Ten Best/Worst things about Star Trek Discovery Season 2 BEST: Captian Pike-Anson Mount delivers a charming, yet commanding rendition Bridge crew have names/get more attention making them seem more like a family Janet Reno-Hiawatha's quick witted/lipped engineer w/deadpan humor severly underused. Klingons have hair Hipster Spock-although Sybok was the only male Vulcan seen out of the mirror universe with facial hair suggesting growing it is an act of rebellion, bearded Spock never looked better. Season finale's episode-long space battle (longest space battle in Trek?) made you feel like you were there. Learning more about Michael's parent's death which was only vaguely intimated in season 1. The touching scene between Dr. Culber and Lt. Stamets as his patient in the season finale. Seeing a relationship between Burnham and Spock instead of just hearing about it. Seeing the inside of Discovery's version of the NCC-1701 Enterprise. Worst: May-Tilly's annoying childhood friend/parasite/hallucination Burnham as a Mary Sue type character Poorly written science fiction/Treknobabble-I was hoping for an improvement over season 1, but it didn't happen. Section 31-instead of being the secretive subversive group it was in DS9, it seems to work out in the open in tadem with, or over-seeing the Federation, in a rather complicated relationship, is Section 31 or Starfleet command the real authority in the Federation? Pike continually changing his mind in deference to Michael Burnham. Sylvia Tilly-seemed even more of an overly-talkative, emotional child-woman this season than last. I expected a more matured character especially given her admission into the Command traning program, but alas... Lt. Ariam's death-unlike previous deaths in Trek (Dax, Spock, Tasha Yar), Ariam's death had no emotional impact on me since the character was barely known. Ariam also had one of the cooler looking designs among the supporting cast. Timekeeper Klingons, makes as much sense as Klingon timecrystals. Admiral Cornwell's death-seemed unnecessary and unheroic, she just stood there and watched the photon torpedo blow up in her face. LOL. Continued lack of continuity between Discovery and TOS/ENT. Discovery if set 10 years before TOS should have stories and plots that tend toward synching up with TOS and the prime timeline (like ENTERPRISE) not charting its own course. This was done to some degree with the season finale ending, but not enough.
It isn't, it means someone who is essentially flawless, always correct. Which Burnham seems to be in the early episodes of season 2. She's always right, while everybody else is always wrong.
With the exception of starting the Klingon war in season 1, and speaking harshly to Toddler Spock, she's presented as the smartest, most capable officer.
I don't know if I can come up with 10 for each, so I will do 5 and 5. Best: 1) Anson Mount. This is probably my favorite portrayal of Pike, even though Bruce Greenwood comes close 2) Ethan Peck. Before the season, I didn't know who this guy was or if he was capable of Portraying Spock. I gave Quinto a fair shake and wanted to give the same respect to Peck. No one can duplicate Nimoy, but Peck really did a nice job with the role. 3) Suru. I loved Suru this season a lot. He's actually become my favorite character on the show 4) The visual effects. This show really has raised the bar when it comes to visual effects. The new Enterprise looks gorgeous, and Burnham's trip through time was really cool. 5) New Eden. Owo got to go on an away mission. That entire episode was a top 3 episode for me in the season I think Worst: 1) The Eve-Looking (Wall-E reference) robots. I can appreciate new technologies and if they want to violate canon (Which is overrated anyway) to tell a good story, so be it, but that looked really really weird. 2) Burnham crying a lot. I get this was an emotional season for her, and I'm not going down the Mary Sue route, but I really do wish she didn't cry in every episode, or what felt like every episode. I think this kind of story (her Mom being the Red Angel) might have worked in Season 4 once we are really comfortable with the characters, but here, it just felt like crying for the sake of crying 3) Airiem's death. Don't tell me these characters who we see on the bridge every episode don't deserve to have a bigger story and then do an entire clip show of Airiem's highlights to make her death mean something. I really did not like that episode, especially when I actually talked to Sara Mittich at the convention 2018 and she was saying expect more on Airiem in season 2. It's not hard to develop this crew. 4) Reneging on the promise of featuring the bridge characters more. One of the things I loved about Brother and New Eden was the feeling that this really was a crew working together. Maybe I'm misremembering but I thought they said there was going to be more with characters like Detmer and Owo and Bryce going into season 2. That only worked after the first two episodes and that's unfortunate. If you're not going to develop them on the show, give them short trek episodes. I want to see the crew of Discovery actually be a crew. Can they at least explain Detmer's implant and what it does and why they looked like they borgafied her? 5) The chaoticness of the final battle. It was really hard to follow what was happening because it was just non-stop messyness. DS9 still does the best space battles in that respect.
I agree with you i would like to see more of the rest of the bridge crew and less of Tilly and her annoying friends. LOL.
Its meaning has broadened over the decades since its first use, where it was used to describe an egregious 'author insertion character' in Trek fanfiction that's quite specific with a lot more specific characteristics that you describe. Mostly it's now used for competent lead female character the critic doesn't like.
I notice you didn't include Janeway. Are you implying I'm prejudiced against Burnham because she's a woman? This isn't the case. The character was just presented as super-competent at the expense of other characters in the series. But if you want to go there, I do think the writers had a bias against men. Tilly and Reno knew more about engineering than Stamets, Mirror Georgiou was more virtuous than Leland, and Burnham made better decisions than Pike. Hmmmm.
It's funny how perceptions and opinions differ. I thought Tilly's parasite friend, the magical mycellial forest and the Klingon time monks and crystals were some of the best parts of the season. Time crystals are pretty much the same as the Bajoran Orb of Time.
And it would be very cool if they had some connection to the orbs! It just seems odd that a Klingon monastery that later clones Kahless also has this vast hidden other side to it.
From Oxford Dictionary: MARY SUE; a type of female character who is depicted as unrealistically lacking in flaws or weaknesses. Not Burnham.