The biggest gap in the existing series is the one-two punch of the Romulan War and the founding of the Federation, which we only missed due to ENT's cancellation. Finding some way back into that era, beyond Riker's holodeck program, would be number one on my wishlist.

I am on record as a defender of the Lorca reveal, though a recent rewatch really brought home to me the fact that they spent way too many episodes in the Mirror Universe and should have used at least some of that time to build up to the climax. I also believe that the reveal is meticulously planned out from the very start and is therefore integral what's good about the earliest stretch. Either way, though, we agree that Discovery started out extremely strong and we also agree that it's a shame they never found their way back to that level of quality -- nor has any of the current Trek, as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, I agree. I wish the writers had made it a bit more clear that Burnham was being scapegoated for "starting" a war the Klingons wanted no matter what.

I also like that he is the only main character in an ongoing series to be from the pre-Enterprise era (since the Tellarites we see there have normal warp engines and presumably would not still be using generation ships like his).

DOH!

Even if they could have made it more organic than it is, it is still more organic than the Data/Lore thing is to Picard's plot.

The biggest recent example of someone getting backstory as prelude to killing them off is Airiam (Robot-Head Person).

There wasn't one -- that's what @khaosworks was pointing out.

That's a great observation -- I may have caught it if I'd had the endurance to continue my rewatch.

I still maintain that Jellico's decision to disrupt everyone's sleep cycles by changing to a four-shift rotation was unforgivable under the circumstances.

It also occurs to me that Worf and Burnham were both raised on a foreign planet by foster parents of a different species and feel like outsiders or anomalies in Starfleet. The fact that this parallel exists with a Klingon would presumably make Burnham feel some kind of way, as the kids say.

Yes! I've been thinking for a while that Discovery season 1 is the Last Jedi of Star Trek -- except of course that Star Trek started with that alienating move for its new era.

Could you elaborate?

I agree that the Construct was a bit of a kludge to make it so they couldn't just go directly back to Starfleet. But I would defend the Rutherford plot as more organic -- it's not just that he's the victim of a mindwipe, which we already kind of knew. We need to understand why he would cooperate with something evil, or even why the evil people would single him out. Making him become a different person with the mindwipe actually adds the the coherence (or provides them with a way out of the hole they had inadvertantly opened up with the mindwipe plot... that's the nature of long-running storytelling).

I connected Spock's willingness to steal the ship for La'an more directly to his willingness to do so later for Pike.

Still, it seems like a risky and high-handed move in context. Most likely he's just doing it because it's how things were on his own ship and to assert that his way goes. I've never heard anyone give an account of why it would be better to change the shifts.

Okay, first they try to cover it up, because it's easier if the Klingons never find out. But then once she's uncooperative, you go all out to show it's serious. And you don't have a Klingon observer because you don't want the general public to know the Klingons are dictating such an important domestic policy.

Of course you can watch it and it mostly makes sense from a PTSD/pragmatism perspective -- that's how they structured it so that it would reward rewatching.

I will edit to hedge.