A suggestion: the collated meta post

[mekare]

Sooo, just before we all get pushed into abyss (or not?) by the finale, here’s something that came to me while going through the hundreds of comments in the episode discussion posts. There’s been some excellent meta linked and written by you awesome guys and I think it would help during the hiatus to make it all more accessible for ourselves and people coming to this comm later. Someone mentioned this was the norm in LJ days (which I never experienced) so please put your linked meta posts in the comments!

Season 1 themes

untitled post by michaelburnhamfanclub This was posted before the finale aired.

Excerpt: “it’s been established that the war on its own couldn’t make explorers turn into soldiers—this was lorca’s most significant failure and most fundamental misunderstanding of our humanity. it’s also been established that living in the most brutal universe and pretending to be the most brutal versions of ourselves does not compromise our principles and our senses of self.

when combining the war with leadership directly from the mirror universe, the remains of starfleet command say that yes, we can become soldiers. we can put aside our humanity.

the crew of the discovery, all of whom have withstood this ideology for the duration of the season, say that no, we cannot put aside our principles for the sake of winning this war.

although discovery has been incredibly dark, at many times disturbing, and brutally intense—sometimes crossing the line from enjoyable to painful—this is the theme of humanity’s virtues that has defined star trek for decades.”

Thematically, the s1arc of DSC kicks ass by Mswyrr

Excerpt:OFC the season is a great critique of a great many things, many of which are problems with “the other side.” But it also says: the moment you forget that moral struggle is something you too have to engage in is the moment you begin to fail and weaken morally. It’s not possible to sit back and say “well, I’m not Klingon so I’m a great person!” Because the next step is “I’m a great person so anything I choose to do, even awful things, is okay.”
For a season that started out with me thinking the Klingons would be a cheap moral pantomime where the Federation folks got to feel very superior, I was shocked, delighted, and moved by a story where the writers were willing to dig deeper and make a very true point about the heart of what it means to try to be a moral person. How it’s an ongoing struggle, with lots of failures and frustrations.

Season 1 episodes:

Episode discussion posts in Spacefungus by rivendellrose

episode posts on Liz Barr’s blog

Antagonists & captains in Discovery

Thread in the episode post 1x07 comparing Lorca and Georgiou storylines as captains (also explaining the origin of Merkin as the name for Lorca’s tribble)

Quick thought on St: Discovery 1x13 (and season to date) by nenya_kanadka

Excerpt: Who gets which treatment isn't random. Given a white male douchey "antihero" character and a woman of colour in a campy gold cape and an evil leadership role, he is going to get "So interesting!" and she is going to get "That was OTT fun; let's get back to the real story now."

But that's not what Discovery did.

Ash Tyler meta

Ash 1.0 to Ash 3.0 by mswyrr

Excerpt: "He uses “I” to talk about Voq’s life before catching himself. And then he draws on Voq’s experiences and personality and has *fun* for the first time in a long time by doing that. That is a thing he can do now; it is a thing that Ash 2.0 would have never done. There was nothing about drawing on Voq that Ash 2.0 found anything but totally traumatizing. There was nothing about Klingon culture he found enjoyable. He had really understandably angry, violent, even sadistic feelings about Klingons…

Analysis of *that* scene between Michael and Ash by data-is-my-favourite-android

A very thoughtful unpacking of that whole argument.

Excerpt: I’ve seen some argue that what Tyler is saying here is abusive. I think it could be if it was a pattern of behavior. At present, I’m viewing it as a messy, frustrated emotional reaction that is understandable (though could have been handled way better). He’s been through a lot as well, and he’s not being his best self. He’s desperate to have the support of the woman he loves and, while it’s justifiable that she’s withholding it, it’s also easy to see why he, an emotional human being who is emotionally strained, would feel hurt. Under normal circumstances we know that Ash is a patient and kind person. But these are far from normal circumstances. Things were bound to get messy. It sucks that he chose these tactics, but it’s not unforgivable (so long as it’s a fluke and not a pattern)."


Katrina Cornwell meta

Give Katrina a Hug, Give Jayne an Award by pixiedane This is meta for 1x14 from Kat’s perspective.

excerpt:Kat is over it. She wants to take all these secrets and and all these criminals to the Starbase, to Command. She has a headache, she needs a break. She’s so tired, she’s been tired for a year, and she can’t let it show. She’s lost so much and everything she gets back is twisted. She wants to cry and she can’t cry and it is all unfair and she is over it. Put Fake Philippa in Not Prison and let someone else be in charge.

Comments

[kore]

Now that was prescient! Michael's the one who convinces Kat et al not to drop the bomb, and then convinces L'Rell to take the opportunity to save her people. I was super pleased with both those solutions.

[mekare]

Yep the solutions are good, I just would have preferred a litle more build up.

[nenya_kanadka]

It should totally have been at least a two-parter, if not three! I don't understand this choice, man. I love that all/most of the facts line up with what I wanted, but somebody needs to rewrite that episode and refilm it and give us the finale this arc deserved! So yeah a bit of a letdown especially in comparison to the couple of episodes immediately preceding it.

Ah, well.