Another “why am I even here?” moment courtesy of Paramount Global

Star Trek Discovery writing is disappointing

Part 2 of the lazy writing saga

I ended my previous critique with the hope that the show makers might take some of my commentary to improve the series. Now, I guess, I just hope that the following can help them not make the same mistakes in future projects.

TLDR

• Continued drama at the expense of professionalism
• Representation and modeling at the expense of drama
• Compartmentalized cleverness
• Success based on luck
• Structure is meaningless
• Throw away plot tech
• Nonsensical tech
• The freak out ← → quiet talk pendulum
• Bad and badass with no proof
• Too much on the actors shoulders
• Quite a lot of death for pacifists

Seasons 3, 4, and 5 have all been dropped upon us. Thus, finishing the series. Though I think the writers have worked through some of the initial problems I wrote about, they have remained plagued by these avoidable issues.

Continued drama at the expense of professionalism

While the later seasons did more to make the crew appear more technically proficient, they didn’t make them any better trained or professional. They continue to behave in short sighted, panicky ways—and preceding urgent communication with snarky digressions. It doesn’t make me root for them. It just hurts their credibility as starship crew members.

There’s always time for snark courtesy of Paramount Global

Representation and modeling at the expense of drama

The next problem is a tragic one. In a place where they could be having drama, it’s getting lost. While I welcome the painfully obvious establishment of main characters to provide much needed representation of human diversity and emotional awareness—I think it’s coming at the cost of storytelling. The show has devoted so many minutes of screen time to these scenes that seem to say, “look at us, on tv, as the main characters of the whole scene, making up, not getting shoved to the margins, yeah”. These scenes don’t end up contributing to the plot or making a social statement through the story—but as filler dialogue that drags on too long. I hate to say it but I ended up fast forwarding through a lot of these, especially in seasons 4 and 5.

Filler dialogue courtesy of Paramount Global

Compartmentalized cleverness

The dichotomy of their borderline magical technobabble and recall of obscure trivia mashed up with their shocking amnesia concerning solutions to practical challenges… it just completely breaks my suspension of disbelief.

Mystery of universe that’s never been solved before? Done in 2 minutes courtesy of Paramount Global

One second they’re deciphering the most impossible physics, hacking alien technology, or communicating a complex contextual strategy with 5 beeps. The next moment they’re bringing fists to a phaser fight, letting interference render them helpless, and getting overpowered by lame adversaries. You can’t both be a brilliant strategist and repeatedly forget that forcefields can be established at will anywhere on the ship.

Why neutralize the problem with Trek methods and technology when you can literally get your ass kicked into the air courtesy of Paramount Global

Here’s a couple illustrations to contrast between Next Generation and Discovery situations:

• Burnam or anyone get into a fist fight with, well, just about anyone anywhere. It happens either because they’ve lost their weapons in the fight or can’t think of a better way to overpower. It usually ends with minor injuries including blunt force trauma to their opponent’s heads.
• Picard and Worf walk into a knife fight on Qo’noS. They chose to engage with knives because of cultural context. Doing otherwise would have broken Worf’s honor.
• The Next Generation bridge crew surround an invader in a force field then stun them unconscious.

The Next Gen examples show the characters exhibiting strategic intelligence. They’re using appropriate force to meet each challenge differently. Whereas the Discovery example shows the characters forgetting strategy and regressing to brute force when it isn’t appropriate, then getting into trouble because their adversaries are free to talk in secret and formulate a plan of attack/escape.

Success based on luck

I’m going to go out on a limb and propose that the reason why Discovery keeps surviving via impossible coincidences and lucky breaks — is because the writers got too comfortable lining up story conclusions with the time travel suit. They got into the habit of writing toward predefined endings, meeting up a challenge to a fateful intervention.

The trouble with continuing this model is that the conclusion ends up in their favor unconvincingly. Believable luck in an episode climax has to work out about half the time either positive or negative. Discovery’s end of episode luck appears to be 100%. There’s only so many times you can make the nick of time survival based something like a childhood song someone happened to hum being the critical clue before your audience stops thinking of your characters as capable.

Waiting around for luck to smack into them courtesy of Paramount Global

The key to most successes in Trek shows should be an established capability in adherence to a character’s principles, while hopefully at the same time advancing a character’s arc. That’s what makes their success feel earned. It makes you respect them, admire them, and see them as worthy of their role. Repeatedly averting death by chance just shits all over that possibility of respect.

Structure is meaningless

I’m not going to count the number of times the main characters gained and lost their rank throughout the show but I know it was a lot. Like, an uncomfortable amount. They oscillated in and out of control, trust, and job titles too much for me to think that it matters anymore. What’s the point of the military-like structure of Starfleet if everyone just plays heartfelt and dramatic musical chairs every once in a while?

Then there’s the nepotism. How can new people like Book and Georgiou just get slotted into the bridge crew with no actual Starfleet training? How are they supposed to actually integrate? How can anyone trust them professionally with no common working knowledge?

Rando on the bridge courtesy of Paramount Global

Though these promotions and demotions clearly mean a lot emotionally to them, it doesn’t carry any functional meaning for the crew to be making the good decisions. And, well, I think that is laid bare by the ways in which they fail so frequently.

Along with all this, as soon as they find the sad remnants of Starfleet, they start taking orders. Given everything that’s happened and they’re now kind of the “elders” in this situation, why exactly? Wouldn’t it make a bit more sense to talk a while together and reformulate what kind of arrangement might make the most sense currently, instead of what came before? Things clearly went disastrously and haven’t improved. Why continue that?

Taking orders from rando dude courtesy of Paramount Global

Yet they do—and it goes terribly for a while. More trust betrayals and rank hopping, secrets and going rogue. Why bother? Why pretend that there’s a need for hierarchy after it’s completely broken down and proven itself to be pointless?

Throw away plot tech

Now I know the main point of the Star Trek franchise from the beginning was more about social commentary than it was about technology. But over the years there was a good amount of effort put into making the available tech pretty stable. The tech used normally was thought out and they tried to make the operation of it consistent. If there was something overpowered, it generally came from a far advanced alien. It couldn’t just become part of the crew’s tool set unless it was important for the world building. And once they had it, they kept it.

This is not the case with Discovery and I think it’s done in an irritating way. They’ve gained both old tech that surpasses the older shows and far future tech that far surpasses any previous Trek tech—to the point where often it doesn’t even look like it’s in the Trek universe. While that’s all fabulous and fun of course, it’s not been integrated into the show responsibly.

Too often, this has happened:

• godlike tech is introduced like it’s nothing
• the crew uses it a few times, often across several episodes
• something happens and ‘Oh No!’ they lost it…
• gone forever, too bad, can’t get it back

This happens with just about everything that would be useful for world building: the time suit, dimensional travel, a second spore drive, adaptable workstation interfaces, etc.

Some major plot tech about to get blown up courtesy of Paramount Global

I suspect that keeping these things around is more difficult to produce for a show. But if it’s really too powerful of a capability to write around or too expensive of an effect to budget, maybe don’t introduce it in the first place? Dropping them arbitrarily after they’re introduced is just disappointing.

Some tech about to be lost courtesy of Paramount Global

Some of the worst offenders for throw away plot devices are the ones that show up for only moments in season 5. New characters are just chock full of “bio signature cloaks” and “personal pattern buffers” that get used once but disregarded before and after. Every time this happens, it opens up plot holes. Why didn’t they use this thing before? Why don’t they use it again? Why hasn’t anyone else used it?

Most likely they’re only used once because the writers wrote themselves into a corner and needed throw away tech to get back out. That is NOT a satisfying thing to watch unless it’s done satirically, for comedic effect.

Nonsensical tech

Unlike the legacy tech, the newest future tech works in inexplicable ways. Personal devices would have to be controlled directly by thoughts yet the crew continues to operate these devices partially with their hands. With mental operation there’s no reason for anyone to be waving their arms around anymore. Examples:

• Holographic tricorders — how else could the correct screens appear right away? Since they can obviously choose that with their mind, the rest should be controlled that way as well.
• Personal transporters — how else could their destination be chosen? You can’t just tap to automatically go anywhere.
• Replicator weapons — no other way these could just appear and dissolve whenever they want them to.

Magical tech used with hand waving courtesy of Paramount Global

So then if they have neural interfaces, why do they physically interact with the rest of the ship and shuttles? Why can’t they send telepathic messages? Why can’t they telekinetically manipulate things with energy fields? Why can’t they research, repair, converse, and fight at the speed of thought? Why do they keep resorting to running, shouting, and punching?

Next, there’s the subject of ships in general but especially their ship. All the ships have an onboard AI that is vastly capable of automating a wide array of tasks—yet it’s people that are spending all day every day configuring, repairing, and tweaking all the systems. The repair drones do some kind of repairs but it apparently is mostly/all structural? Or just the stuff out in the vacuum? I don’t know but it doesn’t seem necessary for people to keep doing all that unless the ship is utterly broken.

Now on top of that, make the AI self aware and you’ve got Discovery. Their ship is literally sentient with all the knowledge of a super ancient intelligence combined with all of Starfleet’s recorded history and science. This ship is far more capable of doing anything than the whole crew combined. Yet still… still, it is relegated to menial tasks. Uh, why? It just prefers to be a helpless slave? This does not compute.

The freak out ← → quiet talk pendulum

This pattern has grown to be the standard delivery of scenes in an episode, just a repeating series of freak out or battle scenes followed by the quiet talk and feel all the feelings scenes. Freak out, talk, freak out, talk… It make the show seem like it has to follow this template instead of tell a story.

You can never have enough quiet talks courtesy of Paramount Global

Bad and badass with no proof

For quite a few characters, we are told that they are especially cruel or formidable but that is never really shown to us. It has come in the form of briefing dialogue, proclamations from the characters themselves, or just taunting one another. This sort of exposition does not work when it is followed by those character not living up to how they’re being pitched. Some examples:

• Mirror dimension people. They said they’d been cruel and “acted” like they were (in a campy, Snidely Whiplash kind of way) but we were shown so little to back that up. Evil twin Georgiou and all the others just talk a big game and that’s about it.

You know they’re evil because eyeliner courtesy of Paramount Global

• Burnam. She’s reportedly best of the best at everything mental and physical, yet she struggles through challenges of all kinds.
• Security officers Nhan and Tyler. Talked up as ultimate badasses even though they get their asses handed to them on the regular.
• The Breen. Supposed to be the 1) toxic big bad and 2) even more advanced than anyone. Not only do these aspects not add up in a plausible way—we’re only shown them being talked out of violence, easily infiltrated, collaborating tragically, and getting assassinated by unarmed prisoners.

Oh no, Breen and… Mol… courtesy of Paramount Global

Too much on the actors shoulders

There are frequently lines getting delivered where I feel a lot of cringy discomfort. Some people might just criticize the actors’ performances but I don’t think that’s the cause. I suspect they were given lines that don’t play to their manifestation of the characters. Lines that just aren’t able to hit the mark when filming. The writing is maybe trying to push them in the wrong directions, moment to moment. It’s the most noticeable during the quiet scenes but I think it’s still there in the action and emergency scenes.

Getting some weird lines to say courtesy of Paramount Global

Quite a lot of death for pacifists

So I know the older series’ had their share of people dying. There is a long-standing joke about “red shirts”. But there are a couple differences now with the way it’s been happening. I think with Original and Next Generation, the deaths mostly occurred during accidents or wicked deeds. They were in general, cautionary, small scale, and the lives were revered.

Now there have been a whole bunch of people dying in Discovery who were just caught in a firefight, main character blasting them out of existence left and right. Not a care in the world.

Seconds from slaughtering a whole mess of aliens courtesy of Paramount Global

All that happens and then relatively soon after they’re toiling over the fate of people again. I’m not saying they shouldn’t start caring again—I just mean it’s weird that they suddenly do. Aren’t they always supposed to be pacifists?

Then there’s the scale of destruction that isn’t just threatened but happens! Open war. Whole planets exploded. Most ships in the known universe blown up. The amount of slaughter in this show is astonishing, for the Trek universe. Aren’t the show makers supposed to hold back with that? The stakes are one thing but I feel like actual horrendous tragedy is something that Starfleet is supposed to be preventing, not recovering from.

So those are the things I couldn’t help noticing as the series kept going. They were the issues that would surface in the middle of episodes, making me shake my head and whisper things like, “Ugh, this is so stupid…” until they passed.

In short, they were the aspects that kept this show from being great.

I really do think that if Discovery hadn’t been bogged down by these problems, it could have been the best Trek show to date. There was a lot else going for it.

(Next, read part 1)

Star Trek Discovery has lazy writing