Star Trek: Discovery Review - 6 Ups And 5 Downs From Season 1
8. The Bridge Crew Is Still Completely Under-developed
Contrary to the main officers on board Discovery, the men, women and miscellaneous tasked with manning the computers and pressing the buttons on the bridge are a melting pot of diversity.
This bridge isn't quite the revolving door of ever-changing faces that we saw on The Next Generation. It’s a consistent, unchanging crew, the faces of whom we see in every episode. The problem is that we know next to nothing about them.
What’s worse is that their visual appearances promise so much. We have a fully augmented human whose shiny chrome-dome is slicker and more intriguing than even Data’s milky skin. We have a woman donning an electronic head-gear component that looks like a precursor to Seven of Nine’s Borg implants. We have an alien with an unusually large, bulbous head. We have a crew-member constantly sporting a cybernetic tactical helmet. We have a Nigerian ops officer given no defining quality, only her name. And even more.
The Next Generation took until its seventh and final season to create an episode focusing solely on the lower-decks characters working behind the scenes of the Enterprise’s daily operations. Discovery needs to give its bridge crew more attention far earlier.