LizstarTrek - Discovery Season 5 episodes 1 - 5
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??? ….I am so insanely checked out of this it’s not even funny.
Red Directive - DIS 1.5/10
God, okay, let’s do more of this shit then.
Everyone is like “Wow life is so boring now that things have calmed down”. WE WERE ALMOST IN AN APOCALYPTIC SCENARIO, GET YOUR HANDS OUT OF YOUR PANTS, Y’ALL. Luckily the big wigs show up to tell Michael they have a job for her to do, and she seems almost giddy they’re doing a “red directive”, some kind of super secret dangerous mission. Then she announces it to the whole crew.
Fire this woman.
Also Kronenberg is here again. He’s kind of taking on the role of what I’d call “The Star Trek G-Man”.
Meanwhile, BREEN! REMEMBER THEM? We see a Breen for the first time ever without the helmet on, and he looks like this.
The Breen wear the helmets because they are made of Goo, and in non cold environments, they turn liquidy.
Goo Girls in Star Trek, confirmed.
This Breen and some Human, I think, are on this Romulan ship the Disco crew is trying to salvage. The Disco crew coems in guns blazing in a breach and clear situation like they’re marines. I miss TNG. Riker would do this away mission better.
Oh my GOD, HOLD THE FUCKING CAMERA STEADY, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.
They get into a fight with the Breen and his hot goth wife. Michael gets spaced and for some reason her suit materializes a space suit. WHY DOESN’T IT DO THAT FOR EVERYONE?!
Some ship shows up to help them, and they merge their warp bubbles. “We can’t beam you because the merged warp bubbles are messing with it” DO YOU KNOW LITERALLY ANYTHING ABOUT STAR TREK? They fall out of warp while she’s out in her suit. She should have become a fucking red paste in that space suit.
They randomly pick up Book. He’s here now!
I want to make it clear, I am directly explaining what happens. They just go and get Book, and Michael acts confused about it. Girl, it’s YOUR MISSION.
Oh shit, they’re also bringing Tilly back. Y’all, why do you write anyone out of this show if you’re just gonna awkwardly bring them the fuck back? Anyways she’s wasted, hits on some guy (so you know she’s straight), and then talks to Michael over the phone.
Meanwhile the Breen and his hot wife go to deliver their stolen goods tosome black market dealer, who’s a Data-style android. He’s weird and creepy. His name is Fred. He tries to rip them off and they fight their way out. I can’t tell if they’re good guys or bad guys. They are at least very in love? They’re very protective of each other, maybe it’s a Bonnie and Clyde type thing. Anyways the Federation shows up and downloads data from Fred’s brain so they can follow the scavengers. Why is this episode still going on?
Back at Federation Base Camp they find out whatever it is they stole is some kind of massive galactic threat. Fucking CHRIST, y’all, you just CAN’T HELP YOURSELVES, CAN YOU? Just one season, JUST ONE SEASON, IT’S ALL I FUCKING ASK.
We get a giant bike chase. In response, the scavengers cause an avalanche that will threaten to kill thousands, but the two ships crash themselves and use their shields to stop the avalanche of sand. Big exciting, whoo. For some reason the scavengers stayed until the VERY END and then leave. Did they just…. want to see if they killed people??
We finally find out wtf this is all about. One of the things they stole was a diary that might give clues to the wereabouts to the last notes by an ancient Romulan scientist, Vellek. You might remember that name, he’s from the episode where they meet an alien who’s the progenitor of all humanoid life in the galaxy. Vellek seems to have discovered a way to create life like the Progenitors did. I… didn’t THINK that was what that episode was about. They didn’t CREATE all life, all humanoid life is descended from them. So, now they’re taking these aliens and turning them into like, godlike precursor beings. WE ALREADY HAVE PLENTY OF THOSE.
The point of The Chase was “We are all the same”, not “GODS EXIST AND THEY CREATED US”. Just use the fucking Iconians if you want a super precursor civilation, they’re right there. Or bring back the Slavers, honestly that would blow my fucking mind.
Under the Twin Moons - DIS 2.5/10
They THINK they might know where this Romulan scientist’s last stuff is, so they go to an ancient uninhabited planet to find it. This is also Saru’s final mission, as he will be retiring, so as they go down, he and Michael talk about who’s gonna be the new XO. Tilly still doesn’t want to be here. So who?
It’s Book. It’s obviously Book.
DO NOT MAKE YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER YOUR XO.
Some ancient security system pops up and tries to kill them. That captain from the last episode shows up to help, and tells them how to fix it. I don’t like him, he’s arrogant and rude. I’m skipping over stuff cause it’s just action to fill space.
“I was searching through Dark Comms”, says Booker, like that’s a normal thing. Did they seriously invent The Dark Web but for Star Trek? He tries to message them to just talk this through, and he SEEMS to recognize Moll, the girl. She’s the daughter of his old mentor. Oh boy, connections! Is Moll short for Molly? What a coincidence, good thing space isn’t that big.
They get to whatever it is they’re looking for and it points them in the direction of Trill.
We get another tearful goodbye to Saru. I think this is the third time we’ve done this. And who is the new XO gonna be?
Why does he look like an American Daniel Craig. She’s like “I have the upmost belief in you”. But I already know as soon as he says anything counter to her it’s gonna be angst city.
Jinaal - DIS 2/10
The new XO’s name is Rayner. He’s awkward. They demoted this fucking guy for this. Poor Rayner. He’s back down to Commander.
They need to go to Trill and talk to a Symbiont who is still alive and has knowledge of all of this, cause it was alive years ago. Its current host refuses to speak to anyone who doesn’t answer some fuck-ass riddle.
There’s also some kind of side plot with Saru helping his girlfriend out with ambassador work. Why do you keep writing Saru out of the show if you want to keep using him?
They put the Trill in Culber, and he’s immediately super suss and obviously evil. He puts them on a dangerous quest to make sure they are able to handle the thing they’re trying to find.
Why did they make Gray grow that heinous mullet? Adira and Gray’s relationship is on the rocks cause of long distance and they dunno how to make it work. No one who wrote this episode had been in a long distance relationship.
They for some reason are not treating Trill as the full settled civilized planet that it should be. Instead it’s…. Endor.
The Trill decides them worthy, because they didn’t just kill the animals that were attacking them.
Rayner is having problems cause no one really likes him that much. Have you considered not being weird? This episode feels weirdly elongated as well. Like the pacing is bad.
The episode ends with a stinger of “OH NO ONE OF THE PIRATES IS HERE TOO ON TRILL” just… chilling, and someone no one noticed the gothed up hot bitch in cult robes.
Face the Strange - DIS 4/10
We get some more character of the two scavengers/thieves/pirates/whatever. It’s L’ak and Moll. L’ak wants out of this and is uncomfy with all of it. Moll keeps killing people and is like “Just one more job babe and we’ll be out~” Also every single person in the underworld keeps trying to fuck them over so they keep having to kill people.
Hey remember how I called Michael getting pissy the SECOND her XO second guesses her? Well she does it. Why even have an XO, Michael? You’re always correct, you don’t need anyone telling you what to do. And you hate it when people do. It’s not like you need him for away missions, you send yourself on them instead.
While yelling at him, Stamets sees a weird bug melt, and then suddenly shit is bad. Everyone is passed out, they’re in a wormhole, and only Michael and Rayner are awake to stop it.
The ship is cycling through random time periods. For some reason Michael and Rayner are completely immune, because they… tried to teleport at the exact same time? Rayner says this is probably the work of a “Time Bug”, a Krenim weapon that you can rarely find on the black market, which makes ships randomly cycle through time periods for like, months. But Stamets is immune, as we know from the WORST FUCKING EPISODE EVER, because he lives outside of time.
They keep jumping between different periods in the show’s history and it kinda requires you to give a shit or remember any of it but I’ve been trying to purge this fucking show from my brain, because it’s a waste of my limited memory. This episode is literally just a super complicated high budget clip show.
“Okay now that we’re collected the things, you go do it, Michael” Um? No? Stamets, you’re the fucking engineer, YOU do it?
THey keep failing to kill this bug over and over. Just jumping around to things, which makes the previous stuff htey were doing moot. We get to see Michael fight herself from season 1. They make Season 1 Michael seem like a super angry bitter fucker. She wasn’t, she was just depressed and emotionless. It’s weird because they are retroactively making her super unstable but she’s always been correct about everything.
Michael has to connect with the crew to get them to trust her, so she tells them all about things she knows about them. This is also stuff we learn just now because none of them are characters. We also get to see Airam again, because of this.
It works, they only lose 6 hours, and they’re chasing after the baddies again.
Mirrors - DIS 3/10
They reach the next clue on the Davinci Code-ass jounrey they’re on, and it’s a big-ass wormhole in space. Why have we not explored this already? Wormholes are very important. I watched DS9, that’s like the whole fucking point of it. That, and Trills Are Hot And Fascists Suck Ass. Those are the only 3 things you should take away from DS9, yes.
Michael and Book need to go into the wormhole, where they find the mirror Enterprise stuck in interdimensional space. Meanwhile, Rayner is in charge of Discovery for the first time and he’s still kind of unlikable. Interesting A and B plot, totally not unfitting side by side.
Book and Michael explore the Enterprise. Michael is like “Oh this is where my brother was. Surely this will not end with her being proven wrong and being sad about it all.
They finally find Moll and L’ak and we learn why they’re doing this. They have a “Breen Blood Bounty” on them, we also learn L’ak is Breen, though I spoiled that immediately. Whoops.
Why did they remove the muzzles from the Breen helmets? Didn’t want Dog Goo People? That’s what this series was missing. If L’ak was a doggy goo girl, I’d give every episode a 10. Your loss, Discovery.
we then start jumping back and forth from the flashback to present. Weird, dunno why? This episode is very Clap Nerds, cause y’know, it expands on Breen Lore. The Breen were a part of late DS9, but we never got a LOT about them or their culture or their people. We literally never heard them speak a language we could understand. We learn that like…. they wear these suits to keep goo, otherwise they solidify, and it’s the Breen Way to be goo. Being solid is “inflexible and weak”. That’s why we wear these EXTREMELY inflexible suits. What’s the point in being goo if you’re goo in a fucking solid thing anyway?! That’s so dumb?!
We also learn that Book’s mentor, and Moll’s father was maybe not the person Book thought he was. Or, Moll has a very bad opinion of him, and he abandoned her. “Hey may have been a shit dad to you, but he was a great mentor to me.” Uh, not really the best line, Book.
Back in the present, they have a very tenuous truce. Which basically ends as soon as they do what they need to do, then it’s back to fighting. I mean, the two of them aren’t EVIL, they just are broken people who can’t trust anyone. It kinda just sucks.
THey manage to get out. Remember when they said earlier in the episode all life pods were launched already? I guess they fucking lied. The two scavengers just use it and run away…. Okay. Book and Michael escape in the Enterprise, and then send it back to HQ, telling Detmer and Owo to take it. So uh, did they just write Detmer and Owo out of the show? Goodbye to them, I guess. Remember when Owo was cool and they let her do something once? Never again.