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It isn't the mushroom drive that made Discovery bad, it's that Starfleet apparently no longer has any kind of standards.
TOS and TNG had all kinds of "woke" politics for their era, but they portrayed them as happening on a military vessel. People were calm, competent and followed the chain of command. The only time that broke down is when they were under the influence of some kind of alien disease or tech.
Discovery's crew was full of whiny, fragile people that were barely able to do their jobs for all the time they spent obsessing about their personal problems. Tilly is the prime example of this. The "Tilly" equivalent in TNG was Reginald Barclay. Shy, stressed, lacking self confidence, etc. Barclay's character arc makes sense for Star Trek. He is able to save the day, but he's certainly not promoted because it's clear that the senior officers on the show are calm, competent and project confidence. He's basically there to show that not all Star Trek characters are the confident, competent, brave people who make up the bridge crew. And, by doing that they emphasize how elite the bridge crew is. Meanwhile, on Discovery, Tilly is promoted and keeps gaining responsibility despite never addressing these gaping character flaws. The "Tilly" message seems to be something like "it doesn't matter if you're weird, awkward and unable to communicate competently, as long as you love and accept yourself, you too deserve to be on the bridge making life or death decisions".
Discovery also fails because that lack of competence is everywhere in the crew. The original shows had the crew acting as... well a crew. They'd tackle problems together. In TOS Kirk would lead the charge, but he'd never do anything on his own. Spock was stronger and smarter than anybody else, but he followed the lead of his commander. McCoy handled the medical stuff. Scotty handled engineering. In Discovery, Burnham is apparently the only competent person on the crew, and the only one not to be fazed when something bad happens, so rather than the crew working together to solve issues, it's superhero Burnham while the crew faints dramatically. The only real exceptions to that are Saru (whose personality doesn't really make sense given what they explain about his species), and Commander Reno, who is a breath of fresh air because she's basically the only one who isn't constantly freaking out -- although the sarcasm and fatalism of her character is almost too much.
What makes it all worse is that the backdrop is that the universe is doomed and only Discovery can save it. Sure, the other Treks have had major threats to the universe, but they were being slow-rolled over a long season, or sometimes multiple seasons. They had room to breathe and do episodes that didn't advance the plot. That gave them a time to do episodes focused on fleshing out the personality of a member of the crew, to do silly things, etc. Discovery has the whiniest, least professional crew that has ever crewed a starship (and I'm including Boimler and friends), who are whining while dealing with the most urgent apocalyptic scenarios. It's a soap opera while the end of the world is playing out.
This. All of this. Thank you.
I feel like one of the main issues with Discovery is also that it's much more serialised, and more compact, to its detriment.
There wasn't an ambiguous downtime between adventures, or for things to happen off-screen, everything happened one after the other. We didn't have space to develop and explore the characters, basically everything was plot, which made the emotional parts feel unearned.
The characters were rarely more than the bare minimum to enable said plot.
It hugely needed downtime it didn't really get, and could have benefited from stretching out either the seasons or the episodes out to have them be more fleshed out and normal, instead of dealing with crisis after crisis after crisis. In all of three seasons, we had about a single segment of episode where they had any memorable recreation at all.
There was never an equivalent of the "The Doctor is a good singer, Worf hates children, Spock likes chess" moments for the Discovery characters to expand into between the big plot points. They don't really have long-term flaws, or room to grow for the most part.
Discovery also fails because that lack of competence is everywhere in the crew.
I'd actually disagree with you on discovery showing a lack of competence. If anything, besides the attitude, it felt more like the characters were too competent. They didn't have varied, specific flaws and weaknesses that made them seem more human, instead being universally omnicompetent.
Even TNG, otherwise a shining bastion of competency, worked best when the characters had individual flaws and weaknesses that they collectively mitigated by relying on each other, rather than everyone being perfect and good at everything.
Discovery lacks that kind of deferring to better expertise, and often comes across as Burnham does everything. Except when she's coming up with a plan that will fix everything, there was barely any consultation, or back and forth. There wasn't really ever a "I can think of something that could help, but have no idea how to execute it, anyone know how we might pull it off?", or "That's not a bad thought, but if we do it this other way, it might be better".
basically everything was plot, which made the emotional parts feel unearned.
Unearned, and also shoehorned in. They were in the middle of a series of crises, and instead of just putting the personal stuff to the side until the crisis/crises were over they had to deal with personal soap-opera stuff in the middle of that. And, that meant that you couldn't have personal character development that was low-stakes. For it to interrupt the crisis it had to be high stakes. That just heightened the soap-operaness because every emotional moment was high stakes.
Discovery lacks that kind of deferring to better expertise, and often comes across as Burnham does everything.
That's basically what I mean about the incompetence. She had to do everything herself rather than consult with the rest of the crew, often breaking the rules because she didn't have time to follow them because everything was so urgent. On every other Star Trek, the chief engineer would be consulted when it came to engineering things, the science officer when it came to science things, and so-on. But, because Burnham didn't consult her experts, it makes it seem like they're not competent enough to keep up with her.
So, these other crew members are involved when there's a high-stakes soap opera scene where they bare their souls. But, they're bypassed when Burnham has to take quick actions or the whole multiverse dies. Which makes it seem like this isn't a crew of a captain, a science officer and a chief engineer working together to solve things. It's a soap opera involving Tilly, Stamets, and Jett while Burnham saves the multiverse.
It’s a soap opera involving Tilly, Stamets, and Jett while Burnham saves the multiverse.
This was also my problem with STD. Star Trek is supposed to be a space opera, not a soap opera in space.
I regret that I have but one upvote to give to this comment.
The only addition I have is the glorification/growth of Section 31. They were introduced as the baddies because they are the antithesis of what the Federation is. As a foil they're at least a gateway to interesting variations on "do the ends justify the means" and ""are short term solutions acceptable while sacrificing long term ones". Which the Federation classically would answer with a resounding "No".
But sci-fi Black Ops is "cool" and The Expanse was popular so lets get on that bandwagon apparently. (I love The Expanse, but different things should be different.)
I had to stop watching when an alien got really sad that one time and that caused all the dilithium crystals in the galaxy to blow up. It was just... Dumb.
At the same time, it was a very TOS plot and resolution, and Discovery is based on that.
Charlie X was a child who would have blown up the entire Federation, because he was upset that people told him "no".
Lazarus nearly detonated the entire universe, and for at least one moment, caused it to cease to exist.
Which doesn't gel with the post-TNG Trek, which is more scientifically grounded, but "child got given godlike powers and nearly wiped out the galaxy because they were upset" fits in perfectly with TOS. It's just missing a reset button to put everything to rights.
Still canon tho
Sure, but hopefully quickly forgotten and ignored.
Just make it a branching timeline and continue with Pike, aka the actually competent current crew airing. “That one universe where only Burnham can solve everything in every era of history” is better as an aberration
Not to worry, I'm sure future writers will ignore the inconvenient parts as hard as Janeway's lizard babies.
Nope. Already got new shows based off of it. Keep crying :)
This childish nonsense of WAHH ITS NOT REAL TO ME is eternally hysterical. The only thing it does is demonstrate how immature you are. Can't coexist with something you don't like without a temper tantrum of ill will. Genuinely funny as fuck to see an adult do something that.
The projection here is hilarious. Merc's comment is well reasoned and calm.
You can like what you like, and it doesn't matter a lick what corpos declare 'canon'. Even disney couldn't un-cool OG star wars.
Yeah so is TAS. Being canon doesn’t mean it’s good or even good for the universe of canon itself.