Re:Celebrating Gene Roddenberry's 100th Birthday
by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Friday August 20, 2021 @09:22AM
(#28245619)
They squandered so much opportunity in Season 3 it is mind boggling. It's like they hired a competent writer about half way through and then threw away all of their work and completely rewrote the last episode.
The Burn was a really good idea. It fundamentally changed the rules of space travel in the Trek world and provided a great mystery and possible existential threat that could lurk in the background for several seasons. It also gave future!starfleet a reason to take the main cast with their 1k-years-out-of-date ship seriously (even though I think the spore drive is kinda stupid in general). Instead it was all the power of some child's grief and we fixed it already.
Osyraa could have been the next Dukat. She was introduced as a 1 dimensional villain, but her plan to unite the Emerald Chain and federation showed us that there was more to her. Maybe she was only as cruel as she was because that's what it took for her to attain enough power to make meaningful change for the betterment of the galaxy? If Admiral wossname had accepted the plan it would have been interesting to see federation idealists struggle with having to compromise those ideals if they want to achieve their goals, and to have to work with someone they think of as a monster to do it. There could have been several In The Pale Moonlight moments, and maybe not all of them end with "I can live with it". Instead we kill off Osyraa (death by Burnham even) and hit the fucking reset button on the Emerald Chain.
Burnham could have been Han Solo. She was never Starfleet material: she can't follow orders, has no discipline, and displays no leadership abilities whatsoever. She can't motivate people, she doesn't inspire confidence, and she does her best work alone. She even had her own Millennium Falcon and Chewbacca, plus Grudge. Tilly is clearly the better leader: she projects confidence even when terrified, she keeps her cool under pressure, she inspires loyalty, she can motivate people, and her crew knows she cares about them. Yeah, she's an Ensign so it's a little wild she ended up in the chair at all, but you know what? Those people have been through some shit and when it comes right down to it, chain of command or no, people are going to follow the person who can lead them and Tilly can do that. Burnham can't do that, she spent 2 seasons and change proving it. So what do we get? Burnham in the captain's chair and Tilly edited into a Science uniform. What the fuck?
...I could go on, probably for several hours, but I'll just say one more thing:
The hack writers working on this show are actually a great fit for the Mirror Universe stuff. Their brand of ridiculous just works in that place. They should hire replacements who can actually write to do Discovery and have this group do a Mirror Universe series.
The Burn was a really good idea. It fundamentally changed the rules of space travel in the Trek world and provided a great mystery and possible existential threat that could lurk in the background for several seasons. It also gave future!starfleet a reason to take the main cast with their 1k-years-out-of-date ship seriously (even though I think the spore drive is kinda stupid in general). Instead it was all the power of some child's grief and we fixed it already.
Osyraa could have been the next Dukat. She was introduced as a 1 dimensional villain, but her plan to unite the Emerald Chain and federation showed us that there was more to her. Maybe she was only as cruel as she was because that's what it took for her to attain enough power to make meaningful change for the betterment of the galaxy? If Admiral wossname had accepted the plan it would have been interesting to see federation idealists struggle with having to compromise those ideals if they want to achieve their goals, and to have to work with someone they think of as a monster to do it. There could have been several In The Pale Moonlight moments, and maybe not all of them end with "I can live with it". Instead we kill off Osyraa (death by Burnham even) and hit the fucking reset button on the Emerald Chain.
Burnham could have been Han Solo. She was never Starfleet material: she can't follow orders, has no discipline, and displays no leadership abilities whatsoever. She can't motivate people, she doesn't inspire confidence, and she does her best work alone. She even had her own Millennium Falcon and Chewbacca, plus Grudge. Tilly is clearly the better leader: she projects confidence even when terrified, she keeps her cool under pressure, she inspires loyalty, she can motivate people, and her crew knows she cares about them. Yeah, she's an Ensign so it's a little wild she ended up in the chair at all, but you know what? Those people have been through some shit and when it comes right down to it, chain of command or no, people are going to follow the person who can lead them and Tilly can do that. Burnham can't do that, she spent 2 seasons and change proving it. So what do we get? Burnham in the captain's chair and Tilly edited into a Science uniform. What the fuck?
...I could go on, probably for several hours, but I'll just say one more thing:
The hack writers working on this show are actually a great fit for the Mirror Universe stuff. Their brand of ridiculous just works in that place. They should hire replacements who can actually write to do Discovery and have this group do a Mirror Universe series.