Category: Editorials

Spoilers GALORE!!!

What do STAR TREK: DISCOVERY and GAME OF THRONES have in common?

Answer: they each have only six episodes left to complete their story lines.

Oh, I know that Discovery has been renewed for a second season.  But up until that recent announcement, and all during the writing and filming of the 15 episodes of the first season, the production team didn’t know if they’d get a second season or, even if they did, if the setting and time era of the show would shift (as original show-runner Bryan Fuller has initially envisioned).

So the idea was always to wrap up the Klingon war story in a single 15-episode (originally 13-episode) season.  If the series got renewed, great.  They’d do a new story arc during season two.

The problem, of course, is time.  While Game of Thrones has had SEVEN seasons and 67 episodes (so far) to slowly develop their many intricate plots and sub-plots and mysteries, move their characters into unexpected situations, and quite often surprise the viewer, Discovery has actually had to “rush” things.

Places where this lack of time has been particularly noticeable include:

Continue reading “If you STILL don’t believe that LORCA is from the MIRROR UNIVERSE…read this blog! (editorial)”

SPOILER WARNING (OF COURSE)!

There’s a misconception out there that I never write blogs that have anything nice to say about STAR TREK: DISCOVERY.  To hopefully dispel this silly rumor, I would like to acknowledge publicly that the eighth episode, titled “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” (“If you want peace, prepare for war”) was MARVELOUS!  I enjoyed it thoroughly in ways that I haven’t enjoyed the previous seven episodes.  In short, this episode was true Star Trek.

And it wasn’t just I who thought that.  Many fans, including After Trek host MATT MIRA agreed…

The woman to whom they are referring is episode writer Kirsten Beyer, who has also written nearly a dozen Star Trek: Voyager novels and is working with Pocket Books on the Discovery novels and IDW Publishing on their Star Trek: Discovery comic book series.  In other words, she’s a true, long-time fan…something that I’ve felt has been missing from the writing of the other seven episodes.

To me at least, the Star Trek elements of this series to date have felt more like last-minute add-ons to their scripts rather than an intrinsic part of them…almost like hanging Hallmark Star Trek ornaments onto a tree at Christmas.  Underneath all those decorations, it’s still just a tree without any inherent connection to Star Trek.

Not so with this eighth episode!  It really did feel like Star Trek.

Interestingly, this episode was NOT loaded up with references to canon.  It didn’t need them.  While some other episodes have tended to squeeze canon Easter eggs in like sardines—as if to say, “Look at how Star Trek we are!”—this episode included only a couple: a reference to the Prime Directive and the good ol’ “Needs of the many…” quote from Vulcan philosophy.  But rather than being add-ons to the story, both were essential parts of it.

Really, though, here’s what made this episode feel like it had the  true spirit of Star Trek for me…

Continue reading “FINALLY…DISCOVERY does a STAR TREK episode! (editorial review)”

I really enjoyed the seventh episode of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY…

…until I didn’t.

Perhaps the title “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad” forgives Harry Mudd’s descent into a bloodlust resulting in the repeated serial killing of Captain Lorca and the rest of the Discovery crew while stuck in a repeating time-loop.

Perhaps having that kind of “cosmic undo” power made Harry snap and become someone other than the lovable but conniving scoundrel we’d come to know and laugh at over the past 50 years.  And maybe that insanity was, in fact, only temporary—and ten years later, Mudd will return to just being, as Kirk said, a thief, swindler, con-man, liar, and rogue…and no longer a mass murderer.

As I watched this week’s episode, I actually thought it was a lot of fun.  As countless other fans noted, it was like the movie Groundhog Day, only told through the perspective of the other residents of the quiet hamlet of Punxsutawney, and where Bill Murray is replaced by a malevolent sadist who is out to kill all the townspeople and destroy the town itself.  And of course, the parallels to TNG‘s wonderful fifth season episode “Cause and Effect” are also pretty evident…except that the spatial anomaly is replaced by a homicidal lunatic who is out to murder the crew and obliterate the Enterprise-D.

But really, it was fun watching and re-watching and re-re-watching Lorca get murdered and the Discovery blow up time and again.  I’m not sure what that says about me—or about the writers on the show who came up with a script that included such scenes!—but perhaps because we all knew it was a time-loop and that nobody would die at the end, that makes it all okay, right?

Right???

As I thought more about the episode, though, I began to wonder…

Continue reading “HARRY MUDD – thief, swindler, con-man, liar, rogue…and SOCIOPATHIC MASS MURDERER??? (editorial review)”

SPOILERS AHEAD!  BIG, HUGE, MASSIVE, GINORMOUS, HULKING SPOILERS!!!  (Don’t say you weren’t warned!)

Last week, I commented on the fan theory that Captain Lorca of the USS Discovery isn’t from “our” universe but rather from the Mirror Universe.  At first, it sounded like a pretty wild theory.  Now, I’m pretty well convinced that it’s the truth.

Is that the “discovery” that the series is named for?  After all, these show-runners are all about things having multiple layers of meaning, like episode 5’s title “Choose Your Pain.”  Maybe Discovery is not just the starship’s name but also alluding to the crew’s discovery that their captain is from another universe…a much meaner and nastier universe, as it turns out!

What?  You don’t believe me?  (Well, actually, some of you probably do.  This theory is already spreading rapidly through fandom—at least those watching the show—and a growing number are, like me, getting on board with the idea.)

Here’s the clues…

Continue reading “Is STAR TREK: DISCOVERY getting TOO PREDICTABLE? (editorial review)”