Pros and Cons of the season (and series) thus far?

It seems to me that general reception towards the show has improved as the season has gone on, culminating in the almost universally loved mid-season finale. What are your own pros and cons of the show so far?

 

Pros:
Nice asthetic
Lorca is awesome
The ship itself is cool
Saru is an interesting character
It's trying to do something different

Cons:
Doesn't really "fit" in prime timeline
Burnham and a few other characters are just "meh"
Can be a bit too dark and depressing at times


Overall it's a net positive for me, not the disaster i was sort of expecting, and has got potential to improve into a really good show.

 

Almost universally.. okay, lol.

Pros:
It has 'Star Trek' in its pedigree.
It is the only new Star Trek in the franchise.
The acting ranges from pretty good to compelling.
The vessel 'Discovery' has eye appeal.

Cons:
Its story lines are disjointed and unsatisfying.
It has a silly piece of technology at its core.
There are no likeable characters.

 

Pros:
The acting - Jason Isaacs, Doug Jones, Anthony Rapp, Mary Wiseman, Sonequa Martin-Greene, Mary Chieff, Shazad Latif, are all killing it.
The show's look - it doesn't look anything like 90's Trek, yet it is still Star Trek. I love that.
The show's tone - it's dark (for the most part), and serious. This is a modern drama, where characters are flawed and pay for their mistakes.
The stories - the way the stories have been built.
Lorca - one of the most intriguing captain characters in the franchise.

Cons:
Klingons speaking Klingon. There was a time when some Trek purists would have welcomed this, but it sounded better than it actually was.The less of this the better.
CBSAA - some bad software. Freeze ups, crashes, no 10 sec back button, etc.

 

Pros:

• It‘s on Netflix.
• It‘s a new Star Trek show.
• It’s very good.

 

I mean, yeah? You and a few others may not have liked it, and that's why I said "almost". But in general the fanbase largely thought it was terrific.

 

Pros:

- great CGI


Cons:

- terrible characters
- terrible dialogue
- terrible lighting
- terrible fight scenes (they're always shit in Star Trek, but I expect more these days)
- terrible writing
- Orcs instead of Klingons
- Orc dialogue sucks
- nothing makes any sense

 

Pros:

Plenty of hints at future exploration and boldly going.

Developing characters.

Some episodes have had intelligent scripts.

Great Starfleet ships designs.

Great Starfleet prop designs.

Good actors.

Nice Klingon costumes.

Positive, non patronising depiction of a LGBT couple.

The foundations for a potentially great show are there.

Probably better than a good 75% of Voyager episodes.

Cons:

Awful Klingon make up redesign, especially making them bald to boot.

The make up change aside, lack of Klingon design aesthetic in the exterior of their ships.

Poor delivery of Klingonese. It's so laboured and stilted compared with actors from Trek's past.

Lack of promised Klingon development beyond what has been seen before. In reality the Berman era Klingons were way more developed.

The Klingon War. Desperately boring and should have been held over for a later season as it has taken away from character development for the Discovery crew IMO.

Klingons lead me onto make up in general. The make up guys should be fired. They clearly do not know how to effectively apply make up without it hampering the actors underneath, a problem previous Trek make up departments did not have. Mary Chieffo, Chris Obi and Mr. "I am not Shazad Ltif" as Voq have all suffered in this regard, as does Doug Jones, who sounds like he has the flu every episode because he can't breathe through his nose.

Boring Starfleet uniform designs.

Gratuitous gore and swearing that hasn't be well placed and beneficial to the story, but rather there mostly for the sake of it and doesn't really work well as a result.

Boring ship interiors. Don't get my wrong, I can live with these and the more gloomy, cramp interiors make sense at this stage of canon, but I do feel they look very generic. Nothing really "wow" about them and they have been the predominant sets for all 9 episodes. Engineering is the least imaginative set of all of Trek's ships IMO.

Lack of international diversity among the human crew. Aside from the bit part actress with the African name and accent, all the humans are American.

Burnham is inconsistent. Boring one week, interesting the next.

Saru, as one of the few aliens on board, is painfully undeveloped.

Lack of exploration. Lack of new worlds and new civilisations.

Cartoon like CGI for space shots. I see to be in a minority, but I have not been impressed.

Harry Mudd. He has added nothing to the series IMO.






My list probably makes it sound like I dislike more than I like. I'd say that I'm pretty much on the fence at the moment. Perhaps leaning towards 60% positive. but overall I have a nagging sense, even when there are good episodes, that the show is a little too "generic sci-fi" and has lost some of the uniqueness the franchise had at it's best. I don't get the positive nature of Trek that I got with other series. The show feels like it is more interested in doing bleark and griotty like everything else than being it's own thing like Trek always has been. Still, we are early days and there is plenty of time for that to change. But right now it has not done enough to truly whet my Trek appetite despite laying enough threads to potentially do so in due course. I'm going to keep watching, but I do feel the show is at a stage for me that it can either go one of two ways. It will either develop and harness what Trek is about, or it will go further down the generic sci-fi route. Please let it be the former.

 

Pro

• Kirsten Motherfucking Beyer writes it
• Tie-in novels written by David Mack and Dayton Ward
• The Phavans
• Saru, Stamets, Lorca, Tilly & Culbert
• The Tyler/L'Rell thing is getting pretty interesting
• MUDD!

Con

• We haven't had enough insight into Burnham's character
• Killing off Georgiou
• Not enough screen time for the bridge officers. A "Lower Decks" type episode would be interesting

I'm sensing some negative vibes

 

The only ‘Cons’ for me:

No other early federation races seen on screen - No Andorians or Tellerites, not even a Denobulan. Find it hard to believe there wouldn’t have been more ‘aliens’ about during this time. No Orions? We have so many races to explore but yet again we’re stuck with Humans, Vulcans and Klingons...

 

After having watched DS9's "Emissary" yesterday, I can see how Disco utterly failed to introduce it's main characters, the setting of the show, the premise of the show in an efficient and entertaining way. DS9 managed to do more, and managed to do this better in it's first 90 minutes than STD did in it's first 5 episodes.

 

The writing. The mystery boxes. The feeling that they are making crap up as they go along. These are cons.

 

PROS:

• Good, mature storytelling compared to the last era of Trek on television.
• Ongoing "arc" approach means characters are developed over time, not presented as essentially fully-developed out-of-the-can people like previous Treks.
• The show is a journey, not a destination. I like that.
• The production design, cinematography and visual effects are outlandishly good. Like...best in the franchise since TMP.
• Good balance of action / adventure with Trek ideals...without it needing speechification or heavy-handed lecturing to the audience to get the point across.
• Gabriel Lorca
• Good characters who you are rooting for to continue to develop their relationships as opposed to "everyone's already a buddy for no reason other than 'hey we're all in Starfleet'" in this show.
• Some well-placed humor thus far
• Soundtrack / music
• The design of the USS Discovery
• "Black Alert....Black Alert"
• Fun easter eggs every once in a while that aren't obtrusive / exclusive
• The boldness to do certain things in the name of fun and entertainment, despite the obvious outcome of potentially pissed off fans.

CONS:

• Klingons speaking Klingon
• Design of the Klingon ships...I couldn't place one if you stuck a full sized model under my nose.
• Not enough planet-side adventure
• Captain Georgiou killed off too early...and no further flashbacks
• Saru actually kind of annoys me. I hope they do more with him in the future.
• If they kill off Lorca...ohhhhh man will I be pissed. Haha.
• Although I understand that the "war" arc was a catalyst and backdrop to tell the stories they wanted to tell...it wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped. I liked the stories within the arc much better than the arc itself.

I've said it before (probably 100 times, but that's about 900 times less than the various tired complaints on the other side, so I feel like I'm still ok here), but DSC is easily off to the best start the franchise has had since 1966. Like, it's not even close. So, even with these "cons" and others that I'm sure will develop over time, this series definitely has my attention and has earned my continued support.

 

Sometimes I wonder if I am watching the same show as other people.

 

Pros: Great group of actors.
Cons: The writing is uninteresting.

 

Pros: It's on.
Cons: It's not really on until January.

 

I often wonder that. Usually it's people loving something I think is meh. Rogue One comes to mind.

I have nothing to add as to the OP. I'm looking forward to the series' return, to find out what's goin on.

 

Fine spectacle, but the cost is very high (at $8 million an episode, it's as expensive per season as a Hollywood tent-pole). They have to keep it low.

The acting is OK, but the writing is not good. They have to slow down by developing story lines, which is viable if they keep costs low. This will also support character development and explain any inconsistencies. Another problem is clunky dialogue and awkward scenes, but that's easy to deal with through revision. The more challenging ones involve avoiding more plot holes.

The most challenging is continuity with the franchise timeline, but there are many options for that.

 

The main con for me is the writing, it is iffy and it hasn't adequetely explained certain characters. Saru was made to look like a very dangerous character to be in a command position, he does not see the bigger picture e.g Chasing after Lorca with a weak Tardigrade he could have stranded the ship and crew in Klingon space. Not to mention destroying starfleets only Tardigrade. That was not part of his decision making process, he just seemed to want to get one up on Burnham.
Tilly - what has she done that has justified her being a Cadet? There is nothing we have seen that a fully trained starfleet officer could not have done.
Ash Tyler - too obvious that he is not what he is pretending to be.

 

Pros: It's scifi.


Cons:
- uniforms are just....wrong. How does Starfleet go from the uniforms in "The Cage" to Discovery, then back to the pre TOS WNMHGB uniform and then in "The Man Trap" in 10 or so years?
- ship design (Starfleet and "Klingon")
It's just not Star Trek (to me).