I am a Star Trek fan and an optimist, which is why I stayed the whole of this series to the end, but sadly, I was left disappointed and frustrated.
Did they really just make an entire season about data storage? At least season one was divided up into several story threads. This whole series was built upon a mystery that started off being intriguing, but just ended up as one of the crew wearing a time-suit trying to manage data. Time as a plot-device has officially worn thin now, and is just a lazy-writing tool.
There are good points. Saru is likeable, but underused. Sylvia Tilly is endearing and funny, the robot girl was cool but they killed her off, Enterprise's Number One is super-cool and I wanted to see more of her. Jet Reno brings a nice slice of dry humour, and Georgiou has been my favourite character of the series. It was a shame they couldn't get "Our Universe" Lorca somehow into the story.
But the bad points. One dimensional characters. The usual over-reliance on Trek Science-babble. Overlong, contrived scenes that are meant to be emotional but leave you cold. None of this criticism is aimed at the actors, They all do the best they can with the appalling writing. But it's not entirely the writer's fault either.
TV Trek has suffered from Franchise baggage since Next Gen. JJ Abrams showed that you could ditch the baggage and let Trek fly freely, but like a giant worm-hole, the franchise has been sucked back into the fan-pleasing, formulaic cycle. We need another Nero reset.
Finally, whether or not you like the crew and stories of Discovery, it seemed a little unfair to omit them completely from the last ten minutes of the series finale. Perhaps this is the show-runner's attempt at ditching the baggage to allow Discovery to have her own adventures. A starfleet ship lost in another part of the universe having self-contained episodes each week. Sounds familiar?
Did they really just make an entire season about data storage? At least season one was divided up into several story threads. This whole series was built upon a mystery that started off being intriguing, but just ended up as one of the crew wearing a time-suit trying to manage data. Time as a plot-device has officially worn thin now, and is just a lazy-writing tool.
There are good points. Saru is likeable, but underused. Sylvia Tilly is endearing and funny, the robot girl was cool but they killed her off, Enterprise's Number One is super-cool and I wanted to see more of her. Jet Reno brings a nice slice of dry humour, and Georgiou has been my favourite character of the series. It was a shame they couldn't get "Our Universe" Lorca somehow into the story.
But the bad points. One dimensional characters. The usual over-reliance on Trek Science-babble. Overlong, contrived scenes that are meant to be emotional but leave you cold. None of this criticism is aimed at the actors, They all do the best they can with the appalling writing. But it's not entirely the writer's fault either.
TV Trek has suffered from Franchise baggage since Next Gen. JJ Abrams showed that you could ditch the baggage and let Trek fly freely, but like a giant worm-hole, the franchise has been sucked back into the fan-pleasing, formulaic cycle. We need another Nero reset.
Finally, whether or not you like the crew and stories of Discovery, it seemed a little unfair to omit them completely from the last ten minutes of the series finale. Perhaps this is the show-runner's attempt at ditching the baggage to allow Discovery to have her own adventures. A starfleet ship lost in another part of the universe having self-contained episodes each week. Sounds familiar?