So I just watched "The Red Angel" and I have to admit that I'm not feeling this one as much as I was the previous episodes this year. Burnham is the cause.
Michael Burnham is, quite literally, a Mary Sue at this point. I know that criticism has been thrown at her before, but while I've always felt she was dangerously close to that territory, she didn't quite cross it (especially in the phenomenal "If Memory Serves" where Spock finally gave her the much need punch to her martyr complex that she so desperately needed as a character).
The term "Mary Sue" literally originated from Star Trek fan fiction - I'll quote the Wikipedia page:
The term "Mary Sue" comes from the name of a character created by Paula Smith in 1973 for her parody story "A Trekkie's Tale" published in her fanzine Menagerie #2. The story starred Lieutenant Mary Sue ("the youngest Lieutenant in the fleet — only fifteen and a half years old"), and satirized unrealistic characters in Star Trek fan fiction. By 1976, Menagerie's editors stated that they disliked such characters, saying: "Mary Sue stories—the adventures of the youngest and smartest ever person to graduate from the academy and ever get a commission at such a tender age. Usually characterized by unprecedented skill in everything from art to zoology, including karate and arm-wrestling. This character can also be found burrowing her way into the good graces/heart/mind of one of the Big Three (Kirk, Spock, and McCoy), if not all three at once. She saves the day by her wit and ability, and, if we are lucky, has the good grace to die at the end, being grieved by the entire ship."
I'm finding myself thinking of how this term was applied to Wesley Crusher, and Wil Wheaton for having played him. The key difference here is that Wesley was only a Mary Sue in season one by proxy, due to Picard and Riker's pompous arrogance and casual dismissal of legitimate threats until shit hit the fan. "Where No One Has Gone Before" and "Datalore" are the worst offenders of this. In these episodes, Wesley notices something either unusual or dangerous, reports it to the adults (like he's supposed to do), but is just hit with the "shut up Wesley!" line until the rest of these dopes realize that... Maybe something
is up with the Traveler and his assistant is full of shit; or maybe the android who looks identical to Data
can take his place and try to kill the crew. In short, Wesley was the only character allowed to have a functioning brain in season one of TNG. If you notice the later seasons of the show, nothing really changed about how Wesley was being written, but Picard, Riker, and the others were allowed to have functioning brains and be the professional flagship officers they should have been right from the beginning, and thus Wesley stopped outshining them and actually started complimenting them in a lot of ways. The universe never actively revolved around Wesley, he was just a smart, dorky kid who had to quite literally point out the obvious to the adults around him, and that led to a lot of unfair criticism being thrown his way.
Burnham is a whole different story. She's surrounded by some very competent officers, but she's the center of the universe, the protégé of Sarek and foster sister of Spock. The episode fakes us out by not having her be the Red Angel as the episode was implying up until the end, but having her be Burnham's real mother isn't much of an improvement. This whole thing still circles back to Burnham in one form or another, and she's suffering as a character because of it. "If Memory Serves" really put Burnham on a path towards being a much more real and human character, and "The Red Angel" just nullified that in almost every possible way.
Of course, Discovery follows the story telling format of DS9 and Enterprise instead of TOS, TNG, and Voyager, so we won't have all the answers and resolutions at the end of a single 45 minute episode. The rest of the season has been stellar up until this point, and we still have a few episodes before we learn everything there is to learn about where this story is going. I just hope that they end up dialing Burnham back and stop with this Mary Sue approach they're taking to her. Sonequa Martin-Green is a fine actress and she's acting the hell out of her role, but the Star Trek universe is massive and anything can happen in it. The show has a very strong cast of characters and actors and directing talent who know the franchise. The rest of the characters deserve their chances to shine, the universe doesn't need to revolve around one character, and the writers should absolutely grab this universe by the balls and do something no one expects, because they absolutely
can.
