Star Trek: NothingBut Emotions

I finally figured out why this show bothers me so much. I thought maybe it was how they prioritize identity as what defines the characters instead of actual individual traits, the dark grim tone, the overly serialized nature of it, the dwelling on federation politics, the way it's so centered on Burnham that there's no room for any other character development (Saru aside, thankfully since he's awesome), the almost antagonistic disregard it has for canon, etc. And yes, these are al legitimate issues. But that wasn't the primary issue that bothered me.

It's the way that EVERYTHING revolves around emotions. Everything is how they feel. The science, the morality, the very nature of science fiction is drowned out by characters constantly stating how they feel. It's messy and dreary and just feels like every character is some narcissistic jerk that only ever cares about how it affects their feelings. And you know what, if this was just some semi-soapy drama show that would be fine.

But it's not. It's start trek. It's supposed to be about something bigger, about exploration and how we interact with the unknown. But it's not, it's stuck in the known and mundane. That is where it fails the idea and very nature of star trek. Sure, there was always some emotional element to trek, but it was never so bad that every character was a babbling whiny self centered puddle of subjective emotional nonsense.

I don't proclaim to be right all the time, but I just kind of had this epiphany watching the latest episode and, now that I noticed it, it's absurd how many times the dialog focuses on emotional verbiage. Maybe there should be a drinking game for every time a character states out loud how they feel while they should be doing their job.