My final analysis on Season 1 is one part fuddy-duddy and I know that, so I say at the start, "Notice I haven't quit and I'm not telling anyone else to quit". They aren't doing it how I would do it and they aren't do it how it used to be done and they know that and whether it will be more successful at capturing a new generation...remains to be seen.
- I was surprised how little it has been about going to school. A couple early episodes showed them in class, but that disappeared.
- Building a year or life in 10 episodes feels very strange and doesn't work in any functional way. The characters say it has been a year, but it has been a little over 2 months and doesn't feel like anything else. The episodes could easily have happened within a month. Everything we have about them living in time is by inference with sudden changes. I didn't see arcs on any of the characters. Just a few of them had an episode where they were suddenly different.
- We are a season in (and another season of Discovery) and don't know what Pathway Drive is. Berman-era definitely would have filled us in with some fictional science. These producers don't care at all. On the premiere Athena moved like 20 times faster than Berman-era warp and made no issue of it, leaving me to wonder whether I should be even more burning to know more about Pathway or whether the writers perhaps didn't even know they had gone so fast.
- I complain (I guess more on Facebook than here) about the producers understanding canon and the retort is always "Didn't you see these references?" The answer is yes I did. And it usually felt like "Remember this? How about this? Remember this?" Their approach to canon was fun on Lower Decks where it was a parody. They brought too much of that to this show where it is supposed to be more serious. I appreciate some things growing organically from references to previous things, but this show (maybe because they have so little time?) do it way to much and make it feel forced.
- Caleb got his growth on the finale and it worked well enough, but his character made so little sense through the show. He appears entirely domesticated pretty much all the time. He has to throw out a line here and there to let us know that he is a rebel without a cause that grew up scrapping for everything. They have to throw those in, because he looks so calm and collected and totally comfortable in his Starfleet world.
- Kraag happily did get a whole episode to develop his character, but he's still pretty hollow. He is bland and seems pretty naive. More like he is 11 than I guess 18 or so. They introduce that he is gay with a couple of brief visuals that you could miss if you were on your iPad while watching, which I often am. Maybe that is a feature, I'm not sure. Maybe what they are going for is that it just doesn't matter to anyone at all and isn't worth even mentioning. I'm alright with them going that way, but it still feels a little bland. He wants to be a doctor and maybe you don't get to do anything of that as a freshman, but they didn't develop anything about him learning medicine.
- Genesis was originally presented as a buttoned up command track. We learn fairly late that there is no command track for Freshmen and she isn't getting into it Sophomore year. And that because she is a basket-case. Even though she clearly isn't a basket case. She is smart and works hard and in all but that one episode she really does have it all together. They PROBABLY named her species at some point. I forgot it. They never told us anything about them, right? Berman-era for sure would have. There'd be something special about them. And it would have been nice to know how long they have been Federation. I don't like it that an alien's first and last name are English words.
- Betazoid girl. I don't remember her name. I don't take all the blame for that. It doesn't feel like the producers understood Betazoids. She several times has exactly the super power the script needs.
- Betazoid boy. Sorry this file is totally empty.
- SAM was pretty irritating until her episode and now I think she'll be more interesting, but we didn't get a lot of time. They didn't make her home planet make sense to me.
- Kionin guy. Garin? Something like that. He was just a jerk. And then he was suddely a guy that really cares about his friends and backs them 100%. And was so into Starfleet that he'd rather be a capable pilot some day than King of his planet. Hey, I'll back in 100% because he is my friend now, but I they didn't show their work. Perhaps because.....they didn't have enough time. They showed us what a Kionian actually looks like in the pilot and show us he can go outside without a space suit. Pretty interesting. But they dropped it. Didn't need to fire that gun again and even on his home planet, they masquerade as humans.
- War College. I don't understand why it still exists.
- Lura Thok. I thought they'd actually explore what it means that she is half Jem'Hadar. I was one of the people in the leadup saying, "It's been 800 years. Let them explain" to the haters. But they didn't explain. Her relationship with Jett makes ZERO sense.
- Captain Ake. Why is she half human? I liked her character, but it didn't feel like we really found out much about her. I was actually pretty intrigued in the dead starship episode how compelling she was just silently listening to Nus Brakka taunting her. It seemed like she put a lot of work into doing nothing and gave a lot out of it. There just wasn't enough time, I think.
- Nus Brakka was a pretty compelling villain and wrapped up pretty well. Giamatti's performance was everything you could hope for. Didn't learn anything about Klingarites. It makes it sound like he doesn't just have split parentage, but that there is a community of blended Tellarites and Klingons. I don't feel like the show made anything salient out of they hybridization. He might as well have just been some random alien. I guess they didn't want to go with Tellarite either because of the time and expense of makeup or what it would do to the actor's performance. It is hard to work in that much makeup.
- The Doctor. It is hard for me to believe that it was that one season 3 Voyager episode that left him damaged for 900 years. The loss of the Voyager crew and any number of poeple who came along after should have made a better explanation. They could have done a flashback with Seven or with an elderly Naomi Wildman who was the last of the crew to die. He didn't close off his heart after his holo daughter died. That was before he met Seven of Nine.
- I got very little idea of what the Federation OR Starfleet are like now. When they show us another ship it is just a blip.
- Jett Notaro. Bringing her on the show was a very good idea. But she went almost entirely to waste until the finale. They just used her for a quick one-liner here and there, which isn't how she is actually funny. The biggest long-running joke of the season is that she and Lura are in love. It doesn't make any sense at all. I cannot see what they have in common or how she met a teacher from the War College on Earth.
- B'avi. The Vulcan guy. I know his name because on the one episode he mattered I looked up his name to make sure it wasn't Bobby. He was an antagonist right up to the episode where his death was a trauma to the other kids. Well, that would be a trauma even if he was still an antagonist. But somehow in that episode they seemed to pretend he mattered to the kids. Maybe just that one big event together is enough, but when it is only a few minutes of screentime for us it is more difficult. If there'd been 26 episodes they could have done it gradually, but of course there wasn't that kind of time.
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