Too much origin story for my liking and also a woeful villian. Also I love a good crashed ship mystery like in Beyond. I'm a sucker for found footage captains logs. "libera te tutemet ex inferis" and the likes.
And BEYOND had a far better story than either 09 or ID.
Two years later...
Season 5 was okay, but I haven't felt a burning urge to revisit it since it aired. Though nice that it gave me a reason to re-watch "The Chase" (TNG). Rayner was great because he added more of a hard edge that Discovery otherwise completely lost by this point. It was nice to see the Breen again, and in a more prominent role. L'ak and Moll were fine. It looks like they were setting up L'ak to become an anti-hero who might've come back at some point if the series had continued. I wish they'd have kept Kovich mysterious instead of having him be Daniels. He should've been this series' Garak.
Season 4 had a lot of potential. The Species 10-C plot is as Roddenberrian as you can get. And I really like everything with Zora. After that? The Burnham vs. Book Melodrama doesn't do it for me, in retrospect. The talking about people's feelings and how you have to be nice to each other needs to be toned way down. I'm not bothered by the slow pace because I like slow burns. Except people have a point about how slow it is since there's a three-episode batch in the second half of the season where I can't remember what happened in which. Tarka does less for me, the more we find out about him. If I want to watch a story like this again, given a choice, I'll stick with TMP.
Season 3 was and still is my least favorite season. The jump to the 32nd Century is fine. DSC never should've been a prequel in the first place. But then they stripped away all mystery about the 32nd Century once Discovery rejoins the fleet. They got rid of Osyrra and The Emerald Chain in short order. Which was a HUGE mistake. They should've kept them around. Making Tilly the First Officer was stupid. Making Burnham's mother a Zhat Vash was also stupid, but I can live with it. What I can't forgive is that The Burn was caused by a child's scream. No justification anyone comes up with will ever convince me that was a good idea.
Season 2 was clearly going to be one thing, then the switching of Showrunners part-way through made it something else. "New Eden" suggests to me they originally wanted to go somewhere else with the Red Angel. In making Pike the Anti-Lorca, I don't recognize him from "The Cage" (bad day or not, 1960s or not). The change in tone has "Sorry about Season 1!" written all over it. Also, if they knew "Calypso" was a thing at the time they wrote this, they should've found a way to integrate "Calypso" into Discovery's travelling into The Future. Tell a story that works with that idea instead of against it. It's my next to least favorite season after Season 3.
Season 1 is my favorite season. The one I'm most likely to re-watch. I was never thrilled with how ENT handled first contact with the Klingons, so DSC was a second chance to see things go horribly wrong. That's what I'd wanted to see back in 2001. So, I have no problem with the Klingon War. I also love the Klingon ship designs. The new Klingon makeup, that I didn't like. And it went over about as well as New Coke. But I did like that DSC made the Klingons of this era actually feel scary. Like in "Lethe" when I thought that Cornwell was a goner. I love the Mirror Universe episodes because they were able to portray the Terran Empire in a vicious way that never could've been depicted in TOS. I liked Burnham, even though I think giving her a Vulcan background didn't make sense, because she doesn't act like she was raised by Vulcans at all after the first few episodes. Lorca was a bad-ass. I don't even mind that he was pretending to be someone he wasn't, since that's what Don Draper did in Mad Men and if they looked at Prestige TV, then they had to have looked at Mad Men at some point. Maybe some Tony Soprano too, where he was leading a secret double-life. I also liked the tone of DSC's first season. Especially in the early episodes. It felt a lot like Battlestar Galactica. That's mostly gone by Season 2.
So, my ranking of the seasons is now: 1, 5, 4, 2, and 3.
Season 5 was okay, but I haven't felt a burning urge to revisit it since it aired. Though nice that it gave me a reason to re-watch "The Chase" (TNG). Rayner was great because he added more of a hard edge that Discovery otherwise completely lost by this point. It was nice to see the Breen again, and in a more prominent role. L'ak and Moll were fine. It looks like they were setting up L'ak to become an anti-hero who might've come back at some point if the series had continued. I wish they'd have kept Kovich mysterious instead of having him be Daniels. He should've been this series' Garak.
Season 4 had a lot of potential. The Species 10-C plot is as Roddenberrian as you can get. And I really like everything with Zora. After that? The Burnham vs. Book Melodrama doesn't do it for me, in retrospect. The talking about people's feelings and how you have to be nice to each other needs to be toned way down. I'm not bothered by the slow pace because I like slow burns. Except people have a point about how slow it is since there's a three-episode batch in the second half of the season where I can't remember what happened in which. Tarka does less for me, the more we find out about him. If I want to watch a story like this again, given a choice, I'll stick with TMP.
Season 3 was and still is my least favorite season. The jump to the 32nd Century is fine. DSC never should've been a prequel in the first place. But then they stripped away all mystery about the 32nd Century once Discovery rejoins the fleet. They got rid of Osyrra and The Emerald Chain in short order. Which was a HUGE mistake. They should've kept them around. Making Tilly the First Officer was stupid. Making Burnham's mother a Zhat Vash was also stupid, but I can live with it. What I can't forgive is that The Burn was caused by a child's scream. No justification anyone comes up with will ever convince me that was a good idea.
Season 2 was clearly going to be one thing, then the switching of Showrunners part-way through made it something else. "New Eden" suggests to me they originally wanted to go somewhere else with the Red Angel. In making Pike the Anti-Lorca, I don't recognize him from "The Cage" (bad day or not, 1960s or not). The change in tone has "Sorry about Season 1!" written all over it. Also, if they knew "Calypso" was a thing at the time they wrote this, they should've found a way to integrate "Calypso" into Discovery's travelling into The Future. Tell a story that works with that idea instead of against it. It's my next to least favorite season after Season 3.
Season 1 is my favorite season. The one I'm most likely to re-watch. I was never thrilled with how ENT handled first contact with the Klingons, so DSC was a second chance to see things go horribly wrong. That's what I'd wanted to see back in 2001. So, I have no problem with the Klingon War. I also love the Klingon ship designs. The new Klingon makeup, that I didn't like. And it went over about as well as New Coke. But I did like that DSC made the Klingons of this era actually feel scary. Like in "Lethe" when I thought that Cornwell was a goner. I love the Mirror Universe episodes because they were able to portray the Terran Empire in a vicious way that never could've been depicted in TOS. I liked Burnham, even though I think giving her a Vulcan background didn't make sense, because she doesn't act like she was raised by Vulcans at all after the first few episodes. Lorca was a bad-ass. I don't even mind that he was pretending to be someone he wasn't, since that's what Don Draper did in Mad Men and if they looked at Prestige TV, then they had to have looked at Mad Men at some point. Maybe some Tony Soprano too, where he was leading a secret double-life. I also liked the tone of DSC's first season. Especially in the early episodes. It felt a lot like Battlestar Galactica. That's mostly gone by Season 2.
So, my ranking of the seasons is now: 1, 5, 4, 2, and 3.
Last edited:
I feel like I had answered this question before; but maybe not on this thread or even this board.
Discovery is a funny one for me. It premiered when I had just moved abroad for work about 8 months previously. As a manager I had a new staff member on team with neurodiverse characteristics that made it really hard to get a conversation going much of the time (as well as a shitty life story for other reasons). She was, however hooked on Discovery, and no one else in the workplace was. So not only did I finally have a working "way in", but I also finally not only had a workplace Trek buddy but one who noticed detail and had usually rationalised the story (where possible) before I could. Basically, she could coach her boss on the most recent happenings....
I moved countries 5 more tiimes during the run of Disco, and it was a constant travel companion. I also think it was a lot better than many realise, and sometimes a lot better than we ourselves have remembered. One of my favourites is the episode where MB is time jumping and I really loved how SMG inhabited the different eras of Burnham - because she did change across the seasons, particularly after her year with Book. When she played "Admiral Burnham", she even subtly added facets of Gabrielle's mannerisms in there. SMG is very underrated. She receives a lot of hate for reasons.... well we all know why she really gets that. By all accounts, like Scott Bakula, she is one of the most considerate natural leaders there has been on set.
Next up for me is Doug Jones. Performance after performance, walking on his toes and wearing a bucket on his head, and he kills it. Again, another well known, lovely, human.
Widely, on the series. It relaunched Trek, it got us 2 excellent spinoff series (and a third thing that was damaged in the transporter buffer). It gave us cinematic effects every week. It gave us a fat Maine Coon driving a ship. It continued production through a pandemic, through strikes, and through a revolving door of showrunners, and it suffered for it, but is still watchable.
It's not my favourite, but I will watch and rewatch and I do love the cast and crew.....
Discovery is a funny one for me. It premiered when I had just moved abroad for work about 8 months previously. As a manager I had a new staff member on team with neurodiverse characteristics that made it really hard to get a conversation going much of the time (as well as a shitty life story for other reasons). She was, however hooked on Discovery, and no one else in the workplace was. So not only did I finally have a working "way in", but I also finally not only had a workplace Trek buddy but one who noticed detail and had usually rationalised the story (where possible) before I could. Basically, she could coach her boss on the most recent happenings....
I moved countries 5 more tiimes during the run of Disco, and it was a constant travel companion. I also think it was a lot better than many realise, and sometimes a lot better than we ourselves have remembered. One of my favourites is the episode where MB is time jumping and I really loved how SMG inhabited the different eras of Burnham - because she did change across the seasons, particularly after her year with Book. When she played "Admiral Burnham", she even subtly added facets of Gabrielle's mannerisms in there. SMG is very underrated. She receives a lot of hate for reasons.... well we all know why she really gets that. By all accounts, like Scott Bakula, she is one of the most considerate natural leaders there has been on set.
Next up for me is Doug Jones. Performance after performance, walking on his toes and wearing a bucket on his head, and he kills it. Again, another well known, lovely, human.
Widely, on the series. It relaunched Trek, it got us 2 excellent spinoff series (and a third thing that was damaged in the transporter buffer). It gave us cinematic effects every week. It gave us a fat Maine Coon driving a ship. It continued production through a pandemic, through strikes, and through a revolving door of showrunners, and it suffered for it, but is still watchable.
It's not my favourite, but I will watch and rewatch and I do love the cast and crew.....
In retrospect, I think I disliked the show so much that I didn't appreciate this. Much like Laris (and the return of Fred Steiner's classic leitmotif) in the first season of Picard, it was something that Discovery got right.
During the series, one thing I kept wishing for was that they'd find a way to have a scene with the Discovery in an asteroid, like the concept art for Planet of the Titans. Not a "have to have" but a "would've been nice." The closest we ever got was when the Discovery spore-jumped into an underground cave in Qo'noS in the first season finale, "Will You Take My Hand?"
All these years later, and I still agree with 95% your take on the series. Although I hold S2 in higher regard, even with the jarring shift after episode 4 or 5.
I think the only elements I don't totally align around are
1. I actually liked the whole re-do of the Klingons in S1, and I thought making them look and feel more alien was a cool chnage.
2. I actually really liked Tarka as an adversary. He reminded me a lot of Sybok or Tolian Soran, in terms of someone who wasn't a "pure villian" but was driven by something they thought was righteous.
I think DSC's biggest problems were, unfortunately:
1. Horrible behind-the-scenes turmoil that led to massive tonal inconsistency and a lack of unified direction.
2. A large case of "self-consciousness" that led to every season being an over-correction from what they thought went wrong with the previous.
