Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

Except that it's more than that. I mean, you can use a cell phone to place a call, or you can use the same phone Bell used when he called Watson, and while it seems the same, the underlying technology is vastly different. More to the point, our crew from the 23rd century adapts exceptionally quickly to a 900 year jump in technology which also happens to look like the 23rd century technology but shinier and holographic. This is all subjective, I know, but it matters to me, which is why I have issues with the way they use it. Tilly thinks a phaser into her hand, but ensigns still die, and stay dead despite the most incredible technology that works like magic, from shuttle crashes. I know, it's Star Trek, but at the same time, these people jumped 900 years into the future so they could get away from some of the tropes that trapped them in predictability, and so here they are creating the same predictable Star Trek tropes, but 900 years in the future.

It just seems so limited in imagination to me. I get it, not everyone's going to agree here, but it does bother me. Honestly? It feels like Enterprise, but set 900 years in the future. Only the setting changed, the writing was still the same lackluster formula then, and it feels lackluster for me here, too. It's not just a phaser, it's a holographic phaser. The spore drive, in the first season, was the first truly creative stroke from Discovery, and now it's just technology that is automatically handled rather than needing a unique navigator. It's like they stripped it of its uniqueness, and made as bland as possible. It's like sprinkles on ice cream: they're colorful, festive, and look fun, but they taste bland. The illusion breaks once you take a bite.

Again, just my two bits on that.

When we saw 29th century ships like the Relativity in Voyager it was super recognizable as Starfleet tech apart from the time travel capabilities. It's also a long-standing part of Trek lore that most space-faring species have been flying around for hundreds or even thousands of years longer than humans but their tech is generally understandable to them. For the most part when truly insane abilities are encountered it tends to be non-technological in nature.

I despised the 29th century ships and episodes, regardless of what series, but especially what we got from Enterprise.

So it's magic and that's bad, but it's also the same basic shit but shinier? Honestly, you just sound depressed.

My understanding was that they jumped 930 years into the future so that they could add a bit of tension to what comes next, since we've never seen anyone from that far into the future before. We always knew Earth wasn't going to get destroyed watching Enterprise because we'd seen it intact during TNG, and we always knew the Federation wasn't going to get destroyed while watching Voyager because we'd seen the temporal Starfleet guys from the 29th century. But the 32nd century is a blank slate. When Osira proposed an alliance between the Federation and the Emerald Chain, I honestly wasn't sure what would happen.

Oh, I'm sure depression's part of it. It takes something exciting and engaging to get me to forget about it, and it's probably affecting my enjoyment of Discovery because, to be honest, for me Discovery is none of those things right now. I don't feel any suspense watching it. I knew space station guy was going to die. I knew prisoner guy was going to die. I knew at least one Starfleet officer was going to die when Tilly's field trip shuttle crashed. I knew Saru was going to shut down the anomaly experiment before it overloaded. I knew the guy from Risa was going to have something else up his sleeve. The only thing that caught me by surprise was Tilly/Mary Wiseman leaving, and I thought "what a stupid fucking idea," which likely isn't the reaction one wishes to elicit from a viewer.

I don't feel any wonder, either, no awe or opening of the imagination to explore new possibilities. Rather, I can feel the Deus ex Machina working behind the scenes, I am aware of its handiwork. While it had missteps, at least the first season was really trying something different. Season 4 just feels like old wine in new wine skins. It's Enterprise in the 32nd century.

I don't hate the show, but aside from the first episode, this season has been boring as hell for me, and as you can see I'm not even finding enough engagement to know the names of the guest stars, except for Tig Notaro's Jett Reno, who is always great.

I mean, Discovery and Picard are both in times of rebuilding, so of course they're not gonna have that TOS/TNG flavor.
We have Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds for that.

I think that in TOS the distance thing was very much derived from Rodenberry's "Hornblower in Space" angle - with the distances involved in the Napolionic Wars making each ship's captain effectively autonomous in the moment, even if they had to give account later. All the later shoves derive more or less from that model in some way

Hell, even in the 1960s it wouldn't have been unexpected for places/vessels to be hard to contact sometimes.

I thought "The Examples" was a pretty decent episode. Definitely the best episode since the season premiere.

But so far they're only batting 2 out 5 for this season in terms of decent episodes.

I'm a Niner all the way, so that's not the problem. I think it just feels like rehashed Trek, despite all the whizz bang 32nd century stuff, like it's trying too hard to be prestige TV. It's definitely a subjective thing.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Tilly started out as mildly interesting character but quickly morphed into an annoying distraction.

For me it is a bad thing. Tilly is the most interesting character to me.

Season 1 Cadet Tilly caught in the middle of a brutal war, no friends except Michael, brilliant but lacking in social skills, constant verbal diarrhea? Sure, fine. She was a little bit Wesley, little bit Barclay, the first person to say "fuck" on Star Trek.

But by season 4 when they keep dragging her back to that characterization? It's kind of sad. Let her grow up.

It's not about maturity, it's personality. You can be highly skilled, and still put your foot in your mouth, these aren't exclusive traits.

Tilly started out as an okay character and mostly likable, but now they've just made her annoying as shit and last season ranked her up at a ridiculous pace.

according to wiki, one needs 2 yrs commission as an ensign to make J.G. in the USN, but only a year in the RN. It's the starting rank in the Canadian Navy, contingent on having a bach degree.

so no. she's pretty much on schedule.

Also, Kirk (who was in the same class year as Tilly-2252) was a JG by 2255 on the Farragut despite not graduating until 2257.

Young Will Riker got a promotion for handling the evacuation of a research facility well enough. Surely Tilly deserves a promotion for her role in stopping Osira, finding the dilithium planet, and uncovering the source of the Burn.

It's about needing a few people in her life to tell her to shut the fuck up with the incessant, neurotic navel-gazing and get the hell back to work. People like that drive me up the fucking wall. Let's just sidebar from every important event in the galaxy, to affirm once again that Tilly was overindulged by her parents. Fuck's sake.

Except her mother has been consistently described as being hyper critical, emotionally abusive, controlling, and unsupportive to the point of undermining her.
Given her mother was a diplomat and she changed schools often, it's likely she was socially isolated as well.

Someone is going to shove you out a torpedo tube and not one person on the ship will ask who or why.

Enough whining from Tilly about how she doesn't feel perfect all the time, and I might climb into that torpedo tube myself.

Yeah, that's what she SAYS, but attention-whoring narcissist drama queens like to cast themselves as the victim.

Correction:

James Tiberius Kirk went from Starfleet Academy to becoming captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise, after Captain Pike was incapacitated by Nero and Acting Captain Spock was no longer able to fulfill his duties.

This is where you supply evidence to support your dishonest bullshit.

I was torn between this and posting "Dude... who hurt you?"

She's a character. She isn't real. She was written as a person whose mother constantly degraded her and now, as an adult, she has confidence issues. She is not the same as real people who constantly need validation just because they like the attention. Those people irritate the fuck out of me, too.

We didn't SEE her mother do shit.

We also didn't see Howard Stark being a dick to Tony. We just take his word for it.