"Red Directive" & "Under The Twin Moons" — Star Trek: Discovery Episode Discussion

Well, that was certainly an episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Actually, it might be one of Discovery’s most representative episodes.

Discovery at it’s worst: geez that warp chase scene was awful. It wasn’t a great use of How We Got Here because there wasn’t enough time between the flashback and the redux to make the flashback seem justified—the bulk of the episode happened after the redux anyways. It wasn’t a great use of Once More With Clarity, either. I guess they were going for some sort of dramatic Rayner reveal? But, the “revelation” that the Antares was shadowing Burnham that whole time wasn’t particularly interesting. Nothing was gained by temporally displacing that scene other than frontloading the action, which makes it seem like Discovery is scared to lead with a character moment or a story beat, as if their mentality is “we gotta get to the pew pew ASAP because that’s why the audience is here.”

It felt unearned, and was just another instance of Discovery borrowing things from better shows without adding anything or seemingly even understanding why what they borrowed worked in a different context. And of course, this teed up one of Discovery’s most obnoxious long-running tropes: Burnham knows she’s right and spends a few minutes exasperatedly explaining to an unwelcome guest with equivalent or higher authority than her to no avail. The thing that’s always weird about these scenes is the way Burnham keeps going even after it’s become very clear that the person she’s trying to convince isn’t having it. At that point, focus on getting into the ship, don’t continue the argument! These scenes always feel like Burnham is trying to make sure that the viewer knows she’s right rather than the other character.

I know she’s right. She’s always right.

Discovery at its best: The scene where Discovery and Antares save the settlement on Q’mau. This had all the bits and pieces of a classic Trek triumph: the heroes put the mission, their ships, and themselves at risk to save innocent lives because it’s the right thing to do and ultimately save the day thanks to quick thinking, creativity, and Starfleet's engineering prowess. This was actually the only sequence in the episode where the Burnham-Rayner interaction worked: Rayner’s calculated risk paid off but introduced a new complication, but Rayner was also pretty quick to concede that “ok yeah, to hell with this ‘Red Directive’ nonsense, innocent lives are at stake” and ceded authority to Burnham.

Visually, seeing Discovery and Antares literally shield the settlement was fantastic. The detail on the shields stopping the rockslide was great fun to watch. These have always been my favorite Discovery moments: classic Trek formula with modern effects and pacing.

Why I'm worried: Rayner. One of Discovery's quirks has always been what I call "the interloper," an external authority figured foisted onto the cast to either foil or assist Burnham depending on which direction the story needs to turn. Lorca and Pike were more pronounced instances of this quirk than Vance and Rilliak were, but all four seasons have done it.

Our season 5 interloper looks to be Rayner, and it looks like Rayner is going to be as prominent as Lorca and Pike were. And boy, I didn't find Rayner to be interesting or compelling at all. I've worked with far too many "I'm allowed to be a jerk because I'm right" types to be entertained by them, particularly when played straight. I really hope they do something more novel with Rayner, and quickly.

Pretty good episodes. I love that they brought Book back even though he was supposed to be in jail. He's too good of a character to leave in jail for too long. I'm sad that Mr Saru is leaving. I hope he guest stars a bit. I wish we got to see more of the bridge crew like Owo and Detmer because I love them and want to meet the new people.

Also this new McGuffin seems pretty neat. I always wanted to know more about the Progenitors.

First impressions (to be continued when I watch the second episode next week)

5x01 Nice feelgood introductory episode (action scenes in warp, actions scenes in the desert, saving the population of a city through the power of friendship combined shields, Romulan tech, a lot of TNG references I didn't get because I never watched it but I'm sure it's good fanservice, Book's return, new Tilly storyline, new Saru story line, Kovich bringing in the unethical orders, Michael and Vance disregarding them etc etc) but I didn't like that it felt as if someone desperately wanted to introduce every new storyline in the first episode

Just working my way through the premier, but had to stop and remark upon the wonder of the everlasting....

Self-sealing stembolt! Captain Nog would be proud.

Further report/discussion pending.

Well, you know me. The resident Discovery lover and defender. My comment will only be about the first episode, Red Directive, as it is the only episode I've seen thus far but let me just say this.

That might be the worst episode of Star Trek I have ever seen.

The opening I had no real issue with. Everyone hanging out and having a little party, Saru having a moment with T'Rina, all of that was great. But then suddenly the term Red Directive is thrown with increasing drama/intension like 3 times by 3 different people with 0 explanations. At least from what I saw anyway. I had to infer from context clues that a Red Directive is a mission that exists as part of the Federation structure, regardless of who is in charge and must be adhered to at all possible costs. Okay. Sure. Then the problems start almost immediately, the problems being for me primarily with the writing behind the scenes. Nothing really makes sense.

DISCO drops in on the ship, surprising Moloch (I'm not spelling both their names and more on that later). Moloch know exactly where they need to go so they head there, cloaking themselves. DISCO notes that they've cloaked themselves and then starts getting ready. Now, you'd fucking expect that they would have gotten ready and dropped in last second for the element of surprise, like the ship was literally designed for, right? Nope. Drop in to announce presence and then fuck about for a while getting ready. By the time the Away Team arrive in the room with the vault (tracking water vapor that Rhys points out), Owo mentions that it's been nearly 5 minutes since the lifesigns vanished and that they would need more time than that to crack Romulan encryption. Note that they cleared this room with visual detection despite knowing that these people can likely cloak themselves in some fashion. Personal cloaking isn't unknown in this new future and if they can fool sensors they can probably fool eyes. So, you know. Visual clear while ignoring all about the particles they were tracking to this room. They then made the brilliant deduction that the people would still have to be in the room (it's never made clear how they were able to break the Romulan encryption faster than they should be able to as Burnham said). They get jumped, unsurprisingly, and Burnham escapes narrowly. Moloch then throw a grenade at Burnhams feet which blasts her into space.

Here's where the Rise of Skywalker style convenience problems start. She just happens to see a glimmer of their cloak and heads to it. She magnetizes on and just happens to survive despite things not really being set up for that. I'll let that go but whatever. Rayner shows up and starts telling her that he knows them better because he's been tracking for a while but Burnham is insistent that she knows better and tells him to back off using, fucking hilariously, things being too personal as an excuse. She says she will track them. She of course fails because she did not know better after having been on the mission for like 4 hours. So she pulls a hail mary out of her ass and says Book!

Despite an insane sense of urgency being built up over this Red Directive stuff (still not explained), Burnham then drags her absolute ass in the corridor with Book having this huge lovey-dovey scene. He acts like "Aw shucks, I'm just helping people and trying to make right" for his fucking psychotic level of crimes against humanity. Yes I know that isn't the right word but I don't care. I'm angry. They spend so much time on this scene with them slowly fucking around that it makes Burnham look like she's valuing Book over the mission. They're SO SLOW! Book takes like 3 seconds to step onto the turbolift. It's fucking painful.

They get back into the briefing and Burnham is withheld information. Now I love this show and she has learned multiple times in multiple seasons the same lesson of "Follow orders and you don't always know better" so I hoped they wouldn't do it here again but of course they do. She starts getting suspicious. Okay, asking Tilly to look into it is fine. Wanting to know more is fine. She's still doing the job though right? Well, for now. They get through the briefing that actually has a sense of urgency and Book just happens to know the only sensible route to plot here of where they'd go. He just happens to know of the dealer on that planet. He also just happens to know vital information about surrounding terrain but that's for later. So they head to it. Rayner says he'll be an hour behind because he goes at warp. So if Moloch have the same tech as Antares and no faster, then by the time that Rayner reaches the planet they will be at least one hour ahead of him. But we know that they're further ahead than that because Burnham had to go get Book and waste time fucking about first. Vance then says they need to work together and Discovery, despite having a spore drive that can be there NOW, has to wait for the slower tech and nullify its literal purpose as a Rapid Response Vessel as Vance already designated it in Season 3.

So then we cut to Moloch whenever they arrive. They go see the dealer who is a Soong style android that demonstrates a total failure of every part of himself. There's also an insanely drawn out scene where he points out how the names of the two fugitives, Moll and L'ak, sound like two word sounds and would go well together. So, Moloch. The most hamfisted bullshit I can think of, especially when they were barely just named on screen. He acts like a cheap version of Lore and when a fight breaks out he has the most insanely slow response times one could imagine. He picks up a gun and fires it multiple times, it failing, before he thinks to get another gun. He then has to look for it, despite it being his fucking shop and him being an android. He gets it, spends a very long time aiming and fires it, missing, and then actually nods with a smile on his face when looking at the gun. L'ak then defeats him in hand to hand combat (with great ease) and Moloch leaves.

Burnham and Book arrive on the planet and have another lil meet cute waiting for Rayner. That's fine, they're waiting. But he arrives at an awkward time and makes a little joke and suggests getting to the mission and they get all high and mighty and act like he's the asshole, despite her wasting fuckloads of time up until now and they go to check out the corpse but are passed by two people on sandspeedster things. A few minutes later they realize it was Moloch. So what in the FUCK happened to that hour plus advance that Moloch had? They just spend it fucking about? There's a bomb that was planted (more later) but that cannot have taken longer than like 15 minutes at MOST. Probably considerably less with transporters. But nah, they're just barely ahead of them. And apparently taking their time because Rayner, Burnham and Book catch up to them. Moloch gets to their ship and fires directly on them and hits them multiple times. Shields block the hits. So either these sandspeedsters have shields that can withstand fire of a ship or the personal shields can. They don't even fucking flinch either. Like it's a guarantee that it'll hold.

They realize that there's a bomb in a tunnel Moloch are going to go into that will let them escape. Burnham yet again does her "No trust me, I'm totes right!" and Rayner rightfully is like "Not the fuck again" and orders the bomb and escape hatch destroyed. But it gives Moloch an idea to trigger an avalanche. Burnham then forces her ship and the Antares (after guilt tripping Rayner) to crashland into the planet to protect a settlement of a few thousand. By this point they are well aware that the threat being posed here is of Galactic importance and could probably shift the scales of power but Burnham is like "NO! There are a few thousand people! We can't let the terrorists get away with information about god knows what. We need to save these people!" Like I get it, it sucks and you wanna save everyone but there is a clear decision here with a line said by your own fucking brother on numerous occasions and I'm pretty fucking sure you at some point. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. So they crash the ships into the planet (whatever) and shield the settlement. Hurray. Yay. They're sitting around when the dust is clearing and Moloch then taunt them and fly off. Rayner is like "Wish I could say this was a pleasure" and beams out and I feel that with every ounce of my soul. Burnham and Book then get all lovey dovey before being emotional and romantic despite THERE BEING TERRORISTS YOU NEED TO KINDA FUCKING LOOK FOR WHILE YOU'RE THE FUCKING CAPTAIN. Yet when Tilly calls? Instant urgency.

To top it all off, Burnham then figures out where it is that Kovich is after and withholds the information from her superior officer, information that's so insanely classified and important that it's a Red Directive (STILL NOT FUCKING EXPLAINED) because she wants to know. She outright says either let me be part of this or I will let the terrorists go. Putting her own insane arrogance above anyone else.

Burnham has been on the same path with every season so far. Disobey orders, realize she shouldn't, start doing the right thing. Happened with Season 1 and 2 and 3. Season 4 had her follow orders begrudgingly and even before Book as the romantic reason she doesn't want to follow said orders. Now she's just back at it again. Me me me me me. I'm tired of it. I loved her and I've been frustrated with the repetition but now I'm just tired of it and tired of her whole character. She doesn't learn anything.

The writing for this episode was fucking atrocious and I am seriously concerned about the rest of the season.

Genuine rating: 1/10.

A bit late to the discussion, but here’s my take:

For those unfamiliar with my opinions of DSC, one may go down that rabbit hole here.

Suffice it to say, DSC S05 isn’t something I lament because it’s the last season, but because it lasted so long. This show is shit, and ENT was better yet didn’t even get a fifth season. Not a single actor in this show could carry Scott Bakula’s left nut, but I digress…

So, The first episode opens with The Queers™ discussing how wtf the drinks are and how they’re totally over this dumb party. Hashtag me too, bitches. FINALLY! Some fucking authentic LGBTQ+ representation in this show! Especially when Rapp— err… Stamets debates whether to leave when his honorific gets downgraded from “Center of the Universe” to merely “Scientific Luminary” because his Very Special Project gets sidelined for being 900 years out-of-date. Boo-hoo, honey. I guess you’ll just have to find something else to be amazing at, which should take you all of an act break.

And then Saru and no-longer-called-Vulcan lady share a nice moment. Then they kinda break up in a flurry of dumb writing. Because Discovery is stupid.

The only other thing worth mentioning from the next 2 episodes is Callum Rennie who’s prolly in his 60s now, but damn is he rocking that hot zaddy energy. And those pointy ears are really doing it for me. Yum.

The show is still shit, tho, and poking at the memberberries with a 24th century Romulan scout ship, a Progenitors treasure hunt, and a Data knock-off isn’t doing the show any favors. It just reminds us all how much better TNG was than this show and how much we’d rather be watching that show than this one.

Pretty standard DIS episode, awith fate-of-the-galaxy stakes. The action scenes are always so boring, let's see some puzzle cracking! Also, if your Captain is constantly running point on away missions, they might be a thrill seeker. Beware the cliff edges.