The sucking sound you hear is that of thousands of panties being dislodged and reluctantly pulled out of the wedgied butt cracks of the nattering, naybob naysayers, disbelievers, and generally unwashed masses. And trust me, they REALLY like their wedgies!
Yes, it's still early in the season, and there's still plenty of time to screw things up, but, I can wholeheartedly say that it appears the writers may have just found their stride, and are well on the way to achieving balance in the force...., er, wait, uhh..., THE balance between looking forward from and paying homage to established Star Trek canon, without being kitschy, and giving ALL Star Trek fans something to look forward to each week. Kudos and applause all around.
They attacked some BIG themes this episode, especially with the brilliant re-interpretation of A.C. Clarke's theorem that, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" to "Any sufficiently advanced technology when viewed by a non technological society is indistinguishable from...., GOD." (paraphrased) Believer, Nonbeliever, Atheist, Agnostic, ALL, like Aristotle's 'petitio principii', often beg the question, that is, their argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it one way or the other.
One person looks at he mathematical precision of the Universe, and concludes that it HAD to have a creator, while another can look at the same precision and declare "There is no God". Yet, who really is the fool? Perhaps neither, perhaps both. If a being had technology that allowed then to manipulate and reconfigure matter on a molecular or atomic level, would that not, to those dispossessed of said technology, make them appear Godlike? It would only be their own benevolence that would prevent them from assuming that role.
That is the position our intrepid crew finds itself in this episode. After Michael Burnham reveals to Pike that her brother (from another Mother) Spock had apparently discovered the mysterious signals MONTHS before they actually appeared, another beacon reveals itself, and at maximum warp, they can reach it in...., 150 years. Ohhhhhhh Staaaamennts!!!!!! Now, Starfleet's General Order Number 1, or, Prime Directive, forbids interference with pre-warp civilizations, yet, somehow, they have been led to one inhabited by Terran's FROM earth who are now in the beta quadrant but their technological development ended 200 years prior during Earth's Third World War, when they were apparently beamed away just before a nuclear strike. So, "This is Us"..., but a severely beta version. The dilemma now being whether they get, or even deserve an upgrade. Oh that pesky prime directive..., What's a Starship Captain to do???
Well, knowing that THIS Captain's middle name is "Richard" and not "Tiberius", does keep that from having a foregone conclusion, and watching Burnam play Spock to Pikes Kirk, (got that?) is rather joyous, ESPECIALLY since this is apparently opposite crew day, and the traditional TOS roles here, are, well..., kinda sorta reversed.
Meanwhile, back on discovery, Officer Candidate Tilly decides to break off a chunk of the mysterious space rock they captured previously, and play with essentially a chunk of a neutron dense asteroid, so Stament's doesn't go mad inside the "mushroom network" if he sees his deceased other half again, and she, well, let's just say things don't go quite as planned.
And then there's the impending doom that suddenly materializes to get everyones knickers in a twist. Well OF COURSE impending doom suddenly materializes, we must have homage beats, yes? Do they even wear knickers in space? George Lucas said "there were no bras in space", but there MUST be knickers.... Those uniforms are too tight to go commando..., but, I digress.
So, the, all that's left to do is defeat the impending doom, make contact with the locals who are us, but running Windows 98, while obeying General Order Number 1, yet somehow not feel like total monkey butts if we decide to exit, planet left, without them.. Did I miss anything??? Oh yeah, and Tilly apparently can see dead people..., or she's having a brain aneurysm. Anyway...,
You now have permission to watch the episode.., if you haven't already.. (But then, WHY are you reading this if you HAVEN'T watched the episode?? Get outta here ya nut!!!)
Imagine two brothers. One is younger, the other is older. Imagine that they happen upon their late father's model trains. Their father was a huge model train fan, and he was very good at running several of them at once and making amazing dioramas for their tracks to travel through. It was always a joy to watch him play. Experts at conducting model trains aren't just playing with trains, they create a fantasy realm that you can watch for hours and get completely lost in. The brother take all of the trains and equipment out of storage and set it all up after years and years of disuse. It isn't quite how they remembered it though.
The younger brother wants to try. He knows he can do it. And while he can successfully make the trains run along the track, he clearly has no experience with any of it and it's just trains moving around in circles. All of the pleasantness and atmosphere their father created when he played just wasn't there. The older brother wants to try, but the younger brother insists on doing it again. Try after try, it just isn't working. After a train falls over taking a turn too fast, the younger brother finally relents and hands the controls to the older brother. The older brother is actually old enough to have spent time with his father, so he remembers what it looked like and the little lessons the father would give him as he played. Slowly, it starts to come back to the older brother and he gets two trains moving in harmony with each other, then a third, then a fourth.
The younger brother, who was pouting because he couldn't make it work, started to watch. As he watches, he begins to understand what he was doing wrong. It was so obvious. They go back and forth, telling the trains what to do and setting up the scenery. In a much smaller way, the magic that their father created comes back to life. But it is definitely there, so they must be doing something right. They finally agree to learn as much as they could so that, one day, maybe they will be as good at it as their father was.
For Discovery, there was almost nowhere to go but up. The Short Treks that have been trickling out for the past couple of months showed a marked improvement in pacing, storytelling, and character depth. So being better than itself should be a shoe-in. Now the moment of truth is here. Star Trek Discovery is no Original Series, no The Next Generation, nor Deep Space Nine, not even Voyager or Enterprise. But I am relieved to say that it is Star Trek in the Roddenberry sense of the term. Still a little too PEWPEWPEW! and "kewl" for the potential the source material offers it, still questionably adhering to the Kelvin Timeline's "Every god damned thing has a reflective surface" aesthetic, but gratefully leaning much heavier towards The Human Adventure.
I have so many minor complaints, even though it's only one episode so far... but that's it, only minor complaints. That's saying an awful lot. The cinematography, the character development and prominence, the music, the story, everything that truly matters is the polar opposite to an average episode of season 1. If you gave up at some point during the first season, I dare say that Discovery deserves one more chance.
(Now, understand that, as I write this, we are exactly one episode in and I may very well be eating those words by the time they shove Evil Georgeou and Voq back into the story. Because they just had to, right?)
It's just not the same without the father's touch. It will never be the same. But I saw the magic again today, even if just for a few moments. I hope that that's a sign of things to come. And I will always support a genuine effort to try again.
7.2/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale. Well, it was no "Homer Loves Flanders," but still, doing an episode that featured an unexpectedly sweet take on Homer and Ned finding common ground despite their very different lifestyles, personalities, and families was a nice way to go. A good chunk of the humor was a little meaner or cartoonier than I usually like from the show (Bart's under-glass mooning and Homer getting tazed in response comes to mind), but there were some good gags as well, like the conversations between Lisa and their tourguide or Homer and Ned's conflicting views of the evening sky. There was kind of an unresolved story thread with Marge and Maude judging each other for how their kids behaved, which was kind of strange, and the frame story was sweet but a little shoehorned in. But overall, this focused on the heart and the differences that make the relationship between a trying Homer and a saintly Ned, and that made it a pleasant episode despite some of its shortcomings.
Oh, and the couch gag featuring tributes to various notable Disney films was great well, and it was a nice entree into the visual and animation side of the episode, where the designers and animators did a great job depicting the grand canyon and the desert sky.
