Why did Lorca suddenly care about other creatures (ones hes never met, and actually betrayed him) and want to defend them from Klingons despite even not knowing if the Klingons would attack the planet? Its insulting to the viewer to just randomly disregard a character's pre-established traits and act in a way that totally contradicts that without any explanation as to why.
Other than the fact that Saru would have kicked up a gigantic stink? For an excuse to attack the Ship of the Dead. He knew it was coming and was itching to provoke a confrontation, so he could order his crew to figure out a way. Remember he knows Admiral Cornwell wants him gone, and he doesn't know whether she'd given that order or submitted her report before her capture. A confrontation before the next visit to a Starbase was his only certain option to fight the Ship of the Dead.
I beleive again you're falling into the same trap - that is, ignoring Lorca's pre-established traits. He doesn't give a shit what Saru thinks. He has ignored him and argued with him before. There is no logic in your argument that a captain took an action to avoid his first officer disagreeing.
I don't believe his motivation is to blindly attack Klingons. His motivation has been set over and over again - to end the war. How does attacking the ship of the dead do that?
I know he wants Admiral Cornwell gone, but he has no idea she was on that ship - none. That was made clear. It was also made clear that he knew she hadn't told starfleet anything. He didn't view this as his last chance to attack a Klingon ship. That doesn't even make any sense anyway, he knew the war would continue - as it is clearly established later. There is no logic in your argument.
Why did the writers just totally discard the Pavho story line entirely? Last week it was all the rage and they communicated to the Klingons and then this week 5 minutes in we've forgotten they even existed. All that effort to introduce a whole new lifeform and its just thrown away and with it the logic for them meeting the Klingons at all. What?
Considering their visual similarity to the spores, I think it's a fair bet that they'll be back.
This does not justify their absence from this episode, and still makes no sense given that they tried to get the Klingons to come. They betrayed Lorca and clearly wanted to orchestrate peace - but when they arrive, and they're both in space, they do nothing. What?
Then suddenly after what a year of trying to work out how to get through the cloak, they suddenly have a solution within 2/3 hours and can magically get through the cloak. Ignoring the fact that this breaks canon and makes no sense for future star trek, this is the worst example of Voyager save the day in 3 seconds with absurd technobabble and ignore all the established parts of the show. It just makes no sense that suddenly two/three crew members have magically come up with a solution to the cloaking problem that the entire federation thus far was not able to do so.
We have to trust here that the writers have a plan. They will not be allowed to leave the universe in a state inconsistent with later canon. It's also worth bearing in mind that this is an early cloak, and we can assume that over time the Klingons refined it to remove the vulnerability. As for 'suddenly have a solution' - there's nothing saying they didn't have this idea before, but without knowledge of where the Ship of the Dead would be there was no way to implement it.
There are several logical flaws in your argument:
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There is no indication that they already knew of this approach at all. It was mentioned in any previous episode nor was it mentioned in this one.
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The ship of the dead is not the only ship with a cloak. It was established over the past few episodes that they've equipped many many ships with the cloak. You can't counter my argument by asserting without evidence that they might have had this idea all along. Thats just lazy storytelling if true.
Its also been clearly established that starfleet have had many battles with ships with cloaks in the previous episodes, in fact, thats why convincing the Pavho to help them was so critical. The admirals said that the klingons with cloaks were overhwhelming them.
I mean that brings up another issue - why did they not return to ask the Pavho for help, even after destroying the Klingon ship? Why did that just get disregarded because of one set back?
- Trusting writers having a plan doesn't make any sense. You want me to suspend logical thought in the hopes that they will stop telling stories with plot holes? All evidence to date suggests they don't care about canon and keep writing plot holes and ask their characters to do things that break with what they already established. I'm not sure what you mean by "will not be allowed". the three star trek movies got away with it. Enterprise got away with it (although they at least came up with a vague reason for it). Who is going to stop them? :P
We'll also casually skip past the part where they were able to transport over to the Klingon ship despite the fact that she had her shields up - we'll gloss over this part.
They explicitly reference this in the episode with a statement that there is a brief window after the cloak drops where shields are inoperative. Shields and weapons do not function while cloaked (even the prototype Bird of Prey in ST6 which can fire torpedoes under cloak can't raise shields) which allows their beamout.
Theres a brief period /as/ she cloaks, not as she uncloaks. If this were true this would upend a lot of previous TNG/DS9/VOY episodes.
Then suddenly Tyler is now suffering PTSD and unable to function despite being able to fight her and scar her terribly the last time he met her. Alright we'll just ignore that.
Except Tyler is Voq. His personality is a construct, and he's not aware. I am more convinced by this theory than ever. It's not PTSD - it's his conditioning breaking. It's not an accident that it's specifically L'Rell who triggers his incapacitation.
Well, thats a horrible storyline because as I've said before every episode was a disgusting attempt to fool viewers into thinking the opposite. It just speaks volumes that the writers want to treat viewers like children all so they can have a big reveal that anybody with any smarts at all would realise was going to happen.
Either way, just seeing her triggered him. Why wasn't this the case on the ship? Him being Voq does not in any way explain the plot screw up that it fucks him up when they want to for the benefit of the story.
Its still pretty obvious they are trying their best to fool us into a bait and switch and Tyler is really Voq. If he isn't Voq then what the fuck was the Voq storyline all about and why did it just end early on? What a waste of time.
Yep. He's Voq.
Well, thats a terrible shame, because its treating the viewer as babies. If they wanted to do this then they should have made it explicit and we'd be on the edge of our seats waiting to see when he snaps or changes. Like on BSG. Instead we're treated to repeated efforts by the writers every week to fool us into thinking "no... that can't be it.." and repeated attempts to make us think he /isnt/ Voq. Only to bait and switch and go "hahahaha bet you weren't expecting that!" as if its some marvelous peice of awesome writing. Come on.
The episode crams far too much into itself and the post-klingon explosion sequence was just fucking weird. Everybody seemed in a trance and... I don't know. It doesn't make sense. I also don't understand why they destroyed the Klingon ship. How did other Klingons find out that the ship was destroyed? Do they not know their cloak has been detected? Why can't they just change their cloaking frequencies? What is this nonsense.
I don't see how the Ship of the Dead would have had time to get the message out. Kol would certainly not have had the opportunity to give the order. As for how the others know the Ship of the Dead has been destroyed, its silence to communications would be a pretty good argument.
I'm not sure that silence of communications is a good argument for assuming destruction, but... yeah.
Wouldn't it have been smarter to disable the Klingon ship, capture prisoners, and capture the cloaking device for themselves? We know that this is the way they act as the admiral and burnham have said this in previous episodes. But in this one...nope! Destruction. Throw away the advantage of being able to capture a cloak for themselves. Throw away burnham's previous logic of capturing a klingon leader. Nope. Throw away the chance for peace. Just destroy them and hope the Klingons don't adapt and don't get super mad?
Lorca is a warmonger. Destruction is the only option for him, he's not interested in diplomacy. He's got a Gorn skeleton in his lab - he's clearly someone who doesn't particularly care about the rights of sentients. Also, capture would have involved CQC against a ship full of soldiers, something Discovery does not seem to be crewed for.
Yup, I agree. But why does the entire crew - which are not warmongers, not ask what I did? Why did Burnham, despite outlining the exact same approach in episode 1/2, not do so here? Why does Saru not object, as you claimed he would have earlier if they didn't try to save the planet?
I would have bought this if Lorca had to overrule his staff and they at least suggested an alternative. But they don't. They all ignore previously established traits and just go along with cold blooded murder despite being /starfleet/.
Oh and why was Lorca happy to twist Paul into hurting himself to win the war, but when the lady he brought on board specifically to let him win the war wants to beam over, he has to be convinced. What?! The writers are just treating us like idiots and hoping we don't notice that these things make NO SENSE.
Stamets was the only person who could do it. Tyler could have been supported by anyone.
You didn't understand my point. She was brought onboard specifically to do this sort of work. Its why he wanted her. Why at the crucial moment does he not want to?
From other reviews, which add more problems too: 'Why would Lorca send Tyler, a crew member recently tortured by Klingons, onto a Klingon ship?' - good point. What the fuck was he thinking?
He's blinded by the singular desire to win the war. It was a bad decision but an explainable one.
Why didn't anybody else object, again?
'it's unfortunate that his PTSD is temporarily cured when Cornwell mentions Burnham needing his help — that's not how PTSD works.' <-- indeed.
As I said previously - it's not PTSD.
Perhaps, but we're meant to believe that it is right now, and that still tells a bad story about PTSD to viewers.