Discovery Season 4 Continues Star Treks Worst Tradition

Discovery Season 4 Continues Star Trek’s Worst Tradition

With Discovery Season 4, Star Trek once again introduces a supporting character to build pathos only by killing them off in the same episode.

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Discovery Season 4 Continues Star Treks Worst Tradition

Warning! SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery Season 4, Episode 1

Star Trek: Discovery season 4 continues one of Star Trek’s worst traditions with its season 4 episode 1, “Kobayashi Maru.” At long last, three seasons of waiting are over as Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) becomes Captain of the Federation starship Discovery, completing her arc from being the first traitor of the Federation in a prequel series to having Discovery leave the 23rd Century behind, where she becomes Captain of its greatest ship in a sequel to all other Star Trek timelines. Now that Burnham has the Captain’s chair, however, it seems that not much will change with Star Trek as it continues its old bad habits.

The premiere episode introduces a new character, Commander Nalas (Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll) of the Deep Space Repair Beta 6 located near the Kwejian system. Commander Nalas sent out a distress call that the station is now spinning out of control. Much in the style of classic Trek, Lt. Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and Ensign Adira Tal (Blu Del Barrio) investigate. Commander Nalas’ backstory, complete with pastoral home-world, is revealed through a panicked phaser stand-off before the crew of Deep Space Repair Beta 6 is saved, but then in the true meaning of Red Shirt Commander Nalas is unceremoniously crushed by the debris of his own broken station, just when the narrative suggests all are rescued.

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The episode also introduces a lightyears-spanning gravitational anomaly of mysterious origin that promises to be this season’s V’Ger—of Star Trek: The Motion Picture—or a more destructive version of the giant energy ribbon from Star Trek: Generations. Star Trek is lauded for is successful character diversity, but the diversity of its scripting does not always offer vast unexplored regions. “Kobayashi Maru” starts with the trope of answering a distress call and ends with the trope of having one of the very few worlds we know about at this point in the timeline destroyed (Book’s native Kwejian), in-between Discovery makes a stop at possibly the worst and most over-used trope in Star Trek history: “He’s dead, Jim.”

Discovery gives Commander Nalas just enough backstory to cash in that emotional currency and kill him off for pathos. Tilly is barely given time to register the grief, the new President of the Federation’s new president Laira Rillak (Chelah Horsdal) has a scene where she talks Commander Nalas down from his phaser stand-off, but after that no more thought is given to the character. The death of Commander Nalas is incidental to the plot of “Kobayashi Maru,” as it does not advance the story. Star Trek purists may be quick to point to Classic Trek as better than Discovery, but Star Trek has been struggling with the trope of killing off incidental cast members since it first went where no man had gone before.

Star Trek has been a science fiction franchise with tremendous successes, and while much has changed over the years with the public’s tastes for Star Treks, some traditions should be left behind. Giving in to the trope of killing off barely named characters is not an issue with Discovery breaking cannon, but rather the opposite: sticking too closely to established formulas, aping the Star Treks of the past, and not coming out any better for it. Discovery has expressed an eagerness to grow Star Trek in new directions, and if sincere in that promise, it should feature fewer disposable characters. The trope is dead, Jim.

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Link Source : https://screenrant.com/star-trek-discovery-new-character-death-backstory/

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