The Shuttle Pod Crew Prepares To Say Goodbye In “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 1”

Like last season, The Shuttle Pod has again transformed into Shuttle Pod At The Disco for the run of Star Trek: Discovery season two, with weekly podcasts about each new episode.

Shuttle Pod At The Disco – Season 2, Episode 13 – “Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 1”

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Star Trek: Discovery Season 2, Episode 13

Brian, Kayla, and Matt board the shuttle pod this week to prepare for the coming battle with Section 31 as they discuss the penultimate episode of season two. The episode sets up the final battle, and whatever the future holds for the USS Discovery crew, quite nicely. Po brings the weird science back to Discovery, and apparently the Red Angel suit is easy to whip up. Also Sarek and Amanda show up, but don’t bring help? The podcasters also discuss their thoughts on seeing the reimagined Enterprise interiors, and spend a bit of time on their predictions for the finale and what it may mean for the show.

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So when can we expect your 4 hour long analysis of the bridge?

You’ll be the first to know!

Sorry to disappoint you, guys, but they are not going to erase Discovery’s events in the 23rd Century. You will need to live with those.

And they shouldn’t. It’s been 15 years since we’ve seen that kind of meaningless flashy timey whimey nonsense on ST (mostly VOY and ENT). Let’s not go back to it, ever.

Also the series and its characters and story should take priority over “canon”. If you break canon, you kind of have to just own it and move on.

Yeah, I think they did a pretty decent job in doing what they needed to do. So I suppose mission accomplished in that I am looking forward to the finale about as much as Star Trek Discovery will allow me to.

I’ve said the same thing about the bridge. It’s about as good as they could get it while being limited to the established Discovery aesthetic. I’m agreeing with Kayla that I did not like it so dark. I liked the % comment and yes, I think it more about 70-30 or 75-25 towards Discovery. I would have very much liked to see it more 50-50 but that would be more than enough to make it not feel like it belonged in the Discovery world.

Also agreed that it’s a HUGE stretch that they reproduce the timey suit in an HOUR.

Let’s not try and make sense out of the spore drive and dark matter and whatnot. I mean in addition to all that stuff they said it can do it it also seems to be able to bring back the DEAD.

Yes. The Sarek/Amanda thing was weird on many many levels. As I said earlier, I had at first thought it was one of those previously used katra connection. But then they left in a shuttle! So they were suddenly there! How?!?
And yes, Lethe still looks like the best episode of the show and that episode hit everything right on the screws. After that, they seem to have gotten everything wrong. Do play the devil’s advocate here… It is entirely possible that Sarek think’s the rift is Spock’s fault while Spock thinks it Sarek’s. A matter of perspective.

I am one of those who found Pike the best part of the show. And I am now wondering what they are going to do without him. Pike was one of the rare parts of the show that WORKED. He will be totally missed in season 3. BIG TIME.

Personally, I am very much hoping there is a complete reset button pressed. That fixes all the issues except for the lackluster characters and sub par writing. But perhaps by nuking everything they will be given a new blank sheet to work with. Perhaps without constraints it could improve? It’s worth a shot.

Regarding Yeoh… Is it for 100% certain the section 31 show will be in the 23rd century? They could go forward to the 25th and she can be on the show set in the same time as the Picard show. Which would feel just a little bit better if we are being honest.

I would hope as well a reset would include a wipe to a more TOSy bridge and Pike & Co. go on their merry way.

I do like the idea of just dropping the holograms and never mentioning it again. It is also possible the hologram talk was indeed a stand in for all the problems.

And this wasn’t mentioned but am I the only one that found the concept of a part 1 and part 2 in a 15 episode season long story arc to be redundant? Aren’t they all part 1, part 2, part 3 all the way up to 15?

I agree with all of this!

Wow! Must be snowing in Hell today! But still nice to to get reinforcement. :)

Yeah, let’s just tell all the people who have loved DSC that they suck and their two years of investment meant less than nothing.But be sure to tune in to all of our other shows and maybe we won’t completely screw you over! That makes sense. But gosh, it’ll make you guys happy so I guess that’s ok.

#cookies

What’s my prize?

I think you guys nailed it with keeping Disco in the future and allowing young Michael to perish in the Forge. It makes too much sense. And I really, really hope for that Captain Pike mini series, more so than the Section 31 show.

Well done! Haha I’m glad you found the #cookies entertaining XD As soon as we get some prizes, I’ll be sure to send you one. For now take an internet high five!

Yay! I’ll take that high five, but how about being a guest on a Shuttle Pod episode? A fan can hope…

I ended up liking the episode, so far as it went. Lots of insanely good production values, including the Enterprise bridge, which I’d previously trashed but ended-up liking much better in motion (and out of its red alert mode, which was overdone with red neon to the point of wretched excess). Mark me down as a fan who very much enjoyed the character moments, and the long goodbyes. The composer’s work is growing on me as well.

(The Po stuff, though, was awful. She needs to go into the black hole sans spacesuit, post-haste. Seriously, if I wanted to watch irritating aliens spouting 21st century colloquialisms I’d binge The Orville. Dump her.)

As to the technobabble-laden time travel shenanigans — well, yeah, it’s quite the mess. Discovery can actually be really good in its small moments, but has yet to get a handle on putting together a grand, season-long story narrative that makes sense. That’s not so easy as it sounds — many fans, myself included, have unfavorably compared DSC’s long-form storytelling chops to that of GAME OF THRONES, but the truth is that for all its virtues the plotting on THRONES has itself been showing seams for awhile now. Doing SF and fantasy right on television has always been a challenge, and serialization has just made it more so. But that’s why these folks are paid the big bucks, to get it right.

I’m disappointed in the Crew’s review of this season. The critique seems to be toned down signifincalty from last year. And in my view, its not because this second season is better. In fact, it many ways, its quite worse. The show has some serious issues in terms of where this incarnation fits within the Star Trek universe. In fact, this show has the feel to me of being written and produced by people that simply don’t understand Star Trek. They are doubling down on a character and actress that is simply not suited for this show. Loved her on Walking Dead. Totally miscast for Star Trek.

Here’s hoping that Kurtz gets promoted out of the STU.

From my perspective, the show has earned the better treatment this season than last. The first season was a total train wreck in nearly every single way possible. This season is still not good. But it is showing signs of improvement.

The way I treat the dilemma of designing a show in the same relative time period of TOS despite being produced about half a century later (with their attendant incongruities) without getting mad is to treat the various Trek series as “historical portrayals” of events that occurred in the “reality” of the Star Trek Universe. Take for instance the WWII movies “The Longest Day” (1962) and “Dunkirk” (2017)–they both tell stories that occurred in the same relative timeframe and setting, but differ in narrative conventions, budgets, production design, and available technology. Both are interpretations of what happened during WWII, and neither one is a fully true portrayal of what actually happened. TOS and DISCO both tell stories of Starfleet officers serving on starships in the mid 23rd century. The former was portrayed by a production that didn’t have great budgets, and its designers never considered computers would use anything other than tape to store data, or know that it would be a trivial matter to record/synthesize/replay the Captain’s voice telling the computer to initiate auto-destruct with the secure code of “Code Zero Zero Zero Destruct Zero”. (Also, why do they use so much paper in the future? https://youtu.be/b8-pXqHPCLA) The latter was portrayed by a production company that had a lot more money to work with, and could depict space battles where ships could execute complex maneuvers instead of movements constrained by models and motion control photography. Audience expectations and visual design continuity then constrains the modern production’s interpretation of the story to ensure that it would be conceivable that the people, ships, and locations all belonged to the same universe. The “dark” bridge design follows current design trends of actual ships and planes, where NASA human factors research found that having too many things that light up and flash in cockpits, or having the ambient light turned up too high hampers the ability of pilots to be alerted (with a flashing light and/or sound cue) to a true trouble warning. When the new Picard series comes out, I fully expect that CBS’ modern interpretation of the late 24th century Starfleet will include things never imagined in the “future” portrayed in All Good Things (TNG), or The Visitor (DS9). I also don’t meant this to be an attack on the views expressed in the podcast, but the most gut-wrenching thing I felt was the discussion regarding the big reset button–the thought that you’d restore continuity by killing Michael off as a young girl on Vulcan. Yes, you do get to a state where you have another shot at following canon again, but you also throw out two years of character growth and development. Aside from Michael’s arc of learning how to reintegrate into human culture, learning from her mistakes that caused Prime Georgiou to get killed and the Klingon War to erupt, you also lose Saru’s loss of his threat ganglia and the Red Angel-facilitated accelerated evolution of his species on Kaminar, as well as Pike’s confrontation with and acceptance of his fate. Without the war, you also don’t get the catalyst event that caused the great Klingon houses to come together under a Chancellor. What made TNG much more watchable starting in Season 3 (aside from Riker growing his beard) is that the relationships between crewmembers were more established. By S3 in DS9, you had established working dynamics between Kira/Sisko, Kira/Dax, Quark/Odo not to mention the bromance of Bashir and O’Brien. Gul Dukat and Kai Winn were good antagonists whenever they crossed paths with the station crew. Imagine hitting the big reset button there–you’d have a hard time convincing the audience, even if you wink at the them and say that we join these characters a few years into their tour of duty; that they’ve already developed working interpersonal dynamics. No matter how painful the early seasons were for any of the Trek shows, we all still consider them a part of the overall story of their respective series. No matter how much antipathy the current showrunners and writers might have for the Bryan Fuller influence, I have a very hard time believing that they would treat the first two years as something that from the prime timeline, didn’t matter at all. Throwing all of that would be a big screw you to the work of the predecessors, and especially the work that the actors went through to develop and grow with their characters. Imagine having to tell Doug Jones that after evolving Saru to become a more self-assured and realized Starfleet officer that with a snap of a gauntlet, he’ll start the next season back to living in a world of fear. Figuratively speaking, what’s the point in “growing the beard” if Riker already started out with the beard? I think the way forward is the pivot. The same… Read more »

The funny thing is, all the reasons you gave to NOT hit the reset button are the very same reasons why I say hitting the rest button is a FANTASTIC idea. Save for it being an insult to the fans that loved the show as is.

Resetting to the point of killing off Michael as a child would be a horrible idea and it would alienate the people who have supported, cheered and loved these characters. There is nothing fantastic about it. It would be attempting to appease people who really don’t like, and don’t care to like the show and it will not make them like the show. I would have a very difficult time watching anything else they make for fear my time and emotion invested would just get trashed by the next loudest person who comes along angry about “not my trek” and who will NOT like Trek if it isn’t exactly how they want it. So sure, just slap those of us who have loved DSC in the face.

That’s how Roddenberry himself treated TOS in his novelization of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE — what you saw onscreen in your living room were not the “actual” events taking place on the Starship Enterprise in the 23rd Century, but a dramatization of them, and one that Admiral Kirk was not always happy with. At the time I thought that was a pretty cool conceit, actually.

I will be really annoyed if they do a hard reset button. There is nothing in the first two seasons that can’t fit into canon, even if you need to squint a bit at times.

We’ve spent the last two years not only getting invested in the characters, but getting invested in the 23rd century. I like the Klingon War, I like the darker Mudd, and I like Burnham being part of the Spock family. They can leave all of this intact, and just have Discovery go into the future where they won’t have to worry about canon anymore.

If even Burnham died on the Forge in the “new” reality, she’s still part of the 23rd Century story. Just not nearly as much, which will undoubtedly make a lot of fans (I’m not including myself here) very happy.

No. She’s not even a footnote. You can say this all you want but you would be relegating everything we went through moot and void. So you want to make the people who have done nothing but tout “Orville is real trek” happy, which they won’t be, but punch people who have spend two years enjoying and supporting this show in the face. Good way to lose those people and if you think ANYTHING will make those who are angry happy, you have another think coming.

If, as we know, Georgiou will be apart of season 3, and she will have a Section 31 show after, both Georgiou and Spock could go with the crew to the future and come back at some point to the same moment they left.

There is no indication that Sarek “hates” Starfleet. He seems to be elitist about his son going into the Vulcan Science Exhibition.

Sarek’s original disdain for Starfleet was supposed to be due to his Vulcan pacifism. That’s pretty hard to square with “The Vulcan Hello,” though. I personally don’t like Discovery‘s more martial take on the Vulcan race, but I mostly blame Star Trek: Enterprise for opening that particular door in the first place.

But that Vulcan society was 140 years before Discovery. Most societies undergo changes over such a lengthy time.

140 years before Discovery, yes, but thousands of years after Surak supposedly converted Vulcan society to pacifism. I personally found the notion that the Vulcans had lost their way and needed a savior in the guise of a human Starfleet Captain to restore them to their original values as very unfortunate, if not offensive, and it sure doesn’t square with Spock’s occasional barbs about humanity’s penchant for violence, since he would be in no position to judge. If you’re going to criticize DSC for its canon inconsistencies, ENT has to take its lumps as well.

That’s not a canon issue. Nothing had been said about what Vulcan society was 140 years ago. Not even hints. All we know is that Surak showed up about 2000 years ago and changed the entire society. It is entirely believable and possible that the Vulcan society had ebbs and flows in societal attitudes over the years. I wouldn’t call Archer a “savior”. That’s a stretch. He carried the katra due to an unfortunate circumstance. It also gave Archer a fresh insight into the Vulcan philosophy. Something he really needed as he did not look kindly on them. That incident has zero to do with humanities penchant for violence. There are some places where one needs to question what happened on Enterprise. But that is certainly not one of them. In fact, the episode addressed a fan issue. Why are the Vulcans of that time slightly different from the ones in Kirk’s day? There is your answer.

He sure hung out at Starfleet plenty in the movies for someone who hated it.

I think Lethe also retconned that entire explanation. Sarek was mad that Spock went into Starfleet, because he gave up an opportunity for his daughter so that Spock could join the Vulcan Science thingy. He would never admit that though, so he made up some BS about not liking Starfleet. Spock was tired of Sarek constantly criticizing his life choices, so he didn’t want to talk to Sarek anymore.

One of the unanswered questions this season is why did a red burst disable the Enterprise at the beginning of the season? I guess so Discovery would be the ship to do all the important stuff?

I don’t understand why you think there’s going to be some sort of reset and that Discovery will be stuck in the future. This is a trope that ST and many other shows have done since the beginning of TV… there’s the set up that it’s all going to change and that there’s no going back, and by the end of the episode everything is pretty much back to the way it was. Also, I think you guys are way more obsessed with canon that the writers and the main audience of the show. I think the writers see a ST show set roughly during the time of TOS is a plus… they get to use characters like Harry Mudd and Capt. Pike, and I don’t think they want to throw that all away. They may start out next season looking like they are stuck in the future, but I feel confident that they will find their way back to their present. And for what it’s worth, I LOVE the Enterprise set.

I hope they stay in the 23rd century, or at least come back after a season set in the future. I am starting to suspect that the show is actually going to stay in the future though. I just hope they don’t change the past.

This show listens to its fans more than it should. But at least after 15 years it seems safe to say ST has graduated past using temporal resets as a narrative device.

How much would actually change if Michael died on Vulcan? Obviously she was important in the lives of all of the characters on Discovery, but on a galactic scale I’m not sure it would make that much of a difference. In the pilot, she didn’t actually start the war with the Klingons. Georgiou stopped her before she could try her Vulcan hello, and T’kuvma was desperate to start a war with or without Michael. Without Michael, the Klingon War, the spore drive, the holo-communicators, and the new aesthetic would all still be there. The only way that it “fixes canon” is that it explains why Spock never mentioned her.

Didn’t she start the war by killing the one Klingon dude who was standing on the outside of the ship?

Fans don’t care. They’re used to the Berman Trek style of timey wimeyness and therefore used to a lot of it not making any sense (Quick, how did ENT’s Temporal Cold War actually end?)

Plus those who have partly written off this show because it doesn’t conform to the prior shows visually or otherwise (mostly visually) don’t feel they need for it to make sense as long as it “fixes” itself back to their liking. Many fans were, specifically, upset that the 2009 movie didn’t end with the ship getting sucked into the black hole and changing everything back in a wash of light.

I think we can all agree that TNG had some serious problems in its first two seasons, but they fixed those problems by season three. Can you imagine if, instead of fixing those problems, they had just retconned them away. Imagine if Q popped up and got rid of the Ferengi and Wesley and anything else people didn’t like about the first two seasons. It would have been terrible. Instead, they took the much more sensible step of fixing those problems. The Ferengi were able to grow into a much less stupid race, Wesley stopped saving the ship every other episode, etc. Discovery shouldn’t erase these perceived problems. They should fix them.

THIS. Luckily the Kurtzman people seem to be of the same mind. Even if they do overcorrect when they fix things.