Star Trek’s disappointing Discovery is revving up for a second Star Trek Hating season of unworthy rubbish. While the special effects are impressive and the title sequence is fine, there’s nothing else to like about the show.

Don’t blame the cast! It’s the stories! Specifically – the uncreative and lazy over use of a single plot device to drive most episodes. Basically what’s on the line in almost every episode is nothing less then – THE END OF ALL THINGS!!

The Stakes Are Too Damn High!

While the acting isn’t a problem and the production values at most points are high the story just isn’t there. The show’s Trope-y and unrealistically high staked at all times. Worst of all it’s unnecessarily disrespectful to the original characters they needlessly entangle in the hot mess of contradictions that is every episode of Discovery, but I digress…

Star Trek Discovery has simply left behind the concept of saving a few cast members, or an entire ship, or a planet in any given episode or story arc.

By episode 8 we’re talking about saving the universe and by the end of the season we were looking at “saving all life everywhere across the entire multi-verse of universes.” It was preposterous and unrelatible.

They also just will not go to a planet and just explore or make contact. The one time they consent to do this we get the only watchable episode.  In that episode only a couple of characters were at risk and there was a  limited “Away Mission” that was familiar and fun.

Rather than learn from this the show’s next episode takes a turn for the too serious again and we find ourselves saving several universes in every show.

It’s a little like Babylon 5 that way. While there were some good things about the show it also suffered the stakes always being far too high.

As far as Discovery goes, well its just too much. You can only stretch a rubber band almost to the breaking point so many times before it stops snapping back into shape again. It’s tedious and fatiguing to always be at the edge of the universe ending. Throw in that if the way to avoid the universe ending is sort of bland or a little too convenient it just makes the whole thing that much less entertaining. Like some magic spore technology co-opted from the Dune books

Lets see just the ship and crew in danger around a strange planet a little more often as a starting point for fixing this very flawed show. The good old days of a possible warp core breach or a good old hide n seek with some bad guys wouldn’t be some kind of step backwards, but it seems the current writers feel that way. They’re making the classic mistake- fixing the parts of Star Trek that weren’t broken.

Dare I suggest some exploring in the Final Frontier? Maybe meet an analogous species that relates to some current societal problem? You know, Star Trek stuff.