Saints of Imperfection

DVD, Discovery S2 (Saints of Imperfection)

I appreciate that this season is more episodic, but this was another one that I knew right from the opening I wasn't going to like. Even Kirsten Beyer can't save the series now. Burnham's 'weighty' voiceovers I can do without, I really don't care for her simplistic philosophising, and when it's added to dreamy slow motion running it once again proclaims loudly how much this is style over substance. It begins and ends with this, and not a lot of any interest happens in between, making it feel like wading through a river of treacle. For a few moments, as they close in on Spock's medical shuttle he stole from the Starbase, and he pulls a typically Spock-like manoeuvre to escape his Captain's pursuit, it was beginning to turn into an episode of Trek I could recognise, but then we have the shock twist of Georgiou stepping out of the captured shuttle and even that little spark went out. She's a reminder of so much that was wrong about Season 1, where the potential dropped off a cliff as the writers set out their stall definitively: we'd rather feature a mass murderer as one of our key characters than a good starship Captain, the Mirror Universe's version of our ideals are much more potent and attractive to modern viewers. They might even have convinced themselves that the idea of throwing up a mirror on our good Starfleet heroes was exactly what would make great Trek, and in the right hands it probably would (although even the greatest of Trek writers, the 'DS9' ones, found it difficult to do anything more with the MU than knockabout fun), but these weren't the right hands.

And now we have to live with this useless character that serves no real purpose. And while we're on that subject, Ash Tyler gets to come on over to Discovery for a joint mission as liaison for Leland, an old friend of Pike's, and one who openly admits to being head of Section 31, a secret organisation everyone knows about. Yes, we're being reminded once again of how stooooopid this series is. Not only are these hyper-secret intelligence agents open about themselves, but they wear big, black badges so there can be no confusion over who they are. Stooooo-pid. This time we even discover that they have their Communicators in their badges, what a novel idea… And while it's never been written into canon when the combadge was invented, the earliest we ever saw one was from the time of the Enterprise-C, which was early 24th Century, so once again 'DSC' makes a mockery of the timeline, the universe and the technology for the sake of some immediate superficial thrills. Whoah, coooool, Section 31 have combadges, man! Ugh.

So what is this week's story actually about? As far as I can make out the whole forty-odd minutes was designed to get us to the point where we can have Dr. Culber back because people were upset he was killed off in Season 1. I wonder if they originally planned to do this or whether it was as a result of the outcry that went up from some corners, because his surprise murder was actually one of the few moments that actually was dramatic. But just like modern 'Star Wars,' Trek follows the trend of needing to make right what was 'wrong.' At least they didn't do it in the same season, but Culber was hardly the essential character we needed so badly, and I wonder if this means Dr. Pollard will take a step backward once he's up and running again. I wouldn't be surprised if things go back to normal pretty quick - that's the kind of quality writing we're dealing with on this series! Even if you hadn't heard that he was going to return, the actor's name in the main credits every week should have tipped you off, so it was very easy to predict who the 'monster' in the mycelial network was going to turn out to be! I suppose there was some interest in the interplay between Ensign Tilly and her imaginary friend, May, but Tilly acts so childishly and far from the stoic, respectful and well-trained Starfleet officer she wants to be. She overreacts to every situation and then has to backpedal or spit out her thoughts like she's in a panic, and we know from the other series' that this just isn't how Starfleet trains its people to react to new life and situations. But it's funny, or we're meant to be swept along in all the hype of emotion and panic, people apparently don't want to see professional, well-adjusted people just doing a good job.

Maybe they think there's no drama there, but I'd much rather watch any other Trek, even 'Enterprise,' which has some of this series' flaws, and set a number of poor precedents this series has picked up and run with, with relish. Whether it's the pantomime villainy of Georgiou (even down to an actual "Ssssss," she hisses at Burnham in response to a jibe about belonging to a pit of snakes), the ridiculous lack of mysteriousness about Leland and his idiotic Section 31 (laughably, he suggests that even they have court martials when Georgiou oversteps the mark and somehow knows our universe's technology better than we do - I doubt official sanctions like that would work with such a rogue organisation!), or the oddly unscientific turns of phrase (Tilly says she really believes the universe will bring her and May back together somehow, as if the universe were a living entity!), it continually defies its monicker of 'Star Trek,' and is absolutely the most stupid version we've seen. Okay, well maybe not quite as clod-hoppingly idiotic as the Kelvin films, but then they haven't had quite as big a budget with which to make such huge clunking holes in the virtues of the franchise.

Amidst all the nonsense there are reminders that this is connected to a coherent universe - this was written by an established Trek novel writer after all, so she was likely to feed in some relief for longterm viewers. It was fun to hear reference to the scorpion and the frog tale, not a Trek invention, but memorably cited by Chakotay in 'Voyager,' to which Beyer is obviously very attached. Then there's mention of tachyons, with Pike giving a rundown of what they could mean, though it is a bit of a poke in the eye as for a few brief seconds it really does sound like Trek before dropping back into 'Discovery' again. It's really telling that what should be the most important part of the ship, the Science Lab, is also the tiniest room aboard, more like a broom cupboard. Supposedly this was meant to be a science vessel, so it shows the hierarchy of where science stands on the series: fantasy is far more important than even the internally consistent pseudoscience Trek became famous for. It's nice to see a tractor beam in operation, but even there they had to add some weird new addition where the Section 31 ship (the series is poor at establishing names and identities of people or places to keep things clear, preferring murkiness and messiness), has to fire three little sensor drones or something before they can attach the beam. The whole point of a beam is that it attaches to the object itself! If they'd explained that they needed these special latching on points because of the ship being half buried in the mycelial network, then it would have been fine and I'd have applauded, but if you ever want detail to expand the universe and make things fit more logically they only do that for the sake of a laugh, like Tilly explaining what a Type-3 Phaser is to the 'monster.'

I will give them one thing about the tractor beam - at least they didn't try to pull Discovery out of there, which wouldn't make sense since they're submerged in another universe or subspace pocket or whatever they've not bothered to explain it as, and brute force wouldn't have got them out. Instead, Section 31 were just holding them from sinking further in and it was the spore jump that extricated them. But these are small crumbs of comfort in a series that doesn't ever do what I want it to, is uncomfortable to watch, and is so far from being true to Trek that I feel down after watching it rather than having that familiar boost of positivity that Trek used to thrive on. Sure, if you like snazzy CGI then this must be your dream series because that's what it's all about, and little else. Who are these people? What is the story? I am glad we haven't seen Spock yet because I suspect I'm going to be railing against a new portrayal and I have so little confidence in these writers and the production staff that I'm even losing my earlier excitement about the 'Picard' series coming soon. The writing is still so heavily portentous and melodramatic as if it's all deep and important, but it's just pure fluff, like a snowflake evaporating on warm skin. You'd think when Georgiou came aboard she'd have just told Pike her mission was classified, but instead they talk around it in an excruciating attempt to be hip and clever in the dialogue (meanwhile Tyler has no compunctions of hiding behind 'classified' as an answer for Burnham). Going through the first season of 'Smallville,' which is so well constructed and a joy to watch, 'Discovery' is like the middle seasons of that series where it was largely nonsense without logical progression. Trek used to seem like a realistic and grounded extrapolation of the future, but now it's just a miserable mess. And I really hope the reference to Leland having been up to his neck in alligators on Cestus III wasn't referring to the Gorn because they don't meet for another ten years!

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