Star Trek Discovery Shows the Strengths & Flaws of Streaming

I intentionally watched Lower Decks and Picard before delving into Discovery because it has 3 seasons (with the 4th starting next month) of about 42 episodes.  I only watched 39 because I had already seen the first 3 on Pluto TV months ago.  Unlike most shows I talk about, I don't really need to get into the plot because I think most of my usual readers have seen the show.

One problem was that when it first debuted, CBS All Access (now Paramount+) only let you see the first episode for free.  The problem with that is the first episode kind of sucks.  It doesn't show the Discovery except in the credits or most of what would become the main cast.  That doesn't even happen until episode 3!  Which really, when Pluto TV showed the first three episodes (plus earlier a second season one for their whole Black Lives Matter/Juneteenth thing one year), I actually started getting into the show, whereas just seeing the first one with the weird Klingons and taking place on the wimpy Zhengzhou, didn't really interest me much.  It helps to actually give people a sense of your actual show with the actual setting and cast and everything.  Seems like common sense, but here we are.  CBS/Paramount got too greedy hoping people would plop down money based on half of a pilot that wasn't that great. 

Starting with Episode 3 we get to the actual ship and meet Lorca, Stamets, Tilly, and some of the others who become important and find out about the spore drive and stuff then the show starts getting more interesting.  To me the first season was still kind of bumpy but it had some good moments and even if they probably didn't need so many Mirror Universe episodes those were good.

But the end of the first season to me kinda sucked.  Getting back to their universe they somehow warp ahead 9 months to where the Federation is on the brink of collapse.  The final episode especially seems rushed as they grow a whole bunch of space mushrooms on a dead moon in the blink of an eye and make a bomb for the female Klingon to threaten to blow up Q'onos with unless the other Klingons make her the leader.  Since the spore network had taken them ahead 9 months, I kept waiting for them to use it to go back in time, but that never even seemed on the table.  I'm sure there are reasons for that...

I think season 2 was probably the best one overall.  The search for the "Red Angel" and stopping Section 31 was all pretty cool--and it's nice they used something first introduced in DS9.  I really liked Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, which makes me want to see the spin-off show.  The guy playing Spock was good too.  The "Number One" joke got stretched a bit too much when she doesn't even give a name during her debriefing with Starfleet; at some point are they going to actually give her a name or just run that joke through the ground into the center of the planet?

But one episode of season 2 really highlighted the weakness with this format.  They had hinted a couple of times that the evil Control AI was using the robotic looking Airiam on the Discovery and then in one episode she goes full rogue before dying.  This is supposed to be sad and tragic, but we know so little about most of the secondary characters that it really isn't.  I don't even know what the hell Airiam was:  a cyborg?  A basic android?  Some kind of Bionic Woman thing? 

Unlike most of the previous shows where you at least knew the whole bridge crew and had some idea of their deal, I barely knew anyone on the bridge of the Discovery besides Pike, Burnham, and Saru.  Earlier in the season they say the navigator Owo (whatever her full name is) grew up in some tech-phobic community, which was the first mention of that in any way.  When you don't define your secondary characters in like the previous 15-16 episodes I guess you can just assign them whatever backstory is convenient to the plot.  And what's the deal with her and Detmer, the pilot?  They give each other looks and hug and stuff, but is there more there?  They already have a gay relationship with Stamets and Culber, so why not a lesbian one?

Anyway, the problem is with only 13-14 episodes there's not time to focus on secondary characters the way TNG would mostly focus on Picard, Data, and Worf but sprinkle in some focusing on Riker, Troi, Dr. Crusher, LaForge, and (unfortunately) Wesley.  Or DS9 would sprinkle in a Bashir, O'Brien, Dax, and Kira episode and of course the funny Ferenghi ones.  Voyager and Enterprise were the same way.  The point being they all had 20-some episodes, so they could take time out to deal with other characters instead of just the main ones, so you at least knew a little about them before they died.  Really I've been saying this since Beast Wars in 1996:  compressed seasons just don't leave time for much besides the overall story.  It especially gets true for these shows like Archer where a "season" now is 8 episodes.

The second season did end on a real bang with a huge battle between the Discovery/Enterprise and Section 31 before Burnham as the "Red Angel" leads Discovery 930 years into the future.  I was intrigued by where this would go and then I was kind of disappointed at the end.

The first couple of episodes introduce a new dynamic more akin to Firefly or Andromeda, sort of a sci-fi Western thing where they're the new sheriff in a corrupt and nasty town.  Then they just sort of throw that aside when they find Starfleet HQ and it becomes about finding the source of "the Burn."  Did there really need to be some elaborate source of it?  Couldn't the dilithium just be gone and we have to move on?

The other disappointing thing was like Voyager there was an opportunity to make it a story of survival with the Discovery 930 years in the future, cut off from Starfleet and on its own.  But like Voyager they pretty well punted on that idea and made it too easy for them to survive.  In a few episodes they find Starfleet and get refitted with detached nacelles and new displays and everything--except uniforms.

And then they did the kind of thing comics like to do to replacement heroes like AzBats in the 90s where they sabotage Saru as the captain so they can make Burnham the captain.  First they had him almost destroy the ship to try to get to a Kelpian ship and then he's stuck on the crashed ship (as a human, which must have been nice for Doug Jones) while Burnham, Book, Tilly, and the others except Culber are off saving the galaxy from the Emerald Chain gang.  I already knew Saru was leaving the show and Burnham taking over (they kind of spoil that in the commercials for Paramount+) but it was really obvious how they were setting it up.

And then it ends with an anti-environmentalist message where in a deus ex machina they find a planet full of dilithium to mine.  Instead of figuring out how to create more spore drives or another source of propulsion, nope, the solution is just to find more non-renewable resources out there.  Drill, baby, drill!

The Discovery came to the future because it needed to hide the Sphere AI from the universe, but really not much happens with that plot in the third season.  The Sphere AI shows everyone a Buster Keaton movie and downloads into some droids and that's about it.  And what's the point of Tig Notaro's Jett Reno, who seems like she'd be much more at home on the Orville?  Other than sniping with Stamets, she never really seems to contribute much.  The spore drive that was so important to the war hasn't seen a ton of improvement.  I thought after Book was able to jump with it they'd realize they could use his people for navigators or something and that would open things up for more spore drives.  But no.  Let's just keep using the thing we've been using for 1000 years.  Awesome.

So now Burnham is the captain and I'm still not sold on her.  She's just too Mary Sue-ish.  Is there anything she can't do?  She's super smart and she can fight and all this other stuff.  Plus she's Spock's adopted sister/Sarek's adopted daughter and the Red Angel.  In the first season she was at least an outcast for "starting" the Klingon war and cold emotionally but by the end of Season 3 she's not even that.  She's perfect!  Too perfect.  That's why I liked Saru; he wasn't perfect.  And he was funny, trying to work out his catchphrase and all.  He didn't even get much of a sendoff compared to Airiam or Pike because they were in too much of a hurry at the end.

Anyway, if it sounds like I didn't like the show, I did.  The big advantages of streaming are there's a much higher budget than TOS for sets and effects and actors.  And there's less worries about cancellation than on one of the big-four networks.  But the streaming platform has some drawbacks, as I've mentioned.

We'll have to see what happens in season 4.  Unlike the previous seasons they didn't really set up much going forward.  They're just going to be UPS drivers handing out dilithium?  That sounds like a Lower Decks job.