Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Star Trek, Season 1, Episode 13: What's Past is Prologue



Lorca is continuing his revolution against Georgiou, releasing all his minions who have been locked up and tortured forever. Personally I think someone who has been suffering constant torture for a year or so may be less function than these people because they all come out the agony boxes raring to go

This is also why you need to KILL YOUR ENEMIES GUYS! Evil empires, stop leaving your enemies around to plan epic revenge. It’s a bad idea, just kill them

And if you are going to imprison them, maybe not on your royal throne ship within stabbing distance of the Emperor?

They also have Terran Landry which doesn’t make up for discarding her so quickly but it’s something I guess

Lorca’s first stop is to Stamets because he knows lots of shiny things. He also sold Lorca out but he’s nicely slimy so is quite willing to change his allegiance at the drop of a hat and can I say yet again how the Terran empire could not be functional. Lorca also explains how he ended up in Prime universe in the first place: transporter malfunction. And if we know anything about Star Trek the only thing more likely to malfunction in freaky ways than a transporter is the holodeck. Health and Safety regs are just lacking in the Federation.

Stamets knows where Georgiou keeps her deadly bioweapons so that thins out a lot of her followers

Georgiou isn’t bothered because she’s evil and what’s some dead minions? She plans to go hunt Lorca down while Michael presumes to advise the Emperor. Hot tip, fascist emperors aren’t big on unsolicited advice and she has Michael thrown in the brigg. Since Michael is Michael, she evades the guards and goes into hiding instead.

Meanwhile Lorca calls to remind us he’s a) obsessed with Michael and b) he’s even more fascist than the Emperor just in case anyone was thinking that Emperor Lorca would be better than Emperor Georgiou. He really goes for a record level of evil here

Georgiou and her forces confront Lorca and it goes pretty badly for her - she has to transport out while her people are slaughtered, leaving Lorca free to take over the ship, declare himself awesome and make another plea to Michael to join him in his fascist future. She’s not buying it. Not needing him any more, Lorca also kills Terran Stamets since he can’t be trusted which, to be honest, is fair

Michael has managed to contact the Discovery and they compare notes: she tells them all about Lorca the evil, and they warn her that evil Stamets has exploited the Magic Mushrooms which is killing them all and because of that will destroy all life everywhere. Because Magic Mushrooms are important. Saru is bemused at how anyone can be so short sighted as the Terrans


Guys… I think we’re supposed to be the Terran reality and Prime is the alternate reality. Because this is us. But also insert my usual question how a multiple planet empire can manage to exist and thrive when it just does everything so badly?

They have a plan - to shoot the big orange mushroom thing on the Death Star so long as Michael can take down the containment field.

The problem is by all calculations this is a suicide mission… which Saru doesn’t accept, pulling out a great big Epic Speech and pretty much solidifying him as captain in a moment of awesome. Tilly is inspired and she comes up with a master plan to save them all, much to Stamet’s praise

Back on the Death Star, Michael finds Georgiou and continues to have issues with the woman who earned her loyalty, the woman she betrayed and the woman she can’t let go of even if this is the evil clone of hers. She has a plan to bring down Lorca

Which involves showing up with Georgiou as an apparent prisoner and being willing to support Lorca (but not in his bed because uckies uckies no) if he lets her crew leave. Lorca hails the Discovery so they can talk and Michael launches her master plan

Her master plan is basically her and Georgiou attacking and entire room full of guards. And the Discovery shooting the ship which is 10 times their size but apparently managing to shake it to its core… don’t they have better shields than this? This ship would be useless in combat. They win and Michael proves she’s a super noble Federation person by not killing Lorca. And Georgiou proves she isn’t by killing him.

She then promises to buy Michael time for her to escape - Georgiou is a defeated Emperor: in the cut throat world of the Terrans there’s no way she can live now. She plans to hold off the enemy while Michael is transported onto the Discovery. Instead Michael grabs her and brings her on board as well

After which the Discovery destroys the spore drive on the Death Star, saving the Magic Mushroom Network, all life everywhere (which depends on the Magic Mushroom Network) and uses the shockwave to transport them back to the prime universe.

9 months in the future

Which is a problem because those 9 months were long enough for the Klingons to win the war





We see a fair few members of the crew here and I really wish we’d explored these a bit more earlier in the series. Rather than the 8 million twists and surprises it would have been nice to know who these people are, to not have people on the bridge be extras. I mean, I’m not expert on Star Trek, but isn’t this unusual? Don’t we generally know most of the prominent members of the crew?

I still hold that Lorca the immoral Star Fleet captain would have been interesting - but I can see why the writers have decided to make him Eviler than Evil now: so no-one wants to support him being the Emperor and we can actually be Team!Georgiou despite the whole Kelpian snacking

It is going to be interesting to see Georgiou in the Prime universe - could she possibly adapt?

I’d almost forgotten the Klingon war. I say again, there’s just too much rammed into this season!