(TV) Star Trek: Discovery

[tmamass]

So its only acceptable for a Star Trek show to have a main character if it has the word "Captain" in front of their name?

No but the show should - like I wrote be a Burnham show - ST TOS work because it was a Trio and it had episodes where the crew got lore and backgrounds, same for tng
In STD all you get is ONE person who is important and the rest is replaceable....

[Sorshen]

Well, the ship would be useless without Stamets to run the drive and Saru's leadership. Burnham the selfless hero gets really annoying after a while.

This season was carried by Georgiou, Pike, Tyler, Saru and Spock. They have arguably the best actors.

[Ivanstone]

No but the show should - like I wrote be a Burnham show - ST TOS work because it was a Trio and it had episodes where the crew got lore and backgrounds, same for tng
In STD all you get is ONE person who is important and the rest is replaceable....

You do understand that DeForest Kelley was not main cast initially on TOS right? Shatner was the lead actor, Nimoy was the supporting actor. There was no trio. This was amended later but it certainly was not how it worked in the beginning.

The lead characters on the ST shows were Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway and Archer. People constantly calling them "Captain" would lead one to believe their part of a team but they got more than story time than anyone. DSC also utilizes a different story structure and has much shorter seasons.

As for other DSC crew? Saru probably had more character development than Burnham. Voq/Tyler and L'rell got loads as well. Burnham seems like she got more but it was shackled to existing characters so familiar fans were already spoonfed half her story to begin with. Stamets, Tilly, Culber, Lorca, Georgiou and Cornwell still got some time even in abbreviated seasons.

[Kithelle]

What kind of a stupid plan is this... lying about what happened to the Discovery - is the Starfleet Command full of idiots or pursuing a hidden agenda?

Welcome to Discovery, where shitty fan fiction level writing prevails.

[Endus]

Welcome to Discovery, where shitty fan fiction level writing prevails.

That level of writing is pretty bog-standard for Star Trek overall.

The entire concept of the Prime Directive is so colossally stupid that nearly every Star Trek story that involves it, involves a Captain ignoring it because it's horrible and wrong and stupid as fuck. And yet, still the Prime Directive.

Star Trek is not high science fiction. It's a step above pure space opera, but it's not that high a step. TNG seems a lot more deep than it deserved to be seen because it lucked into some top-shelf stage actors for most of its main cast, and they were able to bring gravitas to the silly writing.

[Gallahadd]

ST TOS work because it was a Trio and it had episodes where the crew got lore and backgrounds, same for tng

We’ve had more than one episode about Vork, one of the best episodes thus season focused on Saru, a few about Stamets, whether it be about the Spore Drive or his love life, we’ve had a bunch about Tilly (best character) and we kinda got one about Robo girl, before she got taken over by control.

Burnham is the “lead” so the episodes are usually from her POV, but the focus of the episodes have varied wildly.

[s_bushido]

Just finished catching up on season 2. I'm sure that Michael being the center of literally everything has been done to death by now, so I'll leave that alone. It's finished, and hopefully they can move on.

Something else I hope they move on from is the score. I know this isn't the type of show to have the sound design consist of nothing but the ship's engine noise over dialogue and the occasional console beep (like they did for TNG and Voyager), but I really wish they'd tone down the overbearing music.

Overall I thought it was a pretty decent season. As silly as the wrap-up may be (with them basically classifying the whole mess), it did at least give them a way out that seemed plausible. The fan service was nice, honestly. Showed that they either took some of the feedback to heart or at least recognized the mistakes made by departing too far from the established Trek stuff after the first season.

[faithbane]

That level of writing is pretty bog-standard for Star Trek overall.

The entire concept of the Prime Directive is so colossally stupid that nearly every Star Trek story that involves it, involves a Captain ignoring it because it's horrible and wrong and stupid as fuck. And yet, still the Prime Directive.

Star Trek is not high science fiction. It's a step above pure space opera, but it's not that high a step. TNG seems a lot more deep than it deserved to be seen because it lucked into some top-shelf stage actors for most of its main cast, and they were able to bring gravitas to the silly writing.

The level of mental gymnastics that it would take to thrash the whole Star trek legacy as a defense to help elevate the shit show that is STD to a decent place?.. Checking just a few of your comments on this thread alone, you need an award.

[Endus]

The level of mental gymnastics that it would take to thrash the whole Star trek legacy as a defense to help elevate the shit show that is STD to a decent place?.. Checking just a few of your comments on this thread alone, you need an award.

Star Trek's legacy is largely in its mass appeal and progressive politics. It's important, and I'm not arguing that it's not good TV, I am simply pointing out it is, fundamentally, a serial. A higher-quality Flash Gordon, rather than literature that could stand with novels like Foundation, or Dune. There is a difference between recognizing societal influence, and thinking it's storytelling and world building is complex and advanced.

[Frontenac]

I'm just gonna gloat over everyone who shat over me for saying that this is Michael Burnham show. Would you look at that, you've all been wrong and she IS the red angel.
And now she's gonna be captain of Discovery 900 years in the future.
The Michael Burnham Show.

Star Trek was pretty much the James T. Kirk show. I don't mind it if the show is good, and so far I like Discovery.

[tmamass]

..your opinion...

You clearly watch any ST besides STD have you?
STD in a Nutshell aka facts:
#1 Someone: We got a Problem
#2 Burnham: I fix it!
#3 Burnham fixes it
repeat.

[Mavick]

Star Trek's legacy is largely in its mass appeal and progressive politics. It's important, and I'm not arguing that it's not good TV, I am simply pointing out it is, fundamentally, a serial. A higher-quality Flash Gordon, rather than literature that could stand with novels like Foundation, or Dune. There is a difference between recognizing societal influence, and thinking it's storytelling and world building is complex and advanced.

This really. The older star treks had it so much easier honestly, up until the internet allowed people to dissect every single little thing about the shows that they personally don't like and start creating social wagon trains of hate about them. I'm not saying Voyager or Enterprise were gold standards, so don't misinterpret, but I also don't think they're as horrible as alot of people let on. I still enjoy watching episodes of each because I don't sit and stew on things I personally wouldn't have preferred about them.

[Ivanstone]

You clearly watch any ST besides STD have you?
STD in a Nutshell aka facts:
#1 Someone: We got a Problem
#2 Burnham: I fix it!
#3 Burnham fixes it
repeat.

I watched the whole thing. I didn't fast forward through the parts where Saru/Tilly/Stamets/Tyler/Lorca/Cornwell/Reno/Culber/Pike/Spock did stuff.

[Mavick]

I watched the whole thing. I didn't fast forward through the parts where Saru/Tilly/Stamets/Tyler/Lorca/Cornwell/Reno/Culber/Pike/Spock did stuff.

For real. It's such a dumb criticism that just keeps getting dumber tbh. In point of fact it's usually that group of people fixing things FOR Burnham at this point.

[hynx]

there still is so many plot holes. lets start with child spock seeing the 7 signals...burnham never went to child spock, and the show already indicated it was momma mary-sue who engaged with child spock. momma mary-sue never knew about the 7 signals. so how did child spock ever know about them? why arent starfleet ships made entirely out of blast doors? a torpedo took out 1/3 of the saucer section but the blast door mere feet away was nothing. with a window no less. (even if the window was the fabled transparent aluminum from star trek 4, its still only aluminum) how did the kelpian society become so adept at piloting ships? they were basically a bronze age society suppressed by a technologically superior race. It took Saru years of training in starfleet and existing as a refugee before hand to be where he is, so this doesnt make sense. its like a period less than 6 months. (if you want to factor in actual travel times at warp speeds between systems) section 31 aka control, also knows how to detect cloaked ships, so how did the klingon cleave ship manage to ram into a sect, 31 ship? why was gravity shifting only in that one corridor wioth control, Georgiou, and the other person. why is Georgiou so kind and maternal in this season? shes literally space hitler. we dont see her true self until shes happy seeing control nanites seep out of that one dudes body, in extreme pain and suffereing. how did spocks parents know where to go, after Discovery spore drives away from where they were, when section 31 fleet literally surrounds them. also how did the Enterprise get through and not intercepted? they were literally being surrounded, from every direction, even if Enterprise is the fastest ship in the fleet aside form spire travel, Control would have easily intercepted Enterprise at some vector of attempted escape. its a literal strategic computer, a very bad one. its job would have been to destabilize the warp field and/or damage a warp nacel, until the other ships caught up. this doesnt make sense. this should have been a kobiashi maru scenario for the enterprise trying to simply reach the rendezvous point. also when Disco spore drived away from the section 31 signal jamming, why did it not immediately send out a distress call to the rest of the federation for help? also how did the kelpians and klingons know where this rendezvous point was? sect 31 knew, because the sporatically intelligent strategic computer would know, based purely on Enterprises initial trajectory, along with all of its fleet using long range sensors to focus its search to re-find Discovery.

none of this makes sense in the end. I'd rather watch slow mo fighting of kirk and a Gorn again. its more believable

[Endus]

For real. It's such a dumb criticism that just keeps getting dumber tbh. In point of fact it's usually that group of people fixing things FOR Burnham at this point.

Also, the whole "she's the most specialest person in the show" takes a bit of a nosedive as an argument when;

1> Saru is the only member of his species to leave his home planet, and the only one to pass through their "coming-of-age" without being killed by their oppressor species.
2> Stamets is literally the only way the spore drive works by a few episodes into S1.
3> Tilly is presented as monumentally brilliant, one of the smartest people in Starfleet, way more so than Burnham. Tilly has also had unique relationships with multiple individuals who were absolutely critical for the show's progression.
4> Tyler isn't just a major Klingon political figure, he also had a romance with their current political leader, and has a child with her.
5> Spock and Pike both carry massive legacies from the earlier shows.
6> Culber literally died and came back.

The whole crew is "special". Burnham's just tied to the season arc, whereas everyone else gets a lot more focus in episode arcs.

there still is so many plot holes.

...

none of this makes sense in the end. I'd rather watch slow mo fighting of kirk and a Gorn again. its more believable

Dude, have you never watched Star Trek before? It's wildly inconsistent and contains so many plot holes its narrative fabric is more of some kind of lace. You can make similar analyses for pretty much any Star Trek show, even TOS and TNG.

[s_bushido]

Also, the whole "she's the most specialest person in the show" takes a bit of a nosedive as an argument when;
[...]
The whole crew is "special". Burnham's just tied to the season arc, whereas everyone else gets a lot more focus in episode arcs.

Here's the thing. The fact that she's the one they turn to to technobabble their way out of 8/10 situations is only compounded by the fact that she's basically portrayed as the Chosen One throughout the season. If it had been one or the other, it would have been much less egregious. At least when Data was doing the whole "living encyclopedia of literally all technical expertise" thing, he was actually a living encyclopedia of literally all technical expertise...

[Biomega]

Star Trek is not high science fiction. It's a step above pure space opera, but it's not that high a step. TNG seems a lot more deep than it deserved to be seen because it lucked into some top-shelf stage actors for most of its main cast, and they were able to bring gravitas to the silly writing.

This doesn't get pointed out enough, imo. TNG took itself fairly seriously a lot of the time, and is certainly regarded as such by many fans - but in reality there's like a dozen or so brilliant episodes, and a whole lot of gunk passed off as pâté through the efforts of the admittedly stunning cast. DS9 has much more consistent writing, albeit with fewer really high points (though personally "In the Pale Moonlight" is still my #1 favorite ST episode). And neither is really at the level of high-quality science fiction, most of which is not ever going to make it to a screen because it doesn't have mass market appeal.

In a way, DIS is just a natural evolution of the franchise - with the caveat that they had the choice of setting, and decided to go back rather than forward. In terms of action and character-focused drama etc. it's pretty much in the prevailing paradigm of contemporary TV. It doesn't do anything radically new in its conceptualization or structure. All they innovated on is design and decor, really. As was rightly pointed out, the Prime Directive only ever existed to be broken in the first place, or that's how it looks like anyway. Not a huge shocker - "okay, let's not get involved and continue our cartography mission instead" does not for good ratings make.

literature that could stand with novels like Foundation, or Dune.

To be fair, both Foundation and Dune drifted off into silliness later on :P They start out as amazing SF milestones, and end with jumping one cosmic shark after another. Let's just pretend the final books don't exist, and we're good.

[Kithelle]

For real. It's such a dumb criticism that just keeps getting dumber tbh. In point of fact it's usually that group of people fixing things FOR Burnham at this point.

Yeah...it is dumb when you have to pretend reality isn't so because it doesn't fit your narrative!

Burnham does almost everything...the galaxy revolves around her, she is even more important to Spock's parents then he was. They showed up in the finale worrying all about her and barely seemed to give a fuck about Spock at all.

Burnham gets away with whatever she wants...she talks back and often ignores Pike's orders and yet she never even gets a verbal reprimand.

Burnham is the center of the universe....I'm willing to bet Momma Burnham is really future Michael Burnham....only someone as special as Michael Burnham could create Micheal Burnham....after all the test they did on her said the red angel was Michael Burnham...not to mention supposedly the suit was created by Momma Burnham alone....and Michael was able to replicate a new suit so easily.

Saddens me these people who have never watched Star Trek before need to lie about it so much just so they can fit their circle Discovery through the square hole of Star Trek.

[Vilendor]

The last episode broke the "most plothole in a single episode" world record. It was so dumb my brain still hurts

A klingon armada "forgets" the Discovery. Half the saucer blows up but the door holds. Spock can be saved by teleporting him but fuck Admiral Cornwell, let her die. Suicide door lock only inside the room. The most powerful shields in the Star Trek history, 30+ battleship and thousands of drones manage to bring it down to 40% in a 1 hour long fight. Star ships turned into carriers. Hitting and kicking the instantly regenerating half robot main villain for 30 min because that will hurt him. Hand combat with a super intelligent half robot who could react in nanoseconds, who could calculate your every move and who said 1 episode ago: "i can reach you and break your metacarpal in 0.8 seconds if you move". Conveniently working super suit not allowing the interface to work, because she has to go to the past first. Main villain killed by... magnets. The threat is dead but they don't stop because... they need season 3. The literally klingon and loyal to the klingon chancellor Tyler is named to the head of the military shadow organisation, because... they need a new spin off show. Everything ever Burnham does....

And that's just from the top of my head, im sure digging into it would make the list 10 times longer.

And all the whining jesus fucking christ. The episode could be 20 min shorter if they cut every "Burnham switching from bitchface to cryface" scene.

Which reminds me: that's the only 2 face the actress can make... and every good actor's contract ended with this season. We will be stuck with her and her (conveniently) perfectly diverse crew... this will be a shitshow. Please just end this and stop desecrating my childhood.