What exactly is appeal? Why are so many people so invested in Lorca being presented as a hero? When Discovery started I remember all the complaints about Lorca being that he didn’t behave like a Starfleet Captain. Well as it turns out, he wasn’t and now people are apparently all pissed off about that. I just don’t get it. Star Trek as a franchise has a set of clearly established moral ethos, which in modern politics is unashamedly liberal. So why the appeal of a character who clearly is the anthesis of that presented as one of the good guys? Or rather, what’s the appeal of the Hard Man making Hard Choices trope, particularly in this franchise?
Lorca and the hard man making hard choices
- Thread starter Captain Killy
- Start date
I find this question amusing considering your username.
For me it is not that he turned out to be from the Mirror universe, in fact I pretty much took it as read for some time. It was the execution that failed, he went in short order from a complex, ambiguous, intelligent character to a Ming the Merciless/Hans Gruber/Trump mix up and then died an almost comically standard villain death without any exploration of his motivations or true backstory.
His character development up to this point deserved to be followed through and put into a broader context, preferably over a longer period and some measure of nuance introduced, if not a partial redemption. Serial storytelling could have allowed for this, facilitated looking at how he was a product of his surroundings, how the moral judgements surrounding his actions should be taken with that in mind. Instead he suddenly became a generic cackling bad guy with little if any relation to the calculating, ruthless but concurrently thoughtful and measured character who had led the crew thus far.
Then died in what was almost a Flash Gordon parody scene.
His character development up to this point deserved to be followed through and put into a broader context, preferably over a longer period and some measure of nuance introduced, if not a partial redemption. Serial storytelling could have allowed for this, facilitated looking at how he was a product of his surroundings, how the moral judgements surrounding his actions should be taken with that in mind. Instead he suddenly became a generic cackling bad guy with little if any relation to the calculating, ruthless but concurrently thoughtful and measured character who had led the crew thus far.
Then died in what was almost a Flash Gordon parody scene.
Killy isn’t a Hard Woman making Hard Choices she’s a flat out supervillian. There is no moral ambiguity on her account, it’s just plain old sexy evil. I also like Emperor Georgiou. I can appreciate and admire a fun Villian. The compliant with Lorca currently is that he was actually a bad guy, and according to the ones complaing shouldn’t have been.
1. Everyone likes a charismatic actor, even when he's playing a shitheel - see Dukat
2. This sort of character hasn't been shown much in Trek in the past.
3. The "flawed toxic masculinity" is the norm now for protagonist-driven character dramas. See The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc. So when you present a flawed man who makes bad choices, people expect the performance to continue to deepen and gain nuance, even if the character himself ultimately tips over the deep end.
2. This sort of character hasn't been shown much in Trek in the past.
3. The "flawed toxic masculinity" is the norm now for protagonist-driven character dramas. See The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc. So when you present a flawed man who makes bad choices, people expect the performance to continue to deepen and gain nuance, even if the character himself ultimately tips over the deep end.
They weren't, particularly. There was just a lot of appeal in a character who was flawed, interesting, with baggage and history that affected his choices and coloured his relationships.
Not everything has to be white hats and black hats, heroes and villains; but then it seems that's the route they went down. I didn't want him to be a hero, but I'm annoyed he ended up just a villain.
I mean I started off the series as a Lorca apologist. I originally saw him in the same light as Captain Jellico. But then Jellico wouldn’t have the murder room. He wouldn’t encourage one of his crew to glass a planet because “sometime the ends justify terrible means.” Lorca said that. Those are his words and people still wants him protrayed as one of the good guys...
The interest is in what would cause a good person, a person of values to have to turn to those means. Much like Sisko in "In the Pale Moonlight".
Michael Burnham is a flawed hero. She has baggage. She’s made poor choices, which have had terrible consequences. She regrets them. She feels remorse and regret. She’s still a hero because her core beliefs are those of Starfleet.
Ok, great. Doesn't mean every character has to be a 'hero'. It's nice to see Starfleet characters who don't fit that well worn mold, actually. Not everybody had to be a 'good guy' or a 'bad guy'. Sometimes they're just guys.
There are other definitions of hero besides "internalises starfleet values", the best characters always have some degree of ambiguity, some question marks that make you uncomfortable from time to time. The best trek has never been about clear cut heroes with simple solutions to the universes' problems, it has been about leaving the audience wondering and working their way through issues which weren't clear cut. Typically trek has focused on situational, externalised ambiguity forcing the characters to make hard choices but Discovery has taken a different approach, making the characters themselves sources of questions.
This is why Lorcas' sudden change has upset so many people, I think. He stopped making us ask questions the moment he restarted his rebellion, he simply became "villain".
This is why Lorcas' sudden change has upset so many people, I think. He stopped making us ask questions the moment he restarted his rebellion, he simply became "villain".
Me either.
Complaint - Lorca, dimensionless, mustache twirling villain! Well according to the following link, which gives aspiring writers tips on creating good villains, I'd say Lorca fires on just about every cylinder.
https://www.nownovel.com/blog/how-to-create-a-great-villain/
One thing I see in almost every post making the complaint is how he just suddenly becomes a villain. That's not true. We all saw and discussed the clues whenever they appeared. What's surprising imo is that anyone was surprised.
Perhaps they are looking for some excuse to revenge hate the character for the way the writers made them care for someone destined to become a bad guy? I think that alone was pretty brilliant.
Agree completely. That's why Sisko is the most compelling captain (imo). He was just a guy doing his best, sometimes doing things that were pretty fucked up because he was protecting the people he loved. He made amoral, possibly immoral, decisions. It gave him complexity, depth, and realism. Same goes for Kira, Odo, Bashir. They all made decisions that made me uncomfortable but that's what was so fascinating about them. They weren't paragons of moral perfection. They were people. I don't need to like or agree with everything the heroes do. As much as I love Picard, he never surprised me.
Lorca could have gone down that road as well, but yeah, he kinda wound up just a villain. Maybe we'll see conflict and layers with Mirror Georgiou in the Prime Universe plot where we could've seen something similar had they kept Lorca around.
G
Gonzo
Guest
Could have been so much more but perhaps he wasn't willing to sign on for anything further, assuming his PU counterpart is definitely six feet under.
Hugely "this".
Why did we invest a season in this character just for him to get a "bad guy of the week" ending?
G
Gonzo
Guest
Yeah the best part of DS9 was the plan to trick the Romulans into joining the war and Siskos realisation that he could in fact live with it, it would never have happened in TNG.
It's probably pretty lame of me to quote myself, but whatever.
It just occurred to me how much better this episode would have been if this had happened instead:
The entire episode goes exactly like it did with 2 differences. At the very beginning of it, Lorca is shot by some random underling. No epic death, no speech, just shot. He's dead. Everybody's in shock, no explanation, no more Lorca ever seen again.
The rest of the stupid plan is then carried out by the underling, and he gets the "bad guy of the week death".
Yes, there'd be rage, but how "brave" and "courageous" or whatever the writers tell themselves would that have been instead?
Think of the reaction from the fans. Think of the discussion.
Think of the hype.
I think I was taken in by Lorca's novelty as a 'Hard Man Making Hard Choices', a character archetype we weren't used to in B&B era Trek, especially in Starfleet. He was very refreshing as something different than all those boring perfect model Starfleet officers from the 24th century who always knew the moral answer to everything.
I suspected he was hiding something from the start because of the focus on his eyes, the story about the Buran; the story spoonfed me droplets of a greater mystery and I eventually reached the same conclusion as others, that Lorca was from the MU. I don't mind him being a villain and I certainly expected him to turn out to be an antagonist, I was just surprised that he actually was a horrible person even by MU standards. I simply expected more nuance to him than what we actually got, but he still was very entertaining as a supervillain to me.
Being simply put, I think I found it hard to digest because I had to re-evaluate him in the space of two episodes from Anti-Villain, antagonist with sympathetic motives that aren't evil just at odds with our heroes, into a sociopath who was so good at pretending that not even Saru's threat ganglia, nor Cornwell's psychological evaluation could rat him out. Which is utterly awesome and badass on his part, I might add. I didn't mind him being defeated easily, he was quite obviously drunk with power after deposing Georgiou which is well-known to make people act smugly.
I think it would've been more poetic for him to return home and find that he mellowed out during his time in the Prime Universe, and, after the stark realization that he no longer fits in here, performing a heroic sacrifice to help the Discovery fly home (for example, he could've been the one to disable the mycelium core's containment field). But unfortunately, Gabriel Lorca, the Man Who Would be Emperor always hated poetry.
