LizstarTrek - Discovery Season 1 episodes 11-15
Every Sunday my Twitch subs and I watch Star Trek in my Discord. Here are my reviews and thoughts on each of the episodes as I see it. If you’re curious about a nerd’s views on Star Trek episodes, please read on, I go quite in depth with some of these episodes! I’ve watched some Star Trek before but not all of it!
I know literally nothing about Discovery, except for The Burn, and that it leads into Strange New Worlds. So uh… I’ve been dreading this one. But hey, who knows! Maybe it’ll surprise me!!
I am going to become the joker :)
The Wolf Inside - ENT 2.5/10
There is a wolf inside you. The furry convention is going well.
The power went out and no one went to check on medbay??? We have patients?!
We have a big voice over from Michael about how THE LIGHT HAS GONE OUT FROM THIS WORLD. CAN YOU HIDE YOUR HUMANITY? YOUR DECENCY? CAN YOU SURVIVE BEFORE IT EATS YOU? Holy fuck I miss DS9’s Mirror episodes so god damn badly. Remember when the mirror universe was goofy fun, but also dark deep down where it y’know, hits you but isn’t just grimdark edgy nonsense? Fucking CHRIST. We watch them murder people by beaming them into the vacuum of space, we watch them freeze and watch the air fly out of their lungs…. THEN WE WATCH BURNHAM AND TYLER HAVE NAKED SNUGGLES.
WHAT FUCKING TONE ARE YOU TRYING TO REACH?
Oh hey they finally found out that the doctor was killed. They just decide it was Stamets in his comotose state. Somehow. There are… SO MANY WAYS to find out what actually happened. Check the DNA on his neck. Check memory engrams. Fucking say “Hey computer, who was the last person to enter sick bay”. YOU SHOULD BE MORE WORRIED ABOUT THIS.
Anyways Burnham gets orders to blow up a resergant camp. She claims she’ll go down and take them out by herself for the glory. She then surrenders to them IMMEDIATELY and begs them to let her save them, which they obviously are uninterested in hearing, but after Mirror Sarek comes out and mind melds with her, they immediately change their plans. The leader of this group is Voq, remember him? The pale Klingon? He’s speaking in Klingon and it’s freaking Tyler out.
Tyler goes nuts and attacks Voq. They SOMEHOW manage to make it out of this okay? Oh also there’s lots of stuff about Burnham asking Voq why he’s teamed up with all these other peoples, so she can figure out how to get the Klingons to the peace table back home. Uh… cause otherwise it’s death?? Burnham confronts Tyler about this, and he FINALLY awakens, and it turns out… he’s Voq! Who was turned into a Human through a violent ritual, in order to infiltrate the ship. He DOES have the “real” Tyler’s memories and thoughts but he’s also Voq. He attemts to kill her but is stopped by Mirror Saru, who Burnham was kind to earlier, so he saved her.
This is poorly written, but it’s hard to explain why. You just need to see it. Anyways he’s beamed off to die and then Discovery scoops him up and puts in him chains.
They kill Stamets. He dies. All our gays, buried :D But apparently for some reason he’s still KIND OF alive… in the mushroom forest dimension! This looks like a fucking Disney movie.
Another ship comes and blows the fuck out of the rebels. Oh no, who would do such a thing?! It’s the Emperor… Georgiou!! Remember her? She was Michael’s captain. Oh wowee what a twist, what fun. I guess this means Georgiou is like, Hoshi’s grand daughter? Cool.
Vaulting Ambition - ENT 2.5/10
Stamets is in the Magical Fungal Forest, talking to his mirror self, who is the most pleasant mirror universe guy I’ve EVER met. But also there’s something “bad” going on, “corrupting” the fungus. Trust The Fungus I guess.
Meanwhile Burnham takes Lorca to the Emperor, who is VERY happy Burnham is okay, calling her daughter. A bit after caressing her in a very Toxic Mommy Empress kinda way. Damn, killed that one before I could enjoy it.
Anyways turns out Mirror Burnham betrayed the empress so she sentences her to death too. Whoops! But she convinces the Empress not to kill her by covincing her she’s from the Prime Universe. The Empress is like “Huh, how quaint, parallel universes?” and then kills all of her primary guard except for one with the fucking thing that blue guy from Guardians of the Galaxy uses. What the fuck. And then she makes the last guard alive the “Duke of Andor”. Which is VERY funny as a Trek Nerd, because Andor is the gas giant that Andoria revolves around. lol. Duke of a gas giant. Thank you, my empress, how… kind.
Stamets finds out that Culber is dead, because apparently a ghost image of him was dragged into the Fungus Network Forest. Okay. His fucking boyfriend became a force ghost leading him back to his body. Also apparently Mirror Stamets did evil shit to the mycellial network and corrupted it. This killed all the fungus on the Discovery, so they’re VERY stuck now.
The Empress talks to Burnham about what Mirror Lorca was apparently like… He was her father figure, but groomed her. They literally use that word, groomed. It was… gross. All the things she explains HOW he groomed her, we get twists from past scenes showing he’s STILL doing it. This is how Burnham realizes the Twist.
LORCA IS FROM THE MIRROR UNIVERSE.
I guessed this a long-ass time ago btw. And immediately after she realizes this, Lorca puts on the Villain Hat VERY easily, getting out of the excrutiator, and killing people. Better late than never I guess.
Lorca being evil is a twist that like… makes you recontextualize this series a little bit. Cause like, he was ALWAYS bad and evil all along, so all the evil shit he’s doing is justified, right? No. Obviously not. He’s been in the prime universe for a long time and they just Let Him Do That. It was never treated as bad. That’s the problem.
What’s Past Is Prologue - ENT 3/10
Lorca frees all of his crew off screen. Why are they here on this ship? Why were they not killed? THey also find Stamets. Uh, why is he awake??? What? Did THAT also happen off screen?
The Emperor is annoyed at the Lorca stuff, cause he ends up releasing a bioweapon into the airvents and killing lots of people. She decides to punish Burnham for this, who goes gungho and escapes a room with 40 guards. Okay. How? Whatever.
We need GALACTIC LEVEL STAKES so yes, the corruption in the mycelial network will kill everyone. EVERYONE. In every single timeline. In all universres. Total existance wipeout. Okay. We totally needed that. This wasn’t big enough already.
Lorca kills Mirror Stamets just for the fuck of it, and then tries to groom Burnham into joining his side. She just turns off his signal and ignores him. He’s like “oh she’ll come around.” Yeah okay dude. Fucking creep.
Burnham has one last trick up her sleeve if she wants to save everyone and stop Lorca, cause fuck that guy. She’s gonna use herself as bait. And since Lorca seems to be fucking obsessed with her, he takes the bait. I don’t… RELALY know what her plan her eis but hey, he’s into it.
They do a coordinated attack, Michael and the Empress inside the throne room and the Discovery firing upon the ship.
“Hey why isn’t Georgiou using that thing the blue guy from Guardians of the Galaxy-“ “That was a previous scene, Liz.” “Oh, my bad.”
They kill Lorca, and Georgiou tries to die her own way, but is taken against her will onto the Discovery. They blow up the thing killing the mycellium, then use the explosion as a wave to ride back to their timeline. They get back… but they overshot by nine months apparently. So the Klingons have won the war. Yay.
The fight scene was cool I guess.
What’s Past Is Prologue - ENT 1/10
Empress Georgiou IMMEDIATELY calls Saru a slave and tries to stungun him. What the fuck did you THINK was gonna happen??
That one admiral who fucked Lorca once forces her way onto the ship at gun point. Then they have Sarek force a mind meld onto Saru which is NOT… how thats supposed to work. But that means this works out very fast. They explain that the Klingons lost ALL leadership and are now basically 22 houses. So they are disordered, and that means they are even scarier than usual. Wh-what? That’s not… thats not how that……. okay.
Tyler is back to normal. They did a procedure that fixes him. He has all of Voq’s memories but that guy is basically dead. Okay. Everyone is disgusted that he’s here, and even though Saru won’t arrest him because HE didn’t do anything, it was Voq, he’s kinda mistreated. Wow what a surprise.
God, yes, show, we get it. War is bad. Holy shit. It’s bad and grim and people die.
This shit is exhausting to watch.
At least House D’Gor has this starbase now. He’s the dude Quark humiliates in DS9. Thats a reference, I guess. I am so checked out, y’all.
Burnham asks Georgiou how they defeated the Klingons, so she tells her. They took the fight to the Klingon homeworld and made them submit. She takes that info to the Admiral, and they formulate a plan. They’re just going to carpet bomb Q’onos :)
One admiral literally says “Federation tactics have failed us”. Holy fucking christ. Also, THAT’S your new level tactics? JUST BLOW UP THE CAPITAL AND THE ENTIRE MILITARY IN ONE ATTACK? OH WOW, YEAH. THAT’S A GENIUS STATEGY WHY DIDN’T WE THINK OF THAT.
Sarek: “Perhaps you loving the enemy is a sign of what makes us great. Anyways let’s go carpet bomb their capital.”
They terraform some dead planet and turn it into a fungus planet. Uh, okay. That was easy. Its that easy to terraform moons.
I’m fucking sorry???
What the actual shit
Starfleet enlists Empress Georgiou, making her take the identity of the dead Georgiou. She takes over Discovery. What the fuck did Saru do to deserve this?!
Will You Take My Hand? - ENT 2/10
No. I will not.
Georgiou is very uh… crude and evil. Obviously. She’s like “Do not call it the Klingon homeworld. They are animals. Call it the planet.” This’d be better if 90% of the bridge crew didn’t serve under her and know what kind of person she is. Why the fuck is this happening.
People, again, told me “Lorca being evil all along recontextualizes the evil shit they do earlier in the season”. THEN WHAT IS THIS? Oh but they’re losing the war, their values are being tested. WELL THEY FUCKING FAILED THE TEST. Yes, when the Federation was losing the war, Sisko did a bad evil thing. But he did one bad evil thing. They didn’t go “let’s listen to the fascist and give them full power and control over our super weapon.”
They go on an away mission down to Qo’onos, hiding in the planet’s core or some shit, and then sneak into an Orion embassy. Tilly is here! The one really actually kinda funny moment in this entire show is Tilly going “omg Georgiou I’m so happy to finally meet you, I’m so glad you survived!” “Ahh, Killy. What fun we had, subjugating the Andorians.” “Oh, she’s not… okay.”
Georgiou is bisexual, taking two sex slaves, one guy, one girl. Okay cool, I guess. At least THAT’S accurate to Mirror Lore.
Tyler is there using his Voq Knowledge to help them. He gambles and speaks Klingon. This causes Michael to relapse into her racism. Cool.
Oh goodie, we find out that Georgiou is actually using this to plant a “hydro-bomb” in the planet and blow it up. Tilly finds out about it, and then Georgiou shows up and knocks her out.
Then it goes to commercial break, comes back, and Tilly is talking to Tyler and Burnham about this. I… what? What the FUCK happened?
I think I realize why this admiral never realizes that Lorca had been replaced by a fascist monster. Also WHAT THE FUCK
If this season does not end with 60% of Starfleet being tried for warcrimes, it will be a failure.
Burnham convinces them maybe don’t do a genocide. And then Burnham goes down to the planet and is like “hey Georgiou, please don’t” and she goes “fine whatever”. They then give the bomb to L’Rell?? She’s gonna use it to become ruler of the Klingons or something? This is very dumb. “I won’t shoot you, that’d be evil. But I WILL give this gun to my friend and SHE might shoot you :)”
Everything works out. Yay. Also Tyler leaves with L’Rell, maybe he can do some good for both sides. Whatever. Burnham is reinstated, Tilly is promoted, and they’re going to Vulcan to get their new captain. But on the way, they get a distress call from… Captain Pike of the Starship Enterprise! Oh boy!
This is the worst season of Star Trek so far, and I don’t think I need to explain why.