User Reviews

• So it seems the AI created section 31 or am I reading too much between the lines? The ship's captain self-infected himself with nanites following some protocol which would only happen if the AI created the protocols in the first place and gives them commands.

• I didn't understand how phasers were doing zero damage to the cyborg captain? I get he has nanites but he's not T-1000 from Terminator, he's still human flesh that's been infected.

• The mother and suit got sucked back up separately, does that mean she's going to die in space without the suit?

• Why does the mother keep saving Burnham if it's not important to "save the universe"? and yet she seems so stoic that your death means nothing. Also don't know how she can watch her child's life? She's a time traveler, not an invisible being.

This show is no longer Star Trek...................no idea what Im watching.

In one of the better movies released in the last couple of years, the main character said:"There is a good story in there somewhere!". Unfortunately, I have no faith anymore in the writing team to grasp the threads of this good story and pull it out of the miasma into which they have written themselves. This crew of Discovery is irredeemably not a Star Fleet crew as long as the centre of this storytelling universe is a mentally and emotionally unstable person unfit to serve anywhere but a psychiatric ward. I would not feel comfortable with Michael Burnham driving a tractor on an Iowa potato farm several miles away from any person. The fact that the actress in the role has a limited range and tends to overact her scenes doesn't help at all.

Time travel to a degree always is a cop-out regarding storytelling. A convenient paradox here, a little "resetting of the timeline" there and everything will be all right but you can only push this kind of narrative so far before it unravels in a puff of logic. It is what eventually doomed the Terminator series and Discovery is headed in the same direction at warp 9. In fact, you have to be extrodinarily good writers to do a time travel story right. If the writers of this show want a lesson they can watch "Dark" (the Netflix series) to see how it's done. Discovery on the other hand is very close to becoming the "Don't do it this way!" example for future generations of storytellers.

Here are a few hints on how you may be able to fix this series:

* Tilly has to have a watershed moment which helps her overcome her imposter syndrom and turns her from a nervous wreck into a Star Fleet officer. I will even give you the key line free of charge: "I know my demons. I have bowed to them my entire life. Now I know that I am stronger than them if I have to.". She can still have a goofy side to her but PLEASE make her competent rather than just talented.

* Allow Michael to fail and grow rather than to mess up and be disappointed. Take the character beyond her childhood trauma and her god complex and let her come into her own. How about "My faith in you, Spock, is the only logical sollution!" "How very human of you......but your logic is flawless.". Make her emotions matter and not just an overbearing plot device to evoke pointless responses from the audience. Basically, let her be an adult rather than a eternal child overflowing with feeling.

* Make Section31 fade back into obscurity. Use the fact that they were the weak link in an outside attack on the Federation the reason why they morphed into this almost unknown entity we know from earlier Star Trek series. You don't have to be a slave to established lore but at least show a little respect for it. Old fans will appreciate it and maybe follow you to where you want to lead them next.

* Humor? Where is it? This show has been very dark. I know that good comedy is hard to write and even harder to act. Humor makes people likable. So far you only managed to make your characters pitiful. That won't do in the long run. They don't have to have bags of swag like Kirk or a moral übermensch like Picard but let them do something "normal". Give them a hobby or if all else fails a pet. Even Data had a cat.

That was a long wall of text but you don't have that much time and only so many episodes to get on course with this show. There were a few episodes with potential this season. Convoluted and over-acted epsidodes like this this one won't do in the long run.

"Perpetual Infinity" was a nice episode. It could have been great, but Discovery does have a problem with pacing. The best episodes are those where you can feel the plot actually moving, but those episodes are regretfully few - Brother, New Eden, If Memory Serves are the only ones. The rest of them... the plot rather drags than moves. And Perpetual Infinity was one of those.

It wasn't a bad episode. I definitely enjoyed it more than Point of Light and Saints of Imperfection.

I wasn't thrilled about Michael's mom being the Red Angel but now it kinda grows on me. Loved their interactions in this episode. I also loved the fact that apparently it wasn't Michael's mom, Gabrielle, that sent the seven signals. And now that the suit has been compromised we can only speculate who will send it in the future.

My theory is that the Discovery crew will go a thousand years into the future (see the Calypso episode in Short Treks) to find Gabrielle and then somehow they will send the signals back to the past. Maybe Michael will get to be a Red Angel once the suit is repaired.

Loved Spock in this episode and his relationship with Michael. He's such a great brother to her. And I love how they make him a real person not some idealized Vulcan.

Anyway I love that the intrigue is back in the show.

This episode probably contained more tears shred than all of TNG combined. I mean come on the existence of the galaxy is at stake and all you can do is cry and be melodramatic. And that's coming from a woman that had Vulcan training? Cringe to say the least, annoying to be more realistic.

I liked the plot twist of Control taking over Lenend. Makes sense. And Ash and Phillipa joining their forces to do good, despite their questionable past.

Okay episode, but way too many tears.

It would be nice if a character in Star Trek stayed dead. Here is an episode where we have Spock and Dr Culber. The viewer knows that both have or will return from the death.

Now add Gabrielle Burnham, Michael's mother who she thought for years was dead. She is the woman in the Red Angel suit. Gabrielle jumped too far into the future and saw Control destroying sentient life. In the various leaping she has done. Gabrielle has learnt that the information sphere needs to be destroyed to save all sentient life in the universe.

Control needs to evolve and has possessed Leland and wants access to the data from the sphere. The interesting part of the story is what looks like the origin of the Borg. The possessed Leland in many ways shows cyborg like abilities.

What is not so good are the emotional moments from the Vulcan raised Michael and her birth mother. Clunky writing when a melodramatic Michael puts the universe at risk so she can try to save her mother.

Spock on the landscape can only make the show better, but I have to question the casting a bit. It doesn't feel like they found the right man for the job.

Another okay episode, but given the lack of hype around the show, it needs to be better than this to start getting more attention.

One of the requirements of any work of fiction is that you care about the characters. It doesn't mean you have to like them, but even bad guys get our attention. As I've driven my way through this series, even with all the tear jerking, I can't think of a single character that has grabbed my emotional attention. When Michael says goodbye to her mother, I thought--OK. Because the whole thing about her childhood has never captured me. She is whiney and tiresome and apparently the center of the universe. That's really too bad. It's too bad that some talented writers could have engaged the other characters in some way, instead of them standing on the periphery, like the cardboard cut-out of Mike Pence, standing behind Donald Trump. This needs to be about plot and continually bringing people back from the dead really is a cheap trick.

It makes you wonder if this episode of Discovery showed a viewer how borg came into being. A.I. infecting humanoid with nanomachines and turning this humanoid into obedient vessel. Hell, maybe almost defeated Control will use a host body and a time-travelling-ant-man-suit (i bet it's not the last episode we saw it) to go back in time and will end up in Delta Quadrant few thousands years in the past.

Probably not, though.

p.s.

Spock has dyslexia now. He is probably also lactose intolerant.

*sigh*

This episode resonated with me on so many levels. I fully understand the emotions at play: I lost my mother at age 13 - over 45 years ago. I've often dreamed about having just a few moments to talk with her, as Michael got to have with her mother. It was a necessary plot device that appropriately moved the series forward, including a bridge to season 3.

Well done!

I liked where ST:D was going. I even liked season 2 better than 1. It gave promise to an interesting story. But lately there has been very little plot and character development. Most of this episodes were whiny dialogues. The plot of this episode is 10 minutes long at best. Going outside conventional Star Trek storytelling and usual themes isn't bad. What is bad is making up a story that they can't deliver.

So the premise of this episode was that they couldn't delete the data, but they could transfer it to the suit and keep it safe there. So for some reason deleting the data doesn't work, but CUT-PASTE does? But apparently they gave up on saving the data when they decided to send it into the future where AI won't find it. If they gave up on saving the data, couldn't they just fry the computer? Put the hard drive into the microwave or radiate the ship's computer? Eject the computer core and blast it with phasers?

Also, when AI augments a Section 31 officer they become Borg-like phaser-resistant and move with superspeed, yet Philippa slows them down in hand to hand combat. In a previous episode they completely missed the opportunity to beam Airiam out of that airlock and solve the situation that way just to get the dramatic door scene (yes they had a transporter lock on them like 5 minutes before that)

This kind of writing is offensive to viewers' intelligence and is destroying what could've been a well-made season.

First we're told that the DNA of the suit matches Burnam 100%, then mommy is piloting it, and now we've got Stamets contradicting that in this episode. This truly is Star Trek Discontinuity. The writing here is not even up to fanfiction standards at this point. While the effects are excellent, the writing is so badly done, and so A+ Bechdel Test that it has destroyed what could have been a great alternate universe of Star Trek. Really sad to see this happen. Not sure how much more I'm willing to watch since it isn't getting better, it's getting worse.