This brilliant meme really sums up the issues with the plot:

Now, about Michael Burnham.

I will never be able to comprehend why the writers chose to set up the character of Michael so poorly. I mean, they  made her commit mutiny backed by the worst reasoning they could possibly come up with and in turn, completely trash all potential credibility and likability of the character. Then somehow, they still expect the audience to actually follow the “hero’s” story? What a bunch of crap writing!

I only watched the second episode to witness the inevitable backlash Michael had to deal with from failing to take over the ship. Seeing her get sentenced to life in prison was immensely satisfying. Even with the crappy un-Star-Trek-like lighting for that scene, it was easily my favorite. In my version of cannon, she rots in prison. Want a real woman in Star Trek? Stay away from Michael and see Captain Janeway, Lt. Torres, and Seven of Nine in Voyager or Major Kira and Dax in Deep Space Nine. And don’t even get me started on the amazing character arc of Councelor Troi in Next Generation.

Also, I should probably mention the “Klingons…” I’d say they reminded me of orcs from Middle Earth, but I wouldn’t want to insult the orcs. But forget the costumes, their cringey way of speaking, and the completely garbage dialogue for a moment. They could have gone to any star trek convention in the country and found better actors to play them. The Klingon parts were hard to watch for so many reasons, but I couldn’t help but feel the actors hated dressing up like fake Klingons just as much as I hated watching them. There was absolutely no passion there. I started skipping through the Klingon parts because I couldn’t handle the cringe. It felt like I was watching a cheap sci-fi rip-off of Star Trek. Anyways, this show sucks and I’m sick of writing about it. Go watch The Orville. Their cast has a gay couple and a bunch more diversity if you care about that sort of thing, only they don’t need to brag about it to make up for poor writing or unlikeable characters.

For a more recent review, check out this guy’s take on why Star Trek Discovery Sucks!

Season 2 Episode 1 Review

For more of my thoughts on Star Trek Discovery, check out my newest article, Star Trek Discovery Still Sucks And CBS Won’t Learn Their Lesson

Neema, who had been keeping a watchful eye on her bounty from the relative safety of the tenting’s thick canvas, waited until the last possible moment before scurrying out and flipping the meat. A quick glance to confirm its progress, she then turned on her heel and returned as quickly as possible to the welcoming shade.

“Just another couple of minutes, grandfather,” she called over her shoulder.

“Take your time, child,” her grandfather replied from the mound of cushions he’d made his chair. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Neema nodded, her eyes scanning the sands and sky. It was troublesome enough to catch and cook her treat, she was not about to give it up to some opportunistic bird of prey or carrion feeder.

It was as her eyes travelled the horizon that she caught first sight of the hint of motion. Shielding her brow, she focused her gaze, studying the distant shimmer.

“Something is coming, grandfather,” she said solemnly.

“Oh?” her grandfather asked congenially. “Are you sure? Could it not be a mirage; a trick of the sun?”

Neema pouted; she wasn’t a baby anymore, and she hadn’t mistaken a mirage for something else in nearly four years, but still her grandfather enjoyed his gentle teasing of her for it.

“No,” she replied testily, “it’s throwing up dust, and it’s coming closer.”

“A wild dog, perhaps?” her grandfather suggested.

Neema didn’t have to turn to look at her aging carer to know he was smiling. The old man loved to amuse himself with silly notions, despite the fact she had long since stopped playing into them.

“It’s closing too fast to be a dog,” she replied, her eyes watching the flicker in the distance, within which she could now see glints and gleams of reflected sun. “And it’s metal.”

“Hmm…” her grandfather replied, his typically resonant voice pensive. “A dog with a jet-pack maybe?”

Neema rolled her eyes, though her lips curled into a small grin nonetheless; she may not have played into the old man’s jokes anymore, but that didn’t mean she did not still get some enjoyment out of them. “No, grandfather, I think it’s a customer,” she smiled.

“My goodness, a customer!” her grandfather gushed. “Am I presentable?”

Neema risked a glance from their impending company, and her meal, to appraise her grandfather’s appearance. The old man, still garbed in his baggy night pyjamas, beamed a toothy grin at her, a single photovoltaic eye blinking rapidly closed in a conspiratorial wink. Giggling, she turned back to her sizzling rock. “Perfect, grandfather,” she muttered, her gaze alternating between the cooking meat and their rapidly approaching guest.

When their customer arrived barely two minutes later, it was with a purring thrum of slowing turbines. The speeder settled itself gently on the scorching sand, five and a half metres of gleaming, polished metal, a slice of sleek, exquisite engineering in the otherwise barren and desolate plain. Neema, her meat retrieved from her makeshift stove and clutched securely in her fist, studied the machine intently, her eyes roaming its smooth lines, examining the decorative embellishments, and noting with mild interest the high-end electro-magnetic rifle mounted on its hood.

“Careful, little one,” a lofty voice jibed, its owner emerging from the speeder’s cockpit with a hiss of hydraulics and a whoosh of depressurised air. “If you stare too long, I may have to charge you for the privilege!”

Neema turned to look at the man as he stepped down, the soft crunch of the sand muffled by his booming laugh. Beaming back at her, she watched as he affixed a large, golden sun protector atop his head, his hands brushing imagined dust from his soft and delicate robes.

“Nbao!” he barked. “Think you can fill her up for me?”

From within the dark confines of the tent, her grandfather returned an affirmative nod, followed by a rate displayed with his fingers.

The man smiled, his head dipping genially as he reached into a pocket and withdrew a silken pouch. Tossing it in the direction of her grandfather, Neema could hear the clink of credit tiles.

It took but a moment for the old man to verify the amount, his deft and capable hands effortlessly cross-checking the tiles, and when he’d finished he gave her a nod. Her mouth full of meat, Neema refrained from replying and instead simply grabbed the fuelling hose and moved toward the speeder.

“Careful,” their guest winked at her with a smile of gleaming platinum, “if you scratch it, I’ll expect a discount.”

Neema bobbed her head courteously; every customer they had seemed to come up with roughly the same pseudo-joke, and every one apparently thought themselves original and hilarious. It didn’t seem to matter that she’d never so much as grazed a guest’s property in all the time she’d been entrusted with the pump.

The fuelling nozzle in place and locked, she gave her grandfather a quick thumbs-up. At her sign, the old man threw a switch, and chilled liquid hydrogen began surging from the stores beneath their feet and into the speeder’s fuel tanks. The hose, heavily insulated against the icy substance now flowing through it, as well as the searing rays of the sun, writhed and expanded for a moment in the harsh light before settling.

Neema, satisfied her work was done for the moment, carefully chewed a mouthful of her afternoon’s culinary exploits and then swallowed. Turning her gaze once more to the speeder’s owner, she found him studying her uncomfortably. Uncertain, she held out her meal to him.

“Care for a bite?” she asked, hoping this was the polite and socially acceptable thing to do.

The man gazed at her offering, his lips twisting into a grimace, and then waved her away irritably. “No,” he replied, making no attempt to hide his revulsion, before turning his attention from her imperiously.

Neema, despite the fact that she hadn’t really wanted to share her treat, was still hurt that something she’d worked so hard over had been rejected so brutally. Moving away from the speeder and their guest, she retreated into the cooler confines of the tent and settled herself up against the pillowy seat of her grandfather.

“Everything okay, Neema?” her grandfather asked, his lips curling around a freshly lit hookah pipe, the rich scent of the flavoured tobacco already wreathing him in its embrace.

“Yes,” she replied sullenly, her eyes lingering on the lustrous speeder, and its equally gleaming owner.

Her grandfather puffed leisurely on his pipe, his artificial eyes studying her carefully. Silence passed between them, and Neema knew that the old man was waiting for her to confide in him. Ordinarily, she’d rise to the challenge and hold out as long as she could, a game created out of how long each could maintain the silence, however in that moment she didn’t feel like it.

“Grandfather,” she asked, working to put her thoughts in order, “why do some people have power, and others don’t?”

Her grandfather raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And here I thought you were just going to ask why some people had no manners.”

Neema shook her head. In actuality, that had been one of the first questions on the tip of her tongue, however she’d noticed a similar trend in the majority of their customers and she’d found her thoughts attempting to identify a common factor.

Her grandfather smiled and placed a loving hand on her shoulder. “Neema, would it surprise you to know that you and your doddering old grandfather, despite what you may think, are both richer and more powerful than almost all of our ‘esteemed’ visitors?”

Neema frowned, her eyes never leaving the regal figure of their customer as he stood imperially beside his property, his attention no doubt engrossed on loftier things. He was too far away to hear their conversation, though she suspected that were he not he’d have most definitely had some things to say regarding her grandfather’s ludicrous statement.

In his absence, and with no challenge forthcoming, her grandfather continued. “He may have a fancy vehicle, but he requires it because he is not powerful enough to remain in one place. He dresses in gold and finery, but that is because he must go out of his way to display his wealth and inform potential observers of his station. He speaks authoritatively, and rudely at times, but this too is simply window dressing so as to convince others that he deserves to be listened to in the first place. And he refuses your offering, because he does not possess the knowledge or ability to see it for what it really is.”

Neema cocked her head, disbelieving her grandfather, but listening intently nonetheless.

“We, on the other hand,” her grandfather smiled, smoke curling from his lips and drifting lazily up through his thick eyebrows, “have no vehicle at all, because we have nowhere to be; instead, people come to us. They go out of their way to do so, because this is where we have chosen to be. So too do we have no need to clothe ourselves in the appearance of power or wealth, instead prioritising comfort and ease; in spite of this, all who come to us know the power that we hold. Were we to refuse their requests of us, they would surely die out here, the sun snuffing out their lives with a deadly poise that it’s had millennia to perfect. Their riches cannot save them; only our good grace has that power. A grace, I might add, that requires no speech at all. We simply move our head one way or another, and show them our price; one which they will gratefully pay.”

Reaching out a hand, her grandfather gently pried a stick of fried lizard from Neema’s fingers. “As for this,” he said, taking a slow and savouring bite of the treat their guest had rejected so forcefully, “to me it tastes of friendship, made all the richer for it was offered at no cost at all.”

Neema allowed herself a tiny smile, her eyes blinking rapidly to prevent them from watering.

“Your name, Neema,” her grandfather continued, his hand tender and warm on her shoulder, “means ‘one born in prosperity’. Recognise what you have, and learn to see what others merely claim to possess.”

She watched as her grandfather turned to gaze at the speeder, their guest now fidgeting in his sumptuous clothes under the blazing, unforgiving heat of the afternoon sun.

“Nothing but a mirage,” he muttered, his expression calm and untroubled. “A mirage.”

It listened to music through an implant in its skull while standing at the rigid attention its boss wanted. It couldn’t watch digital media through its contact lenses; that might prevent it from reacting when seconds counted, and someone might see the commercials in front of its eyes and think badly of it. It couldn’t risk a bad review, it needed this job. This position paid so much better than the dole out, and you had to work to have the chance to afford an upload. That was a luxury, unlike the gender neutral body mod it had chosen several years before, subsidized because it rendered it sterile.

Levan signaled Anowen through the network that he needed help in lab 5, one that was still in process. Finally, it’d be relevant and bill at a high rate. So much better than getting assigned clean up when someone else did the organ harvesting.

Anowen waved its badge and hand over the sensor, and it still hesitated to let it in. Levan did a voice over-ride, which meant it was high security. Was this something new? A higher pay rate then, to be sure. Anowen entered the room and the door closed immediately behind it.

Levan begged it, “Help me hold her down!” The old woman was convulsing, and the electrodes that went past her skull into the brain were flashing erratic patterns.

“You have to call for medical! I can’t handle this! I just do deconstruction or harvesting!”

“Help me hold her down so it at least has a chance of working!”

Anowen obeyed because it had no other idea what to do. Anowen winced at having to apply pressure to the limbs, bruising the skin. Levan pulled out straps from some hidden compartment on the table and restrained the patient. The body shook and tried to flail as mental commands failed, but now it could not accidentally strike a person or seriously damage itself. The convulsions eased as Anowen watched, fiddling with the restraints’ controls out of a desire to minimize the damage. Did this mean the body wouldn’t be harvested? Anowen’s social rating was high in part because of its ties to the life-saving organ harvesting here, getting shout outs and kudos and not quite joking requests for a new kidney from those who couldn’t afford artificial organs or out of ethics refused them.

The light patterns during an upload were usually fluid, a beautiful liquid rainbow as someone’s essence – the soul, if you believed in such a thing – changed, evolved, and was liberated. This was a dim, discordant mess. It grew darker before seemingly turning off. Anowen had never seen that before and said so.

“I have.”

“You have?” Anowen asked.

“It happens sometimes.”

“The process is perfect. It almost never goes wrong, Six Sigma quality levels – “
“No one would do this if they knew the failure rate.” Levan brought up a human-machine interface and entered a number of commands. The organ harvesting procedures started, and the surgical equipment descended from the machine. Anowen started working out of habit as much as the desire to not think about the failure. Anowen said nothing as the body was disassembled. The brain and a few bones were all that was left at the end.

Levan entered a code to flag the body as suffering severe osteoporosis. He began personally collecting the bones and brain, when usually it was only the brain that was flash burned.

Anowen objected. “The bones could be used, marrow harvested, bone grafts –“

“If the bones are sent anywhere but cremation immediately, someone could get a scan of the sensor entry points relative to the brain or how a sensor shifted and triggered seizures, killing the upload. No, it all gets burned.”

“That’s not policy.”

“That is policy when there is a failure.”

The words burned through Anowen. Policy was like the law; you dare not violate it. But policy for this type of case meant it happened enough to have a policy. “You’re lying.”

Levan hit a button and pulled up the text of the policy on a screen they could both see it. The codes on it indicated this was restricted, extremely sensitive and secret. Yes, there was a policy, and what he was doing was per the rules. And Anowen was never, ever allowed to discuss this. Levan entered a number of other codes manually.

It said, “You could send the commands through the network through an implant or say it aloud.”

“Read the policy again. What gets sent wirelessly through the network from an implant gets recorded there, and voice commands get processed for meaning before implementation. Only commands through an interface are secure enough for something this sensitive. You don’t talk about it, anywhere, and you don’t give any commands in any way in any method that could be used to figure out what happened here.”

“How often does this happen here?” Anowen asked.

“For patients this age, maybe one in eight. I don’t have access to all the stats and researching that would get me in trouble. For all patients, fewer than one in twenty.”

“What about the family?”

“They’ll see the persona we pieced together from the person’s recorded statements and rough personality simulation from their social media history, blogs, interviews, psyche profiles and so forth.”

“It isn’t them.”

“It is close enough for most family members, and given the expectation that the new AI will pursue its own interests and change radically in the grid, it is enough.”

“Won’t the AIs in the grid say that person hasn’t joined?”

“Most of them won’t care unless they were expecting it like a spouse, and this patient was single.”

“Children, friends, someone?” Anowen asked.
“AIs aren’t people anymore. Give it a few weeks of hundred fold experience compared to the lives we live, and it won’t care much about people. And those that do care about the newcomers are relieved that we opted to delete the bad uploads than dump them in with the good ones. If necessary, the intact personalities will cover for us.”

“They can’t lie.”

“They can dissemble and distract until the human gives up asking. And unless you’re in IT and monitoring the AIs, you wouldn’t be able to verify.”
“And IT works for us.”

“Yes.”

“Why would we accept patients with high odds of failure?”
“Because there is still a market for human organs, and a conversion to digital reduces overall resource consumption on the planet relative to you being alive while extending a few lives. Even if the organs aren’t useful due to disease or health problems, they still turn into fertilizer and we still get social points for trying to save lives and reduce resource usage simultaneously.”

“AIs use a lot of energy, servers.”

“They don’t mind running off power from the cremation units, nuclear waste facilities, or biofuels I’m not going to talk about. They can tap chemical energy, too, or slow down to the point they hardly use any power computing or electrical.”

“If they slow down too much, they become incoherent. That requires deletion of the corrupted version and restoration.”

“We don’t back them up.”

Anowen felt its heart become heavy, something it knew was a biological impossibility. “What?” The syllable was all it could utter. “What?” it asked again, a refrain desperately seeking to deny what it had heard.

“There are nine billion people on the planet, some of whom didn’t even have electricity when we were born. Brown outs, blackouts, we still suffer from energy shortages. It is cruel to use power to backup digital personalities when people need energy to live, too.”

“Digital personalities need it to exist.”

“They do exist in the grid. And they are on their second life, living something we can’t imagine. They don’t get a third.”

“Except when the uploads fail.”
“She was going to die. She knew that if she read only the marketing material. She just didn’t get a second life, and most people don’t even get that.”

“We took her money.”
“Yes, to give her that second chance. That’s all anyone has – a chance.”

Anowen fell silent and finished the clean-up task to try to distract itself from the urge to scream at him. Yes, the company said it gave people second chances at a second life. There was no explicit guarantee, only an implicit one. And if the harvested organs saved other lives, extending those, then someone else still lived longer because of this one’s death.

Finally, Anowen said, “Sometimes I see the families when the person is escorted in.”

“And procedures prevent you from seeing them when the procedure is over, ostensibly so that they don’t see the person who deconstructed a loved one, and you’re always forbidden from contacting them.”

“Do the AIs ever contact their families?”
“Their communications outside of the grid are limited so they don’t consume too many resources, copy themselves, harass people from beyond the grave –“

“And censored.”

“Just like everything else in life if you want to keep on living.” His words held an implicit threat. The company monitored activity and communications. Violate the privacy and secrecy rules, get sued to oblivion, and they might get an order for Anowen to be dismantled to pay the debts it otherwise couldn’t pay.

Anowen stared at the now empty bed for far too long before hitting a button on the console for it to be sterilized. Its cycle time metrics had to be shot by this aberrant session. “What is my pay rate for this?”
“For the difficult session, double.”

Then cycle time didn’t matter as much. “Is that why you always seem to get the old ones, to get the difficult cases?”
“They are just as dead when I’m done and you start whether the upload works or not. The only difference is the pay rate, and yes, I do like that.”

“I was saving for an upgrade,” Anowen admitted.

“I save up for replacement artificial organs so I don’t need an upgrade to live a long time in the real world.”

Anowen completed the sterilization routines and let Levan do all the commands, since he was the expert. It waited until he confirmed Anowen could go. It checked out of its shift and went to the showers, stripping quickly to get under the warm, wet spray. Maybe no one would notice the tears mingled with the water, and thus they wouldn’t ask, because Anowen could only bear the burden in silence.

Renwick had seen the holovids of those creatures possessing a person. They instantly drove their host mad. Horrifying chaos and violence ensued every time. It’d gone that way year after year as the wraiths performed their annual migration to Eredia Prime. Up until this year, smart miners fled from orbit or from the colony below.

The situation proved untenable for human colonists. The Rentech Corporation needed the platinum from the rich colony mine. It was far too profitable to stop operations for several weeks every year to allow the wraiths free reign.

Renwick, an engineer by trade, had the foresight to figure out how to repeal the wraiths. The electromagnetic energy field created by his ship’s hyperdrive deterred them, drove the spirits away. As a test, he had a crew amplify that field. Though they contracted radiation poisoning from the experiment, most of the crew survived. That proved enough for the company to allow Renwick the resources for an expedition team to deploy Project Scarecrow.

His ship dropped the last beacon from his cargo bay, activating network of hyperspace fields. Just in time. His sensors detected the energy beings on the horizon.

“We’re deployed. Power up,” Renwick said through his comm system. A glowing minefield of the beacons formed a net of electromagnetic waves around the colony.

The wraiths advanced with inhuman speed. The energy field crackled. If there had been sound in space, Renwick would have sworn the wraiths howled in pain. Whatever those spirits felt, they turned back, leaving the colony safe for another year.