LizstarTrek - Discovery Season 4 episodes 5 - 8
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. Y’all ready to see Michael save the universe again???
The Examples - DIS 2.5/10
This title sounds like a TV show about super heroes from the 2000s. It has “Smallville” energy.
Michael posits that because there’s no historical record in the Sphere Data of the DMA anomaly having happened before, it’s not natural, and thus is manmade. Everyone is like “WOAH TRUTH BOMB” as if somehow no one thought of that possibility yet.
They need to evacuate a planet, which they’ll do in 4 hours, no problems. Hey, remember when the Federation failed at an evacuation of Romulus and they had WEEKS? Anyway. Oh apparently it’s not a planet, it’s a bunch of chained together asteroids. Kind of a neat set piece. Is this a left over thing from the Halo TV show??
The magistrate is like “oh goodie, come save us. Oh, those 6 isolated signatures? Those are the prisoners in our jails. We just left them there to die :)” holy shit fuck them what the hell. Now they have to bust in and save them and get out before the DMA hits. Pumpkin describes this as “a tabletop adventure”. Hey I don’t think the captain should be the one who- okay.
Also Michael keeps announcing everything to her crew over the intercom? And Culber literally goes “everyone is a little on edge about it all” YEAH THAT’S WHY YOU KEEP SOME THINGS SECRET WHEN YOU’RE IN CHARGE
They bring a commander with them, one of the ones on the bridge, Rhys I think??? He starts talking about his life and oh god I’m getting flash backs to Airaim, they’re just gonna kill him aren’t they
Some Risian scientist is here to help them figure out what the DMA is and he’s like, OVERLY an asshole, like very clearly. Y’all gotta at least make it have SOME level of suspense, y’know.
The prisoners are like “WE WANT A GUARANTEE THAT WE’LL BE RELEASED IF WE GO WITH YOU” “I mean, we’ll work with diplomats to-“ “A GUARANTEE, NOW, OR WE DON’T GO” then you fucking die, dude. What do you want???
Michael is the worst captain ohhhh my god, how did she not know the process of asylum
The asshole scientist forces them to do some dangerous experiment that uses a lot of extra power. While the evacuation is happening right now. They’re transporting people onto the ship and destabalizing shit at the same time. Dude, just wait AN HOUR. OR A DAY. WHY DO YOU NEED TO DO THIS RIGHT THE FUCK NOW? They get angry at STAMETS of all people for enabling this guy to do this.
One of the prisoners refuses to go with them, not cause of any weird bullshit from earlier but instead it was like… he feels such guilt over killing someone and thinks he should just die. He killed someone and stole a girl’s future, in order to survive because he had nothing cause he was in a slave trader’s empire. Like, okay, I’m not gonna say he SHOULD have killed people? But I will say uh, he doesn’t need to just sit there and let himself die. That helps literally no one and he’s CLEARLY repentant of his crimes??
The episode ends with Michael returning a holographic family tree the prisoner stole, and somehow kept hidden while in jail for 30 years
Stormy Weather - DIS 3.5/10
They’re still occasionally talking about Zora being a sapient AI and that it’s kinda weird, but is it… really that weird??
Anyways they’re scanning a subspace rift caused by the DMA and then get sucked into it. They’re now in like, an energy-less zone. No scans, no data, nothing. Drones they send out disintigrate, so clearly something is bad.
Michael caves literally 4 minutes after going “ALRIGHT, WE’RE GOING TO RISK OUR LIVES TO GET ANSWERS TO SAVE OTHERS”. “Okay, that’s it, this is scary, reverse course”. Then they find out they can’t leave. This is literally just “The Immunity Syndrome” from TOS. It’s like, the same thing. There’s nothing WRONG with doing the same topic or concept again, but I don’t trust them to do it better than that episode, and that episode wasn’t even like, amzing.
They try to go to warp with Book guiding the warp, aaand it just blows the fuck up on him. Now he’s seeing his dead dad being a dickhead to him. His dad has a weird cadence in the way he speaks, it almost screams John de Lancie.
We get some ACTUALLY good scenes between and Gray. Stuff about gender, identity, and self. Unfortunately this is kinda… dropped out of nowhere, because suddenly things are breaking down the ship on the outside.
They use Sonar to determine the way to get out of the void, but their shields are going to break down and life support will fail before they get there. So Michael determines a way to keep them all alive. Just… put them all in the pattern buffer. Man, Trek loved doing that around this time huh
Book has some talk with his Ghost Dad where he’s like “all those I lost aren’t gone, not really, they live on through me” and then Michael has a weird slow mo walk through the sparking breaking ship. She’s in a pressure suit and trying to help get Zora through it. The AI is having a panic attack at having to save everyone. Maybe it’s a bad idea to have sapient ship AI actually. You know, ship AI is a thing that I WANT Trek to explore cause I really like it as a concept and there’s some really cool stuff you can do with it, but I do not trust modern Trek to handle it well enough.
Michael is burning up. Why is she here? Why does she HAVE to be here? Like yes, the computer needs someone to hold her hand, but no one can have a character moment without Michael, huh??? Not even the fucking computer.
Anyways, they make it out, the end. What good did this do? Well, it determines that whatever force is doing this is from outside the galaxy. We haven’t had much intergalactic lore in Trek, actually. Off the top of my head it’s… the aliens from Conspiracy, and the Kelvans from “By Any Other Name” in TOS. I think thats it?? So like, interesting space to explore in tbh. I just don’t expect them to do it in an interesting way.
This is the least I’ve cared about Star Trek.
Stormy Weather - DIS 3.5/10
They call the species they’re trying to find “Species 10-C”. Zora uses the data they gathered to determine where this species is. She also decides that if they know where the data is, they’ll go and get themselves killed, so she refuses to give them the coordinates. Well then. This also makes Starfleet look at them and go “hey, you shouldn’t have a sentient ship, that is Bad”.
While they’re trying to figure that out, they also visit for a symposium on the DMA. We meet some Earth representatives, who now also reincorporated Titan into their jurisdiction, “inspired by Michael’s methods”. Of course they were.
Cronenberg has a meeting with Saru that everyone just starts randomly crashing, to talk about Zora. First Stamets crashes it like “SHE SCARES ME, WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING SO SHE DOESN’T FREAK OUT AND KILL EVERYONE” then Gray comes in like “WE CAN’T LET THEM KILL HER” and Cronenberg is like “what the fuck everyone I was just going to put her in another body of her choice so she doesn’t have power over so many people”. And then Zora just… makes a fucking kill switch and gives it to them?? Instead??? Actually I liked Cronenberg’s plan Zora, we can just do that one?
Ruon Tarka, the Risan scientist from that other episode who was a weird asshole, hijacks the symposium and goes “Hey, I made a super weapon to kill the aliens who are in control of this anomaly ;D Let’s do a genocide <3” And everyone is like “Hell yea let’s do that” while Michael goes “NO YOU CAN’T JUST KILL PEOPLE”. I mean, the super weapon he’s suggesting is an Isolytic weapon, something banned for literally 800 fucking years, because it highly damages subspace. It’s the Trek equivelent of nuclear weapons, you do not use them.
This is the first season of Discovery. This is literally just the plot of season 1 of discovery.
Tarka enlists Book’s help in convincing them to let him nuke reality, and tells him he’s from another reality or something? And that… convinces book??? I’mma be real I’m super checked out. Anyways I think Book basically betrays Michael by going “yeah let ‘em burn”
They decide that Zora isn’t actually AI, she’s “an entirely new form of life”. It’s kind of them TRYING to do a Measure of a Man and failing.
Then we get Michael doing one of her fucking weepy eyed speeches to change everyone’s mind. Except it’s harder to follow this time because it’s weirdly interrutped by Stamets going “maybe I was wrong to want to kill Zora”
The vote happens and it’s like 60% first contact 40% genocide. Book gets pissy and walks away without even talking to his girlfriend about it. What the fuck?
The only real takeaway I have about all this episode is that Cronenberg is based.
Oh let’s write out MORE interesting characters! Gray is leaving. THankfully Adira is NOT being written out just yet. But Gray is retiring to Trill. Ah well.
Aaaaand Book and his new obviously evil scientist friend steal the prototype Spore Drive, install it in his ship, and blast off to genocide some aliens with nukes. Book leaves his cat behind, which leaves ONE good joke, as Michael enters her room and finds Grudge.
“Zora, can you please find- Grudge?!” “Grudge is 5 meters from your current location.”
Anyways the Zora stuff was…. ok. Everything else I don’t really care. Why are they writing out all the good characters btw?
Stormy Weather - DIS 6.5/10
Hey, at least Owo is super hot
The president is how “how the FUCK did you not know Book would do this” and like, I didn’t know. I don’t know why he did!! He was struggling yeah, but he was getting better literally every episode. Going from “my loved ones who died still live through me, and it gets better every day” and then suddenly going “yeah let’s do genocide that might damage all of subspace” like an episode later is a bit of a fucking jump!!
YOU ARE THE VERY SPECIAL BOY, MICHAEL.
Michael gets the go ahead that she can do literally whatever she wants to get this taken care of. She assumes she knows where Book is gonna go to get the elements needed to make a bomb, literally Isolinium.
Where he’s going is to a broker. This super alien lookin’ mother fucker who no deals Book about nukes, turns out they areExpensive To Make, but agrees when Book basically offers to break some people betting heavy handed in his casino. Michael gets a bit late and finds out Book is already there, and now she has to outbid him in order to get the Isolinium before him. She TRIES talking to Book to tells her to go away. So they need to get like, 3x the latinum. How are they gonna do that?
Sexy fighter Owo.
She immediately gets her ass handed to her. Then fights again… loses again. So is she sandbagging? Yes, hardcore sandbagging. The people who got hustled get angry and and try to kill them, and then Book and Michael team up and help each other with their problems for some reason? The broker decides it’s a draw and they’re gonna decide who gets the nukes through a game of poker.
Michael and Book are still kind of working together here, because the other two people who could get the Isolynium are Emerald Chain warmongers and yeah they should not get a nuke. They work to knock the two out, and then are playing poker against each other. I do wish this was like, hardcore poker episode like something like Akagi but instead it’s a bit of a montage.
“If you take that Isolynium, you’ll burn every bridge you have.” “Does that include between you and me?” Yes, Book. Committing genocide does mean we’re breaking up. Obviously.
Booker wins, and leaves. Well done Book, I guess. Fuck you. But Michael knew she was probably going to lose, Book is good at Poker and she isn’t. So instead, she snuck a tracker into the isolynium. Also from the data we got about where the aliens are from, which we ALSO got from the Broker (it was the on the books reason we went). At the coordinates is some kind of weird thing that must be upkept with a LOT of energy, which Michael takes one look at and determines it runs on Boronite, and they realize they’re mining Boronite with the DMA.
Okay so I’ve obviously really not liked any episode in this season… except for this one. Finally, a good one. It was actualyl good! Not GREAT! But entertaining, I wasn’t BORED.