5 reasons fans never fully embraced Star Trek: Discovery
By Chad Porto
It was embroiled in a plagiarism controversy
This may not have been something you’ve heard of before, or it may have been something you forgot; but Star Trek: Discovery was embroiled in a controversy surrounding accusations of plagiarism.
An Egyptian game designer named Anas Abdin created a game called Tardigrades, in which characters use giant-sized tardigrades to travel. This, and some of the character designs from the game caused Abdin to file a lawsuit against the show Netflix and CBS. Abdin believed the show was lifting aspects of his game, which was available to some degree on Steam in early 2014, to use in the show.
So a lawsuit was filed in 2018, and while it was dismissed in 2020, the possibility that a corporate juggernaut was using someone else’s works for their own gain without compensating them, really left a sour taste in some people’s mouths. Now, some really went and ran with this story as fact, decreeing that the show committed plagiarism, and that was enough for a lot of people to turn against the show.
More than likely, those fans were looking for any reason they could to hate Discovery and simply used that as a justification for their disdain of the show.
The similarities are there, but it’s just as likely to be a coincidence as it is anything nefarious.