(Note: This written rant is posted as is. Mainly because this last season was so .. what?? all logical reason left)
Okay, seriously? What was up with this whole season, especially the last two episodes? I mean. Season one was good enough. Klingons didn’t look like Klingons, but then again, they kept changing how they looked through all the series and movies (but let’s be honest about the whole “grafting” thing, that was kinda corny). Plus, they fit Mudd into it but made him like a nasty guy, so ehhh, six of one and half a dozen of another on that.
Season two had Pike in it, so that gets a free pass even though they fit the Terran into it, and the whole “Bill and Ted” mechanic at the end being used to explain the entire season was even sillier than the first season.
Season three, ehhh, that one started pretty strong but then as it went along, ehhh. And then the ending? That was the lamest big bad villain at the end. I never liked Kahn (well, in the reboot, I liked him) but man. Heck, tribbles were even scarier than her. Mind you, her underlings and organization were scary, and those guys in the black uniforms were sharp. But her? And how quickly she died in the end?
But season four takes this to a whole new level in WTF? It starts terrible enough when Book is back with his family, and it’s sappy. How many years were they fighting, and in one weekend, it’s all forgiven just because his “brother” had a kid? And what the heck with Tilly? One of the only decent “real” people on the ship, and after she “screws up” at the end of the last season (and don’t tell me any other captain could have managed not to lose their ship to that boarding action), a significant crisis of purpose? Granted, I guess she wanted to take a step back, and I can’t fault her for that but seriously, write her a better out than going to teach at the Academy, let alone a class of four cadets. Yes, and I’m well aware they are trying to sell a spin-off for that but seriously.
You know, I managed to get past the fact that the entire series is based on “Soft Science” with bio-drives for travel and the fact that almost every episode of every season is about everyone dealing with their PTSD (and really, every single episode some aspect of that comes up and it gets more and more in your face as the series goes on). But the lack of any “sense of urgency” on the part of the crew; Oh, we have 10 seconds before we blow up, so let’s wax poetic about why it’s a noble thing for 30 seconds and then get out of it in the next 5 seconds, so the introspection of the situation didn’t matter at all. Or the “you can’t waste time on the planet, so I’m going to stand here and tell you why for the next 5 minutes”. It just killed me.
Book’s inability to work past his “my nephew I’ve known for all of a week and a half died” and see any sense of logical reason even after he managed to create an even bigger mess breaks the whole character they built up for him. Granted, the narcissist he was with actually was played pretty accurate until the end because I don’t think he had a change of heart at the end; he just cracked his head good and wasn’t himself after that explosion, and they painted him as a tragic victim of his grief. And don’t get me started on how someone who committed high treason and almost destroyed billions and billions of lives is just given an “I hope you don’t do that again” by the earth’s president. Or Books punishment. Those things point out why people not in Starfleet don’t like Star Fleet personnel. Different rules for them.
But, the worst, the absolute worst, is the massive amount of speech giving, especially at the end, when after only spending four hours learning the alien’s language via math and compiling an “algorithm for it,” they can give passionate eight-minute speeches with words and ideas most citizens of the federation wouldn’t grasp and seemingly understand it well enough that they change their entire society and how it’s functioned for the last several hundred years with nothing more than “oh okay.” Granted, they kicked Discovery out of their side of the Galaxy as soon as possible, and who knows what they actually did. It’s almost like they viewed Discovery as a small yappy dog and threw it out of the house to get away from it (my wife said it was more like them taking spiders outside and dropping them).
Ugh, in the beginning, this was my favorite Star Trek next to the original series until the last few seasons, and it’s still high on my list, but ugh. I’m dreading this next season. Hopefully, this time they can come up with something that isn’t super corny or pretentious.