Are we all on the same page about Michael's part in starting the war?

Regardless, Michael had disobeyed Georgiou's orders and tried to start a mutiny. And Michael did not defend her actions in the end. She immediately pleaded guilty and genuinely believed in her guilt.

 

It does not make her guilty. Just easier on the tribunal.

I do not believe Michael's actions caused the war.

 

Thanks for all your thoughtful replies. I intended to be back sooner but ran into problems related to the severe cold weather here in the Midwest.

I know this goes back to the beginning of Season One which I am still unpacking because I saw it later than most. I will look to stay closer to the current season that is unfolding over the next few months.

 

I know this is off-topic, but I hope you're all right. I saw news stories about the wind-chill getting as cold as -65. I don't even want to imagine what that's like.

 

In my view she's guilty of assaulting a superior officer and attempted mutiny. Those are her actual crimes. As for the scapegoating, sure that is definitely the thing. She failed to prevent the war. She didn't cause it, and its debatable that her actions served to extend it. That's a what if question that can never be answered.

 

Yeah thanks Lord Garth. Alright now and with a short work break before going back into action. I'm in Michigan and we have record cold but it is worse in Illinois and Minnesota and hearing some power has been lost in Minnesota leaving people with no heat.

 

As far as I'm concerned, when your teammate/commanding officer is impaled in the chest with a huge ass sword, you can use lethal force as a justifiable means of self defense.

 

If you don't understand the meaning of words when they're put together in sentences, don't respond to them. Just a bit of friendly advice.

 

Sure. The problem with this isn't so much moral as tech/consistency, and is by no means limited to DSC. Trek has a long history of stun simply being a better option in terms of effectiveness with slim-to-no drawbacks. It pretty much always works (and the times when it doesn't, the 'kill' setting wouldn't have worked either - exceptions mainly being shield modulation related, ie- the borg).
Hypothetically: say one would use a phaser like a computer mouse, a left button and a right button, stun and kill. In the heat of the moment, or in important situations, choices can be made, drama can be had.
But that's quite different from having to take the moment to make an adjustment BEFORE firing. ESPECIALLY when there is no effective difference between the two kinds of shots in terms of stopping force (if anything, 'kill' has been shown to fail far more).
Again, not a DSC issue so much as a general Trek/sci-fi dramatization issue. If "stun" used up all the energy in a single shot, or was more like rubber bullets, that would jive more with the way it's written.
TLDR - The writers treat stun v kill like a choice at the moment of pulling the trigger, but the props, direction, production, etc all treat stun v kill as a pre-trigger choice, separate from the choice of pulling the trigger period.

 

I'm on page 3 right now

 

The way in which Burnham responded to Georgiou's refusal has more to do with dramatic effect, by the writers, to set up all that came after in the series, than it does plausibility in-universe.

They were together for 7 years. Georgiou would have trusted her.

Even if she didn't, it seems likely that Starfleet would have a clause in the regs that if a captain were to put ship and crew in unnecessary danger for refusing to acknowledge facts that others had but that he/she was previously unaware of, legitimate relieving of command could be exercised on that basis. Mutiny would not even be necessary.

You don't trust a first officer for 7 years and then all of a sudden completely reject something that person is trying to inform you about, especially in a crisis situation where moments count. Commanders command, but they don't reject new and important information from subordinates for no good reason.

How T'Kuvma may or may not have responded to a Vulcan hello is a separate issue....

 

We do have quite an excuse here, though: Burnham was out of her mind when so insistently providing Georgiou with the information. She had refused treatment to a condition that ought to have addled her, after all. For all we know, she had behaved erratically ever since; we don't have a point of comparison for whether her interrupting her CO during the talk with Admiral Anderson was her usual antics or something previously unheard of, but Georgiou does react to it.

It is equally possible that the preceding seven years had conditioned Georgiou to this very sort of behavior from Burnham. But for the sake of continuity, we might choose to believe they had not.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Whose mind was she in then? Saru's?

 

Acknowledged....I simply feel that the whole thing was written in such a way as to bring about all of the 'high drama' and the war and all that followed.

Various aspects of the interactions between Burnham and Georgiou don't make sense, from the standpoint of chain-of-command itself and the two of them in particular as individuals who served closely together for 7 years; the characters seem unevenly drawn and contradictory of themselves.

And don't even get me started on Saru. He has seemed very inconsistent throughout.

One thing that has been a problem for Star Trek is too many cooks spoiling the broth....too many writers who are not all on the same page with character development and many other issues.

And the lengths that will be pursued simply to heighten drama....UGH. In TWOK, they had Kirk leave shields down at Reliant's approach, while he knew there was some kind of a problem at Regula 1 and anything out of the ordinary should be considered suspicious and perhaps connected. What the writers did was WILDLY outside of Kirk's character, just to bring about the drama that followed. I'll take a story that is nothing but boring gaseous anomaly charting all the way through, rather than complete stupidity just to bring about drama afterward.

 

If you dislike this show so much . . . to the point that you have to insult it, why do you watch it? Do you watch it in the hopes that it will get better? Or do you want fodder as a means to insult it on a daily basis? Which one is it?

 

Does it matter? We're here to discuss the show, not question people on why they watch it.

 

People watch things for a variety of reasons. Not everyone will love it.

 

Yet isn't that the point of writing, as a thing? Why create low drama? We could have followed the insignificant adventures of not-out-of-her-mind Commander Fryvillage and her equally level-headed Captain Edwardiou, yes, but the writers decided these other two characters would be more fun.

This one I don't get. Why would raising shields be a proper response to a starship in distress? If anything, this would stop Kirk from using transporters to rescue the Reliant crew. Such raising of shields never happened on Kirk's watch in TOS, so why should it happen here?

(As far as Kirk knew, Carol Marcus was having problems with Starfleet bureaucracy. Probably his little unseen talk with Starfleet mainly consisted of him trying to convince his bosses that since he had already been allowed this little birthday cruise for the weekend, he'd be the only man Starfleet could spare to go to Regula to "investigate" and calm down the hysterical researcher.)

It's not just in character for Kirk not to raise shields, it's in the field manuals or something - starships always fly shields down into danger, in TOS, TNG, DS9 and now DSC. But as for character, our TOS heroes were especially slow on the uptake, with Scotty chasing wild geese for hours upon hours in "Friday's Child", or accepting endless antics from the Eminians in "A Taste of Armageddon". Apparently because their training favors erring on the side of caution, which in general reads inaction rather than rash preemptive action...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Drama is all well and fine....if it doesn't seem contrived and implausible.

In TWOK, Saavik was quoting General Order 12, until Spock cut her off. That order is that when communications are unable to be established, maximum safety precautions are to be taken, which would quite obviously include raising shields.