#whistlespeak

[quasi-normalcy]

I think that modern Star Trek does a much better job of doing "Prime Directive" episodes without being condescending or chauvinistic in their depictions of "primitive" cultures, or making absolutely horrifying moral choices out stringent observation of some idiotic, inflexible rule. I think that this is one area where it's clearly improved over Trek from the 60s or the 90s. I assume that someone in Discovery's writing room must have studied anthropology or something.

[xfilesposterproject]

Another great episode of Star Trek: Discovery this week! Here’s my retro poster for “Whistlespeak”, a classic Trek adventure.

[staringdownabarrel]

Okay, so here's my thoughts on the new episode of Discovery, Whistlespeak.

This is a pretty good representation of the kind of episode that I was hoping this season would have. It touched on what different cultures believe about death, and it touched on the idea that a culture might develop a religion around far more advanced societies that were now apparently long gone.

In this episode, we're introduced to a prewarp culture that survived only because the Denobulans had left some weather control machinery behind that made the planet hospitable. In the centuries since the Burn, they'd managed to get inside one of these facilities and basically build a religion around it. This had only gotten stronger since the other similar towers had long since stopped working.

This is the kind of thing that makes a lot of intuitive sense. Of course if you leave a bunch of technology around near a culture that doesn't have the technical expertise to know what it is or even the theoretical capacity to make an educated guess, they'd make a religion out of it. And of course if you put a culture through a period of crisis, they're going to be drawn to certain supernatural or quasi-supernatural explanations for what they're going through.

Really, my contention here is that we haven't been shown this happening with the Progenitors. The entire galaxy had an existential crisis once the Burn happened. All the major powers apparently fell and even species that went unscathed don't seem to have quite had the same standard of living that they had before. And while the methods the Progenitors used to be progenitor-y might have been better understood by the 31st century, they'd probably still be in that region where it's basically indistinguishable from magic to a lot of people; especially if it's outside their specific field of study.

It isn't a question of whether or not a warp capable species will have religion or even theistic religions specifically. The Klingons and the Bajorans are both prominently deeply religious societies whose religions either actively involve deities or have in the past (the Klingons killed theirs). It's only a question of scale. A 31st century Progenitor cult wouldn't need to be widespread; it'd just need to be there, and this season would be a good time to showcase them.

The other thing I found interesting about this episode was that it was an interesting edge case of the Prime Directive. In terms of its premise, it really was the TOS episodes where they'd find some planet where some previous mission had made some major impact on the local culture in some way and the crew had to repair the damage, except taken to the nth degree. Instead of the cultural impact being something that happened in the last few years, it'd happened centuries previously.

This is the kind of edge case that I think Discovery really could have done well over the last few seasons. It'd make sense if there were dozens of cultures like this around the galaxy that nobody really knew about because of how hard getting from place to place was during the Burn.

Overall, I did like this episode. It just drew attention to a specific issue I have with this season. As a standalone episode it was fine, though.

[quasi-normalcy]

Pretty iffy on creating interactive holograms of your dead loved ones to alleviate grieve. That seems like it has the potential to be very, very ghoulish.

[quasi-normalcy]

Hmm, some thoughts.

"Red Directive" - evocative of the prime directive, the omega directive, and perhaps red matter (which jives with my supposition that the secret that they're looking for is linked with the Romulan supernova somehow), and red angel (though I hope it's not that).

"Under the Twin Moons" - A return to Coppelius from PIC season 1, perhaps? Would be interesting to see how the androids have progressed over the last thousand years (and I noticed a thing that looked like that Romulan puzzle box in the trailer).

"Mirrors" might be yet more mirror universe stuff (though I hope not).

There's not too much to infer from the other titles, but "Life, Itself" sounds like it might be related to the proto-humanoids from "The Chase" (or perhaps synthetic life?).

All of this is just wildly speculative, of course.

[startrekepisodebattles]

Round 2 Battle 10...

DIS: S5, E06 - Whistlespeak

DS9: S3, E22 - Explorers

DS9: S4, E01 - The Way Of The Warrior (Part 1)

Voting ended onJun 11

Whistlespeak: Captain Burnham must consider breaking the Prime Directive when a local tradition in a pre-warp society threatens Tilly's life. Culber tries to connect with Stamets and Adira steps up when Rayner assigns them a position on the bridge.

Explorers: Sisko rebuilds an ancient Bajoran space vessel from the blueprints, and he and Jake take the ship on a trip, attempting to prove that the ancient Bajorans went beyond their solar system without warp drive.

The Way Of The Warrior (Part 1): Amidst a growing threat of attack from the Dominion, Sisko becomes concerned by the arrival of a Klingon fleet at the station and enlists the help of Lieutenant Commander Worf to uncover their plans.

[lostinaflashforward]

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY - Recensione 5x06 "Whistlespeak"

Star Trek: Discovery si avvicina alla sua conclusione e offre un'altro buon episodio, che mescola la tradizione e l'amore per l'esplorazione ad alcune sottotrame che vedono il ritorno di vecchie problematiche.

RECENSIONE 5x06

[ddym42]

Coincidence?

Or have we not seen the last of Jinaal?