Star Trek: Discovery 2.06

[selenak]

In which the most insane plan since Archer thought evolution was destiny is executed on a Star Trek show.



Seriously, as the kids say today, what even? Mind you, ideologically, this is the opposite of what Archer did in s2 of Enterprise, when he and Phlox decided that if they helped one of the two sentient species on a planet medically to survive, the other would never develop into who they were meant to be, therefore, any medical help for species A was improper. But it‘s no less bonkers. Not that I‘m okay with one species hoodwinking another into being killed off at an relatively early age, but what team Discovery did here was basically putting gasoline into fire, especially since they couldn‘t count on the angel ex machina appearing. They could have triggered genocide, not to mention suicides on a massive scale since the Kelpians had to assume they were going insane, and they did so without having the slightest precautionary measures in place of how to help the traumatized population in the best case scenario where both Kelpians and Ba‘ul don‘t kill/harm each other immediately. It‘s as spectacularly irresponsible as - oh, I don‘t know, Dubya invading Iraq without any kind of plan for how to keep it stable post Hussein? Brexit? Just -WHAT EVEN?

Show, I love you, but that was one seriously dumb episode. Well, every ST has (more than) one, so I guess this is your first.

Other than that, well, liked the Michael-Saru bond as always, liked that Culber isn‘t just fine and dandy after being ressurected - early on I thought we were heading towards parallels between him and Saru, asking themselves who they are now, especially since since Culber essentially has a brand new body he‘s primed for an existential crisis along the notes of „am I even original Hugh Culber or just a copy?“ -, not because I want him to be miserable but because I want emotional continuity. Speaking of, the scene between Pike and Tyler at the end was the first since the season opener where Pike‘s not so secretly feeling guilty about not having fought in the Klingon war comes up again, or rather, is the subtext of that conversation as Tyler lands a psychological punch while alluding to it. Which isn‘t very sympathetic but is the kind of character stuff I much prefer to bonkers plans. Oh, and I‘m somewhat relieved Saru detected a humanoid wearing a suit in the Red Angel, because that strikes a direly needed morally ambiguous note in all the „saviour“ talk. I‘m currently liking Pike more than Tyler, but in this I have to say he has the better argument, not least because I‘m a Babylon 5 fan and I tell you, that‘s a Vorlon!

In conclusion: what even?

Comments

[jesuswasbatman]

Sounds like they were influenced by the Whedon tendency to "kill/expose all the bad people and assume someone else will sort it all out". Which looks much worse now than it did in the early 2000s.

[labingi]

Can you give an example of what you're referring to here (and why it looks worse now than in the early 2000s)? (I've never heard this particular critique before.)

[jesuswasbatman]

It's something I've been thinking for a while and haven't properly posted about because the shows are so old, but all three of the Whedon TV shows I've seen ended with the heroes responding to large-scale injustice with "burn it all down and someone else will sort it out". Buffy the Vampire Slayer had Buffy empowering all potential Slayers worldwide, which was seen as entirely a good thing, after the old Watchers' Council had been massacred earlier in the final season, which had also been seen as probably a good thing (things didn't turn out so well in the post-series comics, but in a way that for me suggested that the writers had a different view of what the issues were than I had). Angel ended with the characters massacring the Black Thorn who they'd been told were responsible for most of the evil in the world (which is so out of synch with the show's established morals that my headcanon is that the Black Thorn were just a pretentious demon drinking club and Angel and friends fell for the Senior Partners' plan to neutralise them). And the Firefly film ended with the characters just releasing the details of the Miranda scandal into the public domain with no real idea of whether it would actually improve things or what to do afterwards.

And all of these seem very similar to me to various dotcom ideas that were promoted as ways to help the "little guys" help themselves but turned out rather the opposite. AirBNB - promoted as a way for ordinary people to make some extra money and increase efficiency in property use, turned out to be a way for people with capital to get into the holiday rental business on a big scale while evading planning regulations, consumer protection, and taxation. Uber - promoted as a way for ordinary people to make some extra money, turned out to be a way to replace traditionally highly-trained and fairly well-paid working class jobs with untrained, exploited, desperate people on minimum wage, and obstruct and undercut useful public transportation. Wikileaks - promoted as a way for the "little guys" to safely expose wrongdoing, turned out to be a way for the Russian secret service to help a fascist who's probably in their pocket get elected US president.

[labingi]

Sorry for a delayed reply and thanks for these examples. Boy, I hardly remember the Angel stuff at all. Good points. I'll give Firefly a bit of a pass because it got cancelled before its time. :)

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

This is something that would never have occurred to me, but really convincing, so I must thank you very much for stimulating thoughts in unexpected ways.

I knew exactly what you meant when you said it—it's that "Whoever is in authority is bad! But I'm totally uninterested in exploring what it would take to create a better system" that shows up in a lot of pop culture, especially from the US--but the examples are good ones. (I feel like there are several others in early Buffy, maybe involving the Initiative?) There's a libertarian bent to it (not surprising, given that Firefly has an explicit libertarian and pro-Confederate agenda.) And the real-life political implications are terrifying and have pretty much come to pass.

But 90% of the time you can some up this total disinterest in communal structures, realistic emotional fallout, and complexity in favor of an individualistic and destructive hero's narrative as machismo. Which even Buffy isn't free of.