“Is Discovery canon?” is an interesting question because the only real purpose canon serves is to give us boundaries for where it’s reasonable to stop expecting (searching for?) a degree of consistency throughout all of Star Trek

When someone says “that’s not canon” what they’re usually telling you is that they don’t care to reconcile it with other Trek

Given that Discovery is two seasons of “top secret classified never happened” and three seasons of “800 years later than any other series,” even if we decided it was canon in some technical or legal sense, it gives us basically nothing that could potentially influence other Star Trek, before or since. In other words, it’s not canon in any practical or meaningful sense.

tl;dr yeah I guess you’re right

Based and friendpilled

I have long held that Season 5, Episode 2 of The Next Generation is the best episode to "test" if you'll like Star Trek or not. It is a generally well-liked and well-reviewed episode, but more than that, from both a story and a character standpoint it is representative of what your average Star Trek episode is generally about.

So, my recommendation is to watch that one episode and report back.

Well, that was certainly an episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Actually, it might be one of Discovery’s most representative episodes.

Discovery at its worst: geez that warp chase scene was awful. It wasn’t a great use of How We Got Here because there wasn’t enough time between the flashback and the redux to make the flashback seem justified—the bulk of the episode happened after the redux anyways. It wasn’t a great use of Once More With Clarity, either. I guess they were going for some sort of dramatic Rayner reveal? But, the “revelation” that the Antares was shadowing Burnham that whole time wasn’t particularly interesting. Nothing was gained by temporally displacing that scene other than frontloading the action, which makes it seem like Discovery is scared to lead with a character moment or a story beat, as if their mentality is “we gotta get to the pew pew ASAP because that’s why the audience is here.”

It felt unearned, and was just another instance of Discovery borrowing things from better shows without adding anything or seemingly even understanding why what they borrowed worked in a different context. And of course, this teed up one of Discovery’s most obnoxious long-running tropes: Burnham knows she’s right and spends a few minutes exasperatedly explaining to an unwelcome guest with equivalent or higher authority than her to no avail. The thing that’s always weird about these scenes is the way Burnham keeps going even after it’s become very clear that the person she’s trying to convince isn’t having it. At that point, focus on getting into the ship, don’t continue the argument! These scenes always feel like Burnham is trying to make sure that the viewer knows she’s right rather than the other character.

I know she’s right. She’s always right.

Discovery at its best: The scene where Discovery and Antares save the settlement on Q’mau. This had all the bits and pieces of a classic Trek triumph: the heroes put the mission, their ships, and themselves at risk to save innocent lives because it’s the right thing to do and ultimately save the day thanks to quick thinking, creativity, and Starfleet's engineering prowess. This was actually the only sequence in the episode where the Burnham-Rayner interaction worked: Rayner’s calculated risk paid off but introduced a new complication, but Rayner was also pretty quick to concede that “ok yeah, to hell with this ‘Red Directive’ nonsense, innocent lives are at stake” and ceded authority to Burnham.

Visually, seeing Discovery and Antares literally shield the settlement was fantastic. The detail on the shields stopping the rockslide was great fun to watch. These have always been my favorite Discovery moments: classic Trek formula with modern effects and pacing.

Why I'm worried: Rayner. One of Discovery's quirks has always been what I call "the interloper," an external authority figured foisted onto the cast to either foil or assist Burnham depending on which direction the story needs to turn. Lorca and Pike were more pronounced instances of this quirk than Vance and Rilliak were, but all four seasons have done it.

Our season 5 interloper looks to be Rayner, and it looks like Rayner is going to be as prominent as Lorca and Pike were. And boy, I didn't find Rayner to be interesting or compelling at all. I've worked with far too many "I'm allowed to be a jerk because I'm right" types to be entertained by them, particularly when played straight. I really hope they do something more novel with Rayner, and quickly.

Thank you. It’s not a proper Trek vs. Wars thread until someone busts out the canon card. I can’t believe it took 5 hours!

Soran's device was essentially an anti-bomb, based on how Worf described it:

Trilithium is a nuclear inhibitor. In theory, it could stop all fusion within a star.

If you shot it at a Star Destroyer I think you'd just give a handful of unlucky stormtroopers trilithium poisoning.

You're very right... and yet I gleefully wade into it every time...

Transporters block shields regardless of modulation. You can modulate weapons to penetrate shields, but transporters are trickier. "We can't get the away team back because shields are up!" would be a non-issue if the shields could be modulated to block weapon fire but allow transporters.

The Empire can shield an entire planet. Those big spheres on top of a Star Destroyer's command tower are shield generators.

Yeah, exactly. I find criticism of Apple products from people who are deeply familiar with their products to be quite entertaining, but that's not even close to what's happening here. Most of the comments in this community are one step above "DAE Macs can't right click??"

This is one of my favorites, despite the fact that most of my losses are in fact due to the mistakes I committed.

Come sail the high seas, matey