Trying to recall a TOS episode where anything Kirk did was considered wrong by the viewing audience or plot.
Burnham not human?
- Thread starter Fateor
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Obsession, perhaps.
As to the 9g thing—most likely a screwup (like the Kessel Run, or the size of the V’ger cloud in TMP, or any other of thousands of such errors in fiction). However, as screwups go, rather easily “explained”. The pods have inertial dampening BUT a conservative structural rating of sustainable 9g for, say, 7 mins. Burnham pushed it to 9g for 11 minutes—not all that different from whenever Scotty pushed the Enterprise beyond specs.
Problem solved.
Nope.
Most people who don't care for the character don't "hate" her anyway. It's just that as with most of the show, there's not a whole lot interesting going on there.
100% agreed that most Trek characters are boring. As the thing goes on, characters have seemed increasingly to be things generated by rolling D&D dice. Burnham is not an exception. She doesn't act out of "inner conflict" that motivates interesting action nearly as much as SMG is required to portray inner emotional turmoil through dull interior dialogues and flashbacks. It's just clumsy writing that does the character no favors.
She is, in fact, at her best when she is doing those allegedly superhuman things that Trek characters all do - such as responding positively and taking action to rescue Pike during that long videogame flight through the asteroids. The story is moved forward when characters respond to what they encounter in the moment.
A lot of the time SMG is in the exact same boat that Patrick Stewart faced in TNG, early on (and recurrently, forever), which is having to elevate weak material through her performance. I think she does it as well as he did.
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As I mentioned before, maybe she was wearing a futuristic version of a fighter pilot's g-suit.
If only that were true, then we wouldn't have to deal with trolls that stay just under the threshold of what is against the rules by not using overt slurs even though they show all the signs of really really wanting to say them with all their complaints about "diversity hiring", feminist/gay/minority "agendas", PC culture, SJWs, etc.
This is not referring to you, just to make that clear. I just disagree with your assessment that bigots are incapable of modifying their language to something more subtle to try and make it fit in with socially acceptable conversation. For example, saying "thug" instead of the n-word.
Yes, that is certainly true for most people's criticism, and there's nothing wrong with that. You shouldn't take the remark personally if it doesn't apply to you.
That doesn't invalidate that "some" people, which is what Possum said, don't like SMG and Burnham because of the "isms" you mentioned, which are made obvious by their track record of posts around the forum driving those hatreds home relentlessly,
Indeed. Show not tell.
You know, on TNG the episode "The Big Goodbye" was something of a watershed, although not in the sense that it was or is universally agreed by fans to be exceptionally good.* For one thing, it was the first story where the show wasn't looking over its shoulder and competing with TOS - Tracy Torme developed a script around an element of the format that wasn't a hand-me-down from the original. It was a good script that worked on its own terms. But it was clear watching it that Stewart was finally enjoying himself, getting to do some lightly comedic material that embraced the fantasy of the show's premise and let him express something personal about his character that had nothing to do with the Captain slot that Picard occupied.** Up to that moment his job had been to render for the camera all the many shades of grim, earnest, stoic, serious, solemn, ruminative, stern, etc. that the much-harassed writers could deploy.
*It was exceptionally good, and won an award other than the always-coveted Best Hairstyling.
**Watch the unguarded enthusiasm and energy with which Picard tries to describe the holodeck experience to his crewmates in the briefing room. We hadn't seen that dimension to Picard's personality before, and we'd never see enough of it.
*It was exceptionally good, and won an award other than the always-coveted Best Hairstyling.
**Watch the unguarded enthusiasm and energy with which Picard tries to describe the holodeck experience to his crewmates in the briefing room. We hadn't seen that dimension to Picard's personality before, and we'd never see enough of it.
I really like Burnham and I don't think that she is any more super competent than Trek main characters usually. However, one thing I realised when thinking about this, and which may affect some people's perfection of this, is that whilst on Trek character competence scale Burnham is nothing unusual, her crew mates are actually perhaps more useless than is normal in Trek. Sure enough Picard and Kirk are highly capable polymaths, but they are also accompanied by individuals such as Spock and Data, and even the non-blatantly-superhuman members of their crew display wide variety of skills and take very active role in the problem solving. I really don't think it works like than on Disco, Stamets is a genius, but his specialisation is super narrow, and generally the other characters often come across as hesitant and unsure of themselves. So in many cases it is mostly Burnham who is doing the heavy lifting, whereas there was more group effort in other shows. But perhaps with the new direction of the second season this will change; there are already signs that it will.
As I've said before, I feel the issue isn't that Burnham is competent, but that the other characters compliment her somewhat excessively, which can come across as the writers shilling the character. Personally I find it weird, and it certainly hasn't been done in the past on Trek in any incarnation.
There was a bit of that in the first episode this season, but honestly it didn't bother me that much compared to Season 1.
Well, no - even the sainted Kirk had to deal with the people around him busting his chops far more often than the flattered him - the scenes where they would offer him some reassurance were more memorable for that. Really, especially Kirk - Picard's people were never in the habit of contradicting or getting in his face to the extent that the TOS folk did Kirk.
Which is different than the eternal Trek tendency for all the regulars to close ranks behind the show lead when outsiders - admirals, aliens, lawyers - pressed on him or her. That never changes.
"Saint Kirk" was a movie invention. There was nothing in TOS to suggest that Kirk was anything all that special. Just a relatively young captain of a Connie doing his job the best he could.
Yeah, the character's "living legend" status in the movies annoyed the fuck out of me.
I had a post last year where I made the point the long-term arc toward "epicness" has hurt Trek dramatically. Basically the bigger the protagonists have gotten, the smaller the universe seems. TOS felt big and open because Kirk and the rest of the crew almost never ran into the same people twice, mostly dealt with crises which only were on a "ship" or "planetary" scale, and had appropriately-scaled baddies (Kor and Kang were commanders, and Koloth a captain, for example.
Then by TNG, we're following around the flagship of the fleet - who personally knows the Klingon High Chancellor via Worf. DS9 ended with the hero captain man becoming a fucking god, and several characters (Martok, Rom, possibly Garak) becoming leaders of their races. VOY wisely took a step back from the abyss of epic (probably one of the only wise moves it made honestly) but ENT, after trying a bit, went in on the Hero Captain Man as well.
Maybe it just says something terrible about the fandom, I dunno. That people don't really want what I think is the strength of the franchise - stories about a team of normal people working together to overcome a SFnal crisis or allegory story - and just want another story about superheroes or Aragorn or something.
Yeah, in their original incarnation the Enterprise crew were clearly considered outstanding officers aboard a noteworthy vessel, generally doing remarkable work. That's all they were and, come on, that's way more than enough. 
If I took The Orville as seriously as Star Trek seems to demand that its fans take it - and having long-ingrained Trekkie habits I do feel the temptation sometimes, which is obviously why this occurs to me - I'd wonder how, given some of the adventures they've had they're still regarded as an average crew aboard mid-level ship. Not suggesting that they don't trip and fall with some regularity - at least two episodes were built around that, last year - but nonetheless it looks as if Ed and company have been the best thing the Union has going for them in their current difficulties with the Krill. They've rescued two colonies, captured Krill vessels, and in one of those instances the Admiralty tapped Mercer to undertake a crucial and very sensitive intelligence mission ...during which he saved 100, 000 lives.
It's nothing more than the essential implausibility of all action/adventure franchises, I guess - which is why one should never take any of it too seriously.
If I took The Orville as seriously as Star Trek seems to demand that its fans take it - and having long-ingrained Trekkie habits I do feel the temptation sometimes, which is obviously why this occurs to me - I'd wonder how, given some of the adventures they've had they're still regarded as an average crew aboard mid-level ship. Not suggesting that they don't trip and fall with some regularity - at least two episodes were built around that, last year - but nonetheless it looks as if Ed and company have been the best thing the Union has going for them in their current difficulties with the Krill. They've rescued two colonies, captured Krill vessels, and in one of those instances the Admiralty tapped Mercer to undertake a crucial and very sensitive intelligence mission ...during which he saved 100, 000 lives.
It's nothing more than the essential implausibility of all action/adventure franchises, I guess - which is why one should never take any of it too seriously.
I'm perfectly OK with a certain amount of "telling that isn't shown".
That is, I think properly-executed dialogue can move a story along. I felt that some of the story set-up being discussed in Brother was compelling, such as Pike's dialogue giving us information about his mission, and the dialogue between Burnham and Pike giving insights into Spock's relationship with each of them.
I personally found those scenes more important than the pod-through-the-asteroid scene, which I think was a bit "much". A toned-down version of that would have been better, IMHO. I like roller-coasters, but Star Trek is better when it isn't one.
I've always been a sucker for good dialogue. A clever turn of a phrase can tell me a lot about an on-screen situation or about a character. I don't always need to be shown those things.
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Infodumps are permissible when it's one character telling another character about something they don't know about. It's one reason why Berman Trek used briefings so much. It just makes logical sense that senior staff will be briefed on key issues after all. What should never be done is telling something plot related for the sake of the audience which the other characters would already know in universe. Hence if we meet an antagonist for the first time who Burnham has a past with, she shouldn't say "as you know, you and I don't get along well due to ____." Instead, they should get along poorly, and then a third party should ask for some background history and be brought up to speed.
But good witty dialogue generally doesn't inform you much of anything about the plot! It's showing, not telling.
Keep in mind show not tell came from writing originally, not TV/film. The point is that the writer should not just come directly out and say what the point of a passage or scene is through exposition. They should instead frame the scene in such a way that the reader can draw his or her own conclusion.
Thus one character telling Burnham "You're very good at ____" is a narrative failure, because it's making explicit what should be implicit. The writer can show this by actually having Burnham be good with ____ in the episode, or by addressing it in a sideways manner - like say having the other character ask Burnham if she can help them brush up on warp field theory later that night or something.
They change the Warp scale at some point between TOS and TNG. Maybe they changed the G scale between 20th century and TOS.
Consider: "our" G is based on one earth gravity. Who knows what a G is in Trek.
These writers are not confident in letting anything remain as subtext; everything must be commented upon and tied up with a bow for presentation to the audience. This is not unusual or specific to Star Trek - at least not on CBS shows.
I dunno about that. I mean, the first season lacked anything involving themes or "issues" unless you squinted very, very hard at the subtext.
The show had themes and addressed "issues" to the extent and in the sense that rorschach blots have meaning.
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