Yep. Michael had a lot to learn. Season One was all about her redemption from the terrible choices she made. Definitely not a Mary Sue. I mean, it seems weird how one faction hates her for being perfect and the other hates her for being evil and neither side seems capable of accepting the idea that she started out deeply flawed and has become a better person and better officer over time.
You got a number of things wrong in that, but that's neither here nor there. And I am starting to suspect you don't know what a Mary Sue actually is. A Mary Sue can be flawed, so long as those flaws turn out to be positives to the general narrative.
Citation needed. Per Wikipedia: A Mary Sue is a character archetype in fiction, usually a young woman, who is often portrayed as inexplicably competent across all domains, gifted with unique talents or powers, liked or respected by most other characters, unrealistically free of weaknesses, extremely attractive, innately virtuous, and/or generally lacking meaningful character flaws.[1][2][3][4][5] Usually female and almost always the main character, a Mary Sue is often an author's idealized self-insertion, and may serve as a form of wish-fulfillment. Mary Sue stories are often written by adolescent authors.[6] Michael Burnham is not "inexplicably" competent -- like every Star Trek protagonist (except Dal from Star Trek: Prodigy), she is a graduate of an extremely prestigious institution of tertiary education (the Vulcan Science Academy for her, Starfleet Academy for all the others), and has already had a long career in Starfleet when the series begins. Michael is not competent across all domains. She is a competent science officer and pilot, but she is not an engineer or doctor. Michael is a gifted leader, but she does not have special powers. Michael starts off resented by most of the other characters and only gradually earns back their respect. Even as a captain, there are characters who have serious problems with her leadership style and choices. Michael is attractive to the level that most Star Trek characters are attractive; she is not a supermodel or unusually attractive within the world of the show. Michael is clearly not innately virtuous, given her actions in the series premiere. Michael has meaningful character flaws throughout the series, including arrogance, aggression stemming from trauma, early difficulty respecting other people's emotions due to her Vulcan upbringing, refusal to acknowledge the limitations of her own power to protect others (another manifestation of arrogance). In short, Michael meets none of the traits necessary to constitute a Mary Sue... except that she is a female protagonist. Which is not the case with Michael. She can be a selfish asshole and she made horrible choices that got people killed out of arrogance and trauma.
I see flawed protagonists turn those flaws in to assets all the time. That doesn't make a character a Mary Sue. Never mind that those advocating Burnham as a Sue ignore the author insert part. Funny how it keeps coming back to that.
Why is it we hardly ever hear of MALE "Mary Sues"? For some reason, they're usually women. Is competence considered to be so rare in a woman that its presence is to be seen as noteworthy?
I strongly suspect that most of the people who use the word "Mary Sue" so inaccurately do, indeed, find the idea of a competent female leader to be somehow unrealistic.
I don't know about others, but my life is filled with competent, and hyper competent women. My mom was my first introduction, my grandmother. Several of my teachers, and my current director runs several clinical outpatient programs for my agency, runs her own private practice, teaches mental health and psychology classes at two universities, and assists her children in their activities. I strongly suspect that in this thread she might be considered a Mary Sue...
Mary Sue usually just means "female character I don't like." And if it needs to be spelled out, "female character I don't like" usually just means "woman who doesn't know her place."
Janeway would absolutely be called a Mary Sue if Star Trek: Voyager were on the air today. "What do you mean, this woman from the science division on her first command can kick ass against super-strong aliens and scare the Borg into negotiating with her? And she's a surrogate mother figure to Seven of Nine? And she's fighting for equal rights for the Doctor? And she got her crew home across 75,000 light-years? Where are her flaws? Why is she magically able to do everything? What a Mary Sue! She's just a self-insert for Jeri Taylor!"
Be assimilated without any negative consequences. Fights off giant macroviruses. Can defeat a Borg with a bat'leth. Yup, total Sue.
Well, there's a reason why Janeway was long characterized by some parts of the fandom as this hysterical-irrational tyrant and a complete slave to her emotional whims, because of course that's what a female in a leadership position is, everybody who has ever had a female manager could attest to that (). And there's a reason why Seven of Nine is always brought up as the contrasting example of a strong female character: despite her practically Mary Sue-like competence and backstory, she squarely falls within a bog-standard slowly defrosting ice queen archetype. Most of her fans specifically like her for the archetype of femininity she represents, no matter how well and deeply she was written and what a strong performance Jeri Ryan has always had. As long as a female character's entire personality could be condensed into a female archetype, she's okay.
I was one of the first members of this board. And though I never posted in the VOY Forum, I did know that it was a total and complete cesspit when the show was still on. Worse than this forum. Even worse than the ENT Forum. Yes, it's true. How the VOY Forum was is the reason why the ENT Forum had inch-of-rope moderating. In retrospect, now that I have DSC to compare it to, I do think sexism played a very heavy hand. I think some people don't even know they're being sexist, so they'll double-down on "anything but that!" To an extreme. Because they don't want to face the possibility that maybe they actually are being sexist. And "Gary Stus" are never mentioned unless someone else calls someone on their sexism. That's how I know they're trying to hide behind something.
Challenging long held beliefs is uncomfortable, especially in the wrong setting. This is not the setting to process them, methinks.
Female writers dominated the Star Trek fanfiction scene and those female writers created female "Mary Sue"-type characters. Then in 1973 Paula Smith, a woman, wrote the "A Trekkie's Tale" persiflage and created the female character "Mary Sue", the satirical exaggeration of female characters from these countless female fanfiction stories. So you can blame the 60s/70s female fanfic writers, or Paula Smith, for female "Mary Sues".
I agree it is the setting to face them but I do not know if they can process them. That requires a certain level of familiarity to challenge long held assumptions, especially ones centered on identity as a person's fandom can often become a part of one's identity.
The allegory in that story is so subtle that most people don't get it. Most people think that because of the different face paint of the characters it's (only) an allegory about the futility of racism. It's an allegory about the futility of fighting over irrelevant ideological differences (like politics/religion/racism, ETC). And speaking of "subtlety": Discovery is so subtle. "Star Trek The Next Election"? "Trek The Vote To Victory"? There is nothing forced here at all.