This was a GREAT episode. And I'm saying that because YES MY BOY IS BACK <3
Told you they won't show us Spock until the end. The whole episode did not strung a chord with me. Another step sideways instead of forward. I am not surprised Hugh is back, always suspected he would be. They never introduced another doctor. Can't say I care much for the fact or how they did it. The whole explanation was a bit too far-fetched. Plus they milked they whole situation a bit too much. The whole ship is falling apart but again and again they went into all-out "let's explain it to death mode". At some point I was yelling "get the f*** out of there already".
I am somewhat surprised that Section 31 is so out in the open. Tyler walks around displaying his badge to everyone and it seems obvious that everyone knows about them. Kinda weird for a covert ops unit. And I am not just saying that because of continuity. Maybe they were operating like that in this timeframe and where disbanded later, at least officially ?
And Giorgiou is so full of shit. Who in his right mind would ever trust her ?
Best character this season by a wide margin is Pike. He at least seems to be a chip off the old Starfleet block.
Another boring and stupid episode. Tilly is as annoying as Wesley. And to top of it all they brought back that useless fucker.
[6.1/10] I really don’t know what to do with this episode. It has a lot of the things I like from Star Trek: a weird and wild premise, an animating central theme, and a bit of pulling at the tension between the Federation’s mission and the realities of nation-building. But it is also full of speechifying, overblown drama, and more reality-stretching nonsense than you can shake a type 3 phaser rifle at.
The notion that Tilly has been transported in the mycelial dimension using an organic transporter pad is the kind of off-the-wall, loony premise that I really enjoy. And the fact that Stamets wants to use the Discovery as a “doorstop”, with the ship halfway between our universe and the mushroom verse, so they can rescue her, is even better. Sure, it’s kind of insane that Pike is willing to risk his ship and entire crew to rescue one ensign, but lord knows Kirk pulled the same crap all the time, and the show at least has the smarts to paper over it with a big speech about the central promise of Starfleet that helps distract from how dumb a move this whole thing is.
But hey, dumb moves that make for good stories is Star Trek to a tee. And it fits with the overall theme in this episode -- trust. That manifests between Tilly and her former brain spore, between Stamets and an unexpectedly alive Dr. Culber, between Pike and his old friend Leland who’s now running Section 31, and between Michael and the duo of Mirror Georgiou and Ash Tyler. This show is pretty loud about it, but people with different values and interests and priorities having to work together to solve a big problem is something at the core of the franchise.
But good lord, the dialogue in this one. Discovery has pumped out some thudding verbiage in the past (“Hello pot? This is kettle”) but man, this episode takes the cake. I know Captain’s ;ogs are a trademark of the franchise, but Burnham’s overly pat voiceover intro and outro made me roll my eyes so hard I think it changed the Earth’s rotation speed. Tilly had a few funny lines, but on the whole, the entire sequence with her, Burnham, Stamets, Culber, and May was chock full of clunky exposition, leaden statements about the characters’ emotional states, and cornball declarations of this and that. What’s more, for all the charged energy between Burnham and Pike on the one hand, and the Section 31 misfits on the other, the episode could have hardly been more clumsy in outlining the objections and connections between the two groups.
It’s also an action-heavy episode, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’d be lying if I said that the “big fireworks” setting for Star Trek was my favorite, but there’s a nice ticking clock here, real danger for the ship, and an assist from Section 31 that raises a lot of questions and heightens the stakes. There’s a lot of soaring music for the folks stalking through the ship caught between two worlds when there’s not really much of a threat, but the risk of the ship being eaten through provides enough tension for the hour, as does the back-and-forth between Pike and Leland. Plus, you can definitely see more of the special effects budget going to use in this one.
But what kills me here is how much you can feel the show straining to justify the resurrection of Dr. Culber. In a lot of ways, that feels unfair. Lord knows that the franchise resurrected Spock with minimal justification, and that crazy sci-fi stuff is par for the course. But the show spends so much time of the implausible mechanics here that it comes off like complete nonsense.
The fact that Stamets acted as a “lightning rod” that sent Dr. Culber’s unspecified “energy” into the mycelial dimension is, perhaps, no more absurd than Spock’s corpse landing on a regeneration planet and coming back to life. But at least The Search for Spock had the good judgment not to linger on that science-as-magic explanation and just deal with the results. “Saints of Imperfection” gives us extended discussions of this energy transfer, and a strange “I can’t exist in your world” twist, and to top it off, an even less-comprehensible declaration that if they just throw Dr. Culber’s DNA into the mix, they can use the talking human mushroom’s technology to send him back to our universe.
I try very hard not to get bogged down in these sorts of plot details. Despite the presence of our favorite Vulcan, Star Trek has never been especially logical or consistent in how its science works. As Futurama memorably pointed out, a heap of Treknobabble with a spoonful of analogy to help the medicine go down is par for the course. But this scans as just stretch on top of stretch, until you can all but feel the show straining to correct a move that angered critics last season, and using whatever nonsense it needs to deploy to make it happen.
It would help if I bought the emotional hooks of the episode more. Stamets having a reunion with his dead departed love should be a big damn deal. The dialogue just gives us a bunch of hamfisted monologues that the actors have trouble spitting out, and the whole enterprise (no pun intended) gets tripped up on those pointless and unsatisfying efforts to explain how all of this happened. The same goes for Burnham’s reunions with Georgiou and Tyler, which should be full of nervous energy and tension which dissipates as soon as it’s clear that rather than exploring that tension, the show just has them along for the ride in a regular episode.
This episode isn’t a total loss or anything. The whole concept of the mycelial half measure is cool and provides a great deal of both spark and danger throughout. The friction between Pike and the regular crew versus Leland and the Section 31 rulebreakers is interesting in concept, if not always in execution. And Burnham, Tilly, and Stamets having to make unique contact with alien life and solve an intractable scientific problem is bread and butter Star Trek. But between faux-science stacked on top of ever more baloney, false finishes that undermine the story, and reams and reams of painful dialogue that can’t deliver the impact the show needs it to, “Saints of Imperfection” botches what should be the culmination of many loose threads from last season and this one.
Worst episode yet. I hoped second season will be better, I guess I was wrong.
Hopefully this Tilly storyline is now over for good because it's been BAD.
Did not care for this episode. Really disliked everything about it. May’s voice is one of if not the most annoying thing ever.
I liked the episode with the proviso that, HOPEFULLY, this is part of the end game of a long story arc, and NOT the writers throwing stuff against the wall hoping that something will stick. They are still quite schizophrenic as far as deciding what direction they want to take this show, either, "to boldly go where no Trek has gone before", or to play is safe, try to appease and not alienate the Trekkies, and whenever some particular viewers segment has a hissy fit, backtrack, throw in a little timey whimey, mycelial network voodoo, and course correct in a bid to try and keep everyone happy.
Personally I prefer the "First star to the right, and on till morning" approach, that is, pick a fracken path, and stay on it till the nacelles fall off, but, that's just me. I realize they are trying to make this show work, but, they, like a LOT of studio heads, realize that the old tired format was just that, old and tired, yet, there are those who continue to cry and moan whenever anything "not canon" is presented, so, they take two hesitant steps forward, then, in a panic, dust off another old character, even if it means JLP coming back ala Professor X in a dilithium powered wheel chair, or Pike without his, all the while teasing us with beta murder death kill version of Spock, who, will probably be the biggest letdown since Geraldo opened that safe....
Meanwhile Poor Tilly is suffering from the fungal version of Stockholm Syndrome, after being spoor spooged, mind fondled, dissolved, reconstituted, and then disgorged, sputum covered into another dimension, then has like 30 seconds of WTF anger, followed immediately by "How can I help", delivered in that tone that makes you want to slap it right out of the mouth of the person that uttered it.
Maybe it's just me, but, I like to at least like to have dinner and a movie before breaking out the body butter and latex.
Back on DISCO, NOT Georgiou, goes toe to toe with Michael (I AM my brothers keeper) Burnham, and her drop of an apple non verbal "if you're feeling froggy,.... jump, reply, told me all I needed to know if and when bets are ever being taken for that future throw down.
And, since old friends have been discovered and resurrected, does this mean all is forgiven and we'll get to see a big ol group hug with Staments, Burnam, Voq / Ash and might be Hugh? Hopefully it wont depend on this weeks Q score, and they already have that figured out.
One can only hope......
The contrived way that they've reintroduced Georgiou and Tyler to the show is clunky at best and really, really stupid at worst. Either one of them just happening to be what they are and where they are would be bad enough, but to have them both there is so unbelievable and unlikely that it's almost a dealbreaker for me. It's more like bad fanfic than anything else. Add in the fact that Burnham's tedious voiceovers are getting more and more pompous (which I wouldn't have thought possible) and you have a recipe for really annoying me. As for plot specifics here, the way that everyone on Discovery patiently and quietly stands by while the ship is being destroyed was also beyond stupid and only served to conveniently allow Stamets and Culber to have their overlong and tearful (and as fanfic-ish as the other stuff) reunion. In reality, Pike would have been saying "Get the hell back here NOW!" at least five minutes earlier. So yeah, I didn't like this one much at all and would be at the point of bailing if I didn't like this Pike so dang much.
It was like watch a movie. A movie episode. This is not TNG but it is the Discovery way. Something else. I started to be used to.
Remember the story of the boy who cried wolf? If you don't: google it. But the second I heard Spock was gonna be "captured" I knew it wouldn't be Spock (regardless if this Spock is actualy the REAL Spock).
Remember secret organisations that work in the shadows? If you don't: google Bilderberg and other. But apparently everyone knows who and what Section 31 was. It was one of the many awesome things introduced in DS9 (it's where I remember it first from) and allowed such incredible options. In here it's just the CIA, but less covert in their covertness. Hell, here's a special badge so everyone can recognise you.
It's sad to realize you want a show you've loved for decades to fail so they can get back on track to become the show you love in the first place. Give the fans the real Star Trek back, hold canon, stop rewriting the past to fit your narrative. Respect what came before, learn from it and move on from that to please everyone. I do not understand why they feel the need to destroy what was... Does it all have to do with IP, copyright and 25% difference?
NOTES:
- Missed opportunity to have it been called Article 13 but I guess the people in charge would love to see that come to pa$$.
- So this episode was basically another touchy feely love story in which people say goodbye to eachother with another surprise solution cuz Burnham
- Glad to see Pike finally giving some orders that have some gravitas. Even if it is to Ty... no wait, Tyler DIED and is a skin-puppet for Voq. But sure, remnants, sure...
- So I guess Pike didn't rip out all the holograms... Hey, CBS, if you do reshoots to appease the angry masses and have your character say "we'll rip out these holo-ghosts" maybe... don't use them anymore? You try but with so little effort it offends even more.
- The way people look at Burnham when she steps on the bridge is getting old. Burnham sucks.
- Watching this show makes me feel like I was back at my old work, where I suddenly found myself surrounded by young people who couldn't stand me saying things how they were, who insisted on having "positive vibes" even though they (unknowingly?) participated in bringing the mood down. Everyone on this show is patting themselves on the backs, everyone is cheering everyone else but they're not seeing that they're the most unfriendly bridgecrew since... ever. And passing the fourth wall, they don't realize (or refuse to realize) the sinking ship they're in.
- BIG SIGH!!
Well, I can safely say this episode was the best since the start of the season, though, it is very dark, it reminds me of some of the old star trek episodes.
I want to have faith, did you cry at the beginning of the episode? :(
If I have a path, I am still searching for it, that was good!
Everyone's so worried about Section 31 being out in the open, just like that, but no one snaps knowing this was the first time ever we saw littering aboard a Federation starship?
8.5/10
Sensational episode and we went
in for one and came out with two,
now that's what starfleet is all about,
"The Save".
I LOVE the voice overs makes everything seem more epic, as if it's not epic enough anyway.
I just love how every episode is like watching a feature length movie, I just love everything
"Star Trek Discovery"
I'm glad May is gone for good now,
because for the first time this episode
she started to Annoy me, especially when
she pulled a type 3 phaser on one of
our own, a very beloved one at that.
what I will miss however with May
is the way she talks with her accent,
as she sounds exactly like
"Kendra the Vampire Slayer"
from "Buffy" lol lol.
This phenomenal show can do no wrong.
This Show just keeps moving forward.
I'm watching Leland though,
do I fcuk trust him,
I love how Philippa keeps him in
check and accountable.
l loved how Philippa hissed like
a Snake at Michael after her
comment lol.
This episode was epic and
this show is so fcuking cool.
Best Trek Ever.
(next episode
"Hit It").
This series needs less dialogue on the brink of distruction.
I don't know why but Anthony Rapp has got such a slappable face. Maybe it's because I know how insufferable he was back in the Rent days. I just don't vibe with him or his scenes.
Well, well.
Anthony Rap will have a great workout soon
Section 31 is an elite secret force used to keep the Star Fleet in tact. Why is Ash Tyler, who was part of the Klingon Empire, now part of Section 31? This is not how Section 31 should function.
Section 31 also does not answer to Federation Admirals. Why is this Section 31 guy apologizing to a Star Fleet Captain?
Section 31 had a tractor beam engaged only to not having Discovery need it. Why is Section 31 even in this episode?
This is the second time they pulled the bait and switch with Spock.
Happy to see Hugh back. Loves the character. Could they use the same process to bring May back?
I liked where the series was going, but this episode got a number of things wrong. Discovery can do better.
Rescuing a partner is sometimes dangerous, secrets even more
This season is all over the place. There are some spectacular visuals and cool ideas intertwined with pathetic dialogue and drama. They need to lose the voicovers. I know it's supposed to be star trekie but they're just cringy.
what is in the right mind, to flashes black badges to public as of what ash do?
it is deteriorate the meaning of 'never been know there's such section'
Shout by anthoney65BlockedParent2019-02-15T15:43:09Z
It annoys me that everyone seems to know about Section 31 when almost no one should know. Every time they ignore canon for no good reason it makes me want to track the writers down and slap the shit out of them.
Section 31 is suppose to be more like mission impossible than special forces. Carefully making little adjustments to keep the Federation safe and going in the right direction without anyone knowing.
I thought bringing the doctor back was a stretch.
Episode 2 this season was good progress for this show. This episode was not.
I would have liked more interaction with Pike, Michael, Georgiou