🖖 #StarTrekDiscovery S02E08: For all I think DSC needs to do its own thing, a TOS-heavy episode was one of the best so far. Enjoyed the Cage recap, esp. the cut from TOS Pike to DSC Pike. Happily impressed by Peck’s Spock; he has the gravitas and delivery down. Good episode.
Discovery
For Star Trek: Discovery ramblings.
🖖 #StarTrekDiscovery S02E07: Yay! No more Spock-teasing! Space squid are fun, and Tilly gets flustered around causality violations. Glad Pike at least mentioned Ash killing Culber. Still really unsure about Section 31, all the Spock stuff, and now time travel, but holding on.
🖖 #StarTrekDiscovery S02E06: 90% strong episode, but that last 10%…I have serious concerns with the Discovery’s actions in this episode. Pike did far more than bend General Order 1. Sigh. Mixed feelings tonight. Oh, and (unsurprisingly) my theory about Saru was wrong after all.
🖖 #StarTrekDiscovery S02E05: Mostly continues the stronger season. I’m really enjoying Pike, the adventures in the Upside Down, and the “sinking ship” effects were really fun. But I’m not sold on the non-secret Section 31, and the continuing Spock teases are ever more annoying.
🖖 #StarTrekDiscovery S02E04: A marked improvement over last week (no Klingons makes a big difference). Mysteries, science and technobabble, pissy fungus blobs, Number One, and reasons for no holograms on the Big E and (potentially) for no spore drive! Much better!
🖖 #StarTrekDiscovery S02E03: Meh. I’m all good with Tilly’s snarky space fungus, but all the Klingon stuff dragged. It was like this episode was half season two, half season one, and that wasn’t a good thing. My least favorite S2 episode so far. Fingers crossed for next week.
While I’m very glad the Klingons look more like Klingons and less like vampires from Buffy the Vampire Slayer this season, I have to admit to being amused that when they gave L’Rell hair, they entirely reshaped the back of her head. Looks like she lost about 1/4 of her skull. 🖖
Star Trek: Discovery S02E02: 👍
I really liked the extrapolation of Clarke’s Third Law; it was new to me, but WikiPedia says that particular variation is also known as Shermer’s Last Law.
Michael assuring Pike she wouldn’t make him laugh was the best line of the episode.
🖖
On Klingon Coiffures
Some semi-serious musing about Discovery season two:
Two things that we know at this point (not the only two things, just two things germane to this): season two starts immediately following season one, and every Klingon we’ve seen in the trailer, including L’Rell, now have their traditional (well, from TNG onward) long, flowing locks.
Which tells me one of three things: there’s a fairly substantial time jump sometime during season two, Klingon hair grows extremely quickly, or the Discovery producers were so intent on satisfying this particular aspect of fanwank that they didn’t think about that aspect.
Or, I suppose, the Klingon market for hair weaves suddenly exploded.
Linkdump for October 2nd through November 9th
Sometime between October 2nd and November 9th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!
- ‘Star Trek: Short Treks’ Michael Chabon, Aldis Hodge Interview [SPOILERS]: “I started thinking about The Odyssey and the story of Odysseus landing on the Isle of Calypso,” Chabon tells The Hollywood Reporter. “He’s been out wandering for a long time, and she takes him in and falls in love with him. He’s been traumatized and is now just trying to get home, but has this strange magical interlude on the way.”
- “In political terms, calling something a ‘distraction’ means it’s a distraction tactic, not that the issue itself isn’t important.”: “The Republican party has a very longstanding history of dropping hints of major policy changes right before big elections in the hopes of getting the ‘hot-headed liberals’ all fired up about it so we start bickering among ourselves.”
- What Makes ‘The Good Place’ So Good?: “NBC gave Michael Schur total freedom. So the TV impresario made a sitcom that’s also a profound work of philosophy.” This show is so very good. My dad would have loved it.
- “Fifty years later and this is still one of the most daring filmmaking decisions I’ve ever seen on TV”: Behind-the-scenes info on the shooting of the scene in Amok Time where Spock breaks down. One single shot, 1:45, no cuts — done in a single take, at Leonard Nimoy’s insistence.
- Woman awarded Nobel Prize in physics for first time in 55 years: “Donna Strickland, from Canada, is only the third woman winner of the award, along with Marie Curie, who won in 1903, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer, who was awarded the prize in 1963.”