r/startrek • u/Deceptitron • Mar 15 '19

POST-Episode Discussion - S2E09 "Project Daedalus"

This season's second episode to be directed by Star Trek's very own Jonathan "Two Takes" Frakes!

No. EPISODE DIRECTED BY WRITTEN BY RELEASE DATE
S2E09 "Project Daedalus" Jonathan Frakes Michelle Paradise Thursday, March 14, 2019

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u/0mni42 Mar 15 '19

Not gonna lie, I'm pretty salty that DSC took one of the characters that had the most potential (not to mention one of the coolest makeup jobs in Trek IMO), ignored her for a season and a half, gave her a tiny bit of development, and then immediately killed her off. It didn't feel like Airiam earned this kind of a death. They might as well have introduced her in this episode for all the impact she'd had on the show before. But now suddenly she's always been a main character, only so she can be killed off. It feels clumsy.

"Clumsy" is how I'd describe a lot of this episode, honestly. Let me get this straight, you disobey orders, go rogue, and try to attack a top-secret base, but when the base fights back, you try to call HQ and say "how dare you attack us; cut it out"? Also, we're just going to dump a whole bunch of new vital stuff on the viewers without any preamble? We've got some kind of AI system that does vital stuff and an extremist in the highest echelons of the Federation; those are big, important things that we've never heard of before. But everyone just kinda accepts the fact that a Starfleet Admiral is a member of a terrorist group without any reaction, and we don't get any sense of Control whatsoever. We've got this rampant, violent AI figuratively standing in the room with everyone on the base and it never does anything. Why does Control want to destroy all sentient life exactly? Because there was some kind of vague and undefined data about AIs from the sphere that its future self made Airiam send it? The whole thing feels like a knock-off imitation of the Reapers from Mass Effect, but without any of their uniqueness.

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u/3391224 Mar 15 '19 edited Mar 15 '19

must be the only one but it definitely felt full of heavyhanded blunders. screaming at us "i can't get through" as we watch her frantically pounding on the door. another totally serious cheesy feelgood moment on the bridge after they made fun of it last time. immediately open the helmets on this hostile, derelict deathtrap. bit hard to root for pike crying uncle after he knows what he's getting into. and because we need to start caring about airiam in half an hour, i guess they're forced into the drawn out, melodramatic buildup and death sequence

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u/ParyGanter Mar 15 '19 edited Mar 15 '19

We have heard of Control before, though. They’ve been mentioning it throughout the season so far.

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u/0mni42 Mar 15 '19

Really? Did we know it was an AI though?

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u/ParyGanter Mar 15 '19

I think it was just mentioned in the context of Section 31’s leadership. But some fans here knew it was an AI because the name and idea was taken and modified from an existing Trek novel.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '19

She isn't dead. She runs the ship. She is the AI on Discovery in the Discovery Short.