Ups & Downs From Star Trek: Discovery 5.6 - Whistlespeak

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[intouchdm]

To be fair the doctor has been brought back from the dead, experienced mushroom hell, travels by flying mushroom teleporting space ship, travelled to the future to be possessed by an 800 yr old dead man. I would say his life is ALL spiritual experiences and his heads just catching up to it.

[librarian-D]

Tilly giving the water to the Ravah....was almost like a 'metaphor' of the Prime Directive, you think your helping someone but you don't know where your actions may lead!

[BigNWide]

Missed an observation: The episode is "Whistlespeak", which the people use because it carries longer distances, and is exactly the reason that whales communicate that way. Whales. No cetacean would miss that observation.

[stacyp]

Burnam must never have watched Ghostbusters. If someone asks if you’re a god, you say”YES!”

[Animaniac]

I found "Just enjoy it." As Paul being both unable to understand how Hugh feels, but also being supportive for him feeling it. He's a good partner.

[johnbrinker]

A science nitpick: as Tilly and Ravah were slowly suffocating, surely one of them would have thought to extinguish the several lit torches that would have been burning up the last of the available oxygen.

[jmarquiso]

Also Tilly's marathon is also a great callback to season 1 with Tilly and Burnham and Starfleet training.

[MotherShipMedia]

I loved Book playing Asteroids for his downtime lol

[sahaal]

I love the editor for putting those easter eggs in the background of the infinity room, lol.

[NathanWeeks]

Something I have a problem with is they never recognize that creating the rain towers was still a violation of the Prime Directive. Disguising them as natural formations may have been to reduce the interference, but ultimately they did exactly what the Prime Directive is there for: to prevent influencing the evolution of a species in unpredictable ways, for which worshiping and sacrificing to the towers is a great example. Arguably then, Burnham is just helping to correct a previous violation.

[KyleWitten]

Minor correction for those on the other side of the pond. He specified that it was a legal pad. It looks to be American sized, not A4. American legal pads are 8.5x14 inches - approximately the same width as A4, but about 9cm longer.

[frankwilhoit]

Once again we see that Kovich does not report to anyone, and although there are undoubtedly people whom he works *with*, we will never (in the Discovery context) see them or learn anything about them. These loose ends are too many and too large and too tempting; they reinforce my conviction that, had there been a 6th season, Kovich would have been the primary antagonist. Failing that, I expect him to turn up in the Section 31 film -- looking the same age as he does in the 3100s. He bought that "genuine C21 legal pad" at Staples, for cash. He probably has many much older items of similar provenance.

[greenrangerx]

Tilly queen of endurance. I love the call back all the way back to Season 1 and all of her endurance training.

[SechristCircus]

I think this is just what discovery needed. This show has spent so long with stories going at warp 9, a nice slower episode was a breath of fresh air (no episode pun intended).

[jasonwalker]

My favourite part of the episode was when Michael started preforming first aide on the woman with the dust inhalation issue, trying to keep her breathing. The standard, almost universally used trope is for the local primitive healer to come over and shoo the more advanced helper away while they try and apply their primitive death cult techniques. This even happened in Star Trek IV, when 20th century doctors tried to stop Bones from fixing Chekhov.

In this episode however, the primitive healer runs over looking alarmed and says, "don't stop, you're the only thing keeping her alive". And that makes sense because while they might not know modern research-tweaked CPR techniques, they're not idiots. "Keep them breathing" is pretty basic first aide, and you'd expect anyone giving medical help (even a primitive) to know that. And he did, and it was great!

The sound based dust removal technique was interesting. Ultrasonic removal of dust from lungs doesn't seem practical in real life, but it's also not impossible, so that makes it the most creative yet realistic attempt to think up an innovative primitive medical technique I've ever seen.

Oh and Sean, Homeopathy is just water. Literally just water. This wasn't just water, and no matter how poorly it might possibly work as a treatment when statistically analyzed it still has a significant real world physical effect (Michael passes out from it, so it's doing something), so it's still way, way better than Homeopathy. Seriously, look up what Homeopathy is. It's such a laugh. It's not even magic, it's just dumb.

[DanielAWhite]

My big down was that they titled the whole episode on the culture's Whistlespeak and was barely a plot point.

[Hodor_]

Hi Seàn and the team, just wanted to thank you all for Ups&Downs. Love it, love it, love it.

[antney]

Tilly literally said they could cure the woman with a sonic disruptor or whatever. Which is exactly what the aliens did.

[NankitaBR]

18:15 I think that one small change could have changed this moment completely and turned that down into an up. If at that moment when someone's life was at stake Adira got completely "in the zone" and became very assertive, confident and professional (and stopped the second guessing), then that scene would have been great because Rayner could just turn to them and say "See? I knew you had it in you. When the going gets tough you are able to get tough yourself and rise up to the challenge."

[fozzyrinker]

I think it might be effecting Hugh differently due to him coming back from death.