A Very Small Amount of Blundering About Star Trek: Discovery (3×03-3×05)

Oh, um. I meant to write something this week. Fiction actually. But the kids have been extra needy and I’ve been extra tired, so I’ll rattle off some random Star Trek Thoughts…

• Is it just me, or does the United Earth insignia look like it was ripped off from the National Organization For Women? I mean, actually we could do worse than NOW taking over the world.
• We’re on a pretty solid streak here of Discovery living up to the best summary of Star Trek Disney ever wrote: People make bad choices when they’re mad or scared or stressed, but throw a little love their way and you’ll bring out their best.
• Not that I disapprove of Detmer’s character arc, but I feel like they maybe skipped a few steps between “The concussion coupled with all the other stuff going on has given her PTSD,” and, “Now she’s making up haiku about Stamets bleeding out all over sickbay.”
• The right response when the admiral warned Saru that Detmer isn’t mentally healthy should’ve been, “Then we’ll make sure she gets the help she needs,” not, “Well we still trust her with our lives just like she is.” She’s got a serious health problem; you need to address that.
• “Die Trying” is a very solid episode that’s brought down a bit by the introduction of a Conspiracy Thriller plot arc. What is it with Streaming Trek and its conspiracy thriller arcs?
• It’s a nice touch that Michael is familiar with Trill but doesn’t know about the symbiotes.
• Also, I do not like the starship cinematography in Discovery. The whole scene with Starfleet was more interested in presenting easter eggs than actually letting us revel in the starship porn. They make sure we get a good look at the marquees for the USS Nog and the Voyager-J, but we don’t actually get to see what any of the ships look like in any detail. It’s exactly the same as the Federation Armada at the end of Picard, where the whole thing is a big mess. I never imagined I’d say this, but we could really do with a big, slow, languid, parasexualized tracking shot all over the hull like in Star Trek The Slow-Motion Picture.
• I really dig Adria and am sad she’s sidelined immediately in “Die Trying”
• Surprised that Georgiou seems genuinely shook when she learns the empire fell. She seemed like a very literal “Apres moi, le deluge,” sort of former empress.
• Why is Wen dressing up like an alien anyway? What even is that?
• What I’m dreading right now is the seemingly inevitable reveal that Discovery caused the Burn – that something happened to it within the wormhole whose fallout turned most of the galaxy’s dilithium inert as it “passed by”.
• What seems less certain, but I am hoping, is that the solution (or cause) will link back to Xahea. Possibly Po’s recrystalization technology could be used to end the dilithium shortage – we know that recrystalization is possible in the future, but perhaps 30th century recrystalization technology did something to the dilithium that led to the Burn, and Po’s method is a lost technology that doesn’t have the same effect?