Someone watching along with The Greatest Generation?

I love these episodes. But by the Lords of Kobol I’m increasingly rankled by the mispronunciation of names. I’m looking at you Tigh, Tyrol, and Mr Gaeta.

British. Specifically Scottish.

As I am not American I grew up with socialism being a positive connotation in day to day culture, so much so it’s wild to me that this needed to be veiled in Trek’s past. Star Trek should be as explicit as possible with this. “Hey, you want Utopia? This is how you earn it!”

We saw 4 minutes of Tom Paris the father!

I lost so much money in that too.

What a mixed bag; I don’t like the episode, but I respect a couple of elements of it.

• the decision to “Voyager” the Breen to the Galactic Barrier was borderline inhumane (the very name is racist); but, as a solution to the issue it was one that was both Star Trek, and used the seasons long arc of the Spore Drive technology.
• The coda was fine, I love the Admiral’s uniform, but the son’s one looks like an ill fitting wetsuit. Also, the scene on the beach, what the hell, they clearly didn’t make their day and just had to use the footage they got, leaving grainy, blown out shots for Book.
• The zero-g fight was…bad. It had all the impact of a Marvel fight scene.
• The attempts to explain Calypso were admirable but pretty janky.
• Seeing Action Saru become “Diplomaniac Saru” was great.

Photonic and Knuckles.

When the EMH Mark I teams up with a pink echidna, hi-jinx ensue.

What my film paper presupposes is that George Dubya will soon be known as George Triplya.

Ever wanted to have a janitor walk in during your doctors appointment and suddenly ask them how they are doing emotionally? No, me neither.

Ever wanted to have a janitor walk in during your doctors appointment and suddenly ask them how they are doing emotionally? No, me neither.

RSVP Nelix!

True, but also it’s the Discovery, not the Discovery A we have now.

Calypso has to be assumed to be canon to a prevented timeline (maybe one where Control won at the end of season 2 etc.)

As a professional Draper, this name gave me whiplash.

I thought it was quite good myself; it reminded me very much of the doctor taking over Seven’s body in Body and Soul, the various crew possessions in Powerplay, and Curzon inhabiting Odo in Facets. I do enjoy getting to see an actor really chew the scenery outside the confines they have worked in before.

Something that jumped out was Adam’s very astute question; whether this season there will see “an effort toward finally creating an actualised character out of our main character”.

I realised that it’s a fascinating difference between Disco and almost all the other Trek shows. In TOS, TAS, TNG, VOY, ENT, and SNW we see the lead in a self-actualised state when we first meet them. With DS9 we see Sisko questioning his feeling of actualisation early on, but by the end of the pilot we see that conflict resolved. In LD we see 4 lead characters; three of whom seem actualised and one who has a core conflict; but this quite works as they are primarily comedic characters, and the lack of self-actualisation isn’t lingered on. PRO is an outlier as it’s about discovering who you are, which makes an awful lot of sense as the characters are ostensibly children. PIC muddies this by taking a very actualised character, in Picard, and confronting him with a world that’s not the one he last felt actualised in. Though by S03 he’s much returned to his TNG roots as an actualised character.

Now, self-actualisation isn’t a state that you reach and then hold onto forever, it’s a constant process, and we see that process interrupted for many characters in Trek, leading to terrific stories. And many members of the various casts have not been as actualised, which also leads to great arcs. But Disco feels to me to be one of the first and only shows where almost nobody feels self-actualised. Saru, Reno, and Dadmiral are about as close as you get.

I don’t know if it’s a perfect benchmark but I feel as though if you can answer “how would X handle this situation, with confidence, that character has probably been rounded out and presented as an actualised character.

Not now Kesley!

“Coffee. Black.” “Make it yourself!”

What the actors knew and what the writers knew are not necessarily the same thing though. The writers could well have had a much better idea this would be the end of the road, and left them selves avenues accordingly.

Yeah, I couldn’t tell if there was some joke I wasn’t getting, but the “naming paradox” comes up a lot (and I too believed it for years) so I thought I’d add some colour anyway.