Surprised to see Leland still around, although clearly wishing he wasn't. That does kind of explain what he's been there for, in a way - I never got much of a sense of purpose to him, besides fulfilling the mechanical functions of recruiting Flip and flying her and Ash around, he never seemed to have much of an identity of his own beyond what the plot needed of him. In hindsight, he was there to be the eventual villain, so that tracks. (Just personally, when they were firing torpedoes at the planet, I'd have put a couple through the S31 ship at the same time just to be on the safe side. I'm not ideal Starfleet material really.)
Couple of reaction shots for Nilsson as things went on, so it looks very much like she's a permanent fixture among the Bridge Bunnies now. Maybe I'll get my wish of her being added to the game one of these days after all.
So Mama Michael wasn't behind the seven signals? I'm not sure I buy the alternate explanation that it might've been Control then, that seems a bit too obvious, and all in all they do seem very tied to the Angel. Maybe it is her, but in her own personal timeframe she hasn't caused them yet?
One really wild shot idea I had - what if (somehow) Mama Michael does manage to come back, the way she intended to from the very beginning? I mean okay, she's stuck in the future, but she's a resourceful type, suppose she figures something out, and does get back to the research station before the Klingons attack, and prevent it? Michael's got a family again, was never orphaned, never adopted by Sarek - because Spock touched the Red Angel's mind, and shared that with Michael, they remember that timeline, but nobody else does? The reason we never heard about Spock having an adopted sister is that they can never reveal to anyone else the timeline that didn't happen. Of course you'd have to handwave away that Michael still joined Starfleet and basically everything else happened the same anyway... I feel like that might be too much of a stretch to ask viewers to accept, so on balance I'm thinking it's not going to happen. TBH even though making Michael Spock's sister to begin with still seems a bit of a clumsy idea, I like what they've done with it, so I don't feel like it needs to be plotted away at this stage. But it's a thought.
Oh yeah, dude's a meat puppet now. Allegedly this solves that issue it was rambling on about when it was switching between hologram forms, about how it needed a proper body in order to fully master imitating humans convincingly. Given its laughably poor performance on the bridge afterwards, it may have underestimated how much effort it needs to put in (that was something I found a bit lacking in the episode, I didn't feel it needed to be that obvious that it was Control in his body, since we'd already seen it taking him over - it's a miracle Flip didn't just try to stun Leland right there after their first conversation on the basis that "obviously something's wrong with him").
Oh yeah, dude's a meat puppet now. Allegedly this solves that issue it was rambling on about when it was switching between hologram forms, about how it needed a proper body in order to fully master imitating humans convincingly. Given its laughably poor performance on the bridge afterwards, it may have underestimated how much effort it needs to put in (that was something I found a bit lacking in the episode, I didn't feel it needed to be that obvious that it was Control in his body, since we'd already seen it taking him over - it's a miracle Flip didn't just try to stun Leland right there after their first conversation on the basis that "obviously something's wrong with him").
Yeah, it took someone as savvy as Her Highness a little long to figure outt he was messed up. Obviously for story advancement purposes. But, if you can't plot out the second half of your episode without totally ignoring established character traits, you might need a bigger whiteboard......
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
Joking aside I can forgive her - who seriously expects their boss to have been taken over by a rogue AI just because he's acting different? I mean in Section 31 maybe they should, but she's new at this, in her universe if an AI wanted to start something it'd probably just get a robot body and come at her with a sword, because that's how they roll over there. It's more like, I dunno, finesse in communicating with the audience. You on the one hand have Control!Leland acting all robotic and calculating, which is kind of menacing on a surface level because you can blatantly see it's a machine intellect in there piloting him, and that's ooky. But on the other hand what they could have done was have him act completely normal, as if he was still Leland and nothing has changed. Granted that means there's nothing malevolent in the actual performance, but I feel like it'd be super-tense given that we know he's an AI now, and we'd see he's perfectly capable of hiding it from everyone.
I'm kind of imagining a version of the episode where we don't see any of the Leland In Private scenes. You lose all Control's motivation speeches, but kind of think about, end of last episode BAM needle in the eye, and then it's just not addressed this week, Leland shows up on the bridge, nobody has any reason to suspect anything weird's going on, he gives convincing reasons for wanting Ash to get the data rather than just WE NEED THE AI DATA - GET IT - END OF LINE DILLINGER, then with no foreshadowing we get to Ash with his insides all over the floor on the viewscreen and Leland turning up on the planet and shrugging off phaser fire.
Anyway though, I forgot to mention the most important thing this episode: Culber with his facial hair and back in his white uniform. Oh my god.
Has anyone else connected the dots about Alice in Wonderland? Red Angel = Rabbit, Michael = Alice. Michael keeps chasing the rabbit, and rabbit keep eluding. Once she finally caught up with Red Angel (aka rabbit), she confronted Red Angel, and Red Angel had to leave because she was "out of time".
I guess that makes Spock the Cheshire Cat? Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the writers are putting intriguing Alice snippets in there. Leland would seem to be Mad Hatter...
One wild theory of mine: We don't know if the Borg in Enterprise knew that the Borg didn't exist for another 100 years, but they knew they would by the time the message got to them.
Spore drive gives a mechanism to displace Control to the Delta quadrant.
Now, they just need Control to conveniently forget about Earth and Starfleet (unless of course displacement is also temporal, and the cube the Enterprise-D encounters with Q is the first cube they send out?
Edit:
I've just realised that now the theory about Janeway being S31 comes into play: sent to retrieve / destroy Control!
I mean kind of, but I dunno... the whole 'Borg nanoprobe' thing go so over-used on Voyager I kind of try not to think about them, so I'm just seeing these ones as nanites, same as everyone else uses. Control doesn't seem very Borg in terms of goals and ideals, it's not into the whole 'unite everything' model of pursuing perfection - it's more just "we will add your biological distinctiveness to this crater, booyah!" and call it a day.
Hadn't been looking for Alice references (haven't ever read it, apart from the interpretation in Alan Moore's Lost Girls, and that's... I'm pretty sure that version won't be showing up in Star Trek). L'Rell for Red Queen though? She has kind of adopted "off with their heads" into her PR strategy of late.
(Which now that I think about it, Section 31 folks are only human - give or take Leland at the moment - they must have their lighter moments, when they're not busy. How often do you suppose junior Section 31 officers get pranked given that their replicators can do convincing severed heads on demand?)
Sorry to pull a TL;DR, but... I am.
Did anyone hypothesize that they leave the sphere data on the Discovery and just ditch it in orbit around some planet? And while there, the ship's computer becomes self aware? It was a fun little train of thought, but I can't figure out how they get back. Unless they pay Mudd for transportation.
Eh, I guessed having the Sphere data in memory might've been the extra nudge that pushed Disco over the line to fully sapient, but it was in the course of my 'the Red Angel is Zora' theory, so I dunno if I can really claim credit.
I'm currently thinking Disco gets parked in specifically that spot because that's where Mama Michael's going to land in the future from her trip back through the time hole. As for how they get back... there's this bit in the back of my brain saying "the seven signals are a roadmap to bring Disco home" but I don't know what that means in practical terms.
Good stuff. I like it, @Kaitee . I've been wondering about the signals. That's about as good a theory as any. To me, the best part is that it gets rid of the spore drive, which has been more than a little out of place.
One wild theory of mine: We don't know if the Borg in Enterprise knew that the Borg didn't exist for another 100 years, but they knew they would by the time the message got to them.
Spore drive gives a mechanism to displace Control to the Delta quadrant.
Now, they just need Control to conveniently forget about Earth and Starfleet (unless of course displacement is also temporal, and the cube the Enterprise-D encounters with Q is the first cube they send out?
Edit:
I've just realised that now the theory about Janeway being S31 comes into play: sent to retrieve / destroy Control!
Not that I want to spiral down the Borg "rabbit" hole in this discussion, but when the Borg Queen says "Brave words. I've heard them before, from thousands of species across thousands of worlds, since long before you were created"; implies the Borg were around many many millennia before the human race was even around. And they [Borg] are on the other side of the galaxy, and completely ignorant of the Alpha Quadrant at this point in time.
I have grown to really like Stamets, so if they end up killing him to dispose of the Spore Drive, I would be sad. I would hope the writers are more creative than that though.
Also keep in mind this is the story they wanted to tell in Season 1, but got sidelined by the idiot VP at CBS, which is why they ended up in the Mirror Universe. I think that has allowed them to really fine tune the story for this season, and Can't wait to actually see the last episode, and go back and rewatch them all again.
I feel like Stamets is safe, if for no other reason than PR - they got serious ill-will for killing off half of their gay couple after all the waiting for Trek to finally have one featured, they'd be mad to go to all the effort of bringing Hugh back and then go do it all over again. The only way I see Stamets leaving is if Anthony Rapp decides to move on, and honestly even then I feel like they'd have a serious talk and see if they don't want to just transfer him and Hugh off the ship to live happily ever after somewhere else - even at the expense of losing Wilson Cruz - than run into another we-killed-off-the-gay-character minefield. It's not like Stamets has to die to get rid of the drive even, they can make up anything they want - even if him being the 'navigator' is some kind of perpetual threat of the drive being rebuilt, they can just magic up another hypospray to de-tardigrade his DNA, boom, he's just a regular human again.
Assuming they get together again, but I feel like that's where it's headed ultimately. I'm biased in that they're a cute couple, but also I just think an ongoing relationship's more interesting than everyone on the ship being perpetually single, so that's where my mind's at.
Okay, now Jett needs the Counselor Trait
Hugh better listen
Jett's wedding ring was sad making
Not sure if the trip to Boreth derails the The Albino theory, because Time Crystals
I kept telling at my tablet "You're falling for it again! Shoot Gant!"
The Crystal Vision put a whole new slant on Pike's sacrifice that crippled (will cripple) him
More Linus was awesome
Looking forward to more Number One next week
Borethian Monks get realer bat'leths
Also, Burnham should have tried the orange setting!!!
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
I'm okay with the Albino theory not coming round - it's a cute idea, but I don't know that I'd want to see it actually done, it feels like it'd be a reference just for the sake of a reference, not something that has any purpose in-universe. Boreth though, that was a surprise, and I kind of love it. All that stuff before season one about how they were going to make Klingons "alien" again after they'd become too familiar to everyone, that's alien, they've got Time Monks. Nice to see them having aspects of their culture that don't just boil down to 'space Vikings', and I like the hint that that's why their homeworld is (phonetically) Kronos.
Also speaking of Boreth, wow, Pike's flashforward, just wow. I wasn't expecting the 'Menagerie' reference so it was only when he got burned I realised oh snap, this is it, and then daaaamn the appearance of Beep Boop Pike in the chair. Nice job on the makeup, it totally looked like 60s Fake Pike, but also convincing, but Anson Mount's reaction was what really sold it, that was a guy who just got his future hit him like a damn freight train to the face. And all this talking they've been doing about how awesome a Starfleet officer he is, that was awesome, the way he pulled himself together in about as long as it'd take a mere mortal to decide whether they wanted a second cup of coffee or not. Don't anyone ever say he doesn't belong with Kirk and the other great Captains. (Between this and the extra weight they put onto his relationship with Vina, next time I watch 'The Menagerie' it's really going to be a trip.)
I confess I didn't trip to Gant until I was supposed to - after Leland being all robo-Leland I wasn't expecting such a convincing performance from Control (I mean that was what I wanted them to do). Kind of felt like the grey goo stuff later in the fight actually lessened the effect a bit, Gant just calmly switching from human to robot without missing a beat was the real scary bit.
And hey, a D7, love those things. Klingons don't waste time building ships apparently (maybe that's why they don't care how many of them get blown up every battle, they've got a giant replicator in orbit somewhere turning out battlecruisers like Earl Grey).
Nilsson again, and obviously accepted into the bridge bunny club now.
I don’t get Ash either. They should’ve just killed him off when they had the chance. And for being such a secret organization it seems everyone knows someone in Section 31
Don’t you suppose Burnham has to die before the series is over? Or does Agent K give everyone the deneuralizer? “Spock did not have a black adopted sister and to think so would be completely ridiculous” FLASH!!
I wondered if that was going to come up (any more than just setting up Tilly being in the command program, which hasn't had much to do with anything once the May story wrapped up). If we're being honest that was my least favourite of the shorts, but I'm interested to see what comes of it now - it wasn't critically flawed or anything, just ho-hum, so if its story thread can come back with a bit of extra polish this week that'll be nice.
I wondered if that was going to come up (any more than just setting up Tilly being in the command program, which hasn't had much to do with anything once the May story wrapped up). If we're being honest that was my least favourite of the shorts, but I'm interested to see what comes of it now - it wasn't critically flawed or anything, just ho-hum, so if its story thread can come back with a bit of extra polish this week that'll be nice.
Tilly apparently feeds her ice cream......
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
Po put Lippy in her place!!!
Jett could actually follow what Po was doing.
Pike is the best Enterprise Captain. Sorry, guys.
Scott got to see REAL FIGHTER SHUTTLES!!!
Heartbreaking make me cry scene with Mom and Pop Vulcan. Commercial break. Heartbreaking make me cry scene in the hallway, when they stood with Michael.
I knew the Disco was gonna protect itself. Calypso, y'all.
And, the bigger reveal if the night, yet done so subtly.....
PIKE KNOWS ABOUT THE MIRROR UNIVERSE!!!
Also, there has been major buzz on the fan pages the last few days hoping for Anson Mount & Ethan Peck to get a spin-off set on the Enterprise. I would love that!!!
EDIT TO ADD: When we get a Jett Reno card, she needs to be 5* with minimum of 1000 Med, 1000 Science, and 1000 Engineering, Immortalized.
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
I WAS reading Pike right? When Lippy dropped her little bombshell as she was beaming him out? That little grin as he faded?
Oh totally. In a way I feel like that moment was maybe being a bit more cute than it really deserved - there was that exchange earlier in the season where Pike noticed something off about her and asked Michael about it, she said not right now but she'd tell him later on. So I guess she told him (which isn't weird, after their conversation it'd be weird if she hadn't, it just happened off-screen so we could have this little wink-to-the-camera I guess).
I WAS reading Pike right? When Lippy dropped her little bombshell as she was beaming him out? That little grin as he faded?
Oh totally. In a way I feel like that moment was maybe being a bit more cute than it really deserved - there was that exchange earlier in the season where Pike noticed something off about her and asked Michael about it, she said not right now but she'd tell him later on. So I guess she told him (which isn't weird, after their conversation it'd be weird if she hadn't, it just happened off-screen so we could have this little wink-to-the-camera I guess).
I had forgotten that. I was hopeful it was foreshadowing something we will see later. Either Season Three or in "Star Trek: Pike"..........
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
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I was thinking more like it actually is Michael but she just doesn’t recognize herself because she is older. But you never know
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Couple of reaction shots for Nilsson as things went on, so it looks very much like she's a permanent fixture among the Bridge Bunnies now. Maybe I'll get my wish of her being added to the game one of these days after all.
So Mama Michael wasn't behind the seven signals? I'm not sure I buy the alternate explanation that it might've been Control then, that seems a bit too obvious, and all in all they do seem very tied to the Angel. Maybe it is her, but in her own personal timeframe she hasn't caused them yet?
One really wild shot idea I had - what if (somehow) Mama Michael does manage to come back, the way she intended to from the very beginning? I mean okay, she's stuck in the future, but she's a resourceful type, suppose she figures something out, and does get back to the research station before the Klingons attack, and prevent it? Michael's got a family again, was never orphaned, never adopted by Sarek - because Spock touched the Red Angel's mind, and shared that with Michael, they remember that timeline, but nobody else does? The reason we never heard about Spock having an adopted sister is that they can never reveal to anyone else the timeline that didn't happen. Of course you'd have to handwave away that Michael still joined Starfleet and basically everything else happened the same anyway... I feel like that might be too much of a stretch to ask viewers to accept, so on balance I'm thinking it's not going to happen. TBH even though making Michael Spock's sister to begin with still seems a bit of a clumsy idea, I like what they've done with it, so I don't feel like it needs to be plotted away at this stage. But it's a thought.
Yeah, it took someone as savvy as Her Highness a little long to figure outt he was messed up. Obviously for story advancement purposes. But, if you can't plot out the second half of your episode without totally ignoring established character traits, you might need a bigger whiteboard......
I'm kind of imagining a version of the episode where we don't see any of the Leland In Private scenes. You lose all Control's motivation speeches, but kind of think about, end of last episode BAM needle in the eye, and then it's just not addressed this week, Leland shows up on the bridge, nobody has any reason to suspect anything weird's going on, he gives convincing reasons for wanting Ash to get the data rather than just WE NEED THE AI DATA - GET IT - END OF LINE DILLINGER, then with no foreshadowing we get to Ash with his insides all over the floor on the viewscreen and Leland turning up on the planet and shrugging off phaser fire.
Anyway though, I forgot to mention the most important thing this episode: Culber with his facial hair and back in his white uniform. Oh my god.
Has anyone else connected the dots about Alice in Wonderland? Red Angel = Rabbit, Michael = Alice. Michael keeps chasing the rabbit, and rabbit keep eluding. Once she finally caught up with Red Angel (aka rabbit), she confronted Red Angel, and Red Angel had to leave because she was "out of time".
I guess that makes Spock the Cheshire Cat? Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the writers are putting intriguing Alice snippets in there. Leland would seem to be Mad Hatter...
Yep, those looked very like nanoprobes.
One wild theory of mine: We don't know if the Borg in Enterprise knew that the Borg didn't exist for another 100 years, but they knew they would by the time the message got to them.
Spore drive gives a mechanism to displace Control to the Delta quadrant.
Now, they just need Control to conveniently forget about Earth and Starfleet (unless of course displacement is also temporal, and the cube the Enterprise-D encounters with Q is the first cube they send out?
Edit:
Hadn't been looking for Alice references (haven't ever read it, apart from the interpretation in Alan Moore's Lost Girls, and that's... I'm pretty sure that version won't be showing up in Star Trek). L'Rell for Red Queen though? She has kind of adopted "off with their heads" into her PR strategy of late.
(Which now that I think about it, Section 31 folks are only human - give or take Leland at the moment - they must have their lighter moments, when they're not busy. How often do you suppose junior Section 31 officers get pranked given that their replicators can do convincing severed heads on demand?)
Did anyone hypothesize that they leave the sphere data on the Discovery and just ditch it in orbit around some planet? And while there, the ship's computer becomes self aware? It was a fun little train of thought, but I can't figure out how they get back. Unless they pay Mudd for transportation.
I'm currently thinking Disco gets parked in specifically that spot because that's where Mama Michael's going to land in the future from her trip back through the time hole. As for how they get back... there's this bit in the back of my brain saying "the seven signals are a roadmap to bring Disco home" but I don't know what that means in practical terms.
Not that I want to spiral down the Borg "rabbit" hole in this discussion, but when the Borg Queen says "Brave words. I've heard them before, from thousands of species across thousands of worlds, since long before you were created"; implies the Borg were around many many millennia before the human race was even around. And they [Borg] are on the other side of the galaxy, and completely ignorant of the Alpha Quadrant at this point in time.
I have grown to really like Stamets, so if they end up killing him to dispose of the Spore Drive, I would be sad. I would hope the writers are more creative than that though.
Also keep in mind this is the story they wanted to tell in Season 1, but got sidelined by the idiot VP at CBS, which is why they ended up in the Mirror Universe. I think that has allowed them to really fine tune the story for this season, and Can't wait to actually see the last episode, and go back and rewatch them all again.
Assuming they get together again, but I feel like that's where it's headed ultimately. I'm biased in that they're a cute couple, but also I just think an ongoing relationship's more interesting than everyone on the ship being perpetually single, so that's where my mind's at.
Okay, now Jett needs the Counselor Trait
Hugh better listen
Jett's wedding ring was sad making
Not sure if the trip to Boreth derails the The Albino theory, because Time Crystals
I kept telling at my tablet "You're falling for it again! Shoot Gant!"
The Crystal Vision put a whole new slant on Pike's sacrifice that crippled (will cripple) him
More Linus was awesome
Looking forward to more Number One next week
Borethian Monks get realer bat'leths
Also, Burnham should have tried the orange setting!!!
Also speaking of Boreth, wow, Pike's flashforward, just wow. I wasn't expecting the 'Menagerie' reference so it was only when he got burned I realised oh snap, this is it, and then daaaamn the appearance of Beep Boop Pike in the chair. Nice job on the makeup, it totally looked like 60s Fake Pike, but also convincing, but Anson Mount's reaction was what really sold it, that was a guy who just got his future hit him like a damn freight train to the face. And all this talking they've been doing about how awesome a Starfleet officer he is, that was awesome, the way he pulled himself together in about as long as it'd take a mere mortal to decide whether they wanted a second cup of coffee or not. Don't anyone ever say he doesn't belong with Kirk and the other great Captains. (Between this and the extra weight they put onto his relationship with Vina, next time I watch 'The Menagerie' it's really going to be a trip.)
I confess I didn't trip to Gant until I was supposed to - after Leland being all robo-Leland I wasn't expecting such a convincing performance from Control (I mean that was what I wanted them to do). Kind of felt like the grey goo stuff later in the fight actually lessened the effect a bit, Gant just calmly switching from human to robot without missing a beat was the real scary bit.
And hey, a D7, love those things. Klingons don't waste time building ships apparently (maybe that's why they don't care how many of them get blown up every battle, they've got a giant replicator in orbit somewhere turning out battlecruisers like Earl Grey).
Nilsson again, and obviously accepted into the bridge bunny club now.
I still just don't get Ash.
Tilly apparently feeds her ice cream......
Po put Lippy in her place!!!
Jett could actually follow what Po was doing.
Pike is the best Enterprise Captain. Sorry, guys.
Scott got to see REAL FIGHTER SHUTTLES!!!
Heartbreaking make me cry scene with Mom and Pop Vulcan. Commercial break. Heartbreaking make me cry scene in the hallway, when they stood with Michael.
I knew the Disco was gonna protect itself. Calypso, y'all.
And, the bigger reveal if the night, yet done so subtly.....
PIKE KNOWS ABOUT THE MIRROR UNIVERSE!!!
Also, there has been major buzz on the fan pages the last few days hoping for Anson Mount & Ethan Peck to get a spin-off set on the Enterprise. I would love that!!!
EDIT TO ADD: When we get a Jett Reno card, she needs to be 5* with minimum of 1000 Med, 1000 Science, and 1000 Engineering, Immortalized.
Plus, hot damn, that bridge was beautiful.
And during the flashforward with Leland gunning everyone down, I totally wanted Burnham to yell "Activate the Omega 13!"
I WAS reading Pike right? When Lippy dropped her little bombshell as she was beaming him out? That little grin as he faded?
I said in my Hero of Canton voice during the crystal vision "Sure would be nice if we had some, I don't know, some Omega 13, wouldn't it?"
Oh totally. In a way I feel like that moment was maybe being a bit more cute than it really deserved - there was that exchange earlier in the season where Pike noticed something off about her and asked Michael about it, she said not right now but she'd tell him later on. So I guess she told him (which isn't weird, after their conversation it'd be weird if she hadn't, it just happened off-screen so we could have this little wink-to-the-camera I guess).
I had forgotten that. I was hopeful it was foreshadowing something we will see later. Either Season Three or in "Star Trek: Pike"..........
I know!!! I got that same vibe!!!