And then when they do make a serialized show instead of an episodic one everyone complains about people being moody due to the trauma established previously ¯_(ツ)_/¯

No, I do not have it wrong.

There was a protest to mark things NSFW, correct, but what I’m talking about was something else. Kbin and Lemmy communities were marked in such a way that it was impossible to look at unless logged in. While logged in it wasn’t marked as NSFW. It also wasn’t a choice of the subreddit moderators. They were blocked by reddit admin themselves to force people to be logged in to see information on how to transfer to Lemmy.

Star Trek.

It’s not even remotely a surprise to anyone that I’m a dedicated Trekkie and have been for quite some time. Also not much of a surprise to those aware of the Trek fandom that sometimes it can be kinda bitter towards shows that don’t fit a certain trend. I happened to like one of those shows and was looking for a place to talk where it wasn’t just constantly being bitched about. I was just googling around and found Startrek.website so I set up an account on lemmy.world to watch stuff over there for a couple months before eventually joining that instance. My original account still exists on lemmy.world and it’s fairly early in the run of a lot of things. I’ve also gotten a few messages to that account simply because it’s a single first name that other people wanted.

Anyway I started posting Trek memes to Risa and it went overboard. Before I realized people were making memes about me and I just sort of stuck around. Startrek.website showed it’s administrators to be flagrantly abusive of not only their power but also of just people so I set up Stamets on this instance. Rest is history.

As someone who used to be vehemently anti-lemmy, it’s a few different reasons.

1. It’s something new. Honestly is as simple as that. Most redditors are straight up threatened by new features, new looks, new anything. New Reddit is an example of that. To be fair it is hideous but it’s also drastically underused according to reddits own metrics. This just stays consistently with everything. People prefer old subs to new, prefer old users to new, old memes to new. Why? Dunno. Could be as simple as just that they know it so it’s comforting.

2. The propaganda that reddit put up against Lemmy was pretty insane. The first few mini-migrations set people up with weird expectations and a lot of them bounced back to reddit with weird notions. Some of it was based on shitty admins or shitty servers (cough lemmy.ml cough) but other things seemed to be almost coordinated against Lemmy. By the time that the big migration from Reddit killing off third party apps/API use a lot of people had heard one or two things and just started spreading it. Redditors often don’t source material and just kinda spread rumors or ‘feelings’ or upvote one idiot who seems like he knows what he’s talking about while blatantly lying. This has never gone away. The same idiots keep whining and being dismissive.

3. Redditors are hateful. Not purely hateful people or anything but the atmosphere encourages hate and division. I still browse reddit occasionally and I’ll check the comments out about a post. It’s always so bitter and angry, snapping out at one another. When every crab in the bucket is pulling you down, you get stuck in that habit too. Until you break free of reddit you don’t realize just how bitter it’s making you. Lemmy doesn’t have those vibes and it can be really off putting to someone still in that bitterness. Kindness and people getting along almost comes off as stupid and naive so you just kinda dismiss the entirety of Lemmy as a whole.

4. This is a conspiracy but I’m positive that Reddit admins are purging a lot of references to Lemmy that don’t show the site in a positive light. When the API shit was happening people kept pointing out that certain communities that were supportive of Lemmy suddenly got locked behind a NSFW curtain that forced users to be logged in to read the community. A lot of people talked about how certain posts and stuff were being removed, especially ones critical of Spez. I don’t think they stopped that campaign and I think they still try to demonize the hell out of Lemmy. Could be because China has a significant hand in reddit now or it could be because Spez has a tiny dick and a tinier ego. Dunno. But I think they’re weighting the scales.

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The entirety of this season was riddled with examples of characters acting nothing like themselves. Burnham outright says she’ll let terrorists get away unless she’s added to a mission, Rhys/Owo mention that people can cloak but they have a way to track them then never use it and get surprised after visually clearing a room, S1 Burnham during that weird time skip episode acted nothing like her Season 1 counterpart, Book had access to information that was said in Season 3 he couldn’t possibly have… It’s like they just let random people guest write every episode of the season.

Thank Q…

Which is completely subjective and based off of your opinion. Moreover, I’m talking about the current season. There’s a reason I haven’t bothered to interact with anyone else on this thread slagging off the entire show. Not interested in that. The scope of the post is pretty narrow and obviously so.

I had a suspicion but wasn’t entirely sure so I banked on the other option just in case.

LT

I chose the name for a reason

For real… they’ve underutilized her so much that it’s borderline criminal.

Why not just do 20 jumps and find out? Didn’t they do like 100 in short succession in season 1?

They had trails but not end points. They knew the direction of travel but not where they would stop. With speed variances and cloaking shit that would have been a no go. Book was needed for that end point. A point he should not have known but that’s a completely different complaint.

I saw the second episode which was better. 2 out of 10. This season is testing my fucking patience though and I don’t see Burnham as anything other than a shitty person now. Everything that comes out her mouth annoys me and feels unearned, undeserved, and outright insulting. Like when she starts talking down to someone for behavior she’s guilty of in that same episode I want to just start beating the shit out of Sarek for proving that you cannot raise a human under Vulcan ways and have them end up as anything other than a monumental cunt.

Even the interpersonal stuff isn’t terrible this season.

I’m sorry, but fucking what? Heavy spoilers for Episode 1 below but…

Burnham just put herself above her duty and mission again. She did the exact same fucking thing she did in the first episode of the whole show except instead of physically assaulting her superior officer in a misguided attempt to try and prevent a war she threatened to let extremely dangerous criminals escape with information vital to Federation security unless she was read into a mission.

I’m sorry but the first episode immediately and categorically proved that Burnham is unfit for Starfleet in every capacity. Every single season she has flouted her duty and I’ve stuck with it because it’s been sorta different and she’s been growing but now? She is regressing. She went full manipulative psychopath and said “Read me in or I will let you stumble in the dark.” Note that this is after she fucked up two different times on this mission already and thereby let the bad guys escape. First at the opening of the episode and then again on the planet. She knows that this mission needed to be done and was a psychotic level of important because of the whole ‘Red Directive’ shit (that was never fucking explained in the first episode). Kovich outright said to her that he doesn’t care who is on the ship or what happens to them because it is that important. She is told she needs to get this done because it’s above everything else. What does she do? Repeatedly put the needs of the few above the needs of the many.

She should have been court martialed on the fucking spot.

Note also that I’m not some Disco hater. I’m a mod and the one with an account named after a DSC character and who has been defending DSC on here for months.

I haven’t seen past the first episode. If you can promise me it gets better than that, sure, but Burnham is fucking dead in my books. Every major decision that she’s “done” in the show was never done by her to begin with, it had to be done by someone else forcing her to do it. Now she’s in charge and making decisions that are going to get someone fucking killed.

I am a die hard fan of Discovery and am fiercely defensive of it.

But the first episode of Season 5 was so atrociously awful that it killed all my excitement for the season and I haven’t had the energy or strength to start the next episode, despite the fact 4 episodes are already out.

I go out of my way to defend the show and love it. I mean my account name is taken from one of the characters of the show. All my ship models are from Discovery. My calendar is a Discovery calendar. I have a DSC Starfleet Badge. Like I FUCKING LOVE Discovery but the first episode had some of the worst writing I’ve seen from any Star Trek ever. I can’t think of a single other episode in any of Star Trek that was as idiotic as this one was. The writers had no fucking clue what they were doing and the episode is egregiously bad. Half of the episode involves ‘Rise of Skywalker’ type shenanigans where the characters blindly luck into the next thing or just happen to have the thing they need because the universe is catering to them. Let me demonstrate an example from the first couple of minutes of the episode. This does spoil the first 5 minutes but doesn’t spoil anything plot relevant that wasn’t mentioned in trailers or whatever.

The Discovery is a rapid response vessel that can show up anywhere at a moments notice. This was what it was literally designed for. To be able to appear behind enemy lines as a surprise tactic. Burnham has to go get something from a ship and they know other people are after it. So what do they do? Jump in on top of the ship without readying up or doing fucking anything which means they’re caught with their pants down. They scan the vessel and see two people onboard who then vanish so they spend 3+ minutes getting ready (their suits can literally materialize on them now) and get onboard the other vessel. They know the enemy can vanish from sensors and theorized that they can probably personally cloak. So when they land, one of the away team notes that they were here recently because water vapor is still in the air and they can follow it. So they do. They then proceed to visually clear the ship. They also never mention the water vapor again. So, fucking obviously, they are jumped by someone who is cloaked and shot at from behind.

The whole episode is littered with writing that idiotic. They will give a thing and then not pay it off or they will just use a random thing out of fucking nowhere. Like a character having information that they categorically should not have as previous seasons had made it abundantly clear that the character would not have this information. Yet they do anyway, breaking their own rules of the show. Not to mention that the writing of the episode also undoes 4 seasons worth of character development for multiple characters, sending them back to Season 1 behavior with no explanation, and frames them as genuinely bad people who are putting themselves before the mission. Like

In short, it fucking sucks so bad that it sent me into a spiral of depression because if my favorite show starts off their final season this awful how the hell is it going to possibly continue?

Stamets had like one scene that whole episode, didn’t he? The opening party thing where he’s talking about the Luminary stuff. I don’t remember him at any other point.

They bring Owo and Rhys onto an Away team and then treat them like absolute chumps and toss them away.

Like I actually kinda like Rayner because he’s not putting up with Burnhams shit. When he said “I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure” and beams out at the end of the episode I actually 100% agreed with him. I never thought I’d be on his side but I am. How is it that a captain shows up for a singular episode and already proves directly that he cares more about structure and order than you do?

The Burnham doing the same thing for a thousandth time thing is what killed her character for me. I can’t root for her anymore. She is objectively a bad person. She’s been given chance after chance after chance and fucked almost every one of those up but still gets given another one. She’s the Starfleet version of a white middle aged CEO at this point. She can only fail upward and get away with everything. No consequences for fuck all. At any point. And yeah I don’t care about Book either. Dude detonated illegal weapons and violated so many laws but nah, lets get him back because he just happens to know a thing. Bet he’s not being dropped off back to continue his punishment though. Nah there’s gonna be some contrived reason to keep him on board so Burnham and Book can have another lovey dovey thing. I would not be surprised if Burnham sacrifices herself at the end of the season to protect the crew and Book and honestly if she does I will legitimately cheer and whoop that Starfleets worst Captain (easily outranking Jelico) is finally dead and can’t harm the Federation anymore.

If you told me 3 months ago that Id be saying that I would have given you a warning for stuffing words down my mouth that I’d never agree with. Now I’m one of the biggest people wanting her to die. It’s ruined any rewatch value too. I’m so angry.

Like I love this show and I can defend a lot of it. I do defend a lot of it. I hate it when people say STD because it’s flagrantly insulting for no reason to both the franchise and the show. I hate when people bash it for no reason. I hate some valid criticisms (although I do admit they are valid). I am a Discovery fan through and through. Fuck sakes I’ve got the Discovery model on my desk in front of me.

But this was the worst episode of Star Trek I’ve ever seen and it genuinely sent me into a depressive spiral with how excited I was for this final season to be presented with that.

Well, you know me. The resident Discovery lover and defender. My comment will only be about the first episode, Red Directive, as it is the only episode I’ve seen thus far but let me just say this.

That might be the worst episode of Star Trek I have ever seen.

The opening I had no real issue with. Everyone hanging out and having a little party, Saru having a moment with T’Rina, all of that was great. But then suddenly the term Red Directive is thrown with increasing drama/intension like 3 times by 3 different people with 0 explanations. At least from what I saw anyway. I had to infer from context clues that a Red Directive is a mission that exists as part of the Federation structure, regardless of who is in charge and must be adhered to at all possible costs. Okay. Sure. Then the problems start almost immediately, the problems being for me primarily with the writing behind the scenes. Nothing really makes sense.

DISCO drops in on the ship, surprising Moloch (I’m not spelling both their names and more on that later). Moloch know exactly where they need to go so they head there, cloaking themselves. DISCO notes that they’ve cloaked themselves and then starts getting ready. Now, you’d fucking expect that they would have gotten ready and dropped in last second for the element of surprise, like the ship was literally designed for, right? Nope. Drop in to announce presence and then fuck about for a while getting ready. By the time the Away Team arrive in the room with the vault (tracking water vapor that Rhys points out), Owo mentions that it’s been nearly 5 minutes since the lifesigns vanished and that they would need more time than that to crack Romulan encryption. Note that they cleared this room with visual detection despite knowing that these people can likely cloak themselves in some fashion. Personal cloaking isn’t unknown in this new future and if they can fool sensors they can probably fool eyes. So, you know. Visual clear while ignoring all about the particles they were tracking to this room. They then made the brilliant deduction that the people would still have to be in the room (it’s never made clear how they were able to break the Romulan encryption faster than they should be able to as Burnham said). They get jumped, unsurprisingly, and Burnham escapes narrowly. Moloch then throw a grenade at Burnhams feet which blasts her into space.

Here’s where the Rise of Skywalker style convenience problems start. She just happens to see a glimmer of their cloak and heads to it. She magnetizes on and just happens to survive despite things not really being set up for that. I’ll let that go but whatever. Rayner shows up and starts telling her that he knows them better because he’s been tracking for a while but Burnham is insistent that she knows better and tells him to back off using, fucking hilariously, things being too personal as an excuse. She says she will track them. She of course fails because she did not know better after having been on the mission for like 4 hours. So she pulls a hail mary out of her ass and says Book!

Despite an insane sense of urgency being built up over this Red Directive stuff (still not explained), Burnham then drags her absolute ass in the corridor with Book having this huge lovey-dovey scene. He acts like “Aw shucks, I’m just helping people and trying to make right” for his fucking psychotic level of crimes against humanity. Yes I know that isn’t the right word but I don’t care. I’m angry. They spend so much time on this scene with them slowly fucking around that it makes Burnham look like she’s valuing Book over the mission. They’re SO SLOW! Book takes like 3 seconds to step onto the turbolift. It’s fucking painful.

They get back into the briefing and Burnham is withheld information. Now I love this show and she has learned multiple times in multiple seasons the same lesson of “Follow orders and you don’t always know better” so I hoped they wouldn’t do it here again but of course they do. She starts getting suspicious. Okay, asking Tilly to look into it is fine. Wanting to know more is fine. She’s still doing the job though right? Well, for now. They get through the briefing that actually has a sense of urgency and Book just happens to know the only sensible route to plot here of where they’d go. He just happens to know of the dealer on that planet. He also just happens to know vital information about surrounding terrain but that’s for later. So they head to it. Rayner says he’ll be an hour behind because he goes at warp. So if Moloch have the same tech as Antares and no faster, then by the time that Rayner reaches the planet they will be at least one hour ahead of him. But we know that they’re further ahead than that because Burnham had to go get Book and waste time fucking about first. Vance then says they need to work together and Discovery, despite having a spore drive that can be there NOW, has to wait for the slower tech and nullify its literal purpose as a Rapid Response Vessel as Vance already designated it in Season 3.

So then we cut to Moloch whenever they arrive. They go see the dealer who is a Soong style android that demonstrates a total failure of every part of himself. There’s also an insanely drawn out scene where he points out how the names of the two fugitives, Moll and L’ak, sound like two word sounds and would go well together. So, Moloch. The most hamfisted bullshit I can think of, especially when they were barely just named on screen. He acts like a cheap version of Lore and when a fight breaks out he has the most insanely slow response times one could imagine. He picks up a gun and fires it multiple times, it failing, before he thinks to get another gun. He then has to look for it, despite it being his fucking shop and him being an android. He gets it, spends a very long time aiming and fires it, missing, and then actually nods with a smile on his face when looking at the gun. L’ak then defeats him in hand to hand combat (with great ease) and Moloch leaves.

Burnham and Book arrive on the planet and have another lil meet cute waiting for Rayner. That’s fine, they’re waiting. But he arrives at an awkward time and makes a little joke and suggests getting to the mission and they get all high and mighty and act like he’s the asshole, despite her wasting fuckloads of time up until now and they go to check out the corpse but are passed by two people on sandspeedster things. A few minutes later they realize it was Moloch. So what in the FUCK happened to that hour plus advance that Moloch had? They just spend it fucking about? There’s a bomb that was planted (more later) but that cannot have taken longer than like 15 minutes at MOST. Probably considerably less with transporters. But nah, they’re just barely ahead of them. And apparently taking their time because Rayner, Burnham and Book catch up to them. Moloch gets to their ship and fires directly on them and hits them multiple times. Shields block the hits. So either these sandspeedsters have shields that can withstand fire of a ship or the personal shields can. They don’t even fucking flinch either. Like it’s a guarantee that it’ll hold.

They realize that there’s a bomb in a tunnel Moloch are going to go into that will let them escape. Burnham yet again does her “No trust me, I’m totes right!” and Rayner rightfully is like “Not the fuck again” and orders the bomb and escape hatch destroyed. But it gives Moloch an idea to trigger an avalanche. Burnham then forces her ship and the Antares (after guilt tripping Rayner) to crashland into the planet to protect a settlement of a few thousand. By this point they are well aware that the threat being posed here is of Galactic importance and could probably shift the scales of power but Burnham is like “NO! There are a few thousand people! We can’t let the terrorists get away with information about god knows what. We need to save these people!” Like I get it, it sucks and you wanna save everyone but there is a clear decision here with a line said by your own fucking brother on numerous occasions and I’m pretty fucking sure you at some point. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. So they crash the ships into the planet (whatever) and shield the settlement. Hurray. Yay. They’re sitting around when the dust is clearing and Moloch then taunt them and fly off. Rayner is like “Wish I could say this was a pleasure” and beams out and I feel that with every ounce of my soul. Burnham and Book then get all lovey dovey before being emotional and romantic despite THERE BEING TERRORISTS YOU NEED TO KINDA FUCKING LOOK FOR WHILE YOU’RE THE FUCKING CAPTAIN. Yet when Tilly calls? Instant urgency.

To top it all off, Burnham then figures out where it is that Kovich is after and withholds the information from her superior officer, information that’s so insanely classified and important that it’s a Red Directive (STILL NOT FUCKING EXPLAINED) because she wants to know. She outright says either let me be part of this or I will let the terrorists go. Putting her own insane arrogance above anyone else.

Burnham has been on the same path with every season so far. Disobey orders, realize she shouldn’t, start doing the right thing. Happened with Season 1 and 2 and 3. Season 4 had her follow orders begrudgingly and even before Book as the romantic reason she doesn’t want to follow said orders. Now she’s just back at it again. Me me me me me. I’m tired of it. I loved her and I’ve been frustrated with the repetition but now I’m just tired of it and tired of her whole character. She doesn’t learn anything.

The writing for this episode was fucking atrocious and I am seriously concerned about the rest of the season.

Genuine rating: 1/10.

The ultimate fear is that such a wide range of tones attempting to capture different audiences ultimately results in none of them capturing enough of an audience to justify their existence, and then the whole franchise gets written off for another dry spell like we had post-Enterprise.

That’s a gatekeepers argument. It’s not an argument for the strength of the show itself, it’s fear of something new and to shun that new thing because it might shake the status quo. It’s nonsense. Especially when we’re talking about a franchise like Star Trek which is specifically dedicated to the idea of representing different audiences and peoples. The idea that the series is being “too diverse” is just ridiculous. That’s literally the point of everything in the shows. To show diversity and inclusion through that strength. There are numerous quotes from the shows specifically saying that.

I also still am not giving any weight to what you’re saying here because you’re not part of that demographic. At no point in this conversation have you ever considered them. Every single retort of yours has just been “Yeah but it might make things worse for me and other older fans. Who cares about the new ones?”

Fear of the unknown, fear of something knew, and hiding behind tradition is the exact type of shit that Star Trek goes out of its way to say is a terrible thing to hold onto. Especially, again considering you have repeatedly ignored me saying this, every single show has had a radically different tone to varying degrees of success. Fearing that this new tone is going to break it is just the same argument that’s been made since TNG was released and I’m not entertaining this nonsense any longer.

Goodbye.