Is Discovery the most polarizing Trek property ever?

[TheMadCloner]

I'm including all the Trek properties - novels, comics, TAS, movies, etc.

To me it certainly seems to be. People seem to either love it or hate it, and rather strongly in either direction. This isn't like Enterprise where I think most people were just "meh" about the whole series.

 

[BillJ]

Nah. I think TNG was far more polarizing. Discovery is barely a blip on the radar.

 

[Mudd]

Well, people who disliked Enterprise were pretty pissed off about it, because it was the first big break with the continuity that had been built up between 1987 and 2000. There were many small contradictions of previous statements and assumptions, and some unexpected departures in visual design.

Nah. I think TNG was far more polarizing. Discovery is barely a blip on the radar.

The existence of the Internet and our tendency to gravitate toward online news sources and communities that share our interests and values tends to magnify the apparent importance of things we care about. Discovery is barely a blip partly because overall viewership for and interest in Discovery is much more limited than was the case with TNG.

Overall, that's a good thing for people who like genre entertainment that will never achieve mass popularity. There are more ways for studios to deliver and to monetize "niche" programming than ever before.

Geez, who knows - if Farscape had launched on Netflix we might have gotten ten years of it.

 

[TheMadCloner]

Nah. I think TNG was far more polarizing. Discovery is barely a blip on the radar.

Really? TNG was fairly well liked by a large margin of Trek fans (and the general public too). Even those that didn't love it don't generally hate it.

 

[BillJ]

Really? TNG was fairly well liked by a large margin of Trek fans (and the general public too). Even those that didn't love it don't generally hate it.

That's now. In the run-up to the show and after its premiere, Trek fans were quite split on what we were getting.

 

[TheMadCloner]

Well, people who disliked Enterprise were pretty pissed off about it, because it was the first big break with the continuity that had been built up between 1987 and 2000. There were many small contradictions of previous statements and assumptions, and some unexpected departures in visual design.

I think part of it is that apathy had largely set in by the time Enterprise rolled around. People didn't care enough about the actual series to really love or despise it, whereas with Discovery it seems like interest started to build up to the point where people were invested in wanting the series to do well (or vice versa).

 

[TheMadCloner]

That's now. In the run-up to the show and after its premiere, Trek fans were quite split on what we were getting.

I would agree that temporal perspective affects the perception. The Internet also wasn't omnipresent like it is today - there are a lot more ways to be "vocal" about something today.

 

[guyute03]

Hmm it's really a toss up right now between Enterprise & Discovery.
At least for me.

 

[Mudd]

The domestic audience sizes for Enterprise and Discovery are in the same range, so that's reasonable.

 

[TheMadCloner]

Hmm it's really a toss up right now between Enterprise & Discovery.
At least for me.

I don't recall Enterprise being as well-liked by a significant portion of fans though. Certainly there were those that hated it, but to be polarizing there needs to be a sizeable opposition to that hatred. Discovery clearly has large contingents on both sides of the equation; I'm not sure Enterprise had enough people that really loved it.

 

[Hythlodeus]

nope.

 

[Butters]

Really? TNG was fairly well liked by a large margin of Trek fans (and the general public too). Even those that didn't love it don't generally hate it.

There are news clippings from the time floating about that put the bile spilled by the fandom firmly in the mainstream spotlight.

It wasn’t pretty.

 

[Lord Garth]

Opinion of DSC is split, there's no denying that, but ENT was far more polarizing. It's insane how polarizing it was. I stopped watching after six episodes but some people... let's just say I think they were nuts for spending four years watching a show they very vocally hated so much. Even though I didn't like ENT, I did not want to be associated with them. At all. After a certain point you have to look at them and think, "What the Hell are you doing?"

I can't really say about TNG. I wasn't fan in 1987, I didn't have the Internet, and I was 8. So I don't know what it was like back then. But by the time I became a fan in 1991 and joined the Internet in 1996, I was aware of the TOS vs. TNG and Kirk vs. Picard debates. It was around, but -- at least by that point -- it wasn't as bad as the polarization would become with ENT.

 

[TheMadCloner]

Opinion of DSC is split, there's no denying that, but ENT was more polarizing. It's insane how polarizing it was. I stopped watching after six episodes but some people... let's just say I think they were nuts for spending four years watching a show they very vocally hated so much. Even though I didn't like ENT, I did not want to be associated with them. At all. After a certain point you have to look at them and think, "What the Hell are you doing?"

I can't really say about TNG. I wasn't fan in 1987, I didn't have the Internet, and I was 8. But by the time I became a fan in 1991 and joined the Internet in 1996, I was aware of the TOS vs. TNG, Kirk vs. Picard thing and it was around, but -- at least by that point -- it wasn't as bad as the polarization would become with ENT.

The bolded is not polarizing though - that's just people hating the show watching it so they can continue to validate why they hated it. Again, I'm not sure Enterprise had enough people who really loved it for it to be counted as truly polarizing.

TNG I'll have to re-think. I was pretty young when it first aired so my memory/capacity for analysis of those events in real-time isn't as good as it should be.

 

[Vger23]

No, not even close. The reaction to DSC is tame by comparison to other inflection points the franchise has seen.

TWOK caused the fanbase to erupt when the news of Spock's death broke (because of Roddenberry leaking it, most likely). There were literally death threats sent to Paramount and the producers. Ugly, ugly stuff.

TNG was a shitstorm. Even the TOS actors were badmouthing it at conventions (I was present for this more than once as a young fan). There was venom and hatred everywhere.

ENT was also a shitstorm, but probably far more tame that TNG. This was really the first time something "polarizing" hit the franchise in the era of the internet message board.

2009 makes the DSC intro era look like a peaceful picnic, with blue sky above and a gentle summer breeze blowing through your hair.

This is nothing. There's a vocal minority who are "TEH ENRAGED!!!!1!111!uno!!" and that's about it. For the most part, these other items (and others I haven't brought up that were almost as ENRAGING, like destroying the Enterprise in TSFS, etc) have conditioned most fans to take stuff in stride.

 

[Lord Garth]

The bolded is not polarizing though - that's just people hating the show watching it so they can continue to validate why they hated it. Again, I'm not sure Enterprise had enough people who really loved it for it to be counted as truly polarizing.

TNG I'll have to re-think. I was pretty young when it first aired so my memory/capacity for analysis of those events in real-time isn't as good as it should be.

There were Shippers, the Summer Xindi Sloth, etc. ENT did have it's big fans. The debates about ENT's continuity and status as canon were also very heated.

If you had people who weren't that invested in the series and didn't defend the series as hard as others were attacking it, there wouldn't have been so many closed threads, so many warnings, so many bans. You had people on both sides constantly duking it out. For the series and against.

So, yes, I would say it was polarizing. At least online.

I'm not seeing the same thing here at all.

 

[TheMadCloner]

There were Shippers, the Summer Xindi Sloth, etc. ENT did have it's big fans. The debates about ENT's continuity and status as canon were also very heated. If you had people who weren't that invested in the series and didn't defend the series as hard as others were attacking it, there wouldn't have been so many closed threads, so many warnings, so many bans. You had people on both sides constantly duking it out. For the series or against.

So, yes, I would say it was polarizing. At least online.

I'm not seeing the same thing here at all.

Fair enough. My memory of ENT is that there was a vocal minority who loved it, but the majority either hated it or were just completely apathetic to it overall. Perhaps it's because I'm not seeing that same apathy with Discovery that makes me think (maybe wrongly) that it's more polarizing.

 

[Balok's Decoy]

No, not even close. The reaction to DSC is tame by comparison to other inflection points the franchise has seen.

TWOK caused the fanbase to erupt when the news of Spock's death broke (because of Roddenberry leaking it, most likely). There were literally death threats sent to Paramount and the producers. Ugly, ugly stuff.

TNG was a shitstorm. Even the TOS actors were badmouthing it at conventions (I was present for this more than once as a young fan). There was venom and hatred everywhere.

ENT was also a shitstorm, but probably far more tame that TNG. This was really the first time something "polarizing" hit the franchise in the era of the internet message board.

2009 makes the DSC intro era look like a peaceful picnic, with blue sky above and a gentle summer breeze blowing through your hair.

This is nothing. There's a vocal minority who are "TEH ENRAGED!!!!1!111!uno!!" and that's about it. For the most part, these other items (and others I haven't brought up that were almost as ENRAGING, like destroying the Enterprise in TSFS, etc) have conditioned most fans to take stuff in stride.

I wonder if the actors on DSC were ever shown the fan reactions from previous series as a way of easing them into the inevitable internet outrage. Like, don't worry, this is normal.

 

[Mudd]

I was a big fan of Enterprise. Samuel T. Cogley thought it was pretty lame and mocked it wittily and relentlessly here and elsewhere.

We bonded over that and have been friends ever since.

 

[Cox of Seagulls]

The reaction to Discovery is a mild gust of wind compared to Enterprise's raging shit-storm. Funnily enough, I've seen more and more people go back and watch Enterprise and end up liking it, in fact I'd probably say it isn't the most hated Trek show any more (that honor goes to Voyager). We'll probably something similar with Discovery ten years from now when whatever the latest Trek show is is an affront to Roddenberry's ideals and non-canon and rapes the Trek name etc etc.