1) Have I mentioned before that I don't think the premise for this season - that a century ago all the dilithium (apart from some of the dilithium, apparently) "went inert", the Federation fell, the Romulans forgot that they had quantum singularity cores powering their ships and the Klingons just plain vanished - makes a shred of sense?
2) Because it doesn't. At all.
3) SMG just as lousy in flashback as she is in the episodes.
4) Foreshadowing.
5) "To Phillipa!"
6) Yet more 'band of brothers' scenes from right outta nowhere before this season.
7) Well, at least Stamets isn't doing a stereotypical 'slightly catty gay man' reaction to Gray's reappearance in Adira Tal's head OH WAIT.
8) Someone is alive on the Kelpian ship in the nebula (DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN).
9) And an explanation of the forehead markings from Saru - Issa was pregnant (DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN).
10) "Quick, SMG, do that 'oh my God' face!"
11) Space lightning in the nebula. Wrath of Khan already did that, better.
12) Sorry, gotta pause it there. "The crash site is 200 kilometres into the nebula"...say what? 200 kilometres is barely a sneeze in the Trek universe. They could yank it out of there with a tractor beam! You're telling me that this ship was just 200km inside that nebula all this time and no-one fished it out before now???
13) Saru not giving the order to raise shields until the ship was already headed into the nebula seems...negligent, to say the least. Still, no harm done.
14) I'm not sure ionising radiation would make the Spark Generator™ on the bridge kick into life really, but what the hell.
15) I expect this is supposed to be exciting.
16) Book coming in with a plan at about half past useful. But let's just be glad he got there in the end.
17) VFX team earning their corn again this week.
18) Book's ship has a spark generator as well, which is also activated by the ionising radiation.
19) Oh, the excitement. Oh, the jeopardy.
20) Oh, the boredom.
21) Careful now Saru. Burnham's already acted against your explicit orders before in this season. Now you've gotten her boyfriend irradiated, she's likely to come at you with a phaser if he's no longer available for Sexy Times™.
22) "I think we may have just found the source of the Burn." I thought they'd already worked out that this was the source?
23) Exposition.
24) Yeah, that's about in keeping with the (exceedingly dumb) level of Osyraa's previous plan to lure the Discoball into a trap.
25) Tilly with a keen grasp of the obvious.
26) At least Grudge is on screen now. Episode just improved, markedly.
27) Witless dialogue.
28) "I'm not sure he can be objective." Excuse me while I laugh my spleen right off of it's mountings at
Burnham, of all people, saying that.
29) Witless dialogue continues unabated.
30) As does the whispering from SMG.
31) A pretty realistic reaction from Stamets at Culber being on the away team going into the radiation.
32) Reassurance from Culber.
33) Oh lord, a pep talk from Burnham to Tilly. Just what this episode wanted.
34) *so much strangled screaming*
35) I really could do with this scene being over.
36) STOP ******* WHISPERING YOU USELESS BINT!!!
37) Ticking clock.
38) Um...what???
39) Doug Jones getting to spend some time out of makeup this episode. But still...what???
40) On the plus side, not boring. Downside, confusing and irritating in equal measure.
41) Back to the ticking clock.
42) 'Weird for the sake of it' should have gone out of fashion in TV by now.
43) Nope, I was wrong at 40). Bored.
44) Extremely bored.
45) Pixar does this stuff a lot better. So did Red Dwarf ("Terrorform").
46) Cool, split up. Great idea.
47) Federation ship approaching. It isn't, of course. It's actually Osyraa, and the plot is leading up her arrival being some kind of twist from right out of left field and not at all foreseen by every single person watching.
48) This script needed strangling at birth.
49) Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored.
50) Attempt at...who knows. I've got no idea what this episode is even going for here.
51) Meanwhile, Starfleet's least intelligent crew ever (and I'm including the cadets in that DS9 episode that attacked a Dominion battleship with a single Defiant-class escort in that) ponders on the arriving ship.
52) The plot is walking into itself with an audible clang.
53) Heeeeeeeeeeeeere's Osyraa.
54) *rubs temples* This episode is giving me such a headache.
55) They have a cloak. Guess the Treaty of Algeron no longer exists.
56) Oh, what a shame. Burnham is still alive.
57) But she's found the Kelpian.
58) Burnham as a teacher of the dynamics of social interaction. Do me a lemon...
59) Something that passes for exposition.
60) Episode title getting namedropped.
61) The exposition dump continues.
62) Radiation tolerance is about used up.
63) The totems by the entrance were indeed plot-relevant.
64) Discoball crew continues to be just as thick as the plot demands them to be.
65) Incredibly witless dialogue, murdered even further by Janet Kidder's Osyraa.
66) "Okay, we'll skip Freud." I don't get how these writers continually produce absolute hot trash but then pepper it with the occasional amusing bit like that. I wonder if it was a Mary Wiseman ad-lib that got chucked in?
67) Tilly making herself a hostage to fortune with this grand speech.
68) Saru and Culber have made it back to Burnham and Su'Kal.
69) Another week with no '69' references. This series must have finally broken that.
70) *rubs temples some more* Okay. I get that Su'Kal is afraid and that's why he's stuck in this programmed environment. But nothing else at all is making sense. His fear is powerful enough to blow a shockwave out of the nebula and fritz up the Discoball's cloak?
71) The Burn in miniature (and slow motion), perhaps?
72) After all that wanging on the series has done about finding Book a place on the Discoball, this new role he's playing as scout/ranger seems to have been settled on.
73) Tal plotting something that requires a comm badge.
74) Kelpian lullabies seem to be the Chekhov's Gun this season.
75) Back to the witless dialogue.
76) So, did Su'Kal genuinely cause the Burn?
77) Is it me, or has this episode absolutely ground to a halt?
78) Tal running with the first genuinely intelligent plan I've seen for a hot minute.
79) So much for blowing up the Discoball rather than letting it fall into enemy hands.
80) Stamets getting mind-controlled.
81) And now Osyraa has the bridge. This week's epic failure is complete.
82) Witless dialogue continues to be witless.
83) Well, thank God that's over.
84) "Next time..."