Reviews

This adaptation is largely faithful to the book, if your definition of faithful is "major events that happened in the books also happened in this show". The whole thing is rushed, and there is no time to let the events sink in. The first episode already covers half the first book. The mystery of what's behind the scientists' deaths and the thrill of the main characters uncovering the culprit are missing entirely from the show. The divide between the two branches of the three body organization is completely omitted. And where are the pendulums? The hard science that makes the source material so appealing is also "less hard" here. Two episodes in, we've already arrived at the famous "Do Not Answer" scene and know it's aliens. Despite having only 8 episodes, episodes 6 and 7 are nonsense fillers and by episode 8 we're already at book 2.

I don't mind the screenwriters adapting characters to a more international audience, splitting and combining some main characters so they can interact with each other because you can't really have an inner monologue like in a fiction. But it makes zero sense that "everybody knows everybody" or that some early- to mid-thirties are heads of research centers. The epic feeling is gone because the show is made too UK-centric. Different genders and ethnic groups are "represented", but somehow they all have a British (Oxford) upbringing. Major world powers including the US, Japan, continental Europe, and Chinese-Chinese (not British Chinese) are not represented at all. This work is supposed to be an epic that spans the globe, and spans centuries. Yet watching the "Oxford Five"'s relationship issues, it feels like teenage drama instead.

While I might sound negative, this work is miles ahead of whatever's crapping out of Disney/Marvel/SW these days. The CGI is fantastic, especially when it comes to visualizing the VR world. The C******* Revolution backstory is meticulously filmed, and the entire Chinese storyline, however short it is, is spoken in Chinese. I am delighted to see Chinese Sci-Fi being adapted for Western audience, hence +1 star for representation. Nonetheless, as with most shows these days though, please hire more competent writers.

No doubt this will be among one of the best Star Trek episodes. It is a pity, however, that the case was won through a technicality of asylum conditions. The proceedings should also have been shown to be broadcasted throughout the Federation, rather than only being watched by the Enterprise crew. The whole point of a "show trial" is that it has to be "shown", like OJ.

I understand the writers wanted to make this "one small step for an Illyrian", and make future episodes on this issue. But the conclusion could have been way more impactful while still grounded in reality. It is not like racial prejudice vanished overnight when the 13th Amendment was passed in 1865, or the 15th Amendment in 1870, or the 19th in 1920. The struggle is ongoing. In real life, cases like this have been won by the court ruling that the law was unconstitutional. In the aftermath of the Eugenics War, humanity couldn't have known that an entire civilization could thrive on genetic modifications. A law that excludes, discriminates, and prosecutes a whole race could not have been constitutional, regardless of what form the imaginary Federation charter would look like. Thus it was to my astonishment, and my disappointment, that the defendant lawyer, as a civil rights lawyer, didn't even attempt to get the law repealed on constitutional grounds.

Nonetheless, it should be evident that my 9/10 rating means I enjoyed this episode very much. Since other reviewers have covered the merits of this episode, I will not repeat them here.

• Why wasn't Elrond vaporized? I mean Elnor.

• How did LaSirena69 one-shot 3 starships?

• How did they crash land on Earth when they're slingshoting around the sun?

• Why was Raffi the one who was broken by Elnor's death? He's like Picard's son!

• Why did Picard make that "speech" right after Elnor's death?

• Is Rios mentally-challenged?

• Did the producers run out of writer budget?

I gave the first two episodes 9/10, but this third one, while still interesting to watch, has far worse writing than the previous ones. Let's hope this is just a glitch.

Fantastic music, sound effects, CGI, cinematography as usual.

Terrible writing as usual.

Minor quips:

• All of Ni'Var, a reunited people of Vulcans and Romulans, has 86 warp-capable ships in total?

• Since when can Vulcans mind meld through space... and a window?

• Since when do Vulcans hold hands?

But the biggest problem of all, is that there were no stakes at all! Many characters, the good guys and the bad guys, were all heroically willing to sacrifice themselves! And literally none of them died! It might work if it happened once or twice, but it's like, half the episode was people sacrificing (and not dying)! I'm pretty sure my list is incomplete, but let's go:

• President T'Rina, "risked her life" to mind meld with the Ten-C (through space), was completely fine after a few minutes in the sickbay.

• Discovery herself, blowing up the spore drive to escape the orb. Of course she's fine.

• Book gave Reno his badge to beam her out, and stayed with his ship (controls encrypted by Tarka, couldn't beam himself out). Asked Michael to just shoot him out of the sky if she had to. Good news Discovery's weapons got disabled.

• General Ndoye, after being confined to quarters due to her mutiny, was invited to give tactical advice on how to stop Book's ship. Her great idea was, let's ram a shuttle into his ship! Detmer volunteered, but Ndoye volunteered herself too ("redemption" yay, after putting the entirety of Earth, Ten-C, and Discovery's crew at risk). They said it was a suicide mission, there would not be time to beam out. Lol who am I kidding, of course she got beamed out to sickbay!

• Tilly and Admiral Vance. Stayed behind Federation HQ to provide cover fire for Earth's evacuation fleet. Weapon's out, had their "final talk", and... they still had two hours of shields left!? Two hours!?!?!? That's two hours longer than any shields in Star Trek! Surely they survived.

• Tarka, after Ndoye did her ramming, turned off life support to provide power to beam Book out. (What about the encrypted controls though? A "fractal encryption" even he himself couldn't break.) (Oh hey another cheap "redemption"!) His fate remained unknown, but he did suggest that when Book's ship hit the hyperfield, there might be enough energy to power his parallel universe transporter. Not even the baddest bad could get what he deserved.

• Book, whose ship exploded before Discovery could finish beaming him out... Man, for a tenth of an attosecond I thought the writers had balls... then I remembered this list. Of course the Ten-C saved his teleportation signal in stasis and got him out.

That's about it. Seriously?

Now let's look at the fate of the baddies:

• Tarka: Might have made it to the parallel universe

• Ndoye: Got a warm welcome from United Earth's president (hey! A positive body image black female!) after, you know, her being a traitor, endangering the entire Earth.

• Book: Community service.

That's just two aspects of why this episode is bad. The list goes on... I guess the only positive side lies in terms of operational cost saving: They just filmed the wrap party and called it the finale.

Last but not least, for a show that is so heavy-handed with wokeness, the cameraman sure loves to point the camera at Sara Mitch whenever there's an opportunity (or even when there isn't). The showrunners literally killed off the cyborg Airiam (played by Sara) to let Sara show her real face as Lt. Nilsson. If you want to feature a hot female character to attract non-woke viewers, at least give her a real role (think T'Pol, Seven, Kes), no? She's a real actress who has invested years of her career into this show, as did the other bridge crews who stayed on over the years. Least you could do is to dedicate some scenes to them, solo, instead of occasional one-liners playing off only Michael Burnham.

Here are some thoughts that I wrote down as I was watching the show:

Discovery wanted to enter the hyperfield, the hyperfield took them inside. Why the false tension? I can understand the initial fear from what looked like an attack. But once they got inside in one piece, it should be obvious Discovery wasn't under any threat. The least the writers could do was to show a DOT accidentally destroyed by Ten-C, to misdirect viewers.

Zora detected a problem with her system (hint: Book's ship) she couldn't identify. Instead of trying science, Stamet's first thought was to get Hugh, the shrink, to help her feelings! This was before the scene where he tried a bunch of diagnostics that didn't work.

Reno was taken prisoner on Book's ship last episode. She hid some sort of device under her sleeve. The problem was, why on earth would it need a Liquorice to function properly? Yeah she explained "the acid conducts electricity" yada yada. Why wasn't that comms badge working on its own? It's a comms badge, right? It... communicates? If anything, it's more likely to short the whole thing...

Remember when Burnham refused to raise shields to not give a bad impression? Once they were taken inside, her priority was to restore shield and weapon(!). What the hell!? Logic 120%! They have life support, they weren't under threat!

Once they were inside the hyperfield, their weapons were disabled (understandably), their ship scanned (understandably), but Ten-C didn't attempt to communicate. General Ndoye came to the conclusion that they should attack...

Oh god this is only 15 minutes into the episode!

How was Book's ship still cloaked and hidden from Discovery's sensors if "nothing is working"?

OMG Reno is also lesbian? Good lord I couldn't have guessed that! What a big reveal! Such character development! Man, now I can really empathize with a character that vanished from the show for the majority of this season!

Then comes the "Arrival" scene. Minus the cinematography, the suspense, the atmosphere, the music .... The same scene, but devoid of anything artistic.

All that back and forth between Book and Ndoye... why didn't Zora catch everything? Their comms might be encrypted, but it's not like there weren't microphones everywhere on the ship? They used to be able to give voice command from anywhere! And why on earth would Book have Discovery's access codes? Burnham shared this with her boyfriend as a responsible Starfleet captain? I was so mad when I wrote this: a BOY-friend!? Why wasn't she also lesbian? The lack of LBGTQWERTY representation for the main character is abhorrent!

Surprise! Tarka's plan in taking the power source involved the annihilation of Ten-C, blowing up Discovery, and causing a subspace rift that would tear Earth apart. Yet two episodes ago we learnt that his partner powered the transporter using only geothermal energy... Why would he need a power source so strong that could create black holes (DMA) out of thin air?

Now that Tarka was clearly the bad guy, Book got to "redeem" himself. As if anyone would buy that crap. Another reviewer last week predicted Book's redemption would be that he's the only one who could communicate with Ten-C, because he's an empath... Nope. That would have been convenient and contrived, but the writers were certainly able to come up with far worse ideas.

If you remember Tarka "teaching" Saru about yelling, Saru and Burnham yelled at each other this episode. (Literally, of course.)

Saru holding that translator lantern thingie was hilarious.

What's the point of the engineers figuring out Book's ship being attached to Discovery, when everyone could already see them burning through the "orb"?

Thank god this season will be over next week.

You build up a character, Salvor Hardin, as a leader of the Foundation, and possibly a leader of Anacreon since she holds the Huntress bow. Then have her leave behind her loved ones and responsibilities, and waste a century of plot development for a "shocking" 138-years-later reveal. The Foundation has a jump ship Invictus, churning out new jump ships every 18 months, and no one bothered to look for their missing leader? Even though she crashlanded conveniently at Gaal's home? You know, the person they knew she was looking for, and would literally be the first place a search party would look?

And of course the big reveal that Gaal is Salvor's biological mother, that's how she has superpowers: immune to the null field, controls probability, and a telepath. Surely tied up all loose ends.

Another huge "plot twist": The Foundation are rebels now, actively planning to overthrow the Empire, instead of preserving humanity after the fall.

Yet another "plot twist": Robot commits another murder, killing Brother Dawn, the protagonist of the Genetic Dynasty arc. Robot also tore off her face and yell at the camera, because reasons.

While I am just stating facts from the plot without writing an actual review, surely you don't need to be able to see the future to know where this is going. Unlike the writers having to use the Robot to explicitly question if Brother Day really saw the vision walking the Spiral, or spend half an episode of flashback to rehash Gaal's backstory that the audience already know about, or flashback to Dr. Seldon's murder to show that it was part of his plan. And so on.

An AI gaining sentience struggling with emotions would have been an interesting standalone plot, when told out of context. But we do have context: the entire season till now has been crew members talking about emotions and attending counselling. So the reveal ended up hilariously ridiculous. The AI has emotional distress too! Lol

Zora the computer chose her avatar to be some generic concentric circles circumscribing a rectangular box showing waveforms of her voice. Like, this is what the creative team can come up with? Those useless holographic displays have more details than a sentient AI's sense of self!

Back to the beginning of the episode. Starfleet sent Discovery, their most valuable asset, into the subspace rift left behind by the anomaly. You know, instead of a science vessel. Or better yet, an unmanned probe mayhaps? Saru mentioned other similar encounters by the Enterprise and Voyager. Which Enterprise and which Voyager? And why only ships that the audience know of?

Discovery then entered the void. At first the crew was unable to comprehend the concept of "there's nothing". Then spontaneously logic returned, they sent a probe to probe the space, which got disintegrated. With a sudden showcase of maturity and leadership, Burnham decided to abort the mission! What a surprise indeed. But they couldn't leave, due to the lack of navigation landmarks. Even my smartphone has inertial measurements. Same can be found on all commercial airlines, because GPS isn't always available. But a starship doesn't have gyroscopes in the future. Right...

Unlike "the Void" encountered by Voyager in S05E01, the nothingness of this void served no purpose other than a ticking timebomb that threatened to destroy Discovery. In Voyager, Janeway got depression after a few months travelling in the void, that's a legit reason to talk about emotions. There's also a sinister plot, and a message about environmental protection in the end. There's no such thing in Discovery. Squandering all that room for creative freedom on fire and sparks.

Afterwards some problem solving with technobabble happened, which managed to somewhat resemble science instead of nonsense. Photoacoustic effect is a real phenomenon, just FYI. Nice to know the writers still remember that this show is Sci-Fi. But in the end all the logic went out the airlock. The entire crew has to beam to the pattern buffer to stay alive, but Burnham wearing a spacesuit remained on the bridge alone, and survived the trip because the AI sang a song to her. Yeah whatever.

You know what? Drop the sentient AI, and tell the storyline backwards, from the perspective of a third party encountering a vacant Discovery drifting in space. Reveal the plot step by step as a mystery, and end the episode with the third party discovering the crew alive in the pattern buffer. There you go. Where's my paycheck?