Would you like the regular "silent characters" to get more of a role?

Not the mother; if they have to alter 25% of preexisting material she must be one of four parental figures to 0718. Maybe she's actually Andorian?!?!

Airam=Andorian confirmed
I mean, she got blue skin and the cybernetic enhancements account for the lack of antennae. It's basically already canon

 

I don't know if it's been stated officially either way, but I don't think Ariam is a human cyborg, but some other species.

Sara Mitich is quite human though. Strange to get such a looker, then bury her under all that makeup and plastic.

 

I hesitate to even suggest this, but it would be interesting to see her reaction to the Borg.

 

I'm curious just how many of the crew were analogs to MU supporters that Lorca had. Mirror Owosekun interestingly was not a Lorca loyalist as she was serving the Empress aboard the Charon, unlike Mirror Detmer, who might have at least had some allegiance to Mirror Burnham.

 

She probably thinks of them like Bilbo thought of the Sackville-Bagginses.

 

She is an augmented alien according to one of the writers.

Although, like with a lot of DSC, there are contradictory statements:

https://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Airiam#Background_information

Some people have said Human, some have said Alien.

 

I could care less. Just because the characters sit on the bridge doesn't automatically mean they must be part of the main story. It's one of the many unique appeals of DSC as far as I'm concerned.

The bridge officers in S1 were no different than Mr. Leslie or Morn. And with 13-15 episodes, you don't have time for a lot of frivolous fleshing-out of glorified extras.

If anyone, I'd say Detmer is the most interesting because of her history with Burnham.

 

I'd also like to see a bit more with those bridge officers. Not necessarily taking part in landing parties or anything like that, but seeing them in their downtime, hanging out and chit-chatting in the mess hall or strolling along the corridor talking about this or that. Maybe Detmer & Burnham having lunch together, mending fences. Does Detmer still have animosity towards Burnham for the Shenzhou mutiny, or has she let that go by this point?

Or when Geordi is speaking directly to an Engineering extra, telling him to do this or that, but the guy isn't paid enough to have a speaking part so he'll just nod.

 

I tend to vote yes on this. But only if tgey are woven into the main storyline. We do not need bottle episodes on them. Though I must say, I did enjoy the DS9 one on Morn. More episodes to burn in those days, and anything was better than Julian in the holodeck.

 

I like the robot lady. She reminds me of the Bynars. I doubt she's a full android or that'd contradict Data. But I'd like to know more about her species, yeah!

I'd like to see more of the alien extras too. Even if they, or the humans, can't act well enough to carry an episode, it'd be nice if they found them a bit more to do.

And some of the background bridge crew are silly attractive. Maybe Burnham sleeps with half of them in a "The Naked Now"-like episode, when the crew's infected by some alien something-or-other. ...Just clothes and naughty bits everywhere.

 

I never really thought Detmer had animosity towards Burnham, her reaction when they first reunited in Disco's mess hall was more sort of a "I don't want to be seen with the mutineer" moment. Indeed, later in the season we do see Detmer smile at Burnham as the two of them pass each other on the bridge, so I'd say there's no longer any issues between them.

 

no, I want them to make their silence a running gag to drive the fans fucking nuts

 

As I said before, I think the problem here was coordination between the scriptwriters, the directors, and the design guys was weak on the show.

Look at how earlier Treks treated extras. They were these boring looking people - usually human, though occasionally Vulcan or something else - who were always in the background of the shots. They were rarely referenced by names. Some of them appeared in a ridiculous number of episodes (like Ayala in VOY) yet we never really noticed them.

Contrast this with Discovery. The scriptwriters still treated these characters like extras, only giving them the tiniest bit of dialogue, mostly dealing with system status. But the visual crew decided to give several of them (like Detmer and Ariam) really distinctive looks which catch the eye. And the directors decided to add in "reaction shots" where the camera focuses directly on their face at times when others were talking - signaling they were not really props, but characters in some sense.

 

The situation doesn't quite compare. Someone like Ayala was a background player who was never even to listed in the credits. The character was barely a speaking role, having a grand total of three scenes in the entire series where he even had dialogue. Detmer, Ariam and the others are listed in the credits and those actors are being paid more than the guy who played Ayala did, so of course they will have comparatively more to do.

 

True. But my broader point stands. People want to know more about Detmer and Ariam in particular because they made the decision to make them interesting visually and focus the camera on them. How many of you, in contrast, even know the name of the Asian guy on the bridge?

 

Mr. Rhys

 

Shhh, you can't say anything positive about looks of women on the show on this forum. I already got busted for that once. Women are to be admired for their talents only and never for their looks... on this forum.
Anyhow, Sarah Mitich sure often likes to go under such heavy makeup, as to be unrecognizable. Here she is as seen on The Expanse (raise your hand if you knew she was on The Expanse without googling):

 

She seemed so tall in The Expanse, but I haven't noticed Airiam being that tall in DIS. Of course, they barely ever have her standing next to anyone else, so it's hard to tell.

 

Sarah Mitich is 5'10" while SMG is only about 5'4"
In Hollywood for some reason you can't have secondary characters being taller than main characters (that's why original Jennifer asctress was fired from Back to the Future after Eric Stoltz was replaced, she was taller than Michael J Fox). That's why I guess she is always sitting down.
And here:

SMG is sitting down with the two tallest actors so as not to seem too short. Hollywood is soo height-ist

 

They made more of an effort in Season One to show how tall and thin the second, third, fourth generation and beyond Belters were on account of growing up in a low gravity environment, so there might have been some CGI, costuming, and camera trickery at play there to make her seem even taller than she already is. They sort of gave up on that after the first season though. Probably too expensive and impractical to do all the time.