This pretty much defines much of Hollywood right now. I don't think it is as subjective at that, but I remain firm in my belief that it was two bears high fiving.
Sadly, true. It makes so much of the product so boring. As Harlan Ellison claimed that a TV producer once told him straight up:* "The audience are imbeciles. We're doing the Saturday Morning Funnies for these people." *Really unlikely, Harlan.
When I went to see Arrival with my wife (who isn't a dumb person) I needed to explain to her at the end that Louise Barker's daughter's entire life was in the future of the main narrative, and she was experiencing time in a non-linear fashion. How she couldn't get that from watching the movie boggled my mind.
I think you just nailed why I keep coming back to Voyager more often than any of the other post-TNG shows, despite it's many and numerous other failings: at its heart, it's just a bunch of folks running around solving whatever problems they happen to come across. I'd been wondering what the appeal was, for me, given how annoyed I am by so much of the series.
I disagree. Just because that strategy worked in the past with the Vulcans doesn't mean it's a lock to work again. Different time period and thus different political landscape and different individuals. Plus it's not really the first officer's job to go against the captain of your ship like that even if you think your right. Without a chain of command you don't have discipline. I do kind of like the idea that they went against the Trek trope of just giving her a slap on the wrist but like that Starfleet/Maquis conflict on "Voyager" it seems like they kind of bailed on that very fast. Maybe Fuller wanted that and the new writers were more interested in making her traditional action lead instead. Jason
Breaking the Prime DIrective I would go with. Spock would usually point it out but then let it slide. GIving riffles to even the balance out in "A Private Little War." Trying to save Edith Keller. Perhaps but I guess it depends if one thinks someone you love is worth saving at the cost of all life in the universe being forever altered. Jason
Burnham wasn't right at all. There are several times through out the season which supports that she was wrong.
I agree. "Discovery" though isn't all that bad compared to other shows. Still I think it's safe bet to say the best stuff is still going to be on HBO.Showtime,Netflix,Amazon Prime,Hulu,FX, and AMC. Everything else is hit or miss. Jason
It was wrong to mutiny. It was right to attack without warning. Georgiou was a danger to Galactic peace. You could not reason with her. Galactic peace was doomed because one Starfleet Captain was too puritanical to observe the accepted the centuries old uncouth winning strategy of dealing with the Klingons. She had to be removed from play. Which is grounds for court martial, and something illegal which Burnham was fine with, because it was very unlikely that she was going to survive the battle of the Binary Stars, and that was the cost of total victory. Death in a fight, or life imprisonment. A perfectly logical sacrifice to save trillions of Federation Citizens AND Klingon warriors. It was Georgiou's death, that Michael punished herself for, and she felt guilty about, and the reason why she didn't offer a defense in her own trial. Burnham was accepting punishment for the crime she wan't being accused of, Georgiou's death, and not the crime she was being accused of, mutiny. The mutiny was weak sauce. It lasted thirty 30 seconds. Georgiou woke up and defrocked Michael before Burnham could implement Sarek's plan. Michael's criminal actions were not responsible for the battle, or any of the consequences of the battle, or the death of her Captain. Michael would have redone everything the same again, up to the point that she and Pip beamed over to the Klingon Ship to fight 400 klingons by themselves, like idjits. Saru is possibly ten times stronger than a Human, so he's 3 times stronger than a klingon. Sure a phaser is the great equalizer, but it's a Klingon ship, of fricking course its going to come down to a sword fight. Saru would have pwned the Klingons, and Phillipa would have been alive at stories end. Oh, and maybe Michael would have stunned Georgiou so that she stayed asleep for an hour, instead of putting her out for a minute with a nerve pinch, if she turned off the phaser alert klaxons first, if we are thinking about what Michael would have done differently. Her most prevalent issue was not that the Mutiny was bad, but that the mutiny was stillborn.
IMO, VOY has held up better over the years than TNG, and I think that is due in part to what you and eschaton mentioned already, but I think it's also because it was less preachy. Unlike TNG, it was't often mentioning the great enlightened society in which humans lived, and pushing their sense of enlightenment on any fictional race they deemed less enlightened (who, by the way, were stand-ins for the 20th-century audience members). Sure -- VOY might have had some minor preachy moments, but it was far less preachy than TNG -- and TNG's gospel they were preaching was often a product of the times (the 1990s). VOY was mainly just a straightforward space opera.
No T'Kuvma wanted a war, Burnham firing first wouldn't have stopped that. He would have found another way. The Vulcan Hello wouldn't have worked on him, because he didn't want to stand down and run away, he wanted a fight, a battle.
T'Kuvma would have been dead or so slapped around from the Vulcan Hello that the rest of the Klingons would have thunk him too weak to follow into battle. One of his Arguments was that humans lie about wanting peace, and then Georgiou on screen says "we come in peace" and the assembled Klingons laughed. T'Kuvma was a no one with no political power, and he lost control of the war almost as soon as it started because he died, and his line of succession led to an idiot. They wanted to win a war that wasn't being fought for the wrong sort of glory.
The Klingons took the Beacon seriously (why else would they have shown up?), if Starfleet destroyed it they would have seen it as an act of aggression against their beliefs. The Season even ends with Burnham accepting that Georgiou and Starfleets belief in Peace first was the right call. If the show was trying to say she was right, that wouldn't have happened.
Until very recently the ship/beacon had been a landlocked crashed derelict covered in homeless houseless Klingon slumdogs. Responding to the beacon was unlikely to be something that the Line Officers thought about as anything more than a fairy story.
One can reasonably argue tha STD isn't that bad compared to other Trek. But compared to TV drama in general? It's a C- at best.
I kind of agree. I think I would go slightly better with C+. Granted I also think as a Trek fan I wonder if I am letting that bias me. If I compared this to"Black Mirror" or "Better Call Saul" or "Mr Robot" it actually looks worst but if you compare it to something like the Arrowverse it seems fine. I know it doesn't crack the my top 10 of genre shows. That would be. 1 Black Mirror 2 Orville 3 Lost in Space 4 Legion 5 Stranger Things 6 Agents of Shield 7 The Punisher 8 Daredevil( I know it was canned but it still counts with this season) 9 Legends of Tommorow 10 Westworld Then I can name many more who also beat it out like Handmaids Tale or The Man in the High Castle etc. In fact it rants pretty low if you are just looking at genre shows. It's a good thing though the quality of tv has gone up over the years to a point where maybe one of the worst shows in a genre is still good enough to get a C+ and would be better than most of the "good" stuff you would get in the 70's and 80's. Jason