Shuttles in Star Trek Discovery now have a CO/captain's chair, S04E04 wasn't a one-off.
Not even runabouts had a captain's/CO chair.
This feels so wrong, like a Star Trek parody, a fan film, or a cheap knockoff.
Someone asked "what is iconic Star Trek imagery", came to the conclusion "captain's chairs", and decided to cram more of that icon stuff into Discovery.
The shuttle set looks very cheap. Like it's from a parody or a fan film.
The design is not thought through. Two giant windows on the side, so that the passengers can look outside into space undisturbed, but two giant struts next to the pilots' field of view.
Saru's mission lastest on-screen three minutes and 30 seconds. I think only Worf's mission to save Picard in Darmok was shorter.
The entire scene screamed "pity screen time". Let's throw these actors a bone, they need to do something.
The disagreement between the yellow shirts was forced.
You could either edit the segment out completely, and it wouldn't impact the episode, or take away from the plot.
Or you could switch the lines from yellow shirt 1 to yellow shirt 2 and vice versa, and it wouldn't change anything.
That's how insignificant, interchangeable, and devoid of any depth and characterization these charters are.
Admiral Vance is an idiot and makes questionable command decisions.
He thinks that Michael Burnham is emotionally compromised (she is) and distrusts her so much that he puts a political commissar (who is also emotionally compromised, but because she is a Barzan, so it's OK. whatever) on her ship, yet he lets her go on the mission, because she is Burham.
The entire scene where Burnham and Booker try to playfully outmaneuver each other and laugh is tonally out of place for what is at stake.
Some Disveory problems that stand out, especially in this episode:
The spore drive sucks. Instantaneous travel from place to place ruins the flow of the show.
Discovery jumps instantly from Federation HQ to Booker's hideout and then into the DMA.
Star TREK Discovery is not on a trek anymore.
Captain Michael Burnhams's command style:
Burnham briefing the crew:
In classic Star Trek, usually, an episode starts with the crew already knowing what the mission is, and the captain dictating a log entry to explain to the audience the situation and the mission.
In classic Star Trek, the captain would sometimes brief the crew, but this was far from the norm, and only on special occasions.
Discovery just wants to show that Burnham is in charge and hammer it into the audience.
More important than the briefings is something I recognized in all bridge-centric episodes this season (S04E01, S04E02, S04E06) and especially in this episode.
The usual flow in a Star Trek show is that when the crew is faced with a problem, officers (science, OPS, tactical, conn, engineering, XO) would offer the captain a solution. The captain would reject, modify or accept that solution and order the execution of that solution.
This is where we the famous "Make it so" get from.
Sometimes the captain comes up with a solution or explains something to the crew (Picard: Dyson sphere, Sheliak treaty), but this is not the normal case. I would say the ratio usually is 80%-20% officer-captain.
In Star Trek Discovery, it is all about Michael Burnham. There is the rare chance a bridge officer has an idea (surfing the Discovery out of the anomaly) but the vast majority of solutions come directly from Burnham.
It's at the detriment of the bridge crew. This show undermines and damages other characters to elevate Burnham.
Multiple times in this episode, characters would say that they don't know what is going on so that Burnham can show off how smart she is.
The bridge crew doesn't know what is going on.
Michael Burnham does.
Michael Burnham is micromanaging the helm officer, who doesn't know how to do evasive maneuvers.
Michael Burnham tells Stamets to come up with the date when the DMA will move, and she tells him how to do it.
Michael Burnham comes up with the plan for how to board Booker's ship and she does the briefing.
Why didn't the tactical officer come up with a plan to board Book's ship? Why did he not brief the crew?
People are going to argue "Well it's Booker's ship, she knows it. She knows Booker's tactics".
Yes. But this just shows how skewed everything is towards Michael Burnham.
Remember how often Picard or Janeway sat in their chairs in the conference room, listening to a briefing from an officer?
This doesn't happen in this show.
Elevating Burnham at the expanse of other characters, by making them look stupid, is something this show does since season 1 episode 1.
Ten minutes into S01E01 this is the first on-screen interaction between Saru and Burnham:
Saru is stupid and incompetent, Burnham smart and competent.
