Spoilers If you could change one thing about Discovery

That’s a good point - I'd not thought of it that way. It’s said in TVH I think (by Amanda) that Vulcans don’t necessarily understand emotions despite having them. So they’re the worst people to guide Michael on emotion thinking about it!

Agreed on this. I think some of Michael’s issues with Spock come from having some of Sarek’s katra in her head too. Ambassador or not, Sarek is no parental role model.

I actually liked that in s2. Michael does show some development after her interactions with Spock. We see a glimmer of this in s1 with Tilly, but it’s more overt in s2 I think.

It’ll be interesting to see where they go with it in s3 - assuming they do actually stay in the 32nd permanently...

 

I would wish for MUCH better writing and ditch the pew-pew for legitimate "seek out new life and new civilizations" Star Trek stories.

 

Only ONE thing? Okay, here is a major one:

Have the entire first two season take place in unknown space, far away from the Federation/Klingons/Section 31/whatever, and only deal with stuff they newly encounter there.

Just go out there. Tell whatever story they want. But don't have the writers stress so much about canon, backstory or continuity. Just one ship, out there, to explore strange new worlds. But with the chance to just fly back home in later seasons, after the writing team has gotten a good handling on their material.

 

Culber wasn't in the main cast until the second season, even still, I'd say his development so far is about equal to the doctors in the other Trek shows at the end of their second seasons. Culber certainly has more presence and development after two seasons than Dr. Crusher had after seven seasons and four movies. Hell, even the novel continuity barely bothers with Dr. Crusher despite the fact she's married to Picard there.

Airiam and the bridge officers aren't in the main cast, they aren't even part of the show's guest cast, they're just listed as co-stars, which is basically possible position for a speaking role in a TV show. So there's no reason to expect them to be developed beyond what they already have. And really, look back on the other Star Treks, bridge officers really aren't developed that well anyway. TNG began realizing this which is why they likely never bothered with a replacement helmsman after Wesley left, and why they stopped even sticking speaking roles at the helm. Unfortunately, Voyager and Enterprise seemed to drink the "the cast must consist of the bridge officers" Kool-Aid and we got characters like Harry Kim and Travis Mayweather as a result.

Of the characters who are in Disco's main cast, Michael, Saru, Tilly, Stamets, Tyler, Lorca (season 1), Culber (season 2) and Pike (season 2) all are developed and represented well enough in comparisons to the main casts of the other Treks and perhaps even better than TNG, Voyager and Enterprise utilized their main casts. Though admittedly, Tilly is starting to be reduced to just being quirky and awkward. Still, that's the closest thing to underutilized in Disco's main cast, which is a better ratio than the majority of the Berman era.

Now as for my change one thing. drop the epic all or nothing stakes. Season 1 was about the Federation facing being conquered by the Klingons, season 2 was about stopping a galactic apocalypse. Rein it in a little for season 3.

 

Dr Crusher was introduced as the widow of Picard's best friend and single mother from episode one.

I don't know how true that is. TOS had as its central cast of characters Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Chekov, Sulu. TNG had Picard, Riker, Troi, Data, La Forge (until season 3), Tasha Yar, Wesley Crusher and Worf and all of these were bridge officers and well developed characters. Typically on Star Trek, ship action mainly takes place on the bridge, sickbay, engineering and the mess hall.

Agreed, although after being sent almost a 1000 years into the future I wonder if that's really possible.

 

And what else did we really learn about her?

The main cast of TOS only consists of Kirk, Spock and McCoy, and even then McCoy didn't become one of the main cast until the second season. They're reasonably well served over the course of the series. Scotty was only a recurring character, and though he got the occasional episode to himself, there's no real development aside from gaining a nephew in the movies, and even then the scene establishing Peter Preston is his nephew was deleted. The others were co-star status and had practically no development at all. Sulu didn't even get a first name until twenty-five years after he was introduced. Uhura wouldn't get one until forty-three years after being introduced.

As for TNG, you really need to reassess how those characters were developed. Tasha Yar left the show because Denise Crosby felt the character wasn't being developed at all, and Deanna Troi was nearly removed from the show because the writers had no idea how to use the character. Geordi left the bridge after the first season when he took over in engineering in season 2, and even then aside from being noticeable because of the VISOR, what really sticks out about him? Hell, Disco already has a leg up there by having their VISOR crewman just be a background extra. Wesley was a one-note boy genius, Worf's typical contribution was just suggesting an extreme response only to have Picard or Riker shoot it down. Granted, later in the series they began doing some stuff with him when Alexander came aboard, but his best development came when he went over to DS9. Riker stands out because Frakes injected some of his own charisma into the character, but on paper there really isn't much to him. Picard and Data basically are the only characters TNG really did anything with.

Yes, Star Trek's action is typically on the bridge, engineering and sickbay, but that doesn't mean everyone who serves there needs to be in the main cast. If there isn't enough to service a particular character, they should only be recurring at best, not sandwiched into the main cast because their character has a position on the bridge or is a senior officer. Indeed, shifting the focus away from the senior officers was initially the goal with Disco, though the way they've gone about it is questionable.

 

Would have skipped the first two episodes, thrown in a little backstory and started right with Context is For Kings. The first double episode did not resolve anytihng, and painted a picture that would not be followed the rest of the season. It was a way to get Yeoh on screen early.

Context would have been a more honest way to portray what the show would be like, and if it has been on CBS that first night, would have won over a lot of non-Trek fans who never got the reason or interest to watch thereafter instead of suffering through tired Tkuvma monologing, introducing characters that would not be seen again for months, or ever, and that wierd 23rd century hospital underwear. Yeah, I said it. We were all thinking it, What was up with that?

 

IIRC, the original intent with the opening two-parter was to have that stuff play out over the course of the first half on the season in flashbacks interspersed throughout the episodes, with Context is for Kings intended to be the proper premiere. But editing them into the episodes proved to be difficult, and given there was a studio mandate to make Harry Mudd's Groundhog Day a completely stand-alone episode, that meant they had one less episode they could put these flashback scenes into. So they decided since there was enough content to fill two episodes, they use this as the premiere, which is why the season 1 episode count was upped from the original thirteen to fifteen.

 

The reason people expect more out of the bridge crew who are minor characters is because of DS9 and I would argue many other shows like the Stargate shows or Walking Dead were you have a huge supporting cast and everyone tends to get their moments from time to time. Heck on DS9 some of the supporting cast became more important than some of the regulars both in individual episodes and beyond. By the end Quark,Rom and Nog were almost on equal footing.


Jason

 

And if we're talking about DS9... some of the most famous and important recurring characters started off as one-off guest parts for single episodes. Garak started with a single appearance in Season 1 and was brought back for Season 2's Cardassians after Ira Behr realized the premise would be perfect for him, and the idea of the Vorta being clones was literally created so that Jeffrey Combs could keep playing Weyoun. Right now, Discovery has cut itself off from most of its former recurring cast, but who knows what will happen in Season 3? Maybe some new people will get introduced who make such a good impression that the showrunners decide to give them more to do, or they could also use the opportunity to flesh out the current co-stars more. Now that we're getting a new setting, everything's possible.

 

One thing? The mycelial network is inhabited by Q style aliens and prevent access to the network, rendering the spore drive inoperable.

 

That would have been bar far the most satisfactory solution, particularly compared with what the writers actually came up with - which was simply for no one to speak about it ever again under penalty of treason.

 

Yeah, that was a little disappointing after they spent so much time and effort setting up a million other plausible reasons why the spore drive might be discontinued and hushed up.

The fact that it provides easy access to the mirror universe, the ethical concerns with requiring a living navigator, the damage done to the native JahSepp, the way the Terrans were burning it for energy, any one of these would have been a good enough reason for Starfleet to consign it to the scrapheap.

 

If I could change one thing, I’d erase the MU garbage.

 

No bending over. At the end of "Such Sweet Sorrow, Part II" you might as well have had Spock say, "I propose that we have no mention of Discovery, Michael Burnham, or the Spore Drive under the penalty of Treason because, to use a colorful metaphor, STD sucks." That's the way it felt. No one should ever cave to a bully. Or they'll keep on bullying you. They need to be stood up to.

 

Basically this. It felt way too much like pandering to the toxic, shitty end of the fanbase.

 

I would make the show MUCH more Burnham-centric by making her a larger part of the A and B stories. I also think they should make her even more heroic in season 3.

When you have a good thing why note really lean into it.

 

Maybe they will clone her a bunch so they won't even need the rest of the crew.

 

Complaining about canon stuff might get annoying but that isn't really toxic. Complaining about SJW agenda's etc is what is a more accurate label for something being toxic.


Jason

 

True, but my observation is that there's quite a bit of overlap.