Star Trek: Discovery Discussion (SPOILERS HERE ONLY)

[evay]

I am very, very angry about Culber.

I don't care how DSC tries to fix this — whether Mirror Culber joins the crew, or they go back in time, or Stamets falls in love with somebody else — I will never forget that Culber was killed in the first place. That they went there. Trek proclaimed that one of the main characters was an openly gay person in a committed sexual and romantic same-sex relationship, and then they kill the guy's partner.

That is not groundbreaking. That is the fucking Bury Your Gays trope. You don't get to have it both ways. You don't get to proclaim openness and inclusiveness and progressiveness and then kill off the gay character in Season 1.5. That is BULLSHIT.

[Wowbagger]

Culber was one of the only uncomplicatedly decent people on Discovery. His too-rare appearances were generally a point of light in a sea of darkness. He occasionally reminded me that the show I'm watching is, at least theoretically, a Star Trek program.

Now I've got Tilly and no one.

Dr. Culber's death would have been a disaster even if he'd been straight. (Which, of course, he wasn't, and which makes this move weirdly tone-deaf in the current environment.)

Who wouldn't?

On the one hand, Lorca's evil. I mean, this isn't even a question anymore: in "The Wolf Inside," he unhesitatingly orders Burnham to exterminate hundreds of innocent rebels in order to preserve his/Discovery's cover. He represents nearly everything wrong with Discovery.

On the other hand, I kinda like him anyway? Maybe it's just Jason Isaacs' panache. Maybe I just love strong-chinned white males. Maybe I have hope there's still a shred of Anakin left inside his Darth Vader exterior.

I dunno. My feelings on Lorca are oddly complicated and I'm not sure why.

Imma try to watch the show without bothering to consider it Trek, as evay suggests.

[evay]

My sweetie thinks the Lorca we know is from the Mirror Universe and came over during the event which destroyed his ship. That would be entertaining, at least.

If DSC had actually been the anthology/Wheel of Trek which Fuller originally wanted, I would have loved to see a half-season where MU characters cross into our universe, and we have to deal with them here. We always see it the other way around. We just watched TOS's "Mirror, Mirror" with kiddo so she would understand what the MU means on DSC, and Spock notes that it's much easier for civilized people to pretend to be barbarians than vice versa. So show us the vice versa. Show us a scheming, backstabbing, unscrupulous bastard who finds this weird, peaceful, helpful, collaborative society and has to work his/her way to the top without getting stopped.

[Insert gratuitous joke about current American politics here]

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by evay

My sweetie thinks the Lorca we know is from the Mirror Universe and came over during the event which destroyed his ship. That would be entertaining, at least.

Winner winner chicken dinner.

[evay]

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

Winner winner chicken dinner.

yeah, he's a sharp one.

How are they going to bring Lorca back? I guess Discovery has to go back a bit more than nine months to restore both Lorca and Culber? but then they'll know it's Mirror Lorca.

It's not Trek necessarily, but damn, this is some amazing storytelling (with the "murder the gay guy" exception).

[Nate the Great]

So...is anyone still watching the show?

I lowered my own expectations too far and wound up happily surprised!

Could you clarify that statement for me, Zeke? "Too far?"

[Nate the Great]

If anyone saw the earlier version of the post, I apologize. I thought I had deleted it. I was going to bash Discovery again with another link pointing out how other people are having problems, too.

I will bring up one of the more reasonable points. One commenter was irked that a non-Trekkie was so dismissive of Trekkies being so obsessed with continuity, pointing out that such things in other fandoms are seemingly more acceptable. In particular, someone who cares about the details in a historical reenactment. I would expand this to other fandoms as well. Awhile back I linked to a blog about someone who cares whether or not the typography used in movies is accurate to the time period being depicted.

Movie studios spend billions of dollars every year making sure that the clothes are accurate, the weapons are accurate, the signage is accurate, the accents and vocabulary in the dialogue is accurate. To the ignorant who bash Trekkie passion, these things may seem like wastes of time. After all, isn't this a waste of money for things that the casual viewer won't notice? No, it's not.