An Honest Take on Star Trek Discovery from a Casual Trek Fan

When I was in elementary and middle school, my parents would watch Star Trek regularly. It began with them watching The Next Generation after they'd send my sister and I to bed. Sometimes we'd sneak out to see what they were watching. Sometimes they'd catch us. Sometimes, like with the episode "Genesis", I'd run back to my room and try not to have nightmares. Eventually I'd have to confess just so I could go to mom and dad for a little comfort.

When I was older, we all would sit down to watch Star Trek: Voyager every week, hoping that eventually Captain Janeway and her crew would make it back to the alpha quadrant of our galaxy--back to Earth--in one piece. It was both thoughtful and engaging, and we would talk about it. We actually didn't get to express ourselves honestly to our parents growing up--not often--but it was OK to talk about Star Trek, as long as we understood that the episodes on evolution were absolutely silly, laughable, and wrong.

Those are still strong memories for me.

So I've been slowly making my way through the Star Treks we never watched. Being that one half of my family shuns me due to being members of a religious cult that I am no longer a part of, I think suddenly going through these shows is maybe some sort of attempt to recapture those memories. However, coming to Star Trek Discovery, after one season in, there is everything but those nostalgic memories coming to mind. It's lacking that catharsis I have received from watching other Star Trek shows. So far, I have watched a few episodes of Deep Space Nine, and it was there. I watched some of The Original Series, and I could feel it. Then I decided I should start earlier in the Star Trek timeline, and lo and behold: there was Discovery! A new series!...

But I don't feel it.

I discovered there is a lot of controversy surrounding this show. Why is that? What is going on with this show?

It was tough to put my finger on for a while, but I feel as if I have this figured out. I wanted to share what I think are the main problems with Star Trek: Discovery. And I've numbered them into a succinct list of 5 bullet points:

1. Burnham as a character, glaringly, does not make sense. Her backstory really was so neat. I loved the idea of her being raised on Vulcan, but her actions episode by episode don't really connect. Not to me. They don't connect back to that foundation and often they don't even feel as if they connect together between episodes. To use an analogy, I'd say she comes off like 10-second Tom sometimes, from that Adam Sandler movie 50 First Dates.

In fact, lots of plot points feel that way as well. I often feel either ungratified by how little explanation something is given or overwhelmed by how fast we go from plot point to plot point. A lot of these issues have a common thread, and we'll get to that. But I find the same issue with character development as I do with plot development: it feels rushed and/or thoughtless a lot of the time.

2. There is too much focus on a few people, and far too much on Burnham. I think I tend to prefer, if there is going to be a main person of focus, for it to be the captain. This just makes sense when you are supposedly following an entire starship. Then you can spend time and focus getting to know different crew members individually. Some may be more recurring, and some may just appear once or twice, but the gist should be that we are following a crew of people. I don't really feel like I'm following the voyages of Discovery in this show. I feel as if I'm following a small group of friends that happens to be aboard this ship.

It's not unlike how most crime dramas are set up--the same contingent or group of agents or whatever every week, trying to solve a case... I like that sort of thing too, but it's not typically what I come to star Start Trek for.

3. The story-telling itself relies more on emotion to carry it, rather than plot. We are constantly concerned for the character's immediate safety or their current relationships, but we aren't so much concerned about what might actually be the answer to the problem or understanding the unexpected quirk to a planet or species or situation. Instead of the audience being firstly, analytically engaged in the issue at hand; and then secondly, concerned about the relationships between characters; it is flip-flopped.

And notwithstanding that I believe this is the whole purpose of Star Trek, the reason this isn't very good for Star Trek as a show in particular is that when you get to instances where the characters have to make a choice between their emotions and, say, the Prime Directive, the choice to follow the Prime Directive ends up making very little sense at all. You aren't used to looking at a wider picture throughout the whole of the show, and the characters generally don't seem to be interested in broadening their viewpoint. Instead, we are constantly moving from moment to moment, split-second intuitive decision to split-second intuitive decision... So to suddenly remember this is actually supposed to be the Star Trek universe and things like the Prime Directive matter feels really jarring after having followed several episodes of breakneck speed, intuitive, and personal decision-making where emotions have previously been the main motivators and that's always worked just fine for the crew.

Spoilers: the first season involves a mirror dimension plot wherein the captain is actually from the mirror dimension Terran Empire. However to me, by and large the show's characters ALL feel like they're from some other dimension and have been suddenly plopped down into a Federation starship. Idk. That's honestly how they feel to me. This isn't Starfleet. This isn't The Federation.

4. Cannon is totally disrespected. I don't think I need to go into the amount of inconsistencies, especially concerning technological progress during that time period between Captain Archer, where we left off in Star Trek: Enterprise, and Captain Kirk of The Original Series...

Believe it or not I am not an uber-fan of Star Trek. I used to enjoy watching TNG and Voyager with my family. So in the past few months, I decided to finally sit down and give Enterprise a real shot--having been a teenager too cool for Star Trek during it's Nickleback-inspired theme-songed, poorly-received initial run--and the show was actually way better than I had expected. I loved the period uniforms and technology, and in the end there was some truly fantastic story-telling.

Still seeking more, I am now into the second season of Discovery, and it is exciting to see Captain Pike of the Enterprise. And I am looking forward to seeing Spock-- who has been alluded to throughout the first several episodes--but the same story-telling problems and major cannon issues in Discovery still seem to persist in this second season.

One most glaring issue in the second season, to me, was watching Burnham snuff out a candle in her quarters, only for us to discover that all the candles throughout her quarters were holograms, which were all then deactivated by that action of snuffing out the first candle. That is a really cool idea, but I am left in disbelief. Really? The Doctor in Voyager needs a mobile-emitter from the future to get around, but the quarters for Cadet Tilly and recently-pardoned criminal Burnham come pre-installed with their own holographic emitters?

And this right here shows the main, true issue with Discovery:

5. No restraint. Everything I've said before this could probably boil down to this bullet point. Discovery is smack-dab in the middle of a timeline that has already been conceived, but the creators don't show respect for it.

I would be far more happy with this show if it were part of the movie reboot universe, because it feels more like it should be part of that universe. But it isn't. Vulcan is still around and we are expected to believe this show is part of regular Star Trek cannon. As a small-time writer myself, I have a ton of ideas for sci-fi and a few small projects of my own, and if I were ever given an opportunity to write for Star Trek, I'd have so much I would want to include. However, if something I was working on was in a timeline that just wouldn't allow for certain technologies, or relied on certain interstellar relationships, I would have to work within those paradigms as I write my story, unless I could think of some legitimate way to explain why something was majorly different. Otherwise, I would have to just drop those ideas that didn't mesh into that time period. That's not fun or easy to do sometimes, but to be able to do this and write a good story anyway is really the mark of a great writer and even producer. The creative teams churning out Discovery, on the other hand, don't seem to be able to help themselves from just including whatever they want into the universe, nor from allowing their characters to make selfish, poorly thought-out, poorly explained decisions that just happen to work out.

The point of Star Trek wasn't just that the future was some utopian society where everything seemed to work out for the Federation. The point was going through understanding a situation or solving a problem, and watching a crew that placed value on exploration and reason have things work out for them because they did so... Not just because they happened to work out.

Nearly all of the plot resolutions in Discovery come about because Michael Burnham and the crew have "faith of the heart" and are 'goin' where their hearts will take them'. We all laugh at that theme song from Enterprise I just quoted--and if you're like me, you might even secretly love it--but in spite of it, the show wasn't about the crew running around just applying that sentiment to every decision. That was left up to always butt-hurt Captain Jonathan 'Daddy-Issues' Archer to overreact to most situations. Even then however, not every episode involved some sort of overreaction, and he did at least try to think things through, and when he did go off half-cocked, his crew's reasoning would often reign him back in. From what I've seen of TOS, sexist Kirk could also be pretty impulsive, but I'd say even less so than Archer, and still he was very thoughtful and he did learn from his crew and/or from whatever situation was happening.

If you are going to have an impetuous character as your lead in Star Trek, they have to be learning something in spite of themselves. They still need to show that they are capable of being a well-reasoned individual, and should show an awareness of their reliance on others, rather than always thinking they know best and somehow still always being right. To do otherwise is not only unrealistic, but it is also the antithesis of Star Trek. And this is often the case with Discovery.

It's impossible for the audience of a show like Star Trek to feel involved and understand the reasoning behind decisions (explanations of the universe or tech being major element of the fanbase, if you've ever noticed) when one character always thinks they have the answer, forges ahead with said answer, and never learns from doing this because things always seem to work out. The audience isn't involved in the decision-making process, and is instead given the boob of the main characters' non-stop emotional/relationship drama and adventure to suck on. Discovery comes off like any other sci-fi in that sense, and then looses what made Star Trek special to begin with.

And I like The Lower Decks. I've watched a little and it can be pretty funny. I like what Prodigy seems to be doing, from the little I've seen. So I do like the new. This is not solely about nostalgia. New isn't bad as long as the core principles and the old story are reasonably respected. In TOS, women were definitely second-class as officers, and objectified in many episodes. Those are things I am glad that have been abandoned, and it's not hard to understand why they should be. But if it's not harming anyone, why not leave the concept or history as-is. I don't feel that Discovery does that.

I don't feel like there is anything wrong with Burnham being a main character, even as she is (although her decisions and story I still submit don't make sense), but having the focal character be such a confusing mess just is not enjoyable to me. It would be like if TNG's main focus was placed on Reginald Barclay's day-to-day decisions for every episode and we viewed what was going on through his perspective always. Barclay's got some clear problems, and him being the focal character throughout TNG would have distracted from what was going on with the rest of the ship. There is a reason we typically follow the captain, who while often have their own problems, is expected to be overall level-headed and analytical.

Maybe at the end of the series we will find out that Burnham actually did make it to prison, but has been playing out this delusion in her mind ever since the pilot on the transport died and she cracked. Though it's a trope of a solution, it's not an ending that's been done on Star Trek yet, and it would be far more believable to me than what the show is currently asking that I accept. A lot of people think of the controversy surrounding Burnham in particular as some sort of gender-based difference of opinion, and I bring this up because a conclusion like the one I just suggested would no-doubt be overly-scrutinized for relegating Burnham and her accomplishments to the realm of "crazy". While I feel that, I still would prefer such an ending, again because of Star Trek's history. It's not as if there's never been a female lead.

Star Trek is known for having leads of all types on it's shows. We've had several women captains and admirals portrayed in movies and TV shows. And Janeway was both captain and main lead on Voyager.

 
Honestly, my suggested ending here could even explain why women are treated so poorly in TOS. Perhaps it's a rather dark time for women in the Federation's history after Burnham did what she did, and the final episode not only reveals that not only had Burnham been delusional this entire time, but there is a resistance to the poor treatment of women, breaking her out. Idk. At this point, I am just making-up anything that might work as a logical explanation for the events and characters I've been witnessing. That is how little I want to believe that the events of Star Trek Discovery are actually a part of cannon.

So far, my experience watching Star Trek Discovery is just wanting this to end up being a bad case of the hiccups, to be doused with water and quickly forgotten. I apologize to any fans of this series, and I truly hope the show is able to evolve to feel like it fits better and everyone can be pleased with what is on screen.

For what it's worth, I do like some things. I loved the opening scene of episode one. I adore Saru, in both character and species design. I do really like the idea of the spore drive, and utilizing some sort of multidimensional mycelial network for interstellar travel. This idea is probably no less fantastical than warp drive, and I enjoyed the inclusion of the macroscopic tardigrade within the plot. I loved the creativity of those ideas very much, but again--far past this point in future cannon there is only warp drive--I feel disappointed that this couldn't have been introduced as an aside with another species, rather than something so big and vital being now a part of Starfleet and included as cannon. 

How come when Voyager was thrown into the delta quadrant, the crew didn't just turn all it's attention toward discovering a workaround within the mycelial network? It is for those reasons, plus the strange happenings within the Klingon War of season one, that makes me say the show needs to find a way to somehow say none of these things ever happened or that this is some new timeline or mirror universe.

I'm only on season two, so maybe they will? I don't do reviews very often on this site, and perhaps I should. I used to write reviews for a local magazine, and enjoyed that. Perhaps I will catch up later and give my thoughts on later seasons. My book is nearly complete and I am hoping to release it within the next year, so look out for that. I've been working slowly as I continue towards finishing my bachelors degree and focus on my children.

In the mean time, perhaps as the show moves forward, the stories will change. Perhaps I will change my feelings as well. Maybe I will eventually find that catharsis I was looking for in Discovery. As it is, I am looking forward to Strange New Worlds, and I intend to slowly move on from there to The Next Generation, and finally work through Deep Space Nine (which I have only seen a few episodes of), and finally I will rewatch Voyager, at some point. Probably this will take years, and will be a stop-and-go venture as I move between series. But I will boldly retrace those memories that came before, hoping to keep encouraging the next exploration of the final frontier.