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resplendentgoldenwings · 4 years

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Thoughts About Star Trek Discovery 3x06, Trust is a Two Way Street

After reading the synopsis and seeing reactions to the episode I must admit to having trepidation going into the episode. I was hoping as is of the case that fandom was overreacting and my concerns would be allayed when I watched.

They were not.

First it must be acknowledged that the main plot of the episode feels extremely contrived. As a long time viewer of Star Trek similar conflicts have come up in previous shows without creating this type of contention and drama. In TNG Worf repeatedly left to pursue personal missions and other officers in Star Trek shows have done the same.

Usually they just request leave if it conflicts with their duty and the captain grants it. In Disco though, as is often the case with Disco situation like blow up into unnecessary dramas. So I am first and foremost disappointed that the characters were put into this contrived ass situation in the first place.

That said I think what happened was interesting and the writing choices left me hoping that this is actually going some place good, time will tell I suppose.

That out of the way here are my thoughts on the episode.

Saru Was Wrong

I want to start with Saru because he’s the captain, he’s the one with the rank and the power and therefore he is the one whose responsible. Saru was wrong Michael was wrong too but Saru’s error in some way is actually more important even though it seems smaller at first blush.

First let’s go back a moment to season 2. When Saru is on his death bed he asks Michael to attend him and cut off his ganglia. She’s hesitant and emotionally overwhelmed in the situation but he reassures her that it’s the right thing to do and even goes so far as to call her his sister.

So what happens when this sister goes to herself proclaimed brother with a problem? He shuts her down without a moment’s hesitation or consideration. Never mind that this man is important to her, never mind that he maybe got into trouble trying to help her with something that would benefit Starfleet and The Federation, nope fuck all that. Nope fuck all that, fuck everything we been through gotta impress this admiral.

Now look I get it when you’re in the military you follow orders, but when you’re promoted to a leadership position you also have to think about the well being of your crew as well as cultivate the discernment to know what to know what is of value and what should be dismissed. The admiral himself pointed out that Saru should have brought it to him and chastised Saru for behaving like an automaton and blindly following orders.

All that said two wrongs don’t make a right.

As annoyed as I was with Saru I was also somewhat annoyed with Michael who also didn’t bother to exercise any other options or even trying to convince Saru otherwise. Honestly my irritation with this choice for her goes all the way back to s1. If you’re in an organization like this you don’t go outside the chain of command you work within it. She cares about Book and was obviously feeling a sense of urgency given that it took the ship three weeks to reach Discovery but she could have taken 30 minutes to try and exercise some other options, first trying to convince Saru, second she could have just gone over his head.

I’m not going to go too far on this because most people can see where Michael was wrong.

With Friends Like These...

Tilly bothered me tremendously in this episode. I can’t help it, she just did. Someone pointed out in another discussion that Tilly’s thinking as community minded and it get that but it’s still not sitting well with me largely because of the focus on impressing this admiral --a new and unknown individual-- over someone you know and up until this point have trusted. It’s vaguely icky and puts me in mind of both Tilly and Saru’s behavior in season one.

And one really has to question themselves when a Terran is a better friend than you..

I’m not gonna go through the whole episode. I enjoyed the stuff with Book, especially when Michael and Book were gazing into each other’s eyes that was wonderful, the kiss, though. Sonequa really didn’t want to kiss that dude, dang. haha...

Facing the Music

Once everything is settled Michael presents the black box to Saru and the two of them meet with Admiral Vance. The meeting is short and more or less as expected with Admiral Vance letting Michael chastise herself. However what jumps out at me in this scene is the way the admiral chastises Saru, questioning why he didn’t bring the mission to him and challenging Saru to be more than a mindless automaton.

Saru then proceeds to chastise Michael and temporarily relieve her of her command duties. The thing that stands out to me in Saru’s dialogue is that though he reflects that he erred in the situation he does not see that he erred in how he related to Michael instead he seems to question if he erred in asking her to serve as first officer in the first place. He dismisses the suggestion that perhaps he handled the situation poorly in the first place.

This episode is in truth more telling about Saru as captain than it is about Michael as a person or a Starfleet officer. Michael as always choses the action that she deems to help the most people and harm the least.

Saru and Michael together could be a great command team but Saru is either unwilling or unable to accept that he and Michael have complimentary strengths and weakness. For example Saru couldn’t figure out how to speak up to the admiral to keep the Disco crew together, it was Michael who challenged the admiral on that and rightfully so.

This is why I said trust is a two way street. Michael was wrong but why should she trust Saru to have her back when so far hasn’t demonstrated that he does. When she needs something from him impressing the admiral is more important.

It’s difficult to see where the narrative is going with this. In 3x03 we see a Michael who is questioning where she belongs, in 3x06 we come back to this question. In a reddit discussion someone questioned why Admiral Vance would even suggests that Saru erred in front of Michael since she’s his subordiante.

It did make me wonder if that was poor writing or something else. One thing that occurs to me is that Vance is actually evaluating both of them as captain. For Starfleet in the 32nd century Discovery is a valuable asset, if a crew of randos from the 23rd century appeared from nowhere I’d certainly be doubting if I trusted them and if I wanted to leave something as valuable as that ship with its 23rd century crew tbh.

If I found out the captain of that ship was an acting captain, who’d assumed command after serving as first officer under a Terran and then a captain for all of two years idk if I’d be satisfied that this person was actually ready to be captain. I think Michael’s mutiny was struck from the record so if he doesn’t have that info I could easily see him evaluating her for the position just as well especially since she seems more confident, assertive, thoughtful and creative.

It would be interesting if this ultimately somehow leads to Michael being made captain at the end of this season. I’m not convinced that is where this is going but this rift has to be healed for the show to move forward and I don’t think this contrived plot was created just to pile on Michael again, at least I hope not. That theme is old, tired and should be over with.

Overall I’d put this as the weakest episode of the season and while I am annoyed with the contrived plot I’ll be reserving judgement until the full storyline unfolds.

@michaelburnhamfanclub

#Star Trek Disco #Michael Burnham #Captain Saru #Sylvia Tilly #Cleveland Booker #Grudge #also fuck tilly #fuck her right in the ear

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kendrixtermina · 4 years

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Sigh. Chibnall.

Jodie Whittaker and demographic realism

So I want to make clear that I have no problems whatsoever with Jodie Whittaker’s performance - the character seamlessly kept walking across the screen, she has great energy, love the steampunk goggles.

Honestly I’ve always believed that giving existing characters a demographic change is not really as revolutionary or helpful as ppl think; New characters and stories (esp. told by writers of those samedemographics) solve the problem much better. Keeping specificity is often better than losing it, and the character still has a background (from an “advanced” civilization that used to do dirty deeds and is still kind of uppity attitudes, a character who’s decided to be against that attitude but still needs to be knocked own from the occasional uppity moment; It makes sense for them to look like a british dude, and they have the freedom to go wherever problems like sexism and racism don’t exist so... ), and will be linked to its origin. But at worst something that will look dated in a few years like the 80s outfits, the show’s done dated and crowdpleasing before; There’s no hard reason not to do it and I expected no quality dip.

It certainly worked as as attention grab, the premiere drew a lot of attention but that only lasted as long as it took for the reviews to go sour. But one of the main good things its proponents said could come of it was to help the lack of female anti heroes. So far she really didn’t get to anti hero much; It’s not Whittaker, it’s the scripts.

I want to make this clear: Varied demograpics are good;

This is why I kind of hate the term “diversity” is one of those vague euphemisms if you mean “demographic representation”, “social equity” or “demographic realism” just say that.

In a way this is a good thing, it used to be only the best boldest writers who could get away, noadays it has become acceptable to have varied casts. And that’s how it should be artshouldn’t have to have to pass some arbitrary quality standard to simply reflect reality. But as the rebootverse and star trek discovery should’ve proved realistic demographics can’t replace good writing. Sometimes lack of realistic demographis is associated with bad writing because both come from play-it-safe more-of-the-same consummerism focussed sameyness, often someone who goes against the formulas has a solid vision which makes them good, and focussing on ignored topics and perspectives can yield new ideas (consider stuff like Wonder Woman, Get Out, Black Panther... which were just good, novel movies) but you could have a super interesting memorable story where everyone is a medieval european monk, but the characters are differentiated by personality, attitude, beliefs, or something where the cast ticks all sort of all demographic boxes but the characters are 1D and the story trite and predictable

On the one hand you get those gamergate adjacent fanboys who make “diversity” and “good writing” out to be enimical opposites and then you have the purists/antis who treat any critique of writing to be founded in having something against realistic demographics. You need both!

Series 11

There were good things about it: An attempt at leastto do more of your classic thought provoking space operas or going back to the shows’ pulp fiction roots, covering some historic periods/topics other than the classic historical fiction tropes (they got a pakistani writer, had Yaz and Ryan discuss social topics among themselves etc.), the emotional story centered around this family coping with a loss, having Ryan sort of be the “main” companion and the one the rest of the team is protective of

But overall the reason I didn’t rush to watch s12 as soon as it came out is that it was a bit... bland. The team interacted mostly with each other; The Doctor had more charge with one shot characters like King James or the Solitract than she really did with the companions. Graham was such a missed opportunity. Remember how everyone loved the dynamic with Wilfred? No attempt to strike a bond over how they’re the older party members, or the professional xenophile trying to nudge the bilbo baggins like reluctant hero? We’re told the Doctor really likes Yaz, and I believe it cause she always liked people like that, but are we shown?

For all that Moffat and RTD were very different writers with different strenghts and weaknesses, both were very character-driven writers, and that was really missing here a bit.

Some ppl said they didn’t give Yaz enough screentime or personality - but the thing is, they did try. They just failed. They let her make little remarks here and there about her homelife, they just never really assembled into a whole beyond buzzwords and inspirational platitudes and the Standard Companion Traits. I didn’t get a read on what she’s about or who she’s like until the pakisan episode where she unlike Barbara, Donna etc. immediately accepted that the past can’t be changed. Ah, I finally thought, she’s a very responsible dutiful person.

Everything lacks edges and defining moments.

So far, I didn’t sweat it. I though, ok, not everything can be the high-concept character driven spec fic epic type of story that is my personal favorite. Every time there was some addition to the mythos in any way someone cried ruined forever. When the time lords first appeared. When the time war was introduced.

The classics too were lower on the character driven ness; Still good pulp fiction content. (imho the character concepts themselves were often pretty good, just not used to the fullest and some of the actresses were treated crappy backstage)

I thought “okey, it wouldn’t be good to break with the tradition of making the sussequent incarnations contrasting”

I did think that there was much liberty with the additions which the others did do only towards the end when it feltmore earned, but, the addition of say, sisters, isn’t too disruptive

Series 12 and the Timeless Child Nonsense

The frustrating thing about this is that it COULD have been good.

The Master teaming up with the cybermen to try and take over Gallifrey is precisely the sort of story the classics would’ve done.

“Your society is founded on a shady secret and exploitation of the innocent” is a good plot twist especially in these times. The Master finding that secret and using it to his advantage - also very him.

Imagine what it could have been like if it had been approached from the perspective of someone who, for all that they were a rebel, still sort of profited from being part of that society, someone who wants to take responsibility for that past and would maybe have to make some tough choice to let the exploitation victim go because it’s right even if it has cosequences for themselves and their civilization.

but then you ruin that by immediately taking the protagonist out of that society. They and they alone are the victim.

like this plot could have been good except for the twist that the Doctor and the timeless child are the same.

Not connecting it to existing lore about the earlier war game days, everything with Omega and Rassilon, that bit about the Time Lord becoming what they were through exposure to the untempered schism... that might be forgiven. Even if it does stretch the suspension of disbelief that every single piece of sci fi scanning equipment in the show didn’t pick anything up; Not to mention that it destroys the stake on every heroic sacrifice or death prophecy plot, every time a companion or oneshot character took the bullet, the whole “out of regens” plot...

This is not me being mad about things being added or changed, but this being done in such a way that undermines the philosophy, the whole flavor...

Yes, the MC is mysterious, the 7th Doctor arcs did a lot with this etc. but doesn’t spelling something out this clear not deplete rather than add to that? It#s a definite answer even if the final origin isn’t clear.

But they’re so much else.

The trickster hero accomplishing great deeds with planning, guile, improvisation and duct tape, the implicit value that ressourcefulness trumps raw power.

The rebel, different because they chose to be or made themselves to be such through their adventures, sticking to their own values in a close-minded society - who embodies & encourages thinking for yourself in every situation and universal plot, who battles enemies like the Daleks and Cybermen that represent comformity

Yeah they have many names yeah they take out gods... but all this was the result of their actions & path in pursuit of knowledge, and also, as Moffat once stated, the funny part is that behind all the fearsome reputation is wit and duct tape.

The fish in a small pond who started out a misfit, failed their tardis driving exam... etc. and often made a point that they didn’t want immortality or endless godlike power. That’s meaningless if they had it to begin with.

The explorer who wanted to see more than their corner of the world.

The ANTI HERO that’s made alltogether too tragic here, too absolved from their uppity civilization

All that is wiped away if they were this special creature to begin with.

Where WAS the philosophy, rly? The big humanist speeches that made me love the show.

Going Forward

So I think - I HOPE - that this in particular will be treated like the “half human” thing from the TV movie or the now josses additional origin stories from the audios, or be handwaved under the “you cant get it wrong cause everything is in flux” carpet

It’s the Master effing with her to pay her back for the half broken chameleon arch thing.

It’s possible the Child actually existed, long dead or trapped somewhere - again, dirty mystery at the bottom of a stck-up society is a good twist. but this shouldn’t be more than another maybe in the multiple choice past not a definite answer.

Also, i hate this line of thought but I can’t stave it off: Why is is now that the MC looks female that we get this vulnerable, passively victimized tomato surprise rather than something with an ugly but definite choice in it.

I will probably ignore it - parts of me resents this cause “your civilization is based on a lie” could be such a good plot twist (then again the existing twists to that end from the classics and End of Time do enough rly) but if i have to choose between that and the basic meaning of the character....

#Doctor Who #timeless child #chris chibnall

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