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Periodically I am forced to remind people that this is a "Star Trek: Discovery" Opinions Account now. For this, I am told I am a racist, a ghoul and that I deserve to die. That's where we are. Nevertheless, I persist.
It is endemic in serialized genre entertainment now that the plausibility of the events depicted, of characters making the decisions that lead to the outcomes on screen, are secondary to the question of "how cool would it be if that happened?"
This is basically the entire last Game of Thrones season. GRRM is blocked because he can't figure out how to get his characters to plausibly end up where he wants them. TV writers don't care, they just do it.
A thing that makes The Sopranos brilliant is how easily it gets you to believe that each character would make the decisions they make, and, even more importantly, it doesn't shy away from the logical consequences of those decisions, even for the sake of audience gratification.
(It also didn't do implausible "shock" twists, which are sort of more forgivable in Trek because they're a staple of genre fiction.)
This is also like a thing that makes the Greek tragedies tragic. They're the sad result of an accumulation of understandable decisions!
But this is a show whose inciting incident itself really makes basically no sense given what we learn about the character, her background, her moral philosophy, and her relationships to the other characters. It makes no sense except that, you know, it's a Good Premise.
All of this is to say that I get why the genocidal Terran emperor was given command of Starfleet's most advanced ship, on its most important mission, and why a known Klingon sleeper agent was made an integral part of said mission. Because it was a cool idea. But it is so stupid.
Like, obviously, everyone could immediately tell she was the evil Terran emperor. Who were they fooling? And why? But also, why give her a ship with an engine that can return her to her universe and give her an advantage in a war to reclaim her throne...?
Anyway, it genuinely is great fun to follow our unlikely crew as they run around Planet Kings Landing doing drugs and going to brothels. Tilly is a delight and the best new Trek character since James Cromwell's Zefram Cochrane! This show is frequently fun!
The climax with the bomb was good, and Star Trek-y: principled people reasoning their way out of seemingly inevitable disaster. Like you could see Picard or Kirk pulling that off similarly.
But it also still does weird, off-brand things like wanting us to see Evil Emperor Georgiou as a cool badass, mainly because Michelle Yeoh is a cool badass, so it does the (VERY Game of Thrones-y) move of having brothel workers tell her she's very good at sex?
(this show has a ton of very HIRE 
MORE WOMEN GUARDS -y messages but that's going to be par for the course for Woke Hollywood from now on)
MORE WOMEN GUARDS -y messages but that's going to be par for the course for Woke Hollywood from now on)
The episode also contained the line "I'm going to miss looking at you."
None of this is to say "it's not real Trek," but it remains a missed opportunity when, I think, something closer to what I used to get out of Star Trek could be both successful and good for the culture.
Frankly, at this point, an Actually Genuinely and Sincerely Principled Starfleet operating in a utopian space socialist future is a more interesting and nutty sci-fi premise than a Starfleet That Operates Like Our CIA.
Star Trek Picard Season 1 reminded me a lot of.... one of the TOS cast movies with wonkier pacing
nostalgia, old men feeling out of place in a new era, our TV cast who never actually seemed particularly personally close are old friends, bigger budget plotting
at two hours and featuring the rest of the cast it would've been the best TNG movie
(it's basically The Search For Data)
as a TOS or TNG episode it ends with the Admonition being a test that the Synths and Romulans both failed
and a dime store holograph of an ancient race with huge foreheads delivers this message
