What was your impression of Season 2 overall?

Season 3 plot twist: SJGardner turns out to be yet another previously unmentioned Spock family member.

 

You mean like Spock's parents that Kirk didn't know who they were before Spock was practically forced to tell him or Sybok that Spock only told Kirk was his brother after he refused an order to shoot him? Yet Spock did tell Pike about his sister... Well, he's definitely changed in that regard.

 

^^^
IDK - It appears Pike did also have a relatioship with Sarek (Kirk didn't even know Sarek was Spock's father until TOS S2 - "Journey To Babel", plus if Spock was younger and 'embracing' his Human side more at that point, Pike knowing more 'intimate' details from Spock would be more likely.

Once Spock was under Kirk, he was trying to be 'more Vulcanian', probably meaning that unless there was a logical reason to impart some information, Spock wouldn't.

 

Is there any reason to believe Spock had known Kirk for more than a year or two before Journey to Babel? I’ve never understood why that’s supposed to be so significant in these arguments.

 

First of all, I love, love, love Michael. As far as I'm concerned, she's one of the most nuanced characters Trek has ever given us.

I've said this elsewhere, but in Michael we have this character who has been emotionally repressed. That's been fine until she had to face a really emotionally difficulty situation. She doesn't handle it well, gets in trouble, and subsequently meets a bunch of new people. Her journey in S1 is all about becoming human through her shipmates. Michael learns about friendship with Tilly, dating with Stamets, love with Ash, deception with Lorca, and jealously with Saru. She voyages to another universe and even begins to see humanity in an alien species she previously saw as inhuman, and finally she is able to recognize her own bigotry. That's a spectacular arc. And then, in S2, Michael has to grapple with the fact that she's got these new emotions and that she's now built her humanity around being a mentor and leader who saves everybody else. S2 puts Michael in the position of making the absolute sacrifice, being almost god-like--and then it undercuts her by saying, "Nope, sorry, you don't get to do this alone. Everybody is going to sacrifice for you."

I love it, and I love some of the incredibly subtle stuff SMG does in her performance. SMG herself says that the idea in S2 was that Michael swung too far into her own emotions, and I think it makes total sense with her character's journey.

But.

All of that aside, I can't help but look back over the course of Star Trek and think that Discovery's emotional humanity is possibly the first example of the franchise getting human beings in space right. I mean, Starfleet is basically disciplined academics in space. Yes, Starfleet officers are trained to do their jobs, but they aren't put through some kind of extreme, dehumanizing military training. They're trained to be kind, sensitive, curious, generous people. So I love that when the stakes are low, people on Discovery start hanging out at each other's stations. I love that people challenge Pike and he's cool with it. Or that people cry a lot. If you took all the pressures of your life and work and made it so that they were inseparable because you're on a space boat that gets attacked by space monsters on a weekly basis, wouldn't you cry sometimes? That's human.

I don't want the future be a place of rigid hierarchy, stoicism, and emotional repression a la TNG. And I'm a huge TNG fan. I want to imagine that a better humanity will have healthier workplaces where people can have a bad day and be supported by their coworkers, where they can raise counterpoints with the captain, where they can gossip and hang out at work. In 2019, that seems like an image of society that is humane, reasonable, and mature. Sure, the older shows emphasized military structure and emotional repression, but that's feeling a tad dated to me. Discovery posits that you can be a hot mess of a human being and still be a professional. I think that's refreshingly real.

 

Also, Spock spoke of having worked together with Pike for eleven years, this quite possibly meaning his first-ever Starfleet assignment after the Academy (or perhaps at the Academy already) was with Pike.* Pike's "relationship" with Sarek might thus have consistent of Dad pestering Son's CO with attempts to get Son back (while using his Vulcan diplomatic skills to avoid looking like he actually cared about Son), or attempts to get Son's career ruined, or veiled mentions of Earth's odds of getting nova-bombed increasing with every day Son continued to serve. I could see Pike being the ideal man to deal with that, in so many respects.

Timo Saloniemi

* We see in DSC that Spock's association with Pike had its interruptions, so stretching the 11 years all the way back to very early 2250s is easily done. But supposedly an upcoming short will settle that question, with Ensign Spock reporting in and all.

 

I love, love, love this and I love TNG too. However, the problem with it (and its spin-offs) that I had was; because humanity had "evolved" beyond conflict and are depicted as being perfect, I can't relate to these characters on a personal level. What I love about Discovery's characters is how supportive they are of one another. It was small, but there was such a nice moment where Michael just entered the bridge after having a breakdown. She was walking to her station and Saru said, very concerned, "Are you alright...?" There was something about that I found very comforting and, of course, something I could relate to.

I live with anxiety and have the occasional attack and, sadly, it comes to work with me sometimes. But, when I'm clearly distressed at work or just having a bad day, I have an extremely supportive team who can easily sense it and offer their support by doing exactly what Saru did.

This is why modern Star Trek works for me; it's easier to relate to the characters on an emotional level.

 

I don't know. I think I attribute that more to the writing. It's the classic type of story seen in The Jungle Book, but with a Star Trek spin. A human raised on Vulcan is a very interesting and compelling idea. It never seemed to me like it was explored too much with Michael. Sure, we got a fair amount of flashbacks with her as a child and moments with Sarek, but, what effect would that have on her? What sort of human does that make her?

When we see her in flashbacks boarding the Shenzou for the first time, she behaves VERY Vulcan-like, but over the course of her seven years with Georgiou, she seemed to gradually become more human to the point where her Vulcan upbringing didn't seem to leave too much of a lasting impact on her.

 

I agree with all this. I think it’s easy to see what the idea for the character was, but what’s on screen doesn’t deliver on that.

 

The one character that I really don't like in that season is Spock. I mean he's conceited, bad-tempered, he spends two or three episodes "thinking" about "why he was chosen"... I mean seriously, who cares why he was chosen? And he thinks that the fate of the galaxy depends on his "thinking", in the end, he "finds" out by watching a recording of Gabrielle Burnham!!! So all his meditation has come to nothing!! He keeps mocking Micheal, apparently because she called him a name twenty years before!! Talk about holding a grudge!!! Most of the time, his contribution to sessions of brainstorming is to ponderously state the obvious. I mean great character really!

I mean:

Spock: I... Love... Science...
Neither... am... I.
Michael... is... a... dumbass
I'll... have... a... Calzone... without... Onions...

 

The end left me feeling pretty "meh" - it felt like an unnecessary reboot. I enjoyed many parts of it but I definitely preferred season one overall. The time jump and killing off of one of the best Admirals in the franchise was also disappointing for me. They really could have waited another season or two before giving us what will probably end up feeling like yet another reboot in S3.

 

With Spock, I don't think it's a matter of when to tell Pike, or anyone, of his familial relationships, but rather when it is relevant to do so. Spock told Kirk those were his parents because they were standing right there in front of them. Spock told Kirk about Sybok because the mission at hand forced him to do so. Spock doesn't actively avoid dispensing personal information; he's only forthcoming with that information when he feels it's relevant to share it.

Bones, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura can all have siblings that we don't know about and just because they received no onscreen mention doesn't mean it isn't possible.

 

I am not talking about what WE know about Spock but about what he told Kirk. Just as it's likely that say Chekov knows how many siblings Sulu has. When you work with someone for sometime you usually learn those things about that person unless there's an unspoken dislike between that person and yourself. Back when I worked in an office building (some time ago) I had been invited to each of my colleague's dwellings several times and I reciprocated as well, for dinner and for more festive occasions, like marriages for example. So I had met many of their family members and we weren't as close as Kirk and Spock appear to be.

It's not natural for two people as close as Kirk and Spock, to know so little about one another. It's almost inhuman.

 

It would depend on the work place. I have certainly been to several office parties and met family members of coworkers, but that doesn't extend to siblings, or to a fully encompassing backstory. Spock, as noted multiple times, is notoriously tight lipped about personal things, even with Kirk.

And, to quote Spock, "As you are so fond of point out, Doctor, I am not fully human."

 

Perhaps, but in Star Trek, one withholds one's personal details until the plot demands it!

 

Well, lucky for you, Spock is inhuman (mostly).

 

Finally finished it.

Bad. Started off well, but where it went and ended up was a complete mess.

 

The stand alone episodes worked well but the whole Red Angel plotline feels like it wasnt really thought through properly, it felt ham fisted and forced almost like they changed direction mid season.

Pike and the Enterprise helped a lot which may be a problem for S3 as they arent going to be in it due to time travel.

 

I've written about this in other threads, but my general thoughts:

• As others have said, on an episode-by-episode basis, the show was much better in the second season than the first - particularly in the first half.
• I also thought the show was hands down much better in terms of characterization than the first season. I enjoyed the decision to more clearly delineate that many of Michael's traits which were established in the first season were explicitly meant as character flaws. Saru got a few great episodes which provided greater depth to his character. New characters (to the series) like Spock and Pike were explored well. The season did Stamets and Culber a bit more justice, tried to give Tilly some depth in the in beginning of the season, and fleshed out some of the "glorified extras" a bit.
• The main flaw in the season was it was pretty transparently the case that after Berg/Harberts were fired they pulped whatever plan they had for the season, and just started winging it. The tonal difference between the two halves was striking. The weird, psudo-religious elements were dropped for the Control plot, which seemingly came out of nowhere - and never made total sense. The former main cast (Saru, Tilly, Stamets, etc) basically got reduced to bit parts in a series which became about Michael, Spock, and Pike. And the back end of the season (basically everything after Project Daedalus) was largely bad - full of tons of expository dialogue which seemed to be mostly constructed to tie up all the loose ends from the seeming sudden plot retcon, rather than to actually be entertaining. The finale was not as disappointing as the first season finale (and kinda righted the season arc a bit), but that was only because momentum had been lost earlier in the season.

 

One thing that rubs me the wrong way in the season is that many things, mostly actions taken, make very little sense and yet we're supposed to pretend that there's nothing wrong about them.

E.g:

- Gabrielle thinks nothing of traumatizing little Spock for years in order to save her child while we know that she disposes of powerful devices. I mean, she can transport a village halfway across the galaxy but her only recourse to save her daughter is to contact Spock!! Please!! How about killing the beast? Or transporting it elsewhere? Transporting her daughter near Sarek's house and alerting Sarek with a flare or whatever. I mean we're told that the only way to kill a fly is to use a photon torpedo and we're supposed not to question that!!!

- When Pike says to Cornwell that as long as he stays there the torpedo can't go off. The only objection that comes to hers and his mind is that if he's wrong the ship will be destroyed, while the obvious answer is "not if he takes the admiral's place". That's the ridiculously obvious solution given the stupid limitations that are never explained ( using the transporter to beam out the Admiral, using one of the robots to close the door)...

- I mean if Pike is the one closing the door, then if he's right and his fate is sealed then the torpedo will never go off and he'll have all the time in the world to take it apart piece by piece OR if he's wrong and the torpedo does go off then he'll be the only one to die. Why wouldn't he propose that solution? It's so obvious. It's ridiculous.

And the season is strewn with things like that. Where the obvious solution is neither taken nor ruled out, especially the second half of the season I must say.

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