Logline
A distress call from Lt. Noonien-Singh compels Spock to disobey orders and take the USS Enterprise and its crew into disputed space, risking renewed hostilities with the Klingons in a bid to aid their shipmate.
Written by Henry Alonso Myers & Akiva Goldsman
Directed by Chris Fisher
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Right now, the plan is to post the /c/startrek discussion when the episode drops on Thursdays. Once the global community has had some time to watch and digest what they’ve seen, the /c/daystrominstitute discussion will go live on Sundays for a more in-depth analysis. This is subject to change as we evaluate what works best for the community as a whole.
Regarding Nurse Chapel almost dying - this is one of the TV/movie tropes that I think is such a cheap and terrible device and I am tired of it. Discovery was full of these scenes where they make you believe a main character really almost died, only to survive after all, and having their crew mates weep for them (I am looking at you Burnham). There are much better ways to create good drama.
@triktrek Oh, boy - Can we talk about “Picard”?! Data dies in Nemesis, a great and noble sacrifice. Which is then diminished, because we brought him back for Picard! The staff didn’t think the Nemesis sacrifice was a worthy sendoff, or perhaps *they* wanted to do the sending off. So we’ll kill him again, this time with feeling! But, season three, the old gang is all getting together again. Maybe we can resurrect him one more time? (I’m aware of the supposed differences, but really. It was Data.)
And they killed off Picard! Another great and noble sacrifice! But no, not really, let’s bring him back as an android, you’ll never notice the difference! 🙄
It’s really at the point where a character’s death is robbed of all drama, because there’s always a way to resurrect them. It was a dream, they were in the Mirror universe, the mycelium network made a copy, etc.
As someone who actually enjoyed Discovery, that’s one of the things I couldn’t stand about it. And it really disappoints me that they used it here. You can’t have the stakes of every damn episode be that high, so it really bothers me that we get it in the first episode of the season. I really hope it’s not a sign of things to come.
I’d normally agree with you but I don’t think they were trying to fool the audience in this case. It was more about showing Spock’s emotional reaction.
Still, there’s better ways of showing that than the almost dying trope.
spoiler
Nurse Chapel is in TOS - so there wasn’t really any risk that she was going to die here.
It makes even less sense on a prequel show where you know the characters are for sure around longer.