Pros Pike Saru Nice CGI Really solid start to the season, exploration, standalone episodes, interesting premise. Exploration of Klingon culture Cons Bad season long story with no focus Too much silly fan service that is detrimental to the overall mythos Too much focus on Burnham, the crew feel like extras at times Burnham's story just isn't interesting enough Marvel dialogue Weird time crystal stuff The final battle was a mess of CGI that looks like Transformers That's all I can think of tbh. Pretty awful season overall, an embarrassing horrible mess at worst. I'd like to see them at least try something unique and less derivative, show a bit of restraint. I always prefer the space battles with limited ships than the complete mess that we have seen on Discovery so far.
Best... Anson Mount. It led me to his work on Hell on Wheels, which is incredible. I now count Cullen Bohannon as an ancestor of Christopher Pike. Sonequa Martin-Green. This woman can flat out act. "New Eden". Solid callback to more exploration based stories. "If Memory Serves". If you're going to do fanwank, this is the way to do it. "Project Daedalus". A shame Airiam didn't get more story time. Compelling character. Paul Stamets. Great character, and Rapp is a damned good actor. Worst... The Enterprise. In my eyes, you simply don't mess with something that iconic. Either use the original or don't use it at all. The writing. There is just something very flat about this show most of the time. Michael Burnham. For as good as Martin-Green is, this character is just plain uninteresting most of the time. Guess I could've bundled it with the writing. The effects. For the most part, still not very good. "Mother!". They badly flubbed the end of their arc. It was completely downhill starting with "The Red Angel". Guess that is all that I have on my mind right now.
For whatever one thinks of Michael Burnham, the writers try really hard to make her come across as special. It got so bad towards the end of "Such Sweet Sorrow, II", that I thought Spock was going to bust out with "You are the Wind Beneath My Wings".
Via the same ways "Marty Stu" is the male equivalent term accorded Wesley Crusher (quite often) and (to a lesser but still tangible extent) Captain Picard?
In agreement with RLM. Best - The casting of Cullen Bohannon. Worst - The sloppy writing. Red Angels. AI villain. Time Crystals. Let us never speak of Discovery again under the penalty of treason.
An intriguing sidenote. Hunter got to throw more punches in The Cage than Anson had all season, yet NBC declared The Cage as too cerebral with not enough action and fight sequences. How the times have changed.
I can't do ten either. Instead, I'm going to try to give a linked pair of a good and bad thing. Pro: Lots of Fanwank Con: Much of the fanwank sounding like it might have been tending towards a Borg origin story Pro: Kelpian awakenings Con: Lack of fallout from the Kelpian awakenings. Pro: Bearded Peck as Spock Con: Shaved Peck as Spock Pro: Georgiou in Section 31 Con: Ash in Section 31 (liked Ash, but he didn't step up early enough for me this season) Pro: Hairy Klingons Con: Not enough Klingon stuff Pro: The mystery of the Red Angel Con: The reality of the Red Angel Best Pro: "Previously on Star Trek" Con: Talosians too clean cut and stylish. Not creepy enough. Pro: Burnham Worst Con: Burnham's monologues
I didn't mind these so much on reflection. Yeah, they come across as goofy. But sometimes goofy is better than exceedingly tedious.
Best: eh I don't know, there was so much I liked about it, I guess I'd say I liked Anson Mount's portrayal of Pike and his plot arc the best Worst: there wasn't really much I disliked but the last episode felt a bit rushed, and a bit like they were trying to please people who probably wouldn't have been pleased by anything.
Best: Christopher Pike (I'm shallow, maybe?) Worst: The actual plot arc of the season. It just never clicked with me; I liked the one from the first season a lot better.
Best things: Getting to know the character of Christopher Pike and filling in some of the history of the character. Getting to know Number One and seeing what an influence she played on Spock's development as a Starfleet officer. Seeing the original USS Enterprise again (btw, I love the updated look of it). New Eden was a fantastic callback to classic Star Trek storytelling and I really wish they had gone more down this route. Saru's (and his people's) transformation in Sounds of Thunder. Revisiting Talos IV as well as the The Cage recap. Seeing Pike come to face-to-face with his future self and that he pressed on anyway. Seeing Saru develop into more of a mentor-like figure to the crew. Worst things: The red angel arc was interesting at the first half of the season as there was far more mystery surrounding who/what the red angel actually was. Once this revealed about halfway through, the arc began to fall apart and things were either difficult to understand or just didn't make sense The rest of the bridge crew didn't get much extra screentime. I loved how Pike asked them all their names, because it seemed to not only orient him, but, the audience. They were heading down this road to make more use of them as seen in New Eden, but, they eventually just faded into the background yet again. Unearned emotional moments. We have only spent less than 30 episodes with these characters, which equates to one season + in the old world and we are handed these sweeping emotional moments in nearly every episode that don't always work, because we still don't know the characters that well yet. There were a few that I liked and did have a reaction to, but overall, we aren't there yet. Airiam's death was pointless. This was a character we knew very little about and saw her mostly in the background prior. They wrote an entire episode fleshing out her character only to kill her off in the end. That doesn't give us much time to get attached to her and then mourn her death in the following episode. I wasn't feeling it. The season finale was a gigantic mess of plotholes that were just impossible to ignore. Whether it was the result of the writer/producer turnover behind the scenes, I just can't believe they did not notice all the glaring issues (or did they and just not give a damn?) The jump to the future wasn't necessary at all, especially given the fact that Control was defeated just moments before (and being taken with them). If they still wanted to go to the future, fine, but, not one person said, "Wait, stop!" after Leland was defeated. This could've easily been solved as Discovery being caught in the singularity and being pulled in against their will, this resulting in them "disappearing." Tyler. I really wish they would stop shoving this character down our throats. His arc was complete at the end of season one, but, he had no reason to be there in season two. This character just doesn't work, IMO, and this season only made me hate his guts even more given his association with S31. The Klingon stories bore the hell out of me. In a way, I'm glad they didn't fulfill Fuller's original intent of wanting to heavily-feature the Klingons because I just don't think I would've enjoyed it. I'm not fascinated by L'Rell one bit. The whole issue of "syncing up with canon" was addressed as classifying Discovery and Burnham. Star Trek: Discovery absolutely did not violate any Star Trek canon (and I will fight anyone on this), but for whatever reason, it was decided that it did because the ship, its crew, and the events it experienced were never mentioned before. Again, Sybok was never mentioned, Sarek and Amanda were never established by Spock as his parents until they were standing right in front of him, Jonathan Archer and the NX-01 was never mentioned before that series was put into production, etc. The problem is, the solution to these "problems" already fell in line with the continuity anyway and just because something is never mentioned, doesn't mean it can't exist. IMO, this just makes the universe way way smaller. And given the fact that it was firmly established that there were over 7,000 active Starfleet vessels, it only adds to my point. The lack of exploration. There was some, but, overall, the show didn't do much of it. I just want to see a Star Trek show with a ship going out into space and exploring the galaxy.
No frigging way I'm going to dedicate time and energy into doing 10 of each. Here's what I have to say, and it's already too much typing hahaha!: PROS: 1. Great Casting- The regular cast continues to shine, and the "recurring guest stars" (Mount, Romijn, Peck, Yeoh, Van Sprang, etc) all hit it out of the park. The cast has enough chemistry and charisma to make you root for the show every step of the way. 2. Improved VFX- The space scenes and starship models were vast improvements over S1, and S1 wasn't "horrible" by any stretch. There were far too many static shots of the Discovery just sitting in space, not moving, in S1 3. A Non-War Arc- I liked that they set up an arc that felt more like classic Star Trek, with an unknown mystery that may or may not be a threat, and an urgent need to investigate that mystery. For a while, that old feeling of awe and wonder that only Star Trek could evoke was back and as strong as ever. 4. More Planet-Based Storylines- New Eden, The Sound of Thunder, If Memory Serves, Through the Valley of Shadows...I liked that they got off the ship and explored different environments this season. 5. Ties to TOS Backstory- I personally like that we have a series that wasn't afraid to recognize the existence of TOS and embraced adding some backstory...rather than virtually ignoring it or treating it like the drunken uncle of the franchise like the TNG era did. CONS: 1. Poor Planning- Again, it feels like the writing team did not sit down and meticulously map out the season arc and how everything would come together from both a story and pacing perspective. It's extremely frustrating to have an enjoyable premise fail to come together at the end in a satisfying way. 2. Lack of Conviction- They came out of the gate with a premise that had MASSIVE potential to be something special and epic....an almost TMP-like arc about a mysterious potential threat that demands investigation, and a being so powerful it brings questions of faith and science into the fray to be explored. But...it's like...they just lost faith (no pun intended) in either their own ability to deliver on this and/or the audience's ability to resonate with such a story, and instead they turned it into a cookie-cutter "defeat the evil AI" plot line that I'm sure Skynet, HAL 9000 and the evil guys from The Matrix would enjoy. But, at the same time, they still had to wrap-up the arc they started involving the signals, Red Angel, and Spock...and so they cobbled together an utter mess to draw that all together. They also failed to have conviction around cutting some of the S1 characters loose. There was really no reason to return L'rell, Tyler, Phillipa, etc. but it was almost as if the producers like the actors so much, they wanted to find a way to bring them back. 3. Under-Utilized Cast- Each of the primary cast members (except Burnham) were either under-utilized or, at least, utilized in a very choppy and non-uniform fashion throughout the season. Examples would be Tilly and Saru, who virtually disappeared after their early initial arcs concluded. It was like the writers crammed very concentrated arcs for them, but then when the primary season arc shifted, they completely lost site of how to integrate them. 4. Too Much Going On- There's something to be said for simple story telling. I think sometimes modern writers mistake "complicated" to automatically equate to "quality." This season bit off WAAAAAY too much. Think about all the different elements that were involved in just one 14-episode season: Mystery Signals, Red Angel, Culber's Return, Spock, The Enterprise, Pike, Talosians, Klingons, Section 31, Time Crystals, Burnham's Mom, Evil Control AI, Saru's Evolution....I mean 1 or 2 of these would have been enough to base an entire season around....but 12-13....??? No way you can pull that off effectively. 5. Lack of Conviction, Part Deux- The final solution of time-jumping the ship 900 years into the future was so mindnumbingly perplexing to me, I still don't know what to think. I've said for years that the creators of these shows should not / would not listen to idiots like us on the interwebs to get direction on where to take the story and characters....and I've taken a lot of heat from the "TEH FRANSHIZE IS NUTHING WITHOUT US TEH FANZ!!!1!1one!" crew who disagree with my stance...thinking that they own the franchise because reasons. But, you know what, congratulations, because you all were right. They apparently DO listen to online griping and whining, rather extensively I might add...because they became so overwhelmed with fan feedback and criticism of the series that they literally threw up their hands and decided "Fuck it, let's just throw the whole thing out and start over almost completely from scratch." I don't know...It just feels really broken to me. So, anyway....I enjoyed the ride tremendously and I still appreciate bold swings-and-misses in Trek (TFF, ENT for example) FAR more then I appreciate stale, repetitive and safe/comfortable approaches (INS, VOY for example) to the franchise. I'm still a big fan and I rank this a close 3rd in terms of my favorite series (TOS and DS9 are 1 and 2...which is pretty good company). But, I also can't help but be supremely frustrated by the massive missed potential here. I mean, you have a huge budget, an absolutely stellar cast, gorgeous sets, and a brand new streaming platform to tell amazing Star Trek stories. I can't figure out why they can't get their shit together and completely knock this out of the park.
I wouldn’t mind so much if it was handled better. So I file it along with the overall writing into the missed potential bin. They seem to have some good ideas but are miserable at translating them to the screen.