Star Trek: Discovery - Season 4 (With Spoilers)

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Mabus,

I think for the rule of thumb for you is that you are not exactly biased to Discovery.

The breakdowns you do really could be done to any Trek episode.

I'm just not sure that lampooning a feature is a valid form of formal criticism. I'm starting to feel that way at least.

Well I feel that if you do a minute to minute breakdown of any Trek episode you could come come up with alot of criticism. Chuck does that in the form of jokes for example. Some Youtubers do the same thing too.

I just meant off-the-cuff commentary.

[McAvoy]

Mabus,

I think for the rule of thumb for you is that you are not exactly biased to Discovery.

The breakdowns you do really could be done to any Trek episode.

I'm just not sure that lampooning a feature is a valid form of formal criticism. I'm starting to feel that way at least.

Well I feel that if you do a minute to minute breakdown of any Trek episode you could come come up with alot of criticism. Chuck does that in the form of jokes for example. Some Youtubers do the same thing too.

I just meant off-the-cuff commentary.

Well that too.

Maybe I should do a highly praised episode and do the same thing. Yesterday's Enterprise? The Visitor?

[Mabus]

Mabus,

I think for the rule of thumb for you is that you are not exactly biased to Discovery.

The breakdowns you do really could be done to any Trek episode.

Are you just gonna throw blanket statements to appear like you've said something clever?

And no, my nitpicking can't be applied to every single Trek episode, since most aren't stupid every 5 minutes, even the really awful ones. I'd have to really force myself to come up with something most of the time.

Also, way back in season 1 they specifically mentioned that the mycelial network expands throughout the entire universe and beyond. And yet now, because the plot demands so, the mycelial network ends at end of the galaxy. This is a perfect example of completely changing the plot to fit the story.

[Al-1701]

Season 1 had a very odd idea of what "the Universe" was as a ball of spores could destroy multiple of them. Though, the difference in the extent of the mycelial network can easily work within the fact science is not omniscient. When first discovered, the Federation figured it went everywhere because they found it wherever they go. When sitting down and doing the actual research, it's in fact a phenomenon localized to the Milky Way.

And it being confined to the Milky Way makes more sense. The fungus has a symbiotic relationship with the tardigrades, riding on them as they travel from system to system to form the network. If the tardigrades never ventured outside the galaxy, no spores made it out and therefore no network fibers did either.

I do think you just reflexively hate this show and are looking for reasons to justify it and will make any molehill into Mount Everest here.

[Mabus]

The only good part of the last few episodes is the subplot with Tarka and Booker going rogue. And that's only because something is actually happening and doesn't involve the characters endlessly talking about their feelings. And they don't agree with each other, quite the opposite, so there's actual tension.

But even that they sort of screw up by muddling Tarka's and the other alien's origin (Tarka said he and his friend is not from this universe, then he just wants to go to another universe...? Is he still lying? Is he telling the truth now?), the explosive head implants can now be deactivated by just shooting them with a gun that fires explosive blasts and they don't explode and the fact that for some reason Tarka needs a power source much much larger than what ever the Emerald Chain slave camp appeared to have, which is what the alien guy apparently used to leave this universe (assuming he actually did). It's hard for me to keep track of what's going on if the show keeps changing the narrative.

Season 1 had a very odd idea of what "the Universe" was as a ball of spores could destroy multiple of them. Though, the difference in the extent of the mycelial network can easily work within the fact science is not omniscient. When first discovered, the Federation figured it went everywhere because they found it wherever they go. When sitting down and doing the actual research, it's in fact a phenomenon localized to the Milky Way.

And it being confined to the Milky Way makes more sense. The fungus has a symbiotic relationship with the tardigrades, riding on them as they travel from system to system to form the network. If the tardigrades never ventured outside the galaxy, no spores made it out and therefore no network fibers did either.

Naaah, the show can't just say that the mycelial network exists throughout the entire universe and beyond and then backpedal saying that "nope, it only exists inside a galaxy". Especially since this was only done to make sure that Discovery doesn't reach the alien bubble right away. But hey, maybe they shouldn't have introduced a plot element that allows instantaneous travel in the first place.

This could have been solved by simply having the aliens disrupt the mycelial network near their area, something which they already did by accident with the whole subspace tear let by the DMA. But nah, why do that when you can just "kind of forget your own continuity".

I do think you just reflexively hate this show and are looking for reasons to justify it and will make any molehill into Mount Everest here.

Please ask yourself this: what is the point of changing the rules that you, the Dis writer, wrote into the show several episodes or even a few seasons ago, because now it risks breaking your current episode's plot, instead of just altering your own plot to fit the already established rule? And don't you think that this is a problem if they keep doing it over the course of the series?

At least in OldTrek this was often inevitable since when you have like 400 episodes worth of continuity it's not very easy to keep track of the continuity. And even there, only a few plot holes were problematic to the rest of the series, the rest were minor mostly. But given that there are only 56 episodes of Discovery, it shouldn't be hard to remember what happened not long ago.

[Frustration]

I do think you just reflexively hate this show and are looking for reasons to justify it and will make any molehill into Mount Everest here.

Pile up enough molehills and you have a mountain.

The show is a mass of contrivances, illogic, and nonsense.

[Al-1701]

Pile up enough molehills and you have a mountain.

The show is a mass of contrivances, illogic, and nonsense.

Uh...welcome to Star Trek.

How about I give a specific illustration of what I'm saying as you seem unwilling/unable to engage on it. In the not too distant past, it was believed by the scientific community that galaxies were nebulae within the Milky Way. It took further refinements of observation equipment and actual research into them to discover they were distinct galaxies far from the Milky Way. Are you saying real life has a continuity error because scientists called galaxies nebulae?

The only way this breaks continuity is if they had previously used the spore drive for intergalactic travel. They did not. So, the claims in Season 1 can be chalked up to the 23rd century Federation having the wrong idea about this very recent discovery based on their limited observations and equipment available which is something that has plagued actual science since time immemorial.

Does the series have problems? Oh yeah. However, half of what you complain about are minor nitpicks or making something out of nothing.

[Frustration]

Scientists aren't making a piece of art, they're trying desperately to understand the world.

Everything in Star Trek is made up. So any changes are entirely the decision of its creators, and solely their responsibility.

[Mabus]

To be fair, NuTrek writers are basically idiots. Most of the time they use terms like "in the entire universe", "in the entire galaxy" without understanding what they mean. "The Qowat Milat are the best single-combat fighters in the galaxy", like what? Do they know what a galaxy is or how big it is? The Milky Way has at least 400 billions stars, if just 0.001% of those planets carry intelligent life, that means there are at least 400,000 intelligent alien species in the galaxy. What, did the Romulans waste their lives visiting every single one of them and beat them all in hand to hand combat? So I guess the writers must have mixed up "galaxy" with "universe".

Even so, that's not enough to explain the idiocy: how can the mycelial network suddenly end at the edge of the galaxy, yet somehow it can connect to other universes? Since it was stated that the network extends "beyond the universe", then it's pretty clear that the 23rd century Federation didn't had any issues mapping it, if anything, they seriously underestimated how huge it is.

[Al-1701]

There's a mycelial network in the Mirror Universe like it seems to somehow create an evil copy of everything. The networks intertwine somehow someway to be one of the myriad of ways to travel between the universes (or perhaps it's what makes all those other connections work). Trek acts like universes exist in the same space but on different planes (a common trope regarding alternate dimensions), so you can have something that can "reach beyond our universe" and yet still be limited to our galaxy because traveling between universes works on a different plane than traveling through normal space.