Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Discovery | 5x06 "Whistlespeak"

Ah yes we had to have a Prime Directive bending episode in Disco.

My expectations for this one were low based on the preview, but I enjoyed this one more than I thought I might. A very "traditional" Star Trek plot in many ways.

Watching the Culber/Stamets interactions, I wonder if they're going to address the "awakening" that Stamets had following his genetic modification. That's something that's been mentioned a bunch of times (as recently as two episodes ago), but I don't remember them ever digging really deep into it. It seems like there are some parallels there that could be explored.

For a split second, when they looked at the paper with the list of scientists, I had hope that the Discovery would fly to Denobula. That would have been so much more interesting than what we've gotten. Although I give them credit for doing a more traditional Star Trek episode with a bunch of technobabble, prime directive shenanigans and the obligatory human-like pre-warp civilization.

The beginning and last line of Dr. Culber's conversation with his grandmother recreation felt a bit stilted, as if he wasn't fluent, which was strange because the middle part of the conversation had a goof flow to it. It made me wonder if there was some failure in directing or if Wilson Cruz is just not that fluent in Spanish compared to the actress for the grandmother, which is understandable and I'm not knocking him for it.

Anyway, I quite liked this episode. Very classic "planet of the week" Star Trek deal that I'm always down for. Break that prime directive. Save those natives from themselves. You can splurge on a plot or two of those. We've seen it before, we've seen it again. It had a solution more rooted in a character moment rather than Treknobabble which I appreciated. Thumbs up for Tilly's endurance, they made that whole run not look easy.

I can't help but think them teleporting to Moll and L'ak with the fresh new clue would essentially play right into their own hands.

Annotations for 5x06 up at: https://startrek.website/post/9827520

Today’s annotations will be a little late - it’s been a day (to those few who were looking out for them).

Culber's newfound spirituality arc felt kinda shoehorned in as an odd piece of character development in a show that's about to end. I actually initially really enjoyed that he felt weird about hosting a Trill spirit (Trek has a habit of stuff getting right back to normal after a traumatic experience) but it's dragged on without a clear direction as to what it means. I have to assume it will become relevant to the main plot at some point. Discovery surely wouldn't leave weird thread dangling, right? Right?

The whole idea of a humanoid habitat built around a semi-functioning weather control network was cool. Though I would have loved to have seen the dead civilization around the tower they eventually go to!