CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Tue May 10, 2022 5:47 pm
Because realizing she wasn't a good fit for Captain last season was a good arc.
I thought that was an interesting direction to take her, and I thought (and still think) Saru is a better captain. But I give them credit for realizing they didn't now how to write around her being the main character yet not the captain and finally fixed that jagged part of the character dynamics by making it so they simply didn't have to.
I'm really hoping they find a better spot to put Saru (and Tilly) soon, because Saru is still the best and most experienced leader, and as much as I think Tilly's arc this season was an interesting role for her we didn't get to see enough of it on-screen. We could have skipped the episode passing through the barrier and had a "meanwhile, somewhere with Tilly" side story and it would have worked great, IMO. Show what was happening with her and her cadets as they reacted to the news of Earth's impending threat by the anomaly...
As a DISCO fan, I think I summarized it as, "It's not that I don't like Michael, I just don't want her to be in every scene and everything to be about her."
Season 2 was doing great until her frigging mother became the central part of the mystery.
I felt they were doing the entire cast a disservice and Ms. Greene as well.
Unfortunately, I just flat out DO NOT LIKE HER as Captain and both my favorite characters have been largely written off the show.
CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Tue May 10, 2022 5:47 pm
Because realizing she wasn't a good fit for Captain last season was a good arc.
I thought that was an interesting direction to take her, and I thought (and still think) Saru is a better captain. But I give them credit for realizing they didn't now how to write around her being the main character yet not the captain and finally fixed that jagged part of the character dynamics by making it so they simply didn't have to.
I'm really hoping they find a better spot to put Saru (and Tilly) soon, because Saru is still the best and most experienced leader, and as much as I think Tilly's arc this season was an interesting role for her we didn't get to see enough of it on-screen. We could have skipped the episode passing through the barrier and had a "meanwhile, somewhere with Tilly" side story and it would have worked great, IMO. Show what was happening with her and her cadets as they reacted to the news of Earth's impending threat by the anomaly...
As a DISCO fan, I think I summarized it as, "It's not that I don't like Michael, I just don't want her to be in every scene and everything to be about her."
Season 2 was doing great until her frigging mother became the central part of the mystery.
I felt they were doing the entire cast a disservice and Ms. Greene as well.
Unfortunately, I just flat out DO NOT LIKE HER as Captain and both my favorite characters have been largely written off the show.
Yeah that's one of my biggest gripes about Discovery as a whole.
The show has to be about her. This last season, she is actually involved in Federation politics, like her opinion holds sway. Do we see other starship captains in there too? Nope. But gotta get her involved somehow.
Her not being captain actually allows her to do the away mission stuff but being Captain should make her stay on board. Especially if Saru is being made out to be a good diplomat anyway and he isn't captain anymore.
CharlesPhipps wrote: ↑Wed May 11, 2022 1:28 am
It's a bit self-defeating ironically.
Michael is fine when she's the science officer and serving as the foil to characters like Lorca, Saru, and even Pike. She's a great Spock.
However, they want her to be the Kirk.
So she feels like a completely different character now. Which causes people who liked her before to no longer like her.
I never really liked her honestly from almost the start. When I say that I mean, the initial first three or so episodes of Discovery in season 1, but that's because she wasn't truly established as being the Mikey Show, a Star Trek Tale.
Her being Spock's sister honestly grated on me, as there was really no reason to do that, but only to connect her to someone or something from the TOS.
In that, she could have been an adopted child of a Vulcan order of F'emalk M'oonc and then sponsored by Sarek later on.
Nope she is the sister to one of the most important characters of all of Trek.
They could have set the series somewhat later, and had her be an illegitimate child of Kirk's. It's not as though that hasn't happened before. The show could then be about her trying, and failing, to fill her father's shoes, and her eventual recognition that she has to be her own person.
There, I spent roughly five seconds thinking that out, and I managed to create a storyline more interesting than anything the show actually did.
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows." -- George Orwell, 1984
Frustration wrote: ↑Wed May 11, 2022 9:29 pm
They could have set the series somewhat later, and had her be an illegitimate child of Kirk's. It's not as though that hasn't happened before. The show could then be about her trying, and failing, to fill her father's shoes, and her eventual recognition that she has to be her own person.
There, I spent roughly five seconds thinking that out, and I managed to create a storyline more interesting than anything the show actually did.
Bluntly, I think Season One has a lot of good plots and Season 2 as well. Season 3 is just awesome.
However, the problem is most of the plots around MICHAEL are terrible.
Saru's story arc is fantastic about being a primitive native who joins Starfleet and then realizes that he has to go back to his homeland to liberate it but can't do so because of the stupid Prime Directive.
I love Tilly's coming of age drama and every second of it.
I also really love Fran's take on Sarek. The story about him having to choose between Spock and Michael is the one thing that maybe justifies Michael's oddball past.
1. Saru's entire character concept needs serious revision. Especially the hilariously stupid way they explained his species's backstory in season 2. MUCH more effective to say "My species are oppressed and enslaved by the Tzenkethi, I escaped but brought along a crashed Federation spy, who helped me find the Federation, where I decided to stay". You can even keep the psychic threat gills and all, but be sure to make the point of his stories that he's CAUTIOUS but brave.
2. I love Mary Wiseman but Tilly sucks. Make her engineering chief and give her some props to play with and build shit with every episode.
3. Burnham isn't Spock's sister. Literally, she was adopted by some other Vulcan. Maybe she's met or went to school with Spock, but giving Spock long lost siblings is a horrible idea.
4. Lorca is a Mirror refugee, but instead of being a cartoon villain, he's genuinely devoted to the Federation...he's just a violently overprotective mess who does not understand that you can't use Mirror methods to protect the Federation without damaging something essential to said Federation.
5. Michelle Yeoh is THE EMPRESS OF TERRA!!! (always spoken with hammy emphasis), the sadistically evil former ruler of the Terran Empire who is stuck in the Prime Universe and wants the Discovery's prototype transwarp drive for her own starship because she thinks she can use it to get home.
6. The Discovery has a transwarp drive that drives Stamets (its designer) and Tilly (ChENG) crazy.
7. Fuck it, Stamets and Culber's romance is portrayed on the show. Have them fall in love and become a couple over the course of the season.
8. Never, ever hire the godawful Sarek actor. Jesus christ that guy was horrible.
The general plot would be:
--T'Kuvma is an ambitious asshole who wants to unite a weak and decentralized Klingon Empire ("I will unite our race, I will bring the Federation to its knees, and I will be proclaimed Emperor!") and kick Federation ass. He works with Mirror Georgiou to provoke a war with the Federation; Georgiou replaces her Prime doppelganger using an evil trick orchestrated by her and T'Kuvma, then launches a preemptive strike on the Klingons after T'Kuvma does some posturing.
--Burnham mutinies against Georgiou but Mirror Georgiou escapes to T'Kuvma's ship. Pursuing, Burnham discovers Prime Georgiou, who dies in her arms after expressing confusion at Michael's allegations that she did a preemptive strike.
--Burnham is imprisoned as a scapegoat but released to work for Lorca, who suspects what's going on since he got to the Prime universe thanks to his Prime doppelganger.
--Some filler stories to establish characters here: Battle with the Klingons goes bad, leaving the crew in a survival situation, and Lorca goes full Mirror Edgelord around Burnham; Stamets starts a romance with the handsome doctor; Tilly and Saru have to solve some problem with Stamets's drive while Stamets is stuck on some planet with Burnham and Lorca, etc. One of these involves Lorca getting captured by Klingons but escaping with Harry Mudd, who turns out to be Mirror and is killed by Lorca after threatening to kidnap him to deliver to the Empress.
--the protagonists eventually get lured into a trap by Georgiou as the war starts to turn against the Klingons. Lorca freezes up because of PTSD related to her torturing him. Burnham gets the ship out with heavy casualties.
--Prime Mudd contacts the convalescing crew and says he has evidence that can stop the war and needs to be rescued from behind enemy lines. Since Discovery has the transwarp drive they are the only ship that can do it.
--Blah blah they rescue Prime Mudd but the transwarp is on the fritz so they have to warp back pursued by Klingons and the Empress, Lorca does a diversion but is captured by the Empress.
--Mudd is in fed space but Lorca is captured. Burnham has to rescue him and sword fights Georgiou while Michelle Yeoh wears a nice dress because Michelle Yeoh in a nice dress with a sword can step on me. Actually she can do that in general but anyway.
--Finale: Burnham and Lorca must take Mudd's evidence to Qo'noS to stop the war by exposing T'Kuvma's dishonor. They have to fight the EMPRESS OF TERRA when she ambushes them between transwarp jumps when the drive goes on the fritz again but successfully defeat and capture her. They expose T'Kuvma, who challenges Burnham to a duel. She beats him and he is executed by some senior Klingon noble, and the Klingons agree to a ceasefire in exchange for being allowed to execute Mirror Georgiou...but the Klingon Empire is much more united than before, and it's plainly obvious that the peace is tenuous at best.
Then the next season can be a different ship and crew, in a different era, following the initial anthology series plan.
Worffan101 wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 12:26 am3. Burnham isn't Spock's sister. Literally, she was adopted by some other Vulcan. Maybe she's met or went to school with Spock, but giving Spock long lost siblings is a horrible idea.
Great in concept. Feels to me the same as how people describe the maquis on Voyager though. Present in narrative here and there but mostly pedestrian.
I'm probably missing something from seasons 3, 4 though.
Worffan101 wrote: ↑Thu May 12, 2022 12:26 am3. Burnham isn't Spock's sister. Literally, she was adopted by some other Vulcan. Maybe she's met or went to school with Spock, but giving Spock long lost siblings is a horrible idea.
Great in concept. Feels to me the same as how people describe the maquis on Voyager though. Present in narrative here and there but mostly pedestrian.
I'm probably missing something from seasons 3, 4 though.
It's soooooooo bad fanficcy, though. I don't think it can be handled well.
Better for her to be a friend of his or something from school.
