The Red Angel Wrinkle

In my last post, after expounding on how the Red Angel was probably Michael, what with her archangel name and all, I said, "Maybe Michael is more red herring than Red Angel?" And...yup. It was!

So I'm stopped at a red light, thinking about the Red Angel (which seems appropriate, I guess), who turns out to be Michael's long-lost parent, a scientist who got lost in time because of a science experiment, and it hit me -- the probable inspiration for the left turn this story just took: A Wrinkle in Time. Sullen, troubled Michael (Meg) and cranky, troubled Spock (Charles Wallace) set off on a crazy adventure to find the absent parent. There's even a dangerous Big Brother A.I. called Control (in Wrinkle, CENTRAL Central Intelligence and/or IT) controlling stuff and eventually destroying all sentient life if it can just get the right software upgrade. (ADDING: I suppose that makes Pike Calvin.)

Will the rest play out along these lines? Was Michael's mother lost and/or captive, as Meg's father was, or has she actually been controlling events? Will Michael have to save Spock as Meg does Charles Wallace? Will the message be about the importance of love and individuality over complacence and conformity? Fair warning: Whenever I come up with a brilliant literary basis for my speculation, I'm generally wrong. But still...I mean, think about it. Especially, Spock is Charles Wallace. He so is.

On the whole, not my favorite episode. Mostly, I was confused. Why did they have to trap the Red Angel? What exactly is Control up to and what is its relationship to the Red Angel? If they thought the Red Angel was future Michael, then wouldn't she know that they were planning to use her as bait, because she was there? But maybe that's exactly what Spock realizes -- that he has to stop anyone else from saving her, so that she would know he's going to do that, so she has to come back and save herself. (Don't you just love time travel stories?) Hopefully, some of those answers are coming, but I would have liked to have a clearer idea of the point of the trap they were setting.

Also, am I supposed to be warming up to Georgiou now? I interpreted her flirting with Stamets and Culber as an attempt to make them jealous and get them interested in each other again, which is...nice? I think? I really don't know how to feel about this, what with her eating Kelpians and all.

Also also, Burnham being all pissed off at Ash for being in Section 31 seems kind of harsh, given that he probably doesn't have a whole lot of options as a part-Klingon sort-of murderer.

One last thing: They need to stop this nonsense of all Tilly's scenes being about her inappropriate nervous babbling. It's not funny anymore, and they're just reducing her to a running gag. I will not stand for that. Just stop.

Oh wait, no, there was one other thing: Trembling lips and soulful singing at Airiam's funeral. Sob.

Post-Daedalus Project (SPOILERS!)

So far this season on It Started With Trek…my blogging ambitions have flagged miserably. But after “Project Daedalus,” the motivation is strong. Because holy shit, that was so good but so upsetting.

Poor Airiam. We hardly knew ya. And I mean that quite literally. As much as I liked this episode, it commits a sin that really, really bugs me – painting a character’s backstory in broad strokes immediately before killing them. This would have been so much better if her story had been revealed gradually throughout the season. But oh well, I still cried. Once again, proof that Jonathan Frakes is better behind the camera than in front of it. (But am I the only one who thinks Sonequa Martin-Green's stage-fighting always seems fake?)

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk Red Angel. I imagine everyone has a theory. Mostly, I’ve avoided them, but I have run across the most obvious: that the Red Angel is Michael herself, presumably from one possible future. And TBH, it’s hard not to go with this one, because:

a. Michael is the protagonist, so it makes sense for the Big Thing to be All About Her.
b. The Red Angel is clearly stalking Michael’s ship.
c. Spock says it’s human.
d. It seems to be benevolent. But mostly…

Archangel Michael Defeating Satan, by Guido Reni, 1636

e. The name. Michael. Y’know, the archangel? In the Old Testament, Daniel (Spock) has a vision of Michael (Michael), which he alone can see. It's an apocalyptic vision, and it leaves him very shaken up. Something about him battling something terrible in the End Time. Like maybe when all life in the galaxy is going to be wiped out? And in Revelation, Michael fights Satan (evil Georgiou?). I can’t be the only one who’s noticed this.
f. It’s mentioned that Michael Burnham "died" in the bombing of the Vulcan Learning Center by the Logic Extremists (OMG Logic Extremists! More on them later). So she’s been resurrected. Did I mention that the big battle led by the Archangel Michael involves resurrection?

NB: I’m always amazed by how many sci fi writers crib their stories from the Bible.

But with all that said…maybe Michael is more red herring than Red Angel? (HAHAHAHAHA. See what I did there?) Maybe Spock is the Angel. He says the angel is human, and he is acting awfully emotional and human at this point. Maybe future-human-identifying-Spock is trying to warn now-Spock that he mustn’t go down that path because it will lead to the apocalypse. The upshot is going to be that Spock must reject his human half and live as a Vulcan to save everything, resulting in the Vulcan-identifying Spock we see in TOS. And that’s why he never talks about his sister, Michael – because it was his childish love and worship of his big sister that led him down the human path, and it’s too painful for Vulcan-identifying Spock to think about her.

I feel compelled at this point to mention Sybok. I mean, Sybok had visions. Sybok rejected logic. Sybok wanted to make Vulcans more…well, human. OK, granted, I really have no idea how this would fit in with Sybok as we meet him in ST V (or as I like to call it, The Movie That Shall Not Be Named). But there’s too much religious mumbo-jumbo about Sybok to dismiss his relevance to the religious mumbo-jumbo here. Does it seem likely that Sybok is explicitly part of this story? Not really. But he sure is a flashing neon question mark in the background.

But anyway, the Michael = Red Angel theory does seem to have the most going for it. If I were a betting Trekkie, that’s where my money would be. And certainly, whoever the Red Angel is, they are trying to make sure Discovery achieves certain specific things. The kinds of things that will keep a time line chugging along as it should.

Hey...maybe the Red Angel is Crewman Daniels?

Back to the Logic Extremists. Who are they? What are they? Why are they?  A reactionary backlash against the Syrannites, of course! I mean, I really, really hope so. Firstly, because it makes so much sense. The Syrannites of ENT were all about reintroducing ethics, mysticism, and spirituality into the Vulcan way of life. The cold, pragmatic logic-extremist Vulcan admiral Parr is such a throwback to the Vulcans of ENT. And secondly, because this would be the perfect way to bring T’Pol (and dare I say, possibly even Trip?) into Disco.  PLEASE MAKE THIS HAPPEN!

One more thing: I need to resurrect a season 1 theory here. When it was revealed that the Section 31 HQ is a former penal colony, the alarm bells in my head were deafeningly loud: “Dagger of the Mind” was set in a penal colony for the criminally insane. Pike says that Section 31 is going to torture Spock at this location with some infernal device (sorry, I don’t have time to find the exact quote). In the TOS episode “Dagger of the Mind,” a “neural neutraliser,” supposedly a therapeutic device, is used to manipulate, read, and wipe minds. The thing is, in season 1, I was already seeing echos of “Dagger of the Mind.” I’ll just quote myself here and let you draw your own conclusions:

“Disco gave us an episode named "Lethe," which dealt a lot with Admiral Cornwell, prompting fans to speculate that she might somehow become the Lethe who was a character in the TOS episode "Dagger of the Mind" -- a woman on a penal colony for the criminally insane who describes her former self, before treatment with the neural neutralizer, as malignant and hateful. Seeing Emperor Georgiou snatched by Burnham and brought along for the ride to the Prime Universe, I speculated, mostly facetiously, that she, not Cornwell, seems more likely to become Lethe. Certainly, the words malignant and hateful describe MU Georgiou pretty well.
And then something hit me -- something I somehow had never noticed in my four-plus decades as a TOS fan.
The penal colony in "Dagger of the Mind" is on Tantalus V. The Mirror Universe device used by Kirk to destroy his enemies in "Mirror Mirror" is the Tantalus Field.
Tantalus is a figure from ancient Greek mythology -- he invited the gods to a feast and cooked up the body of his own son to feed them. ("Here, have my ganglia. You deserve a treat.")  This offended the gods, causing Zeus to hang him forever above a stream for which he eternally thirsted, but of which he could never drink.
Also from ancient Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the rivers of the underworld across which the dead were ferried by Charon. Emperor Georgiou's palace-ship is the ISS Charon.
That's a whole lot of coincidence going on right there, unless it's not. Could Emperor Georgiou actually become Lethe, and somehow her Tantalus V experience find its way back to the MU in the form of Kirk's Tantalus Field?
Crazy, right?”

Other random stuff:

1. While it makes no sense that Tilly would have gotten as far as she has without a bit more self control, I love her outbursts. When Admiral Cornwell appears on the bridge, and Tilly takes it as an opportunity to vent her anxieties and make it known that she is NOT a rule-breaker…I just want to give her a squeeze. (Tilly reminds me so much of one of my own kids.)

2. When Cornwell reassures Pike that he’s what’s good about the Federation, that he’s what they need to preserve, it’s endearing because it’s so rare to see the Man In Control look that insecure. In that moment, you can see him “let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding,” as the fanfic would say. He needed that reassurance from a powerful woman. So refreshing.

3. The fact that they have the Stamets/Culber relationship on the back burner in such a tense, unresolved state makes me so sad every time I see Stamets. Like, how does he keep showing up for work?

4. Cannot end without taking a moment to react to the “Previously on Star Trek” opening of “If Memory Serves.” SQUEEEEEEEEE. Sometime in the mid-1970s, having only just learned that the original pilot had been turned into the two-episode “Menagerie,” teenage Me sat in a NYC hotel meeting room with a bunch of other colossal nerds for a screening of “The Cage,” which had almost never been seen before by the public. Last week, I got just that excited about it ALL OVER AGAIN.

Phrack and Phreud

I posted this on Tumblr a long time ago; reposting here for posterity.
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When I first binged 2 ½ seasons of MFMM, I was really interested in the tension between conventional and flipped gender roles, and how that combination makes for something that feels, on the one hand, daring and unconventional, and on the other hand, romantic and comfortably familiar.  [I wrote about it here.] As the series moved toward resolving, or at least advancing, the Phryne/Jack relationship, maintaining that balance was one of the biggest challenges. I think overall, they did a good job, but with some missteps. The biggest, as far as I’m concerned, is doing the Daddy Fisher story arc alongside the development of the Phrack.  It was impossible to at least consider the implication that Phryne’s ability/desire to enter a serious romantic relationship was contingent upon the resolution of her issues with her father.  If there was any doubt as to whether this was reading too much into the situation, or whether this was intentional on the part of the writers, that doubt was erased at the end of Death at the Grand, in the waltz scene, when Phryne explicitly invokes her parents’ troubled relationship as Jack woos her in a dance.

[Well this got really long. I’ll put the rest under a link for dashboard neatness.]

 As so often happens with Strong Female Characters, Phryne is something of a contradiction: a bold, unconventional creature shaped by grand, sweeping, historic forces like war, poverty, and class – and also a vulnerable, damaged creature shaped by intimate, domestic, familial forces like family tragedy and her parents’ troubled relationship. The Baron story line straddles both, with its implications about money, class, and war, as well as family relationships – and it all comes to a head in the finale. The problem I have with this particular arc is that, at some point, it veers hard right into some seriously dodgy psychological territory. By associating Phryne’s relationship to her father with her relationship to Jack, there’s this whole batty psychoanalytic Freudian/Jungian subtext, especially given the time period. I know this will sound to many like some far-out theory, but it’s really in your face, in the story. For example, as many have pointed out, the big Jack-Phryne kiss takes place right in front of Phryne’s father – as Phryne is literally about to RETURN HER FATHER TO HER MOTHER. Sheesh.

It’s like they were using the chapter on the Electra Complex in the Neo-Freudian Pocket Handbook to Female Sexuality [no, that’s not a real thing, I made it up to make a point] to write this whole arc. From an admittedly random website on the topic: “According to Freud, girls, realizing that they have no penis, develop Penis Envy for the power that the penis provides. Seeing that their fathers have one but their mothers do not, girls turn their sexual attentions away from the mother and towards the father, competing with the mother for his affection….It is also believed that an inability to resolve these issues could result in a woman who sets out to dominate men, with their actions dependent on their self-esteem levels. Those with high self-esteem will assume unusually seductive roles, while those with lower self-esteem become overly submissive to men.”  Is this how I want to see Phryne – as someone who is assertive and sexually aggressive because of an unresolved Electra complex and penis envy? HELL NO. Yet the Baron story arc requires me to go there, because frankly, it’s more or less spelled out that way. Phryne, an established strong, sexually assertive female, goes all to pieces when Daddy shows up; refers repeatedly to her parents’ unhealthy relationship as a problem in her own life; is painted as being more like her father than she’d care to admit; must resolve her issues with her father in part because of her obligations to her mother from afar; resents what she perceives as her mother’s weakness; cautions Jack about “waltzing” with a thinly veiled allusion to her multiple sexual partners, then to her mother’s loss of “all reason” when “waltzed – hell, the fandom calls her father BARON COCKBLOCK.

 As further evidence that the writers are not only veering into daddy-issue territory, but actually do have Freud on the brain, I offer the appearance of Death and Hysteria in this season and the way it deals with psychoanalysis of the period. The episode certainly seems very progressive in its handling of female sexuality in a repressive society. But on a theoretical level, you have to wonder if the doctor is anything other than a true Freudian. Freud postulated that the clitoral orgasm was an immature, masculine phase, and the vaginal orgasm [the existence of which was and remains unsupported by clinical evidence] was the superior kind.  The Percussor is a therapeutic device designed to help sexually frustrated women, but, as the doctor says, it proved to be of limited use – “symptomatic relief, at best.” Clearly, the good doctor believes that a clitoral orgasm doesn’t suffice to address underlying issues. In fact, on rewatching, I note that Mac actually mentions Freud in the discussion in the morgue, when Jack says the Chinese brothel “made a lasting impression.” Mac replies,“Mr. Freud would be terribly interested in that.” To be fair, one forgets today that Freud’s willingness to deal with female sexuality as a valid issue in mental health was highly enlightened for the time. But at any rate, my point is, Freud and psychoanalysis are intentional themes this season, not accidental ones. That’s my argument and I’m stickin’ to it.

So I don’t doubt for a moment that the writers, so aware of all these issues, are framing Phryne herself by them – a kind of psychological period authenticity, I suppose. And even if they’re just toying with me, and this is all a kind of winking, highbrow game of Spot the Historical Context for English majors and other hyper-analytic types like me, it’s not what I want for the character or the series. So big points off from me for the way the Baron’s arc boxes Phryne into an old-fashioned, un-feminist sexuality. I was truly surprised and disappointed that they went that route. I suspect it was just a misguided attempt to be cleverly highbrow behind all the fun and games – and mind you, I loved all the fun and games. Which brings me to my next point.

 Fortunately, we, the audience, get to decide what really matters to us. In the end, Phryne will never just submit to being a Freudian type. She’s a character so powerful, she beats back her own subtext. Penis envy? She’ll get a dildo and move on. As a character, she is way too big and bold to collapse under the weight of one questionable story line. She, like we, would flip Freud the bird in a heartbeat. And Jack? You know that, rather than pulling Phryne into the narrow, conventional world in which he’s been trapped until meeting her, he’s going to break loose and grab the brass ring she’s holding out to him. The one saving grace of the Baron’s story line is that, at its end, it’s not Phryne following Jack. It’s Jack following Phryne. That twist lets us kiss the Baron goodbye and welcome back the Phryne we want. 

Which brings me back to one final point about tension between traditional and nontraditional gender roles.

 On the one hand, the endless, slow-burn sexual tension between Phryne and Jack is built on the notion that Jack has to make the first move. Clearly, Phryne is waiting for him – uncharacteristically so. Whatever the reasons – his recent divorce, mixed signals from her, their working relationship, his need to accept her unconventional lifestyle, etc. – Jack is cast in the traditional masculine role of initiator. And what a traditional masculine figure he is. He’s masculine perfection. He just nails everything our culture sets up as irresistible virile manhood: classic manly attire, deep voice, taciturn manner, athleticism, chivalry. He’s a machine designed to make women swoon – and we do.  When he goes to kiss Phryne, even that is viscerally masculine: he pulls her to him, he holds her face.  [Nathan Page seems to have been born to play this role, because when he does those things, they’re just pitch perfect. It’s so sexy it hurts.]

 In a conventional love story, that would be the happily-ever-after moment. That the woman wants this – and ONLY this – would have been a foregone conclusion. But when Phryne tells Jack to come after her – flip. Just as he takes the initiative and makes the move, she comes back with a competing need. [Let’s leave out the inconvenient fact that this competing need is her father. I’m just blowing that a big, wet raspberry.]  Her agency is not undermined by romance. She is the inviter, not the invited. And we all know that Jack knows that, and he’s okay with it. Which is, after all, the gorgeous fantasy here. Classically handsome, smokin’ sexy man is just fine playing on the level playing field.

 Are there troubling aspects to this fantasy? Yeah. Some of the very things that make the uber-masculine male so appealing  in fiction are things that, in real life, would make him insufferable. And the fact that, had Phryne been the initiator, the whole thing would have been less swoon-inducing, is also something I’d rather not dwell on. On the other hand, seeing Jack as the one left behind, watching Phryne fly off into the sunset – that’s a pretty sweet role reversal. So in the end, I’m going to consider Jack Robinson an only slightly guilty pleasure, and I’ll leave it to the psychoanalysts to consider why guilt makes the pleasure that much sweeter.

On Disco season 2 so far and other Trek news

Four episodes into season 2 of Discovery, and I haven't updated this blog once yet. Bad me.

Basically, I like a lot about it. I really like that they're letting the crew feel like a crew; bringing Pike in to facilitate that was not a bad idea. I like Anson Mount in the role. I continue to love all these characters, and I especially like the way the story keeps them off balance so much of the time. I like the way their personal stories and the larger story arc are intertwined and feed off each other. But I'm not so sure that the mysterious Red Angel thread is strong enough to carry the season. It feels very MacGuffin-y. Worse, it feels like it's edging toward something I hated about TNG: A plot that is barely more than a premise, which provides a pretense for characters to do what they're known for doing (Picard calls a meeting to discuss; Data is superhuman but endearingly innocent; Troi feels feelings; etc.), and the audience is beaten over the head with the Message. How much more unfortunate if that kind of thing were to be dragged out over a whole season. So let's hope the Red Angels get a whole lot more development and are more meaningfully explored.

OK, to be fair, Disco is nowhere near that TNG extreme. But I think An Obol for Charon comes closest. The plot unfolds mostly by being discussed, with too many talky, unearned emotional moments; much of the dialogue tries to be witty but falls flat. I love big character moments as much as anyone, but not when they’re shoehorned in by hitting pause mid-crisis to discuss feelings. It all feels uncomfortably like TNG's telling-not-showing writing style. That said, I loved the universal translator snafu. And the way the Saru subplot echoes the larger (and classic Trek) theme about overcoming fear and not seeing everything alien as a threat. Doug Jones and Sonequa Martin-Green manage to  spin some gold from a lot of really straw dialogue, but sadly, the Stamets-Tilly-Reno scenes do not work, and the humor bombs.

Let's see, what else? I don't have the energy to go into that whole primitive-religion-is-really-just-mythologizing-science story, other than to say that, if you're going to tread that well-trodden path, you really should dress it up with some better scenery. I'm very intrigued by the betwixt-and-between state of Tyler's relationship status, and who doesn't like a problematic baby now and then?

I have big reservations about Bad Georgiou. The existence of Section 31 has always been problematic, but this, presumably, is its genesis. I always assumed the Section 31 we see in the TNG era evolved from something that was originally well intentioned but misguided, something that started down a slippery slope and eventually ended up in a very bad place. But if they started with Bad Georgiou from the get-go, then the Federation is both stupid (they really think she's going to stay on the side that hired her?) and evil. And that would be a whole different show. (Not to mention that just seeing her reminds me how pissed off I was that Lorca turned out to be a cartoon villain all along, but I suppose I just need to let that go).

In other Trek news:

I missed the story a month ago that the 4th Kelvin movie is dead. I am sad. I like those movies. Just as they get to the part where the characters come together into a tight, boldly going unit, they pull the plug. Feh. But OTOH, if it means I can stop worrying about a Tarantino Star Trek, that’s some consolation.

 While I did catch the news about the Picard and animated spinoffs, I also missed the news about the Bad Georgiou one. As I said above, I have serious reservations about her character within the ST universe. I guess they’re trying to segment the audience and give them targeted versions of the franchise, a la Marvel: Picard for the TNG crowd, the animated series for their kids (and grandkids), and dark-n-edgy Bad Georgiou for the all-important  millennial demographic (that’s my theory, anyway -- why else do a villain-centered show?). The tentpole for the time being, I suppose, is still Discovery.  Sure, there would be a ton of fannish overlap, as always with these massive franchises, but they’re not going to crank up multiple series simultaneously without painting some bright lines between them, because that’s what mainstream entertainment factories do. All of this within the crazy-ass context of the All Access business model (which, I read somewhere, may owe whatever success it’s had so far more to football than Star Trek). Seems insanely ambitious.

It’s hard not to worry that they’re going to wind up sacrificing one really good series for a bunch of mediocre ones. Even though I have my reservations about Disco, it has the potential to take Star Trek storytelling where it hasn’t gone before (ha! see what I did there?) -- to a more nuanced, thought-provoking, dramatically satisfying place. Hope springs eternal.

For Jewish TV, look to...Australia?

The Australian period drama A Place to Call Home is one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of a TV program putting the Jewish identity of a main character front and center in a respectful, meaningful way. No, it doesn’t always get it right (including some butchery of the Hebrew language and inaccurate portrayals of Jewish rituals); and yes, it veers into cheesy-melodrama territory a fair bit (including much that is reminiscent of Downton Abbey in family dynamics and unlikely plot twists). But its protagonist, Sarah Nordmann, is a concentration camp survivor and former resistance fighter who is deeply committed to her faith. Her story of coming home to Australia after the war, coping with trauma and alienation, finding a place for herself in an often hostile, antisemitic community, and trying to maintain her Jewish identity in an interfaith relationship makes this show more Jewish than anything I’ve seen produced for American TV, which tends to stick to broad Jewish characterizations and vaguely Jewish-inflected humor. 

With all the Jews working in American film and television, why is it left for Australia, with its 0.4% Jewish population, to give us a popular drama that deals substantively with being a Jew?

Quick thoughts post Will You Take My Hand?

I liked the Disco season finale, I really did.

1. But the MU Georgiou story echos the problem I had with the Lorca story. I was sure there had to be more to him, because it made no sense that Starfleet would trust a guy who killed his own crew. I was sure there was some big mystery to be revealed about the Buran. But no. Not only did Starfleet go with that really poor plan, but even after their mistake is revealed, they figure handing Discovery to evil Georgiou is a good plan? Hmm.

2. I wonder if the Enterprise just left Talos IV? (Hello Alexander Courage!) Will Burnham become involved in the fallout from the events of The Cage, and will that explain why Spock doesn’t talk about her? Hmm. (Adding: According to Wikipedia, the timing doesn't line up; The Cage would have been two years earlier (or three, now that they've jumped ahead nine months?). But maybe that's wrong?)

3. Culber. Mycelial network. Terrraforming. Genesis. Green spore on Tilly. Resurrection? Hmm.

4. I absolutely can’t wait to see what’s next for Burnham, Saru, Tilly, and Stamets. A new captain? Possibly a Vulcan? Or has Prime Lorca been hanging out on Vulcan? Hmm.

5. I’m still pissed that Lorca was so summarily discarded. I'm not getting over that. It's a grudge and I'm nursing it.

Adding:

6. I'm not entirely comfortable with the fact that Starfleet just released a genocidal maniac. Can we not try people for war crimes committed in other universes? Someone get Samuel Cogley on that.

7. When Tilly announced she was very high, at least two generations of fans for whom watching Star Trek stoned was a rite of passage achieved a moment of perfect joy.

Is Disco Trek enough?

ADDING: For the record, now that season 1 is complete, I stand by this analysis.

NOTE: I write this just hours before the finale of Disco’s first season. It’s dicey to offer an overview before getting the complete story, but what the hell. I will happily revise and recant as needed.


There is an entire book to be written — more than one, probably — about how each iteration of Star Trek extends the vision of the original while correcting perceived shortcomings of previous versions. Discovery is certainly no different, but people are having a harder time seeing it as part of this pattern. That’s because it feels so different; by Star Trek standards, so dark. But what many seem to have forgotten is how very different TNG felt from TOS when it first appeared, and for exactly the opposite reason: It was maddeningly bright. I think it’s fair to cast Disco as the anti-TNG. And just as that series started at an extreme and eventually moved back toward the center, I’m sure Disco will, too.

When Roddenberry launched TNG, he made a rule: No conflict among the good guys. The results were obvious and immediate: bland, uninspired storytelling, as seen in what is now widely agreed to be its weak first couple of seasons. Roddenberry had reportedly developed a giant ego, what with the whole Great Bird of the Galaxy thing and the adoring fans and all; some say he misunderstood his own creation. I think that’s only partly true. Roddenberry was not wrong about people wanting to believe in a hopeful, optimistic future for humanity. But he was wrong about what his job was — not to create an actual future, but to create fiction that illustrates why such optimism matters. They’re actually not at all the same thing.

Utopias do not exist. They never have, and it’s probably safe to say they never will. For that reason, fictional utopias always smack of authorial arrogance. They proclaim for all to see, “Here’s a guy so full of himself that he thinks he’s got all the answers.” Perfection being impossible, all utopias read more like religious visions than practical blueprints, and TNG was no different. And of course, the more the author tries to portray a utopia, the more the cracks show. In TNG, female characters were reduced to embarrassing stereotypes (Tasha Yar and Deanna Troi). The way the corporate boardroom replaced the chain of command was cringe-inducingly naive. The show's idealistic vision of the perfect futuristic community meant that vulnerable civilians, including children, were schlepped into the cold vacuum of space to face all the hostile aliens, disasters, diseases, and other assorted threats of the unknown. In its simplicity, this utopian future was excruciatingly unconvincing. (Arguably, poor Wesley Crusher, the embodiment of everything that seemed juvenile about TNG, paid the price in fan hatred.)

And the jingoism. Good lord, the jingoism.

If we’re perfect and without conflict, then all the conflict has to come from elsewhere. All bad is without; most good is within. You can see the problem there. In TNG, Roddenberry’s secular, utopian vision inevitably and ironically starts to look exactly like what he’s railing against: cultural imperialsim and a sense of human supremacy (mitigated only slightly by the inclusion of aliens who are ultimately very much like us; Star Trek has always struggled with the fact that the Federation looks more like a human-led empire than a coalition of true equals).

What Roddenberry had forgotten — or more likely, never knew, but his TOS writers did — was that in storytelling, the negative space is crucial. There must be both yin and yang. Not only are we more keenly aware of what we perceive to be absent; we value it all the more for the lack of it. When crafting a tale designed to illustrate a moral compass, the tricky part is to give the audience enough positive input to make that compass clear, but enough negative input — space that has yet to be filled with the goodness we seek — to make us understand why it matters, and why the struggle to achieve it is worthwhile. TOS, for all its many flaws, did extraordinary things with that negative space. Its best stories demonstrated the heroes’ struggles to find the way forward without compromising their values, to battle their own demons and confront their own biases. Kirk is at first ready to kill Gorns and Hortas before realizing his error; Spock is forever tempted by the emotions he rejects; our heroes are shown to be not so different than Klingons through Organian eyes (or whatever Organians have). Not all endings are happy.

TNG started with no negative space — or more accurately, with all the negative space assigned to Them and all the positive space assigned to Us. Perfection is not a good look on the heroes of a supposedly progressive drama. (Aside: I think that it’s interesting how, in DS9, notable for being the first Trek sequel to commit to darker storytelling, Sisko is obsessed with baseball, a game weighted toward yin, its perfect form a no-hitter, in which what doesn’t happen is more important than what does. But I digress.)

Which brings us to Disco. In season 1, Disco is nearly all negative space, so much so that it’s disorienting. Burnham’s mutiny and the Battle at the Binary Stars set up a starting point of Star Trek values in near total collapse, and the culture aboard the Discovery is downright dystopian. We get the tiniest glimpse of positive space, and the moral compass that creates it, with Captain Georgiou, only to have it — and her — brutally cut down and eaten for breakfast (both metaphorically and, we eventually discover, literally).

Understandably, this was all too much for a lot of fans. I started the season as an avid defender of this choice because, frankly, I had so detested TNG’s flaws, and I welcomed a series that recognized them and was committed to doing it differently. Of course, there’s a danger in going too far in the other direction. If all that negative space — all that absence of morality — obscures the moral compass entirely, you enter nihilistic territory, the dark ’n edgy place of which contemporary storytellers are so fond. Everything is felt very viscerally in those kinds of stories because the threat level is always turned up to 11. But they’re grueling experiences precisely because they offer no hope of redemption and no promise of joy. The question is, did Disco wander too far into that territory? If so, those who say it’s not Star Trek are right.

I’d argue it didn’t. Those tiny glimpses of positive space, of Star Trek’s native moral imperative, are yanked away early in the story and then carefully, bit by bit, returned. There are acts that are clearly evil (including some that go for real shock value, like Tyler/Voq snapping Culber’s neck and Georgiou offering Burnham a ganglia “treat”), and there are acts that are ambiguous (nearly everything Lorca did, until his big reveal). But there is good, and we certainly know it when we see it. There is love (Stamets/Culber, Burnham/Tyler); there is joy (Burnham’s dance with Stamets); there is friendship (Tilly/Burnham); and there is growth (Captain Saru). And then there are the words in the title: Star Trek. When something has entered the cultural consciousness as much as Star Trek has, the name alone does an awful lot of heavy lifting. Invoke it, and you invoke half a century of storytelling that carries volumes of authority, for all its flaws. That accrual of meaning is why people revisit fictional universes and delight in creating new chapters there, both building up and chipping away at existing foundations. It’s not enough to expect the words “Star Trek” to constitute all of Disco’s positive space, but they carry an awful lot.

That said, I’m not sure the writers got the balance exactly right. As the season went on, I began to feel that they were rushing through the moments that should have provided clarity. For the sake of a breakneck pace and an overabundance of plot twists, they barreled through some story beats they should have paused on, and set up parallels that don’t seem to play out. The worst offender is the Lorca/Burnham parallel. Lorca’s arc bends from redemption to betrayal (having lost the Buran, he gets another chance with the Discovery, only to emerge as the ultimate traitor); Burnham’s, from betrayal to redemption (no explanation needed). But neither feels complete. I can’t help feeling that, at the end of it all, I don’t really understand why either character does what they do, so the significance of the parallel remains a mystery. (If the finale proves me wrong, I’ll be ecstatic.)

What’s more, too much of Disco’s self-awareness comes not from within the story, but from its creators talking about the story. What with the immediacy of the After Trek interviews and the extensive social media campaign, it’s been too easy to tell the audience what the creators are thinking rather than actually craft the story in a way that shows them. So when Harberts, Berg, Sullivan et al reassure us that they “get” Star Trek -- or Wilson Cruz assures us they haven't buried their gays -- you can’t help wondering if they themselves are not sure they’ve done enough to convince us in the story itself.

In however many years’ time, when Disco has aired its series finale, I’m going to revisit all this. Nowadays, the arc of serialized TV plots is long and designed for binging, and thank goodness for that. I’ll be very glad to find that the long game makes perfect sense of a first chapter that, for all its flaws, has hooked me.