Going forward, going back
Aug. 10th, 2023 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakSince because of SNW, I have Paramount + these days, I've done some Discovery rewatching. Now one reason why I've mostly stuck to my journal here with my Discovery discussion and enthusiasm - and by now, I think it has advanced to one my favourite Trek incarnations of all times, so there's a lot of enthusiasm to go around - is that whenever I try to check on what other people might have to say, I seem to run into extremes I can't agree with.
Not just the obvious extreme - i.e. those people who play gatekeepers and declare the entire show as "not real Star Trek" -, but people who like one part of it but not the other. So far, I've spotted:
- viewers who like the first and second season but not the third and fourth (mostly because of the changed setting, the characters left behind and the changing characterisation)
- viewers who like the second season only (because Pike; these are prone to be close to the "not real Star Trek" crowd, and if I didn't happen to like Pike myself, it would have put me off watching SNW altogether, much as the praise of "The Orville" as "REAL Star Trek" during Discovery's first season ensured I haven't watched a single Orville episode to this day
- viewers who like the first season only, because they don't like Pike and resent the presence of Spock in it, but can't cope with the change in era due to the different setting of s3 and s4
- viewers who like the first and the thirtythird century seasons, but not the second, because Pike and Spock, see above
Meanwhile, I'm standing there thinking "I like every season, I love how the show keeps reinventing itself while staying true to the core Trekian ideas, how the characters develop, I don't agree with every plot and character decision, but I think Discovery is the most ambitous Star Trek in terms of going boldly beyond where all the others went before of any Trek show since DS9, and not just chronology wise, understanding that this doesn't mean darker, which is why all the "grimdark" accusations (usually by people who haven't watched beyond the first few eps of s1) aren't true.
Going back to s1 with all this (and the future seasons of the show) in mind, here are some rewatch thoughts:
- Generally, what does and doesn't work for me now as a dedicated viewer is pretty similar to what did and didn't work for me back in the day when the show was entirely new to me - for example, the Klingon redesigned makeup is still weird and inhibits any of the actors playing Klingons to do more than spit out their lines stiffly, with the exception of Mary Chieffo as L'Rell who does a lot with her eyes throughout and by the time the first season ends has gotten the hang of how to cope with all this stuff on her face while still providing character. Otoh, I thought then and think now that the big season storyline with its twists and turns is really well executed. Also, while it's true we don't get to know more than their names about the bridge crew (with the exception of Saru) in s1, it's not true that that we don't get to much about the Discovery crew and the series ensemble (there's a difference) - s1 like all four seasons is Michael-centric, but it it also introduces and fleshes out: Saru, Tilly, Paul Stamets, Hugh Culber of the regulars who would stay on the show, (Mirror) Captain Lorca as the man who turns out to be the season's other primary antagonist, L'Rell and Voq/Tyler (depending on whether you count Voq/Tyler as one or two characters) as the characters making the Klingons, the season's first primary antagonists, into individuals, Katrina Cornwell inaugurating a welcome new tradition of sympathetic Starfleet Admirals who don't show up as a plot obstacle, and of course the two versions of Philippa Geourgiou. Not to mention we get memorable guest star turns and new versions of legendary Trek characters: Sarek, Amanda and Harry Mudd. (I would argue that Amanda in the first two seasons of Discovery and in the second season of SNW is the first time on screen since her original introduction in Journey to Babel that the character has been used in more than cameos and coming across three dimensionally as her own person instead of being there to provide Spock with angst.)
- S1 of Disco as opposed to the MCU Secret Invasion is actually a season who uses the spy/undercover tropes effectively, meaningful and well; the question "who are we in a dark time?" is asked throughout the season (of Michael, but also of Starfleet in general), but whereas when DS9 did this in the Dominion War, at a time where showing the darker side of the Federation was new, the external years were those of the mostly peaceful and optimistic 1990s, now the question is asked in a very dark Doylist time, and so the season replying that yes, you can stand by your ethics and ideals even in a time when extinction may threaten, and no, "someone has to get their hands dirty" is not a good answer, was what made me connect to show emotionally then and now the way I did
- seriously, though, about the spy tropes in this season: we get three major ones and some minor ones. The Voq = Tyler one was the one guessed by a sizable part of fandom. I didn't think of it on my own, but the moment I read the theory, it made sense, since Voq after having been treated as important in three episodes suddenly disappeared right after L'Rell had told him he'd have to give everything for the plan of how to win the war and convince the other houses, and Tyler's backstory as told to Lorca (the claim that he'd been L'Rell's prisoner since the battle of the Binary Stars seven months ago when we had seen L'Rell and Voq stuck on the Ship of the Dead only an episode and four weeks in show time earlier) did not make sense and/or was blatantly false). The "Lorca is from the Mirrorverse!" twist, otoh, I didn't believe the first time I saw it, and only came around to once the show went to the Mirrorverse, i.e. shortly before the reveal, but in retrospect, it was, like the best Agatha Christie murders, fairly prepared. By which I don't mean the newly invented light sensibility of Mirrorverse characters. Lorca twice, in his introduction episode and much later, just before they jump to the Mirrorverse, makes the "you're a ship of scientists, I need a ship of warriors" /"You were a ship of scientists, you've become a ship of warriors" statement, and putting down science, even in war time, is not something a "good" Starfleet Captain ever does; he's pursuing an "end justifies the means" policy as shown by his original security chief, and the way she denigrates and insults the prisoners also is not something that would or should happen on a regular Starfleet vessel (for comparison: Odo, Worf et al may have a low opinion of criminals, but other than Odo to Quark, which is its own special thing, you don't see them insulting them upon arrival before they have done anything), Lorca is sleeping with a weapon under his pillow (and the great thing is that the audience long with Katrina Cornwell plausibly sees this as PTSD at the time, but it is of course standard for the Mirrorverse), he's familiar with torture (this isn't the 1960s anymore, and so I think any trek post Picard's time in Chain of Command wouldn't have indulged into "the Captain is somehow immune to torture" trope, but it makes sense for a man grown up in the Mirrorverse to have a greater pain threshhold, whereas not to much for Gabriel Lorca Prime who as far as we know wasn't ever someone's prisoner to be tortured before), and he's repeatedly shown to be great at manipulation (including with people who don't personally like him, like Stamets) in order to achieve his goals. Not to mention that in retrospect, if you check his individual actions, all Lorca does really is dedicated to get Discovery to the point where he's able to return to the Mirrorverse with this ship, and with Michael personally loyal to him.
- the third big use of spy story tropes is in the Mirrorverse, when Our Heroes have to play their evil alter egos (except for Lorca), and here the show also delivers on the fun part of said tropes (Tilly as Killy) along with the "Becoming the Mask?!?" trope, as Michael is afraid she might do this in terms of impersonating her Mirrorself but is unprepared for the true emotional twist of finding Mirroverse Georgiou alive and well; incidentally, the way Michael and Mirrorverse Philippa Georgiou start by projecting each other's alter egos on each other and bond because of that, but then more and more start to relate to each other in a different way than to their alter agos until when they part in mid s3, their emotional connection to each other is very firm and very much is own thing is a masterful example of how to do this with variants
- but what makes all this and the use of the Mirrorverse (which in its later DS9 eps was pure camp without any frightening "there but for a way not taken go I" chills) so great is as mentioned the intimate connection to the season long "who am I, in the dark?" question; later season Michael and friends would not have been disturbed in the same way, but the Klingon War along with having spent the season with a Captain who lives the "end justifies the means" conviction really makes ia challenge
- the way the season starts and ends with a mutiny for exactly opposite reasons and with opposite effects is something which frustratingly you only see the first part referenced, when the second is instrumental to the overall story; in the pilot two parter you have Michael going against Georgiou Prime re: shooting at the Klingons first in her convinction that only this will save both Captain and ship, no one joins her even before Philippa shows up, and this is when the Federation is in a good state and there hasn't been a war in a century; Michael's actions don't help anyone and ensure she's seen as the cause/trigger of the war instead, and but for Lorca would have ended her life in Starfleet and in freedom - whereas in the season finale you have Michael going against the (Mirror)Georgiou-suggested genocidal solution to the Klingon War which Starfleet Command has become desperate enough to accept, but doing so in the open, not behind anyone's back, arguing with Katrina Cornwell that this is not who they are (and that she was wrong back in the pilot, btw, that's another thing overlooked when I read/hear references to Michael Burnham), the entire bridge crew joins her, and she's able to sway Cornwell to try another solution. In short, it's the anti "24" - plot, where the main character didn't grow by becoming more and more ruthless and sacrificing their morals for the greater good, by presenting the exact opposite and rewarding it narratively. Again, not unprepared but very much prepared through the season. We get Michael when she thinks Lorca wants her on his team because he's after illegal experiments with bio weapons refusing as early as episode 3 (thereby establishing her actions in the pilot don't mean she's a hawk per se, just that she was desperate and triggered and doing the wrong thing in these particular circumstances), we get Michael noticing the Tardigrade is suffering and arguing against it, whe get Stamets (introduced as a snarky jerk) showing his own ethics by coming up with an alternate solution rather than torment the Tardigrade, we get Katrina Cornwell taking the risk of going to the Klingons in an attempt to broker peace, later we see her help Tyler through a mental breakdown while imprisoned and in pain herself, we also saw her establishing mutual respect across the lines with L'Rell, and we've seen Michael and friends in the Mirrorverse choosing to do the compassionate thing over the expedient thing when the pressure and temptation to act otherwise were very strong, we've also seen Michael using her meeting with MirrorVoq to try and understand how to negotiat with Klingons and achieve an alliance instead of war. In short, all this prepares us for believing that yes, these are people who would rather than commit genocide take the incredible risk of making a leap of faith and reaching their enemy to end the war. (And btw, thus they are better than humanity is now and has been - since one ST element is the belief we can be better. Not perfect: better than we've been so far.)
- re: the question on whether giving Michael a backstory with Trek's most famous Vulcan-Human family was right or wrong; while I think Michael's backstory would have worked for her if these had been new characters who adopted her after her biological parents (supposedly) died, I also think it added something to Amanda (see above), Sarek and Spock that it was them; of course I'm influenced by liking complicated, messy family relationships, which all the scenes with Michael and Sarek in s1, Michael and Spock in s2, and Michael and Amanda in both seasons give me.
- re: Michael as a Mary Sue: no more than any other capable main ST character, and the season lets her be wrong as well as right (not just with the attempted mutiny in the pilot; she's also not immune to Lorca's manipulations, telling him she's glad to serve with such a Captain by episode 6, and Tilly has to draw her out of her self imposed guilty emotional withdrawal early in the show with a lot of effort; there's also her emotionally understandable but factually wrong decision of not reporting Tyler's blackouts and issues because he begs her and swears he'll tell her if it happens again)
- the big one for initial viewers: killing sympathetic Georgiou off at the end of the pilot and replacing her by charismatic yet ruthless Lorca in the third episode as the Captain character. Without knowing where this is going, I can totally understand the complaints at the time, but in retrospect, it couldn't have been done any other way. We the audience had to see enough of Georgiou to understand why Michael and Saru are mourning for her through the season, why their shared grief both divides and bonds them, and why Michael will react to Mirrorverse Georgiou the way she does, so the show couldn't have started with Lorca and Discovery already. And of course Lorca as the hidden seasonal villain (as opposed to the Klingons as the open villains for the season) had to be introduced in a way that was ambigous, making it on the one hand understandable why Michael eventually signs up and for the larger part of the season trusts him but on the other hand laying the groundworks for the reveal. Which we get in time enough for seeing the emotional effect on Michael and the Discovery crew, instead of it being brushed aside, ahem, Secret Invasion.
And now I'm off to watch the SNW s2 finale. And then more Discovery.
Not just the obvious extreme - i.e. those people who play gatekeepers and declare the entire show as "not real Star Trek" -, but people who like one part of it but not the other. So far, I've spotted:
- viewers who like the first and second season but not the third and fourth (mostly because of the changed setting, the characters left behind and the changing characterisation)
- viewers who like the second season only (because Pike; these are prone to be close to the "not real Star Trek" crowd, and if I didn't happen to like Pike myself, it would have put me off watching SNW altogether, much as the praise of "The Orville" as "REAL Star Trek" during Discovery's first season ensured I haven't watched a single Orville episode to this day
- viewers who like the first season only, because they don't like Pike and resent the presence of Spock in it, but can't cope with the change in era due to the different setting of s3 and s4
- viewers who like the first and the thirtythird century seasons, but not the second, because Pike and Spock, see above
Meanwhile, I'm standing there thinking "I like every season, I love how the show keeps reinventing itself while staying true to the core Trekian ideas, how the characters develop, I don't agree with every plot and character decision, but I think Discovery is the most ambitous Star Trek in terms of going boldly beyond where all the others went before of any Trek show since DS9, and not just chronology wise, understanding that this doesn't mean darker, which is why all the "grimdark" accusations (usually by people who haven't watched beyond the first few eps of s1) aren't true.
Going back to s1 with all this (and the future seasons of the show) in mind, here are some rewatch thoughts:
- Generally, what does and doesn't work for me now as a dedicated viewer is pretty similar to what did and didn't work for me back in the day when the show was entirely new to me - for example, the Klingon redesigned makeup is still weird and inhibits any of the actors playing Klingons to do more than spit out their lines stiffly, with the exception of Mary Chieffo as L'Rell who does a lot with her eyes throughout and by the time the first season ends has gotten the hang of how to cope with all this stuff on her face while still providing character. Otoh, I thought then and think now that the big season storyline with its twists and turns is really well executed. Also, while it's true we don't get to know more than their names about the bridge crew (with the exception of Saru) in s1, it's not true that that we don't get to much about the Discovery crew and the series ensemble (there's a difference) - s1 like all four seasons is Michael-centric, but it it also introduces and fleshes out: Saru, Tilly, Paul Stamets, Hugh Culber of the regulars who would stay on the show, (Mirror) Captain Lorca as the man who turns out to be the season's other primary antagonist, L'Rell and Voq/Tyler (depending on whether you count Voq/Tyler as one or two characters) as the characters making the Klingons, the season's first primary antagonists, into individuals, Katrina Cornwell inaugurating a welcome new tradition of sympathetic Starfleet Admirals who don't show up as a plot obstacle, and of course the two versions of Philippa Geourgiou. Not to mention we get memorable guest star turns and new versions of legendary Trek characters: Sarek, Amanda and Harry Mudd. (I would argue that Amanda in the first two seasons of Discovery and in the second season of SNW is the first time on screen since her original introduction in Journey to Babel that the character has been used in more than cameos and coming across three dimensionally as her own person instead of being there to provide Spock with angst.)
- S1 of Disco as opposed to the MCU Secret Invasion is actually a season who uses the spy/undercover tropes effectively, meaningful and well; the question "who are we in a dark time?" is asked throughout the season (of Michael, but also of Starfleet in general), but whereas when DS9 did this in the Dominion War, at a time where showing the darker side of the Federation was new, the external years were those of the mostly peaceful and optimistic 1990s, now the question is asked in a very dark Doylist time, and so the season replying that yes, you can stand by your ethics and ideals even in a time when extinction may threaten, and no, "someone has to get their hands dirty" is not a good answer, was what made me connect to show emotionally then and now the way I did
- seriously, though, about the spy tropes in this season: we get three major ones and some minor ones. The Voq = Tyler one was the one guessed by a sizable part of fandom. I didn't think of it on my own, but the moment I read the theory, it made sense, since Voq after having been treated as important in three episodes suddenly disappeared right after L'Rell had told him he'd have to give everything for the plan of how to win the war and convince the other houses, and Tyler's backstory as told to Lorca (the claim that he'd been L'Rell's prisoner since the battle of the Binary Stars seven months ago when we had seen L'Rell and Voq stuck on the Ship of the Dead only an episode and four weeks in show time earlier) did not make sense and/or was blatantly false). The "Lorca is from the Mirrorverse!" twist, otoh, I didn't believe the first time I saw it, and only came around to once the show went to the Mirrorverse, i.e. shortly before the reveal, but in retrospect, it was, like the best Agatha Christie murders, fairly prepared. By which I don't mean the newly invented light sensibility of Mirrorverse characters. Lorca twice, in his introduction episode and much later, just before they jump to the Mirrorverse, makes the "you're a ship of scientists, I need a ship of warriors" /"You were a ship of scientists, you've become a ship of warriors" statement, and putting down science, even in war time, is not something a "good" Starfleet Captain ever does; he's pursuing an "end justifies the means" policy as shown by his original security chief, and the way she denigrates and insults the prisoners also is not something that would or should happen on a regular Starfleet vessel (for comparison: Odo, Worf et al may have a low opinion of criminals, but other than Odo to Quark, which is its own special thing, you don't see them insulting them upon arrival before they have done anything), Lorca is sleeping with a weapon under his pillow (and the great thing is that the audience long with Katrina Cornwell plausibly sees this as PTSD at the time, but it is of course standard for the Mirrorverse), he's familiar with torture (this isn't the 1960s anymore, and so I think any trek post Picard's time in Chain of Command wouldn't have indulged into "the Captain is somehow immune to torture" trope, but it makes sense for a man grown up in the Mirrorverse to have a greater pain threshhold, whereas not to much for Gabriel Lorca Prime who as far as we know wasn't ever someone's prisoner to be tortured before), and he's repeatedly shown to be great at manipulation (including with people who don't personally like him, like Stamets) in order to achieve his goals. Not to mention that in retrospect, if you check his individual actions, all Lorca does really is dedicated to get Discovery to the point where he's able to return to the Mirrorverse with this ship, and with Michael personally loyal to him.
- the third big use of spy story tropes is in the Mirrorverse, when Our Heroes have to play their evil alter egos (except for Lorca), and here the show also delivers on the fun part of said tropes (Tilly as Killy) along with the "Becoming the Mask?!?" trope, as Michael is afraid she might do this in terms of impersonating her Mirrorself but is unprepared for the true emotional twist of finding Mirroverse Georgiou alive and well; incidentally, the way Michael and Mirrorverse Philippa Georgiou start by projecting each other's alter egos on each other and bond because of that, but then more and more start to relate to each other in a different way than to their alter agos until when they part in mid s3, their emotional connection to each other is very firm and very much is own thing is a masterful example of how to do this with variants
- but what makes all this and the use of the Mirrorverse (which in its later DS9 eps was pure camp without any frightening "there but for a way not taken go I" chills) so great is as mentioned the intimate connection to the season long "who am I, in the dark?" question; later season Michael and friends would not have been disturbed in the same way, but the Klingon War along with having spent the season with a Captain who lives the "end justifies the means" conviction really makes ia challenge
- the way the season starts and ends with a mutiny for exactly opposite reasons and with opposite effects is something which frustratingly you only see the first part referenced, when the second is instrumental to the overall story; in the pilot two parter you have Michael going against Georgiou Prime re: shooting at the Klingons first in her convinction that only this will save both Captain and ship, no one joins her even before Philippa shows up, and this is when the Federation is in a good state and there hasn't been a war in a century; Michael's actions don't help anyone and ensure she's seen as the cause/trigger of the war instead, and but for Lorca would have ended her life in Starfleet and in freedom - whereas in the season finale you have Michael going against the (Mirror)Georgiou-suggested genocidal solution to the Klingon War which Starfleet Command has become desperate enough to accept, but doing so in the open, not behind anyone's back, arguing with Katrina Cornwell that this is not who they are (and that she was wrong back in the pilot, btw, that's another thing overlooked when I read/hear references to Michael Burnham), the entire bridge crew joins her, and she's able to sway Cornwell to try another solution. In short, it's the anti "24" - plot, where the main character didn't grow by becoming more and more ruthless and sacrificing their morals for the greater good, by presenting the exact opposite and rewarding it narratively. Again, not unprepared but very much prepared through the season. We get Michael when she thinks Lorca wants her on his team because he's after illegal experiments with bio weapons refusing as early as episode 3 (thereby establishing her actions in the pilot don't mean she's a hawk per se, just that she was desperate and triggered and doing the wrong thing in these particular circumstances), we get Michael noticing the Tardigrade is suffering and arguing against it, whe get Stamets (introduced as a snarky jerk) showing his own ethics by coming up with an alternate solution rather than torment the Tardigrade, we get Katrina Cornwell taking the risk of going to the Klingons in an attempt to broker peace, later we see her help Tyler through a mental breakdown while imprisoned and in pain herself, we also saw her establishing mutual respect across the lines with L'Rell, and we've seen Michael and friends in the Mirrorverse choosing to do the compassionate thing over the expedient thing when the pressure and temptation to act otherwise were very strong, we've also seen Michael using her meeting with MirrorVoq to try and understand how to negotiat with Klingons and achieve an alliance instead of war. In short, all this prepares us for believing that yes, these are people who would rather than commit genocide take the incredible risk of making a leap of faith and reaching their enemy to end the war. (And btw, thus they are better than humanity is now and has been - since one ST element is the belief we can be better. Not perfect: better than we've been so far.)
- re: the question on whether giving Michael a backstory with Trek's most famous Vulcan-Human family was right or wrong; while I think Michael's backstory would have worked for her if these had been new characters who adopted her after her biological parents (supposedly) died, I also think it added something to Amanda (see above), Sarek and Spock that it was them; of course I'm influenced by liking complicated, messy family relationships, which all the scenes with Michael and Sarek in s1, Michael and Spock in s2, and Michael and Amanda in both seasons give me.
- re: Michael as a Mary Sue: no more than any other capable main ST character, and the season lets her be wrong as well as right (not just with the attempted mutiny in the pilot; she's also not immune to Lorca's manipulations, telling him she's glad to serve with such a Captain by episode 6, and Tilly has to draw her out of her self imposed guilty emotional withdrawal early in the show with a lot of effort; there's also her emotionally understandable but factually wrong decision of not reporting Tyler's blackouts and issues because he begs her and swears he'll tell her if it happens again)
- the big one for initial viewers: killing sympathetic Georgiou off at the end of the pilot and replacing her by charismatic yet ruthless Lorca in the third episode as the Captain character. Without knowing where this is going, I can totally understand the complaints at the time, but in retrospect, it couldn't have been done any other way. We the audience had to see enough of Georgiou to understand why Michael and Saru are mourning for her through the season, why their shared grief both divides and bonds them, and why Michael will react to Mirrorverse Georgiou the way she does, so the show couldn't have started with Lorca and Discovery already. And of course Lorca as the hidden seasonal villain (as opposed to the Klingons as the open villains for the season) had to be introduced in a way that was ambigous, making it on the one hand understandable why Michael eventually signs up and for the larger part of the season trusts him but on the other hand laying the groundworks for the reveal. Which we get in time enough for seeing the emotional effect on Michael and the Discovery crew, instead of it being brushed aside, ahem, Secret Invasion.
And now I'm off to watch the SNW s2 finale. And then more Discovery.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-10 11:55 am (UTC)Same here.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-10 03:35 pm (UTC)Same here. And I'm glad not to be the only one who is petty about "The Orville". In other circumstances, I probably would have checked it out - I mean, I loved Galaxy Quest -, but every time I'm almost there, I come across someone who again who goes all "real/true Star Trek" and then I'm mentally shutting down.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-10 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-10 09:29 pm (UTC)LOL, this is me. We LOVED the first season and man I really really hated seeing Spock and Pike take over the storyline (so it felt!) and was NOT interested in the spinoff. Now that we've had four whole seasons I could probably rewatch it in a more benevolent mood, lol, but at the time it felt like a total regression and like it was pandering to people who didn't like the diverse new characters.
if I didn't happen to like Pike myself, it would have put me off watching SNW altogether, much as the praise of "The Orville" as "REAL Star Trek" during Discovery's first season ensured I haven't watched a single Orville episode to this day
I've been hearing a lot of "SNW is REAL Trek" recently too, because it's more episodic and optimistic or whatever. I have heard "X is not REAL Y" applied to so many things I love (Mad Max: Fury Road, Ghostbuster 2016, Discovery, the Star Wars sequels, I could go on) that I tend to discount whatever someone is pushing instead. I do remember hearing that about Orville too.
(Also, hell, I'm old. I remember when TOS fans were SCREAMING about the original movie and how it wasn't Real Trek. I remember people screaming about TNG. I remember people screaming about DS9. Let's not even talk about most of Trek fandom's reaction to Voyager. It's just about as contentious a fandom as Doctor Who, probably because they're both equally long-lived, and the first Fandom of the Heart for a lot of people. Nearly every time there is something new, some people will fight back.)
I knew some people who dropped the show immediately after Giorgiou was killed off and didn't want to come back even for the (AWESOME) Mirrorverse version, and also people who were really incensed at Hugh getting killed off even though he did come back (and the poor actor was begging all the people on Twitter throwing shit his way to hang in there and have faith. Same thing happened to the poor Magicians actors altho that death was permanent). And I can def understand feeling that mad, but it also felt....a little unfair? given how queer and diverse the show actually is. But I dropped Secret Invasion RIGHT after Maria was killed off so I am not going to criticize anyone for that!
.....I HAVE heard that Rebecca Romijin (sp) on SNW is really killing it as Number One, who was one of my original big ST faves even tho she shows up for like half an hour. And the crew looks pretty diverse. I have a hell of a time getting my husband to watch anyone other than Nimoy as Spock, though.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-11 07:20 am (UTC)Same here, except for the original movie, which I didn't see until years later. (Wrath of Khan was the first of the movies I saw in the theatre.) But I remember all the screaming about TNG, then DS9, and then Voyager very well, as that was when I started to interact with other fans by going to conventions, reading fanzines etc.
I have a hell of a time getting my husband to watch anyone other than Nimoy as Spock, though.
I remember feeling that way before watching the first Kelvin Timeline movie, especially since Sylar had been one of the elements I loathed most about the decline of the tv shows Heroes, and here was Zachary Quinto playing one of my favourite characters. But while I have my nitpicks about the first movie, Quinto's Spock wasn't one of them. And as opposed to yourself, I really liked what Ethan Peck did with Spock in Discovery's second season (the beard was a clever touch to ease into a non-Nimoy Spock, btw, whereas the beardless classic Spock look on SNW still makes me squint a couple of times, as it does highlight the differences to Nimoy's face).
Anyway, since I'm of the heretic mind the SW sequel trilogy would have benefited from recasting Leia and giving her a central storyline, and that while the Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries had its problems, it showcased you can have a non-Carrie Fisher person as Leia and finally use her for more than cameos, I'm generally not a "only this iconic actor can play this iconic character, Or else!" kind of fan. (Otoh, I always respect actors who do what Leonard Nimoy did when for the cartoon series they wanted to keep only him, Shatner and DeForest Kelley, and recast everyone else, and he said no, then you don't get me either (according to George Takei), thus securing his colleagues some income in the meagre years for ST actors. But recasting decades later is a different issue.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-11 09:04 am (UTC)There's a long list of things I love and adore about Disco, characters like Saru, Tilly and Adira, or the show's courage to boldly try out narratives that hadn't been tried on any Trek show before. However there's also an equally long list of things that frustrate me. My favourite seasons are 1 and 3, but if it hadn't been for my husband I would have quit watching halfway into the second season, mainly because of Mirror!Georgiou since I personally found the character, based on her Mirrorverse actions, irredeemable. Giving Mirror!Georgiou some admittedly great character interaction with Michael, the whole section 31 plotline and neat martial art scenes while at the same time downplaying/cheerfully ignoring the fact that we are dealing with a mass murderess who used to have Kelpians for breakfast? Sorry, but no.
the praise of "The Orville" as "REAL Star Trek"
I believe the main problem is that a certain hateful type of fan idiotically used Orville to make cheap, unfair shots at Disco which were completely uncalled for. The thing, however, is that over the course of its three seasons Orville indeed comes across as a real Trek show in anything but names and colours of uniform. Please note that I am not talking about its warm, fuzzy TNG-ish set design and costumes here ;-) Right underneath these superficial factors lies a deeply Humanist show in the best, philosophical sense of the word. Boundary-exploring and perception-questioning, driven by an underlying idea of "Yes, we actually can do better!", which are exactly the very same qualities that I love and appreciate in every officially name-bearing Star Trek that I've seen. (Which is practically everything except Lower Decks and Prodigy.)
So, while I am fully aware that Orville, especially during its first season, might not be everybody's cup of tea, it is somewhat depressing for me to read how Discovery haters have actually managed to turn people off Orville. In my opinion both shows, with all their strengths and weaknesses, are adding to whatever makes Star Trek so lovable, relevant and amazing.
mostly about Mirror!Georgiou
Date: 2023-08-11 12:29 pm (UTC)Mirror Georgiou in s2 of Discovery:
Giving Mirror!Georgiou some admittedly great character interaction with Michael, the whole section 31 plotline and neat martial art scenes while at the same time downplaying/cheerfully ignoring the fact that we are dealing with a mass murderess who used to have Kelpians for breakfast? Sorry, but no.
Your point is taken, and I agree that s2 did treat Mirror!Georgiou as if she was, say, on the Garak-in-his-first-career stage of moral ambiguuity instead of treating her as a fully fledged distator and routine perpetrator of genocide. (I think s3 didn't, in that her final two episodes confronted her with her past self, the world in which she had thrived and which she had co-created, and with the Michael she had raised and formed, and she found it horrible and acted accordingly without knowing it would not mean her death, i.e. fulfilled the "without witness, without applaus" criteria as Missy did in her final redemptive self-assassination on Doctor Who. (Insert frustration of how the subsequent showrunner went a giant step back with the Master here.) This doesn't mean said actions make up for all her previous ones but that it showed her capacity for change. I mean, with characters like the Master or Mirror!Georgiou, they're guilty of such a horrendous scale of crimes (the Master once wiped out a third of the known galaxy in Five's era as I recall) that I don't think you can plausibly do a "earning their redemption arc" story with them, but you can do a story showing they're capable of learning and changing, and while Georgiou never had a confrontation with her victims - which I would say is quintessential in an actual redemption arc - I did buy that her time in the Primeverse changed her.
A few more observations on that note, both Watsonian and Doylist in nature:
1) I think fandom at large (and I'm not entirely immune to the effect myself, though I try to catch it) does have a bit of reverse sexism thing when it comes to male vs female dictators/mass murderers. Only last year or so I realised that basically, Mirror!Kira - the Intendant - and Dukat (and here I do include his Waltz and post Waltz characterisation) are the same character, including the quintessential wish to be loved and praised by the people they oppress. (They have the same job and then lose it, too, and presumably are responsible for the same bodycount.) But with Dukat, the show doubled down on how much he was an irredeemable villain because he was a very popular character up to early s6 or so. The Intendant was played as a character study in her very first appearance, but then from the second episode onwards for camp. No one found it disgusting that Sisko, posing as his Mirrorverse self, had sex with her. (Imagine Prime Kira having sex with any version of Dukat on screen, which not just Nana Visitor violently protested against.) And the fandom very much went along with this, treating the Intendant as sexy badass fun.
2) On a more Watsonian note, it did occur to me that the legal status of Mirror!Georgiou in the Federation is extremely tricky. While the conclusion from what she must be responsible for based on her as the Emperor alone is obvious, it's still hearsay, and the only one who actually witnessed any misdeeds (i.e. the killing of several guards and the order of death for one Kelpian, subsequently eaten at dinner) is Michael. Also, we don't know whether or not the Federation has a law about putting people on trial who do not belong to their states. (During my last big DS9 rewatch years ago, I was wondering this about Dukat as well, because Waltz has him escaping while en route to be tried - at a Federation court. Now if it had been Bajoran, by all means, given Dukat's misdeeds primarily affected Bajorans, and there should be enough witnesses and testimony. But Federation? Because he was a head of government of an enemy nation they're still at war with at this point? Huh.) So I don't think there's a legal way to deal with Mirror!Georgiou by putting her on trial for having been a genocidal dictator. Otoh, there's also no reason to hire her. (Not in the last ep of s1, they were desperate and the narrative does signal it was the wrong thing to do, but in s2.) Then again, Section 31 was presumably intended to be as sketchy from the start (though not as bad as it is in the DS9 era.) Now, if anyone had asked me I think I'd have let Mirror!Georgiou work as a freelance mercenary in s2 and in this capacity come across Discovery repeatedly, sometimes as an opponent and sometimes as an ally, and of course she'd want to help Michael in an existential threat situation as in the s2 finale, so would have ended up in the future as she did in canon as well.
Re: mostly about Mirror!Georgiou
Date: 2023-08-13 07:54 pm (UTC)It's played for laughs in a lot of the early episodes, but for all that, it has the important part of Star Trek - a genuine belief about trying to do what is right rather than what is easy.
It has a few flaws, but strong characters, good plots and a great romance where you least expect it.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-13 07:41 pm (UTC)