Well, that's subjective of course, and you're entitled to your opinion. It seems to me that the writing achieves what it set out to do in the first place: show a scenario in which the qualities and sensibilities that have been traditionally portrayed as Starfleet's virtues are made to work against them instead of for them, one in which the "heroes" lose and the "villain" wins. (Note that this doesn't make them into anti-heroes, though. It makes them tragic heroes, in Aristotle's sense.) They weren't able to effectively defend that space with a dozen ships. They got their asses handed to them by the Klingons and had to withdraw. Then they were all tied up in engagements elsewhere. The Klingons had the Feds on the back foot until Discovery got the spore drive working properly and helped to turn the tide. And they had no way of knowing there was only one enemy ship there following that. As we saw later, others were freely coming and going. Who says they were on the same escape pod, or that the telescope wasn't stowed away with any other cargo? Besides, for all we know, alternatively Burnham herself could have even been the one to remove the telescope (if she weren't placed under arrest the moment she beamed back aboard the Shenzhou, that is) and send it to Georgiou's family, only to have it sent back to her by them through Starfleet in accordance with Georgiou's will. We didn't see what happened at all; the editing takes us straight from T'Kuvma's death to an external shot of the escape pods leaving Shenzhou to Burnham's trial. And really, what is the importance of such details? The point is, whoever personally did it, it was done before the Shenzhou was evacuated. There is no indication anyone went back and retrieved it later. (And yes, I agree, if that were the case it would be stupid. But there is no reason to believe that happened.) Well, like warp drive and anything else, phasers have indeed always worked however the plot requires them to at a given moment, from TOS to now. But no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that when the target is not directly and effectively threatening you or your captain/crewmate with deadly force, it may be well worth trying stun and hoping for the best, even though the results can be unpredictable. But if they are directly and effectively threatening you or your captain/crewmate with deadly force, that changes the equation. You use kill. That's what Spock would have done. Just look at "The Man Trap" (TOS). However, again, the point is that even though Burnham made a fair call, the tragedy of the situation was that it achieved no good, and in fact was self-defeating. This was her lowest point, where everything that made her a good Starfleet officer to begin with had led her astray, step by step, into blunder. And Georgiou was served no better by her own instincts and training, either. Such was the nature of the scenario. There was no way to win. Your description here isn't far off... ...but it isn't "evidence of bad writing" in my opinion. That's the very sort of story the writers deliberately wanted to tell. It's just not the one you would have preferred they tell. -MMoM
Very much so. The Vulcan Hello is the classic Trek story of The Corbomite Manoeuvre and I, Borg in which Starfleet stands up for what it says it believes in, acts as what it says it is. Takes the high road, as it were. But the big difference here is that it didn't turn out well for our heroes. Here, Balok turned out to be a jerk after all, and Hugh launched a multi cube invasion of the Federation. The Starfleet characters of The Vulcan Hello, Georgiou in particular, do what we've seen previous heroes do a hundred times and made a choice commensurate with their values (Starfleet doesn't fire first). Just this time, it bit them on the ass.
One has to admit gaping holes in the plot here. Why was the Shenzhou left to float around for the enemy to exploit. That was just - dumb.
Definitely, and there are many more plot holes across the episodes, as revealed in the threads that review each of the latter. The main issue for STD involves writing problems.
Why waste resources trying to rescue the dead carcasses of shot down Starships that have nothing groundbreaking inside them ? They're in the middle of the war and some broken outdated Fed ships with scraps of dilithium aren't going to change the outcome of it. It's like saying the United States should've made efforts to rescue the wreckage of their ships from the bottom of the ocean instead of fighting the Germans or building new ones. Besides, one can assume that region of space is already under Klingon control since Kol easily maneuvered there. I don't remember any Allied plans to rush in before D-Day on Nazi-occupied France to recover the remains of broken war equipment. That's just not how war works.
Well argued. I still disagree, but I liked your post. The whole telescope and letting the ship wrecks float there for six months is the worst of the plot holes in the whole series so far. It is obvious that the ships, or at least the Shenzhou, were cleaned out. There was not one personal item left in Georgiou's office when Voq/Ash and whats-her-name were in there. We know that there is enough functioning tech left on those ships to be used again. The Klingons use it to repair their ship while they drift there in Federation space for six months ignored by Starfleet and the Klingons. Starfleet is aware that the Klingon crew who instigated the whole affair are still alive in the wreck of their ship. But the writers had have everyone in Starfleet and the Klingon military turn into idiots so that they would have the Voq/Ash character to play with. They didn't seem to care that they created a plot hole so big you could drive a Dyson Sphere through it.
For plot convenience the Stargazer was lost in space decades ago. Starfleet knows where their ships in that binary star system are.
We can't have the Shenzhou-crew show some intelligence. They needed to leave their ship there so the the Klingon survivors could use the warp-thingymajiggy they left behind.
Because he had a reason to do it and the Shenzhou crew did not. Why would they bother destroying technology the Klingons already had knowledge of ?
Right, so it wasn't harvested by the enemy at all? It was. How stupid was it to leave anything for the enemy to use.
Oh yeah, because Shenzhou's Dilithium changed the entire course of the war in favour of the Klingons! Just like World War II was won by the Nazis because of the spare ammunition they found on France when they invaded it, right ? We're talking about Star Trek not about The Walking Dead. The Klingons are not going to paint the dead carcasses of Fed ships in blood and invade Earth with it. Dilithium Mines are the game changers inside Star Trek's Universe not almost depleted fuel cells of dead ships. Just like in the real world, what matters most is the Industrial Capacity of a Nation during a time of war. Not some of the fuel they can salvage from the enemy. If we consider that Kol's Fleet would've intercepted the Sarcophagus Ship anyway, what the Federation left behind made no difference. The Federation didn't leave anything behind. Of importance, at least, they didn't.
The Federation not only left their ships behind, which the Klingons used to repair their ship, but they also left the Klingons responsible for the battle behind. It did make a difference. The Federation left the instigators of a war behind, they left a Klingon ship with a cloaking device behind, they left their own tech for the Klingons on the sarcophagus ship behind. But a cloaking device and an ancient Klingon vessel of technological and religious importance are nothing the Federation would trouble itself with in STD. Understanding or at least salvaging that technology which, did I mention, floated in their territory for six whole months, would get in the way of the Disco-plot.
Only because some soldiers left for dead managed to survive and duct tape their sliced up ship back together, which has happened exactly zero times before that we've seen, so we have no reason to expect our characters to foresee it. Let's be honest, neither did we before episode 4, nor did we expect anyone to come back and vaporize all the debris. Leaving battlefields behind is something that happens all the time both in Star Trek and real life, contested borders during war all the more so.