“Red Directive”
Logline
Captain Burnham and the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery are sent to retrieve a mysterious artifact hidden inside a 800-year-old Romulan vessel – but find that they’re not the only ones on the hunt. Meanwhile, Saru is offered the position of a lifetime.
Written by: Michelle Paradise
Directed by: Olatunde Osunsanmi
“Under the Twin Moons”
Logline
On Saru’s last mission as Captain Burnham’s Number One, the team ventures to a seemingly abandoned planet to hunt for what might be the greatest treasure in the galaxy.
Written by: Alan McElroy
Directed by: Doug Aarniokoski
Fred’s absolutely a setup to have Brent Spiner appear as SOMEONE in some episode.
And given Season 3 of Picard, it might even be Data, with his new hybrid with-bits-of-Lore personality.
But it could be a human Soong too, or another Soong-type android (I absolutely hate they call them “synths”, all I hear is Fallout references.)
Edit: It just really stood out to me there was a line referencing that Fred might have “a family”.
I think at this point I’d rather see one of the Isa Briones characters, were they to go that route.
Fred’s Data cosplay walked right up to the line of silliness for me, but honestly he probably represents a legitimate stage of…Soongvolution.
Goddammit man, I had finally convinced myself I hated the fan service in PIC S3 why are you doing this to me??
Burnham is the one that said “family,” but I’m wondering if she even knows what Soong-type androids are, since they would have appeared after her time. She probably made an assumption that Fred was biological, given how quickly she had to sweep the room and leave.
I’m more curious why they didn’t just hook up Fred’s head and turn him back on. They were able to do that with Data. Maybe they figured Fred wouldn’t be cooperative, or that Stamets just didn’t have the technology or know-how to able to do that and went straight for “download the data”.
That didn’t even cross my mind while watching. Most of the crew would have no idea who Picard was either which is kinda funny.
Same but holding out hope they still do this at some point!
Culber had a bit of a moment like that when explaining the Soong mind transfer he was going to perform on Gray last season.
“Soong first used it on a a Starfleet admiral - Picard was his name - but the success rate was so low that eventually people just stopped trying.”
Overall, though, the Discovery crew seems remarkably well-educated about the time they skipped over.
Ah nice, I think I missed that line when I watched it the first time.