1) Recap serving only to underscore just how wretched this all is.
2) VFX team put in some overtime.
3) Oh, drat. Burnham lived.
4) Tries to hail the Disco because that bunch of galactic misfits is exactly who you'd want in a crisis.
5) No dice. But it gives her the opportunity to deliver exposition out loud.
6) Bored already.
7) Mary Sue Burnham The Ever Right™ making several leaps in logic to determine what it is she's looking at. Which will doubtless be vindicated by the script.
8) Oh, please jump. That'd improve things.
9) More VFX.
10) And a rough ride into the next section, which sadly still fails to kill her.
11) A spot of weather. And a dead/dying Breen.
12) Still trying to call the ship.
13) And now a living Breen making a running tackle.
14) Gratuitous slo-mo.
15) Gratuitous hand-to-hand combat. Kirk-fu in TOS was much more entertaining to watch.
16) Of course Burnham wins the fight against an armoured aggressor.
17) Deus ex machina. Or is it deus ex Burnham?
18) Another burst of slo-mo. Quick pause while I look up who directed this crap...Olatunde Osunsanmi, who was responsible for some of my least favourite Discovery episodes. Explains a lot.
19) Slo-mo Burnham jump, as the soundtrack goes for 'epic' but hits 'meh' before it can get there.
20) This is all stupid and terrible and I hate it.
21) And she's made it back to the platform where she started.
22) Dynamic entrance from Breen. Followed by even more dynamic entrance from Moll. Who is trailing blood at a rate that probably shouldn't leave her standing.
23) Burnham tossing her a dermal regenerator to tend her wound. *record scratch* Pausing again. A
dermal regenerator for a sliced femoral artery? These things before now have been shown to repair cuts, grazes and burns. I don't believe even in this far-far-far-future Trek we've ever seen one do that kind of surgery? Plus, she's already bled out a bunch.
24) Witless dialogue ensues.
25) This is all still stupid and terrible and I'm hating it more and more.
26) And all I win for sitting through that 11 minutes of dreck is the Discovery intro and theme.
27) Still, at least the light coma that this puts me into will be restful.
28) Only amusement is counting the people with a producer-level credit, which must comfortably outweigh any other role in the production.
29) More VFX.
30) Back with the Discoball. Spinny camera. Flamethrowers. Sparks. Lights.
31) Boredom.
32) This pair at the front even less compelling to watch than Owo and Detmer would have been. At least those two got an attempt at fleshing out their characters from the showrunners.
33) Vague approximation of witty dialogue between Rayner and Ensign Ricky #3.
34) Breen fighter craft flying in to pound on the Discoball some more.
35) Meanwhile with Vance, Nhan and Saru.
36) Saru and Nhan volunteering for an entertaining opportunity for suicide.
37) Oh, God. "The crew of Discovery is family to us both, Admiral." Please sod right off with the lame attempts at making this crew a band of brothers. It doesn't land
38) Witless dialogue continuing between Burnham and Moll.
39) Devolving into gratuitous fight.
40) Spinny cam.
41) And now a forest with a magenta filter.
42) A sprinkle more witless dialogue.
43) I expect this is meant to be exciting.
44) I just heard Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool fangirling about superhero landings with that one from Moll.
45) Fighting in the fire. Kirk and Kruge did this bit better in the third film.
46) Osunsanmi really got fond of slo-mos for this one.
47) The Discoball still running from the Breen fighters and chasing the portal.
48) Exposition piled upon exposition.
49) And Rayner deciding on Plan B - space battle.
50) Book going to take a shuttle, just as soon as someone's worked out how to keep him safe from all the radiation around the portal.
51) Engineering has quickly built a MacGuffin for the radiation issue. Very quickly. Almost as if they already had it ready to go. Which begs the question -
why wasn't it already fitted anyway????
52) Episode crashing to a shuddering halt while they waste time talking about this. This series never did get away from that.
53) Culber going with him. So the episode slows down even more as he and Stamets talk about it all. Still, at least their relationship is halfway convincing. Unlike...well, pick another relationship shown in this dumpster fire of a show.
54) Burnham and Moll still fighting, having made it back up to the platforms off-screen.
55) Witless dialogue. And whispering.
56) And boredom. So much boredom.
57) Meanwhile on the bridge, no cliché left untouched with Rayner's 'time to switch from defence to offence' line.
58) Tilly with a plan that Ensign Rickette #6 is going to explain.
59) Hang on. This is just a variation of the Riker Maneuver from Insurrection, isn't it?
60) More witless dialogue between Burnham and Moll. And leaps in logic.
61) Burnham The Ever Right™.
62) A wide eyed look from Burnham. Cussing from Moll.
63) Saru and Nhan have caught up to the Breen fleet.
64) Doug Jones remains one of the few bright points about this series.
65) "You speak of 'maybes' and 'mights'. I offer certainty." See, this is what I never got about this series. Occasionally they'll screw up and write a line as good as that. And then the rest of the time it's complete trash.
66) No-sell. But Saru a half-step ahead.
67) Burnham and Moll slogging through the field.
68) Exposition.
69) Sex position joke. My heart's not really in it, but there you go.
70) If you don't know what's about to happen long before it does, then you ain't been watching this show.
71) Pacing has all but disappeared now.
72) Book trying to hail Burnham.
73) Yep, there we go from 70). 'Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal', and all that.
74) Moll builds a triangle with the interface, which won't do what she wants. Because she's stupid.
75) Exposition on the Discoball.
76) The Riker Maneuver worked.
77) But the dreadnought is back in the game.
78) VFX team still earning their corn.
79) Culber with the insight. Deux ex scriptwriter.
80) Tractor lock.
81) Meanwhile with Saru and Nhan.
82) Saru engaging in some psychology.
83) And poker. Not quite Kirk against Balok, but pretty decent. Also, that 'look into my eyes, you think I am bluffing?' bit? Easily 1,001% more badass than anything Burnham has ever done.
84) Burnham waking up from the clonk on the head.
85) Jesus H. tapdancing
Christ, there are young kids at nurseries who can figure out this puzzle quicker than these idiots!
86) Burnham's elevation to Godhood complete.
87) A Progenitor.
88) And, somehow, a slow episode gets even slower.
89) "Time functions differently in here." And, indeed, in the Discovery writers room.
90) For once, Trek getting Magic Fun Time With DNA™ right. Broken clocks, and all that.
91) There have been many, many better works examining the whole "technology is neutral, it's what you do with it that counts" deal than this. In the Trek wider universe see "Federation", by Judy and Gar Reeves-Stevens. Later Trek productions left it irreconcilable with canon (First Contact, for one) but it's a brilliant book.
92) Mystery piles upon mystery.
93) Book and Culber. Exposition.
94) No real answers, but it's alright. Again the writers screwing up and coming up with something vaguely worthy.
95) VFX.
96) Saru with the late breaking update.
97) Rayner and Tilly back-and-forth.
98) Exposition layered with Treknobabble layered with witless dialogue. The unholy trinity of Discovery script writing.
99) A plan. A stupid plan, but a plan nonetheless.
100) Back to clichés.
101) And, unfortunately, back with Burnham. And exposition.
102) Stupid, terrible, hate it.
103) Exposition still wanging on.
104) Rayner's plan, shuffled to the background in all of this expository BS from the Progenitor to Burnham, worked. Because the spore drive is, in fact, actual magic.
105) It's
still going on.
106) Showing Burnham a part of creation.
107) Aaaaaaaand back to the platform, to break the news to Moll that - for her, at least - this was all a gigantic waste of time.
108) Witless dialogue between Book and Burnham.
109) Having been at a snail's pace for most of the episode, now we're just racing past bits in order to get to the next slow, talk-about-our-feelings scene.
110) Whispering. Of course.
111) IDIC getting a namedrop.
112) Burnham The Ever Right™ is the one who gets to make the decision about the Progenitor tech. Of course.
113) Quick pause. I suppose we should be glad that they didn't use the Progenitor tech as a fix-all for this universe - bringing back Book's planet and people, for example. I still can't help but think 'is that it?' though. One again an idea that showed some kind of promise very early on founders on the rocky coast of the We Can't Write For **** Bay.
114) Book visiting Moll in the sickbay.
115) Who is going with 'snotty', though even someone as terminally stupid as her must realise that she brought it all on herself.
116) Witless dialogue.
117) Kovich exposition with Burnham.
118) He really is an utter waste of David Cronenberg.
119) Yeah, yeah, Burnham's awesome, we get it
120) Gratuitous references to other Trek. The Chateau Picard bottle, Geordi's VISOR, Sisko's baseball.
121) The 'reveal', such as it is, that Kovich is Daniels from Enterprise and the Temporal Cold War crapola.
122) Saru and T'Rina married, in a seemingly very human ceremony and reception.
123) Yes, yes, let's talk about our feelings some more. That won't make the audience want to vomit up their own internal organs.
124) And a hook for the Academy series.
125) Did Book just say "Talaxian" pirates? As in, Neelix's lot? How in God's name are they still around, and how on Earth could they possibly have delayed him?
126) Witless dialogue continues.
127) And continues.
128) It's still continuing.
129) And on, and on, and on...
130) Book and Burnham back on then.
131) Kovich wants another word.
132) Here goes the timeskipped coda then, which AFAIK was written and filmed after the showrunners decided season five was to be the end of this dreck.
133) An older Burnham and Book.
134) Space deer! Conspicuously CG'd.
135) This guy is Burnham and Book's son, then.
136) Witless dialogue.
137) Wahey,
a 47 reference with the shuttle hull number. Joe Menosky began inserting references to the number during his time on TNG, and the trend caught on.
138) More conspicuously CG'd animals.
139) Witless dialogue between mother and son continues.
140) Undoing the change in look on the Discoball, presumably to get it back in sync with the Short Trek episode "Calypso"?
141) Zora.
142) About to get abandoned in space. So yeah, 140) confirmed.
143) Witless dialogue between Burnham and Zora.
144) At least Detmer and Owo made it into the episode. Even if it was only in dream/flashback.
145) Jesus, just put a bullet in the show's head already...
146) Honour guard for the Disco's departure.
147) Buh-bye.
148) The adventure continues. Just not on this show.
