Mark Reads Feed, etc videos:

Apologies if this is already somewhere, but in the scramble to save Mark's videos before the YT channel closed down, did anyone grab the Newsflesh trilogy videos? I'm thrilled the Young Wizards and Tortall vids have a home-away-from-home, but I figured I should probably ask on a new comment. Again, apologies if this is somewhere else that I just didn't find. Thanks!

Theobroma! Oh, yay. Thank you thank you.

Oh holy hells, I JUST found out about "what happened" and am still kind of reeling. Thank you to EVERYONE who has worked on making this digital save happen.

I can't even remember now when exactly I stumbled into the Mark Does Stuff community, but I want to say thank you Mark and thank you everybody around here for being very welcoming to me. I was happy to find a place where people were talking about fiction I had just found (and didn't really have someone IRL to talk to), I was even more happy to have a place I felt "safe" in taking chances on new fiction I'd never heard before. I'm just going to chalk it up to fates that it was the right time, right place kind of a thing...and I hope we lifted up Mark as much as Mark's lifted us up.

...even if we have conspired at times to make him want to fight us all. <3 :) B)

So thank you. A whole, whole bunch.

Thank you Mark for giving this show a chance. I'm so glad you ended up enjoying it. Thank you everyone else for giving it a chance too.

It's a show that came around for me at...just one of those "right times" for me to get emotionally invested in the stories, and then it kept going higher for me. It's been really, really cool to have it be something for the Mark Watches community to go through.

Thank you all.

Here we are, the end of season 3, where the A story of the fight to take back the ship is intense and everything I expect out of a Star Trek scenario of the type. But the B story...Admiral Vance and Osyraa talking about everything candidly. I admit I was really worried that it would be one of those "Federation accepts the word of the enemy, enemy inevitably waits a season or so to do the next bad thing" stories. I was also worried it was all a big con from both sides of the argument the whole time. Instead, once Vance buys into Osyraa telling enough of the truth to engage her on the substance of the issues, I was hooked. (Yes, I have a big crush on Admiral Vance. I think he's avoided a big trap of "hard-assed admiral" characters with this episode alone, so part of my crush on the character definitely developed in the last couple episodes.)

I've also seen in fiction the various ways putting a character like Osyraa on notice that they'll still be expected to answer for what they've done personally...well, it can go much more wrong than this, narratively. Either the acceptance of a stipulation like that doesn't feel right or the whole lead-up to the denial of that comes across as wasted time. This felt to me like the two leaders were actually wrestling with the stuff. Do I find Osyraa a redeemable character? No. Do I buy that she was looking for a way to actually do something to change what could have been the completely chaotic collapse of the Chain? Yes. Vance figured out the line she wasn't willing to cross, though, so it all went up in smoke.

Aurellio and Paul...that whole thing also became much more complex than the first scenes implied it would. I don't think Aurellio WAS ever allowed to see the full extent of what the Chain was doing, and that fed into his very harsh realizations the second he actually had enough doubt to go on. Also, look, Kenneth Mitchell acting outside of the prosthetics is great to watch. I'm so happy that Discovery has found many ways to bring him back (which is also an amazing Star Trek staple of reusing actors they really enjoy). Aurellio and Paul conversing was doing a lot more lifting on multiple levels, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

As to the takeover of the ship's systems, I KNEW the Sphere Data couldn't have been destroyed or dealt with as easily as they'd made it seem, so I was just waiting for the reveal of how it was still about and still working to help Tilly and the remaining crew do their thing. I was NOT prepared for it to be showing up in blue-, red-, and gold-lit DOTs. But yes, I am ready to retake this ship, Captain!

Are a lot of the performances in the Mirror section of the episode over the top? Yes, but deliciously so in my opinion. It doesn't undercut the dread of the moment for me, it highlights the (somewhat) subconscious realization of Georgiou that the Terrans are acting out what they think projects strength and badassery instead of feeling it. Georgiou is by no means a reformed Terran, but this kind of thing doesn't come across as a natural state for her compared to what we saw in season 1.

Considering we never actually saw Mirror Burnham or Mirror Tilly/Killy in the first go-round (or several of the other now more relied-upon secondary bridge officers of Discovery) it felt like there were quite a few new insights to be had besides Georgiou herself. Killy being different even from Prime Tilly's portrayal of what she thought Killy would be was interesting. She actually seemed the most reserved (which is not a Good Thing), Tilly's bright attitude in there but moved to a core of "I am confident I can kill anyone in this room, thanks."

I remember being completely baffled by Carl. What the hell was going on there? What made Carl someone/something capable of doing this to/for Georgiou?

This was one of the harder ones to wait week to week for, for sure.

This is an episode that it took me a few viewings to really have settle in as a whole. I loved the character beats that continued to flesh out Adira and Stamets. I loved the Book/Burnham progression of "c'mon Michael, you and me" to a full response involving all of Discovery. I loved Detmer, Ryn, and Grudge.
It took me at least until second viewing to really register how The Chain operates. I was wrapped in Obvious Bad Guy Is Obvious, and even the "twisted version of the Federation" was right there in blinking lights for me. It just took me a while to recalibrate "this wasn't a fast thing, this was a years/decades" thing that sunk in eventually. Kyheem and Book are absolutely siblings, those two play it so well. I wanted at least another thirty minutes of post-Chain wandering around Discovery and those two making up for lost time while Burnham distracted Kyheem's son. Or not. A meal scene, at least! The witty barbs. Well, maybe later.

While Osyrra doesn't care about the distinctions and it's obviously going to cause problems down the line (she was always going to anyway) I did enjoy the Discovery crew evolving a plan to work within the letter of Vance's orders while still not letting anyone be surrendered. That's just a fun thing about Trek, and a lot of sci fi, to me.

Again, some things felt off for me about placement in the season or why anybody thought Osyrra was going to do less than she did, but...well, maybe it's taken the rewatch post-2020 for other things to change my perspective on the bits that were still jagged in my head.

Still would like Book's ship. Still would like Book's cat. No change there.

Purely on this episode I absolutely want to see Ache Hernandez in all the things forever. The way he played what he got tells me he can absolutely do all the things.

I accept it as Gabrielle knowing that Michael, having a home and brother and new adoptive parents on Vulcan, had mentally re-centered that as "home." The last time Gabrielle saw Michael before Control attacked Spock and Michael were speaking, so that would be even more reason to go for Vulcan/Ni'Var over Earth or Terralysium (since Gabrielle, broken suit and all, said she hadn't wound up at her original anchor point near/on there...she instead wound up in the future on Essof 4, where they had trapped her.) I'm being a bit hand-wavy, but it tracks with why earlier Michael had said no one on new-future Terralysium had heard of Gabrielle. Gabrielle, in this new future, also likely took in the lay of the political landscape and if long-distance travel was as much of an issue...well, Beta-quadrant Terralysium versus Alpha-quadrant Vulcan/Ni'Var...especially since Earth had probably made a huge deal to everyone there was a "no outsiders, stay away" isolationism in place.
I know my interpretation is only an interpretation, though. I haven't actually read anywhere that my take is exactly what they were laying out, just what I pieced together from the performances. :D