I have enjoyed Discovery through the first two seasons, and for the first 5 episodes of season 3 (through "Die Trying"), but I am finding myself disengaged from the season since then.
Anyone else finding themselves lost with Discovery season 3?
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Spoilers through "There Is a Tide..."
To go through all of my issues would take too much time and space, but I will hit on the main points:
The description of Discovery as a "bullet" has never seemed more apt. Discovery has always moved at a breakneck pace, but in between there were always character beats that kept the show alive and interesting for me. Now, more events than ever before are simply driven by the necessity of plot, the relentless churn of DRAMATIC PLOT EVENTS rather than any natural character growth. The emotional logic of the character bits have been lost.
Character motivations, evolutions, are again simply dictated by plot. Saru suddenly is compromised by not having seen another Kelpian for the last 6 months, after having lived his entire adult life never expecting to see another Kelpian. Mirror Georgiou is suddenly redeemed (apparently by being willing to only kill some people instead of all people, to remain in power) and beloved by the whole crew after having been Space Hitler, killing people left and right, being dismissive, mean, and treacherous to every single person around her for 2 years.
Lurching from storyline to storyline within individual episodes is creating a lot of tonal inconsistencies - some characters are engaged in relatively minor personal issues when space battles are happening literally simultaneously. For example, it's hard to care about both the interesting character stuff down on the planet in the Verubin Nebula at the same time as the Emerald Chain captures Discovery (for the record, the Discovery portion was boring).
The villains, Osyraa and the Emerald Chain are boing and one note - with mustache-twirlingly bad displays of how evil they really are, until suddenly - PLOT TWIST - they had some other motivations all along, but - PLOT TWIST 2 (5 minutes later) - they are really just as evil as they seemed all along, so don't bother. Did we need this weak-ass villain when we had a nice mystery of what was the Burn and what caused it? People working together to find common ground and a solution to a natural disaster or at least a path forward. I guess it could have been worse, the villain could have been out for revenge against the Federation for raising the costs of postage stamps or something.
Science and basic character/plot logic has never been a strong suit for Discovery, but this year they have just thrown it out the window. Booker pulls miraculous Emerald Chain comms tech out of nowhere (for no good reason too - Discovery could just jump there anytime it wants, who cares about long range comms? Apparently Vance does because somehow some comms technology is evil because bad guys use it.), Booker pulls sensor blocking tech from nowhere which is completely different from the sensor masking tech used in season 1; Burnham can't find an emergency med kit in all of Discovery nor can she find a weapon to use on the first guard she finds; she doesn't even use a Vulcan Nerve Pinch; she won't let Stamets jump Discovery to save Culber and Saru even though that would fix both the threat to the Federation HQ and save the lives of their crew at the same time; the Emerald Chain just beams onto Discovery despite it being "completely" upgraded with brand new 32nd century tech. And how does the Emerald Chain take over the whole ship with the Sphere Data still resident? Oh, the data just decided to download itself to three little cute robots. It just gets worse and worse each episode. And those issues that are addressed are just handwaved by single lines of dialog (e.g., how Book's ship made it on Discovery).
So, long story short - I am actively starting to dislike the direction of Discovery. The previously good stuff keeping it together for me are just not there anymore. It's a real disappointment for me as I felt the show got better from season 1 to 2 and into the start of 3 and I was hoping it would hit its stride like TNG/DS9/VOY, and even to a some degree, ENT did before. (The new Federation stuff and Vance and finding a place in the future is probably the best and most interesting stuff DSC season 3 has created, but it has been largely ignored.) But now it feels like it is going backward. I will keep watching and hoping it rights itself in season 4, but I don't have a lot of hope now. And this makes me worry that Picard won't redeem itself after the promising start but ultimately disappointingly similar issues it had in its season 1.
At least we still have the amazing Lower Decks, and the promise of SNW, Prodigy, and Picard season 2.
Anyone else finding themselves lost with Discovery season 3?
__________________________________________________________________________
Spoilers through "There Is a Tide..."
To go through all of my issues would take too much time and space, but I will hit on the main points:
The description of Discovery as a "bullet" has never seemed more apt. Discovery has always moved at a breakneck pace, but in between there were always character beats that kept the show alive and interesting for me. Now, more events than ever before are simply driven by the necessity of plot, the relentless churn of DRAMATIC PLOT EVENTS rather than any natural character growth. The emotional logic of the character bits have been lost.
Character motivations, evolutions, are again simply dictated by plot. Saru suddenly is compromised by not having seen another Kelpian for the last 6 months, after having lived his entire adult life never expecting to see another Kelpian. Mirror Georgiou is suddenly redeemed (apparently by being willing to only kill some people instead of all people, to remain in power) and beloved by the whole crew after having been Space Hitler, killing people left and right, being dismissive, mean, and treacherous to every single person around her for 2 years.
Lurching from storyline to storyline within individual episodes is creating a lot of tonal inconsistencies - some characters are engaged in relatively minor personal issues when space battles are happening literally simultaneously. For example, it's hard to care about both the interesting character stuff down on the planet in the Verubin Nebula at the same time as the Emerald Chain captures Discovery (for the record, the Discovery portion was boring).
The villains, Osyraa and the Emerald Chain are boing and one note - with mustache-twirlingly bad displays of how evil they really are, until suddenly - PLOT TWIST - they had some other motivations all along, but - PLOT TWIST 2 (5 minutes later) - they are really just as evil as they seemed all along, so don't bother. Did we need this weak-ass villain when we had a nice mystery of what was the Burn and what caused it? People working together to find common ground and a solution to a natural disaster or at least a path forward. I guess it could have been worse, the villain could have been out for revenge against the Federation for raising the costs of postage stamps or something.
Science and basic character/plot logic has never been a strong suit for Discovery, but this year they have just thrown it out the window. Booker pulls miraculous Emerald Chain comms tech out of nowhere (for no good reason too - Discovery could just jump there anytime it wants, who cares about long range comms? Apparently Vance does because somehow some comms technology is evil because bad guys use it.), Booker pulls sensor blocking tech from nowhere which is completely different from the sensor masking tech used in season 1; Burnham can't find an emergency med kit in all of Discovery nor can she find a weapon to use on the first guard she finds; she doesn't even use a Vulcan Nerve Pinch; she won't let Stamets jump Discovery to save Culber and Saru even though that would fix both the threat to the Federation HQ and save the lives of their crew at the same time; the Emerald Chain just beams onto Discovery despite it being "completely" upgraded with brand new 32nd century tech. And how does the Emerald Chain take over the whole ship with the Sphere Data still resident? Oh, the data just decided to download itself to three little cute robots. It just gets worse and worse each episode. And those issues that are addressed are just handwaved by single lines of dialog (e.g., how Book's ship made it on Discovery).
So, long story short - I am actively starting to dislike the direction of Discovery. The previously good stuff keeping it together for me are just not there anymore. It's a real disappointment for me as I felt the show got better from season 1 to 2 and into the start of 3 and I was hoping it would hit its stride like TNG/DS9/VOY, and even to a some degree, ENT did before. (The new Federation stuff and Vance and finding a place in the future is probably the best and most interesting stuff DSC season 3 has created, but it has been largely ignored.) But now it feels like it is going backward. I will keep watching and hoping it rights itself in season 4, but I don't have a lot of hope now. And this makes me worry that Picard won't redeem itself after the promising start but ultimately disappointingly similar issues it had in its season 1.
At least we still have the amazing Lower Decks, and the promise of SNW, Prodigy, and Picard season 2.
