The US has been doing it for decades.
Michael Burnham and the Klingon War
- Thread starter Ro_Laren
- Start date
The US has been doing it for decades.
Lol. Just one question as a result of Michael Burnham being in the picture did the Torchbearer and T'Kuvma die??
The torchbearer (spoiler alert) did because instead of using her jet pack to fly away from him, Michael used it to fly *towards* him so he fell on his own sword - dishonourable much?
T’Kuvma is a different story. If Michael had acted like a starfleet officer and respected her captain and admiral Anderson (one who told her to do a flyby only, not land on the damn thing - seriously she was like 2 feet away from it, why did she need to land on it to “get a closer look”?, and the other who chided her for landing on the beacon), then the battle at the binaries might have gone differently. Yes, the shenzhou might have been destroyed - but starfleet officers should put the good of the mission and the chain of command above their personal feelings. Just ask Deanna Troi when she ordered Geordi to his death for the good of the Enterprise and all of us.
Exactly! It's such a bizarre thing for Star Trek to celebrate, especially considering the franchise's politics and roots in the Vietnam era.
I suppose it's possible. That said, it just ups the other issue I discussed with the ending - in order to build Burnham up into the hero, they destroyed both the integrity and competence of Starfleet and every other character not on Discovery. This is a terrible, terrible thing to do considering DIS is an ongoing series, and will (or at least should) have to live with the ramifications for years to come.
I mean, all of the Trek protagonists in the past have been in situations where their actions directly saved the Earth. However, this was never because The Captain was some sort of uber-special person ("the one"). Instead they were just one of many examples of the professionalism, intelligence, and morality that Starfleet instilled in its officers. They basically happened to be in the right place in the right time to save the Earth through sheer luck (or writing convenience, if you prefer). There were individual antagonists within the Federation - evil admirals, and Section 31 - but the Federation as a whole was always depicted as fundamentally having its shit together, even in dark times.
There was absolutely no need for the writers to drag the Federation's reputation into the mud in the final episodes. Georgiou was the real antagonist - Sarek and Cornwell's involvement just made them look like weak-willed fools. Symbolically it would have closed the circle enough for Burnham to stand against Georgiou alone, because it mirrored her first mutiny, only this time in the name of peace instead of war.
Depend on what you mean by "next."
Federation leadership and Starfleet command knew that a fleet was advancing on Earth, and they had experience on what the Klingon had done during the course of the war.
They knew that the tactics they'd employed so far hadn't work, hadn't resulted in their goal, protecting the Federation and ending the war with the Federation in a state of sovereignty and freedom.
Doing "more of the same" didn't make sense. Something different needed to be tried.
The scorched "Earth" attack upon the core world of the Klingon Empire was that difference, throw them off balance, hurt the Klingons enough that even the Klingons would agree to the bargaining table.
Or face having the same weapon/method (which the Klingon wouldn't immediately understand) used on other Klingon worlds.
Was this guaranteed to work? No, but neither was Burnham's plan.
And give that the Klingon were a interstellar empire and spread among many worlds, the use of the term "genocide" is mis-employed.
If your ideals and morals are going to lead to the slaughter and/or subjugation of your civilian population, your ideals and morals need to be rethought.
"We held our heads high, as they died to the last man, woman, and child."
Seriously need to rethink.
First Contact, Picard and his special knowledge of the "sweet spot" to destroy the Borg cube.
Among all of Starfleet, at that place and time, Picard was just that, a uber-special person.
It's still more a case of the right person being in the right place at the right time. Picard may have been shown as being way too perfect of a character in general, but we were never given the idea that he was the fulcrum of moral righteousness of the Federation, which would stray from its ideals without a good jeremiad from him.
Yeah, I got that impression in Insurrection as well as whenever he had to talk to Admiral Necheyev.
Vice-Admiral Dougherty gained permission from the Federation Council for his mission, but hid from them his plan to forcibly relocate the Ba'ku, thus it falls into the "evil Admiral" trope.
Nechayev did express regret that Picard didn't introduce the "virus" into the Borg Collective, but she didn't directly order him to do so - and there's no sign that it reflected Federation policy. She was in some ways a slightly toned down version of the evil admiral trope - someone who is clearly sane and capable, but incredibly pragmatic to serve as a foil to Picard's idealism. It's still a single individual serving as the foil though, not the whole Federation/Starfleet infrastructure.
I may be misremembering, but I was not aware the details of Dougherty's plan were not known to the Council. I thought they had a fair awareness of the plan to relocate and benefit from the rings.
Also, Nechayev ordered Picard that if he ever had a chance to wipe out the Borg to do so.
Also, given the way the Federation behaves in the Dominion War, I'm not entirely certain Picard didn't provide some measure of being a fulcrum of the best of the Federation ideals.
This is why, on Berman Trek, they had a science advisor whose job it was to just come up with plausible crap to fill in the rough draft portions of the script that literally started out saying "tech the tech."
Some sort of dark energy weapon would have been much more plausible. Locally change the cosmological constant to cause the universe to inflate at a more rapid rate, ripping the planet apart.
Someone who liked Discovery more than I do might be able to make an argument that the show calls back not just to the history of Star Trek but to the history of sci-fi in general, from the pulpy "hydro bomb" to the atomic-age crew uniforms to the use of evil doppelgangers and body swapping. The MU sets and Yeoh's Ming costume look like Flash Gordon, recalling both the serials and the 1980 camp-tastic movie. Because Discovery's a serial, you could go to town arguing that the design and even the dodgy writing deliberately pay homage to the cinematic serials that laid the foundation for it. That way the show can later demonstrate just how revolutionary TOS was as Discovery moves closer to that era.
When that starts showing up in interviews, I will expect a royalty check.
When that starts showing up in interviews, I will expect a royalty check.
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How does this work as an example of a character arc, though? What are the "lessons learned"? What it amounts to is that at the beginning of the season she rejected orders from higher-ranking officers because she was convinced she knew better, but things went badly, and she got thrown under the bus for it. Then at the end of the season she rejected orders from higher-ranking officers because she was convinced she knew better, and (against all odds) they backed down and things worked out okay, and she got rewarded for it.
The moral there is not exactly crystal clear, to say the least.
Yeah, that's another thing that bothers me about the proposition that Burnham learned anything over the course of the season — she trusted Mirror Georgiou up until the very end, despite her being a self-evident lying, torturing, mass-murdering psychopath. Burnham had no logical reason for this; it was purely a matter of emotional baggage because she felt guilty over the death of someone who looked like her. That she was somehow in a position to lecture others on their moral blind spots, therefore, came across as not just unconvincing but downright hypocritical.
And they believed L'rell had the means to destroy the planet because what, exactly? She held up a remote control and said so? She had absolutely no way to validate her threat without actually following through on it. Just how credulous are we supposed to believe the leaders of the other Houses to be?
Indeed. Every part of this bothered me. The character assassination of Sarek and Cornwell was unforgiveable — even if Burnham had personal reasons that led her to trust Mirror Georgiou, they did not. Moreover, the notion that Burnham wound up getting rewarded for upholding Federation ideals by the very people in the power structure who were ready to abandon those ideals is downright perverse.
You seem to be missing the point here, which is that the behavior and motivations "clearly presented onscreen" do not make sense when taken at face value. If we want to rationalize them in any reasonably convincing way, then, "fan theory" is the only avenue left.
The height of arrogance? Far from it. It's criticism, that's all, in the tradition of pretty much all media criticism ever.
It all depends on the context, unless you're trying to argue that any and all criticism of internal story logic in fiction is inherently pointless. If the writers on Game of Thrones show characters moving impossible distances overnight, would you insist they're not "wrong" about the geography of Westeros because Westeros "doesn't exist"?
Yeah, I considered that. It's a consideration that requires certain characters to be really stupid in order to have such an egregiously flawed understanding of their circumstances, though.... hence the comments above about character assassination.
To wit:
I agree. FWIW I think it would have been even better if Mirror Georgiou had never even been involved, and the finale had instead involved Burnham taking a stand against Lorca (as originally conceived, not the MU version), because even if he represented a different moral calculus he was also someone with whom she (and the audience) had built up an actual relationship of trust.
Burnham has one of the clearest character arcs of any main character in Trek.
In a nutshell:
--Decorated XO accidentally starts a conflict with Klingons
--Disobeys CO because after discussing the Klingons with someone who had more knowledge and experience than anyone in Strarfleet, commits mutiny
--Gets convicted of Mutiny, sentenced to life in prison, loses sense of self worth
--After suffering much humiliation, including having no rank, has a series of professional triumphs including finding a way to get the spore drive working, which begins to restore self worth
--Further explores her humanity and falls in love -- develops friendships among Disco crew
--I think she gets reacquainted with Starfleet ideals after getting an up close and personal dose of the completely unprincipled inhabitants of the MU
--In the end, when once again faced with a choice in dealing with the Klingons, this time she doesn't abandon Starfleet principles and ethics, she takes a chance that the "nuclear option" just might not be the right one. Her crew, having watched, worked, and fought with her over the months, backs her up and sure enough, they come up with a solution that ends the war that some think she started, without Starfleet committing genocide.
--What she learns is that Starfleet principles, ethics and ideals aren't just empty slogans, they are the reasons the Federation works and what makes it great. It's all in her final speech in the finale.
Full circle.
Further, it was the producer's way of connecting the show to what so many of us already knew from Trek lore and bringing Starfleet back into line with the other shows.
Full circle.
Now, you may not like Burnham's arc, but to say she didn't have one is objectively incorrect.
People sometimes don’t make sense. We do things for stupid illogical reasons. The show might be trying to reflect that. They behave like actual human beings. Are you familiar with actual humans? Not the ones on Star Trek, the ones outside your house.
Most criticism is about the quality of the writing. Not the behavior of fictional people as if you know how they think more than the writer. It can be stupid motivation, but that’s not what is being argued.
I actually care more about the drama of the story, losing myself in it rather than obsessiving over shit that isn’t real. Yeah, if you want to think you’re an expert on the psychology of fictional aliens, more power to you. But I’m just going to laugh and ignore it because your opinion on how aliens should think carry absolutely no weight in my opinion. If you don’t like how they behaved, that’s fine. That’s your opinion about the quality of it. But there is no standard for how Klingons should act because it has changed with every series to some degree. You aren’t an expert of it, you just remember how they acted in one series versus another. Because Klingons in TOS act drastically different than they do in TNG and they act different than the ones in ENT. How do you explain that Mr. Expert? Oh yeah, it’s just a show and Klingons don’t exist.
I watched the show; I remember the sequence of events. What I'm saying is that it not a thematically, ethically, or psychologically coherent sequence of events. In particular, this part...
...just doesn't work for me.
First, it requires us to accept that her initial "mutiny" at the beginning did in fact involve abandoning Federation "principles and ethics," even though as you note she was following the advice of Sarek, who supposedly "had more knowledge and experience" of the Klingons than anyone in Starfleet. (Which is an odd notion on at least two counts: first, that he would have relevant knowledge about an antagonistic major power that he would not have shared with other Federation officials in his role as an Ambassador, and second, that he would give Burnham or anyone else advice that conflicted with the very Federation principles and ethics he himself values highly and works to uphold.) It's worth noting that her own captain basically forgave her for that "mutinous" lapse almost immediately, to the point of enlisting her support on a mission to the Klingon ship (although the fact that only the two of them went still stands out as egregiously stupid). Meanwhile, the other Starfleet officers in the pilot (such as the admiral who played right into T'Kuvma's hands and let his flagship get rammed) who were supposedly upholding the "principles and ethics" involved came across like naive dolts. IOW, the "wrongness" of Burnham's initial actions is murky at best (and indeed seems to have been (re)written with that specific goal in mind); the war itself appears to have been inevitable, and the only reason she got convicted (in that weirdly impressionistic courtroom scene) was that she completely declined to defend herself because she felt guilty over Georgiou's death.
Second, at the other end of the season, it requires us to accept that Sarek (again), as well as Cornwell (who previously was not depicted as stupid or unethical), and (by implication in dialogue) the rest of the Starfleet admiralty and even the Federation Council, were all ready and willing to abandon the Federation's "principles and ethics" in the face of a crisis... and not only that, but abandon them in a patently stupid and futile way, adopting a risky and likely counter-productive "secret plan" on the advice of a psychopath from the Mirror Universe who had neither any loyalty to the Federation, nor any experience with this universe's Klingons.
Long story short, if it takes a scenario in which the rest of Starfleet and the Federation would consider committing genocide to give Burnham a chance to look good by comparison, that's taking things way too far, because it's not remotely comparable to her (supposed) misjudgment at the start of the war, and it frankly indicates that the Federation's ideals are "just empty slogans" that the powers-that-be are willing to cast aside when the going gets tough. That is not a morally satisfying ending in any way, shape, or form.
(And it didn't help that the way Burnham actually did end the war was an insult to both the intelligence and the moral sensibilities of everyone watching, as it involved trusting not only the MU psychopath (again), but also a Klingon religious zealot who in the same episode had talked about how her side would fight to the end.
Frankly, it was all just incoherent, both logically and morally. That's why I say Burnham didn't have a valid character arc, and didn't learn any meaningful lessons.
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