BillJ you ismist!
Discovery Showrunners fired; Kurtzman takes over
- Thread starter StCoop
- Start date
I think most people would agree that it was the writing and the direction they took with her character that was problematic. The acting was fine. Not great, but not terrible. If the writing was great, she might've been great. Hopefully we get to see that.
I'm among the people who liked Discovery but some of the writing on Burnham was definitely among the things I liked less in the show.
I think she did fine, considering the handicap of truly awful writing (god, can they get someone who knows how to do dialogue?) and inconsistent direction. Plus the handicap that she was clearly told initially to not emote since she was raised on Vulcan, which meant the writers decided to have her tell other people what she was feeling rather than show it (*groan*).
Still, doing fine, or even well, isn't like Patrick Stewart making a silk purse out of a sow's ear with early TNG dialogue.
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up for me, the show was ok, she was ok, but she was outshone by other characters when she was supposed to be the lead. Had she been more interesting I think we'd all be having a very different conversation about a very different show.
Are you saying that this happened in Discovery?
I liked it, but only in a luke warm sense. I felt it had potential and was judged way too harshly by elements of the fanbase, as every iteration of trek is for a season or two. Whether that's down to bigotry or just the usual resistance to anything new we always see is probably best taken on a case by case basis, both are probably true to some extent.
It was far from being the weakest first season in the franchise (much better than TNG S1 IMHO) and had some very fun characters along with an interesting premise.
On another note the recurring idea of Michael Burnham being a "Mary Sue" does nothing more than illustrate how readily people will adopt colloquial usage of a term without bothering to fond out it's meaning. She was literally written to be the opposite of a "Mary Sue".
Wait, are you saying Bill is like Panama?BillJ you ismist!
Oh sorry, that's an isthmus. My bad.
Yeah, I just rewatched some of the earlier episodes and IMO going to the mirror universe was a major mistake because it took away episodes we could have seen more of the war. I think that's were DSC went wrong. "What I'd have done" is also focus more on Tyler having some sort of PTSD. While I generally liked Ash!Voq I think that twist and the Lorca twist (which I really didn't like) both took away lots from genuinly interesting character stuff (PTSD for Tyler and Lorca being kinda fucked up) in favor of an okay sci fi concept (Klingon sleeper agent & mirror counterpart replacmenet).
I've never heard him being called one of the "weaker" cast members. Where do you get that from? He had the vocal quirks of Kirk with the gravitas of Picard and was personally my favorite captain. YMMV. As for supposedly sidelining him, I saw it at the time (and still do) as yet another aspect of realism in the show instead of the fanspank we got with all the other characters in TOS and TNG (VOY being exempted due to the Delta Quadrant stranding and all and Enterprise being cancelled before its would have been realistic to portray). The crew are supposedly the best and brightest in Starfleet serving on vaunted ships (and in TNG, the flagship of the Federation) yet they almost never get promoted in any meaninful way.
That lunacy is best incapsulated in the constant refusal of promotions by Riker but also applies to TOS/TMP personified by George Takei's valid criticism that Sulu was treading water in his career until he finally convinced them to promote him to Captain in Star Trek 6. With his second promotion to Admiral's adjutant, Sisko stayed on the show and still got in on the action but had a realistic career arc (as did Jadzia Dax with her promotion). We got, IMO, the best of both worlds (pun intended) with his promotion in that we still got to keep him (along with MANY episodes focused specifically on him as the Emissary) and still got a very missed dose of realism/career arc for a character in a hierarchical para-military organization like Starfleet.
There simply aren't too many Patrick Stewart's out there.
Note that I like Avery Brooks, and I liked his character a lot - particularly his interactions with Jake. He was still outacted by basically everyone on the main cast except for Terry Farrell and Cirroc Lofton. He was a bit hammy at times, though admittedly it was a lot less evident than Shatner (he did, as you note, come across as Shatneresque a bit).
I don't think the writers intentionally set out to sideline him. However, as other actors showed their versatility and other characters became fan favorites, the more "ensemble" style of DS9 meant that he could fade into the background for large portions of the series. It wasn't so much that he was dim, as it was so many others shone so brightly.
No just in general but if it was a policy then it is incorrect
More like you added some primer, then a first and second coat, and painted yourself into that corner with your posting history.
So again, would you cast a white man as MLK?
But then why bring it up here? I mean, I know you said in the DW forum at one point that you think that diversity is generally good and you were only opposed to the leftist sjws that were pushing for it. Since you also don't think that casting based on gender/race/etc. happend here and DSC still ended up with a fairly diverse cast this seems like a pretty good outcome for you, from a casting perspective only and disregarding the quality of the show's writing etc.
This is a serious underestimation, what about the holodeck, site to site transport, reimagined Mudd, Sarek, Klingons, even if you don't include visual reboot, there are character differences. There is really no serious attempt to stick with canon, this is one of the lies put forth by Harberts, which is why I am not sad to see him go.
The Spore Drive.
The rec room in TAS was holodeck like, so I never understood that disagreement. Same with the Klingons, but we have plenty of threads on that
In any case, I will be curious to see what Kurtzman does.
The NX-01 Enterprise already had holo target shooting, the NCC-1701 Enterprise had a room that could make a hologrpahic environment. If you combine these two it seems fairly reasonable to me that you could end up with something like the DSC holodeck. Furthermore Janeway claimed in "Flashback" that some of the 24th century technologies were around in the 23rd just a lot less evolved. I interpreted this difference of the lack of true holographic interactibiltiy as seen in the 24th century where you could talk with holograms. Here they just react to energetic impulses.
Is a tricky one. We don't actually know why site-to-site transportation was considered dangerous/so hard. I think one of the (non-canon) tech manuals suggests that the sensors are directed outwards or something like that. My rationalization is that Discovery as a testbed ship has extra inwardly directed sensors that enable site-to-site transports.
Personally, I can see Mudd going from total murderous asshole to fairly big asshole in ten years, but your milleage may vary there of course.
I may be biased here because I loved most of the Sarek stuff (especially in "Lethe") but I thought his behaviour wasn't so far removed from the future Sarek we see in TOS. What it does change is how we perceive his past. In TOS we just assumed that Sarek hated Starfkeet from the ge-go but DSC provides us with more of an arc for him. His estrangement with Spock began with his chosing of starlfeet over the Science Academy. He previously made it impossible for his adopted daughter to enter the Vulcan Science Academy, based on an illogical choice, because he wanted Spock to enter. Once he didn't the illogic of his actions backfired on to him and because Vulcans suck at dealing with emotions he projected his guilt onto his children. Once he actually managed to make peace with his daughter he also supported Starfleet in a terrible immoral, illogical, decision. Unable to actually cope with the situation because Vulcans suck at emotional stuff he once again projected his own failure onto Starfleet which also provided him with a convenient excuse to not talk with Spock about the incident that started it all, his choosing Spock over Burnham for Vulcan Science Academy application. I know that most of this is speculation on my part, but I think that DSC makes Sarek into a far more interesting character than he was before (hence why I like to write long paragraphs about him
) so I think it fits fairly well.
