Female Starfleet Captains and why Michael Burnham’s the worst

Michael Burnham and Star Trek: Discovery fail to take advantage of the most basic “Trek” style writing

By Season 4 of Discovery, she’s named Captain, but fails to exhibit many of the typical traits of a Starfleet Captain. Her bridge crew are mostly silent, nameless automatons who simply follow out her orders because she’s the Captain. When things get hairy & most other Captains turn to their Senior Officers for input, Michael needs none of this because she’s a genius and can handle every situation all on her own. Nothing that happens on Discovery ever seems to be out of reach for Michael to solve all on her own.

Though she was not subjected to the Kolinahr ritual of purging emotions, you can’t help but think that by growing up on Vulcan, among such a society, some purging of emotions had to have happened naturally. However, this is anything but true as unlike any of the previously listed female Captains, Michael exhibits a highly unstable personality and is seen openly weeping during moments of high tension. When Janeway would be standing tall, facing the Borg Queen face to face, I can’t help but feel that Burnham, if put in the same situation, would be cowering and crying, thinking the Borg Queen might take pity on her.

For as bad of a situation Starfleet is found to be in in the 32ⁿᵈ Century, I can only explain her latest promotion to Captain of the USS Discovery as being simply because there is no one else. A ship that’s technology is a thousand years in the past takes center stage because it’s the only one now that can go faster than light speed, and her Captain is as flawed as that statement.