Star Trek: Discovery Discussion (SPOILERS HERE ONLY)

[Flying Gremlin]

How exactly is Mudd a betrayal of a con man only out for himself? He's immoral, he's self-serving, he's got recognizable facial hair. He forced the Enterprise to either accept his demands or be destroyed in "Mudd's Women" and looked like he had no problem with it (it was framed nicer). "I, Mudd" had him try to strand the Enterprise crew on the android planet. In "Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad" his main objective was to sell the ship to the Klingons.

I'll return to Sarek later, as I am late for work now.

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by Flying Gremlin

In "Magic To Make The Sanest Man Go Mad" his main objective was to sell the ship to the Klingons.

He beamed Lorca into space and laughed as he asphyxiated.

He found one of the most sadistic methods for murder in the galaxy and used it casually on people who resisted him.

He was delighted to kill within the loop and we have every indication that he was delighted to kill outside it. Not threaten, not bargain, not leverage, not maroon, not even orchestrate something at a distance. Disco!Mudd enjoys looking the object of his hatred in the eye and watching it die in agony. Over and over and over again.

Harry Mudd was an immoral con-man who wants to make a buck. He makes his way scheming through the universe, but in the end he's too sentimental to kill even when it would be very, very convenient (as in "I, Mudd"). He is, basically, Quark -- if Quark didn't have the lobes for business.

Disco!Mudd's a psychopath.

I've caught up now with the finale, and appreciated the last episode for not kicking anyone's character in the teeth. ("Si Vis Pacem" didn't take any canon characters out to the woodshed, but really tore into Saru in a way that hardly seemed fair for Saru's first outing as main character. Or, should I say, Saru's first outing as official second fiddle to Burnham.) The finale ignored almost everything established about Lorca to date and cashed some checks it never wrote ("When I came aboard, you were a ship of scientists." Really? They were? Shame we never met them), but what was there was good and appropriately climactic and didn't try to make me feel Grim And Dark about Starfleet and its mission.

If the show stays on the course it set in "Into The Forest," it might just start growing on me at last.

[Flying Gremlin]

Originally Posted by Wowbagger

He beamed Lorca into space and laughed as he asphyxiated.

Who wouldn't?







*crickets chirp*

[evay]

I am very, very angry about Culber.

I don't care how DSC tries to fix this — whether Mirror Culber joins the crew, or they go back in time, or Stamets falls in love with somebody else — I will never forget that Culber was killed in the first place. That they went there. Trek proclaimed that one of the main characters was an openly gay person in a committed sexual and romantic same-sex relationship, and then they kill the guy's partner.

That is not groundbreaking. That is the fucking Bury Your Gays trope. You don't get to have it both ways. You don't get to proclaim openness and inclusiveness and progressiveness and then kill off the gay character in Season 1.5. That is BULLSHIT.

[Wowbagger]

Culber was one of the only uncomplicatedly decent people on Discovery. His too-rare appearances were generally a point of light in a sea of darkness. He occasionally reminded me that the show I'm watching is, at least theoretically, a Star Trek program.

Now I've got Tilly and no one.

Dr. Culber's death would have been a disaster even if he'd been straight. (Which, of course, he wasn't, and which makes this move weirdly tone-deaf in the current environment.)

Who wouldn't?

On the one hand, Lorca's evil. I mean, this isn't even a question anymore: in "The Wolf Inside," he unhesitatingly orders Burnham to exterminate hundreds of innocent rebels in order to preserve his/Discovery's cover. He represents nearly everything wrong with Discovery.

On the other hand, I kinda like him anyway? Maybe it's just Jason Isaacs' panache. Maybe I just love strong-chinned white males. Maybe I have hope there's still a shred of Anakin left inside his Darth Vader exterior.

I dunno. My feelings on Lorca are oddly complicated and I'm not sure why.

Imma try to watch the show without bothering to consider it Trek, as evay suggests.

[evay]

My sweetie thinks the Lorca we know is from the Mirror Universe and came over during the event which destroyed his ship. That would be entertaining, at least.

If DSC had actually been the anthology/Wheel of Trek which Fuller originally wanted, I would have loved to see a half-season where MU characters cross into our universe, and we have to deal with them here. We always see it the other way around. We just watched TOS's "Mirror, Mirror" with kiddo so she would understand what the MU means on DSC, and Spock notes that it's much easier for civilized people to pretend to be barbarians than vice versa. So show us the vice versa. Show us a scheming, backstabbing, unscrupulous bastard who finds this weird, peaceful, helpful, collaborative society and has to work his/her way to the top without getting stopped.

[Insert gratuitous joke about current American politics here]

[Wowbagger]

Originally Posted by evay

My sweetie thinks the Lorca we know is from the Mirror Universe and came over during the event which destroyed his ship. That would be entertaining, at least.

Winner winner chicken dinner.