Star Trek Discovery: Season Three

[clearspira]

Really, I think we had the most convincing boarding take over here where the Chain just transporting their troop to the precise points they needed to take control before the Discovery crew could counter. Anti-transporter fields in the bridge and engineering would be a good idea in the future.

Why such things do not already exist has always been a general Star Trek plothole. Amusingly enough, that is the interpretation of what the ill-explained ''defence fields'' mentioned in TWOK must be given how Khan never attempted to beam Kirk off the 1701 bridge. One of many reasons why that film is Trek's greatest moment.

[Link8909]

For me personally what's heartbreaking about that ending with Burnham and Stamets is that they're both right, Stamets has already sacrificed and lost so much in coming to the future and losing Culber, and to ask him to risk doing so again is simply unbearable, but Stamets is the one Osyraa needs to use the Spore Drive and if she get that then she would be unstoppable and the Federation would truly die, without using the line in the episode this is very much the needs of the many outlaying the need of the few.

I'm waiting for the last episode of the season to do my little review of the Nebula arc.

With that said, the quote above requires I say something. In this thread, I've strongly lambasted the idiotic decisions of Science-Commando Burnham. In the early bits of the season, her decisions either had strong potential to make things worse, or actually did.

When she bubble-hearthed Stamets to Starfleet Command, that was not one of her bad decisions. However, once again, how that went down is still a character flaw that Burnham shouldn't have given her background and rank.

The reason that the Burnham Bubble Blast was not stupid, even though it may well have killed her relationship with Stamets, was because she had a key piece of information that Stamets didn't: Adira took a whole bunch of anti-radiation meds with her to the Nebula with Culber and Saru. While the meds don't add a lot of time, the crew of Discovery does have time to reassert control of their starship, and DASH back to the nebula to rescue the away team.

Additionally, I call Science-Commando Burnham that for a reason. The Emerald Chain needed Stamets to replicate the Spore Drive, which was among the primary objectives for their operation. By depriving the Chain of Stamets, she was directly denying the Chain one of, if not their primary, tactical/strategic objective.

With that said, though, once again: Burnham's actions don't jive with her former positions and Starfleet rank (even by 23rd century standards.) As a Commander who was formerly XO on the Shenzou and the Discovery, and thus should've been in the Command track, not to mention her established credentials as a xenoanthropologist, she should've been aware of Stamets' emotional state. I agree with her stunning him, as he was certainly not objective about the prospect of losing his husband and adopted child. I think where she failed is in empathizing with him and earning his cooperation. As he noted: they came to the future so that Burnham wouldn't be alone.

Granted, Burnham was single-handedly fighting a guerilla war against the Chain, with a wounded leg no less, and was winning. Don't fuck with the Burnham, you will get burned! Still, securing his loyalty would've eased the situation considerably. As it stands, I sincerely doubt that he will jump Discovery if Burnham is onboard in Episode 12.

That's fair, I personally chalk it up to part human error as she did get stabbed in the leg and nearly blown out into space, and part not wanting to take a chance, as far as Burnham was concerned the longer Stamets was onboard the more risk of him being captured again, like I said this was definitely a situation where a hard choice needed to be made, which is something that is very familiar to Starfleet Captains, and I'm really interested to see the fallout of Burnham's actions and how her friendship with Stamets will go.

Speaking of Stabbed in the leg, if there's one constant in season three, it's Burnham must suffer, she's been hit by a spaceship, drugged, eaten by a trance worm, nearly choked to death, falls upwards onto a hard surface, radiation poisoned, and now stabbed in the leg and nearly blown out into space, and just all the fights she gets into over this season, not to mention all the emotional trauma she's carrying around from the last two seasons, and Mirror Burnham who was put in an Agony Booth and later killed by impalement.

Last note: We finally got to see Rhys in action, and he's every bit as much of a badass as I expected him to be! Sure, he might not have a STO specialization, or levels in a D&D character class, but still. He's proof that you don't need magic or skill point investments, if you've got a solid grasp of the basics: move, shoot, take cover, learn morse code in 1st year Starfleet Academy.

True, it's always great when the supporting cast get moments like this to shine, and season threes been really good about doing this.

EDIT: Congratulations, everyone else who also survived 2020. Thank God that weeping anal fissure of a year is over!

Indeed.

[Link8909]

All I have to say is Die Hard in Space was more fun before the communicators could track position.

When Zareh saw the regulator out in space, I kind of wish there was a sign floating next to them saying "now I have a machine gun, ho, ho, ho!"

[Asvarduil]

Really, I think we had the most convincing boarding take over here where the Chain just transporting their troop to the precise points they needed to take control before the Discovery crew could counter. Anti-transporter fields in the bridge and engineering would be a good idea in the future.

AI-1701, that raises an excellent question.

Standard Trek technobabble/space magic, is that shields block transporters. I could be misremembering, but I'm fairly sure that Tilly took Discovery to Red Alert/Tactical Alert and raised shields.

All of which leads to the excellent question: how did Osyraa's ship beam her troops past the raised 32nd century shields?

[Link8909]

Really, I think we had the most convincing boarding take over here where the Chain just transporting their troop to the precise points they needed to take control before the Discovery crew could counter. Anti-transporter fields in the bridge and engineering would be a good idea in the future.

AI-1701, that raises an excellent question.

Standard Trek technobabble/space magic, is that shields block transporters. I could be misremembering, but I'm fairly sure that Tilly took Discovery to Red Alert/Tactical Alert and raised shields.

All of which leads to the excellent question: how did Osyraa's ship beam her troops past the raised 32nd century shields?

If I'm gonna take a guess its that 32nd century transporters are simply able to beam through shields now because they've figured out a way past that limitation, which is handy if they need to recuse people in a firefight where they can't lower the shields, and what is needed to block a signal is the Anti-transporter fields that the Emerald Chain brought to stop the Discovery crew from leaving, and it looks like that coordinates are still needed as they didn't bean in while the Discovery was Cloaked.

This is something that I feel the series should elaborate on a bit more in the future, but I also agree with AI-1701, that was a very quick and precise boarding party.

[Mabus]

Really, I think we had the most convincing boarding take over here where the Chain just transporting their troop to the precise points they needed to take control before the Discovery crew could counter. Anti-transporter fields in the bridge and engineering would be a good idea in the future.

In Old Trek, most of the time when someone was able to beam onto the ship, be it bridge or somewhere else, was because the type of transporter they used was a special kind (or just some convenient technobabble), and that fact was tied to the plot of the episode in some way. The other time, it was due to sabotage.
Now here's a thing: In the episode where they reach Earth, the Earth forces have no issue beaming aboard because the Discovery shields were 900 years out of date so unsuitable to block 32th century transporters.
But that was before Discovery got upgraded with 32th century technology! So unless Starfleet is run by morons (and the show seems to support that theory), they somehow forgot to upgrade the vessel's shields, you know, the primary defense system of any ship! And to add more salt to the injury, Adira was able to quickly make a transporter jammer in the same episode! So unless Adira is super-Wesley, there's no way Starfleet doesn't have something similar. What jamming system Adira made should be something present on all ships during battle (you don't need to run the transporter jammer 24 hour a day, just activate it during battle or in the event there's some other emergency). After all, if the Emeral Chain has superior transporters that could beam through Federation shields, or Federation transporter jamming field, then there won't be a cold war between the two groups. The Chain could just beam troops on any Starfleet ships and that's it, in just a few days they have captured the entire Starfleet.

[Al-1701]

Probably, there is a continuing battle between transporters and shields. Osyraa brags she has the best scientists, and her flagship is going to have the latest and greatest. The Chain must have the latest version of shield-piercing transporters. And they would have the latest and greatest anti-transporter tech.

[Durandal_1707]

Or defending against photon torpedoes and blocking transporters are two separate use cases now, which are no longer solely handled by the shields, and Tilly didn't think to also raise transporter blockers because she's still used to the 23rd century way of doing things.

[Mabus]

I don't like it when characters conveniently forget thins, it's just pure lazy writing.
cough While Dany kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet

[Zargon]

Well having the bad guys board the ship is classic Star Trek drama....and it's often written by bad writers. Remember when some lame Frengi with salvaged Kingon ships took over the Enterprise D? (when Picard and others had been turned into kids by the transporter).

Of coure for Discovery it's just bad writers that have no clue what they are writing. We hear a couple times that "the shields" are at like 40% because the..er..radiation damaged them? And they were still fixing the shields when Ossarya shows up. But still Captain Dumb Tilly goes "red alert raise shields".....the damaged 40% shields, we guess.

Guess 40% of a shield does not stop transporters. If Tilly was a half way decent captain, she would have known this.

Or maybe the shields dropped when they dumped all their Dilithium? Ehrn the dump kiddy almost did Brun II: Dumb Trek Buggaloo. Maybe the back up batteries can't raise the shields?