Star Trek: Discovery: Under the Twin Moons

April 4, 2024 10:22 PM - Season 5, Episode 2

Burnham and Co. race to follow the Romulan diary to the next clue before Moll and L'ak.

Memory Alpha will eventually catch up.

- A Starfleet officer being taken to task for collateral damage? This really is another century.
- GRUDGE MY QUEEN
- Promellians were first mentioned way back in TNG season 3 in the episode "Booby Trap"
- Saru's spikes can take out drones?
- The surprise over how the key map appears to work is... odd. Did they not look at the records of the LAST time someone was trying to find Progenitor data?

Personal log:
Saru gets two really nice speech moments, between reminiscing about Burnham's first arrival on Discovery (which seems to forget about or at least elide how angry he was at her at the time) and last words of advice.

Rayner's barely contained contempt for the brass was amazing, and I'm looking forward to seeing how he and Burnham mesh as a command team.

posted by hanov3r (10 comments total)

I think the show fell into the trap of characters talking when they should have been doing things again, but the quality of the conversations is much better than it has been previously.

I wish Moll wasn't "related" to Book but that's a minor quibble so far.

The scene with Tilly and Adira and Reyner trying to solve a problem with quintessential Trek and I'm here for it.
posted by crossoverman at 3:19 AM on April 5 [1 favorite]

I enjoyed this one a little more than the season premiere: more focused, less burdened by checking-in-on-everybody, and paced downright languidly by Disco standards. And I always felt TNG gave Picard too few opportunities to do Indiana Jones In Spaaaaace stuff, so I tend to enjoy it when it shows up elsewhere in the franchise.

Is L'ak being a Laas-style exiled Changeling too obvious to be true?
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 3:25 AM on April 5 [2 favorites]

I thought I would give the new season of Discovery a chance, I'm forgiving like that, but I can't even get the Paramount+ webpage to load. "406 Not Acceptable" is the message I get. According to Downdetector, I'm not the only one. I realize this complaint is like one of those amazon reviews where someone gives the product one star because the box arrived crushed, but trust me it took a lot to get as far as I did.
posted by jabah at 11:46 AM on April 5

Fun season, I'm here for it. A good old fashioned scavenger hunt sounds like a fine premise to hang a season of adventures on. A little surprised there's nothing so far about "gosh we wish we could go back home (a la Voyager)" or else "how do we fit in here in the future?" But maybe after two seasons of that they think that story is finished?

I always love the Trek trope of "the clue leads us vaguely to this planet so we'll beam right down to the exact place on the planet's vast surface to find the McGuffin". No snark, it works fine, but it sure is a preposterous thing. I think we'll be seeing a lot of that trope this season.

I agree with crossoverman that all the talking seems much better this season. Re-reading my comments about past seasons I was really harsh on the Feelings Trek stuff, every plot seemed to be a dorm room conversation about some emotional detail even when in the middle of Federation-destroying existential threats. Here the emotional writing seems deeper, better paced, and more story-appropriate. I am particularly enjoying Booker and Michael try to re-establish a relationship. He is so dreamy, you know they're meant to be together.

I had to look it up on Memory Alpha. After Season 4 Gray is on Trill enjoying his new android body and training to be a Guardian. Presumably we'll be seeing him and resolving more of his relationship with Adira next episode.
posted by Nelson at 7:21 AM on April 6

Above all else: I genuinely loved how much the jungle temple establishing shot looked exactly like a nineties-era Star Trek matte painting
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:33 AM on April 9 [2 favorites]

where did they materialize the new set of phasers from, and if they could just do that why all the tenseness of having to be phaserless while running away / phaserless while waiting for the phasers to explode?
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 7:59 PM on April 9 [1 favorite]

The transporters couldn’t work until they took out the shield/distortion field with the EMP from the exploding phasers. Then they had a few minutes for free-beaming until the alien tech recovered.
posted by cardboard at 10:20 AM on April 10

ah that makes a little bit of sense, then.
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 3:56 PM on April 10

obvs the game pauses when they open the inventory menu
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:13 PM on April 10 [3 favorites]

I was very happy with Burnham pointing out a couple of times, both with Saru and with Rayner, that she didn't take her second chance for granted and is willing to extend that to someone else.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:45 PM on April 13 [1 favorite]