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Star Trek Discovery
November 26th, 2020
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Holy shit, this show is the worst. It's physically painful for me.
Uggggghhhhhhh.
I was thinking about doing a systematic take-down laying out all
the failings in a logical way and truly sticking it to the
writers, but who has the energy for all that. Instead, here's
a rambling whine of why I think this is officially the worst trek
that has ever been.
First and foremost, Star Trek has always been an ensemble story*.
Discovery is a major departure for that and tries to lie to itself
that it's not. But James, what about the shaved-head pilot girl,
and the red-head, and the squid-faced guy, and the mushroom drive
guy and his husband the doctor? Fine. Name them. Seriously. What
is anyone's name on this damn show? Don't know, don't care. Nobody
gets more than half an episode of back-story except our darling.
Michael Burnham is the main character. She is, quite frankly,
a Mary Sue of the worst variety. Not only is every problem faced
by the universe something that she needs to fix personally, but
she will mutiny and disobey direct orders to do so only to be
forgiven time and time again because "she had no choice."
Bullshit. Utter crap. This character is relentlessly self-absorbed
and pig-headed. She acts recklessly and has gotten her own best
friend and captain killed in the process but learned nothing from
it. The worst of it is that she as this false modesty. "We'll do
it as a team," she says to the crew of nameless people after she
just went off solo and spoke for the whole federation without
consulting anyone on shit.
And what is with that? Everything Discovery does is saving the
entire universe or starting or ending galactic wars, the end of
all life, or some massive thing like that. The show starts out
with the Klingon wars which they either started or ended or both,
I can't keep it straight. Next up they're destroying empires in
the mirror universe and then I guess they ran out of history to
mess with so they've jumped forward in time so the Federation is
failing again so they can save it anew. This is a bad fanfiction
where everything needs to be the 100% most dramatic bullshit at
any moment. Why is one ship that nobody has ever heard of or
mentioned at all at the heart of every fucking event in history?
Why even mention the ship, how about we just mention Michael
Burnham, who has saved everything countless times and deserves
a whole planet to be carved into a statue of her. Except she is
also so meaningless that nobody ever mentioned that Spock had
a sister and she was human and did all this stuff. Yeah. that's
right. Spock's sister. Cause fanfic.
Okay, okay, so the plots are dumb and the characters illogical,
non-trek in style, and flat. But at least it's well constructed,
right? Well... sorta, except how the big bad Klingon lady in the
first season had such a shitty mask on she couldn't speak clearly
through it and everything came out muffled. Or there's the lens
flares on everything as if JJ Abrams didn't get his ass chewed out
over that a decade ago. Or silly things like having the saucer
section spin. Why does it do that? What purpose does that possibly
serve? And why does the ship flip upside down when it travels on
the mushroom super-highway.
Riiiiight, did I not mention the mushroom super-highway before?
That's the show's mcguffin right there. It can go anywhere
instantly. Nice, right? Except maybe that was a little too
powerful so we'll spend the next 3 seasons hamstringing it and
trying to backpedal.
There's just so much stupid shit I can keep going forever. In
tonight's episode, for instance, the captain decided that after
Michael Burnham's 53rd disobeying of orders he should probably not
make her his first officer anymore. So who should replace her? Oh,
what about the plucky comic relief ensign? She's literally the
lowest ranked person on the entire fucking ship. Let's make her #2
in charge, mmmkay? But she's obviously not cut out for it and is
gonna sweat over the decision. I know, we'll have everyone chime
in and tell her to say yes to the dress and it'll be this epic
moment of solidarity. *VOMIT*
And that brings me to my last point. Last not because it's the
last thing wrong with the show but because I'm too bored of
talking about this waste of time to continue. "The Epic Moment"
That's what this show tries to be. The Epic Moment, again and
again and again. Why? Cause that's what fanfic does. Jump from
amazing thing to amazing thing, let your Mary Sue save the day and
have Epic Moments. Monologue, YES. Threaten and then do some
badass fighty shit and win. Don't worry that your ship is
literally 1000 years old and a little kid's toy bike could take
out your star ship now, you've got moxie. And the Epic Moments
won't just be action and adventure, but heartfelt too. How do we
know? Well, everyone will whisper and tear up! Yes, even the
Mirror Universe queen of evil shit will have a soft spot for
Michael Burnham's ass because Mary Sue!
In all of this, in every single moment, nothing is earned. Michael
will get 1 episode to journey into the future and adventure
wondering where the Discovery is. The very start of episode 2 she
finds the ship and has a tearful reunion about how she's been
searching for them for a whole year. You can tell cause her hair
got longer. We saw none of it, felt none of it, and so the payoff
is flat. It's the same when we say a tearful goodbye to bridge
crew member #7 who I never learned the name of, but had a funny
mouth guard. It's all meaningless drivel without actual emotional
depth because they never invested in anyone or anything. We were
too busy jumping through mushrooms to the next moment of awesome.
Nate Cull on Mastodon had this to add:
I really feel that kids today (by which I mean most movie and TV
sci-fi writers) just have zero experience of working in
a competent functioning team and so they can't write stories in
a setting that requires there be a competent functioning team.
It's all gotta be "BUT MY PROBLEMS COME FIRST" and having loud
temper tantrums while trying to, eg, run an actual ship which
will explode if anyone pushes the wrong button at any moment on
their shift.
I wonder if this is partly because having a career in movies or
TV writing is something that only spoiled rich kids can afford
to do nowadays, and so they literally can't comprehend what it's
like to not always be the most important person in the room. Or
is it just a deliberate dumbing down of writing to try to
capture a young mass audience who have mostly never experienced
working in even, say, a factory, let alone a military?
But I mean if you even ran a McDonalds like the Federation runs
the Starship Discovery, yikes.
I couldn't agree more.
This show is just terrible writing. It's an embarrassment to the
Star Trek franchise. It undermines what it stands for and weakens
canon with nonsense. The best I can hope for is that the last act
of the dying crew will be to erase themselves from history so we
can all ignore this shit and get back to our lives.
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* I acknowledge that Picard is not an ensemble story, but it is
not pretending to be one. It's literally named for the one guy.
I am okay with this. They could have made the entire show about
him growing grapes on his vineyard and I'd have sat through it to
see Patrick Stewart act.