Might it be that one is used as an excuse for the other with some people?
Spoilers If you could change one thing about Discovery
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Make it crew based, not single character based. Don't really care about Burnham's storyline, I just want to know about everyone else and have them get as much input as Michael. Like how Star Trek USED to be....
Stop. Why is it fine for women to fall for Kirk, for Spock to be half-Vulcan, or for the adventures to circle around them?
ETA: If you're going to paste that quote, you might as well read the rest of that interview. Particularly the part where she looks back at the term and the sexist double standards.
https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/243/205
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I think you’ve nailed it
The sexism against Discovery in some circles looks even worse than the sexism against Voyager. But that's just a symptom of what's going on in society at large. Social progress is being made, so the reaction against it is becoming ever louder to try to stop it from continuing and to try to reverse it.
Reactions to canon, on the other hand, have moved in the opposite direction. The reaction to the Disco Enterprise would've been so much worse around the Turn of the Millennium.
Reactions to canon, on the other hand, have moved in the opposite direction. The reaction to the Disco Enterprise would've been so much worse around the Turn of the Millennium.
Incidentally I don't believe Burnham to be a 'Mary Sue' character. It was in reply to someone else making a similar observation that Discovery's plots revolve around Burnham. The last two seasons have been centred on actions taken by Burnham - the Klingon war and the Red Angle who was both her mother and herself.
Paula Smith's commentary was on a parody of badly written Star Trek fan fiction she wrote, one aspect of which was that the Enterprise crew's adventures just happen to revolve around this one character. It isn't enough that Discovery is Michael Burnham's story and seen from her POV - she has to be the catalyst for the plots and solve the problems that come from them.
Focusing almost exclusively on one character and making each season's plot arc based on this one character's actions has worked against Discovery as a series in my opinion.
And yes, as the interview states a 'Mary Sue' (loathe as I am to use the term) can be male or female. It is just a badly written character without flaws who is never seen to struggle, gets everything handed to them and have all plots revolve around them. I wish there was a less contentious name for it due to its obvious sexist connotations.
I don't think I'd change a thing about the current season, though I remain ambivalent about the ship leaving an era of Star Trek that I really care about, canonistas be damned.
The first thing that comes to mind is that I wished that Lorca would have stayed what he appeared to be, a flawed,damaged man, and not just a secret villain from the Asshole Universe. I'm not as enraged about the MU part as some are, I just feel his character lost a lot of nuance in the process. I'm not sure what it would look like to make that tweak, but that's the top one.
One that's an easier fix would be the subtitles for when Klingon is spoken. I continue to maintain that you would have had fewer complaints about the amount of Klingon spoken if they had used the kind of plain nonserif font that you usually see for subtitles. I suspect many people would not have even noticed how much Klingon was used then. Using this weirdly ornate serifed Roman-like font, center justified, with an almost German approach to capitalization, made them difficult to read.
The first thing that comes to mind is that I wished that Lorca would have stayed what he appeared to be, a flawed,damaged man, and not just a secret villain from the Asshole Universe. I'm not as enraged about the MU part as some are, I just feel his character lost a lot of nuance in the process. I'm not sure what it would look like to make that tweak, but that's the top one.
One that's an easier fix would be the subtitles for when Klingon is spoken. I continue to maintain that you would have had fewer complaints about the amount of Klingon spoken if they had used the kind of plain nonserif font that you usually see for subtitles. I suspect many people would not have even noticed how much Klingon was used then. Using this weirdly ornate serifed Roman-like font, center justified, with an almost German approach to capitalization, made them difficult to read.
Honestly - as one of the people often griping about things on this show - I'm SO MUCH in agreement with this part!
Like, I genuinely loved the way they incorporated criticism throughout all of season 2 - give the Klingons beards & hair, the iconic D7, do more exploration, less shooty-shooty - the show improved SO MUCH without actually ever actually negating it's own identity! Season 2 was really the point where I was becoming a genuine fan of the show.
And then this ending - "classify everything, fuck off to where we'll never bother anyone anymore" - felt like such a betrayal. Like - I stuck with this show through good and bad. Why did they falter THIS much?
1) If you don't like the term then why did you initially use Smith's quote?
2) Are you sure you read the part of Smith's interview where she discusses the sexism? It's about being hypersensitive to female characters being too central while praising male characters for the same thing. I'll ask again: why is okay for Kirk and Spock to be central to their show, but not Michael? Hardly anyone complains about the lack of Uhura-centered episodes.
And Michael doesn't get everything handed to her.
TOS and Discovery are two different sorts of shows. TOS is episodic and more ensemble in nature with Kirk and a number of other characters being central to the series whereas Discovery has a serialised format and intended as being Michael Burnham's story, so it isn't exactly comparing like with like. Voyager has a female captain but like TOS is episodic and focuses on a central cast of characters who have an equal amount of importance.
Because the part "They then have adventures, but the remarkable thing was that all the adventures circled around this character" is given as an example of bad story telling and relevant to Discovery. It is one thing to focus on Burnham due to the concept of the series being "her story", but making her the catalyst and major driver for the plots of both seasons seems far too contrived.
Look at TOS' episode summaries. Kirk and Spock are central. The other characters are not. Where is the Uhura episode? What about Sulu?
Where was this implied? Not on screen or tv it wasn't
For me I would have more aliens as main cast members, Saru is the only one, make Linus a main character. The show is too humancentric.
Lorca would not be a Terran but a flawed, Prime human captain suffering PTSD
Which Star Trek ?
TOS was mainly K/S/M and the redshirt or two land on planet X
In situations like that though those supporting characters are usually listed in the guest cast of the show. The bridge officers on Disco aren't in the guest cast, they're listed as co-stars. There's no requirement for them to get character development. While that's not the same thing as saying they shouldn't, I suspect if this were any other show than a Star Trek show, no one would be making an issue out of this, and the only reason people are taking issue here is due to the belief that if you're a bridge officer on a Star Trek series, you should be a main character. Despite the fact that we already know more about Disco's bridge officers than we did about some bridge officers on the other shows who were listed in the main cast.
Actually, like TOS, Voyager centers around a "big three" of the captain, coldly analytical character and medical officer (TOS it's Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Voyager it's Janeway, Seven of Nine, Doctor) with everyone else in supporting roles.
Michael is the lead character, and lead characters are always the catalyst and major driver of their shows. To be fair, I don't think you're being sexist in your objections to Michael's prominence (though I'll admit there is a disturbingly large percentage of fandom who are) but rather I think you're having trouble accepting that a character can be so important without being the captain.
If you take the movies into account, Sulu eventually becomes captain of the Excelsior. McCoy was also an important character in TOS. But comparing a television series made in the 1960s with Trek series made in the 1990s and in 2019 probably isn't a fair comparison.
I wonder if folks complained why TOS was always about Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and the doctor..you know, the three main stars of the show? I remember the uproar ten years ago, when some fans were upset McCoy was sidelined for Uhura in ST09. How dare she upset the Holy Trinity!
"Important" does not mean "central." The stories center Kirk and Spock. Looking at episode summaries, not even McCoy so much. How many episodes center him?
Sulu becoming captain of the Excelsior is very much peripheral to the story of TUC.
