Star Trek

[Sparky Prime]

Lower Decks
Old Friends, New Planets

Spoiler

Nick Locarno reveals to Mariner that he's created an independent fleet of alien ships he's calling Nova Fleet, named after Nova Squad from his academy days. Somehow, he has control of an entire solar system, the Detrion system, which is protected by a Trynar shield (no idea how it surrounds the entire solar system or how one rouge former Starfleet cadet had the resources for all of this). As insurance, he's also got a bootleg Ferengi Genesis Device (I don't buy that the Federation would have allowed those specs to leak out). He announces to the entire Alpha Quadrant that all the Lower Deckers should mutiny and join his fleet, at which point Mariner takes the Genesis device and a Steamrunner-class ship, but remains trapped in the Detrion system by the shield.

Meanwhile, the Cerritos crew negotiates with the Orions for a battleship capable of breaking through the shield, because Starfleet is dealing with politics and will take too much time to address the situation itself. They end up having to agree to hand over Tendi to her sister once they've dealt with the situation. Mariner gets stuck between a level 7 ion storm (which the writers seemed to forget and call it a nebula later, even reenacting the Mutara nebula scenes from Wrath of Khan) and the Nova Fleet and ends up flying into the nebula to hide, and when she runs out of options, activates the Genesis Device. The Cerritos rams the Orion ship into the shield to temporarily disable a portion of it, allowing the captains yacht to get through and save Mariner. Locarno attempts to deactivate the Genesis Device, but the Ferengi have a paywall on disabling the countdown, so it explodes, creating a new M class planet Starfleet names Locarno (since Locarno's atoms were part of what created the planet).

I was hoping for more from this story....

Spoiler

Nothing about Locarno being the main villain, with this much power, makes sense to me. How would he, a disgraced former Starfleet cadet, have the resources to control a whole solar system, and put a force field around the entire thing? A solar system is HUGE. I doubt even Starfleet has the resources to forcefield off an entire solar system. Not to mention, he apparently built his own starship and a space station single handedly. And he convinced several alien crews to mutiny against their captains and join him, all because they're under appreciated lower deckers? I just don't see a Romulan or Klingon crew in-particular deciding to mutiny on that little of a reason.

Not a fan of the idea that Genesis Device technology is apparently common enough for there to be a bootleg version the Ferengi built.

I did like that we got a flashback, showing the members of Nova Squad (except for Jean Hajar) while still planning on performing the Kolvoord Starburst maneuver, with Shannon Fill and Wil Wheaton reprising their roles. This is also the first time we actually see Josh, prior to his death during the failed maneuver. It's a neat scene, establishing some history between Mainer and the ill-fated Nova Squad members. But honestly, if they were going to have Locarno be the big villain of the season, and tied to Mariner, I think they should have had more of this throughout the season, rather than just these last two episodes of the season.

They acknowledged Locarno looking like Tom Paris... sort of. Rutherford points out they have the same face, but Boimler claims he doesn't see it.

[Sparky Prime]

It was reported earlier this week that Kacey Rohl will be playing a younger version of Rachel Garrett, the captain of the ill-fated Enterprise-C in the upcoming Section 31 tv movie.

I'm... not optimistic about anything focused on Section 31. I feel like that's something that's been overplayed by Kurtzman, and isn't done well by him at that. But how can Rachel Garrett be in this movie? I'm guessing time travel will be involved. Georgiou supposedly had to return to 2257 following Discovery's trip to the 32nd century. While we don't have much biographical information for Garrett... we know the Enterprise-C was destroyed in 2344, and the original actress was around 45 in "Yesterday's Enterprise". So unless this Section 31 story involves time travel, Garrett shouldn't be born yet, or otherwise she'd be over a hundred years old in 2344.

[andersonh1]

Yeah, I think any in-depth exploration of Section 31 is a bad idea. I don't object to the department per se, but it needs to appear as little as possible. The more they use it, the more watered down and ineffective the concept becomes, in my opinion.

[Sparky Prime]

The fifth and final season of Star Trek Discovery premiered last week with two episodes. I haven't watched them as of yet. Despite how much I hate this iteration of Star Trek, I still feel compelled to pay attention to it, so I've been reading some reviews...

Spoiler

There's an old Romulan scout ship Starfleet wants secured at all costs (issuing a "Red Directive" which apparently is sorta like the Omega Directive we saw in Voyager). Unfortunately for them, some scavengers get to it first (no one else found this ship in ~800 years?). Eventually, it's revealed the ship belonged to a Romulan scientist that was in TNG episode "The Chase". Apparently he'd discovered some technology of "the Progenitors", the race that seeded the genetic building blocks on dozens of worlds for humanoid races to develop in the Alpha/Beta quadrants. For some reason, this Romulan scientist left clues all over as to where to find this Progenitor technology. But while the scavengers get away with the Romulan's journal, their buyer, who is an android, doesn't want to pay them what they want for it, and so they kill him. I guess they decide whatever the journal points to will be even more valuable so they go after it. Discovery, meanwhile, recovers the android and they're able to access his memories. Since he'd seen the journal, that basically gives them a copy, which kicks off the MacGuffin hunt.

I like the idea of this season revolving around some established Star Trek lore with the Progenitors. They are a race I'd like to learn more about. But... MacGuffin hunting has become such a lazy, overused plot device and becomes monotonous, especially if they drag it out over an entire season. I'm also afraid they're going to turn the Progenitors technology into some super advanced thing that can create or destroy all life in the galaxy or something to that degree. I gather the characters are saying the Progenitors seeded life in the galaxy. What was actually said in TNG however, was that they'd seeded genetic codes to direct the evolution of a species on some worlds towards a humanoid form.

On another note, apparently Starfleet has abandoned development of the Spore Drive 2.0. Guess they still haven't been able to figure out how to operate it without a living organism. Voyager-J is instead testing a new "Pathway Drive" to help break their dependence on dilithium, but no other details have been given about it. Also seems dumb they established they had tried for about 100 years, since "The Burn", to develop a new type of FTL drive with no results, even though Starfleet should be aware of other FTL drives that they've encountered in centuries past. But then miraculously they came up with something only 2 years after Discovery jumped to the 32nd century.

Edit: Watched the episodes...

Spoiler

So yeah, they're totally ignoring what the Progenitor's message actually said in TNG : "Our scientists seeded the primordial oceans of many worlds, where life was in its infancy. The seed codes directed your evolution toward a physical form resembling ours.", and instead, are setting it up that their technology miraculously created life in the galaxy. One character even likens them to gods for this feat. I just... I hate this. Manipulating evolution on various planets is a much more interesting concept to me than magically creating life itself.

It also seemed odd to me, in the second episode Captain Rayner and Burnham face an inquisition for their actions at the end of the first episode... Under the "Red Directive", they were ordered to take any and all means to complete the mission. Yet, Rayner is disciplined for doing exactly that, and Burnham isn't when she refused a direct order to from Kovich.

There's... a lot of things I didn't like in these two episodes. Which, I mean, is normal for Discovery. I keep hoping the writers improve but they never do...

[Sparky Prime]

Discovery season 5 episode 3...

Spoiler

Discovery goes to Trill for the next clue/piece of the map... And already this episode feels like filler territory, with the episode not really adding much. The recently demoted Rayner gets to know the Discovery crew as their new commander, much to Tilly's disapproval in how he handles it. Frankly, I felt this entire part of the episode was mishandled. It sorta reminded me of TNG episode where Captain Jellico took command and the crew didn't like his command style... But Discovery only shows that with Tilly, everyone else just has some slight awkwardness at how fast he interviews them, which we don't even see that much of because most of the interviews they share are in montage. We actually need to see more than one crew member express their discomfort with their new commander for this set up to work. And unlike the crew TNG, Tilly doesn't use military decorum to approach what she sees as a problem. It's his prerogative, so it's not even her place to openly question him on how he chooses to get to know the crew.

Meanwhile on Trill, we find out the Romulan scientist had been a member of a team of scientists from various worlds, both part of and independent of the Federation. I find it hard to believe a 24th century Romulan in their military would agree to work with outsiders, particularly with members of the Federation, but whatever. When they discovered the Progenitor's technology, one of them tried to use it but was killed. Being the middle of the Dominion War, they agreed to destroy their research and hide clues to its location for the day the galaxy was a more peaceful place and make sure it was in the right hands. Jinaal, the Trill host, only joined with a symbiote in order to one day test whoever came asking about it. Not sure why they had to perform a zhian’tara ritual so he could personally guide whoever showed up. They have this big roundabout discussion about how it can only be him to show them the way, without really explaining why the current host can't. They just walk around this rock quarry, and Jinaal takes off before these giant cloaking bugs show up (how are these things that exist on Trill anyway? I feel like they'd easily wipe out the humanoids on the planet). I think they could have just said the current host was too old to show them the way. They even imply she dies and they return the symbiote to the pools after this.

This should put Discovery significantly ahead in the MacGuffin hunt, with no way for the villains to catch up... Until we see Moll is secretly lurking around the symbiote caves.

Oh, Stamets gives an update about the Progenitor's technology from the data of an old Romulan tricorder they recovered that he's trying to make sense of... Sounds like it's essentially the ultimate Genesis device, able to create life and make edits by changing DNA and maybe reanimate the dead. It's too powerful of a technology, and still isn't what the message in TNG said they'd done.

On another note, Adira and Gray break up in this episode. I honestly felt these two were the most compelling characters Discovery introduced at the start of the 3rd season. It's disappointing how the writers have handled them. There's no weight to it, considering Gray was pretty much written out in the previous season of the show so the character could spend his time as one of the Trill Guardians, and Adira is a (redundant) science officer on Discovery... So we never got to see them as a real couple. They never even found much of anything for these characters to do once their initial character arc was wrapped up. Really, the same could be said of all the characters in this series. They only focus on Burnham, Saru and for some reason, Tilly. All of the other characters just fade into the background.

[Sparky Prime]

Discovery season 5 episode 4...

Straight up filler episode

Spoiler

Discovery has reached the coordinates of the next clue... but only find empty space. Meanwhile, the bug Moll put on Adira turns out to be a Krenim "time bug", a weapon left over from the Temporal War. It sends out a signal (alerting Moll and L'ak where they are) while simultaneously trapping Discovery by shifting it through time. Fortunately, Burnham and Rayner were attempting to transport at the exact moment it activated, somehow allowing them to exist unaffected by the time jumps, but still jumping to different points of time along with the ship. And Stamets also remembers everything because of the tardigrade DNA in him. Burnham and Rayner encounter a future where Starfleet eventually saved them from the time jumping, but the Breen got the Progenitor's technology and destroyed the Federation. Eventually, they come up with a solution to kill the bug themselves, and only lost 6 hours due to the time jumping. The DOTS have detected L’ak and Moll's warp signature in the area, so they get back to work to find the clue.

It felt like a lot of the plot for this episode was written fast and loose...
-I didn't like how they handled the time shifting in this episode... For some reason, Burnham immediately concludes they have to avoid making any changes to the timeline. Then at the end of the episode, Stamets explains any changes to the timeline only becomes permanent once the bug resets. Why would the bug resetting make any difference? Either they make changes or they don't. I feel like with any other Star Trek series, they would have explained that everything reset to normal once the thing causing the time shifts was broken, such as the Voyager episode "Shattered".

-Seems like a bad idea for a weapon in the first place if those trapped can make changes to the timeline. Granted none of the crew are supposed to be aware of what's going on, but... Given the right circumstances, it seems like the trapped crew could potentially use it to their advantage. Or accidently screw something up depending on historical events the ship is involved with.

-One of the eras we see Burnham and Rayner in is when Discovery is under construction... apparently on the ground within view of the Golden Gate Bridge. I thought we were past this when the fans voiced how dumb it was they showed the Enterprise being built on the ground in the 2009 film... Even other nuTrek shows like Strange New Worlds and Picard showed ships under construction in orbit.

-Burnham runs into her younger self and she doesn't believe she's from the future because she's wearing captain's pips (because how does a mutineer get to be a captain)... Now granted, the early Discovery uniforms had dots on their badges to show rank, but they didn't actually use pips in the 23rd century. So it struck me as odd younger Burnham would specifically call them pips.

-Stamets has a "hypothetical" conversation with 23rd century Reno about breaking a time loop... And she immediately spits out the name of a device. While I think she might be able to come up with something eventually, it shouldn't have been so simple when time travel is not common place in the 23rd century. To make matters worst, the 'key ingredient' of the device she suggests, Stamets says is a piece from 32nd century holodeck technology.

-How does this device travel with them during a time jump? Stamets just remembers everything because magic space DNA, so he can't take anything with him. While Burnham and Rayner always get reset to where they were in the Ready Room.

-Burnham and Rayner cannot use their comm badge transporters prior to Discovery's 32nd century upgrades.... Not sure why since these have been shown to be autonomous from the ship. The comm badges also apparently are compatible with 23rd century technology... Burnham is able to upload data (in the form of a hologram) directly to a PADD Stamets is holding.

-How does Stamets remember anything about the future when they end up in a time frame before he had the magic space DNA? What happens to him in the jumps where he isn't on the ship? What happened to him with the jump where the computer says everyone is dead? For that matter... what's going on outside the ship in real time? Does Discovery just appear to be sitting there while only those inside experience these shifts in time?

-Rayner first tells Burnham their predicament is probably the result of a Krenim time bug, and explains most of the time they deal with them just by letting them run out of juice. So even if he doesn't have personal experience with these things, he does appear to know about them. But after that, it's Stamets that has to explain everything about the bug, even warns Rayner off from just smashing the thing... Which you'd think he should know.

-When past Burnham wakes up following her encounter with her future self... Why does she go to engineering to confront Rayner and Stamets instead of the bridge where were older self is? And how did she get a phaser if, at this point in history, the crew doesn't trust her?

-Airiam appears in this episode thanks to the time travel. She's intrigued by the hologram technology Burnham displays... which is strange considering the first two seasons of Discovery showed extensive use of hologram technology just as advanced as this is. Although Airiam herself shouldn't exist in the 23rd century, since even in the 24th century we saw there were limitations of how much of a persons body they could replace with cybernetics.

-I liked how this established the Kremin to have been a faction of the Temporal War. Never saw them use little spider bugs like this, but maybe it's something the 29th century Kremin came up with?

Kinda says something when the holes in the story is longer than the description of the episode itself... But like I said, it's a filler episode so it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of the plot. This was meant to be more of a character building episode between Burnham and Rayner, but wasn't written very well in any regard.

[Sparky Prime]

Discovery season 5 episode 5...

The writing of this episode was particularly bad.

Spoiler

Discovery finally detects a wormhole they missed before because they needed to recalibrate their sensors... And when they do it seems to become visible to the naked eye as well. Oddly, they have a Bajoran character asking what it is. It doesn't look exactly like the Bajoran wormhole, but still, you'd think she'd recognize a wormhole. Speaking of which... How has this wormhole existed for hundreds of years? The opening is collapsing, constantly opening and closing, but they theorize this is the result of matter/antimatter reaction made worst by The Burn... If they wanted to explain the wormhole was made more unstable by The Burn, that would have been fine. We know The Burn effected subspace, even though previously it was only said to have made dilithium go inert and explode. But a matter/antimatter reaction? That'd just be a big explosion. Antimatter's not a component of wormholes, as we've seen plenty of times in Star Trek previously. Going back to the point about how it's lasted this long... Wormhole, aside from the Bajoran wormhole, are a temporary phenomena. They don't last for hundreds of years. Seems like a terrible place to hide a clue, given this should eventually collapse, Burn or no Burn. At anyrate... The opening it too small for Discovery, so Burnham and Book take a shuttle into it.

Inside the wormhole, they find L’ak and Moll's ship ripped in two. They obviously didn't make it through the opening in one piece. However, they somehow made it to another starship trapped inside... The ISS Enterprise from the Mirror universe. Not sure how the ship still has power after 800 years, especially since they establish the warp core had been ejected. Drawn out story short... After Mirror Spock was assassinated for trying to reform the Terran Empire, a group of refugees, led by Mirror Saru, took the ISS Enterprise to this universe. The ship was trapped in the wormhole during the dimensional crossing, so they abandoned ship. One of them eventually became one of the members to research the Progenitors and hid her clue on this Enterprise. They find a plaque in the transporter room explaining some of this, which oddly says "Long live the Empire" on it, which you'd think people trying to escape the Empire for the Federation wouldn't put on a plaque describing why they left. Moving on... They mention 3 life signs in sickbay... L'ak and Moll obviously are two. I'm guessing the 3rd is the vial of liquid that serves as the clue to the next piece, but I kept expecting another character to turn up because they never go back to explain the 3rd life sign.

We get flashbacks about Moll and L'ak to explain their backstory as they fight/work with Book and Burnham as the Mirror Enterprise starts headed toward the opening of the wormhole (and the shuttle from Discovery is lost). Moll used to sell dilithium to the Breen and she ended up in a relationship with L'ak. I felt like these scenes felt forced. What they show doesn't really connect the dots, and just gives us the most vague sense of them getting to know each other and is kinda undercut by Moll somehow already knowing more about the Breen than she should. This results in L'ak's uncle putting a bounty on his head for falling in love with a "lesser being". I guess he's royalty or something? I dunno, the episode touched on several important things and moved on too quickly for it to really sink in. Anyway, turns out L'ak is a Breen, the first we've ever seen without the helmet. Find it a little hard to believe after 800 years, this isn't well known. But at any rate, I get why he wouldn't have been recognized as Breen, but Starfleet has scans of Breen life signs, so how come they couldn't match his life signs to previous scans? So we finally get a reason for why the Breen wear the suits. They are jelly-like. I guess kinda putting them on an evolutionary path similar to the Founders? But, as we see with L'ak, they can still become fully solid which I feel undercuts this reveal. Not to mention they don't really do anything with it.

Discovery manages to get the wormhole open by replacing the standard photon torpedo payload with... antimatter, the standard photon torpedo payload, for the Mirror Enterprise to pass through it before permanently closing. Moll and L'ak escape. Don't know where the escape ship came from when they'd established all the escape pods and shuttles had been launched. Not only that, but the escape pod apparently is capable of warp. Even in the 24th century, escape pods didn't have warp drive. So Discovery ends up with the next part of the map and clue to the next section, which is a vial of some sort of liquid, and the Mirror Enterprise is taken back to Starfleet headquarters.

The ISS Enterprise feels wasted here. It really could have been any ship. I get the feeling they just wanted to save some money and use the Strange New Worlds sets. But considering they salvage the ship, maybe it'll turn up again...?