DIS - Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2

[Taurian Patriot]

It's almost like this is a completely different timeline to actual Star Trek canon...

I'm all on board with invoking the Death of the Author and viewing Discovery as a different canon from classic Trek, no matter what the producers and writers say. It's not we're like dealing with real history and factual consequences, so go for it.

[HumanXeroxMachine]

I once jokingly said on some trek forum that Michael Burnham and the entirety of Discovery is a fever dream Sarek had while in a coma during Journey to Babel. I wouldn't mind if it ended up being true haha.

[Kellos Pandorus]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/c129.php

Discovery Season 1 & 2 exposes the inherent problem with doing continuity driven television with a constant spotlight on one character (and one that's not morally compromised like Vic Mackey, Walter White, or Don Draper is even harder). Not only do you risk burnout, but the constant focus on them is a gamble if the audience isn't invested. Even the protagonists I just mentioned still had supporting casts with time on their character development so that if you didn't care for a Don on Mad Men there were other stories to get involved with.

Discovery simply hasn't felt like its gotten to that. Its so convinced of the importance and depth of Michael that everything else feels like it suffers. Its not Kirk in Final Frontier levels of being the most awesome and important person in the galaxy, but its still monotonous.

I can definitely see how that is a problem, and I believe I can also trace the roots of the problem back to its source. Not with Michael as a character, per se...But that it has its roots in how key story-telling tools are used.

When you read about how to create a story, like from John Truby's Anatomy of a Story, one point that comes up is the central focus on the hero. The hero is the central character and, since they're not meant to exist in a vacuum, their allies and their opponents functions partly to form comparisons to the hero, to define who they are and who they are not. The hero must have a desire; an opponent; they must constantly fascinate the reader; you must be able to identify with them to an extent, and you must empathize with them. They must be the one who makes the decisions that move the story forward.

Everything SF Debris said at the end of the video about Michael does meet the criteria...on a technical level. But he said he can't form an emotional connection to the story because of the show's "myopic obsession with Michael". As he points out, Michael's been the primary relationship with virtually every major characters throughout the show, and likely will be when any new characters are introduced in Season 3. But it is not just characters; the main plot of Season 3 will likely develop into the same because, since Michael is the central character, she must have some connection to things in an attempt to have viewers be fascinated with her character.

The Season 2 finale is probably the culmination of it. Because the majority of the red bursts that were part of the main arc of the second season, which led to the crew finding out about Control and deciding to go to the future to stop it...All turned out to have been created by Michael through time-travel, thereby causing a stable time-loop to allow it to happen in the first place.

When it comes to Michael being the central character, they did everything required on the technical level, but they did it at the expense of every other character on Discovery, and even of the story.

[Darmani]

The opening rant is why people HATE mystery box and serialization in some things after one or two fuck ups.

For me Steven universe's characters could never be complete ever since
"What is a school?"
It was too isolating and improbable with the scenario and characters as presented. So when the show focused more on character as to plot resolution. or stalled it over and over again with simple circumcstances and character arcs/crises to be resolved, ignoring other aspects, and then resolving setups in 15 minute episodes with the bandaid of flipping off heteronormative standards I did not have it really got more and more disappointing.

This gets REAL bad if its something popular or something you once were into. You can't ignore the flaws because its you relation to the story and the work.

Its just a matter of don't hurt actual people about it.

A recent culture touchpoint is the line "Martha" meant to be tragic and serendipotous but, as with the former tvtrope name Narm, it collapses the stakes and versimiltude and highlights all the problems to get there.

And when you deliberately seek out already core loved media to do this with dismissive film of supposed social activism as your justification, defense, and guide...
It sours the whole engagement.

[finelargeaxe]

I'm having a thought, here, and I'm hoping I'm wrong...but I can't help but think that this whole thing is somehow going to end with Burnham (either intentionally or otherwise) wiping herself out of existence in order to prevent the events of the show from ever happening, and closing the time loop permanently.

[Worffan101]

That really was the worst Trek show I've ever seen, except for Enterprise.

(Nothing is as bad as Enterprise)

But seriously, between the incompetent character work, the incoherent plotting, the Michael overfocus, the stupid fake science...this is fucking hard to watch. Like, it is legitimately a difficult show for me to sit through. Enterprise I can sort of just ignore and let it go in one ear and out the other until something really egregious happens, but this show rubs my freaking face in its incompetence.

[TGLS]

So let me get this straight: the defence for the 1701 redesign is that special effects have moved on from the 1960s. And simultaneously, your defence for the design of the Discovery is that its a rejected design from the 1970s. Uh-huh. Someone doth protests too much methinks.

Well, at the very least the 1701 redesign is itself a homage to the 1701. Here's a bridge comparison:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarTrekDiscovery/comments/bcbm5c/the_new_uss_enterprise_bridge_alongside_the_tos/

[Kilo]

The only thing I wish to add is that I'm pretty sure that Jonah Hill is skinny now, so that joke about the window on the 'blast door' confused me for a second

[cloudkitt]

I could not believe the show almost seemed self-aware for a second when Spock and the plot were criticizing Michael for making everything about her, and then the very next episode, Airiam literally says straight up, "it's all about you" to Michael's face. were they trying to parody themselves?

[Zatman]

I see it as a broader problem with how CBS is approaching the newer Treks. Every previous Trek had common elements which collectively made them "Star Trek." Some key elements that tied them together: a single, "home" space object (ship or station), an ensemble crew, tackling the unknown of space, bringing the "unknown" and awesomeness of space exploration to the audience, a larger world outside the one we see every week. Each series did these to varying degrees, TOS focused nearly exclusively on the power trio, but didn't shut out other characters, TNG focused more on finding the unknown, and less on bringing it to "us," DS9 didn't do as much of the unknown, VOY didn't do as much of the unknown and didn't bring it to "us," ENT like TOS focused nearly exclusively on Archer, Trip and T'Pol, but also didn't do much of finding the unknown. Yet despite whatever deficiencies these shows may have had, they are unmistakably Star Trek. But the newer Treks lack enough of the elements to distance themselves from the rest of the franchise. To me, Picard comes closer to that than Discovery does. The crew is fleshed out reasonably enough, the La Sirena becomes home, there are things that are new, and the audience is brought in. No, it isn't like previous Treks, but it is still connected.

Discovery however doesn't seem like its elements are nearly as strong. The Discovery itself feels like nothing more than a ship that people happen to be assigned to, there isn't an emotional connection. As Chuck says the show focuses on Burnham almost exclusively, there isn't much exploration, and what there is, we can't connect well to it. Does it mean it's a bad show? Not necessarily, but to me, I do think it means it isn't a great Star Trek.

So does this mean that there couldn't be a good Star Trek show largely focused on one character that's say a solo freighter captain that travels from system to system within well known space? No. But where you don't, or can't have certain "Trek" elements, that just means you have to work even harder at the others. In this example, that would be focusing heavily on the world, or bringing the audience in. As the character leaves Earth, the familiar mushroom of Spacedock passes the window, at a stopover on Coridan, an Intrepid class is in orbit. To the latter, the captain's brother has a young teenage son who dreams of nothing more than spaceflight and being "out there" "unencumbered" by Starfleet rules and regulations so the captain has him onboard every few episodes.

A good example of a franchise doing this right is Star Wars. The prequels, sequels, and spinoffs all have their problems, and the OT wasn't perfect. But yet, no one would argue that any of the movies "aren't Star Wars." To add credence to my example in the previous paragraph, we have The Mandalorian now. It doesn't have Skywalkers, Jedi (much?), the empire (much), the Rebellion/Reistance (yet?) but it is still unmistakably Star Wars.

All of this to say, Discovery is lacking, or not nearly strong enough in the elements that make Star Trek, Star Trek. Focusing nearly exclusively on Burnham is merely one of them. Though no Trek is perfect, DS9 is proof that a show that ditches the standard formula (ship + crew + exploration = good) can succeed if the right connective elements remain.