I just started watching Discovery season 3. I was quite traumatized by the low quality of s02, but I decided to give season 3 a chance because I like most of the characters. Now comes the point. I do like Saru a lot nowadays, but at first I was put off a bit by his treatment of the tardigrade. Did any of you mind his lack of empathy for the animal? Or were you alright with him treating the creature as a resource without thinking twice? It feels kind of wrong to me when his own nation is treated as a resource on his home planet.
I’m curious what made season 2 low quality for you, can you elaborate on that? I also finished season 2 yesterday, currently giving Discovery another try on my journey to watch all of Star Trek since I watched it as it was releasing but I stopped halfway through because the Terran Empire thing was difficult to keep track of for me at the time (probably because it helps my memory if I can watch an episode a day and don’t have to wait a week for the next one to keep track of the storyline). My rewatch made me a pretty big fan though and don’t really understand the hate it got/gets in the fanbase.
Sorry for not writing for such a long time - my first try got erased before I sent it, but I’m back now to answer your question! It was the writing. I found so many of the dialogues to be really cringeworthy. To be fair, this was not the case for all the episodes. I felt ashamed to bare witness to some of the dialogue in The Sound of Thunder for example, while Light and Shadows was ok for me. I truly suffered through the Red Angel arch. There were so many things that just didn’t make any sense to me that I kind of stopped caring. And there was so much unending declamation with no real depth - all I saw were actors trying hard to say the flat lines as well as they could. I continued watching Discovery even after this season mainly because there were great characters again, that is Discovery’s strength in my eyes. And the later seasons seemed better to me. Have a nice day!
I always thought that was the point. People are often a byproduct of the environment that shaped them. Saru’s lack of empathy to the creature is a watershed moment for Saru, storyline wise.
That does make sone sense, yeah. I’m confused, because Saru is otherwise depicted as very empathetic, it’s even pointed out verbally, but this situation was different and it came so early on that it was hard for me to believe his empathy for a while afterwards, so I’m not very sure what the writers wanted me to think.
I think it was also a desperate situation. Lorca was in immediate danger and I am guessing Saru would, even with his empathy, have reasoned that a sentient being’s life, especially someone as important as Lorca, was more important. He also let the tardigrade go back to its home in the mycelial network after the emergency was over and it would have died on either the Glenn or the Discovery if that hadn’t happened.
