Actually, given the amount of pure stupid in that episode, it does. People like different things, so I can understannd someone likes the style, the mood or the characters I hate. I'm having harder time with someone liking the "we can barely move our mouths" Klingons, but I'll let that slide for a moment. But this episode is so filled with things that are just stupid beyond belief, as listed by me and others, I really don't see how anyone, even someone who likes this show, can like this particular episode.

But that's the point. You need to use scientific research to develop weapons to survive! Because there is no other way to develop weapons. There is no dilemma about it. It's no different from asking if it's ethical to defend yourself - it's the same question. Everyone, who wants to survive will choose to fight and use any means necessary.

Questioning if you want to survive or not is just stupid, not deep.

I see it as necessary too. But Stamets doesn't see it that way, or at least is uncomfortable with the idea of his research being used for military purposes. It seems that the Federation didn't give him much choice if he wants to remain in Starfleet.

That's his problem, not etical dilemma. I mean, when he started his research, he should have thought about military application of his work. And if it was in the series, that would be at least in the ballpark of ethical questions - "do I make something that can benifit mankind but can be potentially dangerous?" But in the episode ther was nothing like that - as you've said, Stamets had no choice at this point.

And even if this kind of decision was taking place during the "Butcher's knife" it's so behind such episodes as Voyager: Nothng Human, Voyager: Equinox, DS9: Hippocratic Oath or TNG: Silicon Avatar.

Yeah, and they don't even know whether their plan worked because they teleported away before the ships died. Hooray!! We... might have killed them and saved the colony? We hope?

Also their SJW was showing a little in this episode, I think the earlier posters was right. The conversation between the two main klingons was among the worst dialogue I've heard. 'Oh you are such a strong woman, so much better than I am.' There are other things they can do to show that she's a strong character, things that don't make him into a weak one. I'm still waiting for a character to make a smart decision, at this rate I'll be waiting forever. Any character in the show could die and I wouldn't care.

I think I'm done. I didn't even want to watch the fifth episode after last weeks fiasco, but I tried to force myself to give it one more chance. I lasted something like 8 minutes, that is until the credits. SPOILER

that's when Lorca gets captured. Apparently one of starfleets most important VIPs, the captain of their secret weapon ship, was travelling through deep space in a small, unarmed shuttlecraft with only the pilot. No other protection. No ships, no security people. The guy in command of your Manhattan Project Ship. I can't. I just can't. This show is so stupid. Maybe I'll watch the rest later, like let it run in the background while I clean my house or something, but actually watching and paying attention to it just hurts.

To be fair, Star Trek has always been about captains that for some reason put themselves right in the middle of the most dangerous possible situations without considering maybe sending another redshirt instead. :v

To a degree, yes, but not quite like this. It's about the context. It's the middle of the war, he's not just "a captain" but likely the most crucial VIP in the fleet, and they couldn't at least had him be accompanied by a security detatchment? It's like the Waltz episode in DS9, and there Sisko wasn't trasporting Dukat in just a shuttlecraft. There was a whole freaking ship. I guess it's also an issue a hole that Discovery dug for itself with it's chosen style. It's one thing for Kirk to put himself in danger on every away mission - the style of the show was a spirit of high adventure, and Kirk was the chief adventurer. It made "sense" for Kirk to do that at least in terms of it fitting the show's style. But Discovery is trying to pass itself as far more serious, "realistic" war drama.

I'm sure I'd be more fogiving had the previous episodes been better. But as things stand, there's nothing to cover up for more stupidity.

Well said. It's as if Discovery comes up with a premise and has no idea how to plausibly introduce it within the context of their universe. Or maybe they just don't care about that nerd stuff (i.e. basic writing) and think we don't either.

Oh, I'm sure, it's just that I'm curious how dumb a character has to be to stand out, because Star Trek has never been shy of having characters do stupid, stupid things to advance a plot or for drama. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend a show I've only seen 30 minutes of, it's just... characters in Star Trek are super willing to do super dumb things. Maybe it's just because I've been watching TOS and a little of TNG, but someone doing something stupid and releasing some kind of killer alien doesn't seem that unusual to me.

I'm thinking that one episode of TOS where Spock's father is a suspect in a murder and all he does is go "welp, that's logical" but never thinks that maybe it's also logical to try and help out the investigation because he's innocent (uh, spoilers on a 50 year old episode I guess). Also mister "let's try to do Nazis but better on this alien planet, oh no it went horribly wrong, who could have seen this coming."

Edit: And yeah, I'm very willing to believe that these wouldn't stand out as much if they hadn't decided on the story and background being the whole war thing.

That's really not true at all. I'm not saying it hasn't happened at all, but really rewatching TOS recently what's striking is just how sensible and professional everyone is. To solve a problem they go through all logical steps, take precautions (that may not work but it's not their fault), they cooperate and obviously know how to work as a team. Compared to characters on most modern shows, including Discovery, McCoy looks like a Vulcan:P

I've never actually seen that episode, but this isn't just mere stupidity, they were trying to make a political point here...there are people who believe that a nationalist dictatorship along Nazi lines wouldn't be that bad without the aggressive war and mass murder. Nazism did have its "positive" aspects after all (like welfare assistance for the poor...but only for those who belonged to the racial community). The TOS episode probably tried to show that a belief there could be a good kind of fascism is naive, that the violence and aggressiveness ending in mass murder are inherent in it.
That's pretty different from what Discovery seems to be, with plotlines that make no sense and characters that are incredibly dumb.

You are right in that it's rare for the poor choices to come from a main cast member (Gamesters of Triskelion is the most recent one I've watched and also possibly the closest example, with McCoy and Scotty arguing against following the one lead they have), but a lot of the plots start, or are propelled along, by incredibly dumb choices by characters (and one could reasonably argue that the captain beaming down into a potentially dangerous situation with his second in command is pretty dumb, but you know). Journey to Babel struck me as being a particularly grating episode, as it seemed to me that there were several entirely reasonable solutions and various characters being exceptionally pig-headed. Not that it's an unenjoyable episode! I enjoyed it.

Anyway, I decided to watch some more TOS, watching The Menagerie now.

The key difference is that when people made mistakes in the other shows (with some exception of a bad episode here or there, I'm not pretending it was always 100% perfect), those were acknowledged to be mistakes. In Discovery, we're meant to see all the stupid stuff as perfectly rational. We're meant to see Lorca's idiotic manouver from the end of last weeks episode as super-clever. We're meant to think Burnham's action in the pilot were rational at least from some point of view. And so on and so on.

We're also probably meant to find Cadet Tilly "adorkable" and not want to murder her with rusty bat'leth :P

Well, that was kinda the point of the episode. Sarek was always somewhat pig-headed, it's also what sets the events of his TNG episode in motion. He's clearly no longer in good enough health to work, but is to headstrong to admit it. That's his character. It's not inherently bad writing to have characters make wrong decisions or have such faults. What makes it bad writing is the writiers not even realising stupid mistakes are being made by their characters.

I can't judge that since I have no intention of watching Discovery (don't really know how could...I guess one needs Netflix for that). Tbh I already found the Enterprise series pretty bad, though some of it was watchable. That one was already too militarized in some ways for my taste, and I'd assume Discovery with its war setting is even worse in this regard. Probably a sign of the times we're in.