“Imagine a kid getting a Transformer for Christmas when all he wanted was a couple GI Joes, but mom wants you to send a thank you letter. I feel that is you after each episode.”— Steve Uchrin
My kid MST3Ks this like a professional and it isn’t because he is so skilled at TV watching but because Kurtzman and his people have too many cooks in the kitchen. “Daddy? The thing I love most about Thursdays is getting to make fun of Discovery with you.” Every episode, I think: “Welp, there was a good episode in there somewhere.”
I guess the weird conceit of the holodeck recognizing the landing party had a payoff in that we can see some human emotion from some cast member finally that rings true, Hugh’s reaction to Gray. Wilson Cruz is really taking over the emotional center of the show lately and I hope that continues in season four of this pointless show. So, think about it: Book killed a guy for making fun of his cat, they named the bad guys “Regulators” and nobody made a “sixteen in the clip and one in the hole” joke or a reference to Nate Dogg or Warren G? But, yeah, your Maine Coon cat is a queen, man. It’s beyond most in the audience that it might even be a Lincoln County Regulators reference, so I don’t even know what that was about. Michael said to tell the Viridian they weren’t losing the Discovery, and then there’s a quick cut to the Emerald Chain ship swallowing the Disco in a two-second VFX shot. Where did it come from? What does a two-second shot do to advance the storytelling? I wish they hadn’t bragged about their efficiency of production that the VFX shots are done independently from whoever is directing that episode, because that’s all that ever stands out. These shots don’t fit the rest of the episode. Well, there’s a reason for that.
Book can magically run the Magic Mushroom Drive, because they’ve written themselves into a corner. Owosekun can all-of-a-sudden hold her breath for ten minutes since she was ten, but, in fairness, I’m not sure that would come up in regular conversation and at least it’s giving a bridge crew member a bit of sauce for their character. I’ll allow it! Gray saying “I feel seen” is a little on-the-nose for what they’re trying to do with that character and the Adira/Paul/Hugh quadrangle. But phoning in the Starfleet uniforms? They look like rejected Babylon 5 designs.
I know I’ve talked about this before, but the secret world behind the walls the turbolifts work in made even my thirteen year old insane. I had to explain that for some reason, these things ride a pressurized, Earth normal gravity, magic rail around the inside volume of the ship, and while looking exciting, doesn’t make a lick of sense from a resource-conservation standpoint. He said, “Come on; we know there’s a community of hobos living in the BART tubes in San Francisco, and in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, there’s a whole welcoming civilization living in the New York City subway. Maybe they’re setting up Season Four about ‘discovering’ strange, new world of missing mechanics and Jeffries Tube maintenance guys and misfits that don’t want to be on the ship but can’t get off.”
Which is as good a place as any to get out of this column. Trying to make me laugh, my kid just thumbnailed a better show than whatever is coming next year. I mean, if they’re going to do a pilot in the first season, and then two episodes later do another pilot, and then feature a another ship for a year, and then change format by advancing these cavemen 900 years in the future, and then end this season with Michael as captain of the DISCO like they always wanted to, I don’t know what the point of the show so far has been. Noted award-winning Star Trek expert John Price says, “They could have lifted entire nations out of poverty for the millions they spent on this.”
