Everything Discovery has abandoned over the course of this season...

[jaime]

Another abandoned thread: the Vulcan "logic extremists". They attacked the learning center and almost killed Burnham when she was young, then they almost killed Sarek, and then... never mentioned again after that one episode.

I think they are being mirrored atm, with Lorcas MU rebel faction. I can see what they are attempting, by having the ‘bad eggs’ of the PU be the good eggs in the MU. MU Landry will be another example, and MU Sarek was in the ‘terrorist’ faction over there. The season is working back to a reflection of its opening.

 

[Refuge]

I must admit to being kind of confused by mirror Saru. He should have been confident and a predator. Instead he became weaker.

 

[jaime]

I must admit to being kind of confused by mirror Saru. He should have been confident and a predator. Instead he became weaker.

Given his physical superiority, his whole race should have probably withstood the Empire. Maybe he’s gonna go killspree on the Sehenzou, then save Burnham.

 

[Hythlodeus]

I must admit to being kind of confused by mirror Saru. He should have been confident and a predator. Instead he became weaker.

PU Saru is the confident one

 

[GeekUSACarl]

^That's crap. Roddenberry's Star Trek had more humour than Discovery ever will have. Discovery takes itself so seriously and what was the point of Michael's angst? She ends up with Tyler who is not Tyler but Voq. There's no music that makes that sound right.

Prior trek was always very stuffy. I loved it so don't get me wrong. But this is very different. Its looser and telling just a different story so much including the humor is a bit different

 

[GeekUSACarl]

I must admit to being kind of confused by mirror Saru. He should have been confident and a predator. Instead he became weaker.

I loke that mirror saru, and others, aren't simply polar opposites, just different versions of themselves.

 

[eschaton]

As opposed to every other Trek series that only shows Classical Music or Jazz right? Oh and god forbid they have a party that actually looks and feels like a real party...

Jesus Christ.

No, that was shit too. The out-of-universe explanation for it was that the showrunners at the time were cheap and didn't want to pay to use any song still under copyright. So they used older music rather than contemporary pop music.

Regardless, this is something Trek has always done poorly. If you took someone from 300 years ago, and exposed them to our popular culture, it would be unrecognizably alien. This should be even more the case in the Trekverse 23rd century, as alien influences have been changing human art for generations. Which is why I said ideally they should have alien-sounding pop music - things with weird dissonant scales which just sound off to our ears. If they don't want to spring for a composer to write new tracks, just try and find the weirdest contemporary music you can find, that 95%+ of the audience won't recognize. It will work just as well.

 

[eschaton]

He's growing into the role of having more responsibility. He's the XO instead just someone who wants to be. He does have a personality. He's a bit too stiff and proper. He's also had to cope with making harder and harder choices. Major progress that he no longer feels the need to compare himself to other Captains and has finally begun to accept Burnham.

Saru's personality comes across through the acting, and possibly through the directing as well. But as I said, if you actually listen to the content of his lines, there's little which is actually distinctive about the words as the would be written on a page.

He didn't like being assigned to Discovery at first. But then he found his niche. And he found Culber. That made him happy. Those make him not be a grumpy jerk anymore.

I'm pretty sure based upon some dialogue in the seventh episode that Culber and Stamets were an item before being assigned to Discovery, Actually, that doesn't make much sense reflecting back on it. Did Stamets insist his boyfriend get assigned to the ship in exchange for being "drafted?" If so, he could have quite a lot of personal guilt about Culber's death.

 

[Mudd]

I prefer contemporary music and contemporary language. I'm watching a TV show, not pretending I live in the 23rd century.

I got that shit out of my system in the 80s. Got a closet full of "uniforms."

I get a kick out of The Orville's take on "classical music."

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[eschaton]

^That's crap. Roddenberry's Star Trek had more humour than Discovery ever will have. Discovery takes itself so seriously and what was the point of Michael's angst? She ends up with Tyler who is not Tyler but Voq. There's no music that makes that sound right.

IIRC, Gene Roddenberry hated The Trouble With Tribbles. Gene Coon had to convince him to move forward with the episode. I think the same is true of most of TOS's comedic outings.

Early TNG was very dour on the whole, but as Roddenberry's influence waned, it did loosen up a bit. I think DS9 was the only latter-day Trek series which really embraced fully the idea of having comedic episodes however.

 

[eschaton]

I prefer contemporary music and contemporary language. I'm watching a TV show, not pretending I live in the 23rd century.

I got that shit out of my system in the 80s. Got a closet full of "uniforms."

I get a kick out of The Orville mocking this "appreciation of historical music" thing with the universal admiration of 25th century Planetary Union folks for Barry Manilow.

What's the point of telling a story in the 23rd century if you're just going to plop people who are culturally early 21st century Americans down in it? It would be like deciding to set a story in modern-day India and then completely ignoring Indian popular culture.

 

[GeekUSACarl]

Regardless, this is something Trek has always done poorly. If you took someone from 300 years ago, and exposed them to our popular culture, it would be unrecognizably alien.

You are ignoring peoples constant need to throw back hundreds and hundreds of years for a party or a weekend.

50s style diners ? Medieval Fairs?

Human beings are constantly going ancient to celebrate and have fun. Why would future humans not say

"whaddaya wanna do for this party"

"Well last week we did douche bag 2000's country, so this week let's do late 90's college party" ?

 

[eschaton]

You are ignoring peoples constant need to throw back hundreds and hundreds of years for a party or a weekend.

50s style diners ? Medieval Fairs?

Human beings are constantly going ancient to celebrate and have fun. Why would future humans not say

"whaddaya wanna do for this party"

"Well last week we did douche bag 2000's country, so this week let's do late 90's college party" ?

I honestly think it's more likely that in 300 years, people will think all music from our era sounds alike, much like we lump together everything from the Baroque period to the 19th century as classical.

Hence a party with a late 20th/early 21st century mix would have tracks by Celine Dion, Old Dirty Bastard, Merzbow, and the Flaming Lips back-to-back.

 

[GeekUSACarl]

I honestly think it's more likely that in 300 years, people will think all music from our era sounds alike, much like we lump together everything from the Baroque period to the 19th century as classical.

Hence a party with a late 20th/early 21st century mix would have tracks by Celine Dion, Old Dirty Bastard, Merzbow, and the Flaming Lips back-to-back.

Sure..but they'd still do the party. They would just pretend like they notice a difference.

 

[jaime]

I honestly think it's more likely that in 300 years, people will think all music from our era sounds alike, much like we lump together everything from the Baroque period to the 19th century as classical.

Hence a party with a late 20th/early 21st century mix would have tracks by Celine Dion, Old Dirty Bastard, Merzbow, and the Flaming Lips back-to-back.

Some parties in the late twentieth, early twenty-First already had that. postmodernity is a drag.

 

[Mudd]

What's the point of telling a story in the 23rd century if you're just going to plop people who are culturally early 21st century Americans down in it?

That's who the people on Star Trek were, up until 1987. Then they started mutating into roddenberries.

It would be like deciding to set a story in modern-day India and then completely ignoring Indian popular culture.

India is a real place. It has many cultures with rich histories, customs and musical traditions for writers and musicians to do real research on. When "future arts" are invented for Star Trek they're invented by TV writers and musicians who are in a hurry and on a budget.

Trek TOS made liberal use of what was then contemporary idiomatic jazz in their scores, at least early on; the moment that people remember and mock was when someone went ahead and invented "future rock" for "The Way To Eden."

Believe me, even stuff as set in its era as The Doors or a Jon Bovi number will be less jarring in 20 years than something "alien" either made up or searched out in obscurity for the show.

I got lots I don't like about STD. One thing I did like, or at least was comfortable with, was the scoring for the Starfleet rave in the second Mudd episode.

 

[Spot261]

It was absolutely a part of the early episodes that Burnham had a hard time expressing her emotions in a normal human manner. She even had an extended monologue about at the end of one of the episodes. Confusingly it seemed to veer back and forth depending upon what episode it was, but so far in Act 2 she's acting like a normal human being - expressing, fear, horror, disgust, sadness, etc. I never bought the whole "raised by Vulcans, can't emote right" thing anyway, because her seven years on the Shenzhou should have mellowed her more.



She had a whole monologue in the first episode which amounted to "all Klingons understand is violence." Replace the use of the term Klingon with some earth group (blacks, muslims, etc) and it comes across as very offensive.

Much like numerous comments and speeches throughout TOS, TNG, DS9 about Klingons, Vulcans, Borg, Jem'Hadar, whoever.

The fact we are using these alien proxies is precisely the point, the allegory allows us to examine the sentiment and how it play out within the plot without it being directly applicable to anyone watching the show. Trek has always done this. That we have been shown the sentiment is untrue, that the Klingons are capable of other qualities and behaviours, including compassion and love, should not be overlooked.

As for Michael's portrayal, yes she veers between modalitites between episodes, but also between circumstances. What you see as inconsistency could equally be interpreted as complexity, someone whose background and experiences have led her to behaving in ways which might not be immediately predictable to someone who does not know her patterns well.

How she acts in one set of conditions might not be taken as a predictor of how she acts in another, responding differently to those conditions based on a set of experiences we have only the most surface level insight into.

To be honest I find her confused and patchwork background makes this far more feasible for me than Janeway's almost chaotic portrayal throughout VOY which frankly only holds up due to Kate Mulgrews' screen presence. Likewise other than being a paladin of virtue with Shakespearean tendencies I often think Picard is written quite unevenly with people's fondness and affection being more about Patrick Stewart than the character as written.

 

[eschaton]

Much like numerous comments and speeches throughout TOS, TNG, DS9 about Klingons, Vulcans, Borg, Jem'Hadar, whoever.

There have absolutely been "racists" throughout the Trek history. Kirk being racist towards Klingons was a major part of TUC. O'Brien being racist towards Cardassians was an important part of his early character development.

The difference between what happened in those cases and what Discovery did in its opening two parter is the racism was shown to be a character flaw which was unsupported in fact throughout the Trek corpus. In contrast, Burnham is right to not trust the Klingons in The Vulcan Hello, even if it's arguably for the wrong reasons.

As for Michael's portrayal, yes she veers between modalitites between episodes, but also between circumstances. What you see as inconsistency could equally be interpreted as complexity, someone whose background and experiences have led her to behaving in ways which might not be immediately predictable to someone who does not know her patterns well.

How she acts in one set of conditions might not be taken as a predictor of how she acts in another, responding differently to those conditions based on a set of experiences we have only the most surface level insight into.

To be honest I find her confused and patchwork background makes this far more feasible for me than Janeway's almost chaotic portrayal throughout VOY which frankly only holds up due to Kate Mulgrews' screen presence. Likewise other than being a paladin of virtue with Shakespearean tendencies I often think Picard is written quite unevenly with people's fondness and affection being more about Patrick Stewart than the character as written.

There are of course in-universe explanations for most shifts in character behavior over time. However, I prefer to step back and look at it from a writerly perspective, because it's more interesting to consider why the writers chose to modify her performance than why the (made up) character acts differently in certain situations.

I think the answer is she was given a nearly impossible role in the original few episodes. She was basically supposed to express emoition and nuance, but only with great subtle due to her Vulcan upbringing. Few Trek actors have gotten this down properly - really only Nimoy, Mark Lenard, Tim Russ and (in a very different unemotional role) Brent Spiner. Many "guest Vulcans" have been simply awful, and Jolene Blalock's limitations as an actor in ENT forced them to come up with in-universe explanations to have T'Pol become more expressive. Similarly, and much more quickly, they figured out that SMG would not put in a great performance if she stayed so understated, so they tweaked her role to be more expressive and less stoic.

 

[Hythlodeus]

idk, nothing seems more alien and weird to me than contemporary American pop 'music'

 

[Spot261]

The difference between what happened in those cases and what Discovery did in its opening two parter is the racism was shown to be a character flaw which was unsupported in fact throughout the Trek corpus. In contrast, Burnham is right to not trust the Klingons in The Vulcan Hello, even if it's arguably for the wrong reasons.

Kirk was right not to trust the Klingons, O'Brien was right to fear the Cardassians, Picard was right to assume hostility as the default from the Borg. That doesn't change the fact that in every instance their assessment was also flawed and overly simplistic, based in prejudice which was later shown to be based on false assumptions. That we have seen Klingons in Discovery mourn their dead, show compassion for others, value loyalty and trust, fall in love, these are all strong rebuttals to the generalisation.

There are of course in-universe explanations for most shifts in character behavior over time. However, I prefer to step back and look at it from a writerly perspective, because it's more interesting to consider why the writers chose to modify her performance than why the (made up) character acts differently in certain situations.

Granted, but consider that levelling this criticism at Discovery in particular loads the statement. "Discovery does this" in the current atmosphere of controversy is essentially axiomatic with "This is something which has started with Discovery". Few if any trek characters have ever been written as fully rounded complex beings. Typically they are so inconsistent as to be pretty chaotic (Kirk, Picard, Janeway), defined by a specific trait or behaviour pattern (Chekov, McCoy) or so limited as to be a blank slate (Kim, Mayweather). Some have become iconic due to the performances which became associated with them, the gestures, the body language, the vocal tonalities and inherent charisma of the performers, but to claim they are consistently written as rounded characters is something I would need convincing of.

Many "guest Vulcans" have been simply awful, and Jolene Blalock's limitations as an actor in ENT forced them to come up with in-universe explanations to have T'Pol become more expressive

Agreed. Every Vulcan post TOS sucks.