![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakStill having Star Trek in mind, here are some Discovery thoughts, looking back with the benefit of hindsight:
- Something I’ve changed my mind about or at least am torn on is an opinion I had about when episode 3 and 4 were broadcast, to wit, that the show should have started with episode 3 (Michael Burnham arrives at the Discovery), and told the backstory of Michael, the battle at the binary stars and Philippa Georgiou in flashbacks dispersed through the first few episodes. Here’s why I’ve since then reconsidered: among other things, because Michael’s grief for Philippa Georgiou Prime, her sense of guilt about the events of the series opening two parter and Saru’s grief and resentment are all key motivating forces through the season, and her reaction to MirrorGeorgiou pretty much depends on this. Same with the audience reaction to the reveal of the Emperor as MirrorGeorgiou. And the emotional impact on the audience to Georgiou, meeting her in flashback knowing already she’s dead, might have been different, less intense, as it was when meeting her across two entire episodes right at the start. (Case in point: I don’t think original Trek fandom had much of an attachment to Pike based on The Menagerie alone…)
- Secondly, if you start the show with Lorca as Captain, without showing a different (ethical) Federation Captain first, then Lorca’s general demeanour and command style could have been far easier to take as a narratively approved „man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do“ „toughness“ instead of shadiness, the way Archer was written in the post 9/11 third season of Star Trek: Enteprise. I mean, that was the fear among some watchers anyway, but I think the show played fair in this regard and managed a good balance with Gabriel Lorca: he’s a good enough strategist, manipulative and compelling enough that you can understand why, especially in a war time situation, he wins the crew’s (and Michael’s) loyalty, and that even Cornwell who has known him for decades doesn’t suspect something is seriously wrong until rather late; otoh there are warning signs from the get go. I mean, his introduction episode ends with him having ordered the creature who as far as he knows massacred both a human crew and a Klingon boarding party on board his own ship, right after he’s assured our heroine that no, he’d never use biological weapons.
- And of course there’s the whole Klingon plotline. Now I stand by my initial complaint that redesigning the Klingons both in terms of make-up (seriously limiting to the actors) and characterisation (the first time the Disco era Klingons feel like the TNG/DS9/Voy/Ent Klingons is on Q’onos in the season finale, when you have the space Viking partying along with the fighting stuff) wasn’t good, but regardless of how successful it was, given the overall importance of the Klingon war, and of Tyler/Voq and L’Rell thereafter to the season, as well as the importance T’Kuvma had for both of them, it makes sense that they were given narrative space in the opening episode. (Mind you, this doesn’t mean I don’t wish the Klingon scenes had been written differently, but that they are there at all does make narrative sense.
- Onwards: tv tropes claims that as late as after ep 12, a viewer complained that the Discovery crew was never shown to have any fun and barely even tolerated each other. How anyone can have that opinion if they’ve watched more than episode 3 is beyond me, because even leaving aside the big crew party of the time loop episode, which because it’s a time loop episode we keep coming back to, the growing relationships throughout the season are a joy to behold. As is Sylvia Tilly, to whom a lot of this is owed, both in her determinedly befriending Michael and in her increasingly warm relationship with her immediate superior at work, Paul Stamets. I love that Tilly is warm and emotional and ambitious to have a career, something you (still) rarely get with female characters, because ambition is coded so often as evil or at least questionable and definitely cold from the get go. I love that Tilly might be a babbler, tending to talk too much when she’s nervous, but also shown as highly observant and smart (she figures out that Stamets isn’t just back to his old grumpy self, but that the use of the spore drive has effects on him, she figures out how to cure him later, and at once realises the implication when told about the active volcanos in the area where the supposed drone will be placed, for example). I love that she’s not presented as perfect; her avoiding Michael in public at first because of not wanting to be socially ostracized isn’t admirable, but it’s a human impulse, and Tilly does draw consequences from her shame over it (notably in the scene where she sits next to Tyler after the Voq reveal and his recovery). I love that Tilly might be the young series regular in this particular crew, but she’s an unabashed hedonist in her downtime, and more socially experienced than the older Michael. (No damsel in distress or teasing-the-inexperienced-virgin stories with Sylvia Tilly.) And lastly, I love that we have an actress playing Tilly who isn’t model-like thin but looks downright chubby in the role, with a mole in her face she didn’t have removed.
- And then there’s the entire relationship between Michael and Saru which by itself would justify the opening two parter (as opposed to giving their backstory in a few flashbacks); when Saru is the first to stand at Michael’s side for Federation principles in the scene with Cornwell in the finale, the contrast to him not buying her „Georgiou changed her mind and told me to go ahead with shooting at the Klingons“ for a second in the pilot couldn’t be greater, and yet we got to see how these two got to this point, and it’s Beautiful
- The reveal of Stamets and Culber as a couple remains adorable in its casual intimacy; unfortunately, knowing the entire season still doesn’t provide me with a good reason why Culber had to die instead of being left in the proverbial tv coma, which would have accomplished the same plot purposes (demonstrate how dangerous Voq can be – so far the audience had only seen him hurt his own hand and lose fights while still a Klingon – and of course settle once and for all that Tyler is indeed Voq as opposed to being a brainwashed human) and wouldn’t mean we all now are still wondering how they’re going to bring the character back, given Wilson Cruz is listed as a regular for s2
- Back in the 90s, when Sisko said „It’s easy to be a saint in paradise“ on DS9, in became systematic for DS9’s darker approach to Trek, exploring more than once our heroes making moral compromises while still trying to be true to their principles. And Enterprise really suffered from post 9/11 syndrome, where Archer had to be literally posessed to have the idea that saving the children of an enemy responsible for attacking one’s homeworld might be a good thing. In a way, Discovery‘s first season is a reply and the reverse: „it’s easy to be a devil in hell“, with the dark situations our regulars find themselves in – the Klingon war and then the Mirrorverse – bringing out their inner light and choice to do the right over the dark but easy thing. Which is why it irritates me if I see Discovery described as grimdark Trek, when it’s the very opposite, as should be clear from the moment Michael tells Lorca in episode 3 when she suspects him of wanting to recruit her because he needs someone willing to go against Federation principles (she’s not entirely wrong, as it turns out, but for different reasons than those she assumes at that point) that she’d rather spend the rest of her life in prison, and demonstrates throughout the rest of the season that she walks the walk in addition to talking the talk.
- Discovery has the best use of the Mirrorverse since TOS, hands down. I mean, I enjoy the first two DS9 mirrorverse eps as much as the next fan, and Diane Duane’s TNG Mirroverse novel is fun to read, but what elevates its narrative use on Disco beyond a fun romp allowing the regular cast to play camp evil is its connection to the above mentioned general story. The Mirrorverse is the ultimate consequence of „A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do/Getting your hands dirty, ethics are for losers“ which became stronger and stronger not just on tv in the last decades. (And of course of the rejection of any multicultural society in favour of war-on-all-that-is-different which the Klingons are indulging at that point.) It really does hold up a dark mirror, which is why in retrospect it’s so fitting that Lorca, who prides himself on having turned „a bunch of polite scientists into soldiers“, is revealed to have been MirrorLorca all this time, and why our heroes, after having experienced this, are ready to reject the Mirroverse (literally, since it’s presented by MirrorGeorgiou) genocidal solution to the Klingon War in the end. It’s not an naive, but a very informed choice.
- But yes, of course it’s also plain id fun to see Tilly posing as Captain Killy, or Michelle Yeoh as Emperor Philippa Georgiou; btw, as someone wiser than me first pointed out, all the Mirrorverse eps illustrate the difference Star Trek’s first female instead of a male designer can make, as those Terran Empire uniforms manage to be sexy without being male-gazey.
- Not a fan of the two Mudd episodes on TOS, so it surprised me how much I liked what Discovery did with him. Still an amoral conman with some good lines, but here you see how dangerous his brand of selfishness can be. „Magic to make the sanest man go mad“ might be my favourite individual episode of the season, for many reasons, including the clever use of the time loop trope, Michael bonding with Stamets, and Michael’s inventive and brave way to make Mudd go for another loop at a point where ostensibly he’s won.
- Katrina Cornwell, or, finally that „actor is originally hired for a short appearance but impresses everyone so much that character isn’t killed off but brought back repeatedly“ thing happens to a woman! Starfleet admirals usually are just there for Captains to argue with, with exceptions, see Archer’s paternal mentor on Enterprise, but Bureaucrat Admirals Who Just Don’t Get It are the norm, and so what the show pulls off here with Cornwell and Lorca is a neat revearsal of conditioned audience expectations. On the serious side, the most impressive Cornwell scene for me was when she talks a seriously flashbacking Tyler out of his stupor and into some ability to help her while they’re both attacked by Klingons and she’s unable to move her legs. On the amusing side, her phasering Lorca’s fortune cookies out of existence after having found out he was an impostor will never not be funny.
- Really, the only character who just does not work for me is Landry Prime. (Which is why I’m not sad she’s not around for long.) Yes, in retrospect she’s an early signaller about Lorca, but he’s only been around in the Prime Verse for ca. seven months by the time Michael shows up, and she must have had a career in Starfleet before he made her his chief of security, i.e. at a time where there was no war and thus no need for emergency drafts. How that was possible with her misanthropic attitude (referring to prisoners as animals) and stupidity (even with zero empathy for the tardigrade, it should have been obvious to her what the dangers of her plan were) beats me. A bit less on the nose „this woman is evil“ characterisation, please.
- Something I’ve changed my mind about or at least am torn on is an opinion I had about when episode 3 and 4 were broadcast, to wit, that the show should have started with episode 3 (Michael Burnham arrives at the Discovery), and told the backstory of Michael, the battle at the binary stars and Philippa Georgiou in flashbacks dispersed through the first few episodes. Here’s why I’ve since then reconsidered: among other things, because Michael’s grief for Philippa Georgiou Prime, her sense of guilt about the events of the series opening two parter and Saru’s grief and resentment are all key motivating forces through the season, and her reaction to MirrorGeorgiou pretty much depends on this. Same with the audience reaction to the reveal of the Emperor as MirrorGeorgiou. And the emotional impact on the audience to Georgiou, meeting her in flashback knowing already she’s dead, might have been different, less intense, as it was when meeting her across two entire episodes right at the start. (Case in point: I don’t think original Trek fandom had much of an attachment to Pike based on The Menagerie alone…)
- Secondly, if you start the show with Lorca as Captain, without showing a different (ethical) Federation Captain first, then Lorca’s general demeanour and command style could have been far easier to take as a narratively approved „man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do“ „toughness“ instead of shadiness, the way Archer was written in the post 9/11 third season of Star Trek: Enteprise. I mean, that was the fear among some watchers anyway, but I think the show played fair in this regard and managed a good balance with Gabriel Lorca: he’s a good enough strategist, manipulative and compelling enough that you can understand why, especially in a war time situation, he wins the crew’s (and Michael’s) loyalty, and that even Cornwell who has known him for decades doesn’t suspect something is seriously wrong until rather late; otoh there are warning signs from the get go. I mean, his introduction episode ends with him having ordered the creature who as far as he knows massacred both a human crew and a Klingon boarding party on board his own ship, right after he’s assured our heroine that no, he’d never use biological weapons.
- And of course there’s the whole Klingon plotline. Now I stand by my initial complaint that redesigning the Klingons both in terms of make-up (seriously limiting to the actors) and characterisation (the first time the Disco era Klingons feel like the TNG/DS9/Voy/Ent Klingons is on Q’onos in the season finale, when you have the space Viking partying along with the fighting stuff) wasn’t good, but regardless of how successful it was, given the overall importance of the Klingon war, and of Tyler/Voq and L’Rell thereafter to the season, as well as the importance T’Kuvma had for both of them, it makes sense that they were given narrative space in the opening episode. (Mind you, this doesn’t mean I don’t wish the Klingon scenes had been written differently, but that they are there at all does make narrative sense.
- Onwards: tv tropes claims that as late as after ep 12, a viewer complained that the Discovery crew was never shown to have any fun and barely even tolerated each other. How anyone can have that opinion if they’ve watched more than episode 3 is beyond me, because even leaving aside the big crew party of the time loop episode, which because it’s a time loop episode we keep coming back to, the growing relationships throughout the season are a joy to behold. As is Sylvia Tilly, to whom a lot of this is owed, both in her determinedly befriending Michael and in her increasingly warm relationship with her immediate superior at work, Paul Stamets. I love that Tilly is warm and emotional and ambitious to have a career, something you (still) rarely get with female characters, because ambition is coded so often as evil or at least questionable and definitely cold from the get go. I love that Tilly might be a babbler, tending to talk too much when she’s nervous, but also shown as highly observant and smart (she figures out that Stamets isn’t just back to his old grumpy self, but that the use of the spore drive has effects on him, she figures out how to cure him later, and at once realises the implication when told about the active volcanos in the area where the supposed drone will be placed, for example). I love that she’s not presented as perfect; her avoiding Michael in public at first because of not wanting to be socially ostracized isn’t admirable, but it’s a human impulse, and Tilly does draw consequences from her shame over it (notably in the scene where she sits next to Tyler after the Voq reveal and his recovery). I love that Tilly might be the young series regular in this particular crew, but she’s an unabashed hedonist in her downtime, and more socially experienced than the older Michael. (No damsel in distress or teasing-the-inexperienced-virgin stories with Sylvia Tilly.) And lastly, I love that we have an actress playing Tilly who isn’t model-like thin but looks downright chubby in the role, with a mole in her face she didn’t have removed.
- And then there’s the entire relationship between Michael and Saru which by itself would justify the opening two parter (as opposed to giving their backstory in a few flashbacks); when Saru is the first to stand at Michael’s side for Federation principles in the scene with Cornwell in the finale, the contrast to him not buying her „Georgiou changed her mind and told me to go ahead with shooting at the Klingons“ for a second in the pilot couldn’t be greater, and yet we got to see how these two got to this point, and it’s Beautiful
- The reveal of Stamets and Culber as a couple remains adorable in its casual intimacy; unfortunately, knowing the entire season still doesn’t provide me with a good reason why Culber had to die instead of being left in the proverbial tv coma, which would have accomplished the same plot purposes (demonstrate how dangerous Voq can be – so far the audience had only seen him hurt his own hand and lose fights while still a Klingon – and of course settle once and for all that Tyler is indeed Voq as opposed to being a brainwashed human) and wouldn’t mean we all now are still wondering how they’re going to bring the character back, given Wilson Cruz is listed as a regular for s2
- Back in the 90s, when Sisko said „It’s easy to be a saint in paradise“ on DS9, in became systematic for DS9’s darker approach to Trek, exploring more than once our heroes making moral compromises while still trying to be true to their principles. And Enterprise really suffered from post 9/11 syndrome, where Archer had to be literally posessed to have the idea that saving the children of an enemy responsible for attacking one’s homeworld might be a good thing. In a way, Discovery‘s first season is a reply and the reverse: „it’s easy to be a devil in hell“, with the dark situations our regulars find themselves in – the Klingon war and then the Mirrorverse – bringing out their inner light and choice to do the right over the dark but easy thing. Which is why it irritates me if I see Discovery described as grimdark Trek, when it’s the very opposite, as should be clear from the moment Michael tells Lorca in episode 3 when she suspects him of wanting to recruit her because he needs someone willing to go against Federation principles (she’s not entirely wrong, as it turns out, but for different reasons than those she assumes at that point) that she’d rather spend the rest of her life in prison, and demonstrates throughout the rest of the season that she walks the walk in addition to talking the talk.
- Discovery has the best use of the Mirrorverse since TOS, hands down. I mean, I enjoy the first two DS9 mirrorverse eps as much as the next fan, and Diane Duane’s TNG Mirroverse novel is fun to read, but what elevates its narrative use on Disco beyond a fun romp allowing the regular cast to play camp evil is its connection to the above mentioned general story. The Mirrorverse is the ultimate consequence of „A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do/Getting your hands dirty, ethics are for losers“ which became stronger and stronger not just on tv in the last decades. (And of course of the rejection of any multicultural society in favour of war-on-all-that-is-different which the Klingons are indulging at that point.) It really does hold up a dark mirror, which is why in retrospect it’s so fitting that Lorca, who prides himself on having turned „a bunch of polite scientists into soldiers“, is revealed to have been MirrorLorca all this time, and why our heroes, after having experienced this, are ready to reject the Mirroverse (literally, since it’s presented by MirrorGeorgiou) genocidal solution to the Klingon War in the end. It’s not an naive, but a very informed choice.
- But yes, of course it’s also plain id fun to see Tilly posing as Captain Killy, or Michelle Yeoh as Emperor Philippa Georgiou; btw, as someone wiser than me first pointed out, all the Mirrorverse eps illustrate the difference Star Trek’s first female instead of a male designer can make, as those Terran Empire uniforms manage to be sexy without being male-gazey.
- Not a fan of the two Mudd episodes on TOS, so it surprised me how much I liked what Discovery did with him. Still an amoral conman with some good lines, but here you see how dangerous his brand of selfishness can be. „Magic to make the sanest man go mad“ might be my favourite individual episode of the season, for many reasons, including the clever use of the time loop trope, Michael bonding with Stamets, and Michael’s inventive and brave way to make Mudd go for another loop at a point where ostensibly he’s won.
- Katrina Cornwell, or, finally that „actor is originally hired for a short appearance but impresses everyone so much that character isn’t killed off but brought back repeatedly“ thing happens to a woman! Starfleet admirals usually are just there for Captains to argue with, with exceptions, see Archer’s paternal mentor on Enterprise, but Bureaucrat Admirals Who Just Don’t Get It are the norm, and so what the show pulls off here with Cornwell and Lorca is a neat revearsal of conditioned audience expectations. On the serious side, the most impressive Cornwell scene for me was when she talks a seriously flashbacking Tyler out of his stupor and into some ability to help her while they’re both attacked by Klingons and she’s unable to move her legs. On the amusing side, her phasering Lorca’s fortune cookies out of existence after having found out he was an impostor will never not be funny.
- Really, the only character who just does not work for me is Landry Prime. (Which is why I’m not sad she’s not around for long.) Yes, in retrospect she’s an early signaller about Lorca, but he’s only been around in the Prime Verse for ca. seven months by the time Michael shows up, and she must have had a career in Starfleet before he made her his chief of security, i.e. at a time where there was no war and thus no need for emergency drafts. How that was possible with her misanthropic attitude (referring to prisoners as animals) and stupidity (even with zero empathy for the tardigrade, it should have been obvious to her what the dangers of her plan were) beats me. A bit less on the nose „this woman is evil“ characterisation, please.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-11 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-11 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-11 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-11 10:17 pm (UTC)I think this is another reason it's important that we got the first two episodes -- Picard gave a lot of speeches about the importance of principle, but TNG rarely put him in a position where his principles were compromised.
But when Michael makes her stand against Cornwell and the whole Federation establishment, she's been there, she's made that mistake already. Albeit on a much smaller scale, but her mutiny was driven by the same type of fear. Michael's hands aren't clean, and she knows it, she expects to live with the consequences for the rest of her life.
(And, even with her exoneration, she probably will. She's still widely regarded as the individual who started the war.)
Same! But I've headcanoned around it -- Lorca claims to have been in the Federation for "a year and 221 days" (or maybe he says, "A year. 221 days." Which is more ambiguous, but seven months doesn't approximate to a year, so I think he had a year and roughly seven months in the Federation), and one of the writers said on Twitter that Landry had served under prime!Lorca on the Buran.
So I figure that Lorca had a lot of time to mess with her head, and she probably had her own trauma from the war, making her extra-vulnerable to his manipulations, and bringing out the worst in her. Just like he tries to bring out the worst in his crew, and Georgiou in the Federation.
(This is also how I explain the stupidity of her death -- her judgement is deeply impaired, Lorca's playing her like a fiddle, and she's so focused on keeping him happy that she makes a fatal mistake. Rekha Sharma said that she played mirror!Landry as smiling more than her counterpart, and I have to think that prime!Landry was terribly unhappy before she died.)
no subject
Date: 2018-08-12 04:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-08-12 10:25 am (UTC)That's true. As she herself says, she acted out of fear. Yes, it wasn't selfish fear but fear for others, primarily Georgiou, but Cornwell, Sarek et all by agreeing to MirrorGeorgiou's plan aren't acting out of selfish fear, either. And by letting Michael tell Tilly in the first Mirrorverse ep that fear is what motivates Terrans, the connection is underscored as well.
re: Lorca's amount of time with the Federation, the number he gives (no matter which version) is from the day he and Michael arrive at the Charon backwards, though? The question then is how much time has passed between Context is for Kings and Vaulting Ambition. We know it was six months between the battle of the Binary stars and Michael's arrival on the Discovery, and in the next episode Voq and L'Rell mention it's been seven months since the battle, so I suppose we can roughly go with "one month between episodes".
Anyway, re: Landry, agreed that Lorca undoubtedly manipulated her and pushed her towards an "ends justify means" mentality - but the thing is, Lorca is manipulative towards everyone. And undoubtedly, he picked Tyler as the next security chief because he thought Tyler would be loyal to him personally above the Federation given their shared escape, and due to the Kingon imprisonment would be more ready to use brutal methods if needs must. BUT Tyler, leaving aside his inner Voq, still shows no sign of behaving Landry-like. (Saru, now, Saru being willing to put the Tardigrade through hell even after being told it is likely sentient and suffers in order to save the crew could be the result of his months with Lorca, but then again, it could just as well have been the result of having gone through the loss of the Shenzou and Georgiou.)
I think what prevents me from seeing Landry as tragic is that we're never given a scene where she does anything sympathetic. There's also a difference between, say, Stamets being introduced as snarling into Michael's general direction and the open contempt Landry displays towards all the prisoners with lines straight out of a prison movie. Stamets gets later scenes showing he's actually good at his chosen field, and that he has ethics (substituting himself for the Tardigrade), and that while he has an ego, he's not above actually listening to Michael's imput when it's warranted. Landry in her two episodes never shows regard for anyone but Lorca, never shows even a hint of concern for the people of her ship or anywhere else. Even a minute of showing her with, say, a holo of the Buran (if she served there, though presumably she left/was transferred before it met its fate?), looking sad, or perhaps having to arrange space funerals for all those dead bodies from their sistership and declaring she will do anything to ensure this won't happen to Discovery - anything like that would have helped making her more dimensional, but we didn't get it.
no subject
Date: 2018-08-13 03:54 am (UTC)(And if she was on the Buran, you'd think if anything he'd try and keep her at an arm's length rather than risk someone who knew the real Lorca seeing through him - ala Tom Riker's interaction with O'Brien in "Defiant"....)
no subject
Date: 2018-08-13 04:20 am (UTC)