Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x15 - "Will You Take My Hand?"

[XCV330]

By the end of series one, we knew Harry well enough to know that now, in DSC, Tilly is more or less the same character archetype. Except Harry had made more friends, revealed more personal info, and had a job that put him where he was because of what he does well at. We knew most of these things about him by the end of Caretaker. We knew more about the entire Voyager senior staff by the end of Caretaker than we do about DSC characters by the end of series one. We knew more about bloody Neelix than we do about most of the DSC crew.
I like DSC plenty, now it’s progressed a bit, but pretending they are more ‘real’ based purely on what we actually see on screen, is a bit of a stretch. We know that in the old days, characters had full bios planned in many cases, even if they were altered further down the road.
We know of two characters with actual hobbies in DSC, and boating Ash only turned up in the last episode. By the end of Caretaker, we know about Paris Family and Academy background, Janeways dogs and relationship, Harry being the new boy, Tuvok working as a spy...by the end of series one, possibly half of it, we know Harry is a musician and has overbearing parents, Chakotay has his New Age Shaman stuff, B’Ellana is a Starfleet drop out and engineering genius, Neelix is a traveller with a shadowy past, Kes likes botany and is essentially curious about everything, Paris is a roguish figure...there are hobbies, likes, dislikes, history (we get two bits of character history unrelated to plot in DSC...boating Ash and When Stamets Met Culber.) things that shape the characters. For a range of characters. We can point at things and say ‘Tom episode’ ‘Neelix episode’.
This is in addition to publicity at launch giving those bios (and Jeri Taylor’s Mosaic and Pathways novels, a bit down the line.) meaning we know about B’Ellana being half Klingon etc.
In DSC, much as it is good, we still barely know over a handful of characters names, let alone why they have metal in their skull etc. The characters we do know about, it’s all plot, and they are mostly gone. It’s all about Burnham.

Travis...meh. I dropped out of ENT pretty damn fast. But those other shows? Particularly VOY? Much much more character work. The EMH never ever gets a name, but he gets more revealed about his character than flipping Saru does. (Is grumpy. Is prey. Is riddled with self-doubt. Same as day one to day 13.)
Is this a failing of going serialised? It’s certainly a failure of the writing this year.

I wish we'd known less about the Voyager crew and had them do more stuff worth caring about. That was the problem for me with Voyager. Rarely did it seem like their perilous journey was that perilous. Whatever trouble that they faced had no repercussions down the road. They could escape to VR land for entertainment, and their only real sacrifice was eating Neelix's food (Lorca would sent him out the airlock in 10 minutes.. come back Lorca.. come back) and being on the same starship as Chakoteh.

Ok, best war show I have ever seen, Band of Brothers, yes you do learn about the characters over time, and yes BoB is a better show than Discovery, but it still takes time (and they had more screen time to work with). Voyager is a pretty bad example of how not to do things or how to do things, it seems.

 

[eschaton]

Whenever the question of characterization comes up in the context of DSC, I notice many people make comparisons between its main characters after 15 episodes and TNG, DS9, VOY main characters with 7 seasons worth of character development behind them. If I had to make a character assessment of Julian Bashir after his first 20 episodes, I would've dismissed him as an overeager, annoying douche who had nothing interesting about him and he basically was only there because they needed a doctor... of course, in his case it's just as much a question of character development as fleshing him out. But still, after a mere 15 episodes, I wouldn't expect to know everything about my characters already.

Yes, Bashir took time for DS9 to flesh out as a character, although I honestly have read they always planned to make him be an insufferable prig initially because they wanted him to show growth later. Dax is an example of a character they had no idea what they were going to do with initially, although Terry Farrell was a last-minute recast, so perhaps that's to be expected. On the other hand, several of the characters (most notably Odo and Quark) basically walked off the pilot in recognizable form. They play a good part in making Season 1 of DS9 watchable, if a bit boring at times.

As for Piller Filler, those were always hit-and-miss for me in earlier series. DS9 managed to do them skillfully, as can be seen in the Quark scene linked before, but it had the advantage of having well-crafted characters, as these slice-of-life scenes often don't add any additional depth to the characters involved. We see Harry Kim playing the clarinet... okay, how does this make him any less of a cardboard cutout? My main problem about these scenes in TNG, VOY and ENT was that they often seemed nothing more than attempts to make the characters seem like real people because other than this they, with a few exceptions, only served as static devices through which the story could be told, serving their purposes, nothing more (I mean, did learning that Travis Mayweather grew up in outer space add anything to his character?). We might have not yet seen much breadth added to DSC's main characters but most of them feel much more like real people for me than Harry or Travis ever did.

Basically, what bugs me about Piller Filler is that when they're used, they're meaningless in terms of adding to the character, and when they would work well, they're not even necessary. Of course, they enrich a series greatly when they work well, like it was with DS9.

I dunno. I expected Discovery to take its cues from DS9, considering how much in theory the two have in common. Both are "dark Trek," both are serialized, both are war stories, and both of them supposedly had a focus on character.

That's part of what made this season so frustrating to me. DS9 didn't have an overall plan, but it was a character-focused show. That is to say, the writers used those character moments to spin out whole new plot lines in future episodes. For example, the entire Odo/Kira romantic arc was spun out of a single ad-libbed wounded look by Rene Auberjoniois in one of the early seasons. In contrast, while the writers of Discovery claimed it would be a character focused show, the characters ultimately bent to serve the needs of the plot rather than the other way around. Which is a shame, because the plot wasn't all that, but I would have been much more into it despite that if I felt there was some interesting banter between the characters going on interspersed.

 

[eschaton]

I wish we'd known less about the Voyager crew and had them do more stuff worth caring about. That was the problem for me with Voyager. Rarely did it seem like their perilous journey was that perilous. Whatever trouble that they faced had no repercussions down the road. They could escape to VR land for entertainment, and their only real sacrifice was eating Neelix's food (Lorca would sent him out the airlock in 10 minutes.. come back Lorca.. come back) and being on the same starship as Chakoteh.

Voyager is far from my favorite Trek show. Honestly, it's my least favorite Trek show. I've been slowly weaving my way through a rewatch of the entire Trek canon, and finishing up Voyager season 7 is painful. It's just so insufferably boring.

Nonetheless, the best Voyager episodes, almost without fail, are the character focused ones. This is why most people tend to love the Seven and Doctor shows which became more common as the series drew to a close - they were played by the best actors, were the most complicated characters, and thus got the most story focus.

But even discounting those, the best Voyager episodes were almost always around character beats. Like Neelix contemplating oblivion in Mortal Coil, or Torres facing the complicated feelings about her mother in Barge of the Dead. Come to think of it, those were both Fuller episodes. Regardless, while the "reset button" was annoying, a lot of the cast of Voyager did have the chops to actually pull off a character-focused episode and make something emotionally compelling. In contrast, we know any shipwide problem would be solved in 1-2 episodes tops, so there was never any tension within that format when Voyager went into "action mode."

 

[Boomer359]

I don't need Trek Bond.

What about Bashir, Julian Bashir? I could always do with that kind of Trek Bond.

 

[jaime]

I wish we'd known less about the Voyager crew and had them do more stuff worth caring about. That was the problem for me with Voyager. Rarely did it seem like their perilous journey was that perilous. Whatever trouble that they faced had no repercussions down the road. They could escape to VR land for entertainment, and their only real sacrifice was eating Neelix's food (Lorca would sent him out the airlock in 10 minutes.. come back Lorca.. come back) and being on the same starship as Chakoteh.

Ok, best war show I have ever seen, Band of Brothers, yes you do learn about the characters over time, and yes BoB is a better show than Discovery, but it still takes time (and they had more screen time to work with). Voyager is a pretty bad example of how not to do things or how to do things, it seems.

It was a response to Harry in particular being used as an example. VOY, I actually drifted off from, but came to appreciate years later. Gold Standard Trek is probably DS9, but all the TNG era shows had much much more developed characters than we got this time out the gate, and more of them. The only exception is probably the TNG crew themselves, at least in season one, but saying that...we pretty quickly get a lot of stuff there too.

 

[cultcross]

While we certainly found out titbits about characters through Pillar Filler, there was almost no actual development of characters through any of the Trek series except DS9. The TOS movies managed an arc for Spock and Kirk, but not much else. TNG in particular was very static. We found out lots of stuff along the way, nearly everyone had a 'troubled past' that showed up at some point, but none of it actually developed the characters or changed them particularly. When you had a 'Geordi episode' or a 'Crusher episode', or in later series a 'Kim episode', the character could be relied upon to be back exactly the same the following week as though nothing had happened. It took until the penultimate movie to deal with the Riker/Troi thing introduced in the first hour of the show. Only DS9 really changed its characters over time, and even then it tended to go in fits and starts rather than particularly organically (It's season 4, best bring in Worf and instantly mature everyone's characters simultaneously).

I'm not sure that we gain much from learning so-and-so plays this instrument, or this person likes coffee. We did gain a lot from the deep character episodes like The Visitor, where we see the real depths of the characters as they face difficult challenges. Discovery hasn't managed that yet and that's a detriment, but I do think the development it has done has at least stuck. You don't feel each episode that whatever happens, Ensign Kim will be back at his Ops station by next week exactly the same. People change and stay changed, they have experiences which actually affect them. Not always, because the writing of some of the arcs such as Stamets' was weak, but definitely in Burnham, Tilly and Saru. I prefer that to knowing about their hobbies and families, myself.

As for random bridge crew, I just don't care to find out stuff about irrelevant characters. eschaton keeps talking about Game of Thrones season 1 bringing in loads of characters, but that's because it is part one of a massive and complex book series - those characters are all important to the plot either immediately or later on. GoT didn't spend time introducing people for no reason. Star Trek in the past has done that - does the helmsman really need to be a main character if there's no actual role for them in the story? ENT said yes. DSC says no.

 

[Boomer359]

And Kirk also didn't have a lawyer, but probably had public opinion on his side.

Kirk also didn't appear to have any sort of trial, and was, instead, convicted by proclamation of the Federation president. Though it does not appear to have been presented this way, I guess the trial could have been held in absentia during their Vulcan exile and the president was just relaying the findings of the court. But that, too, is troublesome, since the ultimate mitigating factor hadn't occurred yet, which would mean that the whole big to do in front of the Federation Council was just some bullshit pardoning ceremony. If so, pardons usually require a conviction first, which, in this case, would mean that everyone was found guilty of all the charges and the president pardoned everyone of everything, except Kirk of one charge.

Sorry for the rant. The portrayal of the Federation legal system has always bothered me. It's less consistent than the size of the Defiant.

 

[eschaton]

While we certainly found out titbits about characters through Pillar Filler, there was almost no actual development of characters through any of the Trek series except DS9. The TOS movies managed an arc for Spock and Kirk, but not much else. TNG in particular was very static. We found out lots of stuff along the way, nearly everyone had a 'troubled past' that showed up at some point, but none of it actually developed the characters or changed them particularly. When you had a 'Geordi episode' or a 'Crusher episode', or in later series a 'Kim episode', the character could be relied upon to be back exactly the same the following week as though nothing had happened. It took until the penultimate movie to deal with the Riker/Troi thing introduced in the first hour of the show. Only DS9 really changed its characters over time, and even then it tended to go in fits and starts rather than particularly organically (It's season 4, best bring in Worf and instantly mature everyone's characters simultaneously).

I'd argue that Data and Worf had something approaching real character arcs on TNG. The Doctor certainly did to some degree on VOY. Though your point here is broadly correct.

I'm not sure that we gain much from learning so-and-so plays this instrument, or this person likes coffee. We did gain a lot from the deep character episodes like The Visitor, where we see the real depths of the characters as they face difficult challenges. Discovery hasn't managed that yet and that's a detriment, but I do think the development it has done has at least stuck. You don't feel each episode that whatever happens, Ensign Kim will be back at his Ops station by next week exactly the same. People change and stay changed, they have experiences which actually affect them. Not always, because the writing of some of the arcs such as Stamets' was weak, but definitely in Burnham, Tilly and Saru. I prefer that to knowing about their hobbies and families, myself.

YMMV, but as I said, I feel like the back end of Act 1 was the best part of the season because it had those moments.

As for random bridge crew, I just don't care to find out stuff about irrelevant characters. eschaton keeps talking about Game of Thrones season 1 bringing in loads of characters, but that's because it is part one of a massive and complex book series - those characters are all important to the plot either immediately or later on. GoT didn't spend time introducing people for no reason. Star Trek in the past has done that - does the helmsman really need to be a main character if there's no actual role for them in the story? ENT said yes. DSC says no.

IMHO there has to be some middle ground between "we'll force the helmsmen to be a starring actor, even if we have nothing for them to do" and "the helmsmen doesn't even really talk on camera." I don't expect the secondary crew to be the focus of the episodes, but I do expect to incidentally pick up on dialogue on occasion.

It's also the case, as I've said before, that Tilly was shoehorned into so many weird plot elements in Act 2 (pretending to be Captain Killy, then the "spore expert" then brought along on the final mission because Georgiou liked Captain Killy) because Discovery chose to have so few members of its main cast, meaning roles which may have been parceled out to three or four different cast members in the older shows were shoehorned on her. I suppose it's not the worst thing in the world, but it does give the show a kind of fake "stage play" feel to it.

 

[Prax]

Technically, Voyager's first season had 19 episodes, but the network shuffled 4 of them into season 2. They go as follows:

1. Caretaker
2. Parallax
3. Time and Again
4. Phage
5. The Cloud
6. Eye of the Needle
7. Ex Post Facto
8. Emanations
9. Prime Factors
10. State of Flux
11. Heroes & Demons
12. Cathexis
13. Faces
14. Jetrel
15. Learning Curve
16. Projections
17. Elogium
18. Twisted
19. The 37's

There was certainly a lot more character development here, than in Discovery. If you are familiar with these episodes, you can look down the list and see that everyone was given a lot of attention. People seem to be equating character development with character growth. Not every character in a story is meant to have growth at all times, but certain ones are.

While every character gets development, mostly Neelix, Tuvok, Janeway, the Doctor, Kes, B'elanna, and Paris have growth in the first season.

In Discovery, the characters who have growth are Saru(became confident), Tilly(became confident, and reached a goal), and Ash(lots of growth at the end). Burnham has growth, but I couldn't tell you what it was. Characters like Lorca didn't have growth, but a lot of development(well, until the twist).

 

[cultcross]

It's also the case, as I've said before, that Tilly was shoehorned into so many weird plot elements in Act 2 (pretending to be Captain Killy, then the "spore expert" then brought along on the final mission because Georgiou liked Captain Killy) because Discovery chose to have so few members of its main cast, meaning roles which may have been parceled out to three or four different cast members in the older shows were shoehorned on her. I suppose it's not the worst thing in the world, but it does give the show a kind of fake "stage play" feel to it.

But then if they hadn't done that, they would have had a main character they'd introduced, set up a friendship with the lead, and then unceremoniously dropped because it isn't 'realistic' that she'd be doing the stuff later on. I'm fairly sure someone would then be complaining about that! By using Tilly they continued the friendship between her and Burnham, and kept giving her things to do to build her confidence into becoming a fully fledged officer in the finale. They developed her as a character. Ultimately, it is a stage play, not a documentary. The characters we are focusing on are going to be the ones involved in the story, that's been true since the captain, first officer and CMO went down on landing parties together because reasons.

 

[eschaton]

But then if they hadn't done that, they would have had a main character they'd introduced, set up a friendship with the lead, and then unceremoniously dropped because it isn't 'realistic' that she'd be doing the stuff later on. I'm fairly sure someone would then be complaining about that! By using Tilly they continued the friendship between her and Burnham, and kept giving her things to do to build her confidence into becoming a fully fledged officer in the finale. They developed her as a character.

I think a lot of the issue with Tilly comes back to the show being poorly conceived of to begin with. As I said, good serialized shows tend to either have a multi-season plan (often because they are based on an established work like a series of books) or flow organically from the characters as they develop. Discovery had no real plan beyond Season 1, and even that was seemingly a bit penciled in. But the plan was firmed up enough there wasn't room for a "Tilly episode" to help flesh out her character and change the arc of the series a little bit to account for her. Thus the "development" she gets, after Act 1 is done, is mostly about shoehorning her into what they need done in the Mirror Universe and the final two episodes.

Ultimately, it is a stage play, not a documentary. The characters we are focusing on are going to be the ones involved in the story, that's been true since the captain, first officer and CMO went down on landing parties together because reasons.

I realize you probably know this, but the Kirk/Spock/McCoy triad was not actually well formed in TOS initially. The beginning of Season 1 (before Gene Coon came on) messed around with several different formulas, including true ensemble shows (The Carbonite Maneuver, Charlie X) and shows which were solely Kirk-focused (Dagger of the Mind, What Are Little Girls Made Of?).

Regardless, it might just be a me issue, not a show issue, but as I said, the claustrophobic casting of this show - having Cornwell be the only admiral, having only four Klingons who are more than extras in the entire season, and - yes - having Tilly do a little bit of everything, makes it very hard for me to suspend disbelief and just roll along with the story. Instead I find myself continually conscious that I'm watching a show, which leads me to analyze it on a technical level rather than enjoy it on an emotional one.

 

[jaime]

Technically, Voyager's first season had 19 episodes, but the network shuffled 4 of them into season 2. They go as follows:

1. Caretaker
2. Parallax
3. Time and Again
4. Phage
5. The Cloud
6. Eye of the Needle
7. Ex Post Facto
8. Emanations
9. Prime Factors
10. State of Flux
11. Heroes & Demons
12. Cathexis
13. Faces
14. Jetrel
15. Learning Curve
16. Projections
17. Elogium
18. Twisted
19. The 37's

There was certainly a lot more character development here, than in Discovery. If you are familiar with these episodes, you can look down the list and see that everyone was given a lot of attention. People seem to be equating character development with character growth. Not every character in a story is meant to have growth at all times, but certain ones are.

While every character gets development, mostly Neelix, Tuvok, Janeway, the Doctor, Kes, B'elanna, and Paris have growth in the first season.

In Discovery, the characters who have growth are Saru(became confident), Tilly(became confident, and reached a goal), and Ash(lots of growth at the end). Burnham has growth, but I couldn't tell you what it was. Characters like Lorca didn't have growth, but a lot of development(well, until the twist).

Yup. Only Lorca had development, and that’s coz he was getting canned.
Development, as opposed to growth, is like the old photography in days of film. You watch the details and everything appear to give you the full image, until it’s done. Until then, the image is incomplete.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Kirk also didn't appear to have any sort of trial, and was, instead, convicted by proclamation of the Federation president. Though it does not appear to have been presented this way, I guess the trial could have been held in absentia during their Vulcan exile and the president was just relaying the findings of the court. But that, too, is troublesome, since the ultimate mitigating factor hadn't occurred yet, which would mean that the whole big to do in front of the Federation Council was just some bullshit pardoning ceremony. If so, pardons usually require a conviction first, which, in this case, would mean that everyone was found guilty of all the charges and the president pardoned everyone of everything, except Kirk of one charge.

Sorry for the rant. The portrayal of the Federation legal system has always bothered me. It's less consistent than the size of the Defiant.

It could be a preemptive pardon of the crew, for any and all crimes committed. Like what Nixon got, before any charges were filed.

 

[Visitor1982]

Harry Kim... My God. Are we really discussing this 'character'. He went nowhere for more than 170 episodes. He should have been killed off like planned at the end of season 3. I'd rather have Kes!

 

[Tim Thomason]

I've never heard of this theory before... it'd have to be a GOOD fabrication to leak backwards through time to so that even Malcolm Reed and Admiral Marcus pick up on it!

That's why it's debunked. It made some sense before Enterprise brought Section 31 into the 22nd century and validated Sloan's claims.

It was still a pretty big stretch though, given all that Sloan could accomplish, and the fact that Bashir and O'Brien were wandering through his mind that one time.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Forgive us, we don't speak American.

To quote George Bernard Shaw: "England and America are two countries separated by the same language".

 

[Boomer359]

It could be a preemptive pardon of the crew, for any and all crimes committed. Like what Nixon got, before any charges were filed.

That could certainly be the case, since we really have no idea how the their legal system actually works. All we really know is that the Federation is a a common law jurisdiction based loosely on a some vague notion of how the US legal system works.

That said, the idea of preemptive pardons gives me pause. Legally speaking, it's something of a subversion of due process. In the case of Nixon, it was done to help the country move past an unprecedented national trauma. The circumstances there were exceptional, making the whole thing more acceptable.

I guess the same thing could be said of the dude who saved a whole planet, though.

 

[jaime]

Harry Kim... My God. Are we really discussing this 'character'. He went nowhere for more than 170 episodes. He should have been killed off like planned at the end of season 3. I'd rather have Kes!

And yet, Tilly is Kim with the serial numbers filed off. Low rank. Check. In at deep end. Check. Engineering genius. Check. Overbearing Mother. Check. Has cooler hair and is generally more interesting in other universes/timelines. Check. Is in science/engineering but wants to transfer to command track. Check. Is befriended/befriends the ex-con with chequered Starfleet past, who helps them to come out of shell. Check. Is nervous around higher ranking officers/everybody early on, but confident when in their own comfort zone. Check. Has an episode where somehow, against all odds, they end up in command of a starship in some way. Check. Has an episode where they have to pretend to fit in as an alternate version of themselves. Check.
Seriously. People compare Tilly to Wesley, but...it’s right there.

 

[Visitor1982]

Tilly is funny. Harry Kim isn't even memorable.

 

[cylkoth]

Yet you remember him....