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  • It isn't the mushroom drive that made Discovery bad, it's that Starfleet apparently no longer has any kind of standards.

    TOS and TNG had all kinds of "woke" politics for their era, but they portrayed them as happening on a military vessel. People were calm, competent and followed the chain of command. The only time that broke down is when they were under the influence of some kind of alien disease or tech.

    Discovery's crew was full of whiny, fragile people that were barely able to do their jobs for all the time they spent obsessing about their personal problems. Tilly is the prime example of this. The "Tilly" equivalent in TNG was Reginald Barclay. Shy, stressed, lacking self confidence, etc. Barclay's character arc makes sense for Star Trek. He is able to save the day, but he's certainly not promoted because it's clear that the senior officers on the show are calm, competent and project confidence. He's basically there to show that not all Star Trek characters are the confident, competent, brave people who make up the bridge crew. And, by doing that they emphasize how elite the bridge crew is. Meanwhile, on Discovery, Tilly is promoted and keeps gaining responsibility despite never addressing these gaping character flaws. The "Tilly" message seems to be something like "it doesn't matter if you're weird, awkward and unable to communicate competently, as long as you love and accept yourself, you too deserve to be on the bridge making life or death decisions".

    Discovery also fails because that lack of competence is everywhere in the crew. The original shows had the crew acting as... well a crew. They'd tackle problems together. In TOS Kirk would lead the charge, but he'd never do anything on his own. Spock was stronger and smarter than anybody else, but he followed the lead of his commander. McCoy handled the medical stuff. Scotty handled engineering. In Discovery, Burnham is apparently the only competent person on the crew, and the only one not to be fazed when something bad happens, so rather than the crew working together to solve issues, it's superhero Burnham while the crew faints dramatically. The only real exceptions to that are Saru (whose personality doesn't really make sense given what they explain about his species), and Commander Reno, who is a breath of fresh air because she's basically the only one who isn't constantly freaking out -- although the sarcasm and fatalism of her character is almost too much.

    What makes it all worse is that the backdrop is that the universe is doomed and only Discovery can save it. Sure, the other Treks have had major threats to the universe, but they were being slow-rolled over a long season, or sometimes multiple seasons. They had room to breathe and do episodes that didn't advance the plot. That gave them a time to do episodes focused on fleshing out the personality of a member of the crew, to do silly things, etc. Discovery has the whiniest, least professional crew that has ever crewed a starship (and I'm including Boimler and friends), who are whining while dealing with the most urgent apocalyptic scenarios. It's a soap opera while the end of the world is playing out.

  • People who whine about the silliness of some of the concepts in Discovery (spore drive, space-tardigrades) have never seen TOS.

    • While I do generally enjoy discovery, I do think It's still pretty flawed. Not because of the spore stuff, but because of the way that they have to deal with so many "danger to the entire galaxy/universe/multiverse" type events back to back. Like, doing a few is fine, I generally enjoyed the xindi arc in Enterprise for example, but having so many starts to feel very forced after awhile.

      I especially find that bit with the spore energy extractor in the mirror universe that could kill all life in the multiverse if not stopped jarring, because, if you have a potentially limitlessness number of alternative timelines, and the massive expanse of space, to develop that tech in, the odds that nobody else ever built one of these drops to essentially zero, except that the existence of the plot at all implies nobody else ever has.

      • Not because of the spore stuff, but because of the way that they have to deal with so many “danger to the entire galaxy/universe/multiverse” type events back to back. Like, doing a few is fine, I generally enjoyed the xindi arc in Enterprise for example, but having so many starts to feel very forced after awhile.

        I totally agree. When the stakes are over the top it makes the universe feel small. When everything depends on one crew at all times it feels hard to believe there is a larger world they exist in in which to immerse my imagination. Discovery has fantastic characters, acting, directing, costumes, sets - I would love to see all these great features thrive without leaning on artificial plot tension. The main goal of any show is to make you care about what happens. Ideally you care because you feel a personal connection to the characters. But making the stakes huge, and including frequent ticking-clock scenarios is easier. The thing is I do care about these characters! The artifice is unnecessary!

        But it got better the longer the show went on! I appreciate how every season the stakes got smaller, and more believable, and the pacing got less frantic especially in the last two seasons.

      • I especially find that bit with the spore energy extractor in the mirror universe that could kill all life in the multiverse if not stopped jarring, because, if you have a potentially limitlessness number of alternative timelines, and the massive expanse of space, to develop that tech in, the odds that nobody else ever built one of these drops to essentially zero, except that the existence of the plot at all implies nobody else ever has.

        Agreed. It'd have been perfectly fine to scale it down to have the extractor messing up the nearby mycelial network/subspace enough that the spore hub drive would become inoperable, and they'd lose the only method they had to get home.

        If anything, that might be more compelling, since you could easily squeeze in a character conflict with some people wanting to leave, damn the consequences, or make preparations for a long term stay in the mirror universe if they got stuck.

        In some way, its probably similar to Lazarus' machine. He managed to build something capable of obliterating two universes. It didn't seem that difficult, or that much more advanced than the Enterprise, you'd think someone else would have built something similar, and accidentally destroyed the universe in so doing.

      • That's how I felt reading the Batman new 52 run. It was just constant city-wide crises with escalating stakes. Just foil a bank robbery or something now and then ffs.

      • Not because of the spore stuff, but because of the way that they have to deal with so many “danger to the entire galaxy/universe/multiverse” type events back to back

        I find this complaint to be fairly flawed. It's like saying that it's exhausting to have to deal with a space station on DS9 all the time. That's just... the show. Discovery, the ship, was built to be a fast reaction vessel to respond to immediate and imminent threats. Why is it such a surprise that they do exactly that? It's like complaining that a special forces team is constantly dealing with dangerous missions. It's their job.

        Every show has their own tone and flavor. Discovery's is the major threats. That's really all there is to it on that front. It's not wishwashy or bad writing. It's just the literal gimmick of the show.

        Not liking it is fine but that specific complaint never really struck true for me.

        odds that nobody else ever built one of these drops to essentially zero, except that the existence of the plot at all implies nobody else ever has.

        It doesn't drop to essentially zero. Not all timelines are identical. Each has their own differences. Just because a Charon-type mycelial core was made elsewhere doesn't mean that those people didn't notice that issue or curtail it in their own universe. Question, do you have the same complaint about the finale of Lower Decks then? That's not dissimilar.

        Edit: Downvote an opinion you disagree with while refusing to engage. Go replicate a spine, would you?

    • Don't mind me. I'm just thinking about the time Voyager had to battle a plague of giant viruses.

    • I thought we all agreed that canon doesn’t start until the Wrath of Khan.

  • I try to console myself with the fact that Lower Decks is canon, too.

  • I don't care about Canon. Every Trek has done silly things that are then included, or ignored, based on the next writers whims.

    What did annoy me was that it became less and less fun to watch. Neither the scripts nor the sets and backgrounds felt like they where done by people who liked the general ideas and vibes of star trek. Or maybe they just didn't share my idea for star trek.

    Pretty much only sticked around because I liked Stamments, Culber, and Adira. For all it's failings, I did feel they nailed representation.

136 comments