Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 5x06 - "Whistlespeak"

[cooleddie74]

Fire in space is cool. So is sound. I'm cool with both scientific implausibilities because popular fiction's always been cool with them.

The Death Star simply busting into a cloud of trillions of tiny pieces wouldn't be nearly as cool as what we actually got.

 

[SJGardner]

Another one people never seem to work themselves up over is the ship going dark whenever it enters an "empty" area of space "with no stars". In deep space, the ship should always be only lit by its own spotlights and engines, there should be no ambient light whatsoever.

 

[Quantum21]

Another one people never seem to work themselves up over is the ship going dark whenever it enters an "empty" area of space "with no stars". In deep space, the ship should always be only lit by its own spotlights and engines, there should be no ambient light whatsoever.

I think we'd all rather see the ship than not...

 

[Guy Gardener]

It took a thousand years and trillions of space dollars for the Romulans to invent the first Cloak, because no one consulted Mick Jagger.

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[Tuskin38]

, the fires would not be burning strong

They weren't. Rewatch the scenes, as the oxygen in the room gets lower, the fires get weaker. When they let the oxygen back in they get big again.

 

[Kzinti]

i'm usually not a fan of PD episode but this was a fine one i give it a 8/10

 

[James Cole]

Ok, another DISCOVERY episode that I enjoyed watching. It "felt" like a Star Trek episode. I'm surprised they didn't present the Prime Directive in a different way. Like the Omega Directive, could Red Directives (which they still haven't explained) have a partial PD exemption? Also, if a Federation Denobulan official violated the PD in the 24th century by playing god, could this be handled under cultural contamination grounds?

 

[JLA]

Oh my gosh
I've not seen this episode yet

 

[Phoenix219]

basically the only good season. shrug. lol.

 

[JLA]

devotion means being about to hear when the god tell you something new

 

[JLA]

Was there another captain that blew off the prime directive with so little messing about prior doing it?

 

[Commander Troi]

James T. Kirk

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Benjamin Sisko

 

[fireproof78]

Was there another captain that blew off the prime directive with so little messing about prior doing it?

Janeway.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I hope there is more to Cronenberg's character beyond being just a quirky and mysterious guy.

He's terribly mysterious. Other than that, I dunno. Maybe he can cut guns in half with his mind.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Sure, it's a Prime Directive story, and it's not the first time we've seen a culture that engaged in sentient sacrifice (TNG: "Justice" wasn't sacrifice, but we did see one fairly recently [was it DSC or SNW?] involving a child being sacrificed).

My best conjecture about how such a custom could have evolved is that back when there were locals who knew how to maintain the system, some ruthless individual threw somebody into the vacuum chamber as a sacrifice to his own ego.

As eye-screams go, the retinal tricorder concept was a relatively mild one, probably 100% CGI (certainly no scleral contacts involved!)

Giving it a 9.

 

[thribs]

The Cronenberg character might be in that new Starfleet show. I agree he’s rather pointless here for such a big name.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Some further analysis:

The whole "Prime Directive" discussion is rather reminiscent of the TOS-era interpretations that prohibit even the rescue of doomed cultures, interpretations that are patently meshuga. (And indeed, that's one of the few areas of discussion in which CLB and I have come out in complete and open agreement with each other. )

It's definitely not a retread of TNG: "Justice" -- there, the "surprise death penalty" happens in Act 2. It's a better fit for TNG: "Justice," where it doesn't happen until Act 4, but still, it's not a particularly good fit, because death isn't seen as a penalty here. If anything, it's more like TOS: "Amok Time," where it's not revealed until T'Pau's matter-of-fact "This combat is to the death."

Really, if anything, it's a "tomato surprise death ritual" story, in which we (and Burnham, and Tilly) don't know that the "winner" is to be killed, very much in the vein of Shirley Jackson's masterpiece, "The Lottery." Except that in "The Lottery," nobody is in any particular hurry to "win" the titular lottery. I've read "The Lottery" many times, and I rather enjoy watching the reactions when a "Lottery virgin" gets to the ending, but here, the foreshadowing is much more subtle, and the people are actually enthusiastic about the prospect of being the human sacrifice, even though they presumably are well aware that they're racing to their own deaths. I think ST has done this combination of tropes before, but no specific examples, complete with people competing for the honor of being sacrificed, come to mind.

And as I write this, I suddenly find myself thinking of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with Willie dressed in a sexy, gratuitously jeweled outfit, and pampered with luxury -- right before she finds out she's to be the human sacrifice.