Tilly and Lt. Broccoli were made for each other. Someone should lock them in a remotely located holodeck together, let them think it is reality, put them into situations to showcase their terrible decision making skills, and then use the resulting footage as "blood on the highway" style cautionary training videos for first year star fleet recruits. Might make a good web series, ha.
Tilly keeps getting gold stars for effort when the reality is that her decisions should get her booted out of star fleet, but it's their fault for putting her into roles that she has absolutely no natural inclination for. Almost everything she says and does should disqualify her for any kind of leadership role in any paramilitary organization. Instead they are grooming her as an officer? Jesus, that's like asking George Burns to star in striptease ... he was a great performer, but wrong fucking skill set. They are setting her up for massive failure because leadership is just not her strength. Not everyone is cut out for that.She's apparently got gobs of learning in lots of really complex made-up-for-the-show physics type things, and that's not nothing. They could very easily have made a case for her as someone who's brains make them an important addition in spite of the fact that they are a bit mental. It's not like you are required to be a great leader to be a great scientist.
They rewarded tilly after she consciously and deliberately tried to hide the fact that she was seeing things out of fear that it would harm her career or fear that people wouldn't like her or something, even though her decision to do so almost cost everyone their lives.
I initially felt like the main character's redemption was unrealistic until the truth came out about the facilitator of her redemption and his impetus for it. Then it seemed more realistic.
I really like the Jet Reno character. I'd love it if she was the protag. I imagine her point of view and observations about the crew would be more brutal than anything we could come up with. I love the concept of her being an engineer who sees no distinction between organisms and machines, even though that last episode had some clunky writing in the implementation of that concept.
They gave the Klingons their hair back in season 2. It helps.
Giant tardigrades....fungus? God dammit, just make up new stuff, and when describing the new stuff, say, "It's similar to a mycelial network" rather than "It is a mycelial network." I mean come on, we can google tardigrades and mycelium. That severely limits what you can say about them and makes suspension of disbelief more difficult, not less. Not everything we find in space has to come from earth. That's the point of doing a show in space...you can have non earth stuff. (Star Trek Voyager was the worst about this).
But I still love Star Trek. I wouldn't get this worked up if I didn't care.
I think a lot of these things stem from one thing...many modern show writers don't seem to understand the dynamics of military and paramilitary organizations well enough to write characters that could realistically function inside these structures. This happens in a lot of television and movie sci fi. For example Poe Dameron, mere pilot grunt, knocking on the general's door with his critique of her plan. He's not ranked enough to be privy to the tactical discussions, but he's able to knock on the general's door and tell her what he thinks she should do. Everyone spends a lot of time angry at one or both of those characters for their REactions to these interactions, but the anger is misplaced. The fault does not lie in the characters. They are placed in an impossible situation. These interactions couldn't have realistically happened in the first place, therefore there is no right way to react to them. Whenever something happens as a result of the writers ignoring protocols that would be in place in order to force an emotional interaction, everything that happens downstream of that moment is tainted, and eventually, as the story lines progress, it becomes a tangle of shit that would never have happened in a star fleet vessel, or a militarily organized rebellion. But there is no reason there can't be emotional interactions within the protocols. It's like they don't even try to have people act like they are in a chain of command except when it suits the plot to implement it for a second.
Another example, this one specifically for starfleet, not for all military..the pilot that dies is a total douchebag in a non-red shirt. He won't listen to anyone, and is almost exactly the same person as the redshirt who died on the drilling platform in the startrek movie reboot because he wouldn't open his chute when kirk and sulu said so. Seriously, how did these people graduate star fleet academy. In a well written script, they wouldn't have. We wouldn't have the opportunity to show the audience how bad douchebaggy showboaters are because douchebaggy showboaters who won't listen to anyone don't get to drive the experimental shuttlecraft thingy. You can use a mud character for that sort of showcasing if you want, but you undermine the entire concept of starfleet as an organization that only the very best can be in when you let a uniformed graduate of starfleet showcase it.
Edit: And don't even get me started on Michael fucking the freed pow who, as far as everyone knows at the time, is barely hanging on mentally due to flashbacks of all the abuse, all while playing the role of an abusive captain, then acting like the victim when it goes sideways. Sometimes when you do stupid shit, you get what you get...and that one should have gotten Michael booted from starfleet...again.
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