spacefungusparty | Discovery 1x15: Will You Take My Hand?

A brief warning for those of you who sometimes venture onto Twitter: be aware that a large number of cast and crew are live-tweeting the finale tonight, so there will be spoilers all over many people's feeds. Take care!

And now that I've got that out of the way, here is your episode discussion post for Discovery 1x15: “Will You Take My Hand?”

As always, there will be spoilers in comments! I'll be back later this evening to join in the party once I've had a chance to watch the episode (and then possibly flail and/or cry for a while, depending on how things go), and will add some discussion starters or other remarks behind a cut once I feel I can put words together in a semi-coherent way.

It's been fantastic sharing the first season with you all, and I really appreciate having this community to discuss, share, and generally flail with. I hope we'll have lots more to share during the hiatus (which with any luck won't be too terribly long!).

See you on the other side. ♥

...Okay, so here's the deal. About 5, maybe 10 minutes in, I said out loud, "This is all getting handled suspiciously quickly."

That remained true for 90% of the episode.

It slowed down just long enough for two normal-pace speeches and then the normal-pace thing-at-the-end. But the whooooooole rest of the episode was like "That got resolved awfully quickly. So did that. So did that. ...So did that."

Also, is it just me, or is Ash living in different quarters every single time see them? I would understand if he had different quarters now than he did as the chief of security, but... these were different quarters than he had last week. And it might have been nice if they'd actually explained that he had the pictures from his childhood and youth out to remind himself of his past, because until I twigged to that I was like "uh, that's odd, he's never had pictures up all over his quarters before..."

I actually enjoyed getting to see him start to process the composite of his two personalities. It was also nice getting to see Klingons acting like, well, Klingons, for once. People who Martok would recognize. That was nice.

The equal-opportunity nature of the Orion slaves was also nice. ...So was Georgiou taking advantage of that equal opportunity.

Tilly getting caught by a slaver was pretty much inevitable, and rather amusing the way it actually revealed information. What was not amusing was the fact that she somehow got retrieved without it ever becoming clear how? Did Georgiou snag her back? Did Burnham and Tyler have to go rescue her? Why were we in such a hurry that this got completely skipped?

I totally called L'Rell becoming the new leader of the Klingon empire. I figured Burnham would help her to do that. What I find somewhat perplexing is, again, the speed with which all of this was handled. "Hey, L'Rell, I know Emperor-I-mean-Captain Georgiou just beat the crap out of you ten minutes ago, but here, have your old clothes back, we're going to beam you down to a shrine on your planet because Specialist Burnham wants to give you blackmail material so you can become the new Torchbearer." I bet that was an interesting transition even for a Klingon.

Edited to add: After last week's trailer I said that I had been hoping Mary Chieffo would get a scene with Michelle Yeoh, because I was sure it would make her so happy. I joked about her posting on Twitter "She kicked me one time, it was amazing." I am not at all disappointed by the reality.

GOOD THINGS: Everybody lives! Philippa could come back at basically any moment and start making trouble again! L'Rell is the new Chancellor of the Klingon Empire (or has that term not been invented yet?)! Ash is going with her, so I guess he could come back at any time, too!

BAD THINGS: PACING IS A THING, GUYS. GOOD PACING IS A THING YOU AREN'T DOING. Also, okay, I realize this may not be the case for a lot of people, but the one thing, the ONE FREAKING THING, that I have hoped Disco would not do from the minute they revealed when it would be set... is encounter Enterprise. And yet here we are.

Also, I was really hoping all that sped up action on the main plot would somehow result in the resurrection of Culber. I guess we have to... wait for that? For next season? Or... no? I don't even know. So I guess I meant "Everybody who is not already dead lives." But... that's something?

I liked a lot of stuff here. But there were really significant pacing problems (like, really significant), and a Thing I Didn't Want was painted as the Best Thing Ever, and also just, like, way to not keep up your momentum, show. You had so much opportunity to make this episode amazing, and... for my money, you squandered it. And that makes me really, really sad.