LizstarTrek - Discovery Season 3 episodes 6 - 10

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!!

It has not so far.

Scavengers - DIS 3.5/10

Discovery has been retrofitted with futuristic tech. A whole lot of “programmable matter” and holograms comiong out of the new ugly combadges which like, I dunno why you’d need any of this. “Oh now it connects to your biodata so only you can use that station”. That seems like a HORRIBLE idea, people die on this ship like flies.

Anyways Book sends Michael a message like “yo, I found a black box like you said you’ve been looking for”. Based on black box data, it seems the burn didn’t happen at once, but was instead a wave, and if we get enough black box data showing time and location at explosion, we can possibly triangulate the origin point. Yeah that seems important, sure. Also Book might be missing. But Michael’s like “okay, let’s go get it right now :)” and Captain Saru is like “uh no, we’ve been ordered to wait here because they’ll need our help at any point in the next 12 hours.” “Oh, it won’t take me that long :)” “Um. Michael, I said no.”

I hate this plot point. Michael being really into insubordination, after spending two seasons learning that was A Bad Thing, especially with how much she CLAIMS to respect Saru and his authority, she sure doesn’t. Anyways, since we can’t do this, thankfully we have our backup War Criminal to do our dirty work, so Michael asks Georgiou to help her, and they go AWOL.

Michael is legit the worst first officer I have ever seen.

Book’s cat Grudge is left behind, so now Tilly has to cat sit her. I want the episode to just be her wrangling this big ass cat as she crawls all over her. This also got one good laugh out of us. “Computer, locate Michael.” “She is not on board”. Tilly holds Grudge out and squints her eyes. “Did… did you eat her??”

Michael and Georgiou are on some shithole Orion Syndicate planet with a sadistic Geoffry like Orion who loves torturing his slaves. Book is enslaved by him, by the way. We get to watch a guy’s head explode! Modern Trek REALLY wants to Game of Thrones. They all work together to start a prison break, Book with his new Andorian friend he made in the prison. This Andorian is so dead.

Gah damn, that did not last long. They were really building that up. THough actually it’s a fakeout, he DID jump in front a bullet to save Booker, but he’s rescued by Georgiou and Michael before he can bleed out. Meanwhile, Georgiou is having some seizures or something.

Stamets and Adira bond over having dead boyfriends who’s souls kinda hung onto them. It’s a weird but touching scene.

Booker and Michael make out in the turbolift as she’s about to go get chewed out by Saru for insubordination. Does she have… a kink?? She ALSO gets chewed out by the Admiral. “Permission to speak, sir?” “Well, it better be the best thing I’ve ever heard.” It will be, because its Michael saying it. This series is basically a bunch of scenes of Michael saying a thing, others saying “no”, then her repeating exactly what she just said and them going “you know what you’re right”. They keep harping on that yes, she did a bad, but hey her intel was good and she saved lives. Saru also demotes her, which is a long time coming tbh.

This was annoying.

Unification III - DIS 3/10

HEY, Y’ALL REMEMBER UNIFICATION I AND II? WE’RE BACK TO THAT I GUESS. That was like TWENTY YEARS before this.

Anyways you know how the admiral has been like, multiple times, “we are uninterested in learning more about what happened to the Burn”? Well Michael gets more information and he changes his opinion. They need a thing though, from Ni’Var, AKA Vulcan. See, the unification succeeded and now it’s a Vulcan/Romulan planet. Spock succeeded, yay. But Ni’Var left the Federation after the Burn, believing through twisted logic the Federation did it. Once Michael learns that they left the Federation, she IMMEDIATELY becomes racist about the Romulans.

Turns out uh, no. Logic Extremists. You know how it is. I hate Modern Trek Vulcans. Anyway, even though Michael was insubordinate and demoted and everyone is angry at her, she’s chosen to be an ambassador to Ni’Var to try and get information from them and share the info she learned about the Burn. Sure.

THEY WATCH A RECORDING OF UNIFICATION I. DID PICARD RECORD SPOCK IN THAT CAVE?!

TILLY IS PROMOTED TO XO??? Good on her.

The Vulcans refuse to give them the data they require, so Michael invokes some ANCIENT VULCAN RITUAL that makes it so she can not be denied. Kind of… weird, but okay. None of the Vulcans are happy at her doing this and are of course rude, snooty, and racist. Lovely. They also give her an advocate, a member of the Qowat Milat. REMEMBER THEM, FROM PICARD? Also turns out she’s HER MOM!! Wow, how… coincidental!

Anyways, what proceeds is a court episode. Some of my favorite kinds of episodes! Unfortunately, most court episodes aren’t full of… whatever the fuck is going on with Vulcan politics right now. There are three people judging this. One is a Vulcan “purist”, AKA a racist. Another is a Romulan. And the last is a Vulcan-Romulan hybrid. All three are advocating namely for their own peoples and purposes, and are at odds. Mostly, the Romulan and the Vulcan are at odds, while the vulco-romulan abstains.

Her mom also kind of torpedos her chances by y’know, sticking to absolute candor, making sure everyone knows about her insurbodination and that she can’t really be trusted. Everyone in the room is subjected to watching a spat between a mother and a daughter and Michael crash out because she doesn’t know if she belongs in the Federation anymore. They are being forced to be witness to this. I’d be annoyed.

She almost causes a cultural schism between the Romulans and the Vulcans, but then fixes it by making some grand statement about how it’s not what Spock would have wanted. She ends up withdrawing her request for the data so it doesn’t cause a further schism. This, of course, gets them to give her the data. They ALSO are like “I wonder how much of who Spock became is because of Michael.” MICHAEL SURE IS THE SPECIAL BOY, HUH?

Tilly decides to be an XO and Michael decides to stay here, for “the duration”. Or as long as it takes for her to decide everyone is wrong and go rogue again.

Saru makes moves on the Vulcan president, who seems into it. Saru can get it.

The Sanctuary - DIS 4/10

Booker’s home planet is basically under attack by the Emerald Chain, the modern Orion Syndicate. So they ask the Admiral so send them to fix it. He says no. Michael asks, again. He says yes. Once you notice it happens so much its EXTREMELY distracting. We also meet the ruler of the Emerald Chain, who murders her nephew in a very Game of Thrones scene.

Tilly is following Saru around filling out his schedule. Imagine if we saw Riker do that for Picard. They do know XO isn’t secretary, right?

Woke? Adira comes out as nonbinary to Stamets who’s like “aight.” I like Gay Dad Stamets. And yeah, thats about how it’d happen. I already knew about this, for the record, because my dad complained at me five years ago about how woke Star Trek was being. Anyways Stamets and Adira bond more over playing music together. Adira can’t seem to contact their boyfriend and it’s bothering them, and Stamets distracts them with the music. I LOVE Gay Dad Stamets.

We have… too many plotlines moving at once. We’re on the planet meeting Booker’s brother and learning more about him and his people, and also Georgiou is having more episodes and being looked at by the doctors, AND the leader of the Emerald Chain is trying to coerce them into doing what she wants. Her name is Osyraa.

At least those two last things combine together, we learn that Osyraa is forcing Book’s brother to betray them. She wants Book, since he was her slave, and she wants Burnham now so she has leverage over the Federation.

Osyraa fires upon the planet, apparently these are photon torpedos exploding behind them? If they were they’d be vaporized. The Federation can’t go to war, so they send a rogue agent who’s totally going against rules, using Booker’s ship. Detmer goes with the Andorian from the other episode and attacks her ship. Also apparently this Andorian is the only person who’s ever stood up to Osyraa, which is why she wants him so bad. The ONLY person? She rules an immoral slave empire. Anyways we get a Star Wars scene, and she’s not buying their excuses, so she declares war. What a surprise. Just… blow her up?

The Emerald Chain leaves, and Michael solves the problem this planet has had for decades that they were relying on the Emerald Chain to fix. She solves it instantly. Cool.

ONCE YOU REALIZE IT HAPPENS EVERY EPISODE, IT IS VERY, VERY DISTRACTING.

Anyways the two brothers do the thing and save the day, and fix their problems.

We also find out WHY Osyraa actually wants Ryn, the Andorian. He’s the only one who knows the Chain is running out of Dilithium….. you mean THE THING EVERYONE IS RUNNING OUT OF?! NO FUCKING WAY, REALLY?!

Booker decides to join Starfleet, yay. The end.

Terra Firma, Part 1 - DIS 3.5/10

Georgiou is literally falling apart dimensionally. Apparently she has dimensional sickness from time travel AND dimension travel, which is bad I guess. They use the sphere data and find a cure. Also apparently off screen the sphere data merged with the computer and formed an AI. We saw it talking but they never… drew attention to it being a thing.

Anyways the Admiral was like “if you let her die, your crew will never look at you the same way again for letting a fellow crewmember die.” DUDE. SHE’S AN UNLIKABLE MURDERER. She literally ate sapient people.

I don’t know why they’re trying to make me like her. Michael goes to offer her help and she tries to kill her. THIS is our beloved crewmember??? She goes down to the planet and everyone tearfully hugs her and wishes her well, saying it was an honor. I…. dude. This is dumb. This could have been handled so much better if Georgiou wasn’t CONSTANTLY the worst person and showing no signs of being better in any way. If she was a Terran Grunt learning to be better this’d be fine, but she’s still evil as shit.

They go down to a snowy planet and find some guy sitting, smoking a cigar in the middle of a snow field. He introduces himself as Carl. He has a door just standing there, and is like “welp, go on through”. They don’t trust him. I trust him implicitely, cause he likes puns.

Meanwhile, we triangulate the SOS signal from the source of the burn. The ship is still sending out that SOS so it’s still functional somehow, even 150 years later.

Georgiou goes through the door and finds herself back in time, AND in her own universe. She’s there the day where Lorca and Michael attempted to kill her. So she’s going to change things, kill Lorca, and “return Michael to the fold”. I dunno how no one doesn’t notice she’s like, 10 years older.

You can see that her time in the Prime Universe has, in fact, changed her. She feels kind of bad about the Kelpien slaves they have. She saves Saru’s life. I kinda wish we had… SEEN this evolution through the entire series, instead of just now.

There’s something about this… so, Modern Trek is filled with violence and people acting nuts and evil for no reason, which means that the Mirror Universe isn’t like, a shocking thing, it’s mostly annoying.

It also seems to be addicted with the idea that fascism is cool and powerful.

Georgiou kills her would be assassin, Stamets, with no problem, and confronts Michael about her assassination attempt. Mirror Michael is… nuts, cackling about how Lorca loves her for her and totally isn’t grooming her, and Georgiou decides not to kill her but instead throw her in the agonizer. What a surprise.

Terra Firma, Part 2 - DIS 3/10

This episode does that thing where they change the intro for a mirror episode, like they did in enterprise. But instead of a cool unique thing like in Enterprise, it’s uh, just mirrored. And upside down. That’s a little more lazy.

Michael is tortured nearly to death, but Georgiou is SURE she can reform her, so doesn’t kill her. This weirds everyone out. Also Lorca isn’t coming, of course. Dude got what he needed.

She eventually breaks and swears to kill all of her co-conspirators, alongside Detmer. Detmer, notably, was ALSO a co-conspirator, so I dunno what SHE gets out of this. She is also eventually killed.

She also makes some changes. She stops other problems that were threatening the empire. She makes the Kelpiens… suffer less under her rule. Everyone suffers less. The Terrans are also weirded out by this. You know what this is?

This is an Isekai episode.

She enters into a story with knowledge of it and uses that to make the perfect story she always wanted. It’s an Isekai.

Michael is playing the long game, and build ANOTHER rebellion, everyone turning on the Emperor. Except for… THE KELPIENS! Yes, turns out not treating them like meat will make them protect you. Michael and Georgiou kill each other and bleed out next to each other. The coup… failed? Or succeeded???

Georgiou reawakens in front of Carl and Michael. We also find out that Carl is THE GUARDIAN OF FOREVER…. remember him? He was the guy from one of the best TOS episodes. I dunno if this really… holds up to that history, but that’s fine. He explains he’s been in hiding cause everyone tried to use him to kill people in the temporal wars. He was testing her to make sure she wasn’t going to kill people, basically.

I kinda like Carl being the Guardian of Forever tbh. He’s kinda fun, and his avatar just being a shmuck in a bowler hat is fun too.

Georgiou is like “I wish I had learned how to not be evil earlier…” Well, people tried, but you kept threatening to put their heads on spikes and shit. Maybe if we had a better show we could actually have seen you growing and being a better character but instead character growth is shotgun blasted right at the fucking end here. Michael and Georgiou say goodbye to each other, and she heads off into the Guardian of Forever. Goodbye, Georgiou. You were… a SERIOUS waste of a character.

Admiral: “My condolences. We all feel her absense.” ???????????????

A toast! To Displaced Space Hitler! The greatest crewmate you could ever imagine. They go REALLY hard on this. The stuff earlier was hitting this uh, this is NOT hitting.

SHE WAS SUCH A GIRLBOSS. Fucking AIRAM hit harder than this, and she had had like 5 words.

It fucking ends on that. Christ, I was LIKING this episode until that point. She did not earn that. SHE REALLY DID NOT. WE SAW HOW SHE INTERRACTED WITH EVERYONE IN EVERY EPISODE SHE WAS IN. YOU CAN’T FUCKING PISS IN MY MOUTH AND TELL ME ITS RAINING. I DON’T CARE HOW MUCH SHE SAVED ONE KELPIEN IN ANOTHER TIMELINE.