User Reviews

No desire to engage with whatever discourse is happening in the reviews for this episode. To me this was a solid classic Trek episode. Go to planet, meet locals, learn about their culture and tie that together with an overarching plot thread and a moral/philosophical lesson.

Certainly not the best example of this kind of episode in all of Trek, but very solid. We also get some great Michael-Tilly time that we've been sorely missing. I can definitely feel the budget constraints in this and other episodes in the season, but that really can't be helped. I'm sure they're doing their best with what they've got to work with. Doing an extensive location shoot helped to offset it a bit.

In any case I liked it a lot. It's more sincere and heartfelt than many of the episodes this season which focus on rather vapid action and the pretty boring and rather annoying Moll and Lok. Would love to see more of these kinds of episodes, but this is the last season and they have all kinds of plot to wrap up so I'll just take it as it is and enjoy it.

...We just need to bow our heads to captain Michael Burnham. I mean is there anything she can't do? She is the smartest person in the universe, the strongest, she is revered by everybody in the universe.

I mean we've seen her, as a number one mind you, brokered peace for the universe. A feat that not the smartest nor most diplomatic beings in the universe could accomplish. And yet Michael does it by saying some words and all of a sudden everyone realizes how wrong they were. I mean, can anyone better that?

And now we find she is so powerful that she can blow the prime directive in the wind because her friend needs to be saved. You know, that prime directive that Starfleet relied on for centuries, we now find out it can be broken when a friend is in danger.

And let's not forget, she is able to convince a person in just a couple of sentences that what he believed all his life is not true, and he just disregards his believes because the almighty Michael talked and that's enough for everyone to abandon their believes.

I mean, who writes this stuff? But keep acting like we're the crazy ones and that we're wrong and/or misogynistic.

Sometimes we must go beyond the rules for the sake of life and this is true and typical to what Star Trek is all about. Clearly we should just stand back and appreciate the story that they are trying to tell in this episode.

My opinion is that others should stop trying to sit back and just judge episodes like this one and appreciate the beauty of the story being told without trying to force their ideas of what a Star Trek episode should do.

I enjoyed the wonderful parts that were played by the Captain and Tilly, remembering that Star Trek is about sharing and selfless acts of grace and a message that goes beyond what is only heard.

WELL DONE and thank you for the beautiful story!!!

If so many of you do not like the show, STOP WATCHING IT! Its nowhere near as bad as you keep making it out to be with all of your 1 star reviews and the incessant vitriol about how bad it is. It's not perfect but my God people...funny how a show with women leads and gay and trans gendered characters gets so much hate..enough already. Times have changed its not the 1960s anymore. I agree sometimes the writing is lacking but many of the characters are actually really good as is the interaction between them. Sadly the negativity and closed mindedness is all too representative of the world we live in...Star Trek has always embraced diversity and inclusion and yet so many of you have lost the plot.

Lots of dialogue with soft piano music...this should clue you in as how this season will end. They will save the known universe. There's no tension building except for Star Trek fans who want some action instead of chit-chat dripping with fake authenticity. The usual idiocy the writers give us is when Michael and Tilly beam to the planet's surface and immediately begin to chit-chat like high school girls without first engaging in a quiet moment to ascertain a situational awareness. In what direction are we heading? Are any predators about? Were we observed beaming down? I love Star Trek and always have. But the writing for Discovery is so horrible that I will never ever watch any of these episodes again.

This episode was really like the TOS style episodes mixed with a little of DS-9. The plot and the characterization that the actors delivered was impressive.

I was a kid when Star Trek (tos) began and have watched all of the different series.

In 1989 when Gene R gave us the orginal episode, "The cage" that the network and the tobacco companies rejected because "number 1" was a female, Spock looked like the Devil and on the ship was a "No Smoking" sign...I thought of life under "Jim Crow", segregation, a raging Vietnam war, etc.

Creating Star Trek was a bold endeavor.

It has been a wild ride...5 years and much appreciated scripted, dramatic sci-fi TV

Looking forward to these last episodes.

I have been trying to keep an open mind on this season however I'm at the point that I'm just expecting this to end badly. This peculiar episode seemed like a throw away episode. While I don't usually mind them from earlier series they usually had 22 or more episodes a season. In this new age of Star Trek we can't afford these types of episodes. Finally, why is there even a prime directive anymore? What's the point of even mentioning it if there's going to be a Captain ignoring it? I really don't even know if this series is worth continuing. I'll probably see it through as I'm invested in it but I doubt I'll ever bother to rewatch the series and pretend it didn't exist.

I don't know what this is but it isn't Star Trek, and I want it to stop.

This is the first series in the franchise that I am fast forwarding through scenes because it's so lame and I know it's all just touchy-feely nonsense among characters I wish were not on the show to begin with.

The weighted average for Discovery seems pretty accurate though. It was a solid 7 for season 1 + 2, dropping to a 5 since then.

At this rate, this season looks like it's going to end up around 3.

I hope the directors are learning something with this exercise. Please don't subject Star Trek fans to this hogwash ever again!

Good God! All Martin-Green knows how to do is WHISPER her lines! Not ONCE have you ever heard Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Sisco, Archer or PIKE whisper! They talked with authority and gravitas! And then I turn on Closed Captioning and I realize why - the script for this episode in particular, was wretched! Who... who wrote this garbage? The whole episode was just incoherent babbling; like it was just filler to make up the episode.

This season is just... draggggging. I am forcing myself to watch it just to make sure it's done and this turf is buried after the last four more episodes.

Uninspiring, uninteresting, stuck in all the touchy-feeley, nonsense that just destroyed seasons three and four.

Absolutely stupid plot devices. 40 minutes on the planet to have the ships Wunderkind remotely solve the problem with the planet? Tilley and Burnham put the next pieces of the relic together and... just leave it out in the open in Engineering - no security whatsoever?

Anyhow.

I love this captivating episode!

The writers have stepped back into the fold and bought back the quality of series 1 and 2 of Discovery.

This episode brandishes a beautiful plot build up, excellent acting, wonderful scenes, cinematography and graphics (don't forget the glam squad!). The traditional values of TOS shine through.

The writers have elegantly catapulted a current environmental issue into the future without bashing the audience with global warming doctrine.

But why is Book still hanging around? He betrayed and endangered the entire galaxy and should be flushed out of an airlock asap!

Star Trek: Discovery once more with added feelings. One of the showrunners described this story as a 'classic TOS-style adventure.' I just regarded it as one of the lamer TNG adventures.

Again Burnham leads the away mission to a pre-warp society. First Officer Rayner does not even bother objecting and he probably knows Captain Burnham will break the Prime Directive.

Not only that Burnham takes Tilly to the away mission. The most unfit member of the crew. You guessed it, there will be a race at some point. The kind Book could had done in his sleep. Instead he is on Discovery getting bored.

This society has strong beliefs in religious traditions. Unaware that the disguised alien tech weather tower needs fixing or else their drought will continue to get worse.

If the final season was billed as an Indiana Jones type chase adventure. This was the cure for insomnia sleeper story.

Never even in my worst nightmares could I have imagined that I would hate Star Trek. This series is ending, but I would say it is decomposing. This episode clearly shows the incompetence of the writers. It's a disgrace Against the backdrop of the brilliant films of recent years, this series only disgraces the bright name of Star Trek. I can not understand. The writers either never watched good films. Or they have never read books. Overall, mediocre work from mediocre people. I'm Grieving for You Star Trek. Empty, meaningless plot, terrible actors. Actors do not act like a crowd. No talent.........

So, anyone who at this point in the series still cares about anything that happens in the episodes and doesn't just continue to watch to tick another box on the "I've seen all the Star Trek episodes" list is really beyond help. Although there are obviously still a handful of people who open this page immediately after a new episode has come out to give it 10 stars out of principle. Every time, shortly after the start of a new episode, there are 10-15 10-star ratings. But after a while, when the real Star Trek fans have seen and rated the episodes, the result settles somewhere between 5 and 6 stars. By the way, I recently looked at the average rating of all Star Trek seasons here just for fun. DIS is in second place with season 4 (after season 2 of the Animated Series, which is in first place) and DIS is also fifth place with season 3. Besides the Animated Series (which shouldn't be a benchmark for quality anyway), DIS is the only series with two seasons that appear in the Flop Five! And yet the showrunners and writers have learned nothing from the lousy seasons 3 and 4! It just keeps getting worse. One dud after another! Make it stop finally!

What was the point of this episode anyway? Burnham is once again carrying out an away mission - as always. This time she has Tilly in tow and anyone who had at least a spark of hope when watching the episode that Burnham would pull herself together and not break the Prime Directive and Tilly would finally be good for something - namely bringing rain as a human sacrifice - will of course be disappointed once again. Burnham doesn't give a damn about the Prime Directive, because friendship is ultimately much more important than anything else. Best friends forever! And then Burnham convinces an old man, who knows nothing other than life on this planet with sacrifices and worship, with a short whisperspeak, that there are aliens and technology and that he should no longer sacrifice virgins and the like in the future. Incidentally, DIS is once again rubbing gender ideology in our faces with a three-gender civilization - probably just to make us hear "they" instead of "he" and "she" even more often. Apparently it is not enough that the stuttering Adira is constantly addressed as "they".

And this whiny Culber is really getting on my nerves now. Yes, we know, you had a spiritual experience during the Zhian'tara. Write a book about it! Or go to a monastery and take a vow of silence and spare your fellow human beings this lamentation. What a difference to Star Trek 30 years ago! In the DS9 episode "Facets" several characters also perform the Zhian'tara (with Jadzia Dax) and did we hear any whining afterwards? NO! No whining, no tears, and no sobbing self-pity three episodes later!

Oh, and it's nice that this species communicates by whistling. Apparently they only do that when Burnham and Tilly aren't around... and Tilly wins the race?!? Fitness - what's that again? Just be body positive and you can achieve anything! And what does this Carl Fredricksen character actually want to tell us with his notepad from the 21st century? This series truly has the worst of the bad characters in Star Trek history!

Star Trek has always been about spinning a ripper yarn that gets you thinking, even if they sometimes chuck in some far-fetched science for dramatic effect. Discovery is still giving it a fair go, wrestling with some pretty weighty themes about life, identity, and the whole kit and caboodle of the human condition. But crikey, singing bowls and sound healing? What's next - are they gonna completely chuck out the scientific heart of the Star Trek universe? I mean, I'm all for expanding our horizons and exploring new ideas, but this New Age malarkey feels like a bridge too far. It's starting to veer away from the show's core identity. The writers need to remember what makes Trek great - grouse stories that transport us to a speculative future, not crystal-waving woo-woo. That's what keeps us fans coming back, not bleedin' chakra alignments and cosmic vibrations.