Re-watching Season 1

[Lord Garth]

Feel free to re-watch with me -- or comment here -- if you're doing the same.

Right off the bat in "The Vulcan Hello", I love the sweeping space visuals and the interior shots of the Shenzou. I love the desert planet at the beginning of the episode.

The Klingon Ship, as Burnham approaches it, feels the most alien anything Klingon has ever felt, leading up to the reveal it's a Klingon ship.

I thought that Burnham's suggestions for attacking the Klingons were really bone-headed. She wanted to do what was right but I don't think she'd thought it through.

[Cutting and pasting something I said in another thread]: How the Vulcans responded to the Klingons might not have worked if Starfleet tried. The Klingons probably viewed Vulcans as someone they could bully until the Vulcans stood up to them. That's how they gained respect.

Klingons don't view Starfleet as someone who they can pick on. They view them as a threat to their very existence and way of life. They see Starfleet as something they must destroy to preserve who they are. In such a case, preemptively attacking would not make the Klingons suddenly respect Starfleet.

Burnham's rationale was flawed because the situations and how the Klingons viewed Vulcans (in and of themselves and in the past) compared to Starfleet -- more precisely Humans -- is completely different. [End of Cut & Paste].

So, I found myself agreeing with everything Georgiou said and everything Sarek said when Burnham communicated with him.

Even though Georgiou is Captain of the Shenzou, her scientific curiosity would've made her a good Captain for a ship named Discovery.

It's interesting to see how much more human-like Burnham has become. I wonder if it's because she's realized her Vulcan upbringing didn't get her as much as she would've liked? Contact with the Klingons was botched, she didn't win any brownie points with Sarek, and (to put it into an understatement) she loses her standing in Starfleet. Especially by doing something so brash.

Would Burnham's doing something so drastic -- and seemingly erratic -- be something Georgiou would've noticed Burnham might have a tendency towards before, or was it simply encountering the Klingons that triggered everything inside of Burnham that she'd repressed for 20 years? If it all came out at once, it would explain her acting the way she did if she just set aside the trauma of losing her parents instead of actually dealing with it.

Vulcan Discipline seems to favor repressing emotion instead of actually facing it and using the facing of it to grow as a person. So, it's possible that Burnham had spent all the time up until "The Vulcan Hello" emotionally repressed and only afterwards does she discover who she could really be, but hadn't allowed herself to be.

The biggest influences on the Klingons seem to be Star Trek VI where they don't want their culture annihilated by the Federation through homogenization and "Day of the Dove". After Chekov manages to reason with Mara and she tries to talk to Kang, he says, "I see why the beast did not kill you." These Klingons view the Federation not just as a threat to their way of life but even their thoughts to be toxic. With such an extreme view, it makes the thought of any type of friendship in the future look like a miracle.

 

[Lord Garth]

At the beginning of "Battle at the Binary Stars", when Burnham first comes onboard the Shenzou and is introduced to Georgiou in the flashback, their exchanges and dynamic remind me of Janeway and Seven of Nine. Janeway tried to bring the humanity out in Seven, after she'd been raised Borg. Georgiou tried to bring the humanity out in Burnham, after having been raised Vulcan.

Burnham was about as deadpan as Seven of Nine too.

 

[Midquest]

What strikes me about the first episode now is that works much better when viewed as a chapter of a story. (Shocker.) The writers promises as much, and it's interesting to see how vital this segment of the story is now that we're nearing the end.

My read on Burnham is that she's cool under professional pressure, and professional basically defines her life at this point. So she's always cool. Burnham has avoided close social bonds and therefore hasn't had to learn to cope with them when they go wrong. In a sense, the incredible trauma and pain she goes through in this first season is what forces her to become human again, and she might not have found such humanity if not for utterly screwing up.

I'd say that Burnham's plan is not a bad one in isolation, but yes--in context of Starfleet, Federation-Klingon history, and the precise situation, it was a bad call. Oh, and there's the fact that the Klingons damaged the relay station to lure Starfleet out there, so any intervention was doomed. It was a plan precisely tuned to leverage Starfleet's curiosity and inability to leave a mystery alone.

I'm also struck by how grounded some of the technobabble on the bridge is when the crew is first checking out the object of unknown origin. I'm not sure if that's down to the writing or--very possibly--down to the fact that Doug Jones could say the most ludicrous thing to me and I'd nod and say, "Yes, well, when you say it like that I quite see your point."

 

[Lord Garth]

I'd say that Burnham's plan is not a bad one in isolation, but yes--in context of Starfleet, Federation-Klingon history, and the precise situation, it was a bad call. Oh, and there's the fact that the Klingons damaged the relay station to lure Starfleet out there, so any intervention was doomed. It was a plan precisely tuned to leverage Starfleet's curiosity and inability to leave a mystery alone.

Kobiyashi Maru. A non-win scenario and a test of character: how Burnham reacts, how Georgiou reacts, and how the Admiral reacts.