Star Trek Discovery Episode 14 - relationship status: "Its complicated" and other things

Episode 14 was a break from the shot-em up action of episode 13 and soon to drop season finale episode 15 on Sunday that will probably have a fair amount of shot-em up.

Thus, it was a time for some heart-to-heart talks among the cast and crew.

At the center of it all was Tilly. She talks to Tyler and others join in. She talks to Burnham to get Burnham to talk to Tyler.

Meanwhile, Saru continues to grow as a character as he is now the captain of the ship and shows his blend of getting the job done in the opening when he quickly sized up the situation in the transporter room. He also exhibits compassion as she filled Burnham in on Tyler's condition. He continued to display his generosity and firmness in the sickbay conversation with Tyler.

Stamets took center stage for a scene with Tyler and his response was what you would anticipate from the character we have seen develop through the series. Well done by Rapp. He also steps in with his engineering acumen with the terraforming the dead moon to grow his beloved spores.

However, the script-writers really dropped the ball for the lines they fed Anthony Rapp when Cornwell asked him to jump to Starbase 1. Stamets says something like: Starbase 1 is 100 AU from earth and a little over a light year from our current position.

If I heard that right, the science consultant on the screen writing team should check his or her astronomy notes!

In our world, 1 light year might as well be a 100 light years as it is simply too far to travel. But in Star Trek world 1 light year is like crossing the street! If you are visiting star systems in various parts of the Alpha Quadrant, you have to be traveling hundreds of light years in a matter of hours or days. So 1 light year is nothing and the nervousness about traversing that distance doesn't make sense.

As for 1 AU, that is an astronomical unit, the distance from the sun to the earth. Thus, 100 AU is beyond the Kuiper Belt. This means Starbase 1 is not very far from earth. Discovery arrives at Starbase 1 to find it has been taken over by the Klingons. If the Klingons are that close to the earth already, that is pretty bad for the Federation! This would be like the tanks circling around Paris in World War II. This is equal to the Allied Armies closing in on Berlin. The earlier comment of having lost 20% of Federation territory is bad but to have the Klingons pounding on the front door of earth is very very very bad.

We shall see if episode 15 reveals the "deal with the devil (mirror Georgiou) that Sarak and Cornwell have made. Sarak has a wonderful scene with Burnham as he leaves ship. Well played by Frain and Martin-Green.

The premise of mounting an attack on the Qo'noS, the Klingon home world, may make for good drama, but in terms of military tactics that would be somewhat unrealistic. It would be like trying to launch an massive attack on Berlin prior to D-day. Of course, the Allied air forces were able to launch night bombing raids on Berlin and other German cities but there is a huge difference between air raids and sending in ground troops and tanks.

Discovery sneaking in there to map out Qo'noS and gain other intelligence data is fine. They can sneak via the spore drive technology. But the rest of the fleet would have to get there the old fashioned way and would(!) (should?) be detected on the way there.

One would assume the Klingons have good defenses at Qo'noS and would have robust layers of defense around it. Perhaps, the 24 Klingon houses are so divided that they don't bother to defend their home world? Perhaps, only one of the houses defend the home world? Dunno.

But the premise of attacking your opponent's home world is unrealistic unless you have some aspect of military superiority that the Federation at this point do not have.

Anyway, will see where episode 15 leaves us. I suspect there will be a cliff hanger to set up season 2 so more surprises to come.

Episode 14 ends with the delicious irony of mirror Georgiou taking the bridge with only Cornwell, Saru, and Burnham knowing the real truth. Episode 1-2's arc had Burnham taking matters into her own hands against Georgiou to the dismay of Saru. This time around Saru and Burnham may need to team up to prevent mirror-Georgiou from leading the Discovery and the Federation into a disaster.