Tilly giving the water to the Ravah....was almost like a 'metaphor' of the Prime Directive, you think your helping someone but you don't know where your actions may lead!

To be fair the doctor has been brought back from the dead, experienced mushroom hell, travels by flying mushroom teleporting space ship, travelled to the future to be possessed by an 800 yr old dead man. I would say his life is ALL spiritual experiences and his heads just catching up to it.

Burnam must never have watched Ghostbusters. If someone asks if you’re a god, you say”YES!”

Missed an observation: The episode is "Whistlespeak", which the people use because it carries longer distances, and is exactly the reason that whales communicate that way. Whales. No cetacean would miss that observation.

I found "Just enjoy it." As Paul being both unable to understand how Hugh feels, but also being supportive for him feeling it. He's a good partner.

A science nitpick: as Tilly and Ravah were slowly suffocating, surely one of them would have thought to extinguish the several lit torches that would have been burning up the last of the available oxygen.

I loved Book playing Asteroids for his downtime lol

I love the editor for putting those easter eggs in the background of the infinity room, lol.

Also Tilly's marathon is also a great callback to season 1 with Tilly and Burnham and Starfleet training.

Something I have a problem with is they never recognize that creating the rain towers was still a violation of the Prime Directive. Disguising them as natural formations may have been to reduce the interference, but ultimately they did exactly what the Prime Directive is there for: to prevent influencing the evolution of a species in unpredictable ways, for which worshiping and sacrificing to the towers is a great example. Arguably then, Burnham is just helping to correct a previous violation.

Minor correction for those on the other side of the pond. He specified that it was a legal pad. It looks to be American sized, not A4. American legal pads are 8.5x14 inches - approximately the same width as A4, but about 9cm longer.

I like that they broke the prime directive with full honesty and transparency to the natives and didn’t try to gaslight the natives into thinking that Burnham is one of their gods in order to try to skirt around revealing the Federation & the truth.

My favourite part of the episode was when Michael started preforming first aide on the woman with the dust inhalation issue, trying to keep her breathing. The standard, almost universally used trope is for the local primitive healer to come over and shoo the more advanced helper away while they try and apply their primitive death cult techniques. This even happened in Star Trek IV, when 20th century doctors tried to stop Bones from fixing Chekhov. In this episode however, the primitive healer runs over looking alarmed and says, "don't stop, you're the only thing keeping her alive". And that makes sense because while they might not know modern research-tweaked CPR techniques, they're not idiots. "Keep them breathing" is pretty basic first aide, and you'd expect anyone giving medical help (even a primitive) to know that. And he did, and it was great! The sound based dust removal technique was interesting. Ultrasonic removal of dust from lungs doesn't seem practical in real life, but it's also not impossible, so that makes it the most creative yet realistic attempt to think up an innovative primitive medical technique I've ever seen. Oh and Sean, Homeopathy is just water. Literally just water. This wasn't just water, and no matter how poorly it might possibly work as a treatment when statistically analyzed it still has a significant real world physical effect (Michael passes out from it, so it's doing something), so it's still way, way better than Homeopathy. Seriously, look up what Homeopathy is. It's such a laugh. It's not even magic, it's just dumb.

Tilly queen of endurance. I love the call back all the way back to Season 1 and all of her endurance training.

Once again we see that Kovich does not report to anyone, and although there are undoubtedly people whom he works *with*, we will never (in the Discovery context) see them or learn anything about them. These loose ends are too many and too large and too tempting; they reinforce my conviction that, had there been a 6th season, Kovich would have been the primary antagonist. Failing that, I expect him to turn up in the Section 31 film -- looking the same age as he does in the 3100s. He bought that "genuine C21 legal pad" at Staples, for cash. He probably has many much older items of similar provenance.

Hi Seàn and the team, just wanted to thank you all for Ups&Downs. Love it, love it, love it.

I've liked Culber's arc this year. Interesting to see a counselor take stock of their own mental health. I don't think there should be any worry about the Prime Directive. Someone had already altered the civilization's trajectory. Plus with all of this "red directive supersedes all other rules" thing, Burnham should play that card here.

18:15 I think that one small change could have changed this moment completely and turned that down into an up. If at that moment when someone's life was at stake Adira got completely "in the zone" and became very assertive, confident and professional (and stopped the second guessing), then that scene would have been great because Rayner could just turn to them and say "See? I knew you had it in you. When the going gets tough you are able to get tough yourself and rise up to the challenge."

I think this is just what discovery needed. This show has spent so long with stories going at warp 9, a nice slower episode was a breath of fresh air (no episode pun intended).

I think it might be effecting Hugh differently due to him coming back from death.

Nice 32nd century advanced tech; 1. Retinal tri-corders 2. Instant personal transporters 3. Virtual rooms one can just beam in 4. Replicators that place the food right next to you. Saves time to get up from the couch 5. Replicator weapon arm bands

My big down was that they titled the whole episode on the culture's Whistlespeak and was barely a plot point.

I got the impression the Jintarra they were looking at trying to explain a sort of spiritual "overview effect", the melding has given him a completely new understanding and appreciation

This to me was one of the more well-written episodes. I appreciated how the universal translator was reacting to the long-distance speech (the whistling) - just one of the ways the writers have been creative in their revealing of this new and unique culture, and the way Burnham and Tilly have to quickly adapt on a Quantum Leap level. Lastly, I see the idea of this episode playing like a bottle show, but does it count when they have so many extras?

These people were only dying because Denobula violated the Prime Directive. It was Star Fleet's responsibility to set it right (carefully)

White room looks suspiciously like the room Q brought Picard when he was dying...add in the legal pad and I think Kovich.

Tilly literally said they could cure the woman with a sonic disruptor or whatever. Which is exactly what the aliens did.

My personal tally was: 004 UP & 697 DOWN So glad this series is almost over, lol.

Regarding "responsibity with/of technology" aspect, I'm actually glad that Discovery's crew probably could have, but DIDN'T repair and reactivate the other four towers, but they did (off screen) show how to maintain them. Perhaps in the future, these people will be able to find and reactivate the other towers themselves.

I have been getting strong vibes of the classic Doctor Who the Key to Time story arc with this season.

I think the discovery crew will get all but one piece of the puzzle and everyone will have to "work together"

Halem'no is an anagram for manhole which means this is clearly a reference to the Progenitors being the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The writers got it spot on with regards the prime directive. It was very cleverly written imho

All the other star trek series you do ups and downs for, I align with them almost every one for the most part. But man thats not the case with these Discovery episodes, they seem very gentle over here. To each is own I guess, much love and thank you again for doing these.

The scientist was the one who broke the Prime Directive. Michael slightly bending it to maintain the fiction is perfectly acceptable. But I have to object to the term Bottle Episode. The way I understand it, a Bottle Episode is one where the crew never leaves the ship. Uses existing sets only. Hence the term 'Ship in a Bottle'. They went and visited a planet, on location, so it can't be a bottle episode.

Oh shit, another wild theory: The reason the doctor feels weirdly spiritual since joining with the Trill is that he can subconsciously remember what the Trill remembered, and the Trill remembered successfully summoning the Progenitors, so now the doctor is feeling the inner peace and connectedness that the Trill experienced when meeting them and presumably learning the meaning of life. The final twist will be that the sixth scientist didn't die, but got used as a vessel for communicating with the Progenitors and they'll be the person at the end that Discovery will find!

Burnham didn't have to reveal herself in front of Rava's father. She could've beamed in while simultaneously having Discovery beam him out and store him in a pattern buffer. Discovery could then send a team of engineers to figure out how to open the door and save Tilly and Rava. Once they were all done, everyone could've beamed up, and Rava's father could've been beamed back and he wouldn't even know he lost like, 5 minutes of time. Also, they could've just erased their memories of the whole thing.

A very minor bit of cultural history... I am a very senior citizen and I remember being chastised both at home and in school for speaking contractions. They were the emojis of the time.

It was a pretty good episode, but my problem was the futility of the human sacrifice- It was never explained if it served any purpuse of if there was a proven cause and effect happening. I think they could have easily done something along the lines of - 'a few of the isolinear chips are damaged and they produce roughly the same ammount of energy as the human(oid) body so every time someone steps into the chanber their body's electrical charge/organic material/water is enough to replace the energy of the chips for rebooting the system before the process starts decaying again'. That would have given meaning or at least some reasoning for the sacrifice and all the rituals around it. Instead it's pretty meaningless (which I also get, just think it would have made a better, more noble point)

Pretty certain the fact the Denobleans (pardon the spelling) made the original decision to interfere with weather control and it was required to maintain that system call it a bottle of distilled water episode 👍🤓

17:00 I agree with you on this. when I was watching it, I was saying in my mind "I get you're trying to help, but lives are on the line, get someone more qualified, and more familiar with 800 year old technology in on this!". Also, another minor critique, you can tell the American perspective on this, that everyone needs to spend months in therapy to get over anything, vs the UK perspective of "Man up, and just get over it already!"

I've always loved when the Prime Directive is treated with nuance. It's one of those rules that looks good on a PAAD but is a lot more complicated in practice. There are no easy answers here. It's moral obligation vs moral obligation, but also hearkens back to if you have the means to help (even clandestinely) and don't is one doing wrong by inaction or is one doing right by letting "nature take its course"

My favorite bit: Whistling language over mountainous terrain is a real thing. It's a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Love the Mercury Stardust t-shirt!

the Infinity Room uses a Quantum entangled Particle to allow entry into the space from anywhere in the Galaxy thats what that little infinity prop is

So far this season has exceeded my expectations. My only dislike is that this puzzle has been around for eons and Discovery solves it in a couple of weeks. I would have enjoyed showing some time jumps and following more ships working together.

Was it just me or did anyone else notice the "Whistlespeak" was used in the very beginning of the episode, then never referenced again? I think if you're going to name an episode after something like that you should expand on it a bit. Eh, maybe it was just me.

Thank you Sean for your respect for Puerto Rican dishes

My friend turned to me midway through and asked "what sort of Landru bull is going on on this planet?" I think there's a reasonable argument that the Denobulans installing the weather control towers is going to be the cover Burnham needs prime directive wise (they've already been influenced beyond repair) and they're 800 years overdue for some Cerritos visits to remind them how to maintain these mountains. Legit question they didn't resolve: should the federation fix the other four towers? 🤔

1st, proud Puertorrican. 2nd. this is the first time that I feel that they were talking my language. I felt represented. But at the end they show they presented that mofongo and had cravings, but with camarones (shrimp). I wonder who made that dish in Canada where they filmed that show. Glad the flavor and culture lives on in the 32nd century.....

Regarding the primitive lack of contractions, I tend to assume this is an artifact of the universal translator. Remember, these people are not actually speaking English, and while the UT does a great job of changing their speech into Fed Standard (English) their language may not have contractions, or may not contract at the same places, and so forcing "Hey Dad how're ya doin'?" Into a sentence that may be more formal, or for which there is no way to completely get the nuance, seems like it might be expecting too much from the magic translator. As for the question of the Prime Directive. At first, I wondered why Burnham had to beam into the antechamber where Rahva's dad was. They're most if the way up a huge spire/tower. Surely there are stairs or a lift of some sort, maybe a hallway just out of sight where she could have beamed. As for the rest of the reveal, my first thought was to play along, Tilly could have said she was communing with the gods when Rahva asked who she was talking to. Burnham could have gone with the ides that she was one of the gods when Rahva's dad jumps to that conclusion. I understand the risk of providing proof of gods existing, but they are doing so only to two people, not the entire society, and they could provide a justification for getting rid of the human sacrificing. They leave and does the society really change? Not really. So I definitely thought they could have worked around the PD and still accomplished the same outcome. But then I realized, the denobulan scientist already broke the Prime dorective. Sure, no one saw them do magical science, but it still dramatically altered their society. Not only by saving them from a natural destruction, but also by influencing their religious beliefs. We have no idea what their religion was like before, but presumably it didn't revolve around The High Summit. So, if we accept that the Prime Directive was already broken, then the issue becomes largely moot.

I loved this episode! With it's classic trekky examination of science vs religion, and also spirituality. Breaking the prime directive is always fun, and this is definitely a planet that i could see getting a revisit

The infinity room = spare room in Janet's void that she's renting out.

the writers seem to have completely forgotten that Adira has a symbiote

Finally, an episode that was more difficult to struggle through than a Sisko monolog.... Thank goodness for Strange New Worlds... Seeing the episode again watching the Up's & Downs was almost as difficult... Where is the Planet Killer Doomsday Machine when you need it?

I found the episode very reminiscent of Who Watches The Watchers - with Burnham's discussion at the end mirroring that of Picard.

Yes we have seen the Zhian'tara before but the difference here is that they are also looking for the progenitor tech. Dr. Culber has mentioned multiple times that they are searching for the technology that made them. Couple that with his abuela and her spiritual beliefs that he has also talked about the experiences after his Zhian'tara I don't believe are side effects of the procedure. I believe that having another consciousness inside of him, coupled with the search for their gods if you will has caused his mind to start questioning his strict science above all else mindset.

Did anyone else think that Stammets, having failed to find any other leads, was going to get desperate enough to try drinking the vial of water?

I really quite liked this episode, it's the only one this season that actually felt like a Star Trek episode to me.

I'd like to pose to Sean a theory as to why the "primitive" civilizations use formal sounding language in Star Trek (can't speak to Stargate on this one beyond the trope) - The Starfleet characters, and by extension the audience, are hearing these people speak through the universal translator. The UT likely won't be able to differentiate between formal and informal language and specifically cultural concepts. It sounds formal because the UT will use "proper" vocabulary, grammar, and syntax to convey the words and phrases being translated. Say 'Hot Rod,' and the UT will take that and translate it to either "warm cylinder" or "fast ground vehicle."

So, Burnam has and uses this new magic special eye to scan and x-ray stuff the whole episode, and when Tilly in locked in the room about to die, Burnam doesn't think to scan the room for a level to open the door. The level was literally UNDER THE RUG!!

You saying "whatever the 32nd centery version of the ceritos is" made me imagine a califonia class but the nacels and saucer aren't linked. Its the same frame. Just the primary and secondary hull are separated like the floating nacels. it just floats through space awkward as ever

love and kindness back at you ! thank you for another awesome show

It was nice that they bothered to mention violating the Prime Directive. Raynor already told us that he had free rein on this mission. And, once he’s been demoted and become Burnham’s first officer, i am now calling him not-Spock.

I don't know if Burnham broke the prime directive as much as Picard did in "who watches the watchers" if you think about it the episodes are quite similar, but Picard only revealed himself to clean up a mess that the federation made and to save his officers. But in this episode the denobulans had already inserted themselves into the history of the people, altering the natural development of their society, Burnham's actions were to save Tilly, but also it enabled her to continue the work allowing the species to flourish, the denobulans broke the directive 1st, Discovery just enabled it to continue

Didn’t the Denobulans already break the prime directive putting the rain towers there in the first place, and subsequently failing to maintain them? I feel like there is a loophole here for Burnham's decision. Also, would a Red Directive overrule the Prime Directive?

When I saw the hexagonal shape generated by the tower on Helem’no, I thought of Jupiter, a planet in our very own solar system, with a hexagonal pattern in its atmosphere. Did the Denobulan Dr. Kreel leave a weather machine at the northern pole of Jupiter?🤔. And when it starts to fail, will he return to fix it? Or will that be our job when we final develop interplanetary travel and explore all the planets in person?

The Photoshop images of the Infiniti room absolutely sent me! More comedy like this, please.

Idk the Zhian'tara seemed to effect Odo, and Curzon

I am gonna take issue with the homeopathic medicine comment. Remember what Tilly said. Starfleet tech could have used a sonic percussion wave to shake the dust loose. The bowls making noise was exactly that. Sound waves. No different than a singer breaking a glass. It was a low tech version of the same treatment. Not sham stuff that happened to work.

There’s one part of the Prime Directive that never quite made sense to me. I totally get that you can’t interact with the culture and change it. But I don’t see the point of it being against the Prime Directive that you can’t stop some celestial event that’s going to wipe them out. Pike with the comet. Kirk stopping the volcano in Into Darkness, etc. Stopping a space rock from smashing them all doesn’t contaminate the culture or change their development. They were going to die, and now they’re not. The idea that they were “meant to die” is a little more fate-focused than Star Trek should be.

The Caveat for the Prime Directive in this episode is that the reason for this violation is a direct consequence of earlier interference by the Denobulans. The fact that the Denobulans built those towers and allowed a religion to subsequently form around them was essentially an earlier violation of the Prime Directive. Michael's action could be interpreted as being in direct response to that first violation.

As far as the stilted way more "primitive" Star Trek species tend to talk: totally a trope, and one we have nostalgic affection for. But also -- could you suggest that maybe a language with which the Universal Translator has less familiarity would be translated in a less colloquial way? (Obviously that's not an explanation that holds up under a lot of close examination, but maybe just a notion that can keep this trope from interfering with our enjoyment of or immersion in the fiction.)

In some ways it felt like an anti TOS episode. Roddenberry hated relgion and put it down in the stories. Kirk would have posed as a God then torn down their system, this was spiritual and considered, and tolerant... and Sean has just said all that now, lol.

I LOL'd at the backgrounds for the infinity room!

Basically, the "white room" and Michael bringing back a piece of paper from it essentially means that Starfleet can now transport objects across lightyears by means of this "White room" space. It also made me wonder if this isn't a case of humanity beginning to explore the types of higher dimensional space that beings like the Q inhabit.

Jessi Gender speculates that Dr. Kovich might be the future men from Enterprise and now I can't stop thinking about it.

The Prime Directive is meant to Starfleet's most sacred rule and if Reiner lost his Captaincy over a decision that put a village under threat, Burnham should lose the Captaincy over this just to be consistant. Having said that, every Captain in Starfleet has broken the Prime Directive at some point in their career and from a stortytelling perspective you can bet there won't even be an enquiry like their was for Reiner. Also when Tilly and that guys daughter are locked in the room with the fire burning was anyone else yelling at the TV put it out! as fire sucks up any remaining oxygen in the room!

Well, that was a relief! I was beginning to think that this series of videos would have to be renamed "The Ups and Ups of Star Trek Discovery...". It has been a bit concerning to me, that Sean seems to have been deliberately ignoring some very obvious "downs" in previous episodes, and indeed, making "excuses" for things that he would have previously given a "down" to. I have enjoyed watching the "Ups and Downs" series on all of the recent Trek shows... but for this season of Discovery, the reviews seem to have lost some of their objectivity, and there definitely seems to be a forced bias to being overly positive - and it's particularly noticeable when things that would have got a "down" before, are now getting an "up" (or at least being ignored completely). This particular review feels more "balanced" than the earlier ones in this series - hence my relief... but there is still some missing objectivity, and it is a shame. For example, Book was *absolutely* shoe-horned into this episode... only for Sean to make an explicit, "unprompted" comment that he wasn't. It's like when a politician points to green grass, and tells you that it's a lovely shade of blue. If he really hadn't been shoe-horned in, there was no need to make any comment about it - the fact that the comment was made, suggests that it is a bit of misdirection, to avoid giving a "down". Sean also mentions the "trope" of Hugh and Paul's relationship being flaky once again (or not "understanding each other")... and then denies that it is a trope, and just moves on. Now, credit where it is due... this season of Discovery is getting an awful lot more right, than previous seasons, and on the whole, it is by far the best season of the show. I've been enjoying it a lot... and I wish that we had more episodes, so the pacing would be better, whilst giving a chance to revel in all of the positive changes that have been made to the show, this season.... and give the story more time to breathe and unfold (assuming that it won't be a damp squib ending, of course). 5.6 could easily have been stretched to make it a 2-parter, and that would have given more time to explore the Doctor's issues, and definitively deal with Adira's "guilt". Tilly being trapped in the "sacrifice tower" would have been the perfect end-of-part-one cliff-hanger. Instead, we got a rushed story, with the whole Doctor thing being squeezed-in for good measure (where it didn't really fit, and wasn't needed to "pad out the episode"), along with Adira's ongoing angst. But it is nice to see the writers exploring more of the character-based stuff, even if they are having to wedge it in and only pay it lip service. I hope that we see not only a sensible and fulfilling conclusion of the "Progenitor Tech" story, but also that the Discovery crew/Starfleet are able to help L'ak and Moll (which I can't help hearing as Rock and Roll or Lock and Load), and give them a decent resolution - whilst still keeping the Breen as a potential recurring "worthy enemy" if this era of the galaxy is going to be explored further (say, in Academy). Certainly, the "ups" are very well deserved (so kudos to the writers, crew and actors), but lets have a bit more objectivity and honesty about the "downs" too, eh? Ignoring them doesn't mean that they aren't really there, and fans aren't seeing them (and it's even worse when a "down" is somewhat acknowledged, but not given)... and I think fans of this KZfaq channel, and indeed the fans of Star Trek in general, and Discovery in particular, deserve better than that!

This one really worked for me. The even numbered episodes are strong this season. And in terms of pacing the big mystery--I'm OK with stops along the way as long as they're this good.

Don't say that Michael pulled a Kirk. Judging by Kirk's speeches in TOS, he'd elect to respect the Prime Directive at the cost of a friend, if it came to it. He wouldn't for his entire crew, but that's a matter of scale. He did choose to sacrifice crewmembers to uphold his duties. Wolf in the Fold, Immunity Sindrome, Rwturn to Tomorrow cometo mind. And, of course, in Galileo 7 he chose to sacrifice, Spock, McCoy and Scotty in one go, when push came to shove. Plotarmos stopped a grim result in all those cases, but that doesn't take away from his commitment. He did say, often, that starfleet personnel were sworn to uphold it, even at the cost of their own lives.

The argument COULD be made that the Prime Directive had already been when the scientist put the thing there in the first place...

The Red Directive would override the Prime Directive in my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong but I somehow doubt Kovach would disagree.

A "bottle show" is one that is filmed on existing sets and primarily only uses the main cast. "Mirror, Mirror" is a great example. "Whistlespeak" has a huge guest cast and required new sets, along with location filming. It isn't a bottle show.

The bigger prime directive violation that gets glossed was the creation of the tower in the first place. As being the only source of water on the entire planet, it's no surprise it became the cornerstone of their religion and civilization. To me, Burnham's intervention didn't really matter as the cultural contamination already occurred as the sacrificial rites are a direct result of the technology failing. There might have been a moral issue to repair the tower or not, potentially let the civilization resume it's natural course could of been a great subplot for this episode, but goes entirely unaddressed this episode. *I also point out that it isn't lost on me that one of the 5 scientists of the 24th century who hid the progenitor tech because they knew they weren't ready to play god just demonstrated how correct of an assessment that was about themselves with this episode. I'm also not quite convinced Burnham, a product of the 23rd century has learned that lesson yet either.

Sean, I hate to say this, but I have to give a down to your calling the treatment for the dust "homeopathic", and your describing it as "choking" her. I'm not a doctor but I have some medical training, and what they did was plausible, actual, medical science. It seemed to me that the dust had accumulated in her lungs, not her throat. She was suffocating as her lungs were full of dust which kept them from absorbing oxygen. Human (and presumably alien lungs) often can't cough up that sort of heavy and/or compacted mass. What we'd do in the real-world is try to loosen and break-up the mass so that the body can cough up the mass. This can be done with medication in some cases, but one other common method is to hit or vibrate the chest, sometimes using ultrasound, to vibrate the mass to loosen it and break it up, and what we saw on screen looked VERY much like a version of that: using the soundwaves from the bowls to loosen the compacted dust so her natural coughing reflex could bring it up and clear her lungs.

"For the duration of this mission, the Prime Directive is rescinded. Let's get this over with." With Janeway there is precedent for this. Not too sure where an Omega Directive falls as compared to a Red Directive but both seem to be pretty serious.

It is not just the Trill thing for the doctor. Hey said it in a past episode. It is his experience of being dead and the journey to the "creators" too.

Why was “rule 34” your first thought when thinking of a rule number?? 🤣😂

I definitely appreciate the messaging of science and spirituality being additive and supplemental to the other, rather than subtractive or as a replacement. Because I think there is a lot of substantive value in spirituality (not necessarily any one religion or any religion) in a way that uplifts scientific thought, and I definitely think scientific reason can have value in attempting to interpret or appreciate spirituality, and breaking those barriers down is extremely important! There was a point in my own life where I was fully on board with the "Religion is stupid" train. But as I've learned more and more about how enriching spirituality is in forms of meditative exercises, expressing gratitude, and noticing and acknowledging things that I would often take for granted, the only thing stupid about religion is when people use religion as a weapon. But that's no different than anyone using science as a weapon.

"I'm resourceful " 😂😂 Kovich told us himself

I like that they indicated how the 'sound cure' worked shortly before with Tilly and Burnham talking about how they would use sonic waves to clear the dust.

Welcome to Hater's Gonna Hate Watch: where people, bored out of their minds, hate watch a show they really, really, really don't like. Some even go so far as to rant and rave about how it has "killed Star Trek", among other unhelpful comments. Some will give honest criticism of the show's actual issues, but instead of moving on to better things after giving their critique, they just keep watching and ranting. Paramount thanks them for their support. For the record, I haven't watched Discovery in ages and I think this video is just fine.

I love this episode because of its message. Trek has had a cynical view of religion on TOS and TNG but during DS9 they had a more nuanced view of it. And that nuance is the core of Burnham's speech to Ohvaz , and Book's message to Culber. "What we've shown you doesnt mean that the Mother Compeer's journey was meaningless. It just means that we're here too. Beliefs can evolve". Religion and spirituality doesnt have to be limited by dogma or the need to force everyone to have the same belief. I like that. This is actually a heartwarming episode.

My thoughts are the Denolulians maintained the weather towers until the burn. They couldn’t get there anymore and all the losses from the burn, this planet got forgotten about.

I'd actually give the idea of the zhian'tara having profound aftereffects on a non-Trill participant an up rather than a down, if anything the lack of anything of the sort in our first exposure to the ritual could almost be a down for the DS9 episode. Though maybe a case can be made for Curzon leaving a lasting imprint on his host.

Ill be so glad when this wraps up. Hoping this season is better but as a show, it's just been a mess filled with so many unlikeable people

Too much "ups" every single time... for me

"you're introducing something to be picked up by another writer in another show. Kinda sounds like you're doing 'eh not my problem. You deal with it.'" --- Reminds me so much of the writing issues CC left behind in Doctor Who.

If there is a startrek academy series in this time period I'm guessing they will use the iss enterprise as a cadet training ship like how modern naval cadets are trained on old sail ships..