[WelshAvenger]

I didn't know the actress before Discovery as I didn't watch the Walking Dead so I don't know what acting she's capable of in a different setting. I don't think that the scripts served her well at all. The writing didn't make me identify with her at all. She's a mutineer who can't follow orders, plain and simple. She gets rescued from a prison sentence and upon being offered a second chance, the first thing she does is breaks into a classified area. I'd have spaced her right there and then.

I get that because of the twist involving the captain, they couldn't focus the series on him but to focus on a crew member that had nothing going for her apart from her super smarts, seemed silly to me. The pace of the series didn't help matters, everything went by so fast that you couldn't feel any empathy for Burnham when she discovered that dude wasn't who he said he was because we hadn't experienced them develop a deep connection. I actually felt more for Stamets after his doctor partner was killed.

I do have an issue with one character, Harry Mudd. If Discovery is set in the prime universe as they have stated, then why is Mudd a sociopath rather than a con man? Don't get me wrong, I think the actor did a fine job in his episodes but really, why not mesh the character with the TOS persona?

But, that's all in the past and a new series is coming. Maybe they've learned a few lessons, maybe not, but I'm looking forward to learning more about the bridge crew. I'm hoping that the premise of this new series isn't "there's a universe ending anomaly out there and we only have fifteen hours to stop it! Oh, and btw, your half brother is linked to it all."

[Vox]

As far as the actresses acting goes she was pretty good in The Walking Dead so I don't think it's an acting thing and more a writing thing that's the issue. And yes Scarlett you used it correctly

Three makes a good point too in that they shove that aspect of her character in your face so much, I swear that it seemed like almost every other episode she mentioned that she was related to Sarek or Spock, almost to the point you could practically see the writers going "Look, look she's related to Spock! She's related to Spock and you love Spock so you've got to love her!"

I think if she was just a normal human who happened to be selected to learn on Vulcan or hell give her the same background of being adopted by a Vulcan family and not having it been Spock's would have worked just as well.

Even Star Trek isn’t above retcons if it’s needed, one of the more subtle ones being the arrowhead insignia. Fun fact on that, the starships having different chest patches wasn’t intentional in TOS, they were all meant to be the same but it wasn’t caught in time to fix it on the occasions it happened. There was an internal memo (not sure if it was Roddenberry himself or one of the higher ranking staff members) that told the production that the intention was that the arrowhead was the Starfleet aymbol and not unique to the USS Enterprise. So that’s why stuff set before TMP features it - a retcon.

This is true but things like that are tiny things to retcon. Trek started with TOS, TNG followed on from what TOS established as DS9 followed on from what TNG established and then VOY followed that on from what TNG and DS9 had established in the universe but all of them were built on the foundations of what TOS had setup. Discovery can't retcon much in the grand scheme of things unless they want to screw up 50+ years of Trek canon as they can't go back and reshoot every other series to make up for it. Even for new fans if they came from the JJ movies or started with Discovery and decide well this is set 10 years before TOS I'll watch that and the others if it doesn't line up they'll go "Well what the hell is this, how did this happen in Discovery but none of that is reflected here going forward it makes no sense." That's the risk they have to avoid for it to make sense.

I said it before in a different thread and Sammy mentioned it here about how ideally the show should have been set post Nemesis and I would agree. For one they only have 10 years of time to play with between Discovery and TOS and two we know what the state of the Alpha Quadrant and the Federation is in 10 years from now when TOS starts which means that whatever they do if they don't want to screw up the entire timeline going forwards (or backwards depending on how you want to look at it) they have to take into consideration that for everything to still make sense whatever they do has to end with the universe setup the way it is in TOS. If they'd set it post Nemesis they'd have an open ended timeline to do whatever they wanted or if they wanted to set it pre-TOS then do like what the JJverse did and set it in an alternate timeline and not the main one, that way they can still do whatever they want without having to worry about altering the Prime Universe in anyway because although people could still complain that they did this this and this, much like they do with JJ's Trek at least you can say yeah but it's not the TOS, TNG timeline so it doesn't have to make sense.

Enterprise was a prequel set in the Prime Universe as well but they managed to get away with it on their show because they had 100 years between their time and when TOS started and a lot can change in 100 years so they were fine but 10 years, that whole other story.

As for what Welsh said about Harry Mudd I would say that although it was out of character it is at least 10 years before Kirk will encounter Mudd so it's fair to say that in that decade that passed, especially based on Mudd's experiences with the crew of the Discovery that maybe some things change. Also I don't know if you've seen the comic con trailer for season 2 yet but your

I'm hoping that the premise of this new series isn't "there's a universe ending anomaly out there and we only have fifteen hours to stop it! Oh, and btw, your half brother is linked to it all."

Is pretty much vocalised in the trailer. There are events popping up over the Galaxy and Pike says to Burnham these things are happening all over the galaxy, they don't know why but that it's connected to your brother. Soooooo yeah.

I wouldn't say she's full on Mary Sue, since she's got a few drawbacks, but she definitely has a lot of Mary Sueish traits, especially how she literally knows everything.

Not just that but also in being related to Spock as well since a lot of Mary Sue's make their characters seem more important by having a connection to an already established main character that sometimes is shoved down people's throats to make them appear more important than they would necessarily be by association.