Spoilers Johnathan Frakes is spoiling stuff again (Season 2)

Where have they done that?

 

Supposedly due to license issues, nothing movie-related can be referenced in Discovery, so Sybok won't be in the show.

 

He was demoted. And by the 24th century there are people in Starfleet who don't see him as a hero. Witness Janeway's smug, smirking speech about how Kirk, Sulu, and the rest would have been "booted out of Starfleet" if they'd done what they did in Voyager's time.

Janeway's actually a lot more like Kirk than she would ever admit - bending the rules, breaking the rules (yeah, she did so break the Prime Directive and lied to Ransom about it), destroying the ship (something she did more than once), romancing the opposite-sex guest character (ie. Michael Sullivan, Jaffen, even Kashyyk might count as she certainly flirted with him in a very calculated - even Kirklike - strategic move.

I don't recall knowing that, and I saw the movie in the theatre during its original run.

Some of his actions ended up having very bad consequences, as a long list of redshirts can attest.

That's ridiculous. I can't stand nuKirk, and last I checked, he's a male character. I don't dislike Burnham because she's female. I dislike her because she's boring, along with other reasons which I've already mentioned elsewhere and won't repeat.

 

NuKirk graduates from the Academy in three years, goes from Cadet to Captain in one mission, and is offered a promotion to Admiral less than five years later. NuKirk isn't generally called a Mary Sue. And the same people who think NuKirk is the Ultimate go on complaining that Burnham sucks.

Burnham joined the Shenzou, and seven years later she was First Officer. Seven years. Not an unreasonable amount of time for someone Georgiou took under her wing. She then gets stripped of rank. Spends six months in prison. Then she's found by Lorca who sought her out on purpose, is made a Specialist with no rank, and then regains her original rank roughly a year later (the nine months they skip over plus the few months most of the season actually covered) but still didn't regain her original position as a First Officer.

And there's no guarantee that her Vulcan Hello would've worked. So there probably would've been war with the Klingons no matter what. Only now she had the stigma of an attempted mutiny, which was later rescinded basically for "good behavior". And yeah, she won a medal, but so did everyone else and it's not like Kirk and Spock didn't have medals. Kirk especially as "Court Martial" shows.

So, I think Burnham is being held to a different standard. Which is entirely separate from whether or not someone likes the character. You can dislike a character because of the actor, the character's personality, their choices, they just plain rub you the wrong way, anything. But it's not the same thing as Burnham being held to a different standard than Kirk or Spock without people consciously realizing it.

One more thing: Micheal Burnham was born in 2226. Spock was born in 2230 (which is reinforced in Star Trek Beyond, by the way). Throw Sybok into the mix and, yeah, Spock is the baby of the group.

Like it or not, Burnham would get to do things first. Not that Spock is a slouch. If "The Cage" is anything to go by, it looks like he's Second Officer of the Enterprise within a year of graduating from the Academy.

 

So nobody on Tyree's planet died after Kirk gave the Hill people weapons? Gotta wonder how the People of Vaal coped; I don't remember Kirk mentioning anything about sending help for them to fend for themselves once they no longer had Vaal to care for them.

At least he made sure some people were available to help Miri and the other kids, and the people who were controlled by Landru.

I don't recall if we know for sure that Vendikar stopped bombing Eminiar after Kirk and Spock destroyed the disintegration chambers. Granted, he did the right thing in my view, preventing even some Eminians from dying, but by saving a few the consequences could very well have been the death of everyone.

 

Aside from the "learning pod" in the Burnham flashbacks being functionally identical to the 09 Star Trek, what are you referring to?

 

Of course it does. It's an example of the hero being "exonerated" for doing something heroic. It's pretty standard stuff.

Such as?

 

I believe you.

I don't believe for a minute that it's not Refuge's problem with Burnham. That's who my sarcasm was aimed at.

 

Thank goodness Discovery is the only Trek series that ever featured a main character or characters (or humanity itself, the ultimate Mary Sue in Trek) being put through a trial, court martial, tribunal, or hearing and then being exonerated or otherwise receiving a favorable outcome. Because if that ever became a regular Trek, scifi, or drama writer's trope we'd be positively swimming in Mary Sues by this overly broad and inaccurate definition of the term.

Once a term is over-extended and misused to such a degree that it becomes largely meaningless and just a substitute for "(_thing_) I don't like" ("PC" = speech or behavior I don't like; "Mary Sue" = female character I don't like) than it's outlived its usefulness and should probably be retired, or at the very least locked up in a museum and only pulled out on rare occasion by experts who actually know what it means.

 

They had Ceti Eels in the season finale, and the Vulcan landing craft from First Contact was also in the background of an episode.

Now there could be a legal difference between a main character and ship/creature.

 

I pointed this out in the other thread, but don't forget that TOS-accurate graphics of the hand phaser and communicator are shown in the opening of every DISCO episode.

 

Well, she failed to stop an event that led to a war that killed thousands.

I've been over it quite a few times (even in this thread I believe). Not really interested in typing it out yet again.

 

Amen. See also: "jumping the shark."

 

Again, she's the lead character in a TV show, that trumps being a "low level technician" in the show's world. That means she get to do the "big hero stuff" including talking to big wigs. Many of today's crime shows are full of civilian consultants to major police departments who are the main characters. Are they Mary Sues as well? They hold no rank, yet there they are being big heroes, solving crimes, getting in people's faces and hob nobbing with the powerful.

Did they turn off the quote and link functions?

Saw the list. Seemed a bit arbitrary. First officer? I can't really call that an accomplishment for either one, as that's who they are at both shows start. The Mirror Universe? Spock never went there. The other stuff: fighting Klingons, getting a medal. Really? Those are "acomplishments" that can't be done because....Spock? So now mutiny is an accomplishment? I don't think Spock's putting his on the old CV.

 

Indeed, if anything she didn't go far enough and second guessed herself too much, which in the end meant it was all for nothing.

T'Kuvma wanted a war to achieve his own ends and he engineered a situation that would trigger one, if Burnham had truly been committed to her plan she could have potentially diffused the situation.

T'Kuvma wanted the war, not the Klingon houses, not Starfleet and certainly not Burnham.

Starfleet did exactly what T'Kuvma expected them to do it was only Burnham who acted in an unexpected way, typical predictable bloody Starfleet, the less said about that idiot Admiral who announced to the Klingons which ship he was on the better, what a pratt.

War is often used as a means to an end rather than the end itself and often ends up with a 3rd party winning rather than either of the competing sides.

History has shown time and time again what happens to well meaning appeasers, as I have said before denial is far more dangerous than paranoia when the other side really is out to get you.

 

Anyone watching Michael Burnham as a character without the fallback of sourcing other Trek characters as what? Smokescreens? Strawmen? Seriously the development of Michael er... as a standalone character is NOT dependent on any other character. If you went into watching Discovery as your first Trek you wouldn't be calling out Kirk or other characters to distract the fact Burnham is a Mary Sue. She is that on her own. She is a creation that requires the writer to match her up in a fight with Kol only to beat him. To effortless be Georgiou's favourite both Georgiou's. Lorca's favourite the interest of Ash and every key player she encountered. To be the famed killer of the Torch Bearer, to take one look at Stamet's spore drive and to instantly figure out what to do to make it better. To flit from one universe to another coming up with all the answers and to get (as we all knew she would) a star moment to revel in her Mary Sueness at the end.