Soldato
5x06 - "Whistlespeak"
Ugh.
For a little while there this episode was almost working. It wasn't great. But, by DIS standards, nothing that made you want to throw things. Aaaaaaaaaand then it all falls apart. Burnham goes ahead and disregards the Prime Directive so glibly, and so deliberately, that you'd just want to weep for the clear mental instability of whoever thought it was a sane idea to let this person anywhere near an organisation like Starfleet.
Lookit, characters have gone against the Directive before. Often in response to previous interference (as had happened here, admittedly). But they at least seemed to properly feel the weight of doing so. Look at Kirk's angst over arming Tyree's people in TOS' "A Private Little War" after the Klingons had sold arms there. He needed to maintain the balance of power. He didn't like doing it, if there had been any better option he'd have grabbed it with both hands. But this was the only way that minimised the damage to their society. And so, having made the only choice available that would keep things from getting much, much worse, he felt crappy about it. Because you should feel crappy about breaking the Prime Directive.
Burnham? Nah. This ***** lives for breaking the rules. Even the most sacred one. All to save Tilly who - like Burnham - swore an oath to uphold the Prime Directive even if that would come at the cost of her life. So, good job there gang. Way to hustle. And there's no angst about it, even in a show that would ordinarily love nothing more than having several scenes of characters wanging on about how hard of a choice they had to make. Burnham The Ever Right did a good thing, and set the poor little troglodytes on their backward little planet onto the One True Path to enlightenment
**** this show right in the ear...
For a little while there this episode was almost working. It wasn't great. But, by DIS standards, nothing that made you want to throw things. Aaaaaaaaaand then it all falls apart. Burnham goes ahead and disregards the Prime Directive so glibly, and so deliberately, that you'd just want to weep for the clear mental instability of whoever thought it was a sane idea to let this person anywhere near an organisation like Starfleet.
Lookit, characters have gone against the Directive before. Often in response to previous interference (as had happened here, admittedly). But they at least seemed to properly feel the weight of doing so. Look at Kirk's angst over arming Tyree's people in TOS' "A Private Little War" after the Klingons had sold arms there. He needed to maintain the balance of power. He didn't like doing it, if there had been any better option he'd have grabbed it with both hands. But this was the only way that minimised the damage to their society. And so, having made the only choice available that would keep things from getting much, much worse, he felt crappy about it. Because you should feel crappy about breaking the Prime Directive.
Burnham? Nah. This ***** lives for breaking the rules. Even the most sacred one. All to save Tilly who - like Burnham - swore an oath to uphold the Prime Directive even if that would come at the cost of her life. So, good job there gang. Way to hustle. And there's no angst about it, even in a show that would ordinarily love nothing more than having several scenes of characters wanging on about how hard of a choice they had to make. Burnham The Ever Right did a good thing, and set the poor little troglodytes on their backward little planet onto the One True Path to enlightenment
**** this show right in the ear...
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Thanks for pointing it out, corrected.
Burnham at one point notes that the natives had a lot of words for pain and hurt, and she extrapolates from that about their culture and the way they think. Thing is, there are plenty of words for describing pain and hurt in our language, too. This is the same thinking that leads people to claim how the Inuit and Yupik peoples are obsessed with snow because they have a lot of words for describing it, also neglecting that we have more than one word to do so in English. It's based around the idea of 
