Star Trek: Discovery is Bad, and You Should Feel Bad

The first episode of Star Trek I can remember watching is The Balance of Terror, I was home sick from school and the episode played on the old channel DC20 in the middle of the day or late morning.  I'm pretty sure it aired at 10:00 am because that was when I turned on the television in my parents' bedroom after convincing myself that my mother wasn't going to suddenly decide she wasn't going to work that day.  This thought process is odd because I'm pretty sure my mom was working from home during this period, so maybe she had gone to the grocery store or something.  That's all irrelevant, but that's where my mind was while I was watching Star Trek as a child. 

As an adult, Star Trek fills a similar role as Doctor Who, a show that approaches challenges and meeting new species and people with hope and curiosity, even the Daleks and Klingons have been treated with empathy.  Not to get pedantic, but the opening sequence makes it pretty damn obvious:

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

To quote Captain Kirk, he of the flying leg kick, "We fight only when there's no choice."

After four episodes, my impression of Star Trek: Discovery's opening narration, if it had one, would be: "Victory by any means necessary. Also, fuck all the previously established storylines and precedent."  JJ Abrams can pull this off for his movies, opening up new adventures for the crew of the Enterprise, and allowing writers to work within the same universe while also exploring new ground.  The first new movie wasn't terrible, it was entertaining, but not great, much like Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home.  Star Trek Into Darkness was pretty bad, mostly because the villain had no build up within the story so we weren't invested in him or the threat he represented to the crew.  "Hi guys!  I'm Khan, even though we rebooted this movie series to allow us to make new movies we are reusing all of the old storylines!  Totally not a remake tho!"  However to try and shoehorn this sort of mentality into a universe that has previously always been about exploration, about empathy, and ever hopeful is a mistake.  Like taking away the Doctor's sonic screwdriver and replacing it with a .44 Space Magnum.

Star Trek: Discovery feels like someone at CBS wanted a sci-fi show, and all the execs would allow was Star Trek, and so the creators are begrudgingly working within that framework, while bending or breaking it as much as possible.  The two-part pilot was ham-fisted at best, and downright shitty at worst.  The main problems can be broken into two categories: the heroes and the villains.  The interactions between Michael Burnham and her captain were so forced and awkward, you would be forgiven if you thought they had been working together for 7 days, not 7 years.  Sure, Burnham was raised by Vulcans, and you might say that is why she was awkward around other humans, but if you watch Spock and Kirk for two minutes, you'd see that excuse as flimsy.  After 7 years together, those two characters knew almost nothing about each other, had no trust in each other's decisions, and couldn't communicate effectively in a crisis situation.  Essentially, this results from poor writing.

The villains of ST: Discovery are Klingons on the warpath.  Unfortunately, they're terrible, too.  Dispensing the established storylines of shows that the creators claim to be working within, the Klingons look like someone had described ST:TNG-era Klingons to a make-up artist who had never seen a Star Trek show over a bad Skype connection. This breaks with the continuity of ST: Enterprise and TOS.  These Klingons are much more savage than Klingons of any era.  I could have missed this, but I can't recall any Klingons eating the corpses of their enemies in The Next Generation, and I just finished watching that entire series only last week.  Their costumes, armor, ships, and space suits all look like they belong in a fantasy genre show, "let's just throw spikes on everything, that will show everyone how edgy and new these baddies are!"  Their entire outlook and costumes have been designed to make them out to be one-dimensional savages with whom there can be no negotiation.  That's a violation of Starfleet directive something or other: everyone deserves a chance.

Ultimately, all this boils down to a show that I might have watched an episode or two of on Netflix, but won't bother watching and certainly won't keep paying for a subscription to CBS All Access.  I watched these four episodes on CBS All Access which my lovely lady had signed up to watch the Emmys.  We have already cancelled the subscription.

If I want to watch a new Star Trek show, I'll watch The Orville.  Yeah, I said it, Seth MacFarlane's show is vastly better, with thoughtful writing, some funny jokes, some unfunny jokes, and they've stopped mentioning his character's divorce every five minutes.

The Wizard Uses Item: Scroll of Reanimation

Let us all hope that no otherworldly intelligences have lain spawn within the recesses of this shambling corpse of a bloggio.

The Genius is once again deliberately, and purposefully, unemployed, but not without plan or hope. After all, in this economy it is so easy to find employment that who wouldn't want to take a couple month vacation and then merge with the job stream as the salmon so often do. Except, you know, without the orgy and death at the end of the search.

But seriously, I have moved out of the comfort and light of the lovely city of DC to the far reaches of Virginia-space. The amenities in my new lair are charming and rustic. So rustic in fact, that I must travel 5 miles to find the internets. This rusticity extends to television and radio signals, as well. You might almost wonder if I have violated both Einstein and Lewis' Laws, and traveled into the near-distant past. So do I.

I've got a backlog of post ideas longer than the list of bad wang jokes I told, and I have nothing to stop me from writing. I can't even muster a bad excuse to avoid writing. So look out Pinko Punko, I will be pestering you about Monday Goldriker Theater.

Slackers and Perspective

Lately, I've become re-aware of a terrible new habit among my circle. We are all ignoring each other. We wrap ourselves up in our jobs, or our new relationships, and we drop of the face of the planet. I use the term re-aware because this seems to go in cycles.

I was guilty earlier in the year when I made the transition to working a shitty second-shift job with no set schedule. My friends and family worked fairly hard to keep in touch and I thank them for it. Now that I work a decent second-shift job with a set schedule, it is far easier for me to keep in touch, and even make plans!

Various friends have all been guilty at one or several times in the past, fulsome being the current reigning champ. This can get extremely disconcerting, and even discouraging, but you've got to remember that it frequently isn't personal. It';s hard enough to schedule time to meet when you live in the same city, and damn near impossible when you don't.

Patience and persistence are two important traits. Leave a message or two, appropriately spaced in time, maybe send an email or two, and let them contact you. The line to harassment can be easy to cross, so be patient.

For the wrapped-up, try not to be such a toolbag and spend five minutes responding with an email. A quick note fired off before that meeting, or the reality show of your choice, can mean a lot to the people you're choosing Deal or No Deal over. Don't get upset with your friends if they don't know every miniscule detail of your life either, after all you're the one who stopped returning their calls, asshole.