#'No. Fuck that. I like Voyager's crew but Starfleet can kick rocks.' and as soon as he's pardoned for whatever crimes he just fucks off to

[bumblingbabooshka]

I don’t buy that the entire crew of Voyager would continue on in Starfleet after reaching earth, I think at least half of them quit.

[persephoneofhades]

Star Trek Discovery Review

I liked it!

Now I’m not gonna ever try to say I’m the biggest Trekkie in the world. I’ve only seen one of the five shows all the way through and that’s the original series. I’ve seen a lot of TNG, one episode each of Voyager and DS9, and exactly none of Enterprise. So I don’t necessarily have the history and knowledge that a hard-core Trekkie might have, but I’m putting my opinions out there, anyway.

I’ve been seeing some people say that the dialogue was clunky and they don’t like the new costumes or the new Klingon design or what the fuck ever.

A) I watch a shit ton of shows on the CW, so bad dialogue and heavy-handed plotlines are ALL I ever see. I’m used to that. This was so much better than anything I ever see on the CW and it’s not like Trek has been known for all of it’s super hard-hitting and expert dialogue anyway. 

B) I don’t honestly give much of a shit about the costumes, but given that the colors got switched around from TOS to TNG and the design completely changed (it even changed DURING the show if I’m not mistaken) and I’m not even sure there’s a reason given as to why that makes much sense. The new creators just... wanted something new and liked it better. So I’m not gonna give DSC much flak for doing the same. Personally, I think these look way cooler than the primary color design. If I had to see the characters in Kirk’s fugly yellow-green puke-ish colored shirt, I’d have been more disappointed, honestly.

C) The reason the Kligon design was massively changed from TOS to TNG is reasoned off by Worf in DS9 with a flippant “We don’t talk about it.” So.... why are we upset that there’s a different Klingon design again? Haven’t the creators actually PROMISED there’s a reason for it that presumably won’t be written off as just a “we don’t talk about it” cultural mutation embarrassment? What’s the big fucking deal? They’re aliens, they look weird, get the fuck over it.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, here’s some of other thoughts I had.

Phillipa Georgiou died way too fucking soon. Like I get it, the mentor has to die for the main hero to move forward, but Jason Isaacs is gonna be replacing her as Michael’s new mentor presumably, so it doesn’t sit super well with me that a woman of color is getting replaced by a white(ish) man. Especially since we spent all of two episodes with Phillipa so it’s hard to feel the weight of Michael’s loss when Phillipa dies since there’s not as much time to get attached to the character or the relationship as there probably should be for that moment to have the weight they want it to have. 

That being said, I still believe Michael had a major crush on Phillipa and you can definitely tell that the two were really close with what interactions we’re given. But my sadness came more from losing the character’s potential and my major excitement at seeing Michelle Yeoh kick butt in a Starfleet uniform than anything else. 

The decision to have the first two episodes be to set up Michael’s character and jumpstart the Klingon War plot without introducing the Discovery or most of the main ensemble is a risky one. This show is going to rise or fall based on the chemistry of the main cast and everyone knows the ship (or station) is essentially another character in every Trek show. And they’re holding off on showing us these characters presumably to situate Michael as the main character and put her in a specific mindset that’ll define her relationship with the rest of the crew and give her a place to go from. She’s in a very comfortable spot in the very beginning of the series and almost literally hits rock bottom. She’s got nowhere left to go but up and with a war starting, it’s going to be very difficult for her to find a reason to even try. 

I’m invested in Michael’s character, though. For all that some people found her “Vulcan” dialogue somewhat clunky, I think it’s meant to sound off. She’s not Vulcan, so that type of speech will never come easy to her. And all the years with Phillipa on the Shenzhou will definitely have left their mark. She straight-up admits that her more impulsive actions are born of emotion, of trying to save the crew and her Captain, though in the most logical way she can think of. She’s not Spock, half-Vulcan and half-human. She’s not Data, a robot trying to be human or Seven-of-Nine, a human turned machine who’s relearning to be human. 

She’s a human who spent a significant portion of her life being raised by Vulcans, but we can pretty safely assume she remembers her human childhood to some extent. She’s aware that, as a human, she’s not necessarily required to be emotionless and logical all the time the way Vulcans are. This isn’t a part of her biology, it’s an active choice she makes every moment of her life to be “logical.” 

But she also laughs as she goes to the satellite because she’s having fun and the only word she can find to describe the Klingon relic is “wow.” She gets frustrated and worried very quickly when the Klingons show up and shows very clear signs of PTSD that interferes with her “logical” reasoning and causes her to act more impulsively than she might otherwise. And she’s not as cautious as Saru is, who IS biologically required to be cautious, in the same way that characters like Spock, Data, and Seven-of-Nine were biologically required to be more logical. 

And she seems to have lost all ability to really be “logical” in the face of the destruction of all she’s known for the last seven years, the loss of her Captain and friend, and her imprisonment at the beginning of war she started. A war with an enemy she holds a personal grudge against. An enemy she still has nightmares about. So I’m really intrigued to watch how her character reacts once she’s brought back into the war with a new mentor who is far less inclined towards peace and more “tough-love” oriented than her last one was as far as I can tell. I’m invested in watching how she has to regain her sense of self on the Discovery with the new crew.