Discovery: Gut check time?

I dunno y'all. This latest episode, Light and Shadows, completely threw me out of the show. Just when I thought they were about to reel off a bunch of consecutive good episodes, they drop a stinker like this.

From the jump, there's another ridiculous Burnham monologue filled with portentous words meaning very little. Making it worse, she fills us in on conclusions we never saw the characters reach, which made me feel like I must have somehow missed a crucial episode. Nope. To save even more time, they decided not to include the usual scene where characters immediately lurch toward whatever conclusion the writers need. Instead, they just informed us of the new plot points by narration. I'll say this, it's economical, but most video games have better writing.

I'm already fatigued explaining this single issue with the episode. I won't bloat this post wondering why Amanda and Sarek act like completely different people each time we see them or why Burnham can say things like, "Do this thing for me. You *have* to!" and any character will immediately abandon their own strongly held beliefs.

I'll not detail how the show continues to avoid the merest display of military formality or even workplace professionalism, preferring to focus on characters making proclamations about how cool their job is or how rad "math" is. These continued exclamations on the show seem indicative of writers who have a bee in their bonnet to educate us all about the virtues of STEM careers at every turn, while failing often at getting even the most basic scientific principles right.

The soap opera rivalries being introduced don't fare much better. Neither Tyler nor Cannibal Georgiou come off as anything other than cartoons. When Pike and Ash reach a level of grudging respect, none of it lands emotionally. If I don't buy the setup, they can't earn the payoff. Does anyone know why Pike went from arguing with Tyler to taking him on the shuttle mission? Don't even get me started on the badge flip. I can't conceive of any context a human with a working brain would decide this is a good idea.

I promised not to go long and even just scratching the surface, the issues could fill pages. Why does Spock suddenly get better after being rescued? The magic awesomeness of Burnham? Why would Section 31 plan on lobotomizing Spock when there are tons of other options? Why could Georgiou blackmail her captain based on his fear of Burnham not liking him? Why would he care? Why did characters continue to talk about finding Spock's shuttle after (I think) it was revealed that Georgiou was flying it? Why does Stamets serve as nothing more than a widget they can plug into any self-created plot hole?

There are many things to like about the show, but the writing showcases one unforced error after another. I don't complain about new uniforms or Klingon makeup or high-tech holograms and ships. Canon violations mean next to nothing to me. I just want the story to be good and for some sort of recognizable spirit of Trek to come through. By way of trying to suggest an idea for improvement, could the astounding inconsistency in characters, story, tone and quality be due to the merry-go-round of writers and directors the show employs while still attempting a serialized format?

Whatever's going on, I don't see how the show can sustain this level of inconsistency much longer. Can anybody talk me off the ledge?

7 comments

7 Comments

Daniel Falch

Mar 07, 2019

I'm still playing catchup with season 2 but I can already see some of the points being made in this post. S2 is an improvement imo because they are doing Star Trek exploring type stuff. The writers have demonstrated a very weak grasp of writing political conflict and klingons in particular. The writers also seem to be hangfiring on the wheres Spock thing. Its dragging out to long.

Burnham is actually improved as a character this season imo. I have a higher opinion of her conduct in ep 2 with the beta quadrant humans than the hosts did during the podcast. I am a little tired of characters seeing people/visions and trying to conceal that fact. They live in a universe of unexplored sentient energy interactions, seeing a manifestation shouldn't automatically be concealed as a mental illness. Even if it is an illness, I would have hoped that stigma wouldn't exist in the Star Trek future anymore.

G.L. McDorman

Mar 06, 2019

"Inconsistency" is a great word for it, Greg. I know that the internet thinks season two is an improvement on season one, but I disagree. I do think that the highs of this season are higher, but the lows have been far lower as well -- and the up-and-down is really disorienting.

I think you are right to point to the mechanics of the writers' room as the source of the problem -- it doesn't feel like anyone is smoothing out the inconsistencies the way that a show-runner is supposed to and it's frustrating.

Greg

Mar 06, 2019

Replying to

@Glenn That's how you turn a phrase folks!

Another thing that just occurred to me: RE: the probe. Don't they say words to the effect of "it's aged 500 years?" Well, as we all know, being time travel experts, saying something has aged 500 years isn't always the same thing as saying something came from 500 years in the future. For example, a five year old child can be transported 500 years into the future and then immediately turn around and come home. That doesn't make them 505 years old when they return. They're still a five year old child who jumped around in time.

First off, by what measure are they determining the age of the probe when it shows back up? If they're quickly dating the tech based on relative molecular decay, that would indeed indicate age. However, if that's the case, where did the probe hang out for 500 years? It seemed to disappear into the anomaly and then return. This implies it was taken by some force intentionally, modified and then sent back. In this case, nothing makes sense because where did the probe end up spending 500 years? Did the future people spend 500 years modifying the probe before deciding to send it back? In that case, they definitely took their "time."

Or, did the probe hang out in limbo someplace for 500 years before being grabbed up by the future people and repurposed? This seems unlikely because the probe would just be a hunk of junk after 500 years on its own. I can't see what utility it would have to some future entity who found it in that state.

I dunno. Maybe I'm going down the nerd hole here. Maybe I'm just not seeing the obvious, but to me it seems like yet another example of the writers overreaching. They play with words and concepts they just aren't that familiar with and end up confusing the rest of us. They hope if they move fast enough and throw enough plates in the air, we'll just assume it all works and move on. Even if subconsciously though, our brains notice these little disconnects and they add up. In the end, the story just doesn't land.

chrissam42

Mar 24, 2019

Replying to

@Greg My initial assumption when they said the probe had aged 500 years was that it had evolved on its own (not unlike the computer in Calypso). Which makes it kind of a Terminator-style "don't leave the robots alone too long" trope. I still think that's the only thing that really makes sense with the whole time-distortion anomaly plot of that episode, but y'all are right that they do seem to be suggesting that it was modified by someone and sent back. One reason I could come up with for a future supervillain to recycle an old piece of junk, instead of using their own stuff, is that presumably the Discovery probe would have a better chance at interacting with the shuttle computer to get the data they were after. But yeah, it's all a muddle.

Greg

Mar 24, 2019

Replying to

@chrissam42 Exactly where I was going. As Trek viewers, we've always been asked to suspend a little disbelief and to tolerate some pseudo science that moves plots along. Yet, it seems like often on DSC, we're being put in the tough spot of having to reconcile inconsistent or illogical information and/or conclusions that just don't make sense.