Paramount+ Star Trek: Discovery - Official Thread (1 Viewer)

[TonyD]

I think only 4 of us are still watching this show in here

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I guess no one watches this in the first day anymore.

I enjoy this show, despite my issues with it, but "Evil" came back yesterday and that's definitely the priority for me.

It was smart of them to assign this episode to Jonathan Frakes, because it's a very busy episode with a lot going on, and in the hands of the wrong director it would all get muddled. Frakes is really good at finding ways to let the character beats have space and ways to delineate the various subplots so they're easier for the audience to track.

I liked that it wasn't all on Burnham this week; she took a page out of Pike's playbook and got everybody to bring their A-game.

They've done a really good job giving Rayner an arc this season, so that when he finally sits in the captain's chair at the end of the episode it feels earned.

I didn't love Tilly again being made acting XO, given that there are numerous people on the ship with a high rank and more relevant experience. But I did like what it said about Rayner; him picking Tilly is very much in keeping with Burnham picking him. There are benefits to being paired with someone who is completely unlike yourself in a number of important ways.

Only one outright groaner for me this week, when they've infiltrated the Dreadnought on a tight timetable and Burnham pulls Book aside to touch base about the weirdness between them. That's a before the mission or after the mission conversation, not a during the mission conversation.

I was just reading about Lagrange Points the other day, so it was funny seeing one play such an active role in this episode. Just like the 24th century scientists used the Lagrange Point between the two black holes to park the gateway to the Progenitor's tech, twenty-first century humanity uses some of the Lagrange Points between the Sun and the Earth to park some of its most important projects in orbit. NOAA has its Deep Space Climate Observatory at Lagrange Point 1, which is Earth's early warning system for solar flares. Also at Lagrange Point 1 is the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), which studies the sun and has also discovered over 5,000 comets. The James Webb Space is parked at Lagrange Point 2, along with ESA's Gaia probe and Euclid telescope.

When Bernam and Book are in the Breen ship, her hair was coming out of the back of her helmet/mask or whatever it is.
Do the Breen typically have hair, long hair?

I can't say I noticed that. There have been indications that when the Breen are in their suits, they're kind of soft and gelatinous, like a crustacean inside its exoskeleton. Given that, I highly doubt the Breen have hair, even in their solid exposed state. If Burnham's hair was exposed, that's probably a production whoopsie.

 

[Harry-N]

I intend to watch it. I've only gotten through the first two, and now the wife wants to watch too, so we're trying to finish up all of the other stuff we've got backlogged.

 

[Jason_V]

I guess no one watches this in the first day anymore.

Thursday is my movie night, so I was out. And we have company here through Monday, so I couldn’t watch Friday night. My first chance will be on Monday. There’s just not enough hours in the day for everything.

 

[Sam Favate]

I was too busy to see it until tonight. I mostly liked it, but was taken out of the show for the usual reasons - like they’re on this time sensitive mission and they take time out to discuss their feelings.

Still, next week doesn’t (yet) have the sense of a series finale, which shows how the cast and crew were taken by surprise at the cancellation.

 

[jayembee]

I guess no one watches this in the first day anymore.

I haven't watched first day for quite some time. My wife and I like to watch it together. Generally in the evening, we watch the local and national news (while having dinner), followed by the previous night's Daily Show and Colbert, with an interruption somewhere in there when my father-in-law calls for a chat. We then usually have time for only one other show before my wife crashes out. More often that not, that one show is something that was on the previous night that we DVR'd. Since we stayed up a little later on Friday evening, we managed to get in two: the Will Trent season finale from Tuesday and Discovery from Thursday.

 

[jayembee]

Only one outright groaner for me this week, when they've infiltrated the Dreadnought on a tight timetable and Burnham pulls Book aside to touch base about the weirdness between them. That's a before the mission or after the mission conversation, not a during the mission conversation.

That's something that happens way, way too often in films and TV shows. I just wave it away as a bit of dramatic licensing.

 

[DaveF]

Catching up on Discovery.

Episode 4, Welcome to the Strange: I thought this was a pretty tight and fun time loop episode. I kinda liked yet another callback to that mysterious Short Trek episode of the lost-in-future Computer. A fun episode, I wish we got more DIscovery like this.

Episode 5, Mirrors: I didn’t get this episode. I felt like lots of random new star trek info was thrown in. I felt like I was supposed to know it all already, because it wasn’t explained well. But it all felt new and confusing to me. And I was getting really hung up on why CGI Breen was such a terrible match to practical-makeup Breen. And in the story, prior puzzle pieces required figuring out some riddle or working out a process, but Maal and Lock just walked in and picked it up off the floor without any difficulty. There was a big speech at the end about how the true puzzle is the one in our hearts or something…?

And I’ve realized that Detmer has been unceremoniously written off the show.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

And Owe. Budgetary issues, apparently.

 

[Greg.K]

Episode 4, Welcome to the Strange: I thought this was a pretty tight and fun time loop episode. I kinda liked yet another callback to that mysterious Short Trek episode of the lost-in-future Computer. A fun episode, I wish we got more DIscovery like this.

We finished this one last night. Agreed, lots to like about this episode. Not really sold on the "National Treasure"-like premise of the season yet though.

 

[DaveF]

We finished this one last night. Agreed, lots to like about this episode. Not really sold on the "National Treasure"-like premise of the season yet though.

I have mixed feelings about the alien uber-tech, calling back to TNG. But also because I'm not super thrilled with that core story. But setting aside personal scifi perferences aside, it's an alright McGuffin to propel the season for me.

 

[jayembee]

Well, it's a good bet that the motivation for the TNG "The Chase" was to offer some explanation for why completely separate races that evolved in completely separate ecosystems on completely separate planets seem to have no problem interbreeding.

 

[DaveF]

Well, it's a good bet that the motivation for the TNG "The Chase" was to offer some explanation for why completely separate races that evolved in completely separate ecosystems on completely separate planets seem to have no problem interbreeding.

No doubt. And it's a standard story and a scientific hypothesis for life in the galaxy. But it's a "turtles all the way down" concept for me, so I'm not wild about this being the "canon" for life in the Star Trek universe. As a one off TNG episode that everyone forgot about the next week, whatever. But Discovery building its entire season off of it? Not my personal favorite storyline to reference.

But it's conventional story. Others may love it as a scifi theme to explore. I accept it as the big finale. If they pull it off satisfyingly (unlike The Burn) that will be great.

 

[DaveF]

Episode 6, Whistlespeak. This was a throwback to TOS, destroying gods and elevating technology. A cargo cult believes that competing to win the honor of dying in a sacrifice to their gods will bring the needed rains on this ergo Arrakis. A solid episode and some good time with Michael and TIlly together, something we’ve not had in years, I think.

In hindsight, Whistlespeak was oddly constructed.I think that there were two interesting ideas for stories, but neither sufficient on their own. And they just got smooshed together here without integrating them into a complete story.

Someone had an idea about a race that talks in whistlespeak and has pre-warp acoustic-based medicine.

Someone else had the myth-arc idea about the rain generating technology and people mistaking failing technology for vengeful gods.

And so the first half was the whistlespeak and the second half was the rain-gods. And neither had any relevance to the other.

In a Checkov’s Gun construction, the whistlespeak would have been instrumental in the climax to solve the puzzle or overcome adversity. But it was never used again after the first third of the show.

 

[Jason_V]

Okay, "Lagrange Point." This is all about getting the show into position for the finale this week. And, as far as these episodes go--especially on Discovery--it did everything it had to do without feeling like it was set for the climax.

There's an insane plot, a good amount of action, the requisite "feelings" scenes, threats that are big but not necessarily galaxy-ending, a lot of Rayner and Tilly...and something for most of our characters to do. Owo and Detmer are still MIA, presumably on the ISS Enterprise.

This season has been pretty good at advancing all its plots and subplots at a reasonable, organic clip. (Contrast this season with Tilly being put in command and losing the ship in Season 3...groan.) Rayner is evolving and growing, Michael and Book are figuring their stuff out, Adira has character growth, Culber is remembering he was dead for a while, etc. I don't feel we're lurching from one plot to another; what's happening, by and large, makes sense to me. The only character that's fallen off a cliff for me is Stamets. There's something off about Anthony Rapp's performance in Season 5 I'm not clicking with.

Spoiler: Trailer for 5x10

 

[Harry-N]

We just got through Ep. 6, "Whistlespeak". I'm finding this season better than most others of DISCOVERY, probably because I gave up trying to "listen" to the dialog and have resorted to captions all the time. As I watched Ep. 6, I was taken out of the story just a bit in a scene where Michael and the planet's guru are having a quiet discussion. "Quiet?" My gosh, it was verbally unintelligible. Maybe it should be called "Whisperspeak".

Martin-Green has an annoying habit of losing most of the vocal-chord part of her speech, giving it over to breathy whispers as her words trail off into nothingness. Is there anyone out there who can honestly listen to this show without captions and understand what's being said? And the guy they have for Booker is much the same kind of speaker, but he has an accent to boot. I haven't had any problem with others in the show like Culber an Saru, but Michael, who's in most scenes, is just impossible.

I'm not deaf by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, we've been watching the show at about 8 PM and when it's over we switch over to H&I running NEXT GENERATION. There is no missing what's being said there, and no captions are needed at all.

 

[Jason_V]

We just got through Ep. 6, "Whistlespeak". I'm finding this season better than most others of DISCOVERY, probably because I gave up trying to "listen" to the dialog and have resorted to captions all the time. As I watched Ep. 6, I was taken out of the story just a bit in a scene where Michael and the planet's guru are having a quiet discussion. "Quiet?" My gosh, it was verbally unintelligible. Maybe it should be called "Whisperspeak".

Martin-Green has an annoying habit of losing most of the vocal-chord part of her speech, giving it over to breathy whispers as her words trail off into nothingness. Is there anyone out there who can honestly listen to this show without captions and understand what's being said? And the guy they have for Booker is much the same kind of speaker, but he has an accent to boot. I haven't had any problem with others in the show like Culber an Saru, but Michael, who's in most scenes, is just impossible.

I'm not deaf by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, we've been watching the show at about 8 PM and when it's over we switch over to H&I running NEXT GENERATION. There is no missing what's being said there, and no captions are needed at all.

I do the same: captions on for Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Picard and any live action MCU/Star Wars on Disney+. I'm not sure how much of the problem is the actors and how much is the Paramount+ audio settings or the sound mix.

 

[Josh Dial]

Is there anyone out there who can honestly listen to this show without captions and understand what's being said?

Me. Not only can I understand her clearly, but I find her voice completely mesmerizing. I would listen to her narrate anything.

Maybe the Paramount+ app is bad (I'm in Canada and watch it "natively" on an over-the-air channel)? For being a cable channel that shares its bitstream allowance with three other channels, the audio is clear and crisp, with pretty decent bass as far as a generic DD 5.1 audio feed goes. Perhaps Canada finally snagged something...good?

 

[Harry-N]

Like I said, I can watch any of the older STAR TREKs or movies on Paramount+ and it's fine-sounding. But Martin-Green's whisperspeak comes off as mostly unintelligible.

 

[jayembee]

Is there anyone out there who can honestly listen to this show without captions and understand what's being said?

I find that problem to exist in just about every show on TV. And in movies. I always...always...watch with captions/subtitles on. The only time I don't watch something with captions is when I'm seeing a movie in a theater, and there are no captions, and I typically manage to miss the finer points of dialogue because of that.