Star Trek Discovery Discussion: “People of Earth”

I’m rather busy this weekend, so I’m foregoing a review of this week’s Discovery, a Jonathan Frakes-directed episode (written by Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt) which takes the crew to an isolationist earth, where they encounter hostility, divisions, and…

…(ulp!) a Child Genius.

Discuss.

12 replies on “Star Trek Discovery Discussion: “People of Earth””

  1. So, the reveal that Earth left the Federation and went xenophobic enough to build a (space) wall to keep out people, even people who were just looking for help, was something that was so different from everything I expect of things that I legitimately paused the show and had to take a moment to process it.

    • Yeah, that got me too. That the Federation had been essentially sidelined was pretty clear, but that was definitely not one of the elements I was expecting, although in context of other developments/reveals it does make a lot of sense. I was also initially expecting some kind of time-travel based reset at the conclusion to the season but, given the episode’s resolution, I’m now not so sure and think they’re actually going to run with it and just “reboot” the Federation, or maybe a successor to it, sans dilithium.

      Also, OT, but in both “Edge-ium” and Firefox I’m seeing that spoilered text in clear until I move the cursor over it, at which point the spoiler protection kicks in and then works as expected on further mouseovers. Possible glitch from the recent site update?

      • I am seeing the same spoiler behavior.

        I think the lack of dilithium in the universe is going to be offset by the spore drive. They’ll outfit the regenerating Federation ships with spore drives, allowing post-warp civilization that way.

    • I think it’s too early to tell. My take is that we now basically have a standard quest setup, and the Discovery will now boldy go to explore strange new worlds in order to seek out why the dilithium went inert/exploded and to rebuild the Federation. Also, the Discovery crew were, if anything, truer to the Federation’s stated ideals in this episode than any episode of Trek I’ve seen in quite some time.

      Even if it doesn’t end up as Trek as we knew it, I’m certainly intrigued to see where they go with it.

    • People have been saying that, literally, since the show started. It has grown progressively more like Trek, albeit, in this case, far after the Trek we knew. And for those who want something closer to TOS, they still plan to do the series about the pre-Kirk days on the Enterprise, and they certainly have the cast for it. Doubtless there will be elements not seen in the 1960s since, you know, it’s not the 1960s, but I look forward to it. This is a different take on the future, but if you turned off the first season (and there were reasons for that), you might want to take a look at this year. It shows potential, even if conceptually it differs from the original series. So did DS9, and it was one of the strongest Trek entries.

      Though the child genius gives me pause. I honestly think Wil Wheaton did what he could with Wesley Crusher, but the character did not win over a lot of people, and the second coming of the concept does give one pause.

    • The universe without the Federation isn’t Trek, no, but Discovery and her crew setting out into that is, and they’ve gone out of their way to showcase the Federation ideals. I love it.

  2. I’ve just caught up on Discovery. (I hadn’t even watched the second season yet.) I made a couple of observations:

    * season 2 was basically defeating Skynet. That isn’t bad. It basically worked.

    * season 3 looks like it’s basically the setup for Andromeda. Hopefully it doesn’t go as far off the rails as Andromeda did in the end. This is actually a good development, I think, because it can lead to multiple seasons of plots.

    I don’t expect a time travel reset at the end of this season, or ever actually, based on the lengths they went to to “fix” the timeline.

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