Star Trek: Discovery - Season 4 - (*** Spoilers***)

That Kim can be given occasional command responsibilities on Voyager but Tilly can't be made acting first officer on Discovery because that would be ridiculous.

Yeah, being in command of the night shift twice a week is the same thing as acting first officer. And to really apples to apples this, Kim had 5 years commissioned experience on a ship where his rank was essentially frozen by the time he was put in command where if anything major happened the senior officers were one "red alert, senior staff to the bridge" away.

The two episodes where Nog gets any sort of authority beyond cadet/ensign, Valiant and the Magnificent Ferengi, he's shown to be inexperienced and out of his depth.

I don't recall Tendi being given any command responsibility but people do point out Mariner overstepping the bounds of an ensign all the time.

Captain might be a bit far for Mariner but first officer for someone that could keep her in line once she grows out of the teen rebellion phase which she should anytime now since she's closing in on or has already made it to 30 I could see. Weird fact, if Mariner hasn't been promoted and subsequently demoted during her career she might have been an ensign longer than Harry Kim was if he got promoted reasonably quickly after Voyager made it home. She's been an ensign for at least six years already.

What exactly is this anomaly?

We're not certain

someone wrote this lol

We have a game on our house.

Like betting on the length of speeches at a wedding, we bet on how long it take for Burnham to have tears in her eyes.

Ive heard it called Cry Trek.

Also the reaction of all those more senior bridge staff was to clap and cheer the appointment of the recent cadet rather than go straight to Sarus office and tell him to do one.

Having the main cast as non senior crew just doesn't work. It's not believable that the Lower Decks are forever saving the ship/universe and constantly advising and debating with the captain. It also leads to daft scenes like Sarus dinner parties where he fails to invite the senior staff who he should be working closely with every day

I love the Captain Data moments.

I think the serialized style of Discovery's season contributes to the lack of character development for the rest of the bridge crew. In a serialized story any episode not furthering the overall story is essentially 'wasted time'. Whereas in an episodic season the writers could take time out to highlight a secondary character with some spotlight time in a one-off story.

It could very well be that by the end of the Season 1 production run they realized that funding from Netflix would be limited going forward and that they'd have to heavily re-use the assets & cast they made for this Klingon War / Burnman bit, and thus you end up with the anthology turning into a series.

With renewal up, Martin Green may have insisted that the Michael-centric contract from Season 1 be repeated. These particular contracts can go up to 3 years, and with pressure to keep making content for the then new CBS All Access, the studio went ahead and doubled down on what some of us might regard as a fatal mistake for the show's prospects. I will echo others in believing that there is some contractual obligation in place to make Burnham front & center in most episodes, even when that focus probably should have gone to another character that week. This is a noticeable limitation in Discovery, which frustratingly had glimpses of being a great Trek show if it wasn't for this creative mill-stone around it's neck.

For comparison, in the 20 half-hour episodes we have gotten of Lower Decks, I can readily identify most to the Soritos crew, their role and at least a little of their personality. Frankly, that was pretty clear after 5-6 episodes of the show, which primarily focuses on 4 Lower Decks officers. After 30 hour-long episodes with the biggest budget Trek has even seen....Discovery has no good excuse to not being able to develop the non-Michael elements of the cast.

It's merely a suspicion, and may only be based on perception of the show. However there is a notable slant to give Michael primary focus in nearly any given episode. I suspect contract, but bad writing could be to blame just as easily. Quite possible that they got into the bad habit of throwing a Deux-ex-Michael at all of thier plots to finish them up.

It's just that if it is just bad writing, it's a little more damning of Secret Hideout to be given Trek, a huge budget, and to just piss it all away due lazy writing alone. At least with the contract theory there is a chance that "they did the best they could". Without that, they are just horribly talentless TV folk who have the rights to Trek for years to come.

there is too much money being thrown at shows it looks like. if the stuff today had to depend on advertising in a mature old world station, a lot of this stuff wouldnt be made or would be made differently. As it is they are flush with investment cash so must be easily taken in marketing tosh about expanded universes, spin offs yada yada. I cant imagine Discovery is successful in terms of eyeballs X time but it doesnt need to be

Another Life is just batsht crazy. Stuff just happens out of nowhere between characters with no explanation or backstory.

Still don't see that being offered in a contract for anyone other than a big star ( which everyone thought Wheaton was gonna be ). Also "can't carry a series" is really only an opinion and one held by older Trek fans. This is a popular show and a popular character for all the fans who like the show.

Using soaps as examples of bad writing isn't really strengthening your case. They were all there in Rick Berman's era of Trek, some even in Rodenberry's era and if they didn't impact Trek then why would they impact Trek now? I've not seen a second of Another Life but I get the feeling it got renewed thanks to the pulling power Katee Sackoff has after bringing Bo Katan to the live action screen in The Mandalorian. Had a quick look at the Netflix top 10 series and Another Life is not there. Star Trek Discovery was, every week. You'd be better off comparing good and bad writing to shows closer to home like the stable fellows Picard and Lower Decks, other Sci fi series like Another Life, the stuff Marvel Studios are bringing out, Wandavision, Loki, What If. Arrowverse stuff from the CW, any of those would be more relevant then a British soap, which by the way if you ever saw some of the stuff the Americans have come up with, especially in Spanish, you'd nominate Hollyoaks for an Emmy.

In Media these days if you are seen to take your Sci-fi too seriously you're perceived to be a bit of a "Sheldon". If anything Big Bang theory did the most hurt to Sci-fi writing these days.