I just spent the better half of thirty minutes reading the inane musings of Jonathan Lane over at the Fan Film Factor (interestingly, he wasn’t writing about fan films…) And I have a massive bone to pick with the conclusions he’s come up with, and other’s incessant complaining about continuity.

Firstly he attacks the lazy writing by which our characters accumulate all of the necessary information to fit in to this universe, including the identities of most of our bridge crew, by way of a data core from the destroyed rebel ship. However it was discussed in the episode that it was intact but needed to be extracted carefully, which Tyler did.

Next, he attacks the ‘cutesy’ scene where Tilly has to step up and become the ruthless Captain of Discovery.. now that’s just clever writing in my opinion because it gave the Cadet the most character depth this season by putting her in a sink or swim scenario. It was wonderfully portrayed by Isaacs, Martin-Green and Wiseman.

Another target was the ‘shock’ killing of Dr Culber, which Lane complains should be an easy case to solve given the evidence that should’ve been left behind. What we don’t see is what Tyler/Voq did to the body afterwards – although the promo for next week seems to show the body still in sickbay as Stamets hugs the body. He is chastised by Lorca for being tardy to the transporter room, so who knows how long Tyler/Voq spent covering his tracks.

As for the down time criticism where Burnham and Tyler get friendly, I think that’s purely a victim of the pace set by television shows since forever… how often did you see Jack Bauer go to the toilet, or eat, or take a nap during 24? How often have you seen characters go to the toilet in Star Trek? Exactly… doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Especially when you are on an (essentially) deep cover assignment trying to survive in this very hostile universe.

Now for some others that complained about the bent nacelles and the indents on the saucer of the Defiant, please just remember that the ship has sat in the mirror universe for 90 years being – most likely – studied and reverse engineered by the Terran Empire… you can’t seriously expect it to have gone untouched in all that time?

Ultimately, my theory is that Lorca planned this whole thing ever since he tried to kill the Emperor and then killed the mirror Burnham before escaping to our universe (why divert Burnham from the prison transport then reassign her?) Now he’s back in his universe and he’s ready to exact his revenge.

Read some more of my thoughts over on the episode page when it’s on-line.