Story: That Hope Is You, Part 1
Words cannot describe the bad taste left in my mouth after Discovery’s second season ended. I was initially annoyed by the overly long battle but felt “At least they seemed to the wrap up the mystery” but as I thought about the episode I would get increasingly annoyed and confused at how it all ended. I mean they had to go to the future purely to avoid the threat getting access to the data...but then they kill the computer and act as if that is all they needed to go forward. It just needed a single thoughtful rewrite that made the warping into the future process already begun...they may have stopped Leland...but they can’t turn back now! But they just didn’t do that. The overly long battle sequence with so much going on...just shit flying everywhere and lasers and exploding...I could never figure out which little ship belonged to who and it was just a utter mess of special effects.
Written By: Michelle Paradise & Jenny Lumet & Alex Kurtzman
Series: Star Trek: Discovery
Year: 2020 Words cannot describe the bad taste left in my mouth after Discovery’s second season ended. I was initially annoyed by the overly long battle but felt “At least they seemed to the wrap up the mystery” but as I thought about the episode I would get increasingly annoyed and confused at how it all ended. I mean they had to go to the future purely to avoid the threat getting access to the data...but then they kill the computer and act as if that is all they needed to go forward. It just needed a single thoughtful rewrite that made the warping into the future process already begun...they may have stopped Leland...but they can’t turn back now! But they just didn’t do that. The overly long battle sequence with so much going on...just shit flying everywhere and lasers and exploding...I could never figure out which little ship belonged to who and it was just a utter mess of special effects.
But hey...this is time for a clean slate for the show. They’ve left the 23rd Century behind. Time to just start fresh. It is time to explore where Trek can go in the 32nd Century! Oh yay it’s another grim dystopian nightmare with lots of lasers and fight sequences. Violence! Trek is about violence!
Burnham crashes into the 32nd Century and into a ship manned by a guy named Book and his cat Grudge (which is in the middle of a phaser fight. Both she and the ship crash land onto a nearby planet. When she connects with him he is not very nice, she did make his ship crash after all. They agree that if she helps him get dilithium he will help her contact Discovery. Through Book we learn a lot about what happened to our beloved future where everyone has grown beyond petty differences and learned to get along in peace: they stopped. They ran out of dilithium or it all stopped working, and then society crumbled. So now the Trek universe is aping Mad Max too! God forbid they ever actually try build on the hope Trek once presented. Instead it has been violent and doom and gloom since Discovery began. War! Evil Robots! Terrorism! Racism! It doesn’t feel like it is using Trek to explore these themes, it just makes the
as integral to Trek’s shining future...just as they are so often with any other sci-fi property.
The episode isn't horrible. I didn't hate it...but as Book and Burnham were being chased by the Orion mob (made up of many classic Star Trek races), I was just finding myself bored. Here we are again, writers that always fall back into some kind of fire fight or action sequence...people are punching each other, people of any alien race (including humans) are just hopeless, angry, and fighting to survive. The hope of a brighter future that Trek once offered is gone. Again. They can claim "this is the story of bringing that hope back!" but when the 23rd Century was presented exactly the same on Discovery, or when Picard portrayed even the lovely 24th Century as a grim and dark nightmare where everyone lacks hope...how am I supposed to believe these writers have any interest in truly making a Trek future that represents optimism or hope? They have thwarted that at every turn! The only show that even sort of resembles it was Lower Decks but that portrayed every character in the universe as some idiot goofball.
I have long given the benefit of the doubt on Disco. I try to look for the positives. Season 2 had started off so well and it felt like things were finally beginning to gel, but then they totally lost the plot and it became bogged down in evil computers and action scenes. Season 3 has started and the best scene is at the end of the episode, when Burnham meets the lone member of the Federation/Starfleet, who isn't even officially sworn in. I liked that scene...and if they had an episode that launched with that style of storytelling, rather than wacky phaser chase...maybe I wouldn't be as hard on this episode. But I have been burned too many times by the new shows. I want to like them and I want to believe that this cast with these amazing visual effects could have great stories to go with them...but the writer's room keeps falling short.
NEXT TIME: Waiting for Discovery
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