Absolutely excellent, probably the best episode of the season so far. Some real edge-of-your-seat enjoyment with stunning visuals.
Best episode so far, very entertaining.
Hot damn! That was exciting! And, for me, this was one of the trekkiest Discovery episodes, so far. I enjoyed "Super Saru": even though that was somewhat tacky, it was also a pretty cool moment.
Nothing says Star Trek better than the Federation preventing genocide. Another race saved, hooray!
Hmmmm, I'm I the only one wondering if the "Red Angel" is simply "Q" or another of the "continuum" in a more benevolent guise before they got tired of playing nice, nice with the inferior beings? Just a thought.
Well, I guess the old adage that "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" really does prove true, for, how quickly the DISCO crew seems to have forgotten the consequences of the last time one of theirs put their foot down, drew a figurative line in the cosmos and "Fleetsplained", why it has to be our way or the highway, the highway in this case being another war with a species not uncomfortable with the complete annihilation of anyone or anything that gets in their way.
Could the Red Angel be like your third period gym teacher back in the pre-conflict resolution days, when they just strapped both antagonists into a pair of boxing gloves and said "have at it" until both parties were tired, crying, or just bloody enough to realize the whole thing was pointless and stupid. That would be an interesting take, if, the "Kids" weren't playing with weapons of mass destruction.
Hard to call the predators on Saru's planet 'the BAD guys, once you learned their lots were once reversed and THEY were once the "Saru Snax". (Saru doobie doooo...) Not that I approve of their methodology, but, I can understand their reasoning. After all, We once nuked a couple of Japanese cities to "prevent the loss of American lives". In 20/20 hindsight maybe not the most humane call, but again, I can understand the logic given the circumstances and thinking at the time.
As James Madison aptly stated, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on the government would be necessary." "The great difficulty lies in this: You must enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself".
Here's to ALL of our BETTER angels, be they Human, Alien, or otherwise.....
8.5/10
Sensational
Yet another great episode and I loved how pike and the Discovery crew stood their ground,
gave me chillbumps.
Our Red Angel is super frickin awesome
Holy-shit that was an Epic
entrance,
I swear this show can do no wrong,
best Trek of them all, to that
there is no doubt.
"So The Red Angel
Is A Humanoid In A Futuristic
Exo-Suit Advanced Far Beyond
The Federations Capabilities
And Knowledge You Say".
What a delight to watch
ooooh ...the game is afoot!
I mostly enjoyed this episode. I never did like Saru much but I like him a little better now. They completely screwed General Order 1. They beat it like a red headed step child.
Now the Red Angle makes me think of Babylon 5. A dude in a space suit floating through time. He is the One. No. He is not the one.
I wasn't a fan of the bad guy race. I mean it did kind of look like a skinny Predator covered in oil. Wouldn't it be hard to make sophisticated technology while your are dripping black goo? Why would a race of black goo people design their ships with clean dry rooms and corridors?
I second the complaint about transporting through shields. It's not as bad as transporting across the galaxy like they do in the Kelvin movies but it's still irritating.
General Order 1, General Order 1, until we have a figurative gun at our heads
I'm not really fond of this episode. The history and relation between Kelpians and Ba’ul was very predictable. I had imagined that the Ba'ul could also be the Kelpians after their transformation, as the only alternative.
The Starfleet on the other hand acted pretty much nothing like they were supposed to. How they ignored the Prime Directive for some lame excuse was actually one of the lesser sins and is almost Star Trek standard.
But to transform a complete race without their knowledge or consent, ignoring the risks that those might face from the Ba'ul, with either a genocide or war as the result? Absurd.
When you are up, you do everything possible to follow up
A typical American insolence "because we know better".
On this poor planet it will end with the same "success" as on Earth it ended in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria!
Lazy writing and some weird character makes this a pretty mediocre episode. Saru is probably my favorite character so its a huge disappointment.
Predictable as hell and obviously the authors go out of their was to avoid any real action. Boring.
It seems Red Angel brought showrunners straight from the 1995 to 2018 to work on this show.
There are just so many inconsistencies and stupidities that I at least am totally pulled out of the story. For instance:
I was wondering why Saru set the timer to one minute for the teleport (we literally see him set it to one minute), when it takes him 3 seconds to walk to the pad. The answer came 3 seconds later, when Michael barged in. Oh, so that was so they can have that little bit of overdramatic conversation. How convenient. While we're at it, why wouldn't Michael just go up to the console and cancel the teleportation, but instead pull the phaser on him? How could he even teleport under alert and shields up? Pure shit.
Then the scene on board the Ba'ul stronghold.
So, Saru is suddenly capable of breaking free of restraints presumably designed specifically for Kelpiens. That aside, he crushes all the drones they sent their way. One would think they would send reinforcements or something , not leave them on their own like nothing is happening, especially with them obviously able to spawn in the room. I mean they detected he came back through the pole in the village but they're not aware what's going on within their stronghold?
And don't get me started with fan service. There's that one shot of someone on the bridge flipping 60s style switches. Should we expect Pike fighting with lizard man on the planet service as well?
All that talk about General order 1 that boils down to this:
Listen Trekkies, we know there's such thing as General Order 1, so don't freak out, but we are about to shit all over it.
First contact: hi, I'm Michael from Earth and we travel on a spaceship and there's like million different species and here's the thing we communicate over.. Wait, why are we here again? Oh, just to find out if they've seen red flying person... Hm. Maybe it wasn't necessary to say all this."
Putting aside what is and what isn't Star Trek, this has turned into badly made show. It took a nosedive right after 2x01. And I don't mean the production quality, but the script is so atrocious to the point that even the mystery surrounding Spock and Red Angel isn't enough for me to keep going because 80% I'm cringing at the dialogue, the actors that try to make that dialogue work and then going overboard with emotions.
Michael started the series shaky but till the end of the first season her character came into its own. Now it's just laughable. In every episode she has few scenes where she makes that wide eyed face full of emotion and compassion.
I really enjoyed learning more about the Kelpians. That is much more interesting, much more Trek, than the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" arc.
Couple of thoughts:
How can Saru beam down amidst red alert with raised shields? That's the stuff that drives me nuts, those small details.
Isn't intervention in the evolution of a species a prime excample for violation of the Prime....of General Order One? "No starship may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society"
So is the "Red Angel" indeed a time traveler and will that be the explanation to make everything right ? After all the producers promised that at the end of S2 everything will be canon. But I must admit it raises some alarms with me.
All open for discussion.
And those director must be a huge admirer of JJ A because that lens flaring was at times unbearable.
I'm the first kinda person to say hierarchy only works for people that deserve the respect but then again I'll never make it in an environment where hierarchy is everything. I can't even cut it in a normal work-environment at times let alone military command.
That said I would clearly have a ball on the Discovery and even get to do what I want on it. Pike gets his ass handed regularly by two individuals of lower rank and he just lets them off.
Let alone the fact a Klingon with a human skinsuit/graft is apparently all friendship bracelets now.
Anyways, I gave up on this show being Star Trek, cause it isn't. It's just something disguised as Star Trek and a lot of people seem not to care or ignore that it isn't Star Trek (a lot don't though). Oh wait... that's just like... this show is so meta!
And the red angel starts to look like Bernham more and more.
I actually really enjoyed this episode. One of Discoverys best. But the Star Trek feel still eludes us.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2019-02-26T03:14:56Z
[9.5/10] This is what I have been asking for, not just from Discovery, not just from Star Trek, but from science fiction writ large. Here is an episode of television that is thought-provoking, epic, action-packed, personal, character-driven, tension-filled, socially relevant, imaginative, connected to continuity, and filled with craft and creativity. It’s not that “The Sound of Thunder” doesn't have flaws, but they pale in comparison to the ambition and scope of what the episode manages to achieve in a little over fifty minutes.
The episode features the Discovery driven to Saru’s home planet by the red flashes that have been drawing the ship across the galaxy. Having recently been disabused of the notion that his next people’s next evolutionary phase results in death for members of his species, Saru is pulled between his responsibilities as a Starfleet officer, his righteous anger on behalf of his countrymen at the hands of their oppressors, and his complicated relationship with the family he abandoned in search of a different life.
I frankly don’t know where to begin to sing this one’s praises, but I’ll start with Saru himself. Doug Jones delivers his best performance of the series, and maybe the best performance in anyone. While draped in prosthetics, Jones manages to convey Saru’s sense of having started a new, freer life, his utter indignation and revulsion at what his people have and are put through, his devotion and guilt to his sister, and his determination and courage to stand up to his captain, his enemy, and his old way of life. Jones is the feature point of this episode, and he earns every second of it.
But I also just love the confluence of themes and ideas and tension points in the episode. “Should we interfere in this society that seems organized around something we find repugnant, but which is not our right to disrupt?” is a well-worn Star Trek premise, but it’s well done here. You understand the push and pull between Pike and Saru, the former clearly not enamored with Ba’ul but also understanding that there is a diplomatic process and greater needs at play, and the latter appalled (and emboldened by his transformation) that his captain would negotiate with these monsters.
At the same time, this is a family story. Some of the material is a little rushed, or depends on you having seen the Short Trek episode featuring Saru’s past, but there’s the root of something strong in the bittersweetness of Siranna’s reunion. The joy of seeing one another is tempered by the angst that Saru’s absence caused his family, and the frustration Saru had with his old life and the lie it was founded upon. The relationship with Siranna is sketched quickly, but also has an impact from how the characters react and respond to one another.
And of course, this being Star Trek, there is a twist that complicates the situation. The deus ex machina space anomaly from a few episodes ago reveals that the Kelpians were once the predators, and the Ba’ul once the prey, until technology allowed the almost extinct Ba’ul to turn the tide and prevent their counter-species from reaching their predatory phase. The “great balance” is not just oppressor propaganda to them; it’s a method of self-preservation from there perspective, which gives the baddies in this one some depth beyond their snarling, hostile ways.
The episode also gives them some fantastic design work. Much of the episode, like much of the show, takes place in gunmetal hallways with various flashing lights and the occasional lens flair. But much of “The Sound of Thunder” can wow you from both a cinematography and production design standpoint. As in Saru’s episode of the Short Treks, the scenes on Kaminar are sumptuous and full of bucolic, alien beauty in the landscape and setting.
But the real fireworks come from the Ba’ul. For one thing, their ships are striking (mostly figuratively but occasionally literally). The geometric column design is unusual for Star Trek, and helps give them an other-y quality in outer space that makes them seem like more of a threat based on design and spacing alone. Still, the real coup de grace is the Ba’ul themselves, a set of inky black, oozing and disturbing creatures who seem of a piece with both Armus from The Next Generation and characters played by Doug Jones himself in Pan’s Labyrinth. The episode makes you wait for their appearance, but pays it off with one hell of a creepy introduction.
Of course, beyond the visual design, the episode steps up the evil by having them try to eliminate the Kelpians rather than deal with them in their evolved fearless form. But even that ties in to the red angel, and notions the episode toys with of whether this mystical-seeming figure is saving people from crisis or is actually the cause of the crisis, with hints that advanced technology and time travel are involved. That mix between mystery box storytelling, heady sci-fi mysticism, and politically-relevant subtext makes this development strong.
The episode does leave me with one and a half complaints. The one complete fly in the ointment is the underfed parallel between Saru and Dr. Culber in their “I don’t feel like myself/I feel like who I was meant to be” thematic mirroring. There’s a stage-y quality to the performances in the Culber/Stamets portion of the show that make it hard for me to connect with the emotions of the scene, and the subplot is a bit too brief to be meaningful anyway.
The half complaint is that Pike, Burnham, and the rest of the crew to inflict an evolutionary change on a whole planet of people with barely 30 seconds thought. It feels like the kind of thing that Picard and company would debate for a whole episode -- the upturning of an entire society, without warning or consent, with predictably dangerous results from a hostile species in charge -- but the Discovery’s crew has an attitude of “sure, why not?” It initially made me bristle a bit (and, if nothing else, feels a little convenient).
But then I realized that this move was basically Captain Kirk’s calling card. Every third episode of The Original Series, Kirk would encounter some society ordered in a way he didn’t particularly like, and so he would call upon the Enterprise to basically blow up whatever machine or god or robot-machine-god was keeping the old structures in place. There’s a certain trademark Starfleet hubris in that, upending a whole society on moral principle without necessarily thinking about what happens next, and it feels true to form even if it’s an action I might disagree with (or at least disagree with it being taken in this way). As long as the show addresses it, and the consequences of that choice, in the future, then I’m on board.
Beyond the heady science fiction and social commentary subtext, it’s just a well-structured episode. While things move a little quickly here and there, Saru’s actions are well-motivated, and there’s tension in the standoffs between the Discovery and the Ba’ul, in Saru’s rescue mission, and in the planet-threatening attack with a crewman captured that makes all of these situation that much more delicate. All the while, there is the mirroring of Saru’s new life and his old one: his surrogate sister meeting his real sister, the values of Starfleet conflicting with the values of his home planet, his loyalty to his crewmen being tested against his loyalty to the people. It’s the kind of thematic tug-of-war, rife with exciting incident, that makes for good and satisfying television.
That’s frankly what Discovery has been missing for me along the way. It’s had high points and low points, bits that feel like classic Trek and something different and new from classic Trek. But I’m not sure any episode of the show thus far has felt both so true to the spirit of the franchise while also feeling like such a modern and riveting interpretation of it. This is Discovery’s finest hour, and let’s hope it’s a sign of more to come, for Saru and for us.