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forestofgloryI finished watching season two of Star Trek Discovery and I have many thoughts and feelings. For the most part this season felt lighter and goofier than last season. So in tone season two is more like other Star Trek shows that I've watched. I mostly enjoyed this season but I also had some problems -- especially with regards to how it dealt with disability.
****Spoilers for the Whole Season****
There are a lot of characters I really enjoy watching in this season. I still love Michael Burnham as the main character. She has a strong moral sense while still having a lot of emotional conflict. Tilly is still a delight; I just wish we had gotten more of her and Michael's friendship this season. Saru continued to grow on me this season I enjoyed his character arch and relationship with Michael.
I loved that the supporting cast featured a lot of badass older women: Amanda, Georgiou, Jett Reno, and Admiral Cornwell. And some of them of them are even moms! I would have liked to see more of all of these characters, and for them to interact with each other more.
Jett Reno was a great new character to introduce. I adore her, she reminds me of a dear friend in her sense of humor and approach to fixing stuff. And it's nice to see the engineer role filled by an older queer woman.
I’m conflicted about Georgiou this season. Trek has a bad habit of forgiving terrible people for war crimes if they are nice to the main characters. I don't approve of it here even as I really enjoyed Georgiou trying to look out for Michael and Michael begrudgingly listening to her.
I thought this season wasted Admiral Cornwell. She was such great character last season. I felt like Trek was finally understood why a space therapist might be useful, plus she had her own character arc and moral dilemmas. But she didn't really get any of that this season. She was just kind there giving boring orders. Except when she wasn’t. Honestly her comings and goings over the season where quite confusing. Cornwell seemed to just show up out of nowhere all the time. She did get one moment of nice therapeutic insight -- but really the show seems to have gone back to not understanding what psychology is good for and that's a waste. And her death didn't really serve a narrative purpose. I really didn’t understand why she was there in the end to die heroically -- why would you send someone with her background to try and fix electronics? All around a very disappointing end for a character who had a lot more potential.
But one good thing about all the older women that Michael had a ton of mother figures, which was great. There's just not enough fiction about adult women having complex relationships with their mothers. And I I loved Michael having so many different types of relationships with older women.
Michael's family seemed to be a general theme, which I thought was fantastic! I loved her relationships with Spock and Saru. While I really enjoyed Spock and Michael’s relationship this season, I have to admit this Spock didn’t feel like someone who would grow into the Spock of the original series(TOS). This Spock was much more willing to let his emotions show, and the end of the season made it seem like he would continue to try and balance logic and emotion, whereas TOS Spock is very repressed and much less in touch with his feelings.
I was not happy with how this season portrayed disability. There was some really gross ableism going on here. Pike’s look of horror at his disabled future self was just so awful. I haven’t seen the relevant episode of the original series, but my impression is they are deeply ableist -- implying that disabled people can’t participate in society and are better off living in a fantasy world. So they didn’t have great material to start with -- but they didn’t need to lean into the idea that disability is horrifying!
Then there is Spock's space dyslexia. As a person with a learning disability myself I’m always looking for positive representation of people with learning disabilities. This was not it. So in theory someone like Spock who is smart and high achieving having a learning disability would be great. But the way it was presented was terrible. We were shown Spock as gibbering mess who had strange insights. It later becomes clear that this because of the timey-wimey stuff that he was exposed to, but for a while it seemed it was the result of his learning disability. And that plays into some really frustrating tropes about learning disabilities. So this could have been a bit of awesome disability rep but left me feeling misrepresented.
This season did do one good minor thing to portray disability -- which is having a background crewperson who uses a wheelchair. It's nice to think that a wheelchair user can be on the crew of a starship and no one thinks it's a big deal.
So Section 31 is now a ragtag band of misfits? Honestly I did not like section 31 in DS9. I really hate the style of moral dilemmas they were used to create. So I'm much more interested in this concept of the group, but I didn't quite understand how they worked so it's hard for me to understand exactly what type of moral issues were going on. Like they are still morally gray but in a less cold war way?
Let's talk about the finale. That sure was a lot of space battle. Yep, a lot of things blew up. And well I didn’t really care. I do not watch Star Trek for things blowing up. Sending the Discovery into the future sure was a way to resolve the problems of the show being set up as a prequel. And it does resolve some of the continuity problems (some of which I didn’t think needed to be addressed). I have friends who are really excited by this ending because it opens up so many possibilities. But it feels sloppy to me, like it's a last minute fix.
Overall I enjoyed this season of Discovery especially Michael’s relationships with her family members, and her family-like relationships with others. I would have liked more female characters interacting with each other and less ableism. I don’t love the ending but I’m interested to see where the show goes from here, and excited to spend more time with the crew of the Discovery.
****Spoilers for the Whole Season****
There are a lot of characters I really enjoy watching in this season. I still love Michael Burnham as the main character. She has a strong moral sense while still having a lot of emotional conflict. Tilly is still a delight; I just wish we had gotten more of her and Michael's friendship this season. Saru continued to grow on me this season I enjoyed his character arch and relationship with Michael.
I loved that the supporting cast featured a lot of badass older women: Amanda, Georgiou, Jett Reno, and Admiral Cornwell. And some of them of them are even moms! I would have liked to see more of all of these characters, and for them to interact with each other more.
Jett Reno was a great new character to introduce. I adore her, she reminds me of a dear friend in her sense of humor and approach to fixing stuff. And it's nice to see the engineer role filled by an older queer woman.
I’m conflicted about Georgiou this season. Trek has a bad habit of forgiving terrible people for war crimes if they are nice to the main characters. I don't approve of it here even as I really enjoyed Georgiou trying to look out for Michael and Michael begrudgingly listening to her.
I thought this season wasted Admiral Cornwell. She was such great character last season. I felt like Trek was finally understood why a space therapist might be useful, plus she had her own character arc and moral dilemmas. But she didn't really get any of that this season. She was just kind there giving boring orders. Except when she wasn’t. Honestly her comings and goings over the season where quite confusing. Cornwell seemed to just show up out of nowhere all the time. She did get one moment of nice therapeutic insight -- but really the show seems to have gone back to not understanding what psychology is good for and that's a waste. And her death didn't really serve a narrative purpose. I really didn’t understand why she was there in the end to die heroically -- why would you send someone with her background to try and fix electronics? All around a very disappointing end for a character who had a lot more potential.
But one good thing about all the older women that Michael had a ton of mother figures, which was great. There's just not enough fiction about adult women having complex relationships with their mothers. And I I loved Michael having so many different types of relationships with older women.
Michael's family seemed to be a general theme, which I thought was fantastic! I loved her relationships with Spock and Saru. While I really enjoyed Spock and Michael’s relationship this season, I have to admit this Spock didn’t feel like someone who would grow into the Spock of the original series(TOS). This Spock was much more willing to let his emotions show, and the end of the season made it seem like he would continue to try and balance logic and emotion, whereas TOS Spock is very repressed and much less in touch with his feelings.
I was not happy with how this season portrayed disability. There was some really gross ableism going on here. Pike’s look of horror at his disabled future self was just so awful. I haven’t seen the relevant episode of the original series, but my impression is they are deeply ableist -- implying that disabled people can’t participate in society and are better off living in a fantasy world. So they didn’t have great material to start with -- but they didn’t need to lean into the idea that disability is horrifying!
Then there is Spock's space dyslexia. As a person with a learning disability myself I’m always looking for positive representation of people with learning disabilities. This was not it. So in theory someone like Spock who is smart and high achieving having a learning disability would be great. But the way it was presented was terrible. We were shown Spock as gibbering mess who had strange insights. It later becomes clear that this because of the timey-wimey stuff that he was exposed to, but for a while it seemed it was the result of his learning disability. And that plays into some really frustrating tropes about learning disabilities. So this could have been a bit of awesome disability rep but left me feeling misrepresented.
This season did do one good minor thing to portray disability -- which is having a background crewperson who uses a wheelchair. It's nice to think that a wheelchair user can be on the crew of a starship and no one thinks it's a big deal.
So Section 31 is now a ragtag band of misfits? Honestly I did not like section 31 in DS9. I really hate the style of moral dilemmas they were used to create. So I'm much more interested in this concept of the group, but I didn't quite understand how they worked so it's hard for me to understand exactly what type of moral issues were going on. Like they are still morally gray but in a less cold war way?
Let's talk about the finale. That sure was a lot of space battle. Yep, a lot of things blew up. And well I didn’t really care. I do not watch Star Trek for things blowing up. Sending the Discovery into the future sure was a way to resolve the problems of the show being set up as a prequel. And it does resolve some of the continuity problems (some of which I didn’t think needed to be addressed). I have friends who are really excited by this ending because it opens up so many possibilities. But it feels sloppy to me, like it's a last minute fix.
Overall I enjoyed this season of Discovery especially Michael’s relationships with her family members, and her family-like relationships with others. I would have liked more female characters interacting with each other and less ableism. I don’t love the ending but I’m interested to see where the show goes from here, and excited to spend more time with the crew of the Discovery.
