Missed opportunities in Season 1 and 2

DISCO is a high concept show with a lot of ideas slamming at the viewer constantly. What sort of ideas would you have liked explored more or differently?

Season One

1:] Georgiou is such a good character in her brief appearance, I kind of wish that her death had been moved to the end of the season and we would have had an entire season of Michelle Yeoh as the Ideal Starship Captain that Burnham betrays.

2:] I kind of think that it would have made it more impactful if Michael had blasted T'Kuvma before being disabled. She needed to deliver the Vulcan Hello for Starfleet's reaction to make sense, IMHO.

3:] T'Kuvma's RL actor means that we couldn't explore him via flashbacks but with a different actor, I would have loved to see him as an arc villain with lots of contradictions. A guy who doesn't believe in infanticide and other Klingon traditions but is profoundly racist and fundamentalist otherwise. The sincerely religious terrorist/charismatic leader like on Bajor.

4:] Lorca being a PTSD suffering captain and ruthless but not evil is a much better character than Mirror Lorca, I think we all agree. I also liked his and Cornwall's relationship for what we saw of it.

Season Two

5:] Section 31 being controlled by an evil AI feels like it mutes the most interesting elements of Section 31, which is that they are a bunch of ruthless criminals and bad guys that are devoted to protecting democracy.

6:] L'Rell's reforms to the Klingon Empire, whatever they may be.

 

Not doing a Lorca flashback episode immediately following the big reveal. I want to see him materialise on the USS Buran's transporter pad, figure out he's in another universe and set his epic plan into motion. The Walking Dead (back when it was good) did some excellent pov episodes with The Governor and this could have been just as good. It's a shame they wouldn't leave Michael alone for a second to explore other characters.

No Spock/Sarek confrontation in season two. I was dying for this after the Spock/Michael chess game. That man needs to be called out on his endless shitty parenting, and the new angry young Spock was just the one to do it.

 

Jason Isaacs not being kept around as a regular. He didn't need to be from the Mirror Universe to be a bastard.

As a side note, he is great as Marshal Zhukov in The Death of Stalin.

 

They should have let Jason Isaacs keep his natural British accent too.

To be fair, I would have appreciated the Devil himself coming to kick those guys asses after that movie full of awful people.

It's only more effective with the fact that they were all that bad in RL.

 

Even with the Mirror Universe, there were a lot more sensible and interesting things they could've done with Lorca. Have it so Landry crossed over with him, and that's why she was so weirdly fixated on him. Have him have already had more enlightened views than the MU standard, or he went native during his time in the Federation, and he wanted to free the Empire, but still in a very MU way. Setting him up as a frenemy, or someone who wanted to do the right thing the wrong way, would've been a lot better than having him suddenly just shift entirely to "racist sex predator" in one minute, especially since they kept trying to make Emperor Georgiou the sympathetic one, even though everything we heard and saw of her reinforced that she is, in fact, a monstrous person, and wildly incompetent along with it (Lorca spent most of a year in deep cover with no preparation, and never slipped up unless he was literally naked; Georgiou was recruited and coached to impersonate her counterpart, and managed to last fifteen seconds under cover before she started making inflammatory out-of-character statements about Klingons being animals and wanting to butcher and eat her XO). Indeed, Lorca would've made a lot more sense as a free agent who drops in from time to time than Georgiou would've, assuming that was every actually in the cards and wasn't just a pointless red herring before revealing she'd actually become the universe's least secretive spy in the same episode.

The slightest indication L'Rell is doomed (doooomed!) would've been nice, considering the Klingons and the Federation are less than ten years from another war. Instead, she's all buddy-buddy with Pike, and it looks like cleaning that up and actually exploiting the prequel setting is being left to the comic books.

Alternatively, have Lorca just be a bit of a jerk who we briefly suspect of being an imposter, and the real Mirror Lorca is literally Jason Isaacs as Marshal Zhukov; cheery, scarred, chest covered in medals, and intensely murderous, as we discover "nice" is different from "good."

 

Dare I say a bolder choice would be to rescue Empress Georgiou and have it prove to be a "Space Seed" level screw up.

 

I think removing the MU element from Season 1 would be the best bet. Lorca as a PTSD suffering captain, but comes across as abrasive and defensive and angry, would be an interesting element to explore. But, he is also struggling to prove himself, to Cromwell, to Starfleet and himself. So, his more impetuous, antagonistic, or aggressive actions are him demonstrating he still has his mojo.

Combine that with Burnham's own traumatic struggles around self-doubt and self-punishment and you can showcase different reactions to personal demons.

I would have the MU saved for Season 2, with perhaps Lorca being taken off the Discovery after being mistaken for Mirror Lorca. The crew must then decide to rescue him or not..

 

I thought it was Isaacs himself who decided to use an American accent for Lorca?

 

It was.

 

Then let me rephrase, TELL him "Don't do an American accent."

 

I think a lot of people mistake what motivated the Lorca arc (turning into a MU villain). To me, it was always clear that Isaacs had no intention of doing more than one season. So, they wanted to do something very unusual to take advantage of his limited commitment, like making the captain a frigging bad guy.

Ultimately, it's a ballsy and unique idea. Let's face it- it failed for many fans because the character was TOO damn likable / relatable.

Honestly, I think the fact that the Lorca Twist causes so much controversy confirms that it's pretty badass.

For me, the single greatest missed opportunity of the show was the final arc of Season 2. They set up what appeared to be a thoughtful, epic mystery...something that might be beyond our own limited human experiences/knowledge, and challenge the ideas of science and faith due to the nature of the mystery. And, they set it up in such a way that it looked like unlocking the mystery would be slow-paced and facilitated across multiple, more episodic adventures.

I was really REALLY excited. It felt like the type of Star Trek I really wanted to see, and would be well-facilitated by the streaming format, high production values, and amazing cast.

And then it just.......dropped. Like it became something completely different. And not only was it different, but it got incredibly convoluted, as they tried to not only tie together all the mystery in a virtually nonsensical way, but they also added the evil AI and the whacky idea that all this needs to tie-up at the end so they can time warp 1000 years out of everyone's way. In that way, it felt too much like Star Trek Generations. Like someone had waaaaaayyy too big of an "I wanna" list they needed to fill:

I wanna put Section 31 in it
I wanna bring back Tyler and L'Rell
I wanna bring Phillipa back
I wanna have Spock on the run
I wanna have Pike and the Enterprise
I wanna have Burnham meet her mother
I wanna have the ship end up in the future at the end
I wanna fight Skynet
I wanna go to Talos IV since Pike is on the show
I wanna have Tig Notaro on the show, even if it makes no sense
Etc...

I don't know. I enjoyed it. No question. And there were some great moments. But....it could have been so much better, like something really special. So it's hard for me not to be disappointed and view the whole thing as a massive missed opportunity.

 

Oh, I agree, Isaacs was never going to be captain for more than one season. However, I think it would have been more interesting to make him a bad guy for different reasons. As much as I liked the Mirror Universe, I would have preferred Lorca to maybe learn how they defeated the Klingons in our universe and decide to commit genocide against them on his own initiative.

So he's the final boss in a consistent way.

 

My only missed opportunity is the plot hole in the S2 final episode. Discovery wasn’t able to be destroyed due to the sphere data protecting itself, yet then in the final battle with Control, it was badly damaged and needed protecting by Enterprise. Control knew the data was part of the ship, so it makes no sense that it would attempt to destroy it. It defeats the purpose of jumping to the future if the ship itself isn’t indestructible.

I guess that’s not really a “missed opportunity”, but as much as I adore the show and praise the writing staff for an amazing season, that plot hole always bugs me.

Plus as others have said, they really could’ve gone all out with the whole red angel/creationism thing. But with the writers being sacked mid season, they did the best they could with what they had to work with. Hopefully going forward they seem to have a well thought out plan for S3 and beyond.

 

They weren't trying to destroy it, they were depleting it's shields so Leland could beam aboard, exactly as he did.

 

Didn’t Leland beam onboard when the shields were down so Michael and Spock could leave the ship?

Still doesn’t make sense, if it’s shields were capable of being depleted, Enterprise could have continued firing on it until the shields gave way and the ship could be destroyed

 

Discovery was acting autonomously, has the Spore Drive and would have eventually jumped away somewhere to never be found if the attack continued.

That's the REAL plot hole of the season. A spore jump seemingly cannot be tracked and has infinite range. They could have leapt a dozen galaxies away and Control would never ever find them, at least not for thousands of years or more.

 

It wouldnt have been able to jump by itself without Stamets though

Control had infected multiple ships and people besides Leland. By killing him that shouldn’t have rendered Control completely eliminated as well. And if it was completely destroyed then, as were made to believe, then there’s no reason to send the ship away to the future.

I’m hoping that in S3 they don’t forget that Discovery is basically autonomous with a mind of its own.

 

Captains Log, Stardate: 1234.56 Captain Saru Recording. Discovery insists on taking us to yet ANOTHER strip club planet. End Log.

 

Did we every see Spock and Sarek interact in Season 2? I'm sure they were avoiding any conflicts with the dialogue in Journey to Babel, but I think it would have been worth it in this case.

 

Mind you, that may actually be the way they dealt with each other.

"Lieutenant."
"Ambassador."

*pass by one another*