Star Trek (Dis): Context Is for Kings

[CharlesPhipps]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uW6MXWPuZc

Gazelle

[Ikiry0]

If it's any consolation, Chuck, I should point out I am a HUGE Social Justice Warrior and yet I know you don't hate Janeway because she's a woman. You hate her because she's a megalomaniac.

I for one loved her for being such a megalomaniac. She's one of my favourite villains, it was really showing you need to make some hard decisions when the borg were forced to team up with someone like her.

I'll admit, on the Discovery front, I utterly loathe Sylvia Tilly, though I'm sure her actress is a nice person. I'm autistic myself (Got a note from my shrink and everything!) and she just really feels like this bad collection of autism stereotypes for the sake of having a neuroatypical character that have been run into the ground for years at this point without actually having any understanding of autism. It's just...frustrating, like they needed to have an Australian character on the ship and decided to put Crocodile Dundee or Captain Boomerang in tactical. Or say, needing a native american and getting a Chakotay.

I mean, she's no Sheldon but still, she's one of my primary issues with the characters on the show.

Though, I will dispute SBDebris comment about Micheal being 'Unique'. At this point, random siblings of Spock that were never mentioned until now is something Star Trek has had to deal with already. I'm sure there are like 3 others waiting for their own movie or series.

[Fixer]

Re: Michael Burnham

I think she's a character who I am about 80% onboard with. The problem is I do think she's too much and doesn't really work as a lead without someone to play off of. The Seven of Nine comparisons aren't really very apt because Michael doesn't WANT to be human and there's no real need for her to be since being Vulcan is fine. My big issue with her I think is that if you made her NOT Spock's kid sister and Sarek into Random Vulcan 15# then that would STILL be an interesting backstory.

Since when is being raised by Vulcans not cool enough by itself?

There's also the fact her failed mutiny clashes with her somewhat smug sense of self-righteousness (which all of Starfleet has had at various points but this is full on Season 1 TNG) and her backstory doesn't really fit her attitude. Where does she get off lecturing people about Starfleet rules and regulations?

In a weird way she's Spock/7 of 9/Tom Paris and that's too many characters.

Michael's character is actually pretty convoluted and I think you're right. They've tried to twist too many special and unique elements into her backstory to show how uniquely special she is. These inferred traits clash and ultimately I don't think either the script writers or anyone watching the show actually know who Michael Burnham is.

I commented in the other she seemed to have all the worst traits of Archer, Janeway and JJ Abrams Kirk in the opening two parter with her reckless adrenaline junkie attitude and outbursts. Then there's the end episode of episode 6 where they seemingly do a soft reboot of her by saying she was repressing all her emotions up until that point.

The writing definitely improved by that episode but someone that had made so many impulsive and illogical actions up until that point couldn't have been running on pure logic.

Ultimately it gets bizarre and confusing. When she was giving a speech about the weakness of the Terran Empire she hadn't had any real contact with, I wasn't getting the impression of an insightful Picard speech on the nature of good and evil, it felt like the recall of something she read in a philosophy textbook. When she was called on to do something distasteful my thought was whether she'd use her Vulcan emotional skills to manage the situation, instead she acted as any normal person might in the same situation.

I find it hard to infer how her double terrorist attack surviving, vulcan katra in head, sister of Spock, human raised as a vulcan, trying to understand her emotions, first mutineer of starfleet, responsible for the war and guilty over the death of her captain, smartest and most capable officer ever *intake of breath* status informs how she's going to act in any giving circumstance. It may as well be entirely random and as a result I don't find her very engaging as a character.

So I think you're completely right there. Just being a human raised as a vulcan would have been enough.

[CharlesPhipps]

Re: Tilly

I think I'm okay with her because she subverts a lot of traits which are stereotypical like the fact she's a party girl in addition to being a moe blob of cuteness that suffers from verbal diarrhea.

[Archanubis]

But did you know... Saru is a cow?

That "Saru is a cow" thing is going to be another annoying meme, isn't it? Though perhaps not nearly as annoying as (and I apologize in advance), "The new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, the new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, the new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, the new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, the new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, the new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, the new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror..."

[J!!]

Yeah, I think it behooves us not to milk that one dry.

[AllanO]

I noticed in this review that Chuck mentions that booby trapping a corpse as was done at the Battle of Binary Stars is a violation of the conventions of war. As I recall in a previous thread someone was surprised Chuck did not call them out then. So (assuming he was planning most of these reviews well in advance etc.) apparently Chuck was playing the long game, waiting to call out the war crime for maximum effect. So let it be known he plays the long game...

It is interesting what sort of break in real life laws and norms we let people get away with in fiction without much thought (I did not think much about it, or other examples Chuck poiints out like Tom Paris being in solitary etc.). I always think of the example of the person breaking out of prison (and committing other crimes) to prove their innocence, in fiction all they have to do is prove the initial charges were false and all the subsequent crimes melt away, whereas in real life that does not work as a defense you would still spend sometime in prison for breaking the law in the course of proving your innocence. There are presumably limits, like if the plan to defeat the Klingons had involved using an innocent child as a human shield presumably that would have been way too far for most of the audience...

Yeah, I think it behooves us not to milk that one dry.

Yeah we don't want to make light of such a beefy concept..

[MithrandirOlorin]

By the way, Saru is actually the Japanese word for Monkey.

[Admiral X]

So, if people declare themselves SJWs and then people call them SJWs that's bad? Is it only the context of whether or not they support or oppose the politics that matters because by your own statement just now says that Linkara's isn't worth listening to.

This is probably going to derail the conversation further into the identity politics angle here but this increasing tribalism is part of the problem that makes discussing modern sci-fi and fantasy online for the last 5 years so nasty.

Like it or not people are going to aggressively defend against every criticism made against a character or media solely because of identity politics as much as others rail against them for the same.

Your example is the Ghostbusters movie. Look at what happened, James Rolfe AVGN, made one video saying he thought the movie looked awful from the trailer. Instead of doing what his fans expected, he said that he wasn't going to watch it and then make a video talking about how bad it was. He was just not going to see it and explained why. After that he said hey it could even be good. In response he was labeled a sexist, misogynist woman hater that was just hiding his sexism.
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/ghostb ... to-review/

The Ghostbusters backlash was increased exponentially by a feedback loop of an overly hyperbolic defense which attacked the original movie's fanbase. To the point that you had to declare your support for a pretty awful looking movie or be declared a heretic by the end. To which a lot of people who would have been ambivilent for the movie were now actively wishing for it to fail.

If anything should have been learned by that whole ordeal, it should have been how not to make a trailer and how not to attack a fanbase or critics.

And just to add to that - what a horrible sign of the times that Chuck felt he had to give such an introduction. And, as he points out, when he criticized Janeway, even then people were jumping on him simply because the character he was criticizing was a woman, and in their minds this somehow meant he was sexist. Sad.

Anyway, thanks for another opinionated video, Chuck. I will say that while I don't always agree with you on things, you at least seem to be pretty fair, and if nothing else, you explain your reasoning for why your opinion is what it is.

[CharlesPhipps]

Honestly, the hate and general fan rage has me so disillusioned with responses I'll believe just about any story of harassment or anger over characters being anything than Lily White Straight Males.