Star Trek General Discussion

[Harry Lime]

I saw two quick ads for the new season of disco, and one had Burnham riding a motorcycle through the desert and the other talked about her on the outer hull of a starship firing a phaser. That kind of puts to bed my question of whether the series got better after the first season.

This is the most Mary Sue character I've ever seen.

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

I saw two quick ads for the new season of disco, and one had Burnham riding a motorcycle through the desert and the other talked about her on the outer hull of a starship firing a phaser. That kind of puts to bed my question of whether the series got better after the first season.

This is the most Mary Sue character I've ever seen.

Misogynist!

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

I saw two quick ads for the new season of disco, and one had Burnham riding a motorcycle through the desert and the other talked about her on the outer hull of a starship firing a phaser. That kind of puts to bed my question of whether the series got better after the first season.

This is the most Mary Sue character I've ever seen.

That was no motorbike, it was a stripped down and re-skinned snow mobile. I think.


Oh, and she was bare-backing a spaceship at warp, and if you want to know how much more ridiculous it gets after THAT, you are gonna have to watch the episode.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Blaster86

My head canon is Q wiped them all from the time line so nothing they do matters.

You know...if they brought Q into Disco...I'd watch that.

The entire run of Disco was just one huge Con by Q for his own amusement.

"Spore Drive? You really thought that was real? You were just pumping electricity into some mushrooms and I was behind you the whole time laughing and then just snapping my fingers and sending you wherever I wanted you to go.

Your Trial is over, you have been weighed, measured and been found wanting."

[CaptainCrunch]

My Reaction.


first 30 seconds with Michael surfing on a ship at warp speed while yelling. "Oh F off"


My reaction for the next 20 minutes, these characters are intentionally boring?


Back to surfing on the ship, while shouting orders to the other captain and phasering the ship with her hand phaser. "Oh double F off"


The snowmobile scene with the weird triple split screen - "Did Roger Corman direct this".


Drunk Tilly - "I intensly hate you, like really really hate you"


Then back to meh


The heart felt scene between Book and Michael - "This dude is too good of an actor for this show"


The Progenitor reveal - "For a last season, this is just another treasure hunt, are we going to get some god who farts and blows something up?"


Moll - "She's hot, wait she played a drug addict on the rookie."

[CaptainCrunch]

Oh and once again except for Saru and Michael, every other member of the crew, still lawn furniture.

[Ashartus]

Sounds like no need to rush into a Paramount+ subscription for this. Maybe when I get it for the next season of SNW if I'm having a bad day where I feel I need to subject myself to torture or at least need to laugh at something unintentionally bad I'll watch it.

[Shazam]

I'm going to pirate it and not watch it.

[Wormius]

Paramount is getting tempting to subscribe too.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by Shazam

I'm going to pirate it and not watch it.

Chaotic Neutral

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

I saw two quick ads for the new season of disco, and one had Burnham riding a motorcycle through the desert and the other talked about her on the outer hull of a starship firing a phaser. That kind of puts to bed my question of whether the series got better after the first season.

This is the most Mary Sue character I've ever seen.

[Monahammer]

Which word? Mary Sue?

The term literally originated because of Star Trek fan fiction, and pretty accurately describes Michael and the horror show that is Discovery.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

Which word? Mary Sue?

The term literally originated because of Star Trek fan fiction, and pretty accurately describes Michael and the horror show that is Discovery.

Burnham is somehow worse than a Mary Sue (which is literally S1 Wesley). At least a Mary Sue is competent and so good that she can solve all the problems with her amazing skills. Burnham is like a Mary Sue merged with a trainwreck of B-movie character that is all over the place with bad writing and illogical nonsense.

[Yeah_Baby]

Mary Sue is a self-insert, like Wesley basically being Gene created by Gene.
Like the aforementioned character in FanFic.

Culture has watered down the meaning to remove an important, and to me essential, element of the definition. I don't understand why Picard firing phasers on the outer hull in First Contact and driving a Dune Buggy in Nemesis, or hanging around on cables fighting Ru'afo in Insurrection makes him any less of a mary sue by Harry Lime's use of the term.

(and no Disco isn't my cup of tea ever)

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by Yeah_Baby

Mary Sue is a self-insert, like Wesley basically being Gene created by Gene.
Like the aforementioned character in FanFic.

Culture has watered down the meaning to remove an important, and to me essential, element of the definition. I don't understand why Picard firing phasers on the outer hull in First Contact and driving a Dune Buggy in Nemesis, or hanging around on cables fighting Ru'afo in Insurrection makes him any less of a mary sue by Harry Lime's use of the term.

(and no Disco isn't my cup of tea ever)

I don't love the genedered nature of the term Mary Sue, but we have countless other examples in this thread where people compared her to a messiah like figure, or star trek jesus, etc. None were saying she was divine, more that she was written to be infallible. I don't think terming Michael a Mary Sue is especially inaccurate given the content of the show.

Further, people were complaining about those very picard movies just a single page of this thread ago, you included! Those scenes with movie star picard do cheapen the movies. But, they were for hollywood movies in an era that put a premium on having an action hero. Discovery is a TV show... It doesn't need to be the way it is. It's even more stark when they're running a good version of a star trek TV show (Strange New Worlds) right beside it.

I think we're being pedantic here. I don't generally like the term Mary Sue, but in this case it's a dead ringer for what she is.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Yeah_Baby

Mary Sue is a self-insert, like Wesley basically being Gene created by Gene.
Like the aforementioned character in FanFic.

Culture has watered down the meaning to remove an important, and to me essential, element of the definition. I don't understand why Picard firing phasers on the outer hull in First Contact and driving a Dune Buggy in Nemesis, or hanging around on cables fighting Ru'afo in Insurrection makes him any less of a mary sue by Harry Lime's use of the term.

(and no Disco isn't my cup of tea ever)

The adjunct of a Mary Sue often being a self-insertion is certainly a common trope but not always true of all Mary Sue characters - Mary Sue being an unrealistic but hyper competent protagonist like you would find in fan fiction.

The term Mary Sue itself was invested by a Star Trek fan fiction writer as a parody of those trends in fan fiction:

"Mary Sue stories—the adventures of the youngest and smartest ever person to graduate from the academy and ever get a commission at such a tender age. Usually characterized by unprecedented skill in everything from art to zoology, including karate and arm-wrestling. This character can also be found burrowing her way into the good graces/heart/mind of one of the Big Three [Kirk, Spock, and McCoy], if not all three at once. She saves the day by her wit and ability, and, if we are lucky, has the good grace to die at the end, being grieved by the entire ship."

Sometimes you are just an adolescent writing a story and you don't know how to solve the problem so every superhuman character you throw in there is a hyper-hero that saves the day. There is wish fulfillment there, but its also immature, lazy writing.

I agree with you on bringing up Picard. To me there is little difference between Wesley Crusher being a Mary Sue and action-hero Picard. Action hero and womanizer Picard was by all accounts just Patrick Stewart Mary Sue'ing himself and telling the writers and producers he wanted to do more action scenes and romance more women on the show because that's what real life Patrick Stewart wanted to do (also having affairs with actresses like the one for Vash and destroying his marriage in the process).

[Monahammer]

IMO a better comparison than movie picard is OG Spock. Generally stronger, smarter, and better aligned than basically everyone. Same with Data!

But they gave those characters massive flaws and huge amounts of internal limitations. Michael was not given these. Or, rather, she was given them but she surmounted all of them almost immediately so it seemed pointless that she was initially held back by them. e.g. missing mom, semi-abusive parental upbringing through comparison to Spock, general inability to follow chains of command... etc.

Those characters both had foils in the form of stalwart captains. Michael has Saru... I guess. I really dislike Saru as a character and the species he's apart of makes less than 0 sense from any perspective.

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

I don't love the genedered nature of the term Mary Sue, but we have countless other examples in this thread where people compared her to a messiah like figure, or star trek jesus, etc. None were saying she was divine, more that she was written to be infallible. I don't think terming Michael a Mary Sue is especially inaccurate given the content of the show.

Further, people were complaining about those very picard movies just a single page of this thread ago, you included! Those scenes with movie star picard do cheapen the movies. But, they were for hollywood movies in an era that put a premium on having an action hero. Discovery is a TV show... It doesn't need to be the way it is. It's even more stark when they're running a good version of a star trek TV show (Strange New Worlds) right beside it.

I think we're being pedantic here. I don't generally like the term Mary Sue, but in this case it's a dead ringer for what she is.

We are dudes in a Star Trek thread so

[CaptainCrunch]

With the whole Mary Sue side of things, yes Michael is a completely over powered character who actually makes the show less interesting as it makes all of the other characters irrelevant. They should have made Discovery at that point a ship that can be run completely from the Captains Chair.



I still remember where I thought that the writers were completely unaware was when I think Tilly was in command during a battle, and as explosions were happening all around the ship, she called a staff meeting to talk about how awesome Michael was and then gave her command.



That's why in the opening 3 seconds of this season when I yelled out "Oh F off". Its because the writers just can't help themselves with the Michael is the most awesome being in the galaxy and a hidden member of the Q Continuum

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

I don't love the genedered nature of the term Mary Sue, but we have countless other examples in this thread where people compared her to a messiah like figure, or star trek jesus, etc. None were saying she was divine, more that she was written to be infallible. I don't think terming Michael a Mary Sue is especially inaccurate given the content of the show.

She is all of those things, I'm surprised that they didn't rewrite Star Trek V so that when the Enterprise got to the center of the Universe they encountered Michael instead of that phony god, and Michael fixed the galaxy with a twitch of her nose.

Originally Posted by Monahammer

Further, people were complaining about those very picard movies just a single page of this thread ago, you included! Those scenes with movie star picard do cheapen the movies. But, they were for hollywood movies in an era that put a premium on having an action hero. Discovery is a TV show... It doesn't need to be the way it is. It's even more stark when they're running a good version of a star trek TV show (Strange New Worlds) right beside it.

I think we're being pedantic here. I don't generally like the term Mary Sue, but in this case it's a dead ringer for what she is.

To me the reason why the Next Gen movies became worse then the series was that Picard was turned not only into Jean Luc Picard action man, but his actions really reduced the nature of the usefullness of the rest of the bridge crews except for Data, and it became horribly apparent in First Contact, Insurrection and Nemisis.



By that time, Worf was reduced to a comedy character who when not whining about Romulan Ale was comment on getting a zit. Deanna was reduced to a soap character and the victim of one of the most horrific character arcs for no reason in insurrection. Riker became a nothing, Chrusher and Geordi literally had nothing to do except become like the Weaver character in Galaxy Quest.



When the writers decided to make Pickard and Data the supreme focus characters/men of action/fix all issues character, The NG crew became a lot less interesting, and the writers of Discovery followed that formula by putting Picard and Data in a DNA blender and coming up with Michael, who really whenever she enters the bridge should have a heavenly choir singing her praises.


"ahhhhh Michael's on the bridge
ohhhhh all our fears are gone
ahhhhh avert your eyes

haaaaa in her glory"