Deledrius wrote: ↑Fri Nov 23, 2018 6:23 pm
Worffan101 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 11:47 pm
STD or SFDebris?
It sure justifies Chuck's existence, there's so much bad in this episode that I legitimately am disappointed that Chuck's sticking to such a stolidly neutral, summary-over-analysis methodology here. If there ever was a series that deserved Chuck spending half an hour per episode going full-bore serious analysis with both barrels (in an angry or non-angry way), it was this one.
I suspect that we're going to get the less neutral analysis once it's all done. I can't blame him; it's not a show that lends itself well to an episode-by-episode review in a lot of ways (and that's convenient for the show and the network, as it allows them to deflect criticisms until they've faded). The season-end review will be good, I have every expectation, once the entire story can be looked at for how well it holds together or falls apart.
Fair enough, I hope Chuck shreds this turd.
Both in the "hilariously profane angry rant" sense and the "serious analysis of its structural problems" sense.
Deledrius wrote: ↑Fri Nov 23, 2018 6:23 pmWorffan101 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 11:47 pm
For STD, "Vaulting Ambitions" just makes it clear that they were half-assing this whole season.
We have yet to get to the worst part, though. As an acquaintance put it, "Episode 13 destroyed Lorca and Mirror Georgiou's characters*. Episode 14 destroyed Sarek and Admiral Cornwell. Episode 15 destroyed Ash**."
By the way, I hate how episode 15 tries to make L'Rell into a good guy. She. Is. A. Rapist. She's a fascist cannibal rapist, how the Hell is anyone supposed to sympathize with her????
*Not that Mirror Georgiou was anything more than a thinly-sketched psychopath to begin with, but her motivations make no sense in episode 13.
**By having Ash Tyler ride off into the sunset with his rapist.
I agree, with all of that. It's just a cascade of character assassination and idiot-ball sharing.
The worst part? Mirror Georgiou could've been a fantastic final-boss villain. Think about it--the sadistic and tyrannical Empress of Terra, suzerain of a thousand worlds and commander of a hyper-militarized fleet of planet-shattering power, who wants nothing less than the complete destruction of the soul of the Federation itself, a fascist despot who looks and sounds absolutely identical to a deceased character who one of the protagonists has a deep personal connection to...wouldn't that be a Wrath of Khan level epic story, the story of going out in a desperate quest to defeat the psychopathic Empress of Terra before she can destroy the Federation?
I mean, that sounds to me like good old-fashioned space opera, which Trek is DEEPLY rooted in.
Deledrius wrote: ↑Fri Nov 23, 2018 6:23 pmWorffan101 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 22, 2018 11:51 pm
Honestly, Lorca being Mirror COULD have been good--if they hadn't gone to the MU, if he'd been obviously psychologically scarred by it, if there was any sign that he was at all a decent person. I would've loved something like "Traumatized Mirror refugee Lorca taking his counterpart's place after said counterpart was stuck and killed in the MU while trying to evac himself and Lorca" which provides pathos, regret, all kinds of great emotional depth that can be used to develop a storyline, further the mentor/apprentice relationship between Lorca and Burnham, give Burnham a chance to re-live her fuckups and make a better choice...
Every time the show had a choice, they invariably chose the most predictable and least interesting option. You can tell it was written in the wrong order, with plot points at the end worked backwards. Someone was trying to fill in and flesh things out in between making it more interesting, but none of those points ever matter because they were invented after the plot's track was laid and the train wasn't allowed to take a better route.
So true!
I mean, Empress Cannibal's heel-face turn was so nonsensical I'm surprised that made it through the initial drafts, much less into the final product. And why are all the episodes so short if not because they ran out of money and ideas? I mean, they had little to no runtime limits and the garbage "service" is a freaking Netflix clone made for binging.
So...why?