Thread by @fyeahjola, nobody asked, and yet everybody shall receive: here’s all the reasons season [...]

nobody asked, and yet everybody shall receive: here’s all the reasons season 1 treated hugh culber like shit, as exemplified by one scene.

Full disclosure: I’m a Culber stan through and through. I’ve played the man in trek rp. This 50-y-o gay doctor is MY BOY! So I’m a little biased here but I still think I’m right.

So to set the stage for where our man was in Vaulting Ambition: super dead. He’d gotten his neck snapped by Ash Tyler 2 episodes earlier, where he was promptly plot-shenanigan’d into the network, and appeared on Mirror Paul’s mind palace thing, the “USS Stamets.”

I think a lot of queer trekkies can literally tell u where they were when they were when they heard about it or saw Culber die. I sure can. It fucked up a lot of people, and really damaged the show’s rep with their lgbt viewers (right off the heels of also killing Georgiou, too)

(If you’re wondering what Wilson Cruz thought of Culber’s death: he cried! Allegedly. So that kind of tells you everyone was at.)

The show promptly leapt into damage control, literally minutes after the episode aired. I like to think that sometime between filming and release they realized how badly they fucked up. Articles were written, and GLAAD even put out a press release promising it wasn’t THAT BAD.

And there was also some drama behind the scenes. Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts were showrunners, and would be promptly fired for being huge assholes to the writing staff (allegedly). Harberts is gay, so they also slapped him on the “Culber’s not dead we promise” press train.

Now what I’m about to run through here is basically a list of lines from this scene that I kind of think are dumb and gives Culber the short end of the stick. I’ll run through why they really bother me at the end.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d come home. All the other times I tried to lure you from work with dinner, wine…”

This is a very pointed acknowledgement of a real problem: Culber’s whole career during s1, and his character, were involved in supporting Stamets. Literally everything.

The problem is that it doesn't follow thru. We first meet him when he’s fixing Stamets’s broken nose, and he then goes on to design Stamets’s implants and supervise him while he’s blazed out of his mind, before he gets yoinked into a coma…

And Culber supervises him there too, getting thrown across the room (by Stamets) and then MURDERED!

In Beta, we find out that he transferred to be with him, and that in a universe where he never met Stamets, he was the CMO OF A CONSTITUTION CLASS STARSHIP! The man was nothing but held back s1, and as a Culber stan it bothers me so much.

(thx to leo for the dead endless quote)

(It’s worth noting here that I don’t blame Stamets for anything beyond like, being a dick sometimes who doesn’t get home from work on time, and that’s been my read on Wilson’s take on it too. Paul, you’re off the hook. Berg and Harberts, meet me in the pit for my man’s honor.)

“Paul, I’m so sorry. But I died.”
Why tf is Culber apologizing? That’s my only question about this bit, really.

“Did you know I loved you? I don’t think I told you enough.”
“You showed me. All the time.”

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA BULLSHIT!

“Tell me about your day.”

This right here is the line that prompted the rant in the first place, so I’m going to give myself another all caps pass: CULBER DUDE YOU GOT MURDERED THIS MORNING WHY ARE YOU ASKING *HIM* ABOUT *HIS* DAY.

To say the least. And Stamets doesn’t even do the courtesy “oh how was yours” once he’s done. Disgraceful.

(Can I just throw in another sidenote? This whole scene, they’re both standing like, a respectable meter apart like this is an awkward dinner party convo. All I have to ask is WHYYYY.)

“No Paul… you were right, the network is a gift. It’s the thread that weaves life through space”
And slightly later…
“It’s never goodbye. Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to teach all of us?”

So I’m maybe a little pissed that my fave got murdered just to tell his boyfriend that he’s the smartest special-est scientist out there. No hate to Paul Stamets, but like….

There’s also some weird undertones here given that this whole plotline is a poc providing emotional and physical support for a white guy and literally dying because of it. Not the be-all-end-all, but it sure feels weird, right?

(I’ve said a few times before that the show actually could’ve been improved with Stamets and Culber’s roles switched, or even casting flipped. Not sure I think that anymore about their portrayals of the characters themselves, but this particular issue would’ve been eliminated…)

So as promised, my main issue: this COULD have been the plotline that season two would later make it into. With maybe a few extra scenes, the audience could have seen acknowledgement that Culber was *treated bad, actually,* and that would round out the plot in a way that-

would make Stamets and Culber’s storyline feel complete and fulfilling in the course of the season. Also, they could have just not killed him, which would’ve been super great too.

[pause bc i've reached the twitter post limit SOMEHOW, give me a minute]

Wilson has even gone on record saying (shoutout to @blackalertpod for the fantastic interview) that Culber was treated like a “servant” early in the show, and HE IS NOT WRONG!

This, I think, might be Discovery’s greatest failure in the first season in terms of the characters. And our man Culber got screwed over by it.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Stan Jola ig?

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