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Thoughts on Star Trek: Discovery

Why Star Trek Discovery feels alien within the Star Trek universe.

I started watching Star Trek quite early. I don’t remember exactly at which age, but my mother selected some of the harmless Star Trek: The Original Series episodes that were okay to watch for kids. Later on Deep Space Nine, The Next Generation, Voyager and the movies followed, and the most part of Enterprise as well. It feels like Star Trek has always been a part of my life; that universe and its characters – they all feel familiar to me. And when I heard that there would be a new show set in this very universe, expanding and exploring it… I was excited! I didn’t have a clear vision what this new Trek series could do or should be and I had no problem with them surprising me or trying something new in some ways. Actually I liked the idea of them giving us something we hadn’t seen yet. After all, among the Star Trek shows Deep Space Nine is the one that took a lot of liberties both in the setting and in storytelling, and it’s my favorite Star Trek show. So whatever Discovery would try to do – I was read to give it a chance. Having seen the first season a couple of months ago and with the teaser for season 2 being out now, my first though is that it was and is a wasted opportunity, and it’s a sad realization.

There are a couple of things that Discovery does quite well: there is diversity among the main characters, the special effects are great and the setup with the focus on the first officer instead of the captain is a nice and different point of view.

However, there are too many things that don’t work in this show for me. Setting the plot only a few years before Star Trek: The Original Series means that there is a clear reference to the universe of the previous shows. It sets a few boundaries because it is supposed to be within the same universe as the other Trek shows. But Discovery ignores that too often – and this is not its only problem. The show not only fails to find its place within the established universe, it also lacks faith in its own storyline as well as its own characters. In an attempt to balance that the show tries to evoke nostalgia in long-time Trekkies by throwing in as many references and connections to especially The Original Series as possible. The sad thing is that it doesn’t feel like homage to the old shows but as if they are using them only as a lure. Otherwise, how else could the contradictions and breaks in the universe’s canon be explained?

In the following paragraphs I’m trying to given an overview on what I think went wrong with this show so far.

Technological canon

Technology has always been an important factor in Star Trek. While there is a lot of made-up stuff in it that make no sense there is also a dedication to real physics in it. The shows used to have a science advisor, someone who would fill the parts in the scripts usually known as technobabble. Star Trek had an impact on science and exploration and there are several technical devices that were predicted by Star Trek – and maybe even inspired by it.

That is why I’m disappointed by how careless Star Trek Discovery handles its technological heritage. And I’m not talking about some small gadget from one episode among the hundreds of episodes of Star Trek. I am aware that nobody can remember all the technology in Star Trek. But Discovery tackles a few elements of the technological Star Trek canon that are hard to ignore: The first that comes to mind is the cloaking device on the Klingon ship that is never explained, while it is known that Klingons weren’t supposed to have cloaking devices at that time. Holo-communicators also were a new and barely used thing in the 24th century. It makes no sense for the USS Shenzhou to have it. The site-to-site transport at that time is also questionable, and that holodeck version feels a bit too early as well. Even the spore drive, something we haven’t seen in other shows, is a questionable thing to introduce at that point in time because is difficult to believe that no one would try to use a spore drive again once it was developed so far. While it provides some challenges to make it work without harming its pilot, over the years surely someone would have found a better way to do it – or some less caring people would have continued with the current setup, no matter the cost.

So here is the question I’ll keep repeating throughout this review: why wasn’t Discovery set up after the other Star Trek shows and prime timeline movies? There you could have all the fancy tech that you wanted and even more, without having to pay attention to the technological development of the universe. Since everything on this show looks way more advanced thanks to the 50 years difference in production years it looks much more futuristic anyway and feels like it belongs after the other shows, not before them.

The race of Klingons

The Klingons are one of the worst parts of Discovery. Much like the Vulcans they have been one of the most iconic races in Star Trek and have appeared in all Star Trek shows. Starting out as antagonists in the The Original Series and The Next Generation they made peace with the Federation in The Undiscovered Country and became allies in Deep Space Nine. And Star Trek’s character with the highest episode count is in fact a Klingon. Over the years this race has developed and has become more and more complex in its politics as well as in its characters. But unfortunately Discovery decided to go another way.

The race and culture that we see in the other shows is barely recognizable here. The complete design of the Klingons is different to what we are used to, with actors wearing masks that limit their facial expressions to a minimum and make their talking more difficult. It’s hard to tell them apart if it’s not for obvious features as one being the only one with white skin in the room, or apparently the only female Klingon around. The design of their clothes and ships is also radically different – it’s a visual overload of ornaments and decoration and marks a sharp contrast to the earlier shows/later appearances in the timeline. They also speak Klingon now. All the time. Which I understand so far that the universal translator is a plot device with more plot holes than any other feature in the Star Trek universe, so I can understand why you wouldn’t want to use it, but it’s also super annoying to let the Klingons speak Klingon for several reasons. First, it’s just not a nice sounding language. Hearing them talk like this all the time stops being fun after the first minute and after that it’s just painful on the ears. Second, it’s a difficult language to speak and the actors were clearly struggling to speak in a language they don’t understand. It feels clumsy, it feels unnatural, and as a result there is barely any emotion in the Klingon dialogues. Third, it means you have to read subtitles for quite a while if you want to know what the Klingons are talking about. The problem here is: do I want to know at this point? I usually have no problems with reading subtitles, I have watched countless episodes of anime in Japanese with subtitles and I’m perfectly happy with it! I wouldn’t want it any other way and usually prefer the Japanese audio with subtitles to the dubbed versions. But when it came to the Klingon scenes I was almost to bored to pay attention to the subtitles. The actors can barely move their faces, their voices have to speak a language that almost breaks your tongue, and the content of the dialogue feels only relevant for half of the time. They go on long ramblings about their ideology of purity which I couldn’t care less about especially at the beginning of this show.

But aside from these outside changes the general treatment of the Klingons changed as well. They’ve never been the most complex race among all Star Trek races, but they were never as one dimensional as they are in Discovery. Over the course of the other shows they became more and more complex with Worf being a major element in showing a different side of the Klingons, that they weren’t just war hungry fighters, that there was more to their culture and their believes and morals. They build on that with characters like Martok and B’Elanna, who showed us different types of Klingon characters as well. Anyone remember the Deep Space Nine episode Soldiers of the Empire that shows us a Klingon suffering from PTSD? It stands our as a remarkable episode in my head. The new Klingons are so far away from the possibilities of the old Klingon race that I can barely compare them at all. There is nothing Klingon about the new Klingons, aside from a certain disposition to fight.

On Discovery, they are one dimensional antagonists that are used to draw parallels to today’s politics. Star Trek has done that before, but I believe it hurts a show to have one dimensional villain on the show. The best villains in any show or movie are the ones that we can be interested as well, not only as a foil to the good motives of the main “good” characters. Q in The Next Generation works so well because he can always come down on both sides – supporting or interrupting the crew. The Borg are fascinating because of how completely different their system works and because of the danger their different concept creates. Kai Winn and Gul Dukat in Deep Space Nine are great villains because of the complexity of their characters.

The Klingons on Discovery are dull and barely worthy of a closer look.

Replaceable characters

I don’t know if it’s because of Game of Thrones, but ever since that show became famous it feels like more and more shows try to prove that they can be grown-up and bold by killing off some of their characters. Suddenly, there is a lot more at risk when anyone can die, and the viewer can never be sure who is going to be next. It is an easy way to increase the tension in a story, but at the same time there is the risk of ending up with replaceable and irrelevant characters that the viewer won’t connect to.

In Discovery, it means the waste of so much potential. It starts with Captain Georgiou, wo is amazing, but sadly only in it for two episodes before she gets killed off. Discovery’s security officer didn’t even make it on the list of names that I remembered from this series, and her mirror counterpart is hardly more interesting. Dr. Culber is a charming character, and his relationship with Stamets could have brought some stability to the series, but he is killed off as well.

It can be argued that Georgiou’s death was necessary because of its huge impact on the main character, but I still have the feeling it was a waste of a wonderful character with a great relationship with Burnham.

As for the rest of the crew: we never meet the real Lorca, and Mirror Lorca turns into a one-dimensional villain shortly before the first season ends. Saru gets a little character development, but he barely gets any real connections with any other character than Burnham. Tilly, Stamets and Tyler are probably the most complex characters aside from Burnham, but even then their characters are barely fleshed out. Tilly feels like an improved version of Wesley Crusher, but aside from her quirky personality and her ambitions there is not much to know about her character, and Tyler is mainly characterized through his trauma and his relationship to Burnham. Stamets has probably the most interactions with other characters aside from Burnham and Lorca, and we get a better picture from him because of it. We see him as a scientist in conflict with his orders whenever he is talking to Lorca, we see him as a gentle husband to Colbert, we see him as a troubled colleague to Tilly and a first skeptical but later supportive crewmember to Burnham. He started as an extremely annoying character but turned into a nice guy during the first season – a change that I’m not sure I fully understand the reasons for.

In general the show is missing a lot of character interactions to give us a better understanding of these characters. Who are they and what makes them worth caring? The show spends a lot of time focusing on Burnham’s story, her background and her relationships, but this time is missing in the portrait of the rest of the crew.

The plot

Somewhere in the middle of this first season the producers seemed to get annoyed by the war plot and switched to the mirror universe to tell another story. I couldn’t help but think “Okay, but… what about that enormous war that you started to tell us about? Where did it go?” See, you can’t tell me it’s good story telling to just start a war between Klingons and the Federation that almost wipes out the entire Federation, and then just not talk about it anymore for several episodes. Don’t start a story like this if you don’t want to tell it. You have barely shown us your version of this universe, there is so much we have yet to discover about it – why would you already head over to the mirror universe? In one of what should be one of the biggest conflicts that the Federation has ever seen? How can I care for a mirror version of Landry if I barely know the original Landry? How can I fully understand Burnham’s distress when she has to kill Mirror Conner on board of the ISS Shenzhou when the original Conner only got a few minutes of screen time before he was killed off in the second episode? And what bothers me most about the Mirror universe: Empress Georgiou. I loved the original Georgiou, but Empress Georgiou has nothing in common with her except her looks and affection for Burnham. And while it is understandable that Burnham feels conflicted about her it’s also obvious that this is a completely different Georgiou, and any feelings for her feel fake because it isn’t the real Georgiou. For me, mirror characters have always been fun to point out what makes a character a character. It’s an interesting experiment for one episode, but in my eyes it fails as a long-term plot device because of how non-relatable the experience is. In our real life, people can be dead or alive. We can meet people that remind us of a dead loved one, but even then these people remain individuals in their own right. There is no copy, no mirror image of an existing person and therefore no experience that I could relate to what Burnham is feeling for Empress Georgiou. Especially because everything Empress Georgiou says and does is horrible most of the time. The only reason Burnham is so lenient with her is because she reminds her of Georgiou and because Empress Georgiou likes her, in a way.

That, and because she can be used as a cheap way to end the first plot of the season when they come back from the mirror universe. With Empress Georgiou’s help the horrible conflict with the Klingons is solved within half of an episode; that’s got to count for something, right?

I feel like the Klingon Empire as well as the Terran Empire are supposed to be a foil to the Federation, both are isolationist and try to dominate cultures that are unlike them. Especially the Klingon Empire gets a few lines that most likely are supposed to link it to today’s politics. The only problem here is, that we barely get to see the real Federation. Captain Georgiou was what came closest to it, but after that we get to see Burnham’s mutiny, followed by a lot of time spent on Lorca’s ship which is hardly a good example for the Federation. In the end we get a heartfelt speech by Burnham about the values of the Federation, but unfortunately she is only able to give this speech because of the completely improbable quick end to the war. If we had seen her work for a solution throughout the show that works within Federation values and ends in a victory for the Federation, then the speech would have worked for me. As it is the war only ended because the writers decided that it would end since the show did a poor job in convincing me of their solution to the conflict. I don’t believe that it is that easy, and that the show only spent half of an episode on it didn’t help at all.

A general insecurity

Please explain to me why Sarek has to be in this? What purpose does he serve that couldn’t have been filled by any new character? Why did the show change its plot in the middle of the season, and why did it solve its main conflict at the end in half an episode? Why is the USS Enterprise the last plot twist in the first season and why are Pike and Spock set to appear in the second season?

We already have alternate versions for Spock and Pike, there is no need for yet another recast. I understand that Spock, Pike and Sarek are big names to advertise your show with, and that it can be used to lure Star Trek fans to your show. But it also shows a general insecurity in this show’s own ability to create new strong characters, characters who can become icons and legends themselves. As I already said – we already had reboot movies, and I expected Discovery to try and fit into the existing Trek universe, not to recreate it. Maybe that was a misunderstanding on my part, but I can’t repeat it enough – there is no need for a third incarnation of Spock or Pike. It’s just a distraction of Discovery’s own story, of Discovery’s own characters.

Bringing the Enterprise in at the end and setting it up for season 2 is a distraction as well and now risks to either a) steal the show or b) look less impressive than it should, with its characters only serving as a stage for Discovery to shine on. Both options would be a disservice to Discovery as well as the old shows, but finding the right balance here is really difficult.

Star Trek canon

Aside from the technical Star Trek canon there are also a few points that gave me some difficulties wrapping my head around.

Before I start with my major point, two small questions up front:

What is the meaning of the black badges seen in one of the earlier episodes? According to a deleted scene they are supposed to represent Section 31 – but you wouldn’t know that just by watching the show. I kept wondering when they would bring it up and explain it, and that simply never happened. And the deleted scene makes it actually worse, because it is a pretty stupid idea to have Section 31 parade around in special black badges. They have operated unknown since the Foundation of Starfleet, and not being known is one of the key elements of their existence. Unfortunately season 2 seems to build on that nonsense…

And the last question: could the tribble on Lorca’s desk have revealed Tyler’s identity as a Klingon? Or had he become too human for the tribble to care? Or does the show want to make us believe Tyler was never in Lorca’s office after coming on Discovery?

All in all, the changes and conflicts created thanks to the setting of Discovery before The Original Series bother me the most:

One of them is Burnham being Sarek’s adopted child. Now, unknown family members come and go all the time in Star Trek (remember Sybok?), that is not the problem. But this setup seems quite unlikely, and more than that: unnecessary, because I can’t imagine any other reason for Burnham to be Sarek’s adopted child than what I mentioned in the paragraph before: simple Trekkie baiting. I mean, that was why this information was shared before the show started, right?

It also feels like this was one of the reasons why Discovery would be set before The Original Series. I can’t prove it and I have no information about the decision to place it in this point in time, but every other clash with the Star Trek canon could have been avoided by placing Discovery after Nemesis, the last movie of the original timeline.

It would give the show the freedom to introduce a new race as the enemy instead of twisting the Klingons into something hardly recognizable. The advanced designs and functions of the technology would make a lot more sense.

It would also prevent Discovery from creating plot holes in the other shows; Spock for example states in The Tholian Web that there is “absolutely no record” of a mutiny. With Burnham’s mutiny that statement would be false, and if we go with Burnham being Spock’s sister, he should very well know about this.

So, in conclusion – setting the whole series after Nemesis would have given them more creative freedom while also reducing the risk of errors and breaks in the established canon, and I believe it would have improved the overall quality of the show.

It wouldn’t fix the missing structure in Discovery’s main plot, or the lack of screen time to develop characters other than Burnham, or could ever undo the ugly transformation of the Klingon race. But for all these I only have one advice: stop right where you are and do it better from now on.

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