Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 5x05 - "Mirrors"

yeah, that remark sounded funny.

Regarding the breen, I’m glad they fleshed them out a bit and that they have some interesting unique traits. Could have been any other race? Sure, but then people would bicker about discovery introducing a new race. What we got is consistent with the little we saw of the breen in the past and adds to the lore.

 

"I bet it's going to be difficult for Moll and L'ak to escape now."
"Actually it's going to be super easy, barely an inconvenience."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, they make their getaway in the ship's warp pod."
"Warp pod? Is that a thing?"
"It is now."

 

Here comes that "lazy writing" thing again. I'd like to know when that got started in pop culture. It's usually a really lazy criticism and doesn't hold much water.

 

Did I think the episode had plot holes and convenient technobabble? Absolutely!

However, it's important to remember every fictional work contains these. As a writer, unless you're doing highly character-focused work, you're going to have to throw in some coincidences/contrivances at some point to move things along.

We tend to forgive these things if we are engaged with the narrative enough to suspend disbelief. Which is why it's typically a far worse sin as a writer to have characters act contrary to prior characterization than it is to have a plot contrivance. If we believe in the characters as plausible "real people" we will overlook a ton of things. Hence the longstanding popularity of stage plays.

I feel the critical failure of the episode was not the little plot nitpicks, it was the execution of Moll and Lak's romantic backstory. It was simultaneously trite/cliche, speedrun, and unnecessary. Since the whole friggin episode was built on their relationship, and the flashbacks did little to deepen our understanding (aside from showing us the choice La'k made), the episode as a whole was meh at best.

 

My bad, I may have fallen asleep during the episode...

Typical as it's the first time I watched an episode of new Trek on Paramount+ where I had zero buffering issue.

 

"Lazy writing" is a tired complaint from hyper critical fans, not one I normally use to criticize professional writers.
But here I feel it is apt.

I haven't been in this forum or posted in it for a few years and came here to see if I had missed a plot point or a piece of exposition to explain the "Warp Pod" suddenly appearing and resolving the issue with the Moll and L'ak.

I did not and found others asking the same exact question.

I even went back and check to see if the pod in TOS Court Martial was a warp pod.
It was an instrument pod.
There are also supply pods and mission pods but never one mention of warp pods in over 50 years.

This was the Star Trek equivalent of Lucy Lawless on the Simpsons saying "A wizard did it".

 

Replied to something like this earlier, but it got lost in the sea.

She did, but then the changes that occurred in the Mirror Universe when Carl sent Georgiou back in time in S3's "Terra Firma" stuck and actually did happen. So Saru now survived. Works for me. I'd rather have Action Saru than Dinner Saru.

 

No, she did not.

In Season 1, Michael is presented with a row of three Kelpiens. She picks the middle one. None of them are played by Doug Jones - none are Saru. I just rewatched the scene, and it's very clear - the one she picks isn't even the tallest.

I'd share a screen capture, but somehow, Paramount Plus stops print screen from working.

Edit: Found the pic online:

 

Didn't need to do the screen cap for me, I would've believed you... but, someone somewhere probably would've needed it, so thanks!

 

I have to agree with about the lazy writing.

I don't really like the term, either... I don't think I have ever even used that term in the past, but there were just so many things that point toward this. (Some that I haven't even mentioned, like Stamets making the jump to thinking it was the mirror universe Enterprise, considering he had zero information up to that point.)

 

I see Memory Alpha is calling the Breen a fluid species, where did that come from?

 

We've never seen a Breen either. This argument cuts both ways.

This episode.

 

I feel there was a prior reference to them being a fluid species. DS9? The novels maybe?

 

This bothered me so much that I had to stop watching the episode. They don't have a spore drive, warp drives are barely functioning (unless the flashbacks happen after the burn problem got fixed) and it would take decades to get there by warp. I first thought this is an other example of bad world building. But I was wrong. According to Memory Alpha couriers use the Borg transwarp tunnels are shortcuts between quadrants. That was mentioned in one season 3 episode.

 

They just look translucent. No dialogue said anything about them being fluid or solid, its conjecture.

 

Also, some ships have quantum slipstream. Book's ship was slipstream capable, though he didn't have any crystals for slipstream.

 

They were communicators though, not 24th century style full room projectors.

Was anyone else half expecting a mirror Spock cameo appearance in some uncovered log?

 

That's MemoryAlpha for you. Assumption gets into the entries too often for my taste.

 

The robot AI tentacles were just incredibly dumb, but then a lot of things in PIC beginning with the Season 1 finale started to get really dumb.

 

A quick moment with Spock might have been kind of nice.

Overall I liked "Mirrors", although I am a bit puzzled by timelines and such here. Dr. Cho was one of the cabal of scientists who hid the Progenitor tech, and Dr. Cho came from the 23rd century mirror universe... but those scientists were running around hiding the clues during the Dominion War. I suppose it's also not impossible that the ISS Enterprise was hijacked and was hiding out for quite some time, through the fall of the Empire and well into the era of the Alliance.

I can generally write off that the interdimensional pocket universe's time doesn't match up with real space time, even though it wasn't evident in the episode. It may be less noticeable over a short stretch of time.

I'm cool with the Breen. It's kind of nice we're using established races, and out of anyone to get a "visual update", they make sense. We never actually saw what they looked like under the suits, and there's absolutely no reasons the suits would remain static for 700 years.

I can't imagine ISS Enterprise will be utilized by Starfleet. Discovery was a bit of a special case... it had the unique spore drive and despite being 800 years outdated, it was a newer ship, AND Starfleet needed essentially any ship it could get at the time. Enterprise doesn't really have anything special about it and it's been decaying for 800 years, and Starfleet can build ships again.