Subject: Hmm.
Author:
Posted on: 2019-04-21 19:06:00 UTC

I'm gonna play devil's advocate here. Disclaimer: I have no idea what the show is like, and I'm not looking anything up. I'm simply spinning from the details you've mentioned here, because it's fun. I could be extremely, wildly wrong, and expect to be told so. {= )

So like, without context, I can justify a lot of what you describe of Michael to myself. Who says a xenobiologist has to only do xenobiology and nothing else? It's not unheard of for someone to have more than one specialty. It also makes sense for a specialist to be sent on an away-mission where their specialty or specialties might be of use, and for a specialist to excel in their specialty/ies beyond even the designated bridge officer, which role might be better suited to a generalist with additional skills in command and leadership. I'm pretty sure even being a mutineer and starting a war is no more than other Trek characters have gotten away with before, though my knowledge of the franchise isn't thorough enough to recall an example. She sounds pretty much on par with Kirk to me, though, with the additional grace that a regular officer being a loose cannon is less of a problem than a captain being a loose cannon, because an officer is not responsible for representing the standards of the Federation to the same degree, nor for the lives of a whole shipload of people.

I would require a pretty damn good explanation for Spock having a sister we've never heard of before, I'll give you that. Is it, like, honorary or something?

Re. "space is a mushroom" ... er. Okay, I'm struggling with this one. It has to be a metaphor, right? Because space is curved, right? And maybe there's something about the gills of a mushroom that represent folded space... right? I COULD see the technology existing in an experimental form, though. It's not like the level of technology in Trek has never been retconned before. Kinda like how the franchise considers advanced androids basically unprecedented before the Soong type of Next Gen, even though we had some pretty dang advanced androids show up in TOS. For something as potentially game-changing as something like a tesseract, I'd just expect it to be so flawed as to be abandoned for reasons of impracticality by arc's end. Or it could be that Our Heroes decide it's too powerful for any faction to have, and takes it upon themselves to keep it secret and safe or destroy it, like another more recent space opera I won't name so as to avoid spoilers. ("Spore drive" is a dumb name any way you slice it, though.)

Now, I know you don't mean the Klingons are literally Trump supporters. {= P But it's not like their appearance has never radically changed before, either. If Discovery is roughly contemporary with TOS, I'd expect them to look more like TOS Klingons than later Klingons, though hopefully with less problematic racial coding, since it ain't the sixties anymore.

If Harry Kim's word is all we have to go one re. holograms and holodecks, I think we can safely give that one a pass?

Re. the Federation and its ideals and utopian-ness... eh, I can't say I was ever convinced that everything was always hunky-dory and peachy keen back on Earth. I think DS9 explores this a bit? Having the highest of ideals doesn't mean we always succeed at upholding them, and no society is without flaw, because it's all based on people, and no person is without flaw. Also, strict adherence to canon would be incredibly troublesome here. TOS was progressive for its time, but if we take the Terran culture on display on the original Enterprise literally, without sort of temporally localizing for progress in real-world society, hoo boy, is the Federation ever a scary place for women to be circa TOS!

I'm okay with the Federation being flawed and making mistakes, is what I'm saying, as long as they're also shown to learn from those mistakes and continue striving to do the best they can in the belief that it's worth it to always strive, even when we falter.

I'm cool with temporally localizing the appearance of the Enterprise, too, though I'd personally prefer a functional Android aesthetic over a lens-flare-ridden iPad one. {= P

... I think that's everything except for the video, which I may watch later. So, how wrong am I? {= )

~Neshomeh

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