2/10. I get the impression that they couldn’t afford good writers, but the production heads could afford a LOT of cocaine. The end result is a Trek-ish setting around the biggest Mary Sue trope ever written against a character that they could not ever get up to ‘likeable.’ Watch as Star Fleet Officers constantly break the rules, run off without communicating effectively, disregard orders, or just plainly talk-back with amazing levels of snark to superiors. Somehow they are all written up as heroes instead of all being removed from duty and forced to spend years in front of councillors for their war PTSD… or time-travel PTSD… or mirror-universe PTSD…, discipline and corrective actions for their MANY examples of insubordination, their ship broken up to figure out space-mushroom instantaneous-travel in a post-dilithium universe, remedial training once cleared to return to figure out the changes in the world around them after the jump, and even then being kept on a short-leash because they obviously can’t be trusted: they don’t even fully trust each other and have demonstrated time and time again that they make the wrong decision because of their own ego…
I gave up on it. First trek I did.
Apart from many points already made in the thread for me the worst thing was the acting quality of the Burnham actress and some inclusive actors didn’t cut it for me in theirs quality and took me out the thing. It’s somewhat uncomfortable to say this because you get accused of all kind of things, but I liked many actors in the cast. I loved the cientific guy but didn’t like his partner (thought he overacted) I liked the asian badass emperor but couldn’t stand the spirit of the cello guy.
This is no mean as a disrecpect to them I just didn’t like it and when I read the scripts I liked them better than seeing them acted out.
Not going to score it but I stopped watching at the end of season one.
Really enjoying lower decks and strange new worlds however
5/10: Season one made me think we were getting some kind of Trek / Sliders mashup where they are lost AF in the multiverse and in theory closed all possible prequel issues right then and there. Nothing they could have done would match the show I thought we were in for.
Overall, I thought it was fine. I think it got hit a little harshly by critics. It’s not terrible (read: unwatchable), but it’s pretty firmly my least favorite Star Trek series.
Without actually looking through the full episode lists, and just going off what I remember of each season, here are my gut ratings:
S1: 3/10
S2: 5/10
S3: 4/10
S4: 8/10
Overall: 5/10
Going a bit more into my thoughts in each…
Season 1 - 3/10
Pros:
- First new Trek in a while.
- Neat graphics.
- Great cast. (Especially Doug Jones as Saru).
Cons:
- Prequel-itis…
- New graphics don’t match the TOS era.
- We already know, roughly, how things will pan out.
- Retcons.
- Unintelligible Klingons (and unreadable subtitles).
- Discovery is ugly.
Season 2 - 5/10
Pros:
- Interesting season-long mystery, with payoff for multiple story beats.
- Introduces Anson Mount as Captain Pike, leading to the spinoff of Strange New Worlds.
Cons:
- More prequel-itis…
- Puts legacy characters in peril, when the audience knows they canonically must survive. Saps any tension.
- Galaxy-level threat must obviously be defeated, since we know there’s life in the future canon.
- Burnham time suit well beyond reasonable tech level for the era.
- Control drone fleet tech unreasonable for the era.
- Predestination/Bootstrap paradox.
- Discount Borg.
Season 3 - 4/10
Pros:
- Finally out of prequel territory.
- Cool future tech.
- Interesting mystery of The Burn.
- Great character development.
Cons:
- Unsatisfying conclusion to The Burn mystery.
- Tired of seeing The Federation in shambles.
- Seriously, the source of The Burn was stupid.
- Discovery would be able to solve so, sooo many problems in this era.
- Did I mention the sad kid causing The Burn?
Season 4 - 8/10
Pros:
- More character development.
- Federation starting to get back on its feet.
- Interesting mystery around the “Dark Matter Anomaly” (DMA)
- We get to see The Federation deal with a truly alien first contact. Species 10-C was amazing.
Cons:
- Once again, an existential threat. Very exhausting.
Conclusion
I think Discovery suffered from one main issue, in multiple way: season-based plots. Since every season had a single main plot, any issues with the plot ruin the whole season. We don’t get standalone great episodes like in the old series, which you could watch at random. You kinda need to watch the whole season. Furthermore, since each season had to have a big plot, every season is dealing with a huge issue. It’s exhausting being in an existential crisis the entire time. That’s the feeling we have in our real world right now. That’s the reason I watch Star Trek; it’s a glimpse at how the future might be brighter. Discovery never felt like a promising future. It felt like we are going to be struggling for our lives for the next millennium and more.
So, I still enjoyed it as a piece of media, and a part of the Star Trek canon, but it’s not a show I see myself watching again and again like the rest of the franchise.
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Part of your review is just outright wrong. Discovery does not retcon anything else in Star Trek. I keep seeing that complaint a lot but it’s just flagrantly untrue. Most of the things people point to, like Spock having a secret sister, aren’t retcons. They just weren’t mentioned in the past and it lines up with established personality of Spock. He never mentioned T’Pring to Kirk or Sybock.
The closest thing people can point to are the holograms or the DOTs but if you want to blame someone on that you’d have to start blaming Voyager. They established that holograms were active in this timeframe. Enterprise also showed those holographic training orbs so the idea the tech would be extrapolated to a mini-VR training area within 100 years is entirely feasible. The Animated Series also has ‘The Rec Room’ which was a proto-holodeck and the show is proving to fall into canon thanks to Lower Decks. As for the DOTs, there’s nothing explicitly that would ruleout their existence in the first place. Just because it wasn’t mentioned doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
As for the graphics of the show lining up, yeah. CBS openly said that Discovery was a ‘visual reboot’ so things were going to look similar but not the same, as evidenced with the new awesome bridge we got for the Enterprise. A new update of an old classic. It would be kind of insane to suddenly downgrade everything into looking like it was made of cardboard and jolly ranchers.
I’d also argue pretty heavily against your complaint of “technology that doesn’t match the era”. Both of your examples are Section 31 tech. Given all the other crap we can see that they do, it doesn’t remotely surprise me that their tech would be a bit more advanced, even more so when you consider that this was not long after a war where every resource was going to attempt to stop the Klingons.
A retcon is still a retcon even if it fits or doesnt inherently contradict anything. They do it in comics all the time. Having spoc suddenly have a secret human sister he cant talk about because shes classified is a retcon regardless of whether it fits or was well done.
0 out of 10. I was hoping Michael Burnham would die in that EVA in the first episode because they were so annoying as a character a few minutes in already and it went downhill from there. The only character I did like, the captain in the first episode died not too much later. I stuck through roughly the first 5 episodes but when that security officer went into the cage with that wild animal and got very predictably mauled I just couldn’t stand the horrible writing any more.
I feel like my biggest issue with Discovery was that it failed to live up to its potential. There was a lot that it did right and it had some interesting characters but it never really stuck the landing on it’s major arc premises.
The war with the Klingons was disappointingly handled. I find the little glimpses we get of it in strange new worlds to be way more compelling than the season that actually sort of focused on it. In addition to that the stakes were always way too damn high. Like every arc was an existential save the galaxy from war with the klingons, mirror universe invaders, or super AIs, or solve the energy problems of the future. The show also lacked that sunny optimism that trek normally has. Every once in a while it’d reach for it and then come crashing back down.
Overall it wasnt horrible but meh. When season 4 went on hiatus I lost track of when it came back. I meant to get back to the series but I just never mustered the momentum to do so.
I also feel like Picard was similar though I enjoyed the final season of that more(likely because it shamelessly tugged at my nostalgia strings.
With Strange New World and Lower decks the showrunners have found a better groove for trek I think.
7/10 I think its get hated on very unfairly, though it has significant structural issues that keep it from being the best of star trek. Even still, anyone who says that it didn’t have the heart of star trek is wrong I think, if it wasn’t still there in some essential way we wouldn’t have gotten the rest of new star trek.
Also anyone who says the futuristic starship designs in discovery aren’t awesome are just wrong, sorry.
I watched the first few episodes, and it just didn’t grab me. Its not bad I guess, but it didn’t have the same charm Roddenberry had. Honestly, I don’t like any nutrek, I just watch tng/ds9/voy/ent over and over.
Id give disco a 3/5 for effort.
I’m the same way, I bailed on Picard and Discovery pretty early. Strange New Worlds is really good though, imo.
