this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Star Trek Discovery is a perfect example of how to build wonderful support characters and ideas, but have terrible main characters and story execution.
Literally all of the supporting characters, like Saru, Tilly, Staments, Culber, Reno, Adira........they're fantastic characters.
Burnham, and by virtue nearly every character she frequently interacts with, are tainted. She's a Mary Su, fixer of all things, get out of writer's block free card. Even when they "kick her down", she still comes back as the solution when the writers run out of ideas. Even when she jumped into the future, the writers just couldn't fucking help themselves with the prions and making her immediately say "I'm smart and the best. You should do this" to an admiral with an entire swath of doctors and advisors available. Somehow she's jumped hundreds of years into the future and is supposed to be out of her depth, but is the expert? Fuck off.
Saru and Tilly somehow comes out mostly untainted, but Georgio, Booker, etc. all get overshadowed by her shit character design by virtue of being joined at the hip with her story.
Also, the stories always build up to some "grand reveal" that is utterly stupid. Dilithium exploded because feelings. DMA "oops our bad" aliens. Shitty Klingons. An AI that never heard of backups.
The most interesting arcs are the Emerald Chain, Aroam's sacrifice, and Zora. Like....Ariam's sacrificial story was AMAZING. Why tf didn't they do stories like that the rest of the time???
If they had spent less time making Burnham the solution to everything while promoting her shit self to Captain and written things that built to a satisfying conclusion, it could have been a good show.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a good show.
I will go to my grave insisting that Tilly is the most grating, annoying character in Star Trek. How does she go from a bumbling idiot to an officer in like two seasons? They tried too hard to make her character progress and they pushed it too far
To be fair Worf went from "Klingon" to security chief in like half an episode
@AbsoluteChicagoDog @But_my_mom_says_im_cool
And then he gets nerfed in like half the episodes.
I don't mind Tilly's character. Her growth felt organic to me. She just always had a lack of confidence. At least she started out bad at everything and lacking confidence and they developer her. Michael just STARTED as the miracle child and then they had to pathetically try and claw her back.
That said, I can understand why some people didn't like her. She wasn't for everyone.
Her growth was my issue, if she had started as a bumbling, no confidence ensign and ended as a confident crew member on her way to joining officer school (which takes like 8 years!) that would be believable growth. But she went from a bumbling no confidence ensign to a badass commander/officer. The show wasnt long enough for that level of growth.
She's on the same level as Cameron from "Halt and Catch Fire". I can't enjoy anything else that actor is in like Station 11.
The same way every person becomes an officer IRL, they become a bumbling idiot of a butterbar first
I think the mirror universe arc was the best. The idea of going into the far future was good, if poorly executed. I also worry they've written themselves into a corner now. It's going to restrict any media set post TNG but pre Discovery.
As someone who enjoyed S1 the most, I completely agree. The closest trek yet came to “prestige” and then it slipped away :(
It's no more limiting to TNG era stories than the TNG era itself was to TOS era stories. They can't blow up the Earth or genocide any major races, but beyond that we've been given very little information about any character's future. I didn't find Star Trek VI any less exciting because I knew the Klingon empire would still be around 80 years later, and I'd say SNW is flourishing under far tighter restrictions.
Don't worry. I'm sure Michael Burnham will come back somehow and help the writers get out of their block.
The mirror universe arc was, IMHO, when Georgio was at her most interesting and I also liked it.
Not really. That's a 700 year gap. A LOT can happen in 700 years; Star Trek itself was only set 300 years in the future when it was released.
I see it as freeing: they can have any major event shift the timeline and move Discovery into being merely one possible future instead. No need to constrain themselves to some of the show's more questionable moves.