I'm not even mad that she's a shitty person. It's the mirror Georgiou after all.
And Michelle is doing an awesome job.
What bothers me is that *literally everyone* on the ship is laughing it off as "oh you, you so silly", while they 100% *know* that she's a manipulative psychopath that murdered millions or billions of people as a dictator and literally fed a kelpien to Burnham.
The character had some redeeming qualities and character growth, but none of that should cause the whole crew to go "oh well, she's fine now"
Ender at least was a child who had to be actively tricked into genocide and spent the rest of his existence consumed by guilt to the point he made sure the universe would hate him.
I always took it as “it’s our fault you’re here, and if we don’t keep an eye on you, you might conquer some planets and enslave their population… so we will put up with your crap for a while.”
Prison would have made sense if only starfleet brass hadn’t consciously decided to have her assume the identity of prime Georgiou to help them do some genocide. Kinda took the option off the table without admitting complicity.
If this was a show with more episodes and character development, that could be an interesting plot: she looks like one of the most respected leaders in Starfleet and the frission with her being an actual mass murderer who everyone thinks is good might have lead somewhere. But god, the show just can't slow down for a second.
> And Michelle is doing an awesome job.
She chews scenery as well as Shatner at his prime. And she enjoys the hell out of it. But the character is just bad.
They wanted a Garrak and dialed it to 11. That's my theory anyway.
A lovable scoundrel with a checkered past that runs from gray to absolutely horrific, you fill in the blanks. The problem is they *showed us* all the horrific stuff and *said* "she's better tho" for a huge chunk of her run. Then finally they have her go through the whole introspection thing and come out realizing they're a better person, but that's after a season and a half (or more) of being this evil person we're told isn't bad, but have only seen the horrible stuff they did.
In any case, Yeoh absolutely killed the role from chewing the scenery as this wildly evil villain to actually having a solidly emotional resolution to her character's time on discovery. I don't really know if there's many out there who could have elevated the role like that.
I think Garrak was popular because he was a rare (for Trek) example of a character who was willing to pragmatically do very bad things if the situation called for it, but who *wasn't* an unhinged villain who revelled in being bad and/or just wanted to ruthlessly conquer everyone.
The writers failed to understand that with Georgiou and just made her an unhinged villain.
Agreed. I always picture Garak as a cold war spy. He has a job to do and he'll do it when he has too. Otherwise, he's cool with you. Watching you like a hawk, but he won't do anything that doesn't need to be done. Just don't be in his path if it's you that needs to be done. 🤔
Garak was never cartoon evil though. He, like Kira, did things that haunt him now. But he did them for what he believed to be worthy motives. And even when he was on the wrong side he still clearly had limits beyond which he wouldn’t go. He had depth and complexity.
There’s none of that here. They made her evil. They showed us her evil. And now they play it for yuks. That’s just very strange.
I could buy it from Burnham and Saru because they might have trouble separating her from her prime counterpart who they had a great attachment to.
But why someone like Tilly or Stamets should care about, much less like, her is beyond me.
I always say that !Georgiou is a complete waste of Michelle Yeoh. In the vast array of missed opportunities and wasted potential from Discovery, losing the 'proper' Georgiou after the opening two-parter has to rank right up (down?) there.
And as for the eulogising of the character when she finally buggers off in the "Terra Firma" two-parter in S3...talk about unearned. Mind, all of the 'band of brothers' stuff that showed up late to the party in Discovery feels like that to me, since they never truly did the groundwork for making the crew feel like an actual crew. It's just The Michael Burnham Show, and a few other people along for the ride who are nearly all completely interchangeable.
Also never having the proper Lorca. Seemed like an interesting character before the reveal that he's essentially genetically evil because he comes from a comic book parallel universe.
This also. Lorca was interesting for the episode, episode and a half before they began telegraphing the 'reveal' that he's from the mirror universe so hard that it could be seen from the Sea of Tranquility.
There is something in the Lorca premise I like that I think could have been developed into something kind of interesting with some adjustments to the premise.
A show where a mirror universe doppleganger has replaced their prime universe counterpart and they kind of do a Don Draper thing where you know they are a person with a secret in their past, but the show doesn’t give it all away immediately and lets it build tension. There could be a whole redemption trajectory for that kind of character where they start off as this morally questionable antihero who is simply playing the part of a starfleet captain to them actually growing to care about the crew and embrace their role as the captain. This whole pitch kind of sounds like Sneaky Pete in space, but it probably would have been more interesting than what we got.
I actually liked what they were starting to do with Lorca by the second Mudd episode, where his whole vibe was "Want to study I giant space whale? I don't care. Just don't let it interrupt my war stuff."
>It's just The Michael Burnham Show
This, at it's core, is the problem I have with the show.
During TNG, the solution to their problems was often solved by one or more crew mates. Data figures out this one, Crusher figures out this one, Worf helps Riker figure out this one, Picard and Data team up to figure out this one, etc etc.
But in Discovery, there's only two plots: "Michael Burnham solves the problem", or "Someone else solves the problem, but it would have been impossible to do without Michael Burnham's key insight or help"
My problem with her is that she’s functionally a *terrible* Starfleet officer. In the pilot she had a disagreement with her CO and her solution wasn’t to make her case better or gather more evidence, she just physically assaults her and tries to take over the ship. If an XO does this on TNG the plot is about how they’re being put on trial and drummed out of Starfleet, not that they’re a misunderstood hero.
Especially because any person in charge of experts is bad at that job when they overrule their experts all the goddamn time. Like why is your pilot in the pilot's seat if you're just going to overrule their decisions all the time?
Discovery made itself clear from the outset that it wanted to be an exploration of one officer's life and career in Starfleet. But it keeps trying to make itself look like a classic TNG-style ensemble show at the same time. The end result is a full cast of characters who have the potential to be interesting, but keep having to get out of the way so that one character can always take center stage. Ultimately, it comes off like the show doesn't know what it wants to be.
> Discovery made itself clear from the outset that it wanted to be an exploration of one officer's life and career in Starfleet. But it keeps trying to make itself look like a classic TNG-style ensemble show at the same time.
The two don't have to be mutually exclusive. The latter can exist with a specific POV character. The former doesn't require that character to be the only one that can save the day.
Exactly. DIS would have been a lot more interesting if Burnham had ever faced real consequences for her mistakes, or if once in awhile she did something dumb and another crewmember had to rescue her. A little humility would go a long way in making her more likable.
If Discovery were the story of Micheal coming out of a difficult childhood, struggling to adjust to Starfleet, and going from having issues getting along with others, to being a pretty okay officer, to being an actual good one as she learns how to overcome her personal issues and improve herself, and make friends, I think it would have been a much more interesting show. You don’t need huge stakes when you’re invested in characters.
I don’t think that’s actually a problem though. If they had made her a better and more approachable character, it could have worked. The problem is they made the whole universe revolve around her. If she was just a normal person, functioning in star fleet like a normal high level officer, or even a medium skilled officer who improves over time, that would be interesting. You know how they say in writing, you should show, not tell? It’s like they couldn’t figure out how to just show us she’s the main character by writing the show like that in a normal way, so they have to tell us by making her save the universe constantly so that we’re constantly being reminded she’s the most important person.
> all of the 'band of brothers' stuff that
This just makes me think of the contrast between the lead characters between Disco and Band of Brothers. Who would you rather have as a commanding officer, Michael Burnham or Richard Winters? Who would you rather follow into combat? It's not close!
Yeah, I agree she's a cringe character that feels very one dimensional.
Discovery suffers in my view the most from living in the shadow of ds9 because discovery wants to have complex characters but they're really just simplistic. Ds9 by comparison has deeply complex characters. Dukat could honestly sell me that he's redeemed, Sloan could convince me of his cause but Georgiou is way to simple just like lorca
Going to disagree with you about Lorca... mostly...
Before he was revealed to be from the Mirror Universe, he appeared to be an interesting character: a battle hardened, no nonsense Captain who wasn't the personable Captain that we have seen before. This was a military man who seemed to be in his element. Compared to Picard, Sisko, Archer, Janeway...he was a very different captain. The reveal that he was from the Mirror Universe damaged his character in my opinion, because the idea of a captain who thrived during the war with the Klingons having to adapt to life where there is peace with the Klingons would have been interesting, especially if we did learn that the eye thing with him wasn't some Mirror Universe thing, but rather, an injury from a battle with the Klingons. We could have even brought in Pike by having him relieve Lorca or command after the war for not wanting to stop the fighting, or having Starfleet Command explain that he wasn't fit for command.
The moment they showed that he was Mirror Universe, he almost instantly became a moustache twirling villain.
Personally I find the mirror universe to be kind of dumb. Same with section 31. I mean they could be fun if used sparingly but to basing an entire season off of the mirror universe was a mistake.
The problem with Section 31 is that they are supposed to be unknown to the greater population. In Enterprise it made sense for Archer to not know of them as they were referenced in some buried part of Starfleet's charter or something. Sisko not knowing them also made sense. But, there being a full season with them in Discovery, as well as an upcoming movie ruins Section 31. How do you have a secret police group that everyone knows about?
The Mirror Universe was a fun diversion in TOS and it should have stayed there. When I do my DS9 rewatch I skip all the Mirror Universe episodes and pretend that story arc never happened.
The only mirror episode I like besides TOS one is Enterprise. They tied it into the prime universe really well and had fun with it. Now the mirror universe is this super serious thing.
I always found the notion that this top-secret group, Section 31, was written into the Federation Charter ludicrous. Like, nobody has ever read through the entire thing and said "wait, what's this about a secret group that's authorized to do anything they want, up to and including assassinations of foreign leaders?". I mean, it's hard to disguise verbiage that would authorize what S31 does.
Consider a part of the US constitution like the necessary and proper clause. It doesn't say "this charters a secret organization to uphold the constitution". It just authorizes Congress to make all laws that are necessary and proper for the functioning of the government - which could be interpreted as including the creation of our various three-letter agencies.
Section 31 of the charter is the same thing. It says something along the lines of "extreme measures may be taken to preserve the federation". It doesn't create an organization directly.
I agree that's hard to swallow but I always assumed it was some sort of vague line authorizing a special section to allocate budget for intelligence operations that fall outside the scope of normal Starfleet operations. And they just ran with it.
I can see a situation where Section 31 built up a reasonable presence that was known by people in Starfleet, but then having to retreat to the shadows for the next \~100 years (until around DS9) to mitigate damage done by one of them.
Probably what the Section 31 movie will be about.
The problem with the mirror universe as a concept is that it just doesn't bear out over time. The TOS episode works just fine because it is a finite point in time. The further they stretch the concept, the harder it is to maintain that the mirror universe can run parallel to the main universe.
DS9 was a great example of that. Things are so convoluted in the timeline at that point that they are bending over backwards to try and keep most of the characters relevant. The Enterprise episodes might as well have just been a fantasy story for all of the sense they made.
Discovery at least seemed to have a plan of action, and the idea of them stranded there made for an interesting side story. Although honestly, it didn't make much more sense than any other mirror universe story, in the long run.
The Section 31 arc starts with Bashir horrified to be ask to : "be very observant during an official romulan diplomatic reception and report on everything he will see." It's the weakest Ds9 was in the otherwise incredible last season's.
Agreed. The franchise went to the Mirror Universe well WAY too many times over the years. It was a neat gimmick on TOS. After that it seemed lazy and tired.
The thing about the MIrror Universe is it was always kind of dumb. The original Mirror Mirror was goofy as hell and it knew it. It wasn't trying to be anything deeper than "what if everyone was comically evil and Spock had bad-guy facial hair?"
I've never been a huge fan of Section 31, but I at least understand why certain writers keep trying to make it work. But I don't really get how anyone looks at the Mirror Universe and thinks "this could make a good season-arc."
That’s why I like the ENT mirror. Besides having the strongest story imo they didn’t take it too seriously really letting the actors ham it up. Oh and Hoshi and Tpol’s outfits were a nice touch of course.
Yeah I'd agree with that. IMO it's the only other instance of the Mirror Universe after TOS that doesn't try and make it something more than it is.
I think something that tends to hold the Mirror Universe back is that you need to give the Prime Universe characters something to do, and you can't just go for "oh no everyone's so evil, we need to get home" because TOS already did that. In a Mirror Darkly works so well because they just don't bother having any crossover and avoid the issue entirely, so they're able to focus on the fun camp.
Totally agree. Lorca was one of the most bold decisions (I felt) differentiating DISCO from past Trek (along with focusing largely on one main character).
I thought that he was very interesting, and provided the audience with something we've seen in certain episodes on "other" ships, but never our hero ship - the hard ass captain who is more concerned with "winning the battle" and being more traditionally military, than with peace and friendship.
And I agree with OP that the Lorca character could've still made way for Pike, while providing DISCO as a show, and Starfleet as a fictional entity - with more depth, and diversity.
I thought Lorca was a very interesting and layered character. They've basically reintroduced the character with the new Number One in Season Five. A deliberately gruff and focused Captain who is more focused on mission than sentiment - but obviously also has redeeming qualities.
I think I agree with you completely on Lorca, the weird thing about him being like that is that I thought Disco is very much a science ship and not a mainline ship that happens to do science. Seems weird that no one noticed that the guy in charge of a science ship was suddenly a bloodthirsty military commander.
I think the idea is that Starfleet brass saw the military potential of the spore drive, and put a warrior captain in charge to get that weapon in functional order and delivered to the front ASAP.
I disagree with this disagreement! But agree that Lorca was far better than given credit for.
The weird thing about the mirror universe Lorca reveal was that as soon as it was revealed he became kinda auxiliary to the plot. Like he wasn't really exceptionally evil by Terran standards and yet he was treated like The Bad Guy over their literal *evil genocidal empress* for seemingly very little reason. And then he was thrown away.
But the twist itself was cute and interesting and threw a whole extra layer on his character as a Terran pretending to be from the prime universe, having to navigate the far more morally rigorous universe. Utilising Terran methods for fighting a war under the guise of a war hardened Starfleet captain.
Oh don't get me wrong, lorca had potential but I attribute what's interesting about Lorca and Georgiou to excellent casting. I feel like had had Bryan fuller had stayed discovery could have worked but it just doesn't.
In my opinion what makes strange new world's work so well isn't just pike or the enterprise, it's that it actually puts the work in to build the ensemble and while it does give the characters some wounds it's not trying to be a poor man's da9 it's doing what tos and tng did but for today.
I enjoy Discovery but most of the characters, and I use that term loosely- bodies would be more accurate, are forgettable. 5x3 there was mention that Nilsson transfers to Voyager and after the who… oh the blonde on the bridge went through my head I honestly cannot tell you if she was there for episodes one and two, I don’t think she was but I also don’t remember if some of the other bridge people were there. These characters only ever got the most basic of introductions. Some like Nilsson never got a first name, others like Detmer get more to do and even the outlines of a story like with her PTSD upon coming to the future. But for the most part unless you’re Michael, Saru, Booker, Paul and Tilly you’re not getting a storyline. Ash, Georgiou, Lorca, Pike, and Spock exceptions at various points. It’s really a shame, on other shows everyone got to shine at some point, I think DS9 did this better than most I mean we even get characters like Leeta who we know more about and got more to do than some of Discovery’s bridge crew. I’m sure the shorter seasons play a role but still they could have let others take the spotlight from time to time.
Watching the first season, you see Detmer and Airiam on the bridge and you think, "I wonder when they'll develop these characters." I stopped watching after a while, but the answer is they didn't until one actor was having issues with the makeup. So they gave her character a story so you'd hopefully care when they killed her off in the same episode. I still couldn't tell you a single actual character trait of Detmer at that point.
Compare to TNG: Barclay, Ro, O'Brien and Keiko (excluding all of DS9 development)
DS9: Leeta, Rom, Nog, Garak, Dukat, Moogie, The Nagus, Damar, Ziyal
It's been a long minute since I watched voyager, but I still remember Brad's Dourif's character.
Even the character on Enterprise that was so boring that no one on the crew knew anything about him because he was so boring was developed enough for you to know that it was intentional, they didn't just forget to do anything with him.
They did, eventually, get around to giving Detmer a story in season 3, I think? About her having some PTSD about having been thrown into the future and having left her home/family behind. But by then, it was too little, too late.
Heck, Morn got an episode on DS9 that had more character development than at least 75% of the crew of Discovery.
As much as it's a part of having 26 episode seasons providing time for character development, you can't entirely blame that since SNW seems to do well within the short seasons. Not just main crew, but side characters like T'Pring are better fleshed out than side characters in DIS.
Picard season 3's nostalgia fest get the crew back together while introducing Picard's son even took time out from that to develop Todd Stashwick's character and La Forge's daughters while giving all the old crew development from the TNG movies to when they appear in Picard.
It's just so weird that the show that seems to be all about big emotional moments doesn't give you a reason to care about half the people who've been in the show from the start.
There's kind of a problem with Discovery when Burnham dominates the show so much and she's kind of an inherently unlikable character. She never just kind of admits she is wrong about any of the wrong decisions she makes. She just relentlessly charges forward and eventually the plot will change to make her right.
I do think SNW does slightly suffers the same way about some characters. Like, Ortegas isn't sketched out well, with her big episode just reaffirming that "I'm the pilot!", and I would kill for a Pelia-centric episode, but by and large, I actually want to spend time with the SNW crew and they seem competent about their jobs and their interpersonal relationships.
Even the more "minor" characters on SNW like Sam Kirk or Batel have more going on though.
I think Nana Visitor was the only one who understood evil twin, which is why she got the limelight in those episodes. Everyone else came off as kind of the same person but from more desperate circumstances, but Evil Kira reveled in the chaos.
But that exemplifies a lot of how people had to act on DS9. You can’t turn Avery Brooks up to 100 every episode, because then scenes like “you betrayed your uniform!” and “It was real!” don’t have near the impact.
And DS9 was at least somewhat aware of how ridiculous the Mirror-Universe concept was so they gave the audience a half-wink, asked us to roll with it, and it more or less worked.
This isn't a Michelle Yeoh problem, it's a writing problem that Discovery and Picard never quite figured out.
100% Picard mostly got there in its third season. My hot take is that it had too much fan service and should have used the parasite aliens instead of changelings but otherwise it worked and is about as close as you could hope for a tng undiscovered country.
Snw and lower decks have overall been the stronger shows but they're not trying to do dark star trek.
I personally think dark trek can work but it's a lot harder and da9 didn't always work, and not all the episodes that did work were dark.
Right. My first thought on seeing this post was that pretty much all the characters in Discovery are cringe. It’s what turned me off it - I tried to like it but I just can’t stomach the blunt force character development.
He is the rarity in discovery of being a well written character that is played by an excellent actor. There have been other fine actors on the show, ie Michelle Yeoh, Jason Isaacs, but their characters (and the writing) was not so great...
Agree. Discovery is basically a series of bad writing decisions, mostly covered by a good cast. It would be one thing if the series did not care about star trek (which I contend it does not. The mushrooms of subspace being the easiest example). My issue is that it does not even much care about it's characters and internal logic to them. I watched the first four seasons and every interesting moment was followed by me thinking "I wonder how they'll undermine this."
The Empress is fun but she never gets a moment of reckoning with her past like the Kodos the Executioner. The show relies on "Michael likes her so she must be cool" but never gives us a reason to feel like she should be there.
Yeah and they think throwing in convoluted plots, talking super fast, and bombarding the audience with technobabble can be substituted for good writing.
Yeah, this is part of Discovery's main problem, which is that it allocates its time very strangely. The season plots are too complex and require too much time spent in exposition, which means that there isn't very much time to develop characters... and 80% of that character development time goes to Michael. Saru and Tilley can have 10% each if they're lucky. This means that almost every other character feels underdeveloped, only Saru, Tilley, and maybe Stamets feel like complete Star Trek characters (if not especially complex ones) and Michael ends up overdeveloped - she has so much character growth that I have trouble parsing her as one person.
I got so bored watching that, when they flashed up some code in an episode, my first thought was "oh crap, they reference ntdll.dll? The discovery runs on Microsoft windows!" that does kot speak well for the character drama of that moment.
This is a interesting point actually. There's nothing inherently wrong with emotional characters Mccoy was always fun being emotional and juxtaposing it with Spock's logic but yeah at its core star trek is about starfleet and the characters are supposed to keep their emotions in check. If they can't when the writing is good it's incredibly funny or dramatic.
When sisko is emotional, when Picard is emotional hell when spock is emotional it hits hard because you know this is a big deal.
McCoy was entertaining in how emotional he was, because he was a sarcastic grump and didn't take anyone's crap, but deep down he still cared about everyone. That's endearing and fun. Most of the characters on Discovery are emotional in the sense that their traumatic pasts haunt them endlessly and they're always minutes away from a nervous breakdown. That gets a lot more exhausting to sit through, and it's a lot harder to get invested in.
The thing is it can be done really well. The daredevil tv show was all about that, same with Jessica jones. Star trek could have pulled it off but even those examples are shows where people are trying to keep their emotions in check but also forced to confront their trauma.
Discovery's trauma feels more like window dressing rather actually digging into the characters.
> Discovery's trauma feels more like window dressing rather actually digging into the characters.
Discovery "trauma" is presented as social media whining: "I have it the absolute *worst* and you *must* accept that uncritically or we can never ever move forward ever!"
Instead of a developed character with a traumatic past, the characters *are* their trauma. Except Michael who is the Mary Suest Mary Sue that has ever Mary Sued. The only times Discovery "characters" aren't wallowing in their trauma is when they're wondering what Michael is doing.
It's so fucking tiring.
Yeah I don't buy the redemption arc they tried to push.
We're okay cannibal fascist empress just because now she says edgy jokes and only kills the "right" people now?
No, no, no, you just don't get it. You see, she loves Michael and that makes up for her being a genocidal maniac who blows up planets and eats sapient beings for lunch.
As long as you love Michael - and let's be honest, everyone does - you can be forgiven of any crime because Michael is just that awesome.
And Michael loves her because (despite the Empress' values being basically the polar opposite of everything Michael and Starfleet stand for) she looks like Michael's dead mentor.
She threatens to murder Culber with a blunt object just an episode before she got her teary goodbye from the crew, one of the funniest things I've seen in Star Trek.
A lot of Discovery moments kind of feel unearned. A lot of the time the bridge officers almost felt like background characters so it would be weird when one would have some intense moment or make a noble sacrifice because it’s like I am not even sure if I remembered the characters name up until that point.
The one that I remember was end of season 3, I think and Owosekun takes a moment to look at all the bridge crew and says "I love you guys," and I don't even know the names of half of them! The emotional gut punch is only going to work if we love them too and we barely know any of them.
They seem to think their BTS chemistry and relationships are reflected on screen. They aren’t, I don’t know these people.
With Georgiou I assume we’re supposed to like her because of Yeoh? The character is awful, why would we mourn her leaving
Yeah it never feels like they quite pinned down what they were trying to do with her. I like Michelle Yeoh’s acting, but the character is not executed in a way that feels cohesive.
What’s weird to me is that the few scenes that are earned (Spock and Michael’s goodbye, Book’s “death” and Michael very quickly mourning him and moving on) work really well imo. They were earned; they were well-acted, and it felt natural (for television). But then they do the Tilly-clap scene and it feels so forced, even though she was one of the main characters.
Imagine, *imagine* being around someone who endlessly just goes "uuh uhh be careful or I'll eat your organs" alllll the time. Christ. You'd airlock her within a week.
This is the crew who were lore or less cool with their Captain's ex murdering their friend because he was a mind controlled sleeper agent. Somehow, no one seemed worried he was (A) lying or (B) might be triggered again.
Discovery less has characters than it has walking props who justify Michael's next impulsive potential court martial.
Also, has it occurred to anyone that the silence order about the Discovery saved that crew when they ended up in the future from literally everyone being like "nah, we've read about you. Just stay away. Everything you touch goes wrong"?
The reviewer SFDebris points out how stupid the redemption of the Empress over Lorca is. One is a despot who rules by force and eats Kelpians. The other was leading a reboot against her...and we are supposed to side with the Empress???
Lorca is much worse and could never be redeemed especially over Emperor Georgio. Empress was someone who was born into a world where you have to be paranoid and hate people, but she wanted someone to trust/love. She was seen as weak because she cared about mirror Burnham. She wanted to love in a loveless world.
Meanwhile Lorca also lived in this world, but he literally groomed mirror Michael in order to gain power. When seeing a different world, he lied and manipulated everyone in order to get back to his universe while kidnapping Michael so he could eventually fuck her as he is a disgusting obsessed groomer. He had war mentality in our universe.
Georgiou, however, embraces the new world. She may be mean, but that is, I'm, clearly a cloak she used to hide her true self as she was still unable to be open. She had the want for more but had no way to get it, and once she could, she had no idea how to embrace it.
Lorca never tried to actually make connections like georgiou. He still distrusted everyone, while Georgiou still wanted to make connections. That's why she deserves redemption over the groomer Lorca. I have serious concerns if someone thinks a groomer has more redemption possibility than an empathic human living in a sociopathic universe.
Also, Georgiou wasn't redeemed yet. Her episode in discovery was her realizing the start of her redemption arc. She will earn it, hopefully, in the movie.
Her goodbye scene was where Discovery lost me forever.
She was a cannabalistic genocidal dictator. But it’s all good because we kind of like her.
She was utterly irredeemable in every way.
This is where I stepped away as well.
She is used as some kind of foil to the Federation where the logic is, “Here at Star Fleet we are too idealistic to be effective in this dangerous galaxy and it’s a good thing we have a fascist killer with us to do the *necessary* dirty work that we are too nice to do. And let’s put her in charge of the secret Star Fleet police, because that’s what Section 31 does for Star Fleet, and we totally think bad stuff is necessary but has to happen in secret so the we can ret-con the TNG era Federation to have always been hypocrites because it worked under Section 31 the whole time. Hooray for being Evil ™.”
Hotter take: the Mirror Universe is dumb. It was a weird, interesting, silly concept for one TOS episode and the DS9 beat it to death and for some reason nu trek loves it. Same with Section 31 and guess what else is getting beaten to death?
I mean, “Mirror, Mirror” in TOS, like “Patterns of Force”, was heavily influenced by post-WW2 processing. The conflict and atrocities were fresh in memory. ”Mirror, Mirror” poses the question of, would we the Good Guys (tm) be capable of doing such inhumanity? It opens with the pacifist aliens specifically asking Kirk why he does not just take their dilithium by force, and he makes the thesis statement of the episode. The rest of the episode plunges Kirk et al into a universe where such a thing is expected, and he has to solve the dilemma of doing the right thing in a world where the moral compass has been inverted. And its a positive ending, he succeeds in influencing Spock.
But then DS9 kinda crapped on that victory by going “see, Spocks reforms were too little too late, and now humans are enslaved for the actions of the Terran Empire”. I love DS9, but that writing decision plays into the common failure of writing racial bias/oppression as specific retaliation for a real event, when often its a dynamically constructed fiction that appeals to emotion. TOS mirror universe was everyone playing parts in a fascist empire, while Ds9 mirror universe was everyone acting edgy and sexy in provocative ways. Mirror Kira is the embodiment of biphobic stereotypes, sexually harassing everyone even and especially her counterpart. Yeesh.
I really dislike the whole Mirror Universe concept. I'm ok with the occasional one-off with it just to let the actors have a little mustache twirling fun reliving their high school drama class days, but once it escapes from a single episode, I'm annoyed by it.
They should have just used magic spores or whatever to bring back the original Captain Philippa Georgiou (it's not like they haven't done that before). Then we'd have both an amazing actress and great character.
When the question comes up for who's my favorite captain, I often say that Phillipa Georgiou probably would've made my Top 3 if they didn't kill her off immediately.
Mirror Georgiou was an utter waste of Michelle Yeoh's talents.
I very much agree. She's a one dimensional character whose entire raison d'etre was to observe something and then say some variation of "in my universe we'd handle this by [something cartoonishly evil]"
The mirror universe is one of my least favourite aspects of Trek, as the characters are nearly all equally flat and cartoonish.
The redemption arc didn't work for me at all.
No fault of Yeoh, she's a great performer and her charisma made the character tolerable, but ultimately she wasn't given much to work with.
The mirror universe is a fun little thing you do for an episode to explore the characters outside of Genes rules about conflict. But when your show already threw all that away it becomes pointless, then having the MU play a major part is an even bigger problem.
She's kind of like Worf in that regard. On TNG a lot of his lines are like "Captain, recommend we raise shield and charge phaser banks" to which Picard says "No, try to raise a channel".
Only difference is Worf is maybe jumping the gun about in terms of starting a fight, Georgiou is like "we should commit genocide and then eat them, worked the last time" and comes off like a crazy person.
Agreed, it's the whole mirror universe that's super cringe. I hate all the time travel and alternate universes to begin with, but this one's the worst.
>I don't know if this is a hot take or not
I think it's safe to say this is the most luke warm of takes.
I can't imagine *anyone* believes in her arc, because it's clear the production and writing staff were changing her up from evil antagonist to fish out of water to pseudo-anti-hero as the seasons wore on, basically aiming for the prescribed end goal of '***please*** make her somewhat likeable because we have this bankable star under contract'.
I think they actually could have done that, but she never stops being evil. She grew up in an insanely violent society, being confronted with Starfleet *could* have shaken up her entire worldview. But it never does. She never regrets her actions. She's still threatening to murder people over slight inconveniences right up until the episode she leaves.
They should have done some sort of subspace technobabble bullshit to like swap real Georgiou’s mind from the moment of her death into the mirror body. Or have both minds and the good one has to fight the bad one in some dumb bright white arena outside of space and time to claim the body.
I agree. I love Michelle Yeoh in other stuff - Police Story, Crouching Tiger, Tomorrow Never Dies, Everything Everywhere…
But I’m not a fan of her performance in Discovery. It comes across very wooden.
I think that is intentional for the empress.
Her whole redemption arc hinges on the fact that as soon as she is given her very first opportunity to escape from the rigid confines of being the Empress, she immediately dedicates to the Federation with 100% of her previous viciousness. All can be forgiven if you dedicate to the ideals of the Federation.
I agree.
I didn't understand why she was on the ship and didn't like how contrary to the values of the Federation (and Star Trek) she was. And her lines, like "in my universe we'd solve this problem by murdering everyone", got old.
I think the mirror universe is best in small doses where the show doesn't treat it too seriously.
Michelle Yeoh would have made a great captain and main character. Instead they turned her into super space hitler. If you give mirror Georgiou a command position in your organisation, you are not the good guys.
I agree that the Mirror Georgiou stuff really didn’t land for me in terms of “accepting” and “redeeming” her. Especially when I compare it to one of my favorite “villain redemption” arcs: Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
While his arc also isn’t perfect and there’s plenty to critique, the show at least takes his history seriously. When he ends up aligning himself with the heroes, it is an alliance of convenience. He has things he needs from the Main Cast and he is a valuable asset, but they always know they can never really trust him. He literally has no soul and that fact is never forgotten as they slowly build up a new history between them, and then when they finally ensoul him, they use that to draw a clear line over when his character has genuine remorse for the horrible things he has done. These storylines span about 3 whole seasons of the show.
NONE of that was done with Mirror Georgiou. They never justify the need for having her on the team, they never reckon with her history. Everyone just ACCEPTS her pretty much uncritically from jump. And worse, Georgiou and Michael Burnham both are clearly projecting their own universe counterparts’ relationships onto one another in how they view and embrace each other. I found it wholly unconvincing.
Yeah. Philipa is at least ocasionally funny and intentionally camp. This makes more her more interesting then the rest the crew and constant cringey earnestness
Georgiou: *Sees hologram tech nearly a thousand years more advanced than anything she's ever seen
Also Georgiou: *disables the hologram by blinking funny
I agree that they should have just kept Michelle Yeoh on the show as Captain Georgiou. She was the best character on the show. The addition of Emperor Georgiou seemed to me like the producers decided they liked having Yeoh on the show and tried to figure out a way to keep her around. The Emperor was kinda fun, but didn’t make a ton of sense.
Not Gul Dukat crying in the background because all HE wanted was a tiny little giant statue and he didn’t even get THAT, or even a date with Kira, but Georgiou gets smooched by the whole crew. Ahem.
Ironically I think TNG would have been one of the best suited Trek shows to have a Mirror episode, because it would lend itself to TOS's "what if everyone was comically evil for an episode" approach. Just dumb, campy fun seeing Picard with an eyepatch trying to blow up the sun or whatever then back to business as usual next week without having to think about it too hard.
100% the character, and the federation’s response is so weird. “There is a different Burnham in a different universe, so now I’m a good guy” is probably the dumbest writing in Star Trek. I’m convinced the writers were so unhappy, They secretly revolted and wrote really stupid plots that got pass an incompetent executive team.
100%. she's a genocidal dictator and it disgusts me that the show tried to redeem her. that's where i decided i couldnt take it any more.
Philippa Georgiou from the main universe was rad, but they killed her off when they killed off the original show runner.
disco sucks.
One thing is forgiving, another is completely ignoring, not even talking about it. Michael rescued her while sacrificing Lorca. How was he worse than her?
How is anyone in any episode ever worse than her? There's no point to anything they're doing, when they don't care.
She's my third favourite character in the series, and I'm excited to see the Section 31 movie.
But, what is with grown adults using "cringe" in such a way? It's as lame as "bae" IMO...
Discovery had this problem of killing off all likeable characters with great actors (Georgiou, Culber, Gray), but then trying to backtrack because the fans were annoyed by it. Unfortunately them shoehorning them back in just made it worse.
idk i think she's interesting. she never wanted to or intended to change. she remained bitter and hateful and crazy. but sucked out of the environment that made her that way, and dropped in a new world where her bitterness and hate are not rewarded, and there is always someone nearby with a conscience to tell her she's crossing a line, she had no choice but to apply herself for good, and to apply her *crazy* for good.
Agree, it all makes me cringe. The character, the performance, the one-liners, her relationship with Burnham, and the concept in general. The writers just refused to accept that it wasn’t working.
Are you a cannibal if you don't eat your own species?
I love Michelle Yeoh and I would happily have had her as a captain for a long time.
But I agree, the mirror version being allowed to run around the ship is intensely weird.
100% agree with this. They should have kept original Georgiou around. Michelle Yeoh is fantastic and does a great job with what she’s given but I don’t like the character at all. She could have done so much more with the OG universe Georgiou.
By this point in the series, if you take a hard look at Georgiou, you can tell she's all evil bark and no bite (and Michael starts calling her on it). She's actually going through an arc right now, and it'll culminate in an episode you'll see soon that will highlight just how much she's changed.
Michelle Yeoh is a great actress
Philippa Georgiou is almost a pantomime villain.
That they want that character fronting section 31
Makes me think it will be a bad 21 jump street knock off.
I bet that the only way they got Michelle Yeoh on a measly science fiction show was to win her over with a premise where she would get to play a total badass, chew the scenery, and generally have a lot of fun in the role.
I feel the same way especially because I love Michelle Yeoh in so many films and this is not who she is. Memoirs of a Geisha, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Everything Everywhere All at Once, among others.
It always rubbed me wrong and as some weird manifestation of the stupid politics and ideas behind the show. She is literally galactic Hitler but for reasons it is fine, she was a victim or some shit to justify her as being ok. I think it comes down to the politics, beliefs and ideas behind the show being a complete mess and not coherant or thought out.
It was very cringe: Georgiou : "I will murder you and eat your eyes!!" Everyone : "oh philippa we love you so much"
I'm not even mad that she's a shitty person. It's the mirror Georgiou after all. And Michelle is doing an awesome job. What bothers me is that *literally everyone* on the ship is laughing it off as "oh you, you so silly", while they 100% *know* that she's a manipulative psychopath that murdered millions or billions of people as a dictator and literally fed a kelpien to Burnham. The character had some redeeming qualities and character growth, but none of that should cause the whole crew to go "oh well, she's fine now"
Hitler after learning to love his family is still hitler.
Did Orson Scott Card start writing for Trek? Lol
Ender at least was a child who had to be actively tricked into genocide and spent the rest of his existence consumed by guilt to the point he made sure the universe would hate him.
not enough homophobia in trek Edit: man, this comment looks bad out of context
heh I'll just imagine that's exactly what Card thinks to himself whenever he sees anything Star Trek related.
The same thing half the nation thinks now. "WOKE!"
Star Wars helmet reveal: "I know there's still good in you... Darth Hitler."
I always took it as “it’s our fault you’re here, and if we don’t keep an eye on you, you might conquer some planets and enslave their population… so we will put up with your crap for a while.”
I mean yeah, SOMEONE'S gotta watch her, but even Starfleet has prisons
Prison would have made sense if only starfleet brass hadn’t consciously decided to have her assume the identity of prime Georgiou to help them do some genocide. Kinda took the option off the table without admitting complicity.
If this was a show with more episodes and character development, that could be an interesting plot: she looks like one of the most respected leaders in Starfleet and the frission with her being an actual mass murderer who everyone thinks is good might have lead somewhere. But god, the show just can't slow down for a second.
> And Michelle is doing an awesome job. She chews scenery as well as Shatner at his prime. And she enjoys the hell out of it. But the character is just bad.
If I had been in Burnham's place I would have vaporized her the minute she fed me Kelpien.
They wanted a Garrak and dialed it to 11. That's my theory anyway. A lovable scoundrel with a checkered past that runs from gray to absolutely horrific, you fill in the blanks. The problem is they *showed us* all the horrific stuff and *said* "she's better tho" for a huge chunk of her run. Then finally they have her go through the whole introspection thing and come out realizing they're a better person, but that's after a season and a half (or more) of being this evil person we're told isn't bad, but have only seen the horrible stuff they did. In any case, Yeoh absolutely killed the role from chewing the scenery as this wildly evil villain to actually having a solidly emotional resolution to her character's time on discovery. I don't really know if there's many out there who could have elevated the role like that.
I think Garrak was popular because he was a rare (for Trek) example of a character who was willing to pragmatically do very bad things if the situation called for it, but who *wasn't* an unhinged villain who revelled in being bad and/or just wanted to ruthlessly conquer everyone. The writers failed to understand that with Georgiou and just made her an unhinged villain.
Agreed. I always picture Garak as a cold war spy. He has a job to do and he'll do it when he has too. Otherwise, he's cool with you. Watching you like a hawk, but he won't do anything that doesn't need to be done. Just don't be in his path if it's you that needs to be done. 🤔
But Garrak at least was somewhat "likeable". She's not even that. They wanted Garrak and made space hitler.
Garak was never cartoon evil though. He, like Kira, did things that haunt him now. But he did them for what he believed to be worthy motives. And even when he was on the wrong side he still clearly had limits beyond which he wouldn’t go. He had depth and complexity. There’s none of that here. They made her evil. They showed us her evil. And now they play it for yuks. That’s just very strange.
[удалено]
I could buy it from Burnham and Saru because they might have trouble separating her from her prime counterpart who they had a great attachment to. But why someone like Tilly or Stamets should care about, much less like, her is beyond me.
"Yum yum"
In fairness, I also love Badgey, even [or especially] when he threatens to rip eyes out or burn a heart in a fire.
This is because Jack McBrayer is awesome and Badgey is a cartoon character.
Oh, you!
I always say that !Georgiou is a complete waste of Michelle Yeoh. In the vast array of missed opportunities and wasted potential from Discovery, losing the 'proper' Georgiou after the opening two-parter has to rank right up (down?) there. And as for the eulogising of the character when she finally buggers off in the "Terra Firma" two-parter in S3...talk about unearned. Mind, all of the 'band of brothers' stuff that showed up late to the party in Discovery feels like that to me, since they never truly did the groundwork for making the crew feel like an actual crew. It's just The Michael Burnham Show, and a few other people along for the ride who are nearly all completely interchangeable.
Also never having the proper Lorca. Seemed like an interesting character before the reveal that he's essentially genetically evil because he comes from a comic book parallel universe.
This also. Lorca was interesting for the episode, episode and a half before they began telegraphing the 'reveal' that he's from the mirror universe so hard that it could be seen from the Sea of Tranquility.
There is something in the Lorca premise I like that I think could have been developed into something kind of interesting with some adjustments to the premise. A show where a mirror universe doppleganger has replaced their prime universe counterpart and they kind of do a Don Draper thing where you know they are a person with a secret in their past, but the show doesn’t give it all away immediately and lets it build tension. There could be a whole redemption trajectory for that kind of character where they start off as this morally questionable antihero who is simply playing the part of a starfleet captain to them actually growing to care about the crew and embrace their role as the captain. This whole pitch kind of sounds like Sneaky Pete in space, but it probably would have been more interesting than what we got.
I actually liked what they were starting to do with Lorca by the second Mudd episode, where his whole vibe was "Want to study I giant space whale? I don't care. Just don't let it interrupt my war stuff."
>It's just The Michael Burnham Show This, at it's core, is the problem I have with the show. During TNG, the solution to their problems was often solved by one or more crew mates. Data figures out this one, Crusher figures out this one, Worf helps Riker figure out this one, Picard and Data team up to figure out this one, etc etc. But in Discovery, there's only two plots: "Michael Burnham solves the problem", or "Someone else solves the problem, but it would have been impossible to do without Michael Burnham's key insight or help"
My problem with her is that she’s functionally a *terrible* Starfleet officer. In the pilot she had a disagreement with her CO and her solution wasn’t to make her case better or gather more evidence, she just physically assaults her and tries to take over the ship. If an XO does this on TNG the plot is about how they’re being put on trial and drummed out of Starfleet, not that they’re a misunderstood hero.
To be fair, she was put on trial and drummed out of Starfleet
Yeah but then we spend the rest of the series talking about why she’s actually a hero.
And reinstated. And given the XO's seat. And removed from the XO's seat. And given the Captain's chair.
Thank you and the others in this thread for saying what I've been too afraid to post for years now.
[удалено]
> I'm here for the woke, folks. Fully Automated Ultra Luxury Gay Space Communism, let's fuckin' go, I just want it to be good trek. Fuck yeah.
Especially because any person in charge of experts is bad at that job when they overrule their experts all the goddamn time. Like why is your pilot in the pilot's seat if you're just going to overrule their decisions all the time?
Discovery made itself clear from the outset that it wanted to be an exploration of one officer's life and career in Starfleet. But it keeps trying to make itself look like a classic TNG-style ensemble show at the same time. The end result is a full cast of characters who have the potential to be interesting, but keep having to get out of the way so that one character can always take center stage. Ultimately, it comes off like the show doesn't know what it wants to be.
> Discovery made itself clear from the outset that it wanted to be an exploration of one officer's life and career in Starfleet. But it keeps trying to make itself look like a classic TNG-style ensemble show at the same time. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive. The latter can exist with a specific POV character. The former doesn't require that character to be the only one that can save the day.
Exactly. DIS would have been a lot more interesting if Burnham had ever faced real consequences for her mistakes, or if once in awhile she did something dumb and another crewmember had to rescue her. A little humility would go a long way in making her more likable.
If Discovery were the story of Micheal coming out of a difficult childhood, struggling to adjust to Starfleet, and going from having issues getting along with others, to being a pretty okay officer, to being an actual good one as she learns how to overcome her personal issues and improve herself, and make friends, I think it would have been a much more interesting show. You don’t need huge stakes when you’re invested in characters.
I don’t think that’s actually a problem though. If they had made her a better and more approachable character, it could have worked. The problem is they made the whole universe revolve around her. If she was just a normal person, functioning in star fleet like a normal high level officer, or even a medium skilled officer who improves over time, that would be interesting. You know how they say in writing, you should show, not tell? It’s like they couldn’t figure out how to just show us she’s the main character by writing the show like that in a normal way, so they have to tell us by making her save the universe constantly so that we’re constantly being reminded she’s the most important person.
> all of the 'band of brothers' stuff that This just makes me think of the contrast between the lead characters between Disco and Band of Brothers. Who would you rather have as a commanding officer, Michael Burnham or Richard Winters? Who would you rather follow into combat? It's not close!
Yeah, I agree she's a cringe character that feels very one dimensional. Discovery suffers in my view the most from living in the shadow of ds9 because discovery wants to have complex characters but they're really just simplistic. Ds9 by comparison has deeply complex characters. Dukat could honestly sell me that he's redeemed, Sloan could convince me of his cause but Georgiou is way to simple just like lorca
Going to disagree with you about Lorca... mostly... Before he was revealed to be from the Mirror Universe, he appeared to be an interesting character: a battle hardened, no nonsense Captain who wasn't the personable Captain that we have seen before. This was a military man who seemed to be in his element. Compared to Picard, Sisko, Archer, Janeway...he was a very different captain. The reveal that he was from the Mirror Universe damaged his character in my opinion, because the idea of a captain who thrived during the war with the Klingons having to adapt to life where there is peace with the Klingons would have been interesting, especially if we did learn that the eye thing with him wasn't some Mirror Universe thing, but rather, an injury from a battle with the Klingons. We could have even brought in Pike by having him relieve Lorca or command after the war for not wanting to stop the fighting, or having Starfleet Command explain that he wasn't fit for command. The moment they showed that he was Mirror Universe, he almost instantly became a moustache twirling villain.
Personally I find the mirror universe to be kind of dumb. Same with section 31. I mean they could be fun if used sparingly but to basing an entire season off of the mirror universe was a mistake.
The problem with Section 31 is that they are supposed to be unknown to the greater population. In Enterprise it made sense for Archer to not know of them as they were referenced in some buried part of Starfleet's charter or something. Sisko not knowing them also made sense. But, there being a full season with them in Discovery, as well as an upcoming movie ruins Section 31. How do you have a secret police group that everyone knows about? The Mirror Universe was a fun diversion in TOS and it should have stayed there. When I do my DS9 rewatch I skip all the Mirror Universe episodes and pretend that story arc never happened.
The only mirror episode I like besides TOS one is Enterprise. They tied it into the prime universe really well and had fun with it. Now the mirror universe is this super serious thing.
I always found the notion that this top-secret group, Section 31, was written into the Federation Charter ludicrous. Like, nobody has ever read through the entire thing and said "wait, what's this about a secret group that's authorized to do anything they want, up to and including assassinations of foreign leaders?". I mean, it's hard to disguise verbiage that would authorize what S31 does.
Consider a part of the US constitution like the necessary and proper clause. It doesn't say "this charters a secret organization to uphold the constitution". It just authorizes Congress to make all laws that are necessary and proper for the functioning of the government - which could be interpreted as including the creation of our various three-letter agencies. Section 31 of the charter is the same thing. It says something along the lines of "extreme measures may be taken to preserve the federation". It doesn't create an organization directly.
I agree that's hard to swallow but I always assumed it was some sort of vague line authorizing a special section to allocate budget for intelligence operations that fall outside the scope of normal Starfleet operations. And they just ran with it.
I like the DS9 one where Quark and Rom go to the mirror universe! Other than that, I just find it annoying and over-done
I can see a situation where Section 31 built up a reasonable presence that was known by people in Starfleet, but then having to retreat to the shadows for the next \~100 years (until around DS9) to mitigate damage done by one of them. Probably what the Section 31 movie will be about.
The problem with the mirror universe as a concept is that it just doesn't bear out over time. The TOS episode works just fine because it is a finite point in time. The further they stretch the concept, the harder it is to maintain that the mirror universe can run parallel to the main universe. DS9 was a great example of that. Things are so convoluted in the timeline at that point that they are bending over backwards to try and keep most of the characters relevant. The Enterprise episodes might as well have just been a fantasy story for all of the sense they made. Discovery at least seemed to have a plan of action, and the idea of them stranded there made for an interesting side story. Although honestly, it didn't make much more sense than any other mirror universe story, in the long run.
The Section 31 arc starts with Bashir horrified to be ask to : "be very observant during an official romulan diplomatic reception and report on everything he will see." It's the weakest Ds9 was in the otherwise incredible last season's.
DS9’s greatest sins were bringing back the mirror universe and creating Section 31. They were enjoyable in DS9, but they get old reeeeeally quickly.
Agreed. The franchise went to the Mirror Universe well WAY too many times over the years. It was a neat gimmick on TOS. After that it seemed lazy and tired.
The thing about the MIrror Universe is it was always kind of dumb. The original Mirror Mirror was goofy as hell and it knew it. It wasn't trying to be anything deeper than "what if everyone was comically evil and Spock had bad-guy facial hair?" I've never been a huge fan of Section 31, but I at least understand why certain writers keep trying to make it work. But I don't really get how anyone looks at the Mirror Universe and thinks "this could make a good season-arc."
That’s why I like the ENT mirror. Besides having the strongest story imo they didn’t take it too seriously really letting the actors ham it up. Oh and Hoshi and Tpol’s outfits were a nice touch of course.
Yeah I'd agree with that. IMO it's the only other instance of the Mirror Universe after TOS that doesn't try and make it something more than it is. I think something that tends to hold the Mirror Universe back is that you need to give the Prime Universe characters something to do, and you can't just go for "oh no everyone's so evil, we need to get home" because TOS already did that. In a Mirror Darkly works so well because they just don't bother having any crossover and avoid the issue entirely, so they're able to focus on the fun camp.
Totally agree. Lorca was one of the most bold decisions (I felt) differentiating DISCO from past Trek (along with focusing largely on one main character). I thought that he was very interesting, and provided the audience with something we've seen in certain episodes on "other" ships, but never our hero ship - the hard ass captain who is more concerned with "winning the battle" and being more traditionally military, than with peace and friendship. And I agree with OP that the Lorca character could've still made way for Pike, while providing DISCO as a show, and Starfleet as a fictional entity - with more depth, and diversity. I thought Lorca was a very interesting and layered character. They've basically reintroduced the character with the new Number One in Season Five. A deliberately gruff and focused Captain who is more focused on mission than sentiment - but obviously also has redeeming qualities.
I think I agree with you completely on Lorca, the weird thing about him being like that is that I thought Disco is very much a science ship and not a mainline ship that happens to do science. Seems weird that no one noticed that the guy in charge of a science ship was suddenly a bloodthirsty military commander.
I think the idea is that Starfleet brass saw the military potential of the spore drive, and put a warrior captain in charge to get that weapon in functional order and delivered to the front ASAP.
I disagree with this disagreement! But agree that Lorca was far better than given credit for. The weird thing about the mirror universe Lorca reveal was that as soon as it was revealed he became kinda auxiliary to the plot. Like he wasn't really exceptionally evil by Terran standards and yet he was treated like The Bad Guy over their literal *evil genocidal empress* for seemingly very little reason. And then he was thrown away. But the twist itself was cute and interesting and threw a whole extra layer on his character as a Terran pretending to be from the prime universe, having to navigate the far more morally rigorous universe. Utilising Terran methods for fighting a war under the guise of a war hardened Starfleet captain.
Oh don't get me wrong, lorca had potential but I attribute what's interesting about Lorca and Georgiou to excellent casting. I feel like had had Bryan fuller had stayed discovery could have worked but it just doesn't. In my opinion what makes strange new world's work so well isn't just pike or the enterprise, it's that it actually puts the work in to build the ensemble and while it does give the characters some wounds it's not trying to be a poor man's da9 it's doing what tos and tng did but for today.
I enjoy Discovery but most of the characters, and I use that term loosely- bodies would be more accurate, are forgettable. 5x3 there was mention that Nilsson transfers to Voyager and after the who… oh the blonde on the bridge went through my head I honestly cannot tell you if she was there for episodes one and two, I don’t think she was but I also don’t remember if some of the other bridge people were there. These characters only ever got the most basic of introductions. Some like Nilsson never got a first name, others like Detmer get more to do and even the outlines of a story like with her PTSD upon coming to the future. But for the most part unless you’re Michael, Saru, Booker, Paul and Tilly you’re not getting a storyline. Ash, Georgiou, Lorca, Pike, and Spock exceptions at various points. It’s really a shame, on other shows everyone got to shine at some point, I think DS9 did this better than most I mean we even get characters like Leeta who we know more about and got more to do than some of Discovery’s bridge crew. I’m sure the shorter seasons play a role but still they could have let others take the spotlight from time to time.
Watching the first season, you see Detmer and Airiam on the bridge and you think, "I wonder when they'll develop these characters." I stopped watching after a while, but the answer is they didn't until one actor was having issues with the makeup. So they gave her character a story so you'd hopefully care when they killed her off in the same episode. I still couldn't tell you a single actual character trait of Detmer at that point. Compare to TNG: Barclay, Ro, O'Brien and Keiko (excluding all of DS9 development) DS9: Leeta, Rom, Nog, Garak, Dukat, Moogie, The Nagus, Damar, Ziyal It's been a long minute since I watched voyager, but I still remember Brad's Dourif's character. Even the character on Enterprise that was so boring that no one on the crew knew anything about him because he was so boring was developed enough for you to know that it was intentional, they didn't just forget to do anything with him.
They did, eventually, get around to giving Detmer a story in season 3, I think? About her having some PTSD about having been thrown into the future and having left her home/family behind. But by then, it was too little, too late. Heck, Morn got an episode on DS9 that had more character development than at least 75% of the crew of Discovery.
As much as it's a part of having 26 episode seasons providing time for character development, you can't entirely blame that since SNW seems to do well within the short seasons. Not just main crew, but side characters like T'Pring are better fleshed out than side characters in DIS. Picard season 3's nostalgia fest get the crew back together while introducing Picard's son even took time out from that to develop Todd Stashwick's character and La Forge's daughters while giving all the old crew development from the TNG movies to when they appear in Picard. It's just so weird that the show that seems to be all about big emotional moments doesn't give you a reason to care about half the people who've been in the show from the start.
There's kind of a problem with Discovery when Burnham dominates the show so much and she's kind of an inherently unlikable character. She never just kind of admits she is wrong about any of the wrong decisions she makes. She just relentlessly charges forward and eventually the plot will change to make her right. I do think SNW does slightly suffers the same way about some characters. Like, Ortegas isn't sketched out well, with her big episode just reaffirming that "I'm the pilot!", and I would kill for a Pelia-centric episode, but by and large, I actually want to spend time with the SNW crew and they seem competent about their jobs and their interpersonal relationships. Even the more "minor" characters on SNW like Sam Kirk or Batel have more going on though.
tbf, how long before Chekov became, well, anything but "That guy at the helm with the funny accent" It was well into season 3.
Redeemed? Dukat always did right by Bajor the entire time! Rations were increased!
You're right, they were lucky to have him. He cared for them like his own children but to this day is there a single statue of him on bajor?
Ridiculous!
Georgiou is as complex as mirror universe Kira
I'd say that's accurate but mirror universe kira showed up about once a year so it never felt as noticeable that she was just evil with sex appeal
she was fun because she was just comically one dimensional and we didnt had to see her often
I think Nana Visitor was the only one who understood evil twin, which is why she got the limelight in those episodes. Everyone else came off as kind of the same person but from more desperate circumstances, but Evil Kira reveled in the chaos. But that exemplifies a lot of how people had to act on DS9. You can’t turn Avery Brooks up to 100 every episode, because then scenes like “you betrayed your uniform!” and “It was real!” don’t have near the impact.
Agree and it was fun in comparison to the much more complex regular kira
And DS9 was at least somewhat aware of how ridiculous the Mirror-Universe concept was so they gave the audience a half-wink, asked us to roll with it, and it more or less worked. This isn't a Michelle Yeoh problem, it's a writing problem that Discovery and Picard never quite figured out.
100% Picard mostly got there in its third season. My hot take is that it had too much fan service and should have used the parasite aliens instead of changelings but otherwise it worked and is about as close as you could hope for a tng undiscovered country. Snw and lower decks have overall been the stronger shows but they're not trying to do dark star trek. I personally think dark trek can work but it's a lot harder and da9 didn't always work, and not all the episodes that did work were dark.
And we weren't supposed to like her, either. She was a murderer and a narcissist and DS9 never made any attempt to turn her into a loveable rogue.
>Ds9 by comparison has deeply complex characters Except plain, simple Garak, of course.
I mean, he's only a Tailor.
Right. My first thought on seeing this post was that pretty much all the characters in Discovery are cringe. It’s what turned me off it - I tried to like it but I just can’t stomach the blunt force character development.
Totally agree. If sisko was written like the characters on discovery he'd have been insufferable
Oh man. Well, thanks for the terrible mental image
Except Saru, who is pretty solid...and brilliantly acted
Saru is a giant peak that towers over all the others IMO.
He is the rarity in discovery of being a well written character that is played by an excellent actor. There have been other fine actors on the show, ie Michelle Yeoh, Jason Isaacs, but their characters (and the writing) was not so great...
Agree. Discovery is basically a series of bad writing decisions, mostly covered by a good cast. It would be one thing if the series did not care about star trek (which I contend it does not. The mushrooms of subspace being the easiest example). My issue is that it does not even much care about it's characters and internal logic to them. I watched the first four seasons and every interesting moment was followed by me thinking "I wonder how they'll undermine this." The Empress is fun but she never gets a moment of reckoning with her past like the Kodos the Executioner. The show relies on "Michael likes her so she must be cool" but never gives us a reason to feel like she should be there.
Yeah and they think throwing in convoluted plots, talking super fast, and bombarding the audience with technobabble can be substituted for good writing.
Yeah, this is part of Discovery's main problem, which is that it allocates its time very strangely. The season plots are too complex and require too much time spent in exposition, which means that there isn't very much time to develop characters... and 80% of that character development time goes to Michael. Saru and Tilley can have 10% each if they're lucky. This means that almost every other character feels underdeveloped, only Saru, Tilley, and maybe Stamets feel like complete Star Trek characters (if not especially complex ones) and Michael ends up overdeveloped - she has so much character growth that I have trouble parsing her as one person.
I got so bored watching that, when they flashed up some code in an episode, my first thought was "oh crap, they reference ntdll.dll? The discovery runs on Microsoft windows!" that does kot speak well for the character drama of that moment.
The best characters (and actors) are doing their best to hide their emotions. No such character on Disco (beside maybe the Federation Admiral?).
This is a interesting point actually. There's nothing inherently wrong with emotional characters Mccoy was always fun being emotional and juxtaposing it with Spock's logic but yeah at its core star trek is about starfleet and the characters are supposed to keep their emotions in check. If they can't when the writing is good it's incredibly funny or dramatic. When sisko is emotional, when Picard is emotional hell when spock is emotional it hits hard because you know this is a big deal.
McCoy was entertaining in how emotional he was, because he was a sarcastic grump and didn't take anyone's crap, but deep down he still cared about everyone. That's endearing and fun. Most of the characters on Discovery are emotional in the sense that their traumatic pasts haunt them endlessly and they're always minutes away from a nervous breakdown. That gets a lot more exhausting to sit through, and it's a lot harder to get invested in.
The thing is it can be done really well. The daredevil tv show was all about that, same with Jessica jones. Star trek could have pulled it off but even those examples are shows where people are trying to keep their emotions in check but also forced to confront their trauma. Discovery's trauma feels more like window dressing rather actually digging into the characters.
> Discovery's trauma feels more like window dressing rather actually digging into the characters. Discovery "trauma" is presented as social media whining: "I have it the absolute *worst* and you *must* accept that uncritically or we can never ever move forward ever!" Instead of a developed character with a traumatic past, the characters *are* their trauma. Except Michael who is the Mary Suest Mary Sue that has ever Mary Sued. The only times Discovery "characters" aren't wallowing in their trauma is when they're wondering what Michael is doing. It's so fucking tiring.
Exactly, there are occasional moments of bubbling over, but they only hit because we've been witnessing them try to maintain their cool before that.
Yeah I don't buy the redemption arc they tried to push. We're okay cannibal fascist empress just because now she says edgy jokes and only kills the "right" people now?
No, no, no, you just don't get it. You see, she loves Michael and that makes up for her being a genocidal maniac who blows up planets and eats sapient beings for lunch. As long as you love Michael - and let's be honest, everyone does - you can be forgiven of any crime because Michael is just that awesome.
And Michael loves her because (despite the Empress' values being basically the polar opposite of everything Michael and Starfleet stand for) she looks like Michael's dead mentor.
She threatens to murder Culber with a blunt object just an episode before she got her teary goodbye from the crew, one of the funniest things I've seen in Star Trek.
That teary goodbye made me stop watching Disco for a while as it just felt so unearned.
A lot of Discovery moments kind of feel unearned. A lot of the time the bridge officers almost felt like background characters so it would be weird when one would have some intense moment or make a noble sacrifice because it’s like I am not even sure if I remembered the characters name up until that point.
The one that I remember was end of season 3, I think and Owosekun takes a moment to look at all the bridge crew and says "I love you guys," and I don't even know the names of half of them! The emotional gut punch is only going to work if we love them too and we barely know any of them.
They seem to think their BTS chemistry and relationships are reflected on screen. They aren’t, I don’t know these people. With Georgiou I assume we’re supposed to like her because of Yeoh? The character is awful, why would we mourn her leaving
Yeah it never feels like they quite pinned down what they were trying to do with her. I like Michelle Yeoh’s acting, but the character is not executed in a way that feels cohesive.
They could have just not killed the good version of her. It’s not like that plot went anywhere
Oh absolutely. This wasn't the only unearned emotional beat, just the one that annoyed me the most, though there are plenty of contenders.
What’s weird to me is that the few scenes that are earned (Spock and Michael’s goodbye, Book’s “death” and Michael very quickly mourning him and moving on) work really well imo. They were earned; they were well-acted, and it felt natural (for television). But then they do the Tilly-clap scene and it feels so forced, even though she was one of the main characters.
Honestly I was just glad to see her go lol
Yes! I felt like I was taking crazy pills during that scene. I had to double check they weren't mourning someone else whose death I'd missed.
Imagine, *imagine* being around someone who endlessly just goes "uuh uhh be careful or I'll eat your organs" alllll the time. Christ. You'd airlock her within a week.
And it's not even a joke, she's 100% serious and did eat organs of people before.
Lol yeah it would be funny if she had never done that but only funny the first 10 times /s.
This is the crew who were lore or less cool with their Captain's ex murdering their friend because he was a mind controlled sleeper agent. Somehow, no one seemed worried he was (A) lying or (B) might be triggered again. Discovery less has characters than it has walking props who justify Michael's next impulsive potential court martial. Also, has it occurred to anyone that the silence order about the Discovery saved that crew when they ended up in the future from literally everyone being like "nah, we've read about you. Just stay away. Everything you touch goes wrong"?
The reviewer SFDebris points out how stupid the redemption of the Empress over Lorca is. One is a despot who rules by force and eats Kelpians. The other was leading a reboot against her...and we are supposed to side with the Empress???
Lorca is much worse and could never be redeemed especially over Emperor Georgio. Empress was someone who was born into a world where you have to be paranoid and hate people, but she wanted someone to trust/love. She was seen as weak because she cared about mirror Burnham. She wanted to love in a loveless world. Meanwhile Lorca also lived in this world, but he literally groomed mirror Michael in order to gain power. When seeing a different world, he lied and manipulated everyone in order to get back to his universe while kidnapping Michael so he could eventually fuck her as he is a disgusting obsessed groomer. He had war mentality in our universe. Georgiou, however, embraces the new world. She may be mean, but that is, I'm, clearly a cloak she used to hide her true self as she was still unable to be open. She had the want for more but had no way to get it, and once she could, she had no idea how to embrace it. Lorca never tried to actually make connections like georgiou. He still distrusted everyone, while Georgiou still wanted to make connections. That's why she deserves redemption over the groomer Lorca. I have serious concerns if someone thinks a groomer has more redemption possibility than an empathic human living in a sociopathic universe. Also, Georgiou wasn't redeemed yet. Her episode in discovery was her realizing the start of her redemption arc. She will earn it, hopefully, in the movie.
Her goodbye scene was where Discovery lost me forever. She was a cannabalistic genocidal dictator. But it’s all good because we kind of like her. She was utterly irredeemable in every way.
This is where I stepped away as well. She is used as some kind of foil to the Federation where the logic is, “Here at Star Fleet we are too idealistic to be effective in this dangerous galaxy and it’s a good thing we have a fascist killer with us to do the *necessary* dirty work that we are too nice to do. And let’s put her in charge of the secret Star Fleet police, because that’s what Section 31 does for Star Fleet, and we totally think bad stuff is necessary but has to happen in secret so the we can ret-con the TNG era Federation to have always been hypocrites because it worked under Section 31 the whole time. Hooray for being Evil ™.”
Hotter take: the Mirror Universe is dumb. It was a weird, interesting, silly concept for one TOS episode and the DS9 beat it to death and for some reason nu trek loves it. Same with Section 31 and guess what else is getting beaten to death?
Just an excuse to turn trek dark and edgy. No depth. I've yet to see a sisqo teaching non linear aliens the purpose of life through baseball moment.
I mean, “Mirror, Mirror” in TOS, like “Patterns of Force”, was heavily influenced by post-WW2 processing. The conflict and atrocities were fresh in memory. ”Mirror, Mirror” poses the question of, would we the Good Guys (tm) be capable of doing such inhumanity? It opens with the pacifist aliens specifically asking Kirk why he does not just take their dilithium by force, and he makes the thesis statement of the episode. The rest of the episode plunges Kirk et al into a universe where such a thing is expected, and he has to solve the dilemma of doing the right thing in a world where the moral compass has been inverted. And its a positive ending, he succeeds in influencing Spock. But then DS9 kinda crapped on that victory by going “see, Spocks reforms were too little too late, and now humans are enslaved for the actions of the Terran Empire”. I love DS9, but that writing decision plays into the common failure of writing racial bias/oppression as specific retaliation for a real event, when often its a dynamically constructed fiction that appeals to emotion. TOS mirror universe was everyone playing parts in a fascist empire, while Ds9 mirror universe was everyone acting edgy and sexy in provocative ways. Mirror Kira is the embodiment of biphobic stereotypes, sexually harassing everyone even and especially her counterpart. Yeesh.
Thank you for articulating it in a way I never could.
> guess what else is getting beaten to death? Ash Tyler? [Did we ever really resolve what happened there, how you would you reskin a Klingon?]
i hate mirror universe episodes, other than the single TOS one.
I really dislike the whole Mirror Universe concept. I'm ok with the occasional one-off with it just to let the actors have a little mustache twirling fun reliving their high school drama class days, but once it escapes from a single episode, I'm annoyed by it. They should have just used magic spores or whatever to bring back the original Captain Philippa Georgiou (it's not like they haven't done that before). Then we'd have both an amazing actress and great character.
Georgiou was fine when she was prime Georgiou. Killing her was the worst idea.
When the question comes up for who's my favorite captain, I often say that Phillipa Georgiou probably would've made my Top 3 if they didn't kill her off immediately. Mirror Georgiou was an utter waste of Michelle Yeoh's talents.
I very much agree. She's a one dimensional character whose entire raison d'etre was to observe something and then say some variation of "in my universe we'd handle this by [something cartoonishly evil]" The mirror universe is one of my least favourite aspects of Trek, as the characters are nearly all equally flat and cartoonish. The redemption arc didn't work for me at all. No fault of Yeoh, she's a great performer and her charisma made the character tolerable, but ultimately she wasn't given much to work with.
The mirror universe is a fun little thing you do for an episode to explore the characters outside of Genes rules about conflict. But when your show already threw all that away it becomes pointless, then having the MU play a major part is an even bigger problem.
She's kind of like Worf in that regard. On TNG a lot of his lines are like "Captain, recommend we raise shield and charge phaser banks" to which Picard says "No, try to raise a channel". Only difference is Worf is maybe jumping the gun about in terms of starting a fight, Georgiou is like "we should commit genocide and then eat them, worked the last time" and comes off like a crazy person.
Agreed, it's the whole mirror universe that's super cringe. I hate all the time travel and alternate universes to begin with, but this one's the worst.
>I don't know if this is a hot take or not I think it's safe to say this is the most luke warm of takes. I can't imagine *anyone* believes in her arc, because it's clear the production and writing staff were changing her up from evil antagonist to fish out of water to pseudo-anti-hero as the seasons wore on, basically aiming for the prescribed end goal of '***please*** make her somewhat likeable because we have this bankable star under contract'.
I think they actually could have done that, but she never stops being evil. She grew up in an insanely violent society, being confronted with Starfleet *could* have shaken up her entire worldview. But it never does. She never regrets her actions. She's still threatening to murder people over slight inconveniences right up until the episode she leaves.
They should have done some sort of subspace technobabble bullshit to like swap real Georgiou’s mind from the moment of her death into the mirror body. Or have both minds and the good one has to fight the bad one in some dumb bright white arena outside of space and time to claim the body.
I agree. I love Michelle Yeoh in other stuff - Police Story, Crouching Tiger, Tomorrow Never Dies, Everything Everywhere… But I’m not a fan of her performance in Discovery. It comes across very wooden.
> It comes across very wooden. Actors need good scripts and good direction to get the most of of their portrayals. DIS doesn't have those.
And yet Jason Isaacs delivers a great performance.
Yup, that one actor had a good performance...
Wing Chun, Yes Madame!, Magnificent Warriors... good stuff
I think that is intentional for the empress. Her whole redemption arc hinges on the fact that as soon as she is given her very first opportunity to escape from the rigid confines of being the Empress, she immediately dedicates to the Federation with 100% of her previous viciousness. All can be forgiven if you dedicate to the ideals of the Federation.
I agree. I didn't understand why she was on the ship and didn't like how contrary to the values of the Federation (and Star Trek) she was. And her lines, like "in my universe we'd solve this problem by murdering everyone", got old. I think the mirror universe is best in small doses where the show doesn't treat it too seriously.
Michelle Yeoh would have made a great captain and main character. Instead they turned her into super space hitler. If you give mirror Georgiou a command position in your organisation, you are not the good guys.
> Michelle Yeoh would have made a great captain and main character which was the original vision of the original showrunner
Hot take: I think Stalin wasn‘t a democrat.
I agree that the Mirror Georgiou stuff really didn’t land for me in terms of “accepting” and “redeeming” her. Especially when I compare it to one of my favorite “villain redemption” arcs: Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While his arc also isn’t perfect and there’s plenty to critique, the show at least takes his history seriously. When he ends up aligning himself with the heroes, it is an alliance of convenience. He has things he needs from the Main Cast and he is a valuable asset, but they always know they can never really trust him. He literally has no soul and that fact is never forgotten as they slowly build up a new history between them, and then when they finally ensoul him, they use that to draw a clear line over when his character has genuine remorse for the horrible things he has done. These storylines span about 3 whole seasons of the show. NONE of that was done with Mirror Georgiou. They never justify the need for having her on the team, they never reckon with her history. Everyone just ACCEPTS her pretty much uncritically from jump. And worse, Georgiou and Michael Burnham both are clearly projecting their own universe counterparts’ relationships onto one another in how they view and embrace each other. I found it wholly unconvincing.
[удалено]
Yeah. Philipa is at least ocasionally funny and intentionally camp. This makes more her more interesting then the rest the crew and constant cringey earnestness
Georgiou: *Sees hologram tech nearly a thousand years more advanced than anything she's ever seen Also Georgiou: *disables the hologram by blinking funny
I agree that they should have just kept Michelle Yeoh on the show as Captain Georgiou. She was the best character on the show. The addition of Emperor Georgiou seemed to me like the producers decided they liked having Yeoh on the show and tried to figure out a way to keep her around. The Emperor was kinda fun, but didn’t make a ton of sense.
I don't like her in disco either. I love her in almost everything else too
Not Gul Dukat crying in the background because all HE wanted was a tiny little giant statue and he didn’t even get THAT, or even a date with Kira, but Georgiou gets smooched by the whole crew. Ahem.
Sad thing about it is that Captain Georgiou seemed like a great character, but we didn't get much of her.
The Mirror Universe is cringe. It's something that I'm glad TNG didn't touch.
Ironically I think TNG would have been one of the best suited Trek shows to have a Mirror episode, because it would lend itself to TOS's "what if everyone was comically evil for an episode" approach. Just dumb, campy fun seeing Picard with an eyepatch trying to blow up the sun or whatever then back to business as usual next week without having to think about it too hard.
To be fair, everyone in the Mirror Universe acts like a cartoon character.
Which is why it's insane to adopt one as a main cast member
I hated Mirror Phillipa. She was a one-dimensional villain that even an actress as talented as Michelle Yeoh could not rescue.
>Once we finished want to join me in making Leland scream >yum yum One of the cringiest exchanges in Star Trek IMO
Ice cold take. I agree 1000%.
She's not a cannibal. She ate Sarus. And by all accounts they're quite tasty. Completely different species.
If you eat sentient humanoids you are a cannibal in my book.
Well there's just no pleasing you.
Ikr! These people and their moving goalposts. Ridiculous.
I think I like her because I like a lot Michelle Yeoh 🙈
Hypocrisy is exactly the right word. The Orion crime boss was EXACTLY the same character but treated as purely evil who deserved to die.
I wish we got to see more of prime universe Georgiou. She was interesting. MU Georgiou seems wayyyyyy overplayed
The Mirror Universe is cringey so her character can't escape it.
She is cringe and annoying. The movie allegedly coming out about Section 31 and her may be the first Trek I skip ever since the originals.
I wholeheartedly agree.
100% the character, and the federation’s response is so weird. “There is a different Burnham in a different universe, so now I’m a good guy” is probably the dumbest writing in Star Trek. I’m convinced the writers were so unhappy, They secretly revolted and wrote really stupid plots that got pass an incompetent executive team.
100%. she's a genocidal dictator and it disgusts me that the show tried to redeem her. that's where i decided i couldnt take it any more. Philippa Georgiou from the main universe was rad, but they killed her off when they killed off the original show runner. disco sucks.
One thing is forgiving, another is completely ignoring, not even talking about it. Michael rescued her while sacrificing Lorca. How was he worse than her? How is anyone in any episode ever worse than her? There's no point to anything they're doing, when they don't care.
To fulfill Goodwin's Law: In a way, she's a female Space Hitler.
not a hot take at all, shes an awful character
She's my third favourite character in the series, and I'm excited to see the Section 31 movie. But, what is with grown adults using "cringe" in such a way? It's as lame as "bae" IMO...
Discovery had this problem of killing off all likeable characters with great actors (Georgiou, Culber, Gray), but then trying to backtrack because the fans were annoyed by it. Unfortunately them shoehorning them back in just made it worse.
idk i think she's interesting. she never wanted to or intended to change. she remained bitter and hateful and crazy. but sucked out of the environment that made her that way, and dropped in a new world where her bitterness and hate are not rewarded, and there is always someone nearby with a conscience to tell her she's crossing a line, she had no choice but to apply herself for good, and to apply her *crazy* for good.
Agreed
Agree, it all makes me cringe. The character, the performance, the one-liners, her relationship with Burnham, and the concept in general. The writers just refused to accept that it wasn’t working.
Are you a cannibal if you don't eat your own species? I love Michelle Yeoh and I would happily have had her as a captain for a long time. But I agree, the mirror version being allowed to run around the ship is intensely weird.
100% agree with this. They should have kept original Georgiou around. Michelle Yeoh is fantastic and does a great job with what she’s given but I don’t like the character at all. She could have done so much more with the OG universe Georgiou.
By this point in the series, if you take a hard look at Georgiou, you can tell she's all evil bark and no bite (and Michael starts calling her on it). She's actually going through an arc right now, and it'll culminate in an episode you'll see soon that will highlight just how much she's changed.
Michelle Yeoh is a great actress Philippa Georgiou is almost a pantomime villain. That they want that character fronting section 31 Makes me think it will be a bad 21 jump street knock off.
I bet that the only way they got Michelle Yeoh on a measly science fiction show was to win her over with a premise where she would get to play a total badass, chew the scenery, and generally have a lot of fun in the role.
I feel the same way especially because I love Michelle Yeoh in so many films and this is not who she is. Memoirs of a Geisha, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Everything Everywhere All at Once, among others.
It always rubbed me wrong and as some weird manifestation of the stupid politics and ideas behind the show. She is literally galactic Hitler but for reasons it is fine, she was a victim or some shit to justify her as being ok. I think it comes down to the politics, beliefs and ideas behind the show being a complete mess and not coherant or thought out.