Lorca and the hard man making hard choices
- Thread starter Captain Killy
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That only works if the ensemble is roughly equally talented. Rather rare. And frequently painful to watch as a result.
I was willing view Burnham as the real hero and Lorca as an anti-hero. So I liked that you could get away with all kinds of things with Lorca that you wouldn't have been able to with a Standard Starfleet Captain...
.... and even his being from the Mirror Universe wasn't necessarily enough to ruin it for me. But then there was the one-two punch. The reveal in "Vaulting Ambition" that Lorca was romantically interested in someone who was a daughter-figure, Mirror Burnham, disgusted me. And he sees Prime Burnham as an avatar for her. Then the reveal in "What's Past Is Prologue" showed he isn't any different from any other Mirror Universe character, which then turned him into a Standard Bad Guy fighting other Bad Guys for power. Period.
So now, I feel I have to rewatch the first season to get a better sense of Lorca. He was a scene-stealer, no doubt about that, but the series is about Burnham's arc and her, Saru, and the others are who it seems we're supposed to identify with. Not Lorca.
Earlier, my main fascination with Lorca was, "I can't believe how fucked up he is!" and I enjoyed the freedom I had to think that since I knew he wasn't the main protagonist.
.... and even his being from the Mirror Universe wasn't necessarily enough to ruin it for me. But then there was the one-two punch. The reveal in "Vaulting Ambition" that Lorca was romantically interested in someone who was a daughter-figure, Mirror Burnham, disgusted me. And he sees Prime Burnham as an avatar for her. Then the reveal in "What's Past Is Prologue" showed he isn't any different from any other Mirror Universe character, which then turned him into a Standard Bad Guy fighting other Bad Guys for power. Period.
So now, I feel I have to rewatch the first season to get a better sense of Lorca. He was a scene-stealer, no doubt about that, but the series is about Burnham's arc and her, Saru, and the others are who it seems we're supposed to identify with. Not Lorca.
Earlier, my main fascination with Lorca was, "I can't believe how fucked up he is!" and I enjoyed the freedom I had to think that since I knew he wasn't the main protagonist.
I liked him and I think the Star Fleet ethos is often naive and contradictory. For a peaceful people, they get into a lot of wars. They do dumb things, They locked Burnham up for life — unduly harsh, given the circumstances. Up until the last few episodes, he was tough and smart and willing to do what it takes to get the job done.
And have a death penalty for random stuff.
I'm coming to this thread fairly late so this has probably been said before in some form or another but here goes...
I think the appeal comes at least in part from some degree of skepticism toward that "unabashedly liberal moral ethos" as the unequivocally 'Right Way' to deal with every situation and problem. It is precisely because Lorca was so 'against type' that people found him fascinating (or at least the Lorca we believed we were getting). His character provided the potential to explore the idea of what it might mean to be an outsider or iconoclast in this 'perfect' society - and more broadly to be confronted with a situation where your cherished Star Fleet ideals don't matter, don't work or are exactly the wrong approach with which to deal with the situation.
Sometimes your enemies are not misunderstood, they just simply want you dead.
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Hmm. Perhaps that was the appeal for some people, but certainly not for me. I unapologetically embrace the "unabashedly liberal moral ethos" of Star Trek, and while I agree that Lorca was an iconoclast (and more interesting because of it), I don't agree that he was meant to symbolize flaws in Starfleet's ideals. Saying he was an appealing character doesn't mean he was right, or that one identifies with him or things he said or did. For my part, it just means that he was the best-written and best-acted character on the show (well, until episode 13), and the obvious center of gravity around which other members of the ensemble orbited.
I think part of your disappointment with Discovery stems from this, actually. A few times I've seen you make comparisons with literary sci-fi or shows adapted from it. I maintain that this isn't a fair comparison. Discovery is a 40ish minute TV show in its first season, written from whole cloth to a deadline that was, while clearly somewhat flexible, nowhere near the years of work that often go into these novels. The format they have gone with, in terms of single POV, small main cast and a handful of recurring characters, is exactly what fiction with those constraints tends to do, even today. Compare with contemporary original shows, and it is right in line.
Star Trek has tried for true ensemble with these constraints in the past and it has generally been unsuccessful - DS9 is the only show without a 'spare' in the main cast who never gets any focus, and all the shows ended up shoehorning in characters who didn't belong in a story just to keep up the idea that it was an ensemble. TNG, VOY and especially ENT all eventually ended up focusing on only two or three characters in any depth. I personally prefer Discovery's approach that acknowledged that from the beginning and introduced only the characters it needed to tell the story it wanted to tell.
This. @zenophite 's post is definitely not what I liked about Lorca, in fact I saw his character as intended as a 'bad example' for the others to disagree with. He was compelling and well written, but that doesn't mean I agreed with his viewpoint.
I tend to agree with this. There are a lot of comparisons flying about DISCO and not one of them feel especially fair.
What about exploding the Buran? I tend to agree that Lorca (and Burnham as well) are not as far removed from TOS contemporaries of Kirk as is often stated.
We don't actually know he blew up the Buran. For all we know, he ended up in the Prime Universe just as the Buran was being destroyed, or abandoned the ship to save his skin when the Klingons attacked.
So, he either is selfish, a mass murderer or a liar?
Which, dare I say it, most people would do in reality. Typically few people are consistently heroic or selfless in life or death situations (or find themselves given the opportunity to be), that's exactly why we laud them when they are. The idea he may have jumped ship doesn't make him a villain, it makes him human and fallible.
That we don't know the exact circumstances raises the possibility he may not have had the means or opportunity to save those people anyway, or even been fully cognisant of what was going on. Bear in mind unexpectedly finding yourself in a totally different universe, just as said bit if the universe is blowing up, is probably pretty disconcerting even for a starship captain. From that I gain little insight into his morals, but plenty about how quick witted and resourceful he is to still be alive at all.
Or all of the above.
As I said in another thread, the idea that Lorca would willingly destroy the Buran without his cover being blown is frankly nuts. He had no way of knowing if Starfleet was going to give him another ship, and he could work on his master plan to try to get back home while captaining the Buran just as well - at least in the shorter term.
At least he didn't have a problem with women on the bridge unlike sexist TOS Pike (were those Starfleet ideals?) I don't know where some fans get the idea from that TOS captains were paragons of virtue. They were not. The only paragon of virtue captain shown in the franchise was Picard.
It never made it into the canon, but Isaacs said in an interview the backstory was that he deliberately blew up the ship because some test or other would have revealed him. Although obviously we are free to speculate as it didn't make it into the filmed show, that was the behind the scenes intent.
It's funny, because this weekend I started watching Altered Carbon on Netflix (still not done, about 3.5 episodes to go). Although it's a very different setting, I feel like it takes a lot of the same elements - science-fiction backdrop, protagonist-focused story, flawed and complicated characters, diverse cast, and serialized plot structure - and executes them much, much better. Not that I think the show is perfect - the acting quality is in places worse than Discovery, and there is a lot of gratuitous sex and violence which isn't really needed for the plot - but I find it much more enjoyable (and addictive) to watch than Discovery. Which is funny, because the critics are very "meh" on Altered Carbon, while they thought Discovery was amazing.
Edit: Anyway, one thing this is suggesting to me is maybe the classic format of Trek - a crew on a ship - just isn't suited to tightly-focused character based drama. You could tell that sort of story within the Trekverse no problem, but not if you're wedded to the idea that you're also following the crew of a Starfleet ship as it engages on missions throughout the quadrant.
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It strikes me that this could easily be part of a compelling show, but needn't be all of it. Imagine a Trek show that had separate plot threads on (say) a starship, a merchant freighter, a starbase, a colony world, and Federation HQ, with compelling characters in each, moving among them as the story required, with subplots converging and then separating again. Something akin to a futuristic Game of Thrones. Something like The Expanse, but with a bigger budget and in the Trekverse. Something like the ST: Vanguard novels, but on screen.
(I mean really, how interesting would GOT be if it were only about Jon Snow and his colleagues at Castle Black?)
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I would prefer it, but I know I'm odd.
