Ups & Downs From Star Trek: Discovery 5.3 - Jinaal 

I loved that. 😁

Jinaal should not be commenting on Culber physique. It should have been amazed by being in a Human body. Discovery established that Adira Tal is only Human host known (sort of).

@@BobFJ ....you did watch DS9 right? They've done this before on that series. With Jadzia. Her previous life ended up causing some mayhem on the station. So this was already done in the Star Trek universe. They didn't take the symbiote, they took the personality of the individual the symbiote kept.

@@BobFJno they did that already in DS9.

@@BobFJ Uhm, no, Zhintara has been a thing since DS9, symbiont consciousness have been in non-Trill bodies before

I wonder what Slugo Cola tastes like?

@@HighSierra1500 It's the slimiest cola in the galaxy, according to to their slogan. Contains 43% live algae in every bottle!

@@PlayMilesPlay Somebody needs to make this. There are Star Trek themed wines and SAQ, in Québec, sometimes has Chateau Picard.

He should have poured her a diet drink.

I would have loved another minute of the subsequent awkward silence after that

On the one hand, I wanted more, but on the other hand, that ONE LINE was perfect.

Reno out-assholed the asshole lol

was a great drop. We all chuckled at least admit it lol

@@jackkenefick2696 I'm torn. I was hoping Jett Reno added "that was ten words. We done?" but as @maxshenkwrites puts it the ONE LINE & DONE was pretty perfect - more Tig.

A reasonable assumption. That would also mean that the in-universe and real life production reason is essentially the same: to indicate to the viewer that what you are seeing is a hologram. In fact, I believe it was stated in Disco season 2 that realistic holograms were a security vulnerability considering the Control debacle. That's why Pike didn't want that tech on his Enterprise. Perhaps Starfleet has hard coded the glitches for that very reason.

I preferred the lighting choices of DS9. Just use a lot of top light or a different colour light to indicate this person is projected or from elsewhere.

It’s not their best choice of indicator is the issue, personally I’d love it if they got a Sims style hovering symbol over their heads.

I'm pretty sure there would be some bandwidth issues and signal degradation with "remote" holograms used for communication compared to "local" ones on a holodeck. The glitching makes perfect sense in that regard. Yes, it is 1000 years in the future but also the distances involved are much bigger. There's a lot of data being sent, and even if they are capable of FTL communication this is not equal unlimited speed - there is a limit on how much data they're able to send in an unit of time. And there might be interference along the way. IMHO Sean should just let it go.

@@HermanVonPetri I'm pretty sure the main reason the Enterprise went without the holo-communication is that they said it was causing problems with other systems while the Enterprise was being repaired, so Pike ordered the whole system to be ripped out and to just use the standard comm system instead. Since it's a pretty big continuity error for Starfleet to have such advanced technology in the TOS era when they hadn't even invented holodecks yet, I think that was supposed to be their way of explaining why the Enterprise wasn't using it. Holo-comm technology was presented as being new and experimental even in DS9, so they were using prototype ships like the Defiant to try it out. Even then, I'm pretty sure the only time it was used was during the hunt for Eddington, then I don't think it was seen again until Shinzon projected himself into Picard's ready room.

He did the total "change in personality" thing Trek does so well, so well lol he even changed the inflection while talking.

He was indeed.

The best character on the show. Along with booker and now Rainer. Everyone else is annoying as fu.....

@@spilchsaysstuff1427 I think Culber is underutilized. He comes to life when he has to be a take-charge kind of guy, which I remember happening once - in Season 3 when the Empress was his patient. they had great adversarial chemistry.

i would classify it as retarded writing. the enemy just sneaks into the most protected and sacred spot on Trill... no alarms, no detection, no trill asking who this person is... just multiple lifetime experience Trills stupidly not noticing a damn thing!

Did we ever see anyone tell the other Trill the answer Jinaal gave them? Because otherwise, how does Moll being there matter since no one else was there to hear what Culber-Jinaal told Burnham and Book and the present host of Bix didn't know. Maybe the tracker she put on Gray is ment to track the signal when he inevitably contacts Adira again? You'd think Starfleet would have radio silence protocols on a Red Directive mission...

@@QuintusAntoniousTracker on Gray? Thought it was Adira? Must’ve missed a step

@@lcflngn No, you're right. The tracker was put on Adira's sleeve, as Grey's robe was sleeveless.

It was a conceit. I immediately thought when the Discovery had the next coordinates, that Moll and L'ak wouldn't have a clue and the race would effectively be over. The thing that really bothered me in that scene, was that Moll was hidden under the cloak, but you could see that it was her, but they made sure she looked up so that you definitely knew it was her. Like, hey, yeah, it's the bad guys.

Yeah! As an autistic person that struggles with this daily, this line made me feel like crap. Connection is a bloody hard skill

this line drove me nuts, technically all skills are a choice. if it's not a choice then it's a talent.

I was silently screaming at the screen when Burnham said this. That line bothered me more than anything else in the episode. Connecting with people is most certainly a skill.

@@Bastion90 It is. If you don't have the skill, you can choose to develop it, but it will be hard and you'll never be as good as those who have it.

@@Donnagata1409Agree mostly, but disagree about never being “as good.” Many skills are hard to learn, but with work one can actually be way better than someone who takes it for granted & pays little attention. As far as communication, focus and practice can go so much further than folks who sit on their heels & imagine they’re good at it.

Story lines that chase a hidden plot device so that other do not get it - then most times lose it to the bad guys then still win. How about if hidden all this while - leave it that way. Maybe the story should be chase something or find the hidden because you need it to save the world or team member.

In reality, Discovery seems to be committing their entire last season to a single episode of Next Generation and I get the distinct feeling the MacGuffin at the end will play out the same.

@@tjs114 Yeah, except we might finally get to see a Breen's face! Well, probably not. But the Breen sure seem to be the big end point since I assume the last clue is going to be in Breen space someplace, naturally. And, even though it's super mega unlikely, I'd love it if the Progenitor is somehow still alive (and if Salome Jens was up for a quick visit) in stasis or something and greets them, explains things to them, you know answers - instead of penis teasing us with something that will never come in a season 6 etc. now.

@@tjs114 Being able to use progenitor tech might represent endgame for the human experiment, so a similar status quo ending is probably in the cards. The big question for the season is "What is up with Burnham?" And I wonder if we're going to get a Wil Decker moment.

​@tjs114 yeah that's my expectation as well.

He is the only adult on that ship. He has the experience, he has the training and knowledge of that century and he uses analytical reasoning in his decision making. there is no real world scenario where he would not be in command of the mission. He is a better captain than Burnham. Her decisions consistently makes things worse from episode one season one she makes bad choice after bad choice yet still somehow stays in command, heck Surue (I don’t care how it’s spelt) was a better captain than her. I kept waiting for her to mature into a star fleet captain but it never happened. They put Rayner in to show that her “heart” is what makes her a good captain but it’s been the opposite. In objective terms he is a better captain.

I hated the supercilious way Rainer treated the crew in the 1-to-1's ... Struck me as a VERY misjudged decision by the writers. Really felt disrespectful and did NOT feel in-keeping with the way the Federation should handle people. Maybe they were trying to convey him being grumpy about demotion ... but was a complete Downer for me. And it was definitely NOT rescued by the end scene where he attended to show to Tilly that he WAS paying attention and got a good understanding of each crew member. My abiding thought was that each team member would have left the room feeling insulted by their new Number One. NOT an ospicious start. (However, all of the acting was spot-on .. just the material they had to work with was sub-par)

I feel like Grey isn’t a very good actor and comes across as juvenile and insincere.

@@stardusty It may also just be how syrupy all the dialogue is in Discovery. It's pretty hard to speak like a greeting card all the time and still seem genuine. It's a problem a lot of the characters have, though to the writer's credit, it's lessened over the seasons.

They remind me of two teenagers who have no business being on a starship.

Grey has ALWAYS been a creepy manipulative, always about what Grey wants, and quite willing to use Adira to get it. No real chemistry or anything in common except their gender issues.

I found their relationship takes up too much time, and it's preaching. It hurt the last season, and it's just virtual signaling. I'm glad it's over. Can we not spend any more time on this. ST has never been preachy. Difference, inclusion has always been there and organic. I hope they don't do these things in the future shows

I get that feeling, too. It's like they recognized folks didn't like that Shaw died, so they've dropped a new "Shaw" in, and the actor is fine, but a copy is not the same thing.

@@julieratliff6705 I feel it's more like trying to right the ship from TOS / TNG era, where every captain / commander other than our "hero" captains are complete jerks (Decker, Shelby), and most admirals are outright insane. This is more "look, not everyone is top of the class, but these guys are still trained professionals and would act as such."

Lmao. It did feel weirdly self aware.

The bridge crew is such an afterthought. I don’t get why it’s the Michael and Booker show. It should be Michael and crew

Agree, we already saw indistinguishable holograms in DS9.

Nah, they made it pretty easy to know it from their usage of the Doctor in Voyager, and he didn't glutch unless something happened.

All holograms should look no different from an actual being communicating - just make it look like the individual is standing in a doorway - light rectangle all around. This way they can save a lot of CGI cost and avoid the glitch effect that looks not like 3191.

Personally I think it’s a good idea that holograms of people while communicating isn’t perfect, reminds the other people that the person isn’t actually standing in in front of them

​​@@sirsmegheadyeah but there are different ways that you could make a hologram look not perfect than a "glitch" effect. The glitch looks like old tech, maybe on an occasion of an em storm on the planet of origin does a glitch make sense for the 32nd century

I think it's gonna be the next thing like the mandatory Kobayashi Maru down

@@veggiet2009 Who knows, maybe they want to remind you of older times? ;)

Apparently one needs a HDR capable TV to watch this show.

It's tiresome and sad; sad because I feel, unfortunately, I DO "get" much of it, as in: I feel if I was to scratch the surface and press the issue on some of the criticism, I'd find some ugly '-isms' (or maybe 'phobias') driving it. But it's also instructive to me as a writer, in that it shows me how even fans of a series can find fault with EVERYTHING.

I bet Book ends up bringing back Kwejian with the tech.

Yes completely agree.

This sounds way too interesting and good for discovery lol.

He could be a Breen agent, if not a Breen. Maybe a Changeling?

She's in the military and she's hacked off that he's emotionally aloof from his subordinates.

The technology to bypass a security feature is always three steps ahead of the security feature itself. That's just life.

Save the best for last as the old saying goes.

I wouldn't say it's getting good. This show is least Star Trek of all the Star Treks on right now.

Good? Picard in it's entirety was a steaming pile. Discovery not much better. Just shallow, preachy writing designed to try to convert everyone to the show's ideologies instead of stimulating our curiosity and drive to better ourselves.

My bet is it has to do with the time it takes for a show to find its identity. Setting Enterprise aside for the moment, the older shows had way more episodes in the earlier seasons to screw around with different ideas before they found their groove and identity. For example, Star Trek: TNG's first two seasons alone had 48 episodes. Those two seasons despite having some good moments, were generally pretty poor, before Season 3 came and really started bringing everything together. Discovery's first FOUR seasons by comparison, have 55 total episodes. Season 5 of Discovery, is the Season 3 of TNG in this comparison, where the show is finally starting to find its footing because of pure brute time.

Awkward fan service doesn’t make something good. I think it’s about on par with the last two seasons.

Gravitas is the word that came to my mind. You wouldnt be wearing a 1-piece V neck on *his* bridge!

@@jackkenefick2696 Mavitas, you mean?

Discipline or esprit de corps

Is that good or bad? 😂😂😂😂

@@Donnagata1409 it’s a good thing. I enjoyed the episode for the most part, much better than the first two.

I thought of that also, find a technology so dangerous (but also so incredibly useful and in the right hands wonderful) that they have to keep hiding it away until such time that there is no more war etc. of course, we know by the time that short Trek takes place, there's still war lol (and I guess the Federation has collapsed even worse than with the burn situation? that was very unclear)

This sounds very plausible imo. I'll have to check back to this comment after the finale and see how close you were!

The writers aren't talented enough to connect this with Calypso; don't get your hopes up 🤷‍♂️

@@chriswhite599They've always said they plan on connecting it to Calypso. If they don't end up doing it in season 5, then that's most likely because season 5 was never intended to be the final season, until it was canceled and they got to film a few more scenes to tack on to the end. In any case... while Discovery's writing is definitely hit or miss... I don't think it has anything to do with writer's talents.

That was Rhys, not Christopher. Goes to shoe how ‘well’ we know these people.

How about they made Rayner go rogue and chasing Mal and Lak himself with Discovery chasing both. Tilly could have been Number One for a few episodes - does not have much to do this season anyway.

Enterprise-A had 3 captains

There's a difference between the rank of captain and a commanding officer

It's mentioned about halfway through that Mol and Lok's ship was detected over lyrik, so presumably they found the clue there. True, they would have had no way to know where to look on Trill, but they didn't need to. Upon arriving at Trill (cloaked, no doubt) they would have seen Discovery in orbit and, knowing that Disco has information they don't, decided to play the long game and get a bug on board.

@jpritchett42 I can buy the tracking and such. My main issue is the travel time they would have needed. Discovery can get there instantaneously. They would have been done with their time there and obtained the next clue before Moll and L'ak would have time to get there. Again, they were only there because the plot needs them to be. I feel that this is going to be a recurring thing in this season. I think it's dumb to have someone else after it with Discovery being and enemy type. It's a tried and true trope used over and over again with this cat and mouse. It's very annoying, though, made even more annoying by the fact that one ship can't travel the galaxy like the other ship. Unless I missed somewhere where they said Moll's ship has some other sort of magical drive system.

@@jeffs6090 Eh, I'm not sure that holds true. In the first episode of season 3 when Michael meets Book, he proceeds to rattle off a dozen advanced propulsion methods that he's personally familiar with, and wonder if she's using one of them. The only limiting factor is that they all require a lot of power, and thus a powercore that uses a large stash of dilithium. In the aftermath of season 3 dilithium is more abundant again, so long-shelved projects like the Pathway drive can be dusted off by Starfleet as viable. It stands to reason that other (much more energy intensive) forms of propulsion are still available, like transwarp/slipstream. Book seemed to think it was reasonable for a shuttle sized ship to be equipped with these propulsion types, so they clearly exist and are in use in this time period, even if in season 3 of Discovery they were too energy intensive to be commonplace. Remember, it's not like interstellar travel wasn't happening in the 100 years after The Burn. The Tal symbiot's former host was on Earth, but he was a closer personal friend of admiral Vance, who'd never been to Earth. Fast travel wasn't impossible. It happened, it was just too expensive (due to resource depletion) to be viable on the large scale required for true interstellar civilization and commerce.

Ya I didn't like that either. With the spore drive Discovery should be leaving them in the dust, especially when they theoretically don't have the correct clues to go to Trill. That was quite the jump in the story line to suddenly have her there.

Star Fleet probably needed him to have some official punishment since he was going back on the original one by rejoining so this was the compromise I assume. They could have stated it last week, Michael could have said something like “Vance agrees with me and is willing to reinstate you with a demotion to CMDR to please the tribunal”. I’m sure a professional could write a cleaner version of that.

@@sonicsean34 I would submit that he was demoted because he disobeyed a direct order ... in a military as opposed to a paramilitary organization (like star fleet) he would have not been allowed to remain in service

@@user-qi8tu1go5r which order did he disobey? I can’t think of any right now, the tribunal seemed more concerned with yeh narrowly avoided disaster itself. Cos now thinking back to it the standing order from superiors in the op was when Kovich ordered them to have phasers on kill cos he didn’t care what happened to anyone getting in the way of obtaining the item from the ship. Could be argued that included the town being destroyed as part of the Red directive prioritisation Honestly, I kind of blame Vance for not establishing an on-the-ground chain of command when Rayner asked him who was in charge of the OP on the field and Vance gave a pithy answer of figuring it out like grownups which didn’t work when quick decisions needed to be made.

@@sonicsean34 You are correct, if anything he did carry out the orders of the red directive. The show runners want him to have a redemption arc facilitated by the wisdom of Michael Burnham. Unfortunately they couldn't come up with a situation in which Rayner commits a sin great enough to require atonement. His only offence was to disagree and butt heads with Burnham, a death sentence for confident males in past seasons. Rayner's redemption arc should belong to Burnham, who by the way has never shown that she learned anything in these past five seasons.

@@jinks6005 the show is lazy and takes shortcuts with the female characters too (they did it a bit with Rillik last season when as president of the UFP she was reasonable but the show tried to lean on “they’re mean” in a similar amount to how Rayner is a good captain but shortsighted and grumpy). But also the whole show is based on consequences of a thing that didn’t happen. Everyone talks about Michael starting a war when she mutineed but in the actual show, Georgiou recovers from the neck pinch and takes Michael down before she can even convince the bridge crew to fire. It has always bugged me cos it seems there must have been an earlier draft where she did pre-emptively fire on the Klingon ship and started the war that got changed but all other eps are based on that. cos the way they talk about her doesn’t work with the available actions she did do like accidentally killing the Klingon torch bearer or assassinating T’kuvma. The first is clearly not her fault and the second didn’t start the war as they were already in a huge ship graveyard from the war which started that day. Basically, they gave Michael a redemption arc but didn’t want her to do the big thing she needed to be redeemed of.

I would also think the Breen have a dog-like snout, going by the shape of their helmets.

He could still be a Breen agent, if not an actual Breen. How about a Changeling?

@@shawnkeating3820 I thought about changeling option as well.

idiom

With panic.

Agreed. Just moments before Book was beaming all over the place. The Team to go to Trill should have been Rayner, Book and Tilly. Adira could have guided Tilly - they work together everyday.

The moment Burnham tapped and didn't transport, I knew Sean would be all over it! "Transporter technology is superb and works great, until it doesn't." Aka, until the plot needs it not to work.

It occurred to me too but Jellico was much more of a hardass. All Raynor's done (aside from trying to help the mission) is not be super friendly. Boo-hoo. Apparently this justifies Tilly insulting her superior officer and talking condescendingly in their next conversation.

@@kobayashimaru8114 which is why I was very interested as to why there wasn't a comparison to this part of the episode Between the episode with Jellico and TNG between Jellico and Riker it's very very one-on-one almost

Wrong use of the word allegory.

The class is Firefly. So not wrong.

I recently re-watch S1-S4 of Discovery. I think I understand what they were thinking but showrunners failed to sell the idea to the Trek community before the show hit screens. TOS looks outdated in everyway for a show set in the future so they wanted to do a 'soft reboot'. DC, Marvel etc have all done resets to fix discontinuity or aging etc.

There is really no point in getting to know Tilly- she's a temp crew member and will be leaving soon.