PEOPLE OF EARTH

Welcome back to another episode review of the newest season of Star Trek Discovery. Today we are focusing on the third episode of the season, the episode titled People of Earth... for a moment I felt like I was writing an intro for a video episode review, haha. :) No, those days are behind me for a while but that never stopped me to talk about things or express my thoughts so here we are. People of Earth... let's talk about it. 

FIRST  IMPRESSIONS

For all the 30 or so episodes so far we seen from this series this was the one I really enjoyed watching. If aging has to do with this or something else I'm not sure, but I surely enjoyed watching this episode that had a resemblance of an "old fashioned" Star Trek episode. In parts I even felt my warm blanket sneaking in - yes, that is a big thing for me. 

The joyful moment of seeing the crew finally reunite after the first two episode was simply brought a smile on my face. Book and his ship getting a ride to Earth and him seeing the spore drive being used was a kind a joyous childlike moment - you know, when you finally see the magician popping a bunny out of his hat kind of excitement.  :) Than we have had our moment in Earth where we got to see a different structure and learnt more of what happened with the Federation and that it has left the planet - we gonna talk about that later - and last but not least we got ourselves introduced to the Earth Defence Force. Overall a jam packed episode with a lot of great moments and amazing music that left me with a big smile on my face... finally Discovery hit home for me. :)

CAPTAIN  SARU

To be honest I never even thought Michael being ever considered to be a captain of Discovery, so I did not get why was that a thing that needed to be done. I know there are ranks and she was a first officer on the Shenzou, but Saru has always been the first officer on the Discovery. He could naturally have just taken the chair without any "ceremony" however that whole scene gave a charming and official way of putting that to reality for all of us and it was a great moment indeed. For once, ever since I was watching this show I felt that now it's getting its own foot. Saru has proved to be a great commander in chief and I really loved that even though Michael went on her own way with Book to get the situation under control, he stood up for what she has done or Discovery. Trust and knowing that you can count on your crewmates is a really valuable feature of a captain and so it seems that Saru is brilliant in the chair, well earned.

Federation   NO  MORE

The one thing we learned from this episode in terms of the "galactic balance" that the Federation no longer has a base on Earth. I might be wrong here, but for some reason I always thought that Earth was where we had the whole thing controlled from. Knowing that it is not there any more raises many questions. Humans as founding members just gave it up after "The Burn?" Was it taken from Earth by the other founding members? Are they still around? I would really love to see how things played out in the cosmic charts and I'm sure at some point we gonna see that happening.

I think the driving force of this season if easily to find out what happened to the Federation or playing a kind of "Where's Waldo?" in Star Trek style which is certainly interesting. It's funny though that in the first season we seen the Federation being challenged by the Klingon ideals, than in season two we had an existential threat from the distant future and now it's gone. This could very much be a recurring theme of the series as well. If that's the case I must say that kudos to the writers for this. It does feel like showing us a way how our current global union is threatened by dangerous leaders and their ideas and how we have to work together even more to find that idea we hold so dearly, the one that the Federation represents. No, it's not perfect, it never has been... but it's certainly worth the good fight.

We  ARE  ON   OUR  OWN

Earth is alone in the universe now. There's no Federation or a feet of ships able to defend them from those bad boys any more, just a few satellite and a force field grid. Earth has a new defence force the EDF - the Earth Defence Force not to be mistaken by the French energy provider ;) - that it seems like a very efficient and effective organisation protecting the planet from trespassers and unwanted guests.

The few shots we seen from the surface - heavily featuring San Francisco - was beautiful and felt more like a idealized version of our planet where we would love to live. Well, I would for sure...  but that's another story for another day and possibly for another blog.

TRILLS,  Admirals  and  WHAT  COMES  AFTER

In this episode we also got introduced to our new recurring guest, 16 years old Adira - is the young age an homage to the character of Checkov from TOS? - who I did not like at the first time as she felt like a bit of an "arrogant smarty pants" but by the time Stamets figured her out she was actually quite loveable. Now I know that "she" is a non-binary character and the correct pronoun would be "their" but it just after reading the interview on Trekcore.com occurred to me where it was explained by the actor that this has been a choice to reflect on "her" personal journey that I found really sweet. 

Adira's character is sweet and charming and I am for sure looking forward to see how we got that Trill inside of her as she is being a human and not a Trill. I mean, I know that Riker did host one of them in his body for a brief period and I guess in 930 years a lot happened in biologically and maybe Adira got into the same situation as poor Ezri with the Dax symbiont... being in the right place in the right time and possibly with the right surgeon. ​

I guess finding out more about Adira, the symbiont and also the long lost admiral will be the driving force of the following episode and I am really excited to see that happening. 

CONCLUSION

I cannot believe that I am going to say this, but I have had no issue with this episode. It was interesting, uplifting, exciting, thrilling and most importantly made me smile. Yes, a smile! Can you believe that? :) I loved the way how Saru became captain, I loved how diplomatic he handled the situation between the EDF Captain and Wren, the leader of the raiders. The music was amazing with its curious and charming tone that made me feel like I'm in a cosy spot and it was all directed by Jonathan Frakes, so what else we could really wish for? And it's maybe me, but seeing the crewmates at the end outside hanging around that tree just felt like we really got that fresh breath of air for the show. 

After all this, it comes as no surprise that this episode eared a solid 5/5 for me. Discovery, for some reason you did it you charming devil! :) _\\//