Star Trek Discovery 1x13 – "What's Past Is Prologue" [** SPOILERS **]

jasonb

Just reading the comments here, I think the show settling into a ‘Captain Suru and his crew go exploring’ mode in a future season would be a very different show to this season!

Not only noticed the Tie Fighter noise when Lorca was dying, but I think there might have been a Flash Gordon ‘laser’ shout-out when the fired the torpedos at the ‘core’?

I didn’t read into the spore landing on Tilly’s shoulder as anything more than the final spore disappearing into nothing-ness. Am I right in think that the Spore Drive is dead in the water now, at least for the moment, as Discovery’s stock is gone, right?

I also assume that Lorca is dead in both Universes, the Prime one died on the MU ship (Boran or whatever it’s called) as he swapped places with the MU Lorca? And they swapped because it was a transporter/ion cloud incident, like the TOS episode?

And also, do we have any reason to think that the MU Discovery and Captain Killy came over to the Prime Universe? They didn’t have a spore drive (as Stamets worked on the Emperor’s ship) so couldn’t do a jump. So maybe the ISS Discovery had that battle that we saw the remnants of, they flew off, the USS Discovery jumps in, and then they met another ISS ship who assumes they’re the ISS Discovery. So basically both Discoverys were existing in the MU, but the ISS one was off doing its own thing and the USS one came back home before anyone noticed. How long was the USS Discovery in the MU for, a few days, a couple of weeks?

fritzelly

jasonb wrote: »

Am I right in think that the Spore Drive is dead in the water now, at least for the moment, as Discovery’s stock is gone, right?

Not getting that, do they not have lots already stored in the cannisters and it's healing itself?

fxotoole

jasonb wrote: »

Not only noticed the Tie Fighter noise when Lorca was dying, but I think there might have been a Flash Gordon ‘laser’ shout-out when the fired the torpedos at the ‘core’?

That was the sound effect of a torpedo launch from the Star Trek movies of the 80s & 90s, and quite possibly TOS. Not so sure it was an intentional Flash Gordon reference.

LionelNashe

Could anyone give me a 10 word summary or point me to the bit in the episode where Stamets recovered from his coma or whatever he was in? I must have missed it.

duffman13

LionelNashe wrote: »

Could anyone give me a 10 word summary or point me to the bit in the episode where Stamets recovered from his coma or whatever he was in? I must have missed it.

Had a chat with his dead OH who told him to open his eyes.

A little more than 10 words but thats the jist

noodler

I still think it is the poorest acting and cheesiest cast we've seen in a ST show.

Bar the captain and suru.


Can anyone explain to what the captain was fighting the empire for if he feels the Federation is a social experiment and the strong must always rule anyway?

I mean, what was the ideological difference?

More over, how does Burnham judge him the lesser of two evils?

The whole thing is saved by lorca imo. That and the shows scattergun mentality in terms of trek tropes. Something new game changer does seem to pop up every two Eps.

The klingons are awful, the doctor romance was horribly forced and the spore drive universe threads thing was tacky.

AtomicHorror

jasonb wrote: »

And also, do we have any reason to think that the MU Discovery and Captain Killy came over to the Prime Universe?

It is far from certain, but a few things suggest it is possible.

When Kirk and his people crossed over, they swapped places with their counterparts.

Same thing seems to have happened with Lorca, which sadly means the prime Lorca likely died on the ISS Buran.

When Lorca jumped Discovery to the MU, the jump animation was different. Two images of Discovery were visible moving vertically out of frame in opposite directions.

So, maybe.

fritzelly wrote: »

Not getting that, do they not have lots already stored in the cannisters and it's healing itself?

They had to use it all in the escape. Their grow room is dead.

Perhaps they can start again.

fritzelly

LionelNashe wrote: »

Could anyone give me a 10 word summary or point me to the bit in the episode where Stamets recovered from his coma or whatever he was in? I must have missed it.

Wasn't this episode, was last weeks, and it was in the "last time on..."

bogwalrus

corkie wrote: »

That would not stop experimentation of the network, as Paul Stamets in both universes where working on it, even without Lorca involved, he just sped things along in the prime.

The moment time travel comes into the equation all cards are on the table. I don't think the writers can introduce something significant like the micelium network knowing it has never been mentioned in other star treks set in the future. The technology has to be destroyed, forgotten or never discovered to fit in to future events. IMO of course.

_Kaiser_

Watched it tonight but to be honest, my attention kept wavering throughout. After a very good few episodes recently, this one felt more "by the numbers" and I agree with the comments above that having spent half the season building up this mysterious very different type of captain, they then went and undid it all by turning Lorca into a generic one-dimensional bad guy this week.

Ditto Tilly and Stamets.. It felt like their development regressed/reset to earlier in the season. About the only one with any real progression was Saru (who seems to have come to peace with Burnham and recognition of her value).

Overall though it left me cold.. The all too common flashy and frantic action in badly lit environments does nothing for me to be honest and this is where my attention wavered most.

It really felt to me that the writing and plot took a huge shift this week vs what came before in this MU arc, and it wasn't for the better.

corkie

fritzelly wrote: »

Not getting that, do they not have lots already stored in the cannisters and it's healing itself?

They used up the reserves to blow up the ISS Charon Palace spore thing. And for the trip back home.

"Captain's log, stardate 1834.2. Acting Captain Saru recording. We are en route to the Terran flagship, having been summoned by Specialist Burnham. Discovery's spore drive is operational again, thanks to the full recovery of our navigator, Lieutenant Stamets. Yet, despite his best efforts, the lieutenant was unable to save Discovery's mycelium crop. His fear is that his Terran counterpart has already contaminated the network, and if so, the results could be catastrophic."

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/What%27s_Past_Is_Prologue_(episode)

Evade

AtomicHorror wrote: »

It is far from certain, but a few things suggest it is possible.

When Kirk and his people crossed over, they swapped places with their counterparts.

Same thing seems to have happened with Lorca, which sadly means the prime Lorca likely died on the ISS Buran.

When Lorca jumped Discovery to the MU, the jump animation was different. Two images of Discovery were visible moving vertically out of frame in opposite directions.

So, maybe.

Both of the other swap incidents were due to simultaneous transports of the same person to the same ship in both universes during an ion storm that doesn't apply to the Discovery, if they had a spore drive maybe but as it turned out they didn't. The reason I think most people thought the ISS Discovery crossed over was it was supposed to be at the battle where the USS Discovery crossed over to but wasn't and there were no signs of Federation/Imperial debris. There doesn't seem to be any reason for the ISS Discovery to go anywhere other than the fact the writers needed it gone from the mirror universe.

noodler wrote: »

Can anyone explain to what the captain was fighting the empire for if he feels the Federation is a social experiment and the strong must always rule anyway?

I mean, what was the ideological difference?

The difference is he gets to be Emperor. If Lorca had at least feigned wanting to reform the Empire he could probably have gotten Burnham and the Discovery crew on his side. It could have been more interesting to have Burnham have to kill Georgiou herself this time only for Lorca to turn around and betray her.

Mitch Connor

corkie wrote: »

They used up the reserves to blow up the ISS Charon Palace spore thing. And for the trip back home.



http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/What%27s_Past_Is_Prologue_(episode)

That was just their stock though, not everything in the prime universe - it r make sense that there are still spores to harvest especially considering they healed the corrupted network.

noodler

Evade wrote: »

The difference is he gets to be Emperor. If Lorca had at least feigned wanting to reform the Empire he could probably have gotten Burnham and the Discovery crew on his side. It could have been more interesting to have Burnham have to kill Georgiou herself this time only for Lorca to turn around and betray her.

So he was feigning some sort of Comraderie with the aliens he rebels with?

It never seemed clear to me,then suddenly in that ep he talks about ruling exactly the same way the Empress did.

Chrussell2

Thinking of the DS9 episodes where they crossed into the MU because of a transporter device specifically for it, or a wormhole anomoly - (at no point did the prime universe characters swap places with their MU selves (Correct me if I'm wrong). I think they only time this happened is in TOS Mirror Mirror because of the ion storm. Therefore I'd suggest that there's nothing to suggest that the ISS Discovery swapped places with the USS Discovery. What could be a possibility is that Lorca swapped with Lorca because he transported in an ion storm - but does that then mean he died in the MU? I don't know - I really hope not - he has been my favourite character and has had in my opinion some of the best one liners in the series so far.

I remember the producers saying after the first couple of episodes that trekkies should trust them that everything would eventually work back to canon - so I'm really unsure what is going to happen from here on. I guess there's never been much on the klingon war (I'm basing this on the TV's/Movies - I haven't read hugely into it) so perhaps they could possibly have nearly lost it and come back - but it does feel like they're going to somehow jump back in time.

Having said that - I think there is an assumption that all will become clear in the next two episodes, and I really wouldn't be so sure of this. TV series now are all about the ARC. Think House of Cards and Game of Thrones. Discovery is following that approach and we've seen that season finales in these ARC shows don't always tidy everything up - a lot of times series have finished on cliffhangers and the ARC continues into the next season - so who knows this might go on for a while.

Discovery is a stunning show - I really really like it. I really enjoyed the scene where they were attacking the palace ship, and as they were turning to make their attacking approach, the camera was sat on the arch towards the left nacelle - a sort of Go Pro style shot that just felt like something completely different and very welcome.

noodler wrote: »

I still think it is the poorest acting and cheesiest cast we've seen in a ST show.

I'm really not sure how you think this - TOS was so cheesy and the first couple of seasons of TNG (bar Patrick Stewart) had terrible acting - Will Wheaton is in my opinion the worst actor in Star Trek history.

jasonb

Mitch Connor wrote: »

That was just their stock though, not everything in the prime universe - it r make sense that there are still spores to harvest especially considering they healed the corrupted network.

When I said that the Spore Drive was dead in the water, I meant at least at the moment. In other words, there's no spores onboard Discovery. Whatever they did before the program started to build up the spores stockpile, I presume they can do it again, but for the moment they're stuck with Warp Drive only I believe.

Of course, the next episode could easily have a line saying 'after spending a few days starting to build up our spores stockpile again, we're now on our way to meet the Admiral...' or something like that, though I hope not, that would be a bit of lazy writing!

Speaking of lazy writing, why would a throne room have a trap door to open up over the core? Apart from reminding me of ROTJ, the moment they opened it the first time, you knew it was done so they could throw someone out later on...

As for ISS Discovery coming to the Prime Universe, apart from the shot of two Discoverys going in two different directions (which I had forgotten) during the jump that Lorca hijacked, I don't think there's any reason to believe ISS Discovery ended up in the prime universe. As others have said, all other switches between the two Universes were to do with Transporters/Ion Clouds, right? And ISS Discovery didn't even have a spore drive to jump with. Well, we assume it doesn't, as Staments was on the Emperor's ship, though maybe his science colleague/friend from Ep. 3 was on ISS Discovery? Also wasn't the USS Discovery itself designed for the spore drive (the way the saucer section is designed, spins around etc.) so why would the ISS Discovery be designed the same way, even though it doesn't have a Spore Drive? Or am I just getting into 'don't ask too many questions about the MU and just go with it' territory?

However, if ISS Discovery did come over, what effect, if any, would they have had in the war. Would they have joined the Federation (unlikely with their multi-species culture) or the Klingons (unlikely as they're not human) or gone off on their own? Are the Klingons winning the war due to having the cloaking devices and the USS Discovery not being around for the last several months to help out/give the data they collected during all the jumps to help spot the cloaked ships.

Which brings me to a final question, which someone else raised on an earlier episode. once or twice we've heard 'sensors detected a cloaked ship coming out of warp/warping in'. Is there some rule that when it's coming out of warp it can be seen, but not under impulse power?

flazio

It's great to think that two established movie stars such as Jason Issacs and Michelle Yeoh would agree to be in a television series and more so square off against each other in a fight scene.
Damn we're lucky.

seamus

I think it's pretty clear that Prime Lorca ended up on the ISS Buran and was killed when that ship was destroyed.

That said, they never actually showed it being destroyed and everyone in the MU seemed to be assuming he was dead - nobody says, "I saw you die" or "We recovered your body from the wreckage".

The fact that MU Burnham had been sent to "get him" suggests that maybe the Buran had escaped that day. Will Prime Lorca and Mirror Burnham re-emerge somewhere in the prime universe?

Or maybe it's just something they're leaving open in case they want to use it later.

When they were travelling back and Stamets couldn't figure out where to go, I thought for a second we were going to be treated to a "Star Trek: Sliders" scenario where they spent the next five seasons trying to get back to their universe. Which would be fun, I guess.

Instead we got Star Trek: Quantum Leap where they're presumably going to spend a while trying to put right what once went wrong.

Though perhaps the writers' original intention was to create yet another new Star Trek universe that would leave them free to explore without purists whining about the timeline. Disco is gone, knowledge of the MU does not exist, the spore network is unavailable; the Prime timeline remains intact.

In a mirror of the mirror universe, Discovery hooks up with a rebel fleet, fighting to repel the Klingon Empire. Of course the existence of Ash/Voq on their ship will complicate matters a lot. They'll still be able to use the spore drive, but Disco is not a warship, she's only good for guerilla warfare and black ops.

The_Valeyard

So for the next 10 years the Terran Empire is run by the Imperial Senate until Spock begins his reforms

muckwarrior

noodler wrote: »

I still think it is the poorest acting and cheesiest cast we've seen in a ST show.

Funny you should say that, because I was thinking the exact opposite!

When the MU stuff came to light I decided to watch the Enterprise episodes again. I did like that show at the time, especially the second 2 seasons, but jesus it was painful to watch. The acting in particular was atrocious!

I'm also rewatching Voyager at the moment and Discovery is superior in just about every way. Even TNG had plenty of episodes filled with more cheese than an obese American.

Mitch Connor

jasonb wrote: »

When I said that the Spore Drive was dead in the water, I meant at least at the moment. In other words, there's no spores onboard Discovery. Whatever they did before the program started to build up the spores stockpile, I presume they can do it again, but for the moment they're stuck with Warp Drive only I believe.

Of course, the next episode could easily have a line saying 'after spending a few days starting to build up our spores stockpile again, we're now on our way to meet the Admiral...' or something like that, though I hope not, that would be a bit of lazy writing!

Speaking of lazy writing, why would a throne room have a trap door to open up over the core? Apart from reminding me of ROTJ, the moment they opened it the first time, you knew it was done so they could throw someone out later on...

As for ISS Discovery coming to the Prime Universe, apart from the shot of two Discoverys going in two different directions (which I had forgotten) during the jump that Lorca hijacked, I don't think there's any reason to believe ISS Discovery ended up in the prime universe. As others have said, all other switches between the two Universes were to do with Transporters/Ion Clouds, right? And ISS Discovery didn't even have a spore drive to jump with. Well, we assume it doesn't, as Staments was on the Emperor's ship, though maybe his science colleague/friend from Ep. 3 was on ISS Discovery? Also wasn't the USS Discovery itself designed for the spore drive (the way the saucer section is designed, spins around etc.) so why would the ISS Discovery be designed the same way, even though it doesn't have a Spore Drive? Or am I just getting into 'don't ask too many questions about the MU and just go with it' territory?

However, if ISS Discovery did come over, what effect, if any, would they have had in the war. Would they have joined the Federation (unlikely with their multi-species culture) or the Klingons (unlikely as they're not human) or gone off on their own? Are the Klingons winning the war due to having the cloaking devices and the USS Discovery not being around for the last several months to help out/give the data they collected during all the jumps to help spot the cloaked ships.

Which brings me to a final question, which someone else raised on an earlier episode. once or twice we've heard 'sensors detected a cloaked ship coming out of warp/warping in'. Is there some rule that when it's coming out of warp it can be seen, but not under impulse power?

In the first ep of the Mirror Universe didn't they specifically say that Discovery took the place of the MU Discovery (which is why there were not two Discovery's flying about).

I assume this meant that the MU Discovery swapped in the other direction - rather than simply that ship disintegrated/everyone died as 'our' discovery tooks its place in space-time.

Mitch Connor

muckwarrior wrote: »

Funny you should say that, because I was thinking the exact opposite!

When the MU stuff came to light I decided to watch the Enterprise episodes again. I did like that show at the time, especially the second 2 seasons, but jesus it was painful to watch. The acting in particular was atrocious!

I'm also rewatching Voyager at the moment and Discovery is superior in just about every way. Even TNG had plenty of episodes filled with more cheese than an obese American.

"I guess I just don't understand why people would take something they know is bad for them?"
"And we hope you never do, Wesley".

Why did the emporeor give up at the end? I didn't really get how she had lost everything

muckwarrior

Evade wrote: »

The idea that destroying the mycelial network destroys all life in all of the multiverse is stupid. Someone, somewhere, somewhen would have done it already.

That's a good point. If there are infinite universes then not only can every possible combination of events happen, but they must happen.

Spear

Deleted User wrote: »

Why did the emporeor give up at the end? I didn't really get how she had lost everything

Her supporters in the form of the lords and all senior officers were all executed by Landry, so she's fairly vulnerable and visibly so. Any other captains about wouldn't need to do much to get rid of her, since they also wouldn't face opposition from the freshly crispy Lorca.

seamus

Spear wrote: »

Her supporters in the form of the lords and all senior officers were all executed by Landry, so she's fairly vulnerable and visibly so. Any other captains about wouldn't need to do much to get rid of her, since they also wouldn't face opposition from the freshly crispy Lorca.

"My neck is exposed", as she said.
A semi-successful coup where the leader flees with their life is basically the end of their reign. Someone who leads with force and fear loses all of their power when they run.

She'll be an interesting addition given their current situation. In the "normal" circumstances Starfleet would have no option except to imprison her for public safety, but she might serve as a tactical resource in leading a rebellion against the Klingons.

Johnny Storm

bogwalrus wrote: »

I don't think the writers are planning on rewriting star trek lore. This also makes me think that they might go back in time to when lorca first came to their universe and stop him then. ...k.

I dont see anyway to get back to "normal" Trek continuity without some kind of time travel? It will have to be very well handled to make it not be a cop out.

The scene in ep 3 where Burnham is in the shuttle that gets attacked by some random lifeform is very odd. Burnham does not react - almost as though she knows what is about to happen.......

I liked this episode but IMHO not quite as good as the last few.

Also IMHO there is no reason to think that the Lorca from the prime universe is dead. He will probably show up at some time (depending on his contractual arrangements )

Obviously the season will end with some kind of major cliffhanger? Defeat the Klingons but at the cost of the magic mushroom drive? Reset the timeline but then forget all their hardfought information about Klingons etc?

Johnny Storm

Spear wrote: »

I also note that primeLandry was always primeLandry and just a good little stormtrooper.

Very disappointing ..... :(:(:(

jasonb

Mitch Connor wrote: »

In the first ep of the Mirror Universe didn't they specifically say that Discovery took the place of the MU Discovery (which is why there were not two Discovery's flying about).

I assume this meant that the MU Discovery swapped in the other direction - rather than simply that ship disintegrated/everyone died as 'our' discovery tooks its place in space-time.

Just spent a happy few mins of my lunch break looking back at some of Eps 9 and 10. And yes, in the jump to the MU, the Discovery briefly becomes two ships, which go in different directions. And also yes, Saru says they appeared in the same coordinates as the MU Discovery, which disappeared, so he though it was a theory that they could have swapped places.

So, the means it's possible/likely that MU Discovery is currently in the Prime Universe, assuming it didn't come back, somehow, to the MU when USS Discovery got back to Prime. Wonder if we'll get to meet Captain Killy again?

fxotoole

Deleted User wrote: »

Why did the emporeor give up at the end?

Because the plot required it.