1) Recap here, but it only really shows how overwrought SMG's acting has become.
2) "We can attempt to rebuild it"...God, I wish Saru had finished that with "we have the technology"
3) The TylerVoq-Burnham relationship is the least convincing one on Trek since Worf-Troi.
4) Spin the camera really fast to try and make it look exciting!
5) "Shields on maximum sir"...as opposed to...what, exactly? "Oh, I only gave the shields 30% power, did you want more?"
6) You know why when they were setting out the bridge in the original series they gave it that layout? It was so the bridge officers didn't have to turn and face the captain every time they wanted/needed to tell him something. He can hear everyone perfectly well where they are. So quite why Number One feels the need to spin her chair around to tell Pike that she's got weapons up and running is beyond me...
7) Unnecessary running scene to fill an extra ten seconds of runtime.
8) "Take off every Zig for great justice!"
9) Unless the entirety of NotEnterprise's secondary hull is a shuttlebay then I can't see how they got that many shuttles and pods in there to come pouring out. It's a bit like Voyager and the Delta Flyer, a heartwarming tale of how you fit a 21m long shuttle into a 14m long shuttlebay
10) This is rapidly turning into Star Wars again, with all these shuttle engine sounds doppler-effecting their way around the screen.
11) Good thing the DiscoBall has an industrial replicator that's better than anything we ever see later on in this timeline...
12) Not sure about you guys, but I pretty much understood what Detmer was saying first time around. Dunno why Number One needed it dumbing down.
13) Three-way split screen. An...
interesting choice from the director there.
14) Ah, that familiar Trek trope of being accurate down to the second on how long it'll take something utterly alien to finish what it's doing. Windows can't even get file copy/move operation times right.
15) Ah, that other familiar Trek trope of asking someone to then take only half the time. Sorry Burnham, but as good as Reno is she ain't Scotty!
16) Burnham giving a rueful look there after being given third degree burns from Reno all but calling her a moron.
17) So the subspace relays are down, and he's attempting to circumvent them. Surely that means that they have backup relays then. So he should just activate those. Unless he plans to circumvent the need for subspace relays by doing...something...magic, maybe?
18) Gratuitous Sun Tzu quote.
19) Nice of Saru to prep everyone for the horror of seeing someone who looks human but isn't. Because, as we all know, this is something never seen in the Trek universe...
20) I miss Michelle Yeoh as the proper Georgiou. !Georgiou is about the least interesting character on that bridge right now, and I'm including the bridge bunnies that we know almost nothing about in that.
21) Okay, are we cribbing from the swarm in Star Trek Beyond now?
22) While everyone on the DiscoBall stares at the viewscreen with dread, everyone on the Enterprise does it with determination.
23) Christ, we're only now getting to the opening titles?!
24) I do love that TOS phaser sound.
25) More dakka!
26) Suit construction technobabble as substitute for anything resembling real dialogue.
27) Is...is this 'invoking diplomatic immunity for nicking a shuttle' bit meant to be funny?
28) Oh, okay. Sure. So Po's the only one who knows how to take down the enemy craft. The crews of two whole starships couldn't figure that one out. Makes perfect sense.
29) Grr. Think I preferred the technobabble down in engineering to this conversation between Saru and !Georgiou.
30) See,
that was amusing (Reno trying to row back on her insubordinate comment).
31) VFX people must have put in some overtime on this one...
32) How big is this ship anyway? Every time in this series they cut to that turbolift shot and the thing looks absolutely cavernous.
33) Oops, need more jeopardy, gonna blow up the corridor that they're taking the suit along.
34) I expect I'm supposed to care that Stamets got hurt.
35) Back outside, where this series is more comfortable. No dialogue out here. Just explosions. They really can do explosions quite well, this team.
36) Aha, my favourite line so far. Which I'll grant you wouldn't be saying much, but I genuinely did like that from the doctor there. "Any free hands to help us down here?" "
Sorry, no, do your best." "No, I'm gonna do a half-assed job because now's the perfect time."
37) Yeah Spock, let's waste time standing around looking at the suit and saying 'yep, suit is ready'.
38) Oh God, someone really needed to strangle this storyline at birth.
39) *movie trailer voice* Michael Burnham...is...IRON BONEHEAD.
40) "There is no time for debate"...as they debate it.
41) Good thing there was a shuttle left, eh?
42) Iron Bonehead launches, so once again the VFX team take over proceedings.
43) I'm not sure that this show can decide if it wants to be a Star Wars ripoff or a Marvel Cinematic Universe ripoff. Either way, it's not very good at it.
44) Gosh, imagine that. Leland/Control beamed aboard while you had the aft shields down. WHO COULD HAVE FORSEEN THIS AMAZING PIECE OF STRATEGY?! Apart from, you know, everyone watching at home. Hey ho.
45) And in another brilliantly strategic move, Leland first goes to the bridge to shoot at people and let them know that a) he's what beamed over and b) he's going for the sphere data. Giving !Georgiou and Nhan a chance to stop him now. This show learned absolutely nothing from the Season 1 debacle.
46) At least when Section 31 has it's own show I won't have to put up with this 'want to help me make him scream *twirls villainous moustache*' rubbish any more.
47) Are we down to using
missiles against the NotEnterprise? Thought this was Star Trek, not
Star Fleet Battles. We borrowing from the Kzinti (Mirak in the Starfleet Command video game series) now?
48) Oh. But it's explicitly called a photon torpedo in dialogue. Funny, I don't remember them ever before launching or flying like that. Anyway, the whole 'torpedo lodged in the hull' thing was done already by DS9 ("Starship Down") and Voyager ("Year of Hell").
49) "Everything I saw...this is how it starts"...oh good, there's that Bonehead wide-eyed look of panic again. It's like they decided that was a face that SMG could do, so they would use it every chance they got.
50) Okay, definitely ripping off Star Wars now
They've sent out little repair robots to go look at the damage.
51) *strangled scream*. Oh. My. God. That bit on the DiscoBall bridge. "Come on Burnham." Aw, you can hear the hope dripping from the poor little bridge bunny.
52) Spock has a keen grasp of the obvious.
53) Oh good. It's the NotQuiteKlingons. And Ba'ul ships, with Saru's sister. I can't help but think that one of those cleave ships would have been useful in the future of this timeline. Say, around the time of the Dominion War?
54) Is it just me? Is no-one else really bored with the story and dialogue beating viewers over the head with how awesome someone is when the showrunners need to make that person (Saru's sister in this case) look heroic?
55) Oooh, waitaminute...Spock's just had a 'Jonathan Creek' moment. And yes, now he and Burnham have figured out that it's all wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey. Pity that half the audience was already here about forever ago.
56) More awful dialogue as !Georgiou and Nhan engage Leland.
57) Please, please, please torpedo. Blow up. Then we can have a scene with the NotEnterprise being refitted to look like she's supposed to.
58) Again, how big is this ship? They've only just gotten Stamets to sickbay. Feels like ages since he got hurt. Or is that just this episode dragging?
59) For all the detractors of it (and they are legion), the Stamets-Culber relationship is orders of magnitude better-written than TylerVoq-Burnham ever was.
60) Lord, how is this only halfway through?!?!?
61) "The future is still unwritten"...and yet, the other plot point here is that the future
has been written, Burnham has already travelled into the past because otherwise the Ba'ul ships wouldn't be here. Helloooooo, Earth to the writing staff, didn't anyone sanity-check this?
62) *starts humming the Doctor Who theme to himself*
63) More VFX sequences spaffed all over the screen.
64) Oh, that's a shame. Thought we might get to see that science officer Pike brought from the NotEnterprise get splattered again That was one of the better bits of that episode.
65) More flashbacks? Were they
that short on story that they needed to pad this out? If so, why didn't they just not make this a two-parter?
66) You know things have turned to worms when Tilly is the only one left to get the shields back up...
67) Credit where it's due, this fight against Leland with the gravity acting up is quite well done.
68) Calling it now, Cornwell is getting written out here in an 'heroic sacrifice'.
69) Nice.
70) More dakka from the NotQuiteKlingons.
71) Called it at 68). Though, small point, they have repair robots that can pop out and wander around on the hull...but they haven't got anything that can take Cornwell's place and operate the manual door lever? Really?
72) Impressive blast door, that. A matter-antimatter explosion right by it and it isn't even dented. Maybe they ought to have made the entire ship out of that stuff.
73) *more strangled screaming* Please make this Spock-Burnham dialogue just stop. Here we have the speech that they were all referring to in the build up to Season 2, about how Burnham is the one who made Spock who he is later.
74) Wonder how many people on the DiscoBall and NotEnterprise got hurt or killed while these two just talk?
75) Question - if Leland is dead and Control is neutralised...
why do they need to go to the future?
76) Christ, that torpedo took a hell of a chunk out of NotEnterprise's bow.
77) At this point if these NotQuiteKlingons were actually the same race that we saw in TOS, they'd immediately attack and board the NotEnterprise to steal it.
78) SanFran, and it does kinda look like it did in The Motion Picture. Hooray for continuity!
79) Board of Inquiry time. And I get this funny feeling that I know how they're going to claim that they've made STD fit into canon now...
80) So TylerVoq is going to end up running Section 31. And yeah, that's how they're going to do it. Everyone involved goes under a gagging order. So no mention of the DiscoBall, no mention of the crew, no mention of the spore drive. Now, it's going to be one thing ordering Starfleet officers to obey a gagging order. But family? Saru's sister? Sarek and Amanda? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLY GOING TO WORK?!?! Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh.
81) **** this show. **** the people making this show. Axanar got canned for...this BS. Please, anyone want to step up and defend the showrunners at this point?
82) Sarek and Amanda just won't talk about Burnham when around other people. Yeah. Okay. Sure.
83) Sadly, they put the NotEnterprise back how it was before the battle rather than turning it into the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 no bloody A, B, C or D. Unfortunate.
84) And everyone on the NotEnterprise lived happily ever after. Apart from Pike, who gets crippled later of course. And Spock dies, but at least he comes back.
I'm with you on the Captain Pike series though.