DIS-0510 "Life, Itself" & General Evaluation of Discovery Season 5

Cover Photo of DIS 0510 "Life, Itself" & General Evaluation of Discovery Season 5
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Discovery-2017 Season:05 Episode:10

Overall Score:       21.60 / 100
Star Trek Values:    3.00 / 5
Inspiring:           3.00 / 5
Story Development:   3.00 / 5

View Episode (Imbd)

Evaluation of Episodes

Episode Score Which Episode
Average Episodes 22.0 / 100 -
Best 51.2 / 100 Whistlespeak DIS-0506
Worst 6.4 / 100 Under the Twin Moons DIS-0502

This season has been built on the clues of Progenitors from TNG spinoff. If this season would be a substory in TNG, it would be worth of 2–3 episodes. I didn’t like this season by some points.

Cons

  • Unnecessarily long and a non-tangible story development line
  • The poor nature of the spinoff; relying on action scenes and heavily CGI-based (Computer Generated Imagery) scenes, instead of good acting.
  • ClichĂ©s; As I described in my review for the 8th episode, the ability to share regrets and self-reflection became the litmus test. So if a captain can open heatedly share something, that means humanity has evolved? I appreciate the power of openness, friendliness and self-reflection. But quick stories make us to underappreciate the work here. This is certainly the zeitgeist of the today’s world, especially in the USA. People believe they are defending diversity, equality and values. But their actions don’t add up, like this series.
  • Unrealistic moments; In the most difficult, action-oriented scenes, people find time to talk about their feelings. For example, after running and fighting, characters can talk easily. I guess, CGI make the actors perform worse. They forget to mimic the tiredness. In one occasion, doctor spontaneously said the frequency for locking the tractor beam; 5.1732, as a spontaneous inspiration(!)
  • Captain-centric stories. Even the TOS series didn’t put captain into savior’s chair. And after TOS, captain-centric story telling has been diffused over the crew’s stories. (They had some messages about the diversity of the crew, for example how their sense of meaning differs; but still it appears like flashbacks or voiceover, not happening during the story development.)

It seems like this is the last season of Discovery, and they’ve prepared some clues for the upcoming Section 31 spinoff. We might see some characters from Discovery too. But I’m not so sure, whether Trekkies has liked or not the current Discovery’s line of development. If S31, would share a similar trajectory, they might lose the way of Star Trek. It’s not surprising to see these points, I mentioned, as other Trekkies’ opinions.

Pros

  • The best episode was 6th episode (Whistlespeak). It was one of the moment, we remembered the spirit and values of the federation, like prime directive. I think Prime Directive related episodes will always be interesting and inspiring. So, producers can use this topic easily to make their work like Star Trek.
  • “Not enough, but yes” Characters from other spinoffs; Dr. Kovich (Agent Daniels, first appeared in ENT)

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