And always gonna be. Go cry about it some more
It isn’t the mushroom drive that made Discovery bad, it’s that Starfleet apparently no longer has any kind of standards.
TOS and TNG had all kinds of “woke” politics for their era, but they portrayed them as happening on a military vessel. People were calm, competent and followed the chain of command. The only time that broke down is when they were under the influence of some kind of alien disease or tech.
Discovery’s crew was full of whiny, fragile people that were barely able to do their jobs for all the time they spent obsessing about their personal problems. Tilly is the prime example of this. The “Tilly” equivalent in TNG was Reginald Barclay. Shy, stressed, lacking self confidence, etc. Barclay’s character arc makes sense for Star Trek. He is able to save the day, but he’s certainly not promoted because it’s clear that the senior officers on the show are calm, competent and project confidence. He’s basically there to show that not all Star Trek characters are the confident, competent, brave people who make up the bridge crew. And, by doing that they emphasize how elite the bridge crew is. Meanwhile, on Discovery, Tilly is promoted and keeps gaining responsibility despite never addressing these gaping character flaws. The “Tilly” message seems to be something like “it doesn’t matter if you’re weird, awkward and unable to communicate competently, as long as you love and accept yourself, you too deserve to be on the bridge making life or death decisions”.
Discovery also fails because that lack of competence is everywhere in the crew. The original shows had the crew acting as… well a crew. They’d tackle problems together. In TOS Kirk would lead the charge, but he’d never do anything on his own. Spock was stronger and smarter than anybody else, but he followed the lead of his commander. McCoy handled the medical stuff. Scotty handled engineering. In Discovery, Burnham is apparently the only competent person on the crew, and the only one not to be fazed when something bad happens, so rather than the crew working together to solve issues, it’s superhero Burnham while the crew faints dramatically. The only real exceptions to that are Saru (whose personality doesn’t really make sense given what they explain about his species), and Commander Reno, who is a breath of fresh air because she’s basically the only one who isn’t constantly freaking out – although the sarcasm and fatalism of her character is almost too much.
What makes it all worse is that the backdrop is that the universe is doomed and only Discovery can save it. Sure, the other Treks have had major threats to the universe, but they were being slow-rolled over a long season, or sometimes multiple seasons. They had room to breathe and do episodes that didn’t advance the plot. That gave them a time to do episodes focused on fleshing out the personality of a member of the crew, to do silly things, etc. Discovery has the whiniest, least professional crew that has ever crewed a starship (and I’m including Boimler and friends), who are whining while dealing with the most urgent apocalyptic scenarios. It’s a soap opera while the end of the world is playing out.
I regret that I have but one upvote to give to this comment.
The only addition I have is the glorification/growth of Section 31. They were introduced as the baddies because they are the antithesis of what the Federation is. As a foil they’re at least a gateway to interesting variations on “do the ends justify the means” and "“are short term solutions acceptable while sacrificing long term ones”. Which the Federation classically would answer with a resounding “No”.
But sci-fi Black Ops is “cool” and The Expanse was popular so lets get on that bandwagon apparently. (I love The Expanse, but different things should be different.)
I had to stop watching when an alien got really sad that one time and that caused all the dilithium crystals in the galaxy to blow up. It was just… Dumb.
At the same time, it was a very TOS plot and resolution, and Discovery is based on that.
Charlie X was a child who would have blown up the entire Federation, because he was upset that people told him “no”.
Lazarus nearly detonated the entire universe, and for at least one moment, caused it to cease to exist.
Which doesn’t gel with the post-TNG Trek, which is more scientifically grounded, but “child got given godlike powers and nearly wiped out the galaxy because they were upset” fits in perfectly with TOS. It’s just missing a reset button to put everything to rights.
deleted by creator
If I remember right, it wasn’t sonic, but a psychic blast. The scream was just the usual “a telepath hits breaking point and explodes while screaming” Due to his biochemical links to the dilithium, it acted as an amplifier, and was momentarily rendered inert, which is extremely bad news when you have a bunch of stuff on the verge of constantly exploding, relying on a specific property of dilithium.
For us, it’d be like Q briefly snapping away the neutron absorption features of nuclear moderator rods. Things would go south extremely quickly, especially if no-one was expecting anything like that to happen.
deleted by creator
I feel like one of the main issues with Discovery is also that it’s much more serialised, and more compact, to its detriment.
There wasn’t an ambiguous downtime between adventures, or for things to happen off-screen, everything happened one after the other. We didn’t have space to develop and explore the characters, basically everything was plot, which made the emotional parts feel unearned.
The characters were rarely more than the bare minimum to enable said plot.
It hugely needed downtime it didn’t really get, and could have benefited from stretching out either the seasons or the episodes out to have them be more fleshed out and normal, instead of dealing with crisis after crisis after crisis. In all of three seasons, we had about a single segment of episode where they had any memorable recreation at all.
There was never an equivalent of the “The Doctor is a good singer, Worf hates children, Spock likes chess” moments for the Discovery characters to expand into between the big plot points. They don’t really have long-term flaws, or room to grow for the most part.
Discovery also fails because that lack of competence is everywhere in the crew.
I’d actually disagree with you on discovery showing a lack of competence. If anything, besides the attitude, it felt more like the characters were too competent. They didn’t have varied, specific flaws and weaknesses that made them seem more human, instead being universally omnicompetent.
Even TNG, otherwise a shining bastion of competency, worked best when the characters had individual flaws and weaknesses that they collectively mitigated by relying on each other, rather than everyone being perfect and good at everything.
Discovery lacks that kind of deferring to better expertise, and often comes across as Burnham does everything. Except when she’s coming up with a plan that will fix everything, there was barely any consultation, or back and forth. There wasn’t really ever a “I can think of something that could help, but have no idea how to execute it, anyone know how we might pull it off?”, or “That’s not a bad thought, but if we do it this other way, it might be better”.
basically everything was plot, which made the emotional parts feel unearned.
Unearned, and also shoehorned in. They were in the middle of a series of crises, and instead of just putting the personal stuff to the side until the crisis/crises were over they had to deal with personal soap-opera stuff in the middle of that. And, that meant that you couldn’t have personal character development that was low-stakes. For it to interrupt the crisis it had to be high stakes. That just heightened the soap-operaness because every emotional moment was high stakes.
Discovery lacks that kind of deferring to better expertise, and often comes across as Burnham does everything.
That’s basically what I mean about the incompetence. She had to do everything herself rather than consult with the rest of the crew, often breaking the rules because she didn’t have time to follow them because everything was so urgent. On every other Star Trek, the chief engineer would be consulted when it came to engineering things, the science officer when it came to science things, and so-on. But, because Burnham didn’t consult her experts, it makes it seem like they’re not competent enough to keep up with her.
So, these other crew members are involved when there’s a high-stakes soap opera scene where they bare their souls. But, they’re bypassed when Burnham has to take quick actions or the whole multiverse dies. Which makes it seem like this isn’t a crew of a captain, a science officer and a chief engineer working together to solve things. It’s a soap opera involving Tilly, Stamets, and Jett while Burnham saves the multiverse.
Removed by mod
Sure, the other Treks have had major threats to the universe, but they were being slow-rolled over a long season, or sometimes multiple seasons. They had room to breathe and do episodes that didn’t advance the plot.
As a usual defender of Discovery - I absolutely agree here. CBS clearly wanted to do a Battlestar Galactica, just in case Star Trek was over.
As much as I like Discovery, I’ll admit I’m sure I would like it more if they had settled down from the constant universe ending a bit more often.
And the constant tearful goodbyes to characters that either don’t die or somehow come back from the dead.
Tap for spoiler
When they killed the cyborg girl, I felt absolutely nothing because they had spent essentially zero time on her character prior to that.
I have had fun with Discovery (wrapping up season 4 on my first time through), but it’s my least favorite series so far. I don’t connect with the characters nearly as much as I’d want, and I think that’s largely because every single moment is a universe-ending crisis.
No one character’s big sacrifice to save everything has any meaning when five minutes later the universe is ending again. There isn’t space for any real happiness in the plot. They don’t really do science. The scientific explanations of things are extra goofy.
Tap for spoiler
(“The data won’t let us delete it. Guess we can’t remove our computer storage, so we’d better destroy the ship. No, wait, let’s just time travel instead using a suit that we also said was impossible to make with our technology - but we’ll make TWO of them anyway using the magic time stones!”)
I very much enjoyed the Strange New Worlds cast joining the series for that season though (I wish we’d gotten some more Nurse Chapel time because I think Jess Bush is adorable.)
I like the set and costume work. I think the actors do a great job (just once I’d like to hear Doug Jones do Baron Afanas’ voice while in Saru makeup). There’s a lot to like about the show, and I think it was worth watching. I can’t see rewatching it anytime soon though.
deleted by creator
he mad
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
This. All of this. Thank you.
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
Not to worry, I’m sure future writers will ignore the inconvenient parts as hard as Janeway’s lizard babies.
Threshold is a dream that Tom Paris has. It’s the only way that episode makes any sense. This is headcanon, but I’m sticking with it.
I’m aware the events are referenced in Lower Decks. Tom Paris recorded the dream in his personal log which was later published as a memoir, and the dream story was taken out of context and misunderstood.
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
Yeah so is TAS. Being canon doesn’t mean it’s good or even good for the universe of canon itself.
People who whine about the silliness of some of the concepts in Discovery (spore drive, space-tardigrades) have never seen TOS.
While I do generally enjoy discovery, I do think It’s still pretty flawed. Not because of the spore stuff, but because of the way that they have to deal with so many “danger to the entire galaxy/universe/multiverse” type events back to back. Like, doing a few is fine, I generally enjoyed the xindi arc in Enterprise for example, but having so many starts to feel very forced after awhile.
I especially find that bit with the spore energy extractor in the mirror universe that could kill all life in the multiverse if not stopped jarring, because, if you have a potentially limitlessness number of alternative timelines, and the massive expanse of space, to develop that tech in, the odds that nobody else ever built one of these drops to essentially zero, except that the existence of the plot at all implies nobody else ever has.
Not because of the spore stuff, but because of the way that they have to deal with so many “danger to the entire galaxy/universe/multiverse” type events back to back. Like, doing a few is fine, I generally enjoyed the xindi arc in Enterprise for example, but having so many starts to feel very forced after awhile.
I totally agree. When the stakes are over the top it makes the universe feel small. When everything depends on one crew at all times it feels hard to believe there is a larger world they exist in in which to immerse my imagination. Discovery has fantastic characters, acting, directing, costumes, sets - I would love to see all these great features thrive without leaning on artificial plot tension. The main goal of any show is to make you care about what happens. Ideally you care because you feel a personal connection to the characters. But making the stakes huge, and including frequent ticking-clock scenarios is easier. The thing is I do care about these characters! The artifice is unnecessary!
But it got better the longer the show went on! I appreciate how every season the stakes got smaller, and more believable, and the pacing got less frantic especially in the last two seasons.
spoilers: de-escalating stakes each season
- season 1: The entire Klingon war, and btw the existence of every possible universe is threatened.
- season 2: All life is about to be wiped out, but only in one universe.
- season 3: Is the Federation over? It’s not clear if the dilithium crisis extends to other galaxies, but the stakes seem to be scoped to geopolitics in one quadrant.
- season 4: Several planets are in danger. Still bigger stakes than I’d prefer, but there is much improvement over season 1.
It would be very funny if they had kept the trend and de-escalation, and Season 7 is just that lunch is threatened because one of the duotronic circuits in the food synthesiser computer banks broke, and people haven’t used duotronics in centuries.
I especially find that bit with the spore energy extractor in the mirror universe that could kill all life in the multiverse if not stopped jarring, because, if you have a potentially limitlessness number of alternative timelines, and the massive expanse of space, to develop that tech in, the odds that nobody else ever built one of these drops to essentially zero, except that the existence of the plot at all implies nobody else ever has.
Agreed. It’d have been perfectly fine to scale it down to have the extractor messing up the nearby mycelial network/subspace enough that the spore hub drive would become inoperable, and they’d lose the only method they had to get home.
If anything, that might be more compelling, since you could easily squeeze in a character conflict with some people wanting to leave, damn the consequences, or make preparations for a long term stay in the mirror universe if they got stuck.
In some way, its probably similar to Lazarus’ machine. He managed to build something capable of obliterating two universes. It didn’t seem that difficult, or that much more advanced than the Enterprise, you’d think someone else would have built something similar, and accidentally destroyed the universe in so doing.
That’s how I felt reading the Batman new 52 run. It was just constant city-wide crises with escalating stakes. Just foil a bank robbery or something now and then ffs.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I wonder… What world you say if they gave Discovery the Battletech TAS treatment?
To explain, the tabletop wargame Battletech got an animated series in the early 90s. The series, while well-versed in the game’s setting and lore, played fast and loose with both and had, well, early 90s cartoon writing.
As a result, it wasn’t received well. However, it is canonical – as an in-universe propaganda show aimed at children, complete with inaccuracies and bad writing. The show’s antagonist even ended up suing over his portrayal.
Now I imagine that Discovery is referenced in a future Trek show but the dialogue mentions that there’s a horrifically inaccurate in-universe holoseries about the ship and most people have entirely wrong ideas about it. We deliberately never learn whether Discovery-the-show is the accurate version or not.
I think that might work as a nod towards both the fans and the haters of the show but if like to hear what you’d think.
deleted by creator
Eh, good point about the secrecy. You’d have to really twist the lore into a pretzel in order to accommodate that and that ain’t worth it for what’s essentially a throwaway gag.
As for bowing to haters, I definitely wouldn’t do that. I’d acknowledge that there is some controversy with a tongue-in-cheek reference but I wouldn’t take a side. That’s the fans’ job – and let’s be honest here, everyone who debates the canonicity of DSC is a Star Trek fan, just maybe not one of that particular show. People who hate Trek in general will not engage in debates about relative worth; to them, all of the shows suck.
You made me realize that Discovery was probably the worst ship Saru could have possibly been assigned to.
deleted by creator
It’s been a while since I saw season 1, but wasn’t his early behavior characterized by a desire to avoid stress? Discovery definitely benefited from his skills and senses though.
I’ve not seen much of lower decks tbh. I’ve tried watching it a couple times, trying different episodes in case its just a case of it taking a few to get in stride, but I’ve just not liked it the same as other trek shows, the characters just seem annoying and everything happens too fast.
Removed by mod
The Klingons in TNG didn’t match either. And it still felt like a starship. The set design isn’t too different from SNW as well.
deleted by creator
I mean, we’ve seen a number of ships in Starfleet that don’t look identical. The set design also seemed pretty spaceshippy to me. Especially when you consider that it’s an experimental ship designed for this one purpose. Very clean and pristine and showing that one purpose design.
Discovery’s set design resonated reasonably well with the look of the TOS films, which made sense for a cutting-edge ship. And that was also well underscored by the way the Shenzou looked more Enterprise inspired, right down to using the NX-01 style lateral transporters versus Discovery’s vertically aligned ones.
That’s to say, Discovery used Trek design elements from different eras intelligently, to communicate the different roles and histories of these ships. Very much the opposite of throwing it all away.
deleted by creator
or TAS
They berate an exam table ffs
TAS? Never happened.
Don’t mind me. I’m just thinking about the time Voyager had to battle a plague of giant viruses.
TBH Voyager is the orginal “bad trek”
TOS was, well TOS, TNG had a rough start but was always viable, DS9 started with consolidated lore and respected it, albeit being of course darker than the others, VOY… had bad writing. Wackyness in itself is not a huge issue though.
DIS gets hate because it feels like they wanted to write a specific series and just used the Star Trek setting for it, instead of wanting to make a Star Trek series.
I thought we all agreed that canon doesn’t start until the Wrath of Khan.
Shouldn’t that last one say USS Voyager NCC-74656?
I have such a soft spot for VGR but my god it was an abomination. Tuvix anyone?
Don’t care. Still ignoring it exists.
the real chad
This might hurt your bones a bit:
MOOPSY IS CANON TOO
Remember when TOS had magic wand worms?
Remember when Spock tried to kill Kirk because he was sexually frustrated?
deleted by creator
Remember when Trip Tucker got pregnant?
I would be good at this thread, but I think we’ve gone far enough.
Suffice to say, we haven’t even mentioned Voyager yet. Lol.
Macrovirus. Enough said.
I try to console myself with the fact that Lower Decks is canon, too.
Always bring a cannon to a canon fight
Pop culture is mythology. You decide what’s canon.
Aside: Y’all think the Egyptians ever had arguments over which version of Horus was canon?
Absolutely. In fact they definitely had wars about it.
If I’ve never seen them, they don’t exist. Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks… none of it. I’m safe and pure.
At least give lower decks a try if you’ve seen the rest of trek, the references alone make it fun to watch. It’s AU it doesn’t taint the cannon but it’s still trek and a good time
From the clips I’ve seen, I can already tell you I don’t like the character designs or the humor.
Removed by mod
Why do people care about canon?
Because an expansive universe lore is enjoyable if it’s coherent and there are stakes at play. If you consider the official canon, voyager as a series is pretty much to throw away, because the Federation would already have the technology to bring them home centuries ago. And yes, many times the writers played around the concept in good ways to not make Discovery a ridicolously overpowered ship, but it still suffers from big “Superman is so strong he can destroy a plenet with his mind” energy.
Can you make the whole series good with deus ex machina superpowers? I guess. Was the writing good enough for it? Absolutely not.
Yes, I am aware of the baby lizards warp 10 episode of Voyager, that should also be thrown away from canon as it makes no sense, but at least it was a whacky episode among many (and the showrunners ackowledged it) not the premise of an entire seriea.
Because an expansive universe lore is enjoyable if it’s coherent and there are stakes at play. If you consider the official canon, voyager as a series is pretty much to throw away, because the Federation would already have the technology to bring them home centuries ago.
This sounds like a very good argument not to care about canon. You, who care about canon, are bothered that two shows made 20 years apart by different creative teams have a little friction with each other. I, who don’t stress about canon, am able to accept both shows’ premises on their own terms and enjoy them for what they are.
I mean, I am glad you and other people are able to enjoy the show also given the inconsistencies, but the question I tried to answer was why people cared about canon and coherence. It might not be important for you, but from what I can see, it looks like it matters for a lot of people, especially in a show that except for TOS and maybe a little of the first season of TNG, tried really hard to stay coherent with itself, in the bad and the good.
You can’t really blame a show for not being coherent in their early days, but once stuff is established, you can expect faithful fans to be mad about disrupting an expansive narrative.
Headcannon all that matters
deleted by creator
IMO they did a fantastic job reconciling why there’s no mention of Discovery and it’s fancy spore drive in the canon timeline. Launching them to the far future was probably the best decision
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
🙄
But in generall the concept of canon is completly overated.
You know, I wanted to disagree… But some of my favorite stories (especially Pathologic) make questions of canon a central story element. Sure, there’s still a canon you could arrive at, but the canon of your experience with these stories is what makes them endlessly interesting and mystifying to me.
And that’s not even to mention worlds like Dark Souls, Elden Ring etc. which deliberately allow for so much head canon that discussions are still going many years after release. None of this would work with strict canon.
Wasn’t that line said by someone from the mirror universe?
Where Musk wouldn’t be a total fascist?
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
deleted by creator
I haven’t yet seen the last season of Lower Decks, but apparently they make the claim that Discovery was set in an alternate universe.
https://cosmicbook.news/star-trek-discovery-erased-canon
https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/star-trek-erased.htmlAgain, I can’t validate that, but have read those articles
That just seems like an intentional misinterpretation from someone who wants Discovery to be as non-canon as possible.
That’s very possible
deleted by creator
People do love to wine about Discovery, so that’s not surprising. Thanks for the clarification. I do need to get onto watching the last LD season.
People love to whine about anything new - and not just about Star Trek.
I honestly think that newer Star Trek properties have been better than newer Star Wars properties on average.
Who’s to say that episode wasn’t from a multi verse branch and isn’t canon itself? (It’s a stretch, and I haven’t seen the episode yet)
deleted by creator
Without any more knowledge, but knowing lower decks, I understand completely.
Getting strong Sealab 2021 but live action vibes here.
strong Sealab 2021 but live action vibes
Now I want to see survey of people who loved Sealab 2021 and are apologists for Discovery. The venn diagram might just be a perfect circle…
I don’t, myself, disagree with any of the many complaints people have about Disco. My counter argument is just - I still had fun.
You’ve given me this revelation that I defend Sealab 2021 exactly the same way…
Doppelgänger!!
