Last month in talking about the bullying complaints lodged against ex-princess Meghan Markle, I casually referred to Star Trek: Discovery whose own showrunners were forced out due to questionable "bullying in the workplace" accusations that basically sounded like "the boss wanted me to do things his way". It's like that kung fu fight over tooling specifications in Kill Squad.
Well ironically enough look what I came across: Star Trek Discovery is a bully… And you’re an enabler. (the "you" here, of course, are people dumb enough to actually watch the show, not "you" as in "me" your humble but still better than most of the planet scribbler).
I can’t let this go because Star Trek Discovery is an insult. It’s an insult to its audience, it’s an insult to Star Trek fans, it’s an insult to science fiction fans, it’s an insult to television fans, it’s an insult to any living being with a semblance of critical thinking skills. I can’t let this go because Star Trek Discovery knows it’s insulting you — the audience. It knows that it’s hiding vapid storytelling behind flashy effects. It knows that its characters are morally bankrupt shells reciting storylines from other shows. Worst, STD knows it can get away with this behavior, because it is.Star Trek Discovery is a bully, grabbing your hands and asking “why are you hitting yourself?” And in true bully fashion, it has a lot of vocal supporters, a lot hangers-on who want to use its immediate success for their own selfish gain. But the cracks are showing. Six weeks in, reviewers that once hailed STD as a “brilliant new chapter” are now happy that “this week didn’t suck as bad.” Fickle friends, the bully has. But there will always be yes-men behind it, those intellectually stunted few who don’t know any better, and it is on those souls the bully preys. Its victims are the immediate goal, but its audience is its survival. The Klingon proverb warns us “Don’t feed the trolls.” You, the unquestioning audience who says things like “Burnham is so logical” or “Lorca is a great captain” or “serialized storytelling has never been done on Trek before,” you are feeding this troll.
(It's unclear if this was written before or after Lorca turned out to be from the mirror universe)
Star Trek Discovery has no respect for you — its audience. Its producers only care about your money and its writers think you are dumb enough to be easily manipulated and distracted by superficial smokescreens. This show fails on every single level possible — the aesthetics are wrong, the effects are boring, the storytelling is hackneyed and plagiarized, the morality is nonexistent, and the distribution is vampiric. And yet, you remain.
