Star Trek Discovery - Episodes 8-9 random comments from a Cadet level fan

And so ends the first part of season 1. The show comes back from hiatus in January.

I think they are developing the characters nicely and you can imagine them being a crew for future exploration post-war. However, the plot lines do point to the fact that each may have some serious problems adjusting to life post-war:

Lorca - heroic leadership but also crazed from blowing up his previous crew and being tortured by the Klingons and pushing the rules with the Disco crew. He could be relieved of duty at anytime by the admiralty of Star Fleet.
Ash - heroic soldier but crazed by being tortured by the Klingons and of course the lingering suspicion that he is actually a genetically/surgically altered Klingon.
Stamets - heroic scientist but crazed by having Tardigrade DNA injected into him and having had too many trips into the multiverse with the magical mushroom spores.
Burnham - heroic efforts all around but of course there is still the matter of the life sentence for mutiny.

About the only two characters who are "normal" are Saru and Tilly!

Anyway, love the character development, the production values and pacing of the story telling. We get a little more insight into Saru's character in Episode 8 and he continues to be one of the more interesting characters in the show.

Some comments in no particular order.

An inconsistently alarm about Pavho, the planet of galactic peace .....

Episode 8 introduced us to the planet Pavho and its inhabitants. Presumably, the idea of using their transmitter to detected cloaked ships was a recent idea because the signal was newly detected by Star Fleet. Thus, you would think Pavho is out in the boonies somewhere otherwise they would have known about them much sooner as they have probably been blasting that transmitter for a while as a way to announce to the universe they were there. Given that this is the case, it is pretty interesting the Klingons knew of the planet and could quickly get there. And of course, in Episode 9, the Discovery was only a few hours away from a star base using traditional warp suggesting the planet isn't too far away.

In episode 9, Lorca gets to give his version of the St. Crispen's Day speech (Shakespeare Henry V).

Meanwhile for a warrior race, the Klingons of ST-Disco don't seem too concerned about making sure people are actually dead. L'Rell tells them she will make sure Cornwell is dead.

What do we see?

We see L'Rell dragging Cornwell into the dead people's room. And later, we see Kol denouncing the deceptiveness of L'Rell and seem to threaten her death.

What happens?

We don't see Kol have one of his minions make sure Cornwell was actually dead since they are suspicious of L'Rell? And of course, in episode 9, we see an injured L'Rell in the dead people's room and we find out BOTH Cornwell and L'Rell are NOT dead after all!

As for episode 9, great action and pacing but once again a few plausibility issues.

Of course, you need the away mission to plant the data transmitters. And, of course, one of them just has to be in the bridge of the Klingon ship. However, if you think about it, they are capturing data points and so ANY two distal points within the Klingon ship would probably do. But that would be rather dull for them to plant BOTH data pods in closets in the front and back of the Klingon ship!

Great fight scene between Burnham and Kol!!

Finally, it is about time, Stamets is checked out by medical personnel in Episode 9!

If someone had been genetically altered by the addition of Tardigrade DNA (or DNA from anywhere!), you would think they would be checking him out medically all the time to see what is happening. And of course, he is being plugged into the jump drive machine for each spore jump and comes out looking terrible, you would think they would be checking him out every time. Way back in the 20th century, NASA had all sorts of monitoring equipment on the astronauts when they flew spam in a can rocket rides! Meanwhile, in ST-Disco world, ONLY after they plan to do 133 jumps do they attach Stamets to medical monitoring equipment?

But anyway, it is just a TV show!

Overall, am enjoying the characters and the production values and plot lines even with the various holes in them.

Season 1.5 in January 2018. Where are they? Are they in the Mirror Universe? Is Ash a Klingon spy or not? Will Stamets come back from his Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds trip? All this and more .......