@maeron I am so much in support of everything you've written here. Already I am certain that next weeks episode will be the last I'll be watching and it doesn't bother me on iota. And to be honest: I am not putting much faith in the upcoming ST shows. Right now I might as well going on record saying that the time without Star Trek was better than a time with this Star Trek.
And S3 was officially confirmed by CBS All Access.
Review by DeletedBlockedParent2019-04-12T11:48:41Z
The dialog in this episode sounds like it was written by a 12 year old. I've read Star Trek fan-fiction from the 90s (written by actual 12-year-olds) that had better prose and more thought-provoking ideas than this.
The two most three-dimensional characters from the first season, Burnham and Tilly, are continuing to be under-minded by Shatner-esque overacting and unearned emotional moments. Instead of feeling what they're feeling and enjoying the moment, I'm just waiting for the scene to end so the episode can continue. No attempt is being made to convince me to empathize with anyone.
Discovery doesn't just not live up to the standard of humanization and story-telling of any other part of the Star Trek franchise, it's no longer even living up to earlier episodes of this very season. New Eden was not particularly an extraordinary episode of Star Trek, but it remains the high watermark for this series. What looked like actual progress and improvements and a willingness to grow at the beginning of the season turned out to be a small blip before settling back into its old mistakes. Just an anomaly in Discovery's now two-year-old subpar, by-the-numbers, over-saturated style that wholly vindicates the JJ Abrams movies as a superior and much more enjoyable reimagining of Star Trek.
Which is a real shame. Because in the hands of someone who cares and has any production talent, this feels like it could be an amazing story. Turns out Kurtzman is just as incompetent as Fuller.
I have no idea what's happening with this series going forward. I heard a while back that it had already been renewed for a third season but now I'm hearing contradictions to that claim. And the show seems to be very overtly building up to burying the history of Discovery and Burnham so that it doesn't interfere with known future historical events. But I honestly can't bring myself to care like I did when The Next Generation ended... or when Deep Space Nine ended... or even when Voyager or Enterprise ended. Seriously, I still want more episodes of Star Trek Enterprise. It would make me happy to spend more time with that crew again. As campy and clichéd as they were, they were people I wanted to be friends with and learn from. Whereas next week's finale of Discovery could be flat-out canceled, never to publicly air and I honestly don't think I would feel as though I had lost anything. Whenever Discovery ends, it won't leave me with pangs of separation, it will leave me with a sigh of relief that it's finally over.
...I certainly won't scrunch up my face and start dripping tears all over the place at the drop of a hat like the current version of Michael Burnham does with just about everything now. Stoic and stunned when her Captain and mentor of seven years dies right in front of her, sobbing uncontrollably and running into waiting arms like a teenager when her Section 31/Klingon spy lover, who got into her pants by lying to her face, fumbles with his goodbyes.