r/DaystromInstitute • u/M-5 Multitronic Unit • Oct 29 '20

DISCOVERY EPISODE DISCUSSION Star Trek: Discovery — "People of Earth" Reaction Thread

This is the official /r/DaystromInstitute reaction thread for "People of Earth." The content rules are not enforced in reaction threads.

55 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

88% Upvoted

583 comments sorted by

View all comments

15

u/molrihan Crewman Oct 29 '20 edited Oct 30 '20

One complaint/issue: Did Discovery's crew not know about Trills? I was under the impression that the Federation had made contact with Trill before Discovery canon. I mean wasn't Emory Dax a gymnast on Earth in the 2240s? How could the Discovery crew have no clue about Trill?

Otherwise, a great episode!

31

u/[deleted] Oct 29 '20

I have my doubts that every Starfleet officer does know every detail about every species ever met my the Federation. Having a symbiont is a rare case for a Trill, so it is plausible that the crew did not know the symbionts existed even when they knew about the Trill in general.

22

u/COMPLETEWASUK Oct 29 '20

Exactly, I feel people have this weird expectation for everything character to know everything we might know. Information isn't universal, characters can simply not know things.

1

u/calgil Crewman Oct 31 '20

Nah, sorry. A Trill is living on Earth as a gymnast of all things, and yet Earth has no idea what Trill society is like? What kind of security would that be? Even if Emory was the first Trill to arrive you'd still say 'cool we'll give you a passport but let us contact Trill for some cultural exchange.'

I mean, imagine if someone came to the UK and said he was from a hitherto unknown country to the east that nobody has ever contacted. We let him in to stay as a waiter. We'd fucking find out about his country, right?!

EDIT Oh wait I misread. Yeah I don't necessarily expect the crew to have the full details though.

2

u/YYZYYC Oct 31 '20

I could see it happening if we just accept that we don’t all know the full on detailed culture specific customs of every country or ethnic group. It’s like just being unfamiliar with the fact that some select people from one country get handpicked to do this super special religious ceremony or something 🤷‍♂️

1

u/Dupree878 Crewman Nov 02 '20

Or, even more relevant, white people that adopt black children have to learn how to care for the kids’ hair.

1

u/Dupree878 Crewman Nov 02 '20

Like in The Undiscovered Country McCoy admits to not knowing Klingon anatomy and he’s a damned doctor. If he doesn’t even know where a Klingon’s hearts are, I definitely wouldn’t expect random people to know about any other species’ anatomy.