Star Trek Discovery” Season 2 Rough Sailings Ahead (A Review)
When CBS launched accolades and heaped praised upon itself for making the announcement that it was embarking on a much prestige can in its highly coveted TV Vault and that was the reimagined Star Trek. Specifically, it would be called Star Trek: Discovery and it would take place ten years before The Enterprise exploits.. It also would change one of the principal canons of Star Trek, giving Spock an adoptive human sibling, much to the chagrin to the fandom core constituents. This wasn’t the only alteration to the core of Star Trek had come to challenge but when it came to Spock, it was a central one.
So, Season 1 began with The Klingon War started by Star Trek officer, Michael Burnham, the adoptive human sister to Spock, and at the end of Season 1, The Klingon War had come to a conclusion, thanks in part to Michael Burnham. This must be noted because Michael Burnham was court-martial at the beginning of the first season but somehow winds up back on a ship serving a captain. I’m assuming it’s the scared straight program of Rygel 4. Keep in mind that she got her captain killed in battling the Klingons. So, this is Season 2 now. Michael Burnham gives a speech at Federation Command, her conviction is tossed out, she has redeemed herself, her captain turns out to be someone else, he gets killed and all is right with the universe. At the beginning of this season, Burnham has an opening prologue that has identity politics laced throughout it and you question the veracity of it all as this is a show where the origins of species is a vast complex admixture. Season 2 opens up with what is assumed to be a young Michael Burnham climbing a flight of stairs as she is about to be introduced to a young Spock. Keep in mind that the Vulcan canon on child rearing and education is already locked and this reimaging tosses everything out on its ass. At the end of Season 1, The Enterprise shows up with Captain Christopher Pike on board. As Star Trek canon goes, this is one of the holy grail s where we have Pike-Enterprise-Spock and a raw and unrefined Spock at that. However, this canon is altered by several factors, the Michael Burnham factor, The Enterprise factor, the timeline factor, to name a few but let’s march ahead with this equation, shall we?
Pike is played with assured self-confidence by Anson Mount. You may recall him from Marvel’s ill-fated ABC show, Inhumans. In his role as Pike, they establish himself as an officer beaming with self-assured confidence and as one who has been doing the captain thing for quite some time. He comes on board with two of his officers, neither of which is Spock. Spock apparently is not on board as he has left the ship in a quest o find an answer. Yep, that’s as vague as one can get. I must also make note that of the complement of Pike’s officers, one of them is female while the other is apparently a straight white male. This notation will become apparent and carries a note of significance later. Pike quickly establish himself as the new captain of discovery when he wrests command from acting Captain Saru. And because Discovery had an imposter captain in the past, Pike must be DNA verified as being the said Pike. I had an issue with this scene, in particular, surrounding the character of Tilly played by Mary Wiseman. When did Tilly turn into a guffawing buffoon falling into a teenage fangirl mode meeting a boy band? Tilly is awestruck with Pike as she attempts to place his hand in position on the console to read his DNA. Why was this behavior displayed? Last year, her aspirations were to be a commanding officer but if this is how she behaves, I do not wish to be under her command. And then there is the screening of Pike’s DNA. Why show him receiving an ‘F’ to what is equivalent of him being in grade school? What about the Kobayashi Maru testing? That should have been a key test in confirming Pike’s pedigree.
So why is Enterprise out there is the first place? Well, it was following red pulses embedded within an asteroid cluster. Burnham, Pike and his two officers investigate the asteroid cluster in these individual pod skimming vessels. Burnham makes notes that she has withstood so many g-forces while piloting the vessel. Why the humble brag? Well, the single white male takes exception to this humble brag and challenge her statement and because if that, he’s immediately killed by an asteroid shard. Challenge Burnham and they’ll kill you off. They’ll redshirt you like the TOS. Now Pike’s pod malfunctions and it’s up to Burnham to rescue him. Convenient. He gives her direct orders and she disobeys. , again. She enlists the aid of two of the other women on Discovery and this is an obvious maneuver of the perception of women over men ploy device as they rescue the captain as Burnham affirms the women's gender in performing the task. Burnham disobedience is not even addressed but placed as being interrupted before she could make her point. Where in anyone’s military would that be accepted?
So they get to the base of the asteroid cluster to find a federation ship crashed within the array. There are survivors on the ship led by a science officer who has culled together parts and scarps to make devices that have sustained the remaining survivor's lives. This science officer is now performing brain surgery on one of the survivors. Yeah, it’s beyond the point of credibility at this point. Now the asteroid cluster is starting to lose its integrity so now all the survivors must be transported onto Discovery. They do it is two transport maneuvers but there is a problem of course. Burnham jumps into action and fixes the transporter issue not once but twice. The last procedure leaves her stranded on the asteroid field while the federation ship falls apart around her. As she is dodging ship parts, she is struck by a piece of debris and her suit is compromises and she has a major femoral tear coming out of her leg. Now, I’m no science officer but when your suit is compromised by the level of a tear to the suit and you have a deadly femoral artery tear, I’d say you have one second to life. But somehow she talks and doesn’t go into shock and wallow, she’s in sickbay getting healed up.
Now to this point of the discussion, I must point out that Michael Burnham is a full-blown Mary Sue. For the uninitiated, a Mary Sue is a woman character who has no flaws, is idealized, a competent character, knows more than you and comes off a too perfect to believe. Micheal Burnham ignores the laws of space and runs through a debris field like a gazelle. Burnham takes a deadly shrapnel injury to a femoral artery and survives. Burnham's space suit doesn’t have any signs of decompression failure after being ripped by shrapnel. Burnham rescues the captain with aplomb. Burnham talks back to the captain. Burnham knows how to fly a pod like a Jedi recruit. Burnham can fix a transporter problem in under 60 seconds. Burnham can recall a childhood memory surrounding Spock and figure out what ‘s troubling him before anyone can and decipher his digital pictograph.
Star Trek: Discovery is a paid service on CBS Access Network. CBS is pushing this service and its agenda but at what cost? There have been accusations that CBS has been salting the mines with paid or influenced favorable reviews with the promises of free merchandise and what not. It is also alleged that attacks have been made against the core fandom base of Star Trek including from the stars themselves who have railed against the negative comments. It is no secret that many of the core fandoms have not embraced this re-imagined storytelling of Star Trek.
Why force an agenda where Spock has an adoptive sister where none existed in the first place. Instead, why not write something new with a different set of new canons to explore? You wound up altering the images of the Klingon race so much so that they wound up looking like a new species of lizard people and nothing like the Klingons we’ve come to know. One thing you did do was listen to the fandom and now the Klingons will have some hair on their heads as opposed to that reptilian look. That’s the only thing you have given in to otherwise, you’ve double down on the anti-fan approach and ignored the core audience,
And then there is the copyright lawsuit against CBS/Star Trek: Discovery and game developer Ana Abdin surrounding the use and storyline of the Tardigrades. The Tardigrades where mentioned again in this Season 2 episode that surprised me considering the case had recently been heard in court and not in favor of CBS. It’s nowhere near to being settled but on the surface, it looks as if CBS and Star Trek: Discovery did a bad bad thing by stealing Abdin’s work that he had published back in 2014.
There are a lot of questions surrounding this production. How well are the subscription numbers? Is there any truth to the bias reviewing process with Rotten Tomato? Are they not really writing reviews but instead highlighting puff piece articles? Is Michael Burnham a hive queen? This was just the first episode. I don’t think I’ll return for another visit to this universe. The science isn’t just there.
