Let's talk about the elephant in the room, this series violates Roddenberry's vision big time
- Thread starter Sci-fi fan
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It depends on the starting point. Lorca being Captain is already a consequence of previous actions. Michael in a prime position is also a consequence of story telling that wanted her to be free to not be imprisoned. Move the goal posts by all means for what has yet to be told but I do not see any thing that could be told in the future that would change Michael disabling her Captain. Done duck. Same with Lorca. He did what he did.
Exactly. I tend to resist the idea that characters have to be admirable to be interesting. We're supposed to be uncertain as to whether Lorca is essentially a good guy or a bad guy; that's where a lot of the narrative tension is coming from. He's not supposed to be an unambiguous role model like, say, Picard.
In general, I'll often take interesting over virtuous--at least when it comes to fiction.
Then I'm at a loss as to what you want here. It seems to be that the expectation is that Lorca and Burnham must somehow be raised to grand moral bastions but have been driven so low by their actions to be forever tarnished as protagonists in a Star Trek show.
I truly am at a lost as to what you want from either of these characters or this show.
There seems to be no allowance for moral grayness in DISSCO even when Star Trek has done it before. No regard for lawbreaking even though Kirk, Sisko, Bashier, Spock, Janeway, Paris, among others, all did. But, these characters. They're just damned and cannot be leads. There is no room for them.
Exactly. I tend to resist the idea that characters have to be admirable to be interesting. We're supposed to be uncertain as to whether Lorca is essentially a good guy or a bad guy; that's where a lot of the narrative tension is coming from. He's not supposed to be an unambiguous role model like, say, Picard.
In general, I'll often take interesting over virtuous--at least when it comes to fiction.
Think about Khan. One of the great villains of late 20th century Earth and a man both directly and indirectly responsible along with his fellow genetic supermen for the deaths of about 37 million people. As an Augment bred for conquest and subjugating those he sees as lesser human beings he's a threat to both world peace and the lives of those around him, yet he's also one of the most fascinating characters in the history of the Trek franchise. He is a criminal and a tyrant who oppressed untold millions but he's still an interesting person and legions of fans flock to his character.
Honestly, of all the Trek books I've written, it's the Khan trilogy people seem to remember.
Well, who can resist “fine Corinthian leather”?
Then I'm at a loss as to what you want here. It seems to be that the expectation is that Lorca and Burnham must somehow be raised to grand moral bastions but have been driven so low by their actions to be forever tarnished as protagonists in a Star Trek show.
I truly am at a lost as to what you want from either of these characters or this show.
But, these characters. They're just damned and cannot be leads. There is no room for them.
"Janeway and Picard are not walking through that door"
Star Trek got dull and the drama fell flat when every week you knew that the high-horse morality of the lead characters would win out no matter what. When moral delimmas have foregone conclusions because you know (for example) that Jean-Luc Picard is a frigging paragon of boy-scout virtue, they cease to be true moral delimmas.
I for one have no desire to go back to Star Trek: The After School Special.
Someone serving the sentence for their crime is not wanting them to be raised to 'grand moral bastion' standards. It's a simple balance of justice based on the law, in Michael's case she was judged by. Morale greyness is when you get the wrong change when you buy dinner and pocket it, not when you disable your Captain and friend or kill your entire crew. What do you think they are just little lapses, lol.Then I'm at a loss as to what you want here. It seems to be that the expectation is that Lorca and Burnham must somehow be raised to grand moral bastions but have been driven so low by their actions to be forever tarnished as protagonists in a Star Trek show.
I truly am at a lost as to what you want from either of these characters or this show.
But, these characters. They're just damned and cannot be leads. There is no room for them.
Lorca as a role is well acted but not complex. He's an unambiguous nutjob and the narrative tension comes from him twirling his moustache. There is nothing you cannot predict about him. I knew he was going to dodge getting into trouble with Cornwell, didn't you? Same with Michael. We all know she's not going to spend the rest of the show in prison.Exactly. I tend to resist the idea that characters have to be admirable to be interesting. We're supposed to be uncertain as to whether Lorca is essentially a good guy or a bad guy; that's where a lot of the narrative tension is coming from. He's not supposed to be an unambiguous role model like, say, Picard.
In general, I'll often take interesting over virtuous--at least when it comes to fiction.
Wow. That's quite a straw man, there!
But FWIW, Kirk was just about to have Spock perform exactly the same sort of interrogation via forced mind meld on Kryton in "Elaan Of Troyius" (TOS) immediately before he vaporized himself:
KRYTON: Captain, you must know I will tell you nothing. Our interrogation techniques are more excruciating than you are even capable of.
KIRK: Yes, I'm aware you're trained to resist any form of physical torture. [into comm] Kirk to Spock...
SPOCK: [over comm] Spock here, Captain.
KIRK: Mister Spock, it was Kryton transmitting. He refuses to talk. I'll need you for the Vulcan mind meld.
[Kryton grabs security guard's phaser and vaporizes himself]
But it wouldn't even be a lie! Whatever she did or didn't do, it didn't legally constitute a mutiny until the moment the court found her guilty of that charge. If the court reverses the conviction, then it's made a binding legal decision that, in fact, no mutiny ever actually took place. And even if they don't, but instead merely expunge the record of the conviction, then there's still no record of any mutiny taking place. Other people can continue to call it a mutiny all they like, just as Kirk and Garth claimed that their own crews had mutinied in "This Side Of Paradise" (TOS) and "Whom Gods Destroy" (TOS). But the court is the only authority that can ultimately make such a determination. Any number of other people besides Burnham could be accused and brought up on such charges, but as long as they didn't stand convicted, they would not technically be mutineers. Spock himself was apparently charged with mutiny in "The Menagerie" (TOS), but the proceeding that was begun in response turned out to be a sham, and real charges were subsequently forgone.
And in any case, in context of "The Tholian Web" (TOS), Burnham's "mutiny" is of zero relevance or importance to the situation at hand. It clearly wasn't one of the sort that they were putatively looking at the results of aboard the Defiant, where the whole crew had been at each other's throats. It was not "such an occurrence." Spock doesn't answer the question Chekov actually asked, but that's not a lie, certainly not by Spock's standards, and apparently not even by your own:
-MMoM
P.S.
It was already clear in canon that multiple encounters with both the Borg and Ferengi had taken place prior to official "first contact" with either, before a single episode of ENT had ever aired!
P.P.S.
Spock said he had never attempted a mind meld with any human prior to "Dagger Of The Mind" (TOS):
SPOCK: [voiceover] Enterprise log, First Officer Spock, acting captain...I must now use an ancient Vulcan technique to probe into Van Gelder's tortured mind.
MCCOY: Spock, if there's the slightest possibility it might help...
SPOCK: I've never used it on a human, Doctor.
MCCOY: If there's any way we can look into this man's mind to see if what he's seeing is real or delusion...
SPOCK: It's a hidden, personal thing to the Vulcan people, part of our private lives.
So seeing that happen would indeed be violation of canon...unless, of course, Spock's memory of it were wiped afterwards...or he made a vow to the subject never to reveal to anyone else that it had happened!
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You realise ‘this is a story, not a morality tale’ suggests they are mutually exclusive (they are not) and plays right into the ‘not Trek’ argument, because historically, Trek very much is a morality tale.
No. Trek occasionally presented “morality tales”. It has NEVER merely done only that.
Never merely indeed.
Got it. So, you would rather Michael be in prison for the rest of the show.
Star Trek has used morality tales, and no, I'm not arguing that they are mutually exclusive. I'm arguing that DISCO isn't necessarilly a morality tale.
April was 75 circa 2270 per "The Counter-Clock Incident" (TAS), meaning he was born circa 2195, and could readily have been captain of the Enterprise from the late 2220s and still leave Kirk (born 2233, assumed command circa 2263 around age 30—but probably after having had a previous command—see here) as the youngest-ever captain of such a ship as per The Making Of Star Trek (which is the same source where the age of the design is said to be "about forty years" old). Not set in stone, of course. The Chronology and an unused and unseen portion of Archer's bio from "In A Mirror, Darkly" (ENT) place the Enterprise's launch in 2245. That would still be a decade before DSC.
Scotty performed site-to-site transport of an individual from one surface location to another, with no novelty value attributed, in "A Piece Of The Action" (TOS).
What concerns Spock about intra-ship beaming, pad-to-site, in "Day Of The Dove" (TOS) is the necessity of "pinpoint accuracy" due to the possibility of ending up materializing inside a deck or wall. But that would generally be a concern beaming just about anywhere, so I think you are quite sensible in presuming the complication must have something to do with some other function of the ship within the area of the destination potentially interfering with the process. Spock quite explicitly says it has been done, though, even if rarely because of this danger. Scotty accepts that it could work, even if it may be a trap. Spock makes computations and sets the computer to automatically perform the transport. And it ultimately all goes off without a hitch, despite it all being done hurriedly in the heat of the moment.
So Lorca actually does nothing they couldn't do in TOS, and is quite justified in feeling no apprehension, especially because in his case he's had the luxury of all the time in the world to have the computer programmed for such pre-set transports and work out any bugs! It can't possibly be a more complicated matter than getting the spore drive to work, methinks. Plus, again, quite possibly better transporters.
Sorry, I'm not just arguing for argument's sake here. I just think much more has been made of this than really ought be.
-MMoM
sorry for being late (i was three weeks off the grit) my answer to that fancy transporter, holodecks etc is 300 paralell scientific experiments - does anybody believe for a second gabriel lorca wouldn't use those experiments to win the war or for his personal convenience?
so why didn't starfleet incorporate this stuff into new designs? because they nearly lost and ordered their warfs to push out existing types as replacements for the losses. if you need a reason why nobody ever mentioned discovery you simply need to blow her up with all hands lost in the grand finale - i admit that would be something totally new to the franchise
edit to add: oops, i forgot
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I believe it’s a Nichelle Nichols interview, or her autobiography, where she outs the ‘Trek is a Morality tale’ revelation, and Gene basically confirms it. Let’s be honest here...Trek, from day one, has been a morality tale, and if you were to count the morality tales on one side, and the non-message episodes on the other, you would see a noticeable and marked difference. What might give DSC an out is that it’s theoretically one long story...but, it is also very episodic for a serialised story...and therefore we may not see the morality plays till the very end in some cases.
But Trek is a morality tale. If DSC isn’t, then as I said, it’s straight in the ‘not Trek’ evidence box.
A morality play of 1966 is necessarily different in character to a morality play of 1987 or 1996 or 2017, because the moralities of all those times differ in various ways from each other. Morality is relative to the time and place, and often to one's individual subjective viewpoint within that context as well.
Gene Roddenberry was in his own time a man of eminently questionable morality, if you ask me. And he has been dead for more than two and a half decades. The notion that Trek can or should forever limit itself to his personal concepts and ideals of morality and how a morality tale should play out, or indeed ever has, is patently absurd.
-MMoM
Gene Roddenberry was in his own time a man of eminently questionable morality, if you ask me. And he has been dead for more than two and a half decades. The notion that Trek can or should forever limit itself to his personal concepts and ideals of morality and how a morality tale should play out, or indeed ever has, is patently absurd.
-MMoM
It really isn't, since morality tales can take on different forms and storytelling for different generations. Star Trek is first and foremost entertainment, and the rest of it builds from there.
The idea that it "must be" a morality tale in order for it to be "Star Trek" is not one I will agree with.
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And Lorca is just the man to do it!... if you need a reason why nobody ever mentioned discovery you simply need to blow her up with all hands lost in the grand finale - i admit that would be something totally new to the franchise
edit to add: oops, i forgot
