Friday, February 23, 2018

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

** (2 stars out of 5)

Starfleet finds the planet of the Good Vibes and Discovery is tasked with finding a way to make it War Useful. "Pahvo, eh? Pretty Planet of the Placid Blue Lava Lamps? Makes strong vibrations, all Wakanda style? It's sort of Pandora if Pandora was Vancouver? Cool, cool, can they send sonar pings? Get them busy pinging these invisible damn enemy ships!"

Starships Gagarin, Hoover, & Muroc are destroyed. Stamets calls Sylvia "Captain" because he's full of 'shrooms. That's the whole "C" story. I wish I had a joke. Here's an observation instead: Owosekun is at ops and Airiam has the conn! I wrote them down from the subtitles but I still couldn't tell you their names with a gun to my head. 

Over in story "B", Kol of House Kor is doling out invisibility screens. These are the bad guys' main advantage and yet another way THESE 2250s are not unfolding as they did in the Trek timeline I grew up with. L'Rell pretends to be torturing Cornwell and instead has a "nice" chat with fake screams. As soon as she hears “The Federation has no death penalty." L’Rell says she wants to defect, like a true follower of Kalesh. I think that’s Kahless here?

Incidentally, why did the "Klingon" guard leave his post just because his prisoner is screaming? How do you even have that job?

Michael Burnham & Lt. Love Interest, Ash, continue their twitterpatin'. 

But this is Saru Day! Doug Jones does beautifully in (sorry) the dullest tale of the year. Saru can top 80 kph on those hooves of his and his senses are more acute than human. He crushes communicators with his bare hands. That's not our focus, however: it's the bodiless, voiceless, Pahvan peaceniks and how Saru converts overnight when they take away his fear. 

This decompressed tale could use a bit of compression. The title means: "If you want peace, prepare for war". Prepare for a nap, more like.

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