Discovery 2x01 – "Brother" [** SPOILERS WITHIN **]

_Kaiser_

pixelburp wrote: »

Wait. What "men are idiots nonsense"? The script practically fell on itself fawning over Pike, who was such an old timey hero ya coulda called him Flash Gordon; and if you mean the Science officer, he was a waking trope (I know what I'm doin-DEATH), not a narrative polemic. Cmon. Every other male character is nowhere near that, tbh I think you're reaching a tad.

Missed this one last night..

Pike as the new main/secondary (we'll see) character was obviously going to get a lot of focus.. But that didn't stop the writers having Burnham dress him down publicly twice in the episode (assuming that the comm lines in the pod were open to Discovery as I think they were), the same thing with the disposable blue-shirt who of course was an ass, and the "oh yea we got this" girl power rescue. Even Saru is reduced to just standing around for lame comic relief ("what did you expect?") during the sequence.

Women can certainly be strong independent characters on TV shows and that's no bad thing.. But this in your face feminism and Mary Sue character (Star Wars suffers the same issues nowadays and apparently Dr Who's- seeing as it's been mentioned here - latest season is gone the same way) was never what Trek was about

_Kaiser_

Blazer wrote: »

Tilly is a pain in the hole. No ensign would act like that fresh out of the academy.
Apart from her I do like it but its basically switch my brain off and go with the flow.
But yeah lets hope Tilly dies soon.

I genuinely don't get the love for the character. She's obviously intended to be the relatable one for the audience, but all she is is irritating and out of place. She ruins the flow of every scene she's in.

It's actually an insult to the actress as well as she showed she's capable of a lot more during the Mirror Universe alternate Tilly scenes last season.

Fenster

This episode got my eyebrow raised, and I'm the biggest Discovery supporter out there (looking at the model of the ship on my shelf as I type). Yeah, an eyebrow. Brother came off as two episodes squeezed into one. The writing team went through a checklist of things to cover:

• Introduce characters new.
• Re-introduce us to characters old and show us their growth since last season. Tilly is now an ensign, Stamets wants to leave, etc.
• Set up plot hooks for the season: the Red Blobs of Doom, Spock as a man of broody broodness; kill off Pike's science officer and then conveniently introduce us to someone (Jet Reno) with enough character to fill the role, and so on!
• Expanded budget for new Discovery SFX (where do they fit all that stuff inside the hull)?

Blah. It was a fun ride in an episode packed with spectacle, but I never felt any tension because of the railroaded story.

I do like the new characters of Pike and Reno and Number One. Discovery's writers and producers have shown that they aren't afraid to kill off, shuffle around or just allow characters to grow, which makes me interested in where things go this season.

Fenster

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

I genuinely don't get the love for the character.

There is no captain in my heart but black-hearted Captain Killy.

GSPfan

Those of you hating on Tilly should be ashamed of yourself. She’s incredibly likeable.

_Kaiser_

GSPfan wrote: »

Those of you hating on Tilly should be ashamed of yourself. She’s incredibly likeable.

I suppose if awkward, inappropriate, overly emotional and generally immature is your thing then sure. I'm not a fan of the "oh my god, like totally" type myself

The whole sequence with verifying Pike's ID was ridiculous. No way would a freshly promoted ensign (I missed this in the episode actually but saw it mentioned above) behave like that with her new Captain.

You could chalk it up to nervousness, but like so much else with Discovery and the Kelvin movies, it's been ramped up to be annoyingly loud and in your face.

OldMrBrennan83

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

I suppose if awkward, inappropriate, overly emotional and generally immature is your thing then sure. I'm not a fan of the "oh my god, like totally" type myself

The whole sequence with verifying Pike's ID was ridiculous. No way would a freshly promoted ensign (I missed this in the episode actually but saw it mentioned above) behave like that with her new Captain.

You could chalk it up to nervousness, but like so much else with Discovery and the Kelvin movies, it's been ramped up to be annoyingly loud and in your face.

Have to agree with that. I know people can't be like machines but her character is ridiculous.

Slydice

That was so good!! Really needed a bit of new Star Trek

Damn the spike going up through her leg and the scream!! :eek:

AtomicHorror

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

Feel free to add me to your ignore list. No bother to me.

If these threads are just to gush over the episodes that's a different matter, but last I checked it was for people's opinions.

It's a visually very impressive show, but I have long since stopped being impressed solely by shiny CGI wizardry.

The main character is deeply unlikeable and a poor actress - not helped by the Rey-like "perfect in every way" writing, Tilly is nothing more than awkward and misplaced comedy relief (now supplemented by the same humour that many here slated The Orville for), and the bridge crew are largely anonymous at this point as they were last season.

But... Pike is a welcome and much needed addition, the lighter tone is an improvement, and while I'm not sold on the season arc mission, maybe it'll get better once it beds in (supposedly lots of reshoots again with the production staff changes so it's bound to be a bit uneven).

I don't like the JJ movies, what they did to long established characters, the aesthetic and generic shoot em up action comedy they became. Discovery carried most of the same flaws into season 1. It remains to be seen whether or not the above changes will carry forward into the rest of season 2.

Burnham seems to mostly annoy people for her character flaws. Her stubbornness and impulsiveness, the mutiny, the war she started (or didn't). But for you, it's her "super" skills, her strength... all neatly summed up by that neat pejorative "Mary-Sue". That used to be all about an author's needy wish fulfilment but these days nobody ever seems to use the term except as a sleight against "strong women". Hell, you use "Rey-like" and "Mary-Sue" interchangeably, can't resist dragging in the 13th Doctor and throw in a little sneer at "female Scotty" to boot.

Yet you consider yourself an arbiter of what constitutes "real" Star Trek. To me, it looks like you managed to miss every significant message the show has tried to communicate in the last five decades.

coffee_cake

I thought it was brilliant!
I love tilly.
It's true it feels like movie-trek rather than series-trek but it's cool too

burnham seems a bit serious and emphatic all the time but sure maybe i would too if i grew up on vulcan with spock beside me disliking me the whole time.

Pike was cool. totally flash gordon like someone else said i like him.
I love saru's actor - the way he walks with the arms trailing behind him, he's fab

TheIrishGrover

I really enjoyed that episode. I didn't think it was saying men are idiots but actually gave the helm and other woman something to do. The production values were simply off the hook. I mean it was hard to remember that this was a TV show when they were descending to the other ship. That would have been a great scene in a summer blockbuster and would have been all over the trailer just a couple of years ago, they would have been that proud of it.

Liked

• The intro.
• Pike. Liked the portrayal and the actor himself. Very much in the Kirk style but that was good and fun.
• Liked his roundtable of the bridge crew. Getting them to introduce themselves. Very clever way of bringing people up to speed.
• Liked his intro of himself with his profile. Again, cocky but fun.
• Liked the flashback scenes.
• Sarek as usual.
• LOVED Tig Notaro (As the engineer). I knew nothing about her except that people were losing their minds (in a positive way) when it was announced that she was going to be on it. Now I can see why. Thought she was fantastic.
• "I'm a bad patient" "That's for sure"
• They got the hang of swearing. It no longer comes across as forced.
• The descent to the other ship. Brilliant.
• As I said before, the production values are just INSANE. It looks amazing.
• Good to see the doc back in some form.
• Don't know if Stamets is leaving or not (I've been staying away from spoilers) but if he is at least his reasoning is sound and realistic.
• Any scene with Tilley and Stamets.

Didn't like/Meh

• The science officer was SO flagged to die arrogantly.
• While I liked the flashback I hope they don't overuse it.
• I like Tilley (Although I still firmly believe they are going to kill her off as a "surprise" gut-punch). But I thought they overdid it with her with the palm scanner: I get it, Pike is a living legend - Captain of the flagship but was a bit OTT.

So, yeah, I REALLY enjoyed that episode. One thing though: Did the navigator (Can't remember her name) always have that blue eye (Assuming it's an implant) after the pilot episode. Never noticed it before the extreme closeup.

opus

Murray TheDemonic TalkingSkull wrote: »

The guy who died should have been wearing a Redshirt.....just saying...

For sure I had to go back & rewatch that part afterwards just to make sure he wasn't!

Evade

tromtipp wrote: »

What happened to Burnham's parents

Klingons killed them in an attack on the colony they lived on.


The good.

• The new uniforms are nice, I wish they were sticking around.
• Pike.
• The red shirt suit red herring.
• It's very pretty.
• The transporter chief's more primitive looking visor.

The Bad

• Tilly. Almost everything about Tilly.
• Saru not knowing how to shake hands in what always seems to be a majority human organisation. It's reminiscent of the worst of early TNG Data. And on the same note Saru3PO.
• The weird internal architecture shot when they were in the turbolift.

The Dumb

• 1,000 century old human story.
• Red bursts appearing simultaneously from whose perspective?
• Alien sneeze.
• Casslilian opera singer story.
• Sensors don't work at warp anymore?
• Measuring distance in feet.
• Wizard Starfleet engineer that can do complex surgery by reading a few books doesn't know pad to pad transporting is safer just so Burnham seems smart. It doesn't work if you have to make other allegedly smart characters seem dumb.
• Weird unfolding technology and the over elaborate shot to board the pods.

It's hard to tell from one episode if it'll be better than season one but it could be.

Spear

TheIrishGrover wrote: »

So, yeah, I REALLY enjoyed that episode. One thing though: Did the navigator (Can't remember her name) always have that blue eye (Assuming it's an implant) after the pilot episode. Never noticed it before the extreme closeup.

She didn't start out with it, and only received it, and the temple implant after the loss of the Shenzhou. I'd guess it was due to injuries received at the battle of the binary stars, but they've never explored it. But then for that matter, they never did anything with the other bridge crew members.

flazio

Spear wrote: »

She didn't start out with it, and only received it, and the temple implant after the loss of the Shenzhou. I'd guess it was due to injuries received at the battle of the binary stars, but they've never explored it. But then for that matter, they never did anything with the other bridge crew members.

Lt. Keyla Detmer, helm control. A character I thought was massively under used in Season 1. She served on the Shenzhou with Burnham and Saru so should have been equally peeved that Michael was brought on board the Discovery, yet there never was so much as a word between them throughout the series.

TheIrishGrover

Spear wrote: »

She didn't start out with it, and only received it, and the temple implant after the loss of the Shenzhou. I'd guess it was due to injuries received at the battle of the binary stars, but they've never explored it. But then for that matter, they never did anything with the other bridge crew members.

Yeah, that's what I meant. Just never noticed the eye thing before.

As for someone mentioning measurement in feet, yeahthat's something that gets me too. Obviously its because the show is American but still. I mean, I'm of probably the last Irish generation to grow up using Imperial and even I have switched to Metric (Because I work with a lot of Europeans). So it is jarring to hear them mention feet and miles in the "future". lol

Johnny Storm

Add to the "dumb" list:

- Ship comes out of warp into the middle of an asteroid ****-storm. Did some one forget to use the sensors?

- The captain and other senior officers are shot out a rail-gun and are then surprised to find themselves in the middle of said asteroid storm

Add Good point: Tilly not quite as annoying as before

In gereral my expectations for Trek are so high, that its hard for me tosort out what I really think of Discovery. I think based on this episode Season 2 has a lot more potential than season 1. I just hope they avoid dumbing down too much...

Franz Von Peppercorn

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

But if we accept that it's really just Trek in name only then they should have just called it something else and in a different universe.

Calling it Star Trek, insisting that it fits within what was previously established, and rewriting/changing well known characters, plots or events is just going to annoy anyone who does like those previous shows.

It’s no more Trek in name only than the movies were Trek in name only compared to the TOS. They looked completely different.

pixelburp

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

Missed this one last night..

Pike as the new main/secondary (we'll see) character was obviously going to get a lot of focus.. But that didn't stop the writers having Burnham dress him down publicly twice in the episode (assuming that the comm lines in the pod were open to Discovery as I think they were), the same thing with the disposable blue-shirt who of course was an ass, and the "oh yea we got this" girl power rescue. Even Saru is reduced to just standing around for lame comic relief ("what did you expect?") during the sequence.

Women can certainly be strong independent characters on TV shows and that's no bad thing.. But this in your face feminism and Mary Sue character (Star Wars suffers the same issues nowadays and apparently Dr Who's- seeing as it's been mentioned here - latest season is gone the same way) was never what Trek was about

This is hitting agree-to-disagree, but TBH this reads like a conclusion searching for proof.

I don't think even those of us who enjoy the series would disagree that Burhnam is a poor protagonist, but IMO you're just reading way too much to find some hidden agenda, in what otherwise amounted to fleshing out thin characters from season 1; it was just nice to see the helm given something to do, and the joking around felt meta more than anything, the women suddenly feeling a bit pressurised to deliver.

Not every positive action by a female character is feminist; not every negative male character is some misandrist polemic. Sometimes a jerk is just a jerk.

Goodshape

Loved all the character stuff, the more cinematic style, and there's some plot hooks there that I won't mind seeing played out. I thought it was absolutely brilliant for the first 20 minutes or so.

Really let down though by the apparent magic of the technology at their disposal, particularly in the action set-pieces. I think there was a bit of this last season too but really seemed ramped up here. Never any tension, you know there'll be some other button that'll spin and twirl and zip and woosh some solution out of nowhere, just in time.

And everyone seems to be having too much fun while, for example, hurtling through an asteroid field in some ridiculous looking spinny-bubble-pod.

And god I hate that magic transformer metal nonsense. I'd like to see some head-canon on how that all works.


So, I liked it. Almost loved it, just let sharply down by some silly lazy action-sci-fi tropes.


Also – I like Tilly, but thought she was laying it on a bit thick here to be honest.


Looking forward to more

coffee_cake

Sure Burnham thought pike was an angel when he came to rescue her
As you would

Gbear

bluewolf wrote: »

Sure Burnham thought pike was an angel when he came to rescue her
As you would

I think that was some sort of entity.

That was a bit like Obi Wan's ghost talking to Luke on Hoth and then he dissolves into Han riding a tauntaun to rescue him.

I suspect whatever that thing was will have something to do with the red blobs.

Spear

Goodshape wrote: »

And god I hate that magic transformer metal nonsense. I'd like to see some head-canon on how that all works.

Memory metal is a real thing already, just not to the extreme level shown:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape-memory_alloy

coffee_cake

I do wonder with the tech is there going to be some kind of disaster that throws everyone backwards because it does seem a bit much compared to tos!


gbear that's interesting, i didn't think of that.

Sparko

Still enjoying it, looking forward to seeing how the season progresses.

Pike's blueshirted redshirt science officer was possibly the dumbest Starfleet officer since that Battlestar Galactica security officer from the early season 1.

AtomicHorror

bluewolf wrote: »

I do wonder with the tech is there going to be some kind of disaster that throws everyone backwards because it does seem a bit much compared to tos!

A lot of it might be explained away as being a result of Enterprise being an older ship than Discovery, and being tuned for sustainable long range exploration rather than scientific research. Commissioned 10 years before the Crossfield class, based on a class design that could possibly be decades older. Pike's engineer mentions the noticeable difference- Discovery is where Starfleet spends the pennies.

GSPfan

I think you guys just have to accept that the technology and visual aspect of Star Trek has been rebooted but they are leaving the characters and timeline events in tact.

You can’t really be too critical of holograms and fancy collapsing helmets when the one single most miraculous bit of technology is the transportor. Even artificial gravity, warp speed, and spore drives are so far fetched that I’ll accept a folding helmet in a universe where those other things exist.

Sonics2k

Re-watched it there.

It's good, but I'd have to agree with Kaiser and some others here. She is basically Super Burnham. There's nothing she's not great at.

So far she's gone hand to hand with Klingons, done immense calculations while in bed with a concussion, test-pilot for a new form of ship, and far too much more.

I'm not out looking for character flaws, but it would be nice if there was something she wasn't great at.

Bacchus

I agree with many of the comments above in that overall I found it fun and enjoyable, with fantastic production quality (the asteroid scene was cinema quality), and a great addition of Pike. However, Burnham is just a chore. I don't find her interesting as the main character and it feels like now that her whole "starting/ending the Klingon war" arc is finished with season 1, they are forcing this Spock arc on her to keep her central to the show. I like the levity in the tone with the humour they've brought to the first episode, though the elevator scene with the sneeze was toilet humour and was a bit cringe.

Goodshape

One thing I think they got very right in this episode was the Vulcans. Specifically James Frain's Sarek. It's going to take a bit more work for me to accept this new actor as a replacement for Mark Lenard but – that aside – this new guy is a fantastic Vulcan in his own right.

I think in the past, with the exception of Nimoy and Mark Lenard, Vulcan's are far too often played as cold, emotionless, incapable of feeling or even empathy. And you can include Tuvok and T'Pol in that. Much of the time they seem to resent emotion rather than displaying a mastery of it.

But you can see the underlying emotion in James Frain's performance, and in the script/dialogue, and I think it's fantastic. Not a cold hearted individual, but someone who is in control and will not allow emotion to cloud or even at times influence their judgement or actions.

I really enjoyed his scenes in this episode, particularly in those opening 20 minutes or so, and it has me looking forward to this Spock storyline much more than I thought I would.


Also... this episode was a full 60 minutes runtime. Last season was all 45 or below I think? Would be nice if they keep that up. Although at the same time I'd happily do without a good chunk of the "action" from the middle of this particular episode