Online Series: Star Trek: Discovery - III - Spock's Beard

[Harbinger]

Burnham is quite possibly the worst star trek character ever. She is completely unlikable.

 

[Blender]

Burnham is quite possibly the worst star trek character ever. She is completely unlikable.

I haven't watched the new episode yet, but this is a bit of a stretch. I would say she's easily the worst lead character of any Star Trek series, including core characters from ensembles.

 

[SJSharksfan39]

I called this episode over-waught in sentimentality. I don’t remember many shows (Star Trek or otherwise) having this much crying, and then it feels like the entire crew is bowing at the feet of Burnham and it’s really hard to connect with the emotions this series wants us to connect. For example there was a scene where we see the characters writing letters to families and like Airiam Death, it felt unearned. Compare this to say A Call to Arms in terms of goodbyes and there is much more gravitas to it. Granted we know the characters more but that’s provided by the writing of those characters. We want to see this succeed, we understand why Sisko is pissed at Jake staying on the station. That’s what character development is.

In this series we never see these people as people, except for Burnham and occasionally Suru and Tilly. Heck, even Stamets has been sidelined this season to relationship drama. We haven’t seen this connection the crew supposedly has with Burnham, so those scenes in the episode feel empty.

My favorite episode this season is If Memory Serves and not just because it was the long awaited sequel to the Cage. It was an episode that slowed down and allowed these characters to be actually people. The scene with Pike and Vina, or the scenes with Burnham and Spock really delivered the emotional weight those scenes deserved.

The last few episodes have shown more crying and more emotional baggage than probably the entire franchise combined. Melodrama for the sake of melodrama doesn’t work unless it’s earned. This series is basically cutting corners and leaving all the important stuff on the cutting room floor. It’s a shame because I do think this season is better for the most part than season 1 but it’s ending like season 1 ended, with the feeling the series can be so much more.

 

[The Nemesis]

Burnham is the worst central character, but she's not the worst character in totality. Tilly is far worse because she's a one-note joke character who at times appears to be intended to border on "inspirationally disadvantaged" with her personality/social hangups, but is so poorly written that she comes across as severely lacking in what should be some of the core competency requirements for being a Starfleet officer on a ship and a constant sense that everyone else panders to her disruptive quirks instead of expecting her to grow as a person.

She's Lt. Barclay stripped of his likability and self-awareness and drive for self-improvement and instead is coddled and validated in a way that reinforces her negative personality traits in a way that makes it seem like the audience is supposed to embrace her faults as endearing but only makes them more grating.

The only credited regular character that I can think of that ever close to Tilly was Pulaski. But being a bad McCoy ripoff that engages in a terrible McCoy/Spock relationship riff that comes off like kicking a puppy rather than a good-natured rivalry is somehow less annoying than Tilly. Or maybe Neelix. But at least he had the excuse of trying to be a kid-appeal character with his clownish goofiness.

There have been plenty of bland and poor characters who suffered for not being interesting in any significant way (Mayweather and Kim immediately come to mind.) but that's not the same as being actively grating and infuriating.

 

[Jussi]

Burnham is great!

 

[Osprey]

The writing on this show is so bad.

Burnham: Now, more than ever, I wish I had his certainty.

The most utterly certain character on the show and in the history of the franchise is monologuing about wishing that she had the certainty of the character (Pike) who can't make a decision without her telling him what to do. On top of that, just 7 minutes later:

Spock: You sound rather certain.
Burnham: I am.

Do these writers even think about what they're writing?

Also, I agree with SJSharksfan39 about this episode being excessively and cheaply melodramatic. There have been some similar moments this season (like Saru's expectant death and Airiam's funeral), but this was ridiculous. Just like we knew that Saru wouldn't die, we knew that Burnham wasn't seeing her crew mates for the last time, so milking it so hard fell flat. If this had been a TNG or DS9 episode, it would've at least been used to reveal and develop things about the characters' relationships, so that, even though we'd know that the characters were going nowhere, we'd get valuable insight and be touched by it. Here, there was nothing but crying and hugging, as though we were supposed to be touched by the sheer emotion on display and nothing else.

 

[peate]

I wouldn't say Burnham is the reason I don't particularly like this Star Trek, Tilly makes me cringe more, but together they don't make me eager to watch the newest episode like the Orville for example, I'm always a week or two behind. I rather get the recap here and then know what to expect. LOL.

 

[Blender]

Ummmm...how the f*** did Sarek and Amanda just show up to say goodbye and then leave when they had just jumped there recently?

 

[Blender]

So Burnham is the red angel after all? The plot of the season is so f***ing stupid and completely nonsensical. Who wrote this garbage?

The episode was full of emotional scenes that were not earned or emotional.

I actually laughed when they showed the space map and said that "they are surrounded" with all the ships being on a flat plane with Discovery, as all I could think of was this Spock quote from TWOK: "He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two dimensional thinking."

 

[The Nemesis]

So Burnham is the red angel after all? The plot of the season is so ****ing stupid and completely nonsensical. Who wrote this garbage?

The episode was full of emotional scenes that were not earned or emotional.

I actually laughed when they showed the space map and said that "they are surrounded" with all the ships being on a flat plane with Discovery, as all I could think of was this Spock quote from TWOK: "He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two dimensional thinking."

In fairness, treating space as 2d is hardly new to discovery. All treks have been guilty of it. That's why the future battle scene in All Good Things was so radical.

 

[RobBrown4PM]

I think the only shows that haven't utilized the 2D space trope is B5 and The Expanse.

 

[peate]

In fairness, treating space as 2d is hardly new to discovery. All treks have been guilty of it. That's why the future battle scene in All Good Things was so radical.

Good point, now that I remember it, was the first time a ship came in firing sideways down.

 

[Osprey]

In fairness, treating space as 2d is hardly new to discovery. All treks have been guilty of it. That's why the future battle scene in All Good Things was so radical.

It's one thing for space to be represented as 2D for the sake of visual orientation and simplicity and another for the characters to actually treat it that way and have it affect their decision making, IMO. It's sort of like the fourth wall. It's missing for our sake, but the characters aren't supposed to act like it is. The general two dimensionality of space on the show is excusable so long as it's not lazily used by the writers to contrive predicaments for the characters.

Previous Trek series would've simply shown the ship surrounded by the enemy, played some dramatic music and then faded to black, leaving us to an easy conclusion about the situation that the characters are in. This show, however, refuses to leave anything up to the viewer. On top of those things, we also need to be shown a character rotating a computer model and, worst of all, hear another character say "we're surrounded." That's completely unnecessary (not just for us, but for the officers who don't need a crewmate to explain their situation to them), but everything needs exposition in this show as if it's targeted at children or people who can't do any thinking for themselves.

 

[SJSharksfan39]

I think the only shows that haven't utilized the 2D space trope is B5 and The Expanse.

I think the new Battlestar Galactica didn't as well.

 

[Canadiens Ghost]

Just saw the latest episode... one of the worst of this current series and that is saying a lot.

 

[Ducks in a row]

Some pics from the last episode of the 2nd season

Spoiler

 

[Ducks in a row]

Didn't like the season. Still the worst Star Trek series to me.

 

[The Macho King]

I think the only shows that haven't utilized the 2D space trope is B5 and The Expanse.

B5's horrible CGI and wooden acting just keeps me from getting into that series.

 

[RobBrown4PM]

B5's horrible CGI and wooden acting just keeps me from getting into that series.

The CGI was ground breaking for it's time, and admittedly it hasn't aged very well, however, the acting is absolutely top notch. Jurasik and Katsulas alone are OFTEN touted as having some of the best onscreen performances of all time in the entirety of the science fiction genre. John Vickery, Koenig and Jason Carter are also remarkable stand outs.

 

[Blender]

That season finale was not good.

Based on the way the season ended, is the crew of the Discovery now gone and season 3 will focus on Pike and the Enterprise?

 

[LeafalCrusader]

This show has become such a chore to watch. Still 3 episodes to go for me. Not sure I can make it through a 3rd season.

 

[CaptainCrunch67]

That season finale was not good.

Based on the way the season ended, is the crew of the Discovery now gone and season 3 will focus on Pike and the Enterprise?

Since its been announced that Mount is done with Discovery I doubt it. We're going to see Discovery 900 years in the future.

 

[Osprey]

That was hilariously bad. Ordinarily, I might make a list, but I don't know where to start and it would take too long. I'm just glad that it's over.

 

[Cloned]

That was hilariously bad. Ordinarily, I might make a list, but I don't know where to start and it would take too long. I'm just glad that it's over.

We are getting a Pike show definitely now though. There’s no way they ended it like that without a Pike show coming up.

 

[JetsFan815]

I skipped the second last episode and just watched the finale for the sake of completion. Couldn't wait for it to be over. You just knew throughout the episode that no major character was going to die, I felt no stakes in that space battle. At the beginning of the episode you could tell exactly where and how this episode was going to end and it ploddingly followed that path to the predictable conclusion with no surprises in the middle (the only exception perhaps being the Klingons and Kalpiens coming in as the cavalry).

The Inception style fight in an environment with changing gravity was cool.

The scenes with Burnham traveling back in time for the red dots nearly gave me an epileptic fit with the flashing lights. Honestly I was hoping they would give us a glimpse of 900 years in the future at end but didn't even get that. Once again, everything ended up being about Michael Burnham.

Overall I enjoyed Season 1 much more than Season 2. The parallel universe stuff in Season 1 was campy fun such as "Make The Empire Great Again" whereas the last 2/3rds of this season was a complete chore. Pike and Saru were the bright spots and the New Eden episode was pinnacle of the season.

I finished Star Trek Enterprise a few weeks ago (the only other non-Discovery Trek I have seen) and I have concluded that Season 3 of that show is a better version of what Discovery is trying to do- a serialized storyline that is dark and in which characters push the envelope and do uncomfortable things. However unlike the Xindi storyline where you could literally see the toll that was taking on the crew, I felt nothing like that with Discovery.