Very cool. At most

Well, they have done it. Even though it’s only E3, we can feel that the whole show is definitely a millennium ahead of S1. Everything I’ve complained about, from not having any useful Asian bridge crew, to horrific dialog, to lack of gravitas when controlling computers, to the lack of happiness… it is all gone! Asians did a lot to bring USS discovery so far into the future. Dialog sound like real people in real dialogue, and the writing is witty and delivered instead of barked. Tech has progressed, programmable matter! That is damned cool sci-fi. Their operating the programmable matter interface definitely looks like the new UI let them feel the commands they are issuing. Headstrong characters that work. Inexplicable geniuses are a must in a sci-fi show and now we have a spectrum of them. Then, there is the story, this show is what Trek feels like. Excitingly barraging into the unknown full smile ahead, always coming out on top of tech and evil.

Looking back to history known to us, we can find Petroleum as one of the most transformative power source human has discovered. According to wikipedia, there’s good record of human comprehending relevant chemical and engineering properties of petroleum for the last 2000-4000 years. Modern commercial drilling began in the mid 1800’s, developing technologies to separate crude into gasses and liquids for various uses. Around the same time as start of commercial oil drilling, the internal combustion engine (ICE) was also commercialized. Since then, the most consuming use of petroleum is for powering ICE’s. So we are approach two centuries of using Petroleum to power our engines.

Jump ahead into the Trek Universe. It is theorized that first contact was made after humans successfully achieved faster-than-light travel using warp engines (presumably using dilithium crystal, the new Petroleum) in 2063. The events of discovery season 2 ends in 2259, then discovery season 3 starts in the year 3188, with the Burn (destruction of all dilithium crystals and the ships around them) occurring a century before that late in the 31st century. So we’re as advanced into the age of petroleum as the Federation will have been into the age of dilithium when Discovery jumped ahead 900 years.

This story really tickles the imagination. It challenges us to think at a grander scale about the comings and going’s of technologies. The massive changes in our civilizations when technologies come and go. Every person is such a small speck, so inconsequential, so very powerless against the emptiness and chaos of space. until you realize you’re the emperors daughter… oh wait… until you realized that you’d been part of something great, then you realize that you have greatness in you, that you are great! And even when you have rekindled that new hope, the newborn spirit is curious, fearless and determined, but it is frail…

Another aspect of the story is the change in Burnham. she says it a few times that she has let go of some of Federation within her. It’s kind of dangerous to see a happy person when Federation (and the Vulcan) is removed. But that’s what’s happened.

Absolutely mesmerizing!

Fantastic in so many ways!

Ravishing! Wild! Beyond!

Bravo!

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