Trekathon 803: Die Trying (DIS)

It’s German for ‘The Trying’. Spoilers.

Ultimately an episode that felt a bit dominated to me about establishing the next move in the ‘setup’ for the show. It had some interesting moments, and there was a good level of attention paid to making sure that the major plot holes were filled in, and with respect to previous canon like the Temporal War. But it was ultimately pretty business like and flat, so not the greatest hour of TV.

The mechanics were ‘how to keep the crew and the ship together doing things for Star Fleet’, as objectively that makes zero sense. Other than the spore drive the ship is obsolete, the crew are traumatised and well behind the technological frontier, and probably need a rest more than anything else. From the point of view of the TV show that all needs to be ignored, but it was nice to see a bit of justification put to it.

The mission to prove their worth honestly felt like a side quest from a video game (why yes, I have been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla this week…). It was a reasonable Trek subplot, with some links to the broader season, just nothing special or particularly exciting. A space thing has happened to the ship. The science nerds reverse the polarity and fix the thing, but it’s imperfect. A bold speech saves the day. The only surprise was leaving Nhan behind – a setup for later, or just a case of realising that there’s just too much cast to get plot to, so need to rationalise a little.

The only other thing of note with this episode is deciding to do something with Georgiou. It’s just bread crumbs thrown out this week, but clearly setting up for the future.

I feel like we’ve spent the first half of this season setting things up. Time for a bit of payback in terms of telling some good stories now. And maybe bring back Grudge (and Book), they were fun.

Quick hits:

– Ariam in the previously on, interesting.

– Yay, Voyager (J I think?). Oh, and (according to Memory Alpha) a USS Nog. That’s very sweet.

– For some reason the big emotional ‘here’s Star Fleet in the future’ sequence didn’t really work on me. I’m normally a sucker for such, but it just felt a bit flat to me.

– I can’t help but think that having Federation HQ not on a planet is an advance in terms of equity for members.

– I’m on the Chief of Staff’s side here. Even if he could work on his leadership skills in terms of bringing people along, and caring about staff welfare.

– Nice to see the connection to the Enterprise ‘Temporal War’ plot. Especially given that Enterprise kind of gave up on it.

– That is some *excellent* ‘Man in Black’ vibes from the Georgiou interview.

– There is some weird stuff going on with Holo-people this episode.

– Absolutely, 100%, no way that a Star Fleet officer doesn’t know what a Coronal Mass Ejection is. It’d be like having a drivers licence and not knowing what indicators are for. Wait a minute….

– ‘Disfunction is the team’. Ummm, Yeah, no. They could be just as productive if they weren’t so snarky. Less fun to watch of course.

– Bad Saru. ‘Dark Ages’ is ahistorical stuff, mistaking a lack of sources for a lack of culture.

– Am I the only one remembering the poor Federation envoy from episode one.

– Holo-Georgiou?

– It bugs me that people can so effortlessly use the user interfaces of the future. There’s not even a moment of ‘wait, where did they put the menu button’. There should at least be as much pain as when a website changes its look and you can’t find anything any more. Plus there will be user interface conventions that are just not obvious.

803 down.


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