She always was the focus. That's why it never would work. *Jack Sparrow* Sorry.
I never felt they were worse than TOS to TNG to DS9.
Save maybe the Klingon near attack on Earth, but that's no egregious to me. Mileage will vary.
Did They Jump Too Far?
- Thread starter MikeS
- Start date
Save maybe the Klingon near attack on Earth, but that's no egregious to me. Mileage will vary.
They very easily could have pivoted away and turned it into more of an ensemble. The premise of the show was never stated as "this is Michael Burnham's story", it was "focusing on characters who are not the captain"... by that logic, when Burnham became captain, the show should pivoted to focus on like, Detmer and Owu or something.
Mirror universe stands out as a big one.
In all fairness though, alot of the continuity issues are related to visuals.
I don't mind TOS to TNG, that's a forward progression. I would expect things to change. From TNG to DS9 is... quite incredibly visually consistent.
I'd have to relook but I'm pretty sure Burnham was listed as the main character and principle focus. I could be wrong but that's my (fuzzy) memories.
That's where you and I will differ. TOS to TMP to TNG is way to much of a jump for me.
The MU I see no issues with so I guess mileage will vary again.
Sort of a yes and no.
Yes, Michael Burnham was the main character... but also she was the main character because the show was not going to focus on the captain, instead focusing on lower ranked crew.
Once Burnham became Captain, the show should have pivoted to other characters.
But even without that, just because the show was initially about something doesn't mean it couldn't switch gears... the show was also set in the 23rd century...
I mean, of course they could. But, it seemed that was the one thing they didn't want to change on, even with the time jump.
In my opinion, the time jump was a poor decision, in reaction to poor comments. But, even if they shifted the focus from Michael, she'd still be there. If you don't like the character (worst in Star Trek, I believe) it's hard to keep watching. At least for me, and it's why I didn't watch as much TNG or ENT. Picard and Archer were not interesting.
The time jump was the only thing that made DSC almost kind of watchable to me. Combine that with shifting focus away from Burnham and the show would have been alot better.
It's a shame. Discovery had some great characters, but they were always in the shadow of Burnham.
And how did you rationalize that with the fact the Shenzhou was stated to be an older ship yet had Disco's design aesthetic as opposed to a "TOS look"?
I said the same things through all of season 1..... That this is just fine for a generic Sci-Fi show but it isn't good Star Trek. That's the lens I had to watch it through to get over some stuff.
That is before I settled into my belief that first contact cause the TCW and rewrote the timeline and the entire 23rd century can look and do whatever it wants.
That is before I settled into my belief that first contact cause the TCW and rewrote the timeline and the entire 23rd century can look and do whatever it wants.
I hate to break it to you, but Star Trek is generic sci-fi.
It's by no means a perfect explanation. Working with what I got.
I tried to just gaslight myself into think Shenzhou and Discovery look different enough to be completely different eras... I like think Shenzhou is REALLY old, like turn of the century old, 2200-ish.
That was less of the point, the point would be make Burnham the Captain... and then shift the focus of the show away from her onto other characters. Not focusing on Burnham all the time might potentially have improved the show.
Despite the fact that their bridges aside, the two ships used the exact same sets?
This is the hardest truth for Trek fans to accept.
Like I said, not perfect. An attempt to polish a turd. You can only get so far.
I don't think that's true at all, until Discovery... and even then, some of it is more unique.
Star Trek, in my opinion, has always been fairly unique. One of the things I really enjoyed about the Berman-Era of Trek was that... by and large (there are exceptions here and there), it didn't feel like "the 80's/90's IN SPACE" like many other sci-fi works from the time did. The general tone was unique in that it didn't focus on wars and conflicts was always unique... until such time as it began to.
I would disagree. I think the tone of optimism was always tempered by something else. And I would say that in the 90s and 2000s Stargate episodes"felt" more like Star Trek than Enterprise or Voyager did!
So, if Star Trek was unique (a dubious proposition to my mind), it started to fade long before Discovery.
I don't disagree. On DS9's initial run, I actually stopped watching when the Dominion War hit. I didn't like that Trek was doing that. I've since went back and watched the hell out of it and enjoy it.
But yeah, there was definitely a slide. It's not a purely Discovery problem, although I think Discovery just went "whole hog" on it, barely even paying lip service or making any effort to not just be generic. DSC, the first two seasons anyway, felt like somebody made a sci-fi space show and then after the fact dropped Star Trek buzz words in it.
And I mean, it's kind of by design... Season 1 especially, it's fairly well known Fuller had a design mandate for the show to... not look like Star Trek. The show was literally made to try to be Star Trek without being Star Trek.
And yet still had those Trek touchstones with Burnham, Sarek, extremists from an alien culture, Mirror Universe, and some other interesting ideas.
So, despite not being looking like Trek, which is an issue I'll grant, it still felt like Star Trek with the stories and the ideas. And I think Burnham is an interesting character.
Well that's somewhat of my point though. It's mostly just like, a Star Trek skin.
I'm not sure how "Burnham" is a Trek touchstone.
Sarek... sure, Sarek was Sarek.
"Extremists from an alien culture" isn't a particularly iconic thing I think of when I think "Star Trek".
"Mirror Universe" was largely in name-only.
I'm not saying that there wasn't anything at all interesting in Discovery, just to me it didn't feel like Star Trek. It felt like... well... a sci-fi show that didn't actually want to be Star Trek and was kind of trying to not be Star Trek but was forcing itself to be Star Trek...
That's where I can kind of just leave it I disagree. That's all subjective so there's no "right" answer.
I think Burnham... could have been an interesting character. The ingredients were there. There some occasionally flashes of what I think could have been, but on the whole I think she was terrible and one of the largest detriments to the show.
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