Star Trek Discovery - How bad was it? ... or was it?

[RGMage2]

Caution - spoilers ahead

 

I'm writing this as a life long Star Trek fan. I watched original Star Trek when it was new (and I was new - very young) and became permanently hooked. I waited years for a new Star Trek and was finally rewarded with TNG - loved it from beginning to end. I didn't initially love Voyager but came to love it over time and still enjoy watching it. DS9 was awesome. Enterprise I'm still watching, recently bought the boxed set. I have my differences with some of the characters - don't like Tucker, too quick to anger and sometimes cringe worthy, but well acted by Connor Trinneer. In fact all the main characters were well developed and well acted.

 

Discovery? I've watched the first 2 episodes 4 times each, not because I loved it, but because I'm trying to figure out if it was as bad as I thought it was or if I'm being too critical. After the first airing I searched the net for reviews, looking for confirmation of my own conclusions and could only find positive reviews, and I was like in total disbelief. How could they not see what I saw? Was I wrong? Was it just the mood I was in? It wasn't until a few days later that I found some confirmation on some fan sites from viewers rather than re-viewers. Now I'm thinking that it just shows how out of touch the media is on everything. They seem to be living in some bubble universe, or maybe they just write what they're paid to write.

 

First impresionss: Michelle Yeoh's Captain Georgiou was crippled by her accent. I loved her in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but in Discovery her accent was an annoyance. If they needed a Chinese actress Lucy Liu might have been a better choice if only for the dialog. Deficiencies in the way the role was played - lack of a commander's bearing, smiled too much - I put down to an undemanding Director rather than the actress as she wasn't the only problem.

 

Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham had issues from the start, mostly related to dialog but also unnatural body language and facial expressions. In the opening scene with the Captain and Michael in the desert it felt like something was off with her but I couldn't put my finger on it. On one of the early lines she spoke on the bridge it became apparent, she sounded like she was reading it off a script and her intonation seemed unnatural. At that moment I had the feeling the director should be jumping up and yelling "cut cut let's try that again". And there were many such moments with her delivery. Once again I don't blame her, I blame whomever directed that scene. Sonequa is not relaxed in her role, you can see it in her body language. There is one scene viewed overhead and from behind where she is walking around the bridge, basically just moving from point A to point B, and if you saw that stiff unnatural movement in a video game you would call it really bad animation.

 

The Michael Burnham character is thus far unlike-able - arrogant, conceited, superiority complex, immature, untrustworthy, unreliable. Obviously they are going to try and rehabilitate that character but it might be a harder sell than they think. In the first 2 episodes the immature Michael has all the answers/knows everything, where as the experienced captain apparently knew nothing and had no answers - that didn't work, too unbelievable.

 

The immature behaviour of bridge officers trying to push each other out of the way to get at a bridge console also didn't work. I guess it was meant to be amusing or comical but that sort of thing just doesn't happen on the bridge of a Star Ship. No captain would allow it. Those officers would have been disciplined out of such behaviour long before they were promoted to the bridge. Showing it in these episodes only served to make the captain look incompetent.

 

More unbelievable, in the middle of a tense standoff with the Klingons Michael asks to leave the bridge. The Captain responds "are you kidding me?" um... no, that is not what the captain would say. Poorly written dialog. And then it gets worse. Michael retreats to quarters to communicate over subspace with adoptive father Sarek (father of Spock) to learn how Vulcans dealt with Klingons. Really? Seriously? You're connecting her to Spock? That's just too cheesy verging on ridiculous. And the timing of the scene could not have been more wrong. If they really felt it necessary to explain the "Vulcan Hello" it should have been done earlier in the episode - it came off looking like an officer asking for a washroom break in the middle of a tense moment.

 

Mildly annoying: In the middle of battle and with Michael in the brig, slightly injured male bridge officer accidentally enters brig while trying to find sickbay, whimpers and cries about being an explorer and not a soldier, and basically plays a weak and frightened emotional male being consoled by the strong female. OK, I know where they are coming from with this and it's not unexpected, but if they really must push a politically correct social engineering agenda, could they at least do a better job of it, make it less obvious, less transparent? And while we're on the subject of PC, was it really necessary to give the main female character a man's name? They could have achieved the same sort of social engineering objective by giving her a very unusual name like... um... Sonequa. How about calling Sonequa Sonequa. Lieutenant Commander Sonequa Burnham, I could dig that.

 

Another annoyance: In the middle of communication between Captain and Admiral, 1st Officer Burnham interrupts conversation to give words of wisdom to superior officers. Admiral responds derisively and scolds her for her handling of her contact with Klingons. Nope, it wouldn't go down that way. in spite of the inappropriateness of Burnham interjecting herself into the conversation, he is not going to scold her for her handling of a mission when he doesn't yet have all the details, and anyway it's a waste of his time, he has bigger fish to fry. He might keelhaul her later at a disciplinary hearing, but right now he needs information and will want to hear what she has to say. You don't get to be Admiral without learning how to prioritize.

 

 

Second thoughts, second, third and forth view: Speaking of unbelievable, how does it make any sense that the captain would have participated in the mission in the opening scene, which did not require a senior officer, but when in the far reaches of Federation space examining damage to a Federation beacon, the captain would be in her ready room puttering about and not aware of what was going on until Michael comes in with a report.

 

The explanation of the "Vulcan Hello" would have been learned at a much younger age. Michael Burnham grew up on Vulcan, was schooled by Vulcans, so would already be well aware of how Vulcans handled Klingons. For that matter humans, being allies to the Vulcans, would also be well aware of how Vulcans had dealt with Klingons.

 

The undisciplined, argumentative, and problematic nature of the Michael Burnham character would be well known to StarFleet and not something that just suddenly pops up at an inopportune moment. She would not be anywhere near getting her own command and probably not even a first officer. More believable as an Ensign.

 

And one final thought on the Political Correctness angle they are playing. Having a Chinese Captain with a Chinese accent in command of a Chinese ship actually runs counter to the message of inclusiveness and one big happy family they want to put forward. If you really want to go down that road then it would be more appropriate to have the white English speaking male Captain in command of the Chinese ship, and the Chinese female Captain in command of Discovery itself. Doing it the way they did it makes it look like nation states are still a thing in that time period. So not just political correctness, but poorly done political correctness.

 

There is lots more I could say - I'm not even touching the Klingons, but where Discovery really failed with me, is that through bad writing and bad directing it failed to suspend my sense of disbelief.

 

I will continue to watch it since I don't have to pay any extra for it. It's on Space channel in Canada, which I get in a bundle with Showcase, Bravo, A&E, Action, and a few others for $6 dollars on Shaw Direct satellite, which I think is a pretty good deal.

 

In summation, I liked it for what it could be, not for what it was. As a life long Star Trek fan I will give them every chance to win me over, but they are not off to a good start.

 

Feel free to disagree . I'm sure some people must have loved it.

[DoctorKaizeld]

as someone who isnt a trek person i do intend to try the show. my reason is that everyone i talk to who is trekfan says that they werent expecting the first few episodes to be the best and think it will get better in time like their previous series.

[JimboUK]

I think it has potential but it's not off to the best of starts, I'm not convinced by the Burnham character who is all over the place emotionally, odd for someone raised on Vulcan and she's not the kind of person you'd expect to find in Starfleet. I thought the ship to ship battles were a huge improvement on earlier shows, weapons actually did damage rather than knock a few percent off the enemy shields. I did nearly switch off when that guy from the bridge started crying in the brig, OK they want a strong female character but you don't need to turn the male ones into useless crybabies to do that, Janeway was a strong character and she didn't have male characters like that around her, the whole scene was cringeworthy. I'm a huge fan of the franchise and own every episode and movie but this could be the first one I give up on, time will tell I guess.

[kvnchrist]

Caution - spoilers ahead

 

I'm writing this as a life long Star Trek fan. I watched original Star Trek when it was new (and I was new - very young) and became permanently hooked. I waited years for a new Star Trek and was finally rewarded with TNG - loved it from beginning to end. I didn't initially love Voyager but came to love it over time and still enjoy watching it. DS9 was awesome. Enterprise I'm still watching, recently bought the boxed set. I have my differences with some of the characters - don't like Tucker, too quick to anger and sometimes cringe worthy, but well acted by Connor Trinneer. In fact all the main characters were well developed and well acted.

 

Discovery? I've watched the first 2 episodes 4 times each, not because I loved it, but because I'm trying to figure out if it was as bad as I thought it was or if I'm being too critical. After the first airing I searched the net for reviews, looking for confirmation of my own conclusions and could only find positive reviews, and I was like in total disbelief. How could they not see what I saw? Was I wrong? Was it just the mood I was in? It wasn't until a few days later that I found some confirmation on some fan sites from viewers rather than re-viewers. Now I'm thinking that it just shows how out of touch the media is on everything. They seem to be living in some bubble universe, or maybe they just write what they're paid to write.

 

First impresionss: Michelle Yeoh's Captain Georgiou was crippled by her accent. I loved her in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but in Discovery her accent was an annoyance. If they needed a Chinese actress Lucy Liu might have been a better choice if only for the dialog. Deficiencies in the way the role was played - lack of a commander's bearing, smiled too much - I put down to an undemanding Director rather than the actress as she wasn't the only problem.

 

Sonequa Martin-Green as Michael Burnham had issues from the start, mostly related to dialog but also unnatural body language and facial expressions. In the opening scene with the Captain and Michael in the desert it felt like something was off with her but I couldn't put my finger on it. On one of the early lines she spoke on the bridge it became apparent, she sounded like she was reading it off a script and her intonation seemed unnatural. At that moment I had the feeling the director should be jumping up and yelling "cut cut let's try that again". And there were many such moments with her delivery. Once again I don't blame her, I blame whomever directed that scene. Sonequa is not relaxed in her role, you can see it in her body language. There is one scene viewed overhead and from behind where she is walking around the bridge, basically just moving from point A to point B, and if you saw that stiff unnatural movement in a video game you would call it really bad animation.

 

The Michael Burnham character is thus far unlike-able - arrogant, conceited, superiority complex, immature, untrustworthy, unreliable. Obviously they are going to try and rehabilitate that character but it might be a harder sell than they think. In the first 2 episodes the immature Michael has all the answers/knows everything, where as the experienced captain apparently knew nothing and had no answers - that didn't work, too unbelievable.

 

The immature behaviour of bridge officers trying to push each other out of the way to get at a bridge console also didn't work. I guess it was meant to be amusing or comical but that sort of thing just doesn't happen on the bridge of a Star Ship. No captain would allow it. Those officers would have been disciplined out of such behaviour long before they were promoted to the bridge. Showing it in these episodes only served to make the captain look incompetent.

 

More unbelievable, in the middle of a tense standoff with the Klingons Michael asks to leave the bridge. The Captain responds "are you kidding me?" um... no, that is not what the captain would say. Poorly written dialog. And then it gets worse. Michael retreats to quarters to communicate over subspace with adoptive father Sarek (father of Spock) to learn how Vulcans dealt with Klingons. Really? Seriously? You're connecting her to Spock? That's just too cheesy verging on ridiculous. And the timing of the scene could not have been more wrong. If they really felt it necessary to explain the "Vulcan Hello" it should have been done earlier in the episode - it came off looking like an officer asking for a washroom break in the middle of a tense moment.

 

Mildly annoying: In the middle of battle and with Michael in the brig, slightly injured male bridge officer accidentally enters brig while trying to find sickbay, whimpers and cries about being an explorer and not a soldier, and basically plays a weak and frightened emotional male being consoled by the strong female. OK, I know where they are coming from with this and it's not unexpected, but if they really must push a politically correct social engineering agenda, could they at least do a better job of it, make it less obvious, less transparent? And while we're on the subject of PC, was it really necessary to give the main female character a man's name? They could have achieved the same sort of social engineering objective by giving her a very unusual name like... um... Sonequa. How about calling Sonequa Sonequa. Lieutenant Commander Sonequa Burnham, I could dig that.

 

Another annoyance: In the middle of communication between Captain and Admiral, 1st Officer Burnham interrupts conversation to give words of wisdom to superior officers. Admiral responds derisively and scolds her for her handling of her contact with Klingons. Nope, it wouldn't go down that way. in spite of the inappropriateness of Burnham interjecting herself into the conversation, he is not going to scold her for her handling of a mission when he doesn't yet have all the details, and anyway it's a waste of his time, he has bigger fish to fry. He might keelhaul her later at a disciplinary hearing, but right now he needs information and will want to hear what she has to say. You don't get to be Admiral without learning how to prioritize.

 

 

Second thoughts, second, third and forth view: Speaking of unbelievable, how does it make any sense that the captain would have participated in the mission in the opening scene, which did not require a senior officer, but when in the far reaches of Federation space examining damage to a Federation beacon, the captain would be in her ready room puttering about and not aware of what was going on until Michael comes in with a report.

 

The explanation of the "Vulcan Hello" would have been learned at a much younger age. Michael Burnham grew up on Vulcan, was schooled by Vulcans, so would already be well aware of how Vulcans handled Klingons. For that matter humans, being allies to the Vulcans, would also be well aware of how Vulcans had dealt with Klingons.

 

The undisciplined, argumentative, and problematic nature of the Michael Burnham character would be well known to StarFleet and not something that just suddenly pops up at an inopportune moment. She would not be anywhere near getting her own command and probably not even a first officer. More believable as an Ensign.

 

And one final thought on the Political Correctness angle they are playing. Having a Chinese Captain with a Chinese accent in command of a Chinese ship actually runs counter to the message of inclusiveness and one big happy family they want to put forward. If you really want to go down that road then it would be more appropriate to have the white English speaking male Captain in command of the Chinese ship, and the Chinese female Captain in command of Discovery itself. Doing it the way they did it makes it look like nation states are still a thing in that time period. So not just political correctness, but poorly done political correctness.

 

There is lots more I could say - I'm not even touching the Klingons, but where Discovery really failed with me, is that through bad writing and bad directing it failed to suspend my sense of disbelief.

 

I will continue to watch it since I don't have to pay any extra for it. It's on Space channel in Canada, which I get in a bundle with Showcase, Bravo, A&E, Action, and a few others for $6 dollars on Shaw Direct satellite, which I think is a pretty good deal.

 

In summation, I liked it for what it could be, not for what it was. As a life long Star Trek fan I will give them every chance to win me over, but they are not off to a good start.

 

Feel free to disagree . I'm sure some people must have loved it.

Sounds like they turned Star Trek into yet another preachy little message flick. Why don't these Hollywood types stop trying to persuade us to be what we already are, which is excepting of others for being themselves. We don't need their help in realizing this. They need to entertain us with thought provoking ideas, not flood us with their own stereotypical prejudices towards us.

[RGMage2]

Yup, I just want entertainment. Any show that tries to preach to me gets turned off. I keep thinking there is going to be a backlash against all the attempts at social engineering the State and the Media are pushing at us, but I could be wrong. I'm viewing it from the eyes of an older generation, and there is no way I can know how heavily invested a younger generation will be with PC. Will they reach a certain age and open their eyes to the brainwashing and throw it off, or will they carry it with them to the grave?

 

Anyway I'm hoping Discovery tones down the messaging and focuses on making good television, because as much as I love Star Trek I will tune them out and turn them off.

[HeyYou]

Yup, I just want entertainment. Any show that tries to preach to me gets turned off. I keep thinking there is going to be a backlash against all the attempts at social engineering the State and the Media are pushing at us, but I could be wrong. I'm viewing it from the eyes of an older generation, and there is no way I can know how heavily invested a younger generation will be with PC. Will they reach a certain age and open their eyes to the brainwashing and throw it off, or will they carry it with them to the grave?

 

Anyway I'm hoping Discovery tones down the messaging and focuses on making good television, because as much as I love Star Trek I will tune them out and turn them off.

I haven't watched it yet, and, given what I have been reading here, I don't think I am going to bother. Not to mention that I don't have any real desire to subscribe to some pay TV thingy, to watch ONE show. I'll wait for it to hit netflix, and then see what happens. (but, likely I won't want to be socially engineered then either.)

[RGMage2]

I watched episode 3 tonight, it was better, much better. It still didn't feel like Star Trek, I would say it had almost a Galactica feel to it. Some tense moments, maybe even riveting, and some intriguing ideas. Better acting and better writing, and I didn't notice the directing so it must have been OK.

 

There will be a character or two I wont like, but I can probably look past them. I don't think there is anything they could do to make me like the Burnham character... other than a personality transplant, on the other hand maybe I'm not supposed to like her.

 

A few more episodes like tonight and I might get hooked.

[kvnchrist]

Yup, I just want entertainment. Any show that tries to preach to me gets turned off. I keep thinking there is going to be a backlash against all the attempts at social engineering the State and the Media are pushing at us, but I could be wrong. I'm viewing it from the eyes of an older generation, and there is no way I can know how heavily invested a younger generation will be with PC. Will they reach a certain age and open their eyes to the brainwashing and throw it off, or will they carry it with them to the grave?

 

Anyway I'm hoping Discovery tones down the messaging and focuses on making good television, because as much as I love Star Trek I will tune them out and turn them off.

It's not age, it's laziness. Some people want their vision of utopia handed them because it takes far less effort to set in front of a TV set and gorge themselves on good feelings than it would to go down to the homeless shelters,or volunteer at Habitat for Humanity for a couple of days and bring a little of that utopia to today's world. There are armchair activists all over the place preaching how the world would be such a great place, if others would just make it so. These message flick s are ego fluffers for hereditary hypocritical. People will march around, shaking their fists at others all day long, but doing dishes at a soup kitchen is somehow demeaning. Go figure.

[folgore62]

I think your criticisms are on point. For me, even the opening credit scenes were poorly done. Regarding Michelle Yeoh as Captain, it reminded me of something I saw on YouTube recently: a scene from the first episode of Voyager done with the woman they originally wanted as captain: Geneviève Bujold. Though a great actress, Bujold seemed way too low energy for the role of starship captain. They then showed the same scene with Kate Mulgrew and you could see that she was definitely right for the role! On Voyager, they didn't have to make the male characters weak in order to make Captain Janeway look tough.

 

âIn general, I think they put this show too close to the time of the original series and connecting Michael Burnham to Spock's family was a silly mistake as well. And as for the Klingons...the less said the better. All that said, I do remember the first episode of TNG being a bit awkward. Perhaps they need a few episodes to work out the kinks. We'll see...

 

[JimboUK]

I think the third one was an improvement, enough to make me want to see the forth, the only thing that's spoiling it for me is the Burnham character, the more I see her the more I dislike her, the way she treated the nervous girl whose name escapes me made me hate her, she came across as plain nasty.

 

@kvnchrist I know the sort, they'll sit in Starbucks on their iPads ordering stuff from Amazon while tweeting about greedy corporations not paying enough tax.