Hoisted by its Own PETArd
My title is, of course, a famous quote from Shakespeare.
Now Shakespeare, one would think, has been exiled from the shiny new Stsr Trek canon because the father of modern literature and his works are considered to be far too patriarchal and male-centric to be suitable for post-modern Marxism.
But to really let slip the dogs of war on all that is Shakespeare one must show that he belongs to the bad guys and their camp, and our lengthy list of executive producers (there's more of them than core cast, what does that tell you?) do not fail in this regard.
Because as we all know, Shakespeare can only truly be experienced in the original Klingon... but the producers can't bring themselves to go full male-centric Bard, so in this episode we get to meet that most feminist of Shakespearean characters, a Klingon Lady Macbeth.
And to keep post-modern feminism happy, let's tie in a little Marija Gimbutas (despite the fact her theories have been discredited in serious Archaeology) and create a new force in the warrior society... The Matriarchy. Our male warrior of course must sacrifice everything to gain the great powers The Matriarchy has to offer.
Meanwhile, back in Starfleet land, our Vulcan-trained hero is nearly emotionally overwhelmed at receiving one of those new Starfleet uniforms that look like they were fitted by a tailor from Wal-Mart. Then the chubby neurotic cadet with the bad complexion delivers a last will and testament to her, but our cool-headed Vulcan-trained logician is too emotionally overwhelmed to deal with it.
But our human characters aren't the only characters disobeying Polonius's "Too thine own self be true". Doing whatever the writers find convenient now extends to beasts. For both we and the Head of Security were shown explicitly in Ep. 3 that the captured "tardigrade" killed an unarmed Klingon from behind with no provocation whatsoever. Yet the working theory of the Vulcan-trained logician is that the beast only attacks when provoked, despite the evidence of... our eyes, her eyes, and Commander Landry's eyes.
Now one might claim the Klingon had done something in the past to enrage the beast, but let's remember Burnham had put several phaser blasts into the creature, and later it had no issue with her.
But let's be honest, if you're trying to get a PETA point across, Politics are far more important than story or character. /sarc
I wonder though, if Sarek will call Burnham up on his subspace mind meld and let her know that according to Vulcan logic, "the needs of the many outweigh the few. Or the one." And of course the young ungraduated cadet's well-being was once again put at great risk this episode, by exposing her to the tardigrade, but apparently such risks are common to cadets in the new Starfleet.
I wondered why the forcefield gate holding the beast wasn't opened just a bit to first approach it, much like when Burnham escaped from the brig back in the pilot, or why the creature didn't just tear through the metal walls, but then I remembered we are not honoring past story points in this series.
We were given more unbecoming emotional immaturity from the gay engineer part way through the episode, but at least the writers let him get his act together by the episode's end.
At which point our cool-headed Vulcan-trained logician finally is able to open her former Captain's last will only to discover a telescope last seen... on an abandoned ship! Lol, like who went back and got that? And why didn't they grab the all-important Dilithium processor or the cloaking device before grabbing an easily replicated telescope? And don't get me started on why does the saucer spin in spore drive, when the effect is coming from Engineering; or the galactic map in the creature's brain; or why the most important mining community in the Federation is undefended and unarmed; or why Lorca risked the ship and every crew member on it by not firing back at attacking ships... just so a dramatic exit could be made.
A new core male human character is introduced, the ship's doctor, but alas, he is also gay, and thus the show's largest demographic--straight male humans--is bizarrely still in wont of a sympathetic character. I suppose though that with gay male characters out-numbering straight male characters 2 to 1 in this 'verse, we should just be happy the human race exists at all, since so few are choosing to reproduce.
This series continues to be a travesty, choosing heavy-handed message over good story-telling. The final result is a dagger in my mind. The die is cast... the writing is awful, fire everyone.
Still really enjoying it thus far.
