This is a scheduled post, because I got a bottle of champagne and a bottle of draino, so I’ll be ready to toast either way. Anyway, I haven’t been writing much as you can tell, but it’s because I’ve been putting a lot of time into my art. I finally built up the nerve to start working with resin. Results are mixed.
Good luck and god speed.
An unattributed list of how I think about various media figures who believe themselves qualified to pass judgment on what it takes to be manly and expect me to follow their advice lest I will be considered no-true-man:
I’m not going to say who’s who, so if you are upset about how I’ve described your favorite manosphere figure, just assume I’m talking about some other twink lumberjack.
Last week, my daughter performed in a production of The Wizard of Oz. She was a member of the Lollipop Guild. Also the lead apple tree. Also a denizen of the Emerald City. Also a Winkie. I get the impression that as an actress, she is “good, for a little kid”
Anyway, for some reason, she asked me to AI-enhance a photo I took during the performance, and what came out was kinda wild, like some sort of surrealist interpretation of The Lion King, so I thought I’d share it with you.
And yeah, I am so happy that they’re leaving Calypso in the canon. Yes, we don’t know what could possibly justify them retrofitting Discovery back to its 23rd century configuration, but it was hilarious to watch them scrubbing the “-A” off the hull.
(Just off the top of my head, Craft appears to come from a time when the Federation has degenerated into an imperialistic state. Perhaps Kovitch anticipates that a symbol not of the 32nd century but of “The Long Ago” would be required)
Also, now that we know that Discovery’s state is a cover, it’s possible that Zora’s claim to have been abandoned for a thousand years is also not entirely honest – that she was ordered to claim to have been left there in the 23rd century. Better still, “Calypso” ended on the sad notion that Zora would probably remain alone forever, but now we know that she isn’t lost: they put her there deliberately, and made plans to retrieve her. Might not pay off, but it seems a lot more plausible now to imagine that she’s recovered not long after those events, given that we now know that it was Craft she was waiting for all along.
Anyway, here’s me being angry about the new Taco Bell architecture.
I know, I know, right? Kovitch being Daniels feels so utterly random. But still, him being a time agent was apparently the plan even without the series coming to an end. I like that he’s a time hoarder, with Sisko’s baseball, Geordi’s visor and Riker’s Risan Sex Statue on display in his office.
I also really like the surprise twist of Discovery zapping the Breen out of the plot. It’s a good way to do a big surprising reveal in this situation. We’ve never seen that Discovery can separate, and we’ve never seen that it can jump other things. But we have seen that it can detach its nacelles, and we have seen that some ships can separate their saucers, and we saw back in season 3 that it can take other things with it when it jumps. So it’s new, but not outside the parameters previously set.
Anyway, here’s Death.
I really do want to have my say about the aftercare at the end of Discovery and the interesting implications of its ending and the extent to which some of the final reveals feel tacked on despite apparently being an abbreviation of their aborted season 6 plan. But I have not had a complete thought in a month, so instead, here’s another encaustic.
I’m tired and don’t want to write about Star Trek this week, so instead, here’s An Art. This is one of a series of encaustic collages I’m doing.
I got some fairly devastating news at work last week (Or, as your therapist would tell you, an exciting opportunity to meet new people and be the untrusted new guy and have to impress them all over again. Fear not; I’m being reassigned, not fired. Probably), and now I don’t even have any new Star Trek to look forward to.
So this went exactly the way we knew it would. Michael is granted the power of the gods and promptly chucks it into a black hole because there is going to be a new series in a couple of years set after this, and the writers have no idea how to continue the adventures of Star Trek in a universe where the Federation can create life at will.
I don’t fault them for this. I really don’t. Now, had this actually been the capstone to all of Star Trek – if this had been the planned denouement of the timeline, then yeah, “In the 32nd century, we became gods,” would be a decent ending, a payoff for sixty years of trekking. But it’s not, and we knew it wouldn’t be, and we knew this was exactly what would happen. But I can still object to how it happened.
They tried to be uplifting here. Michael’s decision evolved out of the observation that the galaxy already exists in a state of high diversity. She basically reckons “There’s plenty of life in the galaxy already,” and thus using the forge (I reckon that’s what fandom will call it eventually) to make new life is redundant, and the only practical use for the thing is to instantly clone up a huge slave army. Which is bad.
This is not terrible thinking.
It is also wrong. In the first place, I am utterly gobsmacked by the short-sightedness of, “eh, we got diversity enough.” I’m not talking about something speculative like, “But what if one day a plague or something wipes out most life and they need to reboot it.” That is actually covered in its way (I’ll get back to it). More of medium-range short-sightedness: yeah, there’s plenty of different forms of life in the galaxy right now. But you know what there isn’t? Kweijans. Y’know, Michael’s boyfriend’s species. Or space Tardigrades. Or those people who are white on one side and black on the other. Or that race that Kevin Uxbridge wiped out. Or trance worms. They even mention trance worms later in the episode. Now, they establish that you can’t actually raise the dead in the practical sense after all (More on that later too), so no, they can’t use the forge to resurrect Kweijan. But preserving a species from extinction is a noble goal in and of itself; it’s something that preserves and enhances the diversity of life in the universe. Yes, sure, it wouldn’t be “the same”, but it’s not without value. It’s like that time the Klingons cloned Kahless: sure, the clone wasn’t really the reincarnation of the patriarch of Klingon civilization, but he was a legitimate heir to the imperial line. We know they appreciate the value of this, because Book does go on to replant the Kweijan world root. The only thing stopping me from being livid is that no one seems to actually notice any of this and excuse it – there is no scene where Book has to be told that, no, seriously, Evolution “wanted” his people to die out and thus it would be morally wrong to second-guess Evolution-God.
In the second place, I find the threat of raising an instant army to be extremely dubious here. Sure, you can magic a large number of people into existence. But cloning technology already exists in this setting. And being able to magic an army into existence doesn’t get you training or ships, so what exactly are you going to do with this army? I think you need some justification for the idea that a thirty-second war can be won just by having a huge number of meatsacks available as cannonfodder. Do you have a lot of infantry charges in space? It’s a very regressive view of military might, the kind that complains about the modern military being “woke”. It’s the kind of thinking that convinces you it would be a great idea to invade Ukraine with a ’90s army whose generals already sold half your equipment on the black market.
They never really say it outright, and I wish they had, but one of the strong implications I got was that in the “dark” timeline from “Face the Strange” was not caused by the Breen exploiting the forge, but just by the fact that whichever primarch acquired it would be able to unite the Breen.
Speaking of… Yeah, the subplot with Primarch Ta’al sure did happen. It was fine, but it added up to basically nothing. I’d have to go back and check, but I think even when the shuttle she sent ahead to the black holes is mentioned by Rayner, it’s while he’s out-of-view. Yeah. I’m pretty sure that whole subplot was part of the last-minute rewrites to give Saru something to do other than get married.
It’s a great scene, sure. Saru staring down a Breen primarch on the basis of his being able to carry off the whole “Stone Cold Apex Predator” thing is really cool. It might be a bluff, but I don’t think so. They sent Saru off at the beginning of the season to be the ambassador to the minor planets, and this is the payoff: Saru has made a connection with those planets, and if Ta’al kills him and pursues the other dreadnought, they’re going to attack Ta’al’s holdings along a major trade route. Not with the realistic expectation of defeating the Breen, though. Because they don’t have to: the Breen are in such a state of mutual in-fighting right now, that even the mildest of bloody noses at the hands of a mob of Federation-aligned rabble would scuttle Ta’al’s chances of claiming the throne. But why even involve Ta’al specifically when she’s never going to come face-to-helmet with Rayner? Rayner is really the character served the least well by this season. It’s clear they inserted him expecting to build him up over multiple seasons, but someone at Paramount heard the phrase “Five-Year Mission” and decided that five is the right number of seasons for a Star Trek to run. Also, the Pathway Drive was a bit of a dud. All we see is that it seems to project a watery bubble around the shuttle. Or maybe those were just shields. I was hoping for something cool.
Anyway, the story on balance is okay I guess, but it’s sort of messy and random, and a lot of things seem to happen for very little reason. The Breen who went into the portal last week just get flat out murdered in the first scene. Michael encounters Chiana, they fight, she suggests they work together, then later Michael attacks her… And then says that they need to stop fighting and work together… What?
The portals to different environments was a neat visual. They don’t clarify if those are real places or terrarria or simulations or pocket universes or whatever, but it’s a neat visual. Michael sorting out the puzzle with the shadows was done well.
Then the final obstacle to receive the power of the gods is… A tangram. And Chiana is like, “I wanna do the thing” and Michael is like, “No that is an obvious trap let’s spend five minutes thinking about it” so Chiana cold-cocks her and tries the dumb thing and gets electrocuted.
And since I’m at twelve hundred words and don’t know what I’m going to talk about next week, let’s break here.
We edge ever closer to inevitable disappointment.
This is a good, strong episode, don’t get me wrong. After a few clinkers where they tried to do a puzzle box episode and failed, it occurred to Discovery to play to their strengths, and do a nice straightforward heist. It’s nice and straightforward. The inevitable disappointment comes from the fact that it just seems so obvious that this is going to end with Michael deciding that humanity can’t be trusted with the Power of the Gods. Probably going to shove it into one of those convenient black holes.
Anyway, the main thing I love about this episode is that the entire heist basically hinges on the fact that the Breen are absolute jerks, all the time. So you can fairly trivially infiltrate a Breen warship by putting on a Breen costume and just yelling at anyone who challenges you. How fucked up is it that the Breen keep the environment in their own ships at a temperature that is comfortable for most other races, but not themselves? This seems insane, but, little though we know about the Breen, it does come off as plausible that they are just the kind of assholes who would do that sort of thing. Remember, Breen can survive at normal temperatures, but they have to switch from gooey to non-gooey, which is deeply shameful. So instead, they maintain their low-temperature goo form, but wear face-concealing refrigerated suits all the time. Because they are just jerks like that. It is profoundly stupid, but in an enjoyable way.
I notice President Rillak is back. I had assumed that T’rina was taking point in the Breen negotiations a couple of weeks ago because they hadn’t hired Chelah Horsdal back on for this season. But it’s got me wondering whether Saru’s subplot here was actually added later, after they found out they weren’t getting renewed. Even though it ties back to Rayner – the Breen primarch who is racing to join the fight is the same one who conquered his planet – that subplot is completely isolated from everything else. It seems pretty obvious that they wouldn’t introduce Primarch Ta’al here unless it was to lead to a showdown between her and Rayner. So if that doesn’t happen, I’d take that as evidence that this sideplot exists purely because Doug Jones would’ve otherwise unceremoniously disappeared from the series weeks ago. And if that’s the case, it’s even possible they might kill him off. Though that would be a bit of a bummer. In any case, every scene with Saru and T’rina is an absolute gift. #RelationshipGoals. At least we’ll get to see the pathway drive in action. I hope it’s something super cool and/or weird.
Adira gets to really come into their own on a big important away mission, and it feels very earned that Stamets freaks out a little but ultimately makes his peace with them going. And I guess they were really pushing for Rhys to become a main character, because he’s there too and doesn’t even die or anything.
I need to momentarily drop my conceit of calling them Chiana and D’argo to make a joke about Mol having a La’ak-et in her pocket. Another cool bit of It’s The Future’s Future that I wish had just been a constant background element of this show: personal transporters means everyone can carry around their own personal hammerspace. Maybe that’s where they get their phasers from, though I’m pretty sure they’re slightly more mundanely origami’d up their sleeves.
Another negative point for having to sit through the whole episode with the sense of inevitability from the fact that we all knew the second the barrel opened up to reveal a mysterious portal that the episode was gonna end with Michael jumping into it. I’m interested about the setup, though. We’ve got a pair of Breen, and Chiana with Hammerspace D’Argo, and Michael. I assume next week Book’s going to go in after her, in order that we can set up something with pairs of lovers. The secret last clue did say something about many becoming one. Orgy time?
And then there’s the real centerpiece of the episode: Rayner having them tuck Discovery’s nacelles in and whang itself through the Dreadnought’s shuttle bay in order to blow everyone out into space. It is indeed cool. I’m disappointed we actually get to see the full extent of the Dreadnought on-screen all at once, but still very cool. (This show is bad at scale. The Dreadnought dwarfed Federation HQ, but Discovery seems to be just a bit smaller than the hangar bay that spans 3/4 of the width of the ship. Similarly, there’s very few shots of the Federation fleet that reflect the fact that Discovery really ought to be much smaller than a 32nd century capital ship.
Our final plot complication of the episode is that the barrel containing the Progenitor Technology bursts open leaving what appears to be a Twilight Portal from Zelda in space.
This I assume will complicate things.
Everything I said about last week remains true: the Discovery writers room is good at feelings and connection and trauma and not good at puzzles. If it was a problem last week that the B-plot required Stamets, Adira, and Tilly to be a little thick so as to stretch out the process of solving the next clue to fill the whole episode, it’s even worse when it’s the A-plot.
Because this week’s A-plot is that Michael gets zapped inside a “mindscape” (I think they reference the same kind of energy beam as in the TNG episode where Picard gets gaslit into learning to play the flute, an episode whose near-universal praise really overlooks the gaslighting and lack of consent) where she has to face her own personality flaws in order to find the last MacGuffin fragment. And it takes a whole damn hour. Not for her to face her personality flaws, but just for her to realize that facing her personality flaws is the point. She wastes the first half of her time in the mindscape convinced that she needs to study books on the Dominion War, because that was the historical context that prompted the scientists to hide the Progenitor technology. Then, she decides that the actual test is that the mindscape is the library, but presented as a labyrinth, and she’s supposed to solve it. And even when that doesn’t pan out, she’s still resistant to the idea that the puzzle she’s supposed to solve has anything to do with her own mind. Despite the fact that they was told up-front that the mindscape was generated from her own mind, that Book was drawn from her own mind to appear as the sage and unhelpful magical guide character, and she figured out quickly that the mindscape had recreated the library because in the real world, she was looking for something in the library, so her mind coughed up “The exact place I physically am right now” as the best metaphor for “The place where you go to search for something.”
(That, by the way, is both very wild and very silly. The mindscape could have taken her anywhere, but it took her to the exact place where she already was, and the reason is because “for her, the library represents the mission”. So, like, it took her to the most important place for her, which is where she already was, because she is very focused on her mission. It’s not illogical or anything, it’s just very funny. It also reminds me of how Harry Potter could retrieve the philosopher’s stone because he just wanted to get it, not do anything with it, so the mirror showed him getting it, rather than the things he wanted to accomplish with it.)
Do you know how far you have to go astray for the resolution to be “Michael has to face up to her core belief that she is only worthy and loveable when she is successful at her mission” and for me to not be fully on-board? Luisa admitted that in a jaunty musical number and I was bawling like a fucking baby.
It’s the right puzzle and the right solution, but the wrong “solving”. After five years, Michael should be better than this. Discovery has done a great job at handling people owning their own emotional baggage, but for the purpose of this episode, Michael has to take a whole fucking hour to even realize that’s what she’s supposed to do. (In fairness, once she does figure it out, she doesn’t fight it. Also, I like the bit where she has some other unrelated deep inner revelation, and Mind-Book is like “Yeah that’s a big important thing, good on you, but it’s not the solution to the puzzle.”)
The rest of the episode is fine, I guess. The main thing about it is the library itself, which is utterly fantastic, and fuck Starfleet Academy, I want a show about this place. The librarian is a wonderful character. I think she’s the same “70s Glam Rock Album Cover Interpretation of a Klingon” species as the Federation President from Star Trek VI, but she’s super chipper and upbeat, even when facing down the Breen.
The Breen. So the main other plot advancement in this episode is that Chiana takes over the Breen dreadnought because D’argo’s uncle went from zero to crazy real fucking fast. Like, he went from “I need the scion to secure my claim to the throne so I will make deals with the lesser races” last week to “I am going to gleefully brag to my own personal bodyguards how quickly and happily I would sacrifice them for my own personal glory which I absolutely do not intend to share with anyone.” He brute forces his way to the library, and attacks it even knowing this will bring even the other Breen factions down on him, he breaks sacred oaths, all the crazy stuff, because he reckons that the power of the Progenitors will make him a god.
This sort of thing would work better over a period of several episodes, instead of like three scenes. This is not a bad character arc per se, but it isn’t one well-suited for the kind of show this is or the pacing of its arcs. Compressed like this, it lays bare the utilitarian nature of the character: he’s just a means to the end of putting Chiana in a position of power so she can be a proper antagonist. She’ll stop at nothing to bring back D’argo. Believable character arc. But she needs “And as D’argo’s wife, she has a Breen dreadnought at her command” to make it plausible that she can actually operate at the level necessary for her motivation to be effective on the story. The Primarch going crazy so extravagantly that his own men back Chiana’s coup is the means to the end.
So we close on Discovery giving up the MacGuffin to save the library – with the caveat that they hand it over after copying the map it reveals, and that Michael gained a secret extra clue. Discovery dumps its ballast and jumps, tricking the Breen into thinking it’s been destroyed, but the spore drive was damaged so they don’t end up where they meant to, giving Chiana time to catch up. The stage is set for a race to the final marker.
But there’s also one more side plot that is noteworthy. Turns out that the Library had a cutting from the Kweijan world root – last seen when Book’s adorable and doomed nephew did his manhood-root-cutting ceremony. There isn’t time for any reflection on it: Book goes to tell Michael and finds she’s in a mindscape, and then the Breen show up. But will this be left a dangling end?
I was thinking last week that I don’t know for sure if Chiana is going to resurrect D’argo. Her motive seems pure enough that the laws of storytelling might require it, here in the show that is about connection and healing. But at the same time, given that the Star Trek universe is going to continue from this point, it seems unlikely that they are going to outright cure death. So… I think it’s 50-50 right now whether D’argo gets brought back to life, or whether Chiana is forced to accept that it’s wrong to change the laws of nature to bring people back from the dead, and that true healing can only be achieved if she moves on and lets go.
(Uncomfortable shifting from Hugh and Grey. Heck, maybe Picard, Spock, and Data could stop by to uncomfortable shift too. Oh and I think Neelix got brought back from the dead once. Kinda Georgiou. Is Kai Opaca still alive on that forever-war-resurrection planet? I’m saying that Star Trek has always had a bit of a revolving door afterlife policy and it is both entirely likely and extraordinarily cheap if they try to sell that it would be immoral for Chiana to bring D’argo back)
But if they find the secret of life itself, could giving Book a piece of the World Root be a setup for him to be offered the power to bring back Kweijan? And if he is, does he get to take it, or will that be the temptation that must be overcome in the end to become truly morally worthy of the power of the gods?
I’m in that annoying place I was in last week – except instead of five minutes of “I know Chiana and D’argo are going to donk this up for everyone and now I have to sit here and wait for it,” it’s two weeks of, “I know that Discovery is not going to end with the Federation actually acquiring the power of creation, and now I have to sit here and wait for the painful cliche that leads them to turn it down/blow it up/lock it away.” It’s a shame they didn’t know this was to be their final season; if they’d gone into this with a real possibility of “Though the franchise will continue, we can actually have the 32nd century be the end of the Star Trek Timeline,” there’s a chance that they could have opted to end Discovery with “And then humanity became as gods and everything was entirely different forever and ever.” Which would have been one hell of a thing.
So let’s see how they don’t do that.