Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

I bet Breen suits need to be removed by the wearer in a particular way, and if they're not the person inside just melts or dissolves or evaporates into nothingness. That would explain how Kira and Dukat were able to incapacitate two Breen and steal their suits without ever seeing what the people inside looked like.

Does it matter? There's so much we don't know about MU timeline. It might not even have been related to Spock at all. Maybe the ISS Enterprise we see in this episode is an entirely different ship than the one we see in Mirror Mirror, maybe whoever the Emperor was at the time covered up the theft of this Enterprise and ordered a different Constitution class renamed Enterprise, and the replacement is the one Kirk visited.

The blue liquid was left by Dr. Cho, it's the next clue. For all we know it might be Gatorade or Bolian piss or a baby changeling.

Anyway, this episode at least clears up why Moll and L'ak would hand over the Progenitor technology to the Breen, but I still don't feel any particular sympathy towards them. I spent the entire last act wanting to scream "Shoot them, Michael! Stun them! One of them is wounded and the other is distracted , now's your chance! Throw them in some agonizer booths so they don't just escape! Something!"

Oh, and Michael can't even offer them pardons or amnesty or the Federation version of the witness protection program? She has to make it clear they'll go to prison if they surrender? Idiocy. And it doesn't even seem like the Breen are taking that bounty very seriously, since they were already on Starfleet's radar before the season started but the Breen hadn't caught up with them yet.

The blue vile very much may be a changeling because apparently that was the third life sign they detected.

So I just watch the ups and downs over at Trek Culture and someone mentioned in the comments that when Culber was coming back to life you can hear TWOK theme. I thought that I heard that, but wasn't sure.

I thought at first they'd detected three life signs in sickbay, but I think they'd actually detected three "matter signatures not from the MU" in sickbay.

Michael puts something from her uniform in that MU locket so Moll and L'ak will detect the same non-MU signature if they scan it when she tries to bluff them.

I've got it, the Progenitors are what the Founders used to be, the Breen want to pull a Picard season three and rebuild the Dominion.
ETA: The paradise in the Gamma Quadrant is the Founders homeworld where refugees from the burn live with the Founder. We may see a CGI Odo or something like that. It ends sort of like Return of The Jedi.That's my prediction.

The Breen thing was pretty sloppy. So sloppy, that the writer agrees it didn't make any sense

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-discovery-breen-details-writer-carlos-cisco/

Two things about the Breen portrayal:

1) It solidifies what we've already figured since the second half of DS9, that "Kira and Dukat stripped the refrigeration suits off of some Breen" lives alongside "the Trill have forehead ridges and nobody in the Federation knows they're a joined species" and "the Ferengi eat people" in the realm of "early statements about a species that we're just gonna ignore."

2) The reveal helps explain why they might be ideologically predisposed to side with the Dominion.

I'm fine with the Breen reveal. It's not the way I would have done it, but it still fits with established lore.

The breen mystery was better on Babylon 5.

Agreed on both points. The Breen are in the middle of evolving towards the changeling form. Like Enterprise, it seems the Discovery writers are finally figuring out the show just as it gets cancelled. I give the writers credit for this choice.

It makes sense for the story they seem to be telling.

"Whistlespeak"

This one felt like I got to breathe a little bit. No action set pieces, phaser fights or anything like that, just a really nice story about a group of people surviving on an overly inhospitable planet, and we get a Denobula reference! As a fan of Dr. Phlox, I was pleased. I also love seeing Michael and Tilly play off of one another, and here they seem to have had so much fun while driving the episode story line. I liked this one. Well done.

I didn’t become a Eurythmics fan until after I’d seen Annie Lennox on … it must have been Johnny Carson … I don’t think David Letterman was on yet. Anyway, the host asked why she shaved her head and she responded with “none of your business”

And that was it. She’s been my favorite since. But, Scarlett Johansson has made attempts.

So this sort of a mix of one of those classic TOS episodes like "The Apple" and TNG's "Who Watches the Watchers". So this tower requires regular maintenance, but they can't violate the Prime Directive and show them how it works, but you've already violated the Prime Directive by putting it there in the first place. Now the Discovery crew is going to show them how to maintain it. Wouldn't that be like showing ancient Egyptians how to use a smart phone? This episode was a huge improvement from last week and I think the writing made sense. I do wonder why they don't have cloaked shuttles by this point. They did manage to bring in that signature cry session and whisper session.

I want to add that it sounded like they were whistling Katy Perry at one point.

Yeah, she's been a hero of mine for a long time. Her, Sinead O'Connor, Grace Jones, and so many other powerful women who shaped music and even politics.

Generally my thoughts regarding the Prime Directive. The civilization was already polluted, and it was because of that technology that people were going to die. This was less a Prime Directive issue and more a standard rescue mission, even if the civilization was pre-warp.

It was a Kirk type PD break or “Pen Pals” type situation. Someone brought up “Paradise Syndrome.” Also, I thought Crosshair was going to bite the dust.

Pretty much. It was the kind of situation where some limited contact should be expected and understood. In this case, it worked out wonderfully, better than hoped for. The Federation would be foolish and shortsighted to say anything negative to Michael for this.

The PD is a great plot device allowing for tension in otherwise vanilla episodes.

I mean, we knew as soon as they brought it up that the need to break/skirt it was going to be imminent and that added to the tension of the episode - how, where, when …, etc

Most of the episode was nonsense anyway. The only important bit was the backstory to Moll and L'ak. There was no need for the mirror universe; no need for the ISS Enterprise (other than they recycled the SNW set).

Ugh, it's like every other episode is a snooze fest. I don't care for these two characters, I literally don't care if they live or die. You invite Raynor in on a meeting and then immediately shit on his ideas. Speaking of Rayner, did they change up his ear design on this one, something looks off? The beaming from the ready room to the bridge, come on, just freaking walk. The fight with Moll in sick bay was ridiculous as in ridiculously stupid. I'm so tired of this idea that a skinny girls beating up multiple multiple big dudes in hand to hand combat. For some reason, these writers have a huge hard on for this trope.

When I was younger, nearly every man in my life tried to tell me that my size was an advantage and that all I needed to do was leverage that to win a fight, then proceeded to show me exactly what I should do.

The problem was I’m not quick.

The point is, you’re full of shit.

Dime Store Helena Bonham-Carter can hurry up and die any fucking time.

And does anyone care that this portrayal of the Breen wrecks an entire novel universe? Yeah, me either.

It's funny-- you often question about how the current writers do not act as though Starfleet is a military organization. And yet when Rayner, a captain whose stupid idea got him demoted to commander mouths off in the presence of an admiral and a president, you seem to think that they should not have "shit on his ideas." Which, for the record, to the extent that anyone did, they were probably right to. Rayner's clearly suffering some PTSD from what the Breen did to his homeworld/family and that colored his advice.

I actually agree with you about the stupidity of the fistfight in general. There have to be about a million ways that they could keep Mol under wraps or subdue her in an escape given the technology and manpower that they have. But because there has to be an action sequence or two Mol has to have two fistfights when anybody should be able to beam in a phaser and stun her, or there should be automated ways to get her. If Discovery had the tech of a contemporary 7-11, they should be able to find her.

In terms of women being able to outfight men in general, I think you need to accept that a) there are real-life women who can outfight men larger than them and b) it's not significantly different than a single man being able to outfight 10-20 others in a hand-to-hand battle.

Rare outliers aside, men are built for fighting to a degree that women just aren't, even at the same height and weight. A lot can be mitigated with training, but let's cut the bullshit here.

This.
I invite our so-called fight experts to take out a whole cowboy/biker bar like what happens in the movies.
While giving us streaming phone video of how it's going.
That'd be neat.
I imagine they'd rather be creamed in that fight than have to explain why they don't criticize those movies.

Men and women are built differently, period. If you disagree, it is out of ignorance.

Yea. Let’s cut to the chase.

It’s fucking starfleet.

To assume women are not trained to fight in hand to hand combat is ludicrous and only furthers the assumption that it matters not what the subject is, if women are not demeaned and ridiculed by men the movie or tv show is shit.