Like we did last season, for the run of Star Trek: Discovery season two The Shuttle Pod has again transformed into Shuttle Pod At The Disco with weekly podcasts discussing each new episode.
Shuttle Pod At The Disco – Season 2, Episode 5 – “Saints of Imperfection”
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Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, Episode 5
Jared, Kayla, and Matt board the shuttlepod this week and wedge themselves halfway in to the mycelial network to discuss “Saints of Imperfection.” We’re greeted with yet another Spock fake out (have we found him yet?), then Tyler the liaison officer to Section 31 comes aboard leaving us all a little uneasy. In a real bright spot of character development, we get to see Pike acting like a captain who may not always make friends with his staff and properly keeps untrusted visitors at arms length. And of course we get deep into the spore scheming with Stamets’ “very bold, deeply insane” plan to get Tilly back out of the mycelial network. Listen along as we discuss the twists and turns in this dense fifth installment of the second season.
About Section 31
Why didn’t they just “claim” to be Starfleet Intelligence? Why couldn’t the black badges be Starfleet intelligence badges. It could have been cool if 31 presented itself as to Discovery personal and Cornwell as Intelligence officers of a covert mission while secretly being Section 31.
That would solve all of the issues of 31 being out in the open yet somehow, unbelievably, being erased from history by the time DS9 rolls around.
Exactly. I guess they figure Section 31 has some kind of ‘brand recognition’ with fans, and so they’re going to use it as much as possible.
Why didn’t they just “claim” to be Starfleet Intelligence?
Agreed. Sloan used Starfleet Intelligence as his cover in DS9.
I’ve always thought of Section 31 as being a more covert arm of Federation Intelligence anyway.
Yeah, great point. That could’ve worked well and keep S31 underground or at least just known within Starfleet intelligence itself. And then the DIS crew could’ve found out about them later.
My problem with the show is that it feels 90% complete. They almost pull off a good show and then the writing falls apart. The Section 31 business, mycelial network, mirror universe, and much more; as the comments here show it would take a little better storytelling and it fixes all these issues. I wonder if this is why the writing duo got canned.
Yep, I agree with the “it’s almost complete” idea, I think it’s somewhere in the 75% to 90% range depending on episode. It’s frustrating because there’s great stuff in there, and I think we all want Disco to be successful and hit its full potential.
Agreed. I wonder how much got fixed after they finished writing and shooting when they looked at the episodes back to back, before the effects were fully created. Perhaps it was even more wild and uneven. And even if they knew there were problems in rough cut, there may have been cost constraints on the fixes. It’s hard to believe that a few lines of dialogue couldn’t be re-recorded out of schedule with the episode but there might be union penalties.
I don’t think it’s the writing falling apart. It’s more like the pressure of getting the episode “in the can.” There’s also an expression about the director maiming a writers script. It’s part of the business. Writers fight for specific scenes then the directors may cut them out while filming.
While shooting MindSifter, I fought for a lot of scenes to be added back in for the sake of the fans of the short story and to make a better episode. Some scenes I fought more didn’t win due to time pressures or creative differences.
Because “Starfleet Intelligence” would be a generalized arm of Starfleet. It makes perfect sense that there would be more specified organizations within Intelligence. Sort of like saying “I’m in the military.” Well ok great but what branch of the military are you in?
Since Starfleet is the space navy, it would be more like saying “I’m in Naval Intelligence.”
I look forward to the podcasts each week. And while there have been times that Discovery has been a little disappointing, the podcasts are always a hit. One little nitpick though, how many times did they use the word “like” ? Like a lot .
It’s my “filler” word and a weakness of mine. I’ve done better and worse with it. We do this podcast in a conversational style, so it happens.
It’s cool. You guys are great and the conversational flow is on point and everyone’s observations are spot on. Don’t change anything, I’ll just make a drinking game out of it.
lol. please don’t give yourself alcohol poisoning. I know I can say it a lot :-)
I took up your idea of the drinking game, but that was this morning so it was in the form of espressos. I’m now wired and won’t sleep til next week’s episode!
:-D
The expressions “Deep Dive”, “Hang a Lantern”, and “On the Nose” also are uttered about two to four times in each podcast. Great podcast, but please stop the jargon!
Oh, and “Lean Into” is another one…
And “problematic.” That one is waaaaay overused these days. Across all media.
bsan, actually the phrases “Deep Dive”, “Hang a Lantern”, and “On the Nose” have become a sort of inside joke, they kind of became our trademark jargon. We know they’re jargon.
If you’re unfamiliar with the ways “like” is validly used in conversation, please query the term “discourse marker.” Cheers.
Love the podcast but wasn’t expecting a Harry Potter spoiler in the final seconds. I just started book two, so I’m definitely late to the party… no worries.
Finally got around to watching it, and given the mixed reaction I actually wound up liking this show more than I expected. Yes, like most Discovery episodes it’s overstuffed (in the immortal words of the Emperor Joseph, “Too many notes”), but at least the pieces fit well together and are mostly entertaining. Anson Mount’s Pike finally gets something of the brooding quality that Jeff Hunter originally brought to the role, and even alt-Georgeau, whom I generally hate as a character, comes off a little more interesting. And for the record, I had no problem with Burnham’s voiceover at all.
My notes….
I also have Spock tease fatigue. I’ll repeat what I said before about this. At this point regarding Spock either sh*t or get off the pot.
But why bring Section 31 into the open in the first place if your goal was to show why it retreated into the shadows? The entire S31 thing to me just doesn’t work.
I’m also not finding Tilly getting better and better. In fact, I find her getting more and more annoying.
I still say it’s not real Culber. The way they “explained” it there is no way it’s Culber. Even Spock’s resurrection made a weird kind of sense. But this one just doesn’t work. As a viewer, I will never trust Culber from here on out. Ever. I agree that it would have been much much better and more emotional had they let “Culber” sacrifice himself again. Then they would have given Stammets closure and Culber dies for a good reason. Also, as far as I can tell there was no fan backlash to Culber getting axed in the first place. At the risk of getting ripped, the reason they said up front he was coming back was because they were caving to a PC group. Yes, a better resurrection would have been Culber getting killed in connection to the network to begin with. Then it would have made a bit more sense. And the idea that they had planned the resurrection all along is even more frustrating because they had such a very long time to plan this. And then THIS is what they came up with? Facepalm.
Yep. The communicator badge was idiotic. And a VERY good call would have been using the wrist communicator instead. But I prefer what Matt said about Tyler busting out a slightly advanced communicator. But this also strains credibility. The idea that Section 31 has their own Q branch I find to be a tremendous stretch. I’m hoping they will make this Section 31 thing interesting. But based on what I have seen thus far I have my doubts.
All in on the Sybok thing. He HAS to get name dropped. If for no other reason than to just give Michael a little more credibility as Spock’s newly known adoptive sister. Just drop the name as code for, “See? It’s happened before!”
The Cestus III thing was them trying to be more clever than they ought to be. Also, sure, it’s a folksy saying. But Pike is from SoCal. Not Florida. Maybe things change in 300 years but it’s not a thing a Californian would say.d And again, the less said about Lorca the better.
And as a PS… I did not get a Ned Stark spoiler but I did get a Jon Snow is dead spoiler.
I thought this was another intelligent and entertaining analysis by the valiant shuttle pod crew. Thank you. I’m looking forward to getting my “You don’t get to be an Empress by being a team player” mug.
Besides that great quip, I thought Kayla was spot on when she said, to paraphrase, “it’s almost like the writers are not very familiar with Star Trek.” I would modify this slightly by deleting the word “almost.” :)
The only thing I see differently than her (and it’s just a matter of preference) is that just because while you guys, or anyone, can twist yourself into a pretzel to explain things like the Cestus III comment to be consistent with canon, I don’t see the point of doing so. Why pick something like the Cestus III (or communicator badges) that seemingly go against the things that previous series implied? Like (as the Matt Wright would say “like” :)) why not just pick another planet to mention instead of Cestus III? I disagree with Kayla, that it’s a good thing to play a game where the writers seem to go against canon but you come up with some overly complicated suppositions to justify them, so we can’t say “gotcha!” Why not just build on how things were laid out in previous shows instead of seemingly oppose them , especially for these nonessential things?
My overall hunch is that the writers know enough about Star Trek to throw in some fan references but not enough to think them through. I suspect they want to come up with something “cool” whether it makes sense or not. I think this problem is true for little things, like the Cestus III comment, but are also true for major plot devices in several episodes or things like the mycelial network.
Why does one of you always sound like your in a cave? Please get a decent headset and/or speak up a bit. 😂