• Stamets@lemmy.worldM
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    3 days ago

    No issue with what you’re saying but I will say that Burnham does have some fatal flaws that are throughout the show and not past things she’s overcoming.

    1. As you mentioned, hubris. Throughout the entirety of the series she thought she knew what was best or had to shoulder every single responsibility single handedly. Spock openly mocked her for it in front of other crewmen during Season 2 and other crew constantly kept saying that she does it or doesn’t need to.

    2. She’s hypocritical as hell but that seems to be a thread through most Starfleet officers. Hypocrisy when it serves you. Look at the Prime Directive for every ounce of proof you’d ever need for any other Captain and hypocrisy but she does it pretty regularly too. Again something Spock pointed out in Season 2.

    3. She’s hot-headedly emotional because she was a human raised as a Vulcan. She suppressed the everlovingfuck out of her emotions and by the time she was embracing her human side and starting to cope with those emotions she was already well into adulthood. A significant crux of the show is that Burnham has trouble regulating emotion because its new to her. People point this out as a complaint saying she “cries too much” but her character is literally someone who feels things more overwhelmingly because she was never raised to cope. Every season is her overcoming that little by little with Season 4 being all of that coming to a head. Her listening to Rillak and trying to do everything she could that she felt was right while also not doing the stupid shit like abandoning Starfleet to go save Book without asking for permission that would have been granted or freaking out over her biological mother and letting those emotions cloud so much of Season 2.

    • Hugin@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      So about point 3. Vulcans are more emotional. So much so they have to constantly control them. Being human should make it eaiser not harder.

      • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        That one can be handwaved with alien psychology. Aliens think just like humans, except for when the plot calls for them not to. Humans psychological damage from repressing emotions, and vulcans get pon farr.

        • Hugin@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I think pon far is just when they get super horney every 4 years.

          Side note the AI summary for Kolinahr has what I hope is a mistake.

          Kolinahr It is the Vulcan ritual that is to purge all remaining emotion. It’s a ritual in which a Vulcan male shaves his balls for the first time.

    • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      The problem (at least during the first two seasons, after which I gave up) is that the show bends over backward to make her right in the end.

      • Stamets@lemmy.worldM
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        2 days ago

        This again is one of those complaints thats constantly parroted but just isn’t rooted in the reality of the show. It’s not factually accurate by even the largest stretch of the imagination.

        1. The mutiny at the start in the first episode. She is proven immediately false and that her actions of firing first would have caused a war with all the Klingons warping in just to see Starfleet fire first.

        2. She (along with Lorca and a few others) make the mistake of trusting Ash Tyler. Something that isn’t fully shared. Saru has apprehensions until the divide has been made and even then is cautious.

        3. She keeps trying to keep to Federation Ideals while in the Mirror Universe and is proven repeatedly wrong that they don’t apply. She might be able to apply them to herself but no one else from that world and it ends up with her nearly broken from it.

        4. She spends most of the episodes she’s with Spock just outright ignoring him and going on her own path of what she thinks is right. During the Talos IV episode Spock even in a state of catastrophic mental instability is even annoyed by her arrogance at thinking she’s right when she’s not. Episode also shows her basically arguing with the Talosians and Spock having to say “Just fucking do it.”

        5. She brings Georgiou back from the Terran Universe and in doing so a planet is almost rendered uninhabitable.

        6. She refuses to kill Ariam, insisting that she can save her anyway. She ignores orders and in doing so almost allows Control to complete its mission and kill Burnham and everyone else on board. If it wasn’t for Nhan, all sentient life would be dead.

        7. Throughout Season 2 she is constantly misunderestimating Control and how they can get rid of it. She’s often just as onboard with everyone elses wrong notions as she is wrong on her own. She often goes along with the ideas of how to trap it or stop the sphere but is consistently proven incorrect.

        8. As mentioned previously, she constantly shoulders all burdens and pushes through them like they are her own. She is proven incorrect there repeatedly too.

        And those are just the ones I can think of off hand from the first two seasons. If I actually looked back at episode synopsis and jogged memory I’d find far, far more. A significant portion of her character is constantly being wrong and learning from those mistakes.

        You can not like the show all you want. Not trying to convince anyone to like the show. I’m just tired of seeing complaints that just aren’t based in what the show does or what happens in it.