Star Trek: Discovery (TV Series) There Is a Tide... (2020) User Reviews

There Is a Tide...

[Prismark10 · 6/10 · 6 January 2021]

Broadcast over the Christmas period. Burnham goes Die Hard as she tries to take back the Discovery from Osyyra.

Just to focus more on the John McClane comparisons. Burnham also loses her shoes.

The episode ignores what Saru is doing in the Nebula.

It really is about the Discovery crew trying to take the ship back with the unexpected assist from the sphere data.

Of course the episode is not action all the way. It gets bogged down with Osyyra's gambit to seek legitimacy for the Emerald Chain. She wants an alliance with the Federation and begins negotiations with Vance. Shucks, the Emerald Chain is just something like British East India Company. A bunch of buccaneers involved in piracy.

The negotiations bog down the episode. The recap at the beginning of the episode means a certain character will return form the dead.

It is still too unfocussed and I did not get the deal with Stamets. Your ship easily got overpowered, they were targeting you for the technology and you care more about saving your boyfriend.

Surprisingly decent after a run of very poor episodes

[doctordbx · 7/10 · 31 December 2020]

This episode is better than I expected, granted I had pretty low expectations.

It demonstrates in the right hands with the right script Discovery can bring passable Trek to the screen.

It also ironically highlights the failings of the Federation and their utopian ideals, plus their inability to let things go and move on.

Peace offered and rejected and millions will continue to suffer because the Federation wants to be idealistic.

At least I'm talking about the story and not the horrible acting or weak wobbly crew that somehow have a starship.

Thank goodness for Jonathan Frakes

[paul-38-957914 · 8/10 · 1 January 2021]

JF rescues Season 3. By far the best episode of season.

A decent story with some great action. However I won't take replicators seriously again ;)

Sick of Burnham

[butcherbob · 1 January 2021]

This episode pretty much cements Burnham as the most unlikeable character in Star Trek history. Are the writers so stupid that they think people enjoy watching this arrogant. hypocritical Mary Sue and her impossible plot armor?

The real enemy of this show is Burnham. There would be absolutely no downside in getting rid of her and refocusing the show on other characters. Of course, we all know that won't happen because Burnham can whisper her way out of anything.

Actually liked a Frakes episode!

[Cragsidebarry · 9/10 · 9 February 2021]

I think those who keep saying they don't like STD should just stop watching it. It's set so far in the future they don't need to worry that what's going on is messing with their precious canon, timeline, etc.. So, treating this entirely in its own right, and allowing for many of the usual trek irritations, it's a damn good show. Oh, and thank you, Jonathan, for a damn good episode!

Osyraa is my new favorite character

[jps05880 · 10/10 · 1 January 2021]

Not sure why all the negative Nancys feel the need to type out their personal hurt at a TV episode, but whatever floats your boat, I guess. Yes, Discovery is different than TNG, VOY, etc., ...you can tell because the title of the series is different.

Osyraa is amazing - manipulative, empathic, vindictive - all signs of a highly intelligent person gone wrong and all the things I admire in a villain - even better she's in a position of power with unclear (though likely severe ulterior) motives. Drama=maximum. Her hair looks great too, btw.

I love how Michael DGAF about other people's feelings in the short-term, knowing what will benefit everyone in the long-term, whether they like it or not. Yes, she cries almost all the time, but she will also stab you and then beam you into space. Wouldn't that upset you too, if you were forced to do the same?

Yes, there's room for improvement and I wish the writers of past episodes had consulted with Jeri Taylor frequently and written more technical Star Trek jargon into the script - we did get some of that in this episode, thankfully. You can also really tell a difference in the episodes Jonathan Frakes directs, they are of notably higher quality.

Star trek - Game of Thrones

[ewaf58 · 6/10 · 5 January 2021]

Good grief the previous episode was like a fantasy Sword and Sorcery epic. Betrayals - bluffs - counter bluffs and blood everywhere.

So now we had a slightly calmer episode featuring a complete nightmare who is green - a soon to be dead guy who is blue - phaser action - people drinking wine and a cast looking bewildered.

A message to the current writers - what are you doing? Too much CGI plus scripts and stories which are not allowing me to put any emotional investment in the characters.

I wrote a review at the start of season 3 saying you were wasting the opertunities available once Discovery had arrived in the far future.

If there is to be a season 4 why not go out and explore strange new Worlds - seek out new life and new civilisations and boldly go where no one has gone before.

Now where did I get that idea from?

Strong episode that sets up the series 3 finale well

[snoozejonc · 8/10 · 7 May 2021]

Osyraa takes Discovery to Starfleet Headquarters.

This is an enjoyable episode with a compelling story and strong character moments.

The opening sequence is quite exciting and the episode continues at the same pace and with a nice level of suspense. We have a number of good confrontations and mixed in with it some decent action sequences.

Osyraa's character is developed further and this makes a big difference to what we've seen from her so far. It makes sense to know the motivations behind her methods. This is established with some great exchanges between her and Admiral Vance, which for me are the highlights of the episode. There are also strong moments between Stamets and Aurellio. However I'm not that fussed about Zareh, who appears to be a pretty one-dimensional henchman type villain.

'McClane' Burnham's Die Hard tribute provides some popcorn entertainment, especially when her shoes come off. She has a great scene with Stamets that involves making a hard decision for both of them. Of course the icing on the cake is the emotion that comes with it, which hopefully makes the IMDB trolls angry as always.

The other crew members have fairly strong moments but they are all pretty much dominated by Tilly and Booker. That's not necessarily a bad thing as Tilly especially is a very watchable character. However it does make you wonder if the likes of Detmer, Bryce, Owosekun and Rhys will ever do much more than background actions.

All visuals are superb as always and the performances are excellent, especially Oded Fehr, Janet Kidder, Sonequa Martin-Green, Anthony Rapp and Mary Wiseman.

Much like other episodes it does not deserve the level of negativity. Most other reviews (that are not actual reviews, mostly just social media type commentary) contain generalised negative comments with little specific references to scenes and constant repetition of the same comments relating to whispering/emotion/Burnham/diversity.

Pretty good but Vance is an idiot

[Hughmanity · 7/10 · 9 September 2021]

Was Admiral Vance supposedly serious in the minds of the writers when he asked Osyraa to stand trial for crimes as part of the armistice? Are you kidding me?? Like "sure I'll sign the armistice so long as you agree to be found guilty of heinous crimes and go to prison for the rest of your life" (assuming the Woke Federation doesn't have the death penalty).

If he seriously thought she might go for that then Vance is the biggest idiot in the galaxy. If he was just stalling for time and then knowingly gave her a deal breaker reason to end negotiations then I guess OK, but that doesn't seem very Federation good-faith-like.

I guess we'll find out in the next episode but I wish the writers would be more realistic with the characters and their decisions.

More fun but still dumb

[jgoddard-15534 · 2/10 · 1 January 2021]

At least this was mildly fun, even if the quality of the script and the terrible acting continued on their downward trajectory. Despite being bad in many ways, it was also far less annoying thanks to the welcome absence of three of the most dire characters in the history of Star Trek who remain stranded and hopefully dead from radiation exposure.

There are so many silly touches in Discovery that I think might be designed to distract viewers from how bad the show is (the lie detector hologram who wears a bow tie, IKEA furniture used for firefight cover, the 'cute' service droids who are more annoying than D-Squad from Clone Wars etc). If you focus your hate on those things then maybe you'll ignore the total lack of logic in the heist and infiltrate plot, and the fact we're somehow expected to believe a treaty determining the fate of the universe can be decided over an afternoon chat and a plate of apples made from recycled faeces. It took four years to sort Brexit.

Oh and well done Burnham for once again being the saviour even though you managed to get stabbed in the leg almost immediately, gave your location away like a noob, and then physically assaulted your crew mate who literally gave up everything for you.

The jokes about Tilly being useless are so painfully laboured, even though they are true, because of course the finale will be a tale of her redemption and will show what a great captain Saru is for having made the equivalent of the ship's cat his second in command. I guess that's to appease all the self-entitled brats (that this show seems to be targeting as its primary demographic) who think they deserve to be the boss despite having no relevant qualifications or experience. Maybe I'm being unfair and Tilly had a TikTok channel about Starfleet captaincy back in the 23rd century that naturally qualifies her for leadership.

Please end soon Discovery, and have the decency to disappear up the wormhole you've been so smugly inhabiting.

FINALLY!!!!!

[shemarine · 10/10 · 31 December 2020]

Excellent episode as the one and only Jonathan Frakes can deliver! And so nice to see Kenneth Mitchell in his best role yet on Discovery!

The Crescendo of this Season?

[james-26989 · 7/10 · 2 January 2021]

Seems like the hole season has been multiple sequences of recycled scripts from other Star Trek series. Quite possibly a Kobayashi Maru designed to save the whole series.

A good premise lost in bad execution.

[Andromeda4482 · 4/10 · 31 December 2020]

Firstly, lets just get the stupid continuity errors out the way; Michael Burnham can use vulcan grip later in the episode, but for some reason couldn't earlier which led to her being stabbed? Like really?

Also; In a moment of real brilliance, I got hit in the face with more stupid writing. The sphere data now manifests itself as repair drones. Great, a little army? Then it hit me, in Season 2 - The sphere data could defend itself not only against the Enterprise but an entire fleet of ships with equivalent technology; Now, centuries in the future even with a retrofit, the ship is occupied in "7 minutes"? And the sphere data, despite clearly wanting to fight at the end of the episode didn't once do anything to protect itself? What sorta half assed writing is that? The ship was invincible a season ago and now it's occupied like that?

This episode has a good plot, I really like it. The acting is brilliant (for the most part) There is a great cast here, with great potential. And they throw in a good moral problem with the scientist. I love that, that's great - a scientist, in a cult slowly getting a reality check.

But bygod when you take the first two points into account you soon realise how poorly thought out this all was. How do you manage to not only do a diservice to 50 years of story writing, but to also do a diservice to your own story writing? it's beyond embarrasing.

I did enjoy this episode, but it's distressing knowing how little effort is put into it.

Also the VFX was all over the shot. Some of it was amazing, some of it was poor. Ships have star wars guns now. *Sigh*.

It would help if the Discovery crew spoke with Jar Jar Binks accents...

[rsvp321 · 2 January 2021]

...so it would be clear to the audience that the clownish and incompetent behavior of the crew was meant by the writers as comedy. Tilly shes-a mooey mooey bomba bad captain!

Burnham's tilted head and whispering is now a drinking game. The crying is a drinking game, too. Everyone who plays gets to have many drinks :)

Another vapid episode in an unreasonably long string of fails. For me, STD had been demoded to background noise while I multitask. I'll watch to the end of the season with naive hope that it improves, but after that I'm hoping there is a spore drive Burn, and Discovery explodes.

Still loving "woke" Trek

[mattimanc · 9/10 · 1 January 2021]

Absolutely loved this episode. Edge of my seat loved it. Great to see the larger bridge crew get their teeth into some action and the moment between Burnham and Stamets was heartbreaking!

I see "fans" continue to review bomb the series but have now strayed away from homophobia/ transphobia and are now going for misogyny and straight up body shaming under the pretence of not liking how it's written. It's embarrasing to read some of the other reviews

Back to boring me

[sparklefish · 6/10 · 16 January 2022]

Well after getting my hopes up for this season to improve after last week's interesting and exciting episode, I am back to yawning and daydreaming as I watch this episode. Michael Burnham annoys me more and more. I miss Captain Pike a lot. I am even getting irritated with Tilly, who was a favorite character of mine in Seasons 1 and 2. She's changed and I don't like it. I still plan to watch the rest of this season, but I might stop after that.

the best episode of the season

[tmuspian · 10/10 · 1 January 2021]

Jonathan frakes was supposed to be the director of all the episodes. Quality increases a lot. Excellent episode, balanced, showing several characters, story well done.

Capitalism vs Marxism

[kennyg72118 · 7/10 · 31 January 2021]

It's interesting to see where this story line goes! Star Trek is pure Marxism from the very first series. I'm curious to see see what happens in their world when it meets at Capitalistic Equal!

Fairly good

[Z4ne_ · 8/10 · 1 January 2021]

Again, here come out the trolls who only seek to write negatively. This episode was fairly good. It progresses the story and it isn't a "filler" as many of you guys like to repetitively call every episode of this season. It wasn't the best but again it was fairly entertaining.

The only 2 negatives I have here is the poor acting from the Emerald Chain scientist (I don't know if he's intentionally acting bored) and the wasted potential of what could've been a top class season. By "wasted potential" I mean the fact that they could've explored more with the burn, aswell as the significance of the Emerald Chain. Osyraas evilness was calmed down abit this episode which is something they did abit to early considering we haven't seen much of her and what she's capable of doing.

Episode 312

[bobcobb301 · 7/10 · 25 February 2022]

Finally, a little bit of action, excitement, drama and violence on this show.

I see a lot of people complaining about Burnham, but she is far from the problem with Discovery.

The Crying and Whispering Continues

[EntropyFashion · 3/10 · 31 December 2020]

I am at a loss to find new ways to express how bad this show continues to be. No logic, cheesy CGI, and the infernal crying and whispering from our all around superhero Burnham. They took a season, with a great premise, and squandered it on a slew of episodes better suited to the Lifetime channel. Go back and watch any TNG, Voyager or DS9 to see what real ST IS.

Discovery gets it's first airlock joke

[XweAponX · 10/10 · 2 January 2021]

The jokes about tossing people out of airlocks actually began in the Deep Space Nine S1 episode "The Nagus". Quark threatens ROM with being tossed out of the airlock and then ROM almost actually does it, or tries to do it, to Quark. From that point on there was always some airlock joke up until the end of that series, and there may have been airlock jokes in the Next Gen movies and there was also a pretty good array of airlock jokes in "Enterprise". So it is good to see Discovery finally joining this Time-honored tradition.

We also get to hear exactly how food replicators work, but this is not really new information, they explain this in detail in the Star Trek Next Generation Technical Manual, section 13.5, Page 153. Where they even have a fairly "graphic" graphic.

Osyyra's Organization is revealed here, and the size of the Emerald chain is discussed as well. Is it a government or is it a conglomeration of merchants? Maybe both or maybe neither, but in this part of the story she wants to have some kind of legitimacy assigned to her. And she is able to fool the Starfleet "Lie Detector Hologram", but only to the point where it is outed that she wants ultimate control over everything. This is a person that doesn't have any redeeming characteristics, but she is still looked upon by her followers and sycophants as if she is the second coming. But here, she wants to approach Starfleet by taking over Discovery. Regardless of anything else she said to Admiral Vance- that may have even sounded reasonable, all you really need to do is see what she has done previously- to family, even.

"There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads onto fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea we are now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures".

That is what Captain Kirks' favorite author has said.

Jon Frakes helms this episode that has a lot of action, it is difficult to continue the story without checking in with Saru, Culber and Adira. We know that there is a time limit on their situation. As usual, the only complaint I have about the show is the dwindling number of episodes per season. As far as resolving previous conundrums, we now have an inkling of what the Burn was, Georgiou was packed off by Jim Brass/Guardian of Forever, Adira finally got to meet her previous hosts in a variation of a Zhian'tara Ritual, and Commander Nhan was re-joined with her Barzan heritage. I was hoping that she would have shown up again, hopefully she will later.

It is refreshing to have a good conflict to go out on, but with only one episode left it might look like the complete resolution might have to be in the next season. And this is a pretty tall order considering the massive ending of the Red Angel story.

Just let everything after season 1 be a dream

[DunkelheitVZ · 3/10 · 1 January 2021]

I would gladly accept Burnham waking up and realizing that season 2 + 3 were only a dream. Sounds bad? Oh yeah, it absolutely is. But this solution would maybe enable me to watch season 4.

Here is a little lesson for the writers: 1. Photon Torpedos against physical armor. 2. Lasers vs Shields 3. If shields are up, you are not able to beam

If you keep those 3 rules in mind, your series will be a lot better and bad ideas like teleporting into a starship and take over the crew won't happen.

Don't Trust Osyraa!

[cin_kong · 10/10 · 1 January 2021]

Having watched every Star Trek episode (except for The Animated Series) over 48 years, Star Trek: Discovery has finally come into it's own in the franchise. If there are any doubts, this is Star Trek. We have something reflective of the state of the world, we haven't seen since Star Trek Voyager.

I can't review this episode without dropping a few spoilers.

There are many delicious moments in this episode. Yes they were centred around the negotiation between her and Vance. I was worried for his life when he had laid out his on concessions.

Back on Discovery, I was getting vibes of Commander Riker in how Michael dispatched the female regulator.

That ending with the DOT was amazing. How often I forget the sphere data is still in the computer.