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Is Discovery the most polarizing Trek property ever?

I think it’s really difficult to look at a product that has a 75% or so approval rating as polarizing.

At Rotten Tomatoes, which rates the overall audience response - fuck just "fans" - the show has a 55 percent approval rating.

Not terrible, but not so good.

Remember that people who watch STD are a small minority of the TV viewing public.
 
At Rotten Tomatoes, which rates the overall audience response - fuck just "fans" - the show has a 55 percent approval rating.

Not terrible, but not so good.

Remember that people who watch STD are a small minority of the TV viewing public.
Hadn’t seen the 55% rating but that would seem to be an outlier compared to everything else that I’ve come across. DSC seems to be pretty popular with both its audience and critics from what I am seeing. And yeah it doesn’t have a huge following but TV Trek is a niche product anyways and being on a fledgling pay service makes it even more so. Overall, it seems to be pleasing its customer base at the moment. Now whether that customer base is large enough to sustain it is a separate discussion and one that I doubt any of us have a good feel for at this point.
 
Critics on Rotten Tomato give Discovery an 82% while the General Audience gives it a 55%. So there's a disconnect between the two.

The Orville, which I also happen to enjoy (for different reasons) even if I don't talk about it nearly as much online, has an even worse disconnect, except in the other direction. Critics on Rotten Tomato give it a 20% but the General Audience gives it 93%. link
 
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Critics on Rotten Tomato give Discovery an 82% while the General Audience gives it a 55%. So there's a disconnect between the two.

The Orville, which I also happen to enjoy (for different reasons) even if I don't talk about it nearly as much online, has an even worse disconnect. Critics give it a 20% but the General Audience gives it 93%. link

There's often a disconnect between critics and viewers. When it's critics savaging a show, fans call them talentless snobs. When it's viewers dissing it, fans scream conspiracy theories about vote manipulation.
 
We'll probably something similar with Discovery ten years from now
I doubt it, I'm someone that enjoyed Enterprise when it aired and I think Discovery is awful. People overreacted with Enterprise and Voyager because at their core, they were still Star Trek shows, they were just kind of, not that good. They still had the spirit of Star Trek, in fact, Enterprise is probably the single closest to TOS and the "Wagon Train to the Stars" original concept behind Trek.

Discovery though, just isn't Star Trek beyond it's name. It shares pretty much absolutely zero with other Star Trek series or the ideals of the series. There is no explorations of social issues, high scifi concepts, political issues, philosophical issues. There is no exploration of alien species, of the world, of the setting. It's just extremely grim and dire drama non-stop.

Discovery is in every way, a generic grimdark action-scifi series with a Star Trek aesthetic skin plastered on top. If you changed some of the ship designs, changed the aliens and didn't call it Star Trek, I would make a bet almost nobody would recognise it as such, where say The Orville a show I don't really like either because of the lame humour, everyone instantly sees it as Star Trek, because it actually captures the feel and hope of a Star Trek show and even tries to explore social problems and issues. The Orville, a Fox sitcom parody show written by Seth Mcfarlane, one of the hackiest writers in Television and film, has smarter writing, than an actual Star Trek branded show and that is actually a problem.
I'll give Star Trek Discovery to the end of the first season, but I don't know what I expect to change, I don't think I will ever get from Discovery an actual Star Trek show because honestly, it's not even trying to be a Star Trek show. It's a generic scifi show riding on the brand name aimed at 20 year old Star Wars fans.
 
That seems to be happening a lot lately.

Not really. Just in regards to Star Wars TLJ and STD. Interesting that both properties had strong SJW political agendas behind them and were very upfront about their agendas.

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In any franchise, when you try to mess with it's history and rework it in a 'bold' new direction, you're bound to get divisive reactions. Especially if it's executed in a half-assed way.

Makes me really appreciate how Kevin Feige is handling the Marvel Universe. It helps when the people in charge are actual fans.
 
I doubt it, I'm someone that enjoyed Enterprise when it aired and I think Discovery is awful. People overreacted with Enterprise and Voyager because at their core, they were still Star Trek shows, they were just kind of, not that good. They still had the spirit of Star Trek, in fact, Enterprise is probably the single closest to TOS and the "Wagon Train to the Stars" original concept behind Trek.

Discovery though, just isn't Star Trek beyond it's name. It shares pretty much absolutely zero with other Star Trek series or the ideals of the series. There is no explorations of social issues, high scifi concepts, political issues, philosophical issues. There is no exploration of alien species, of the world, of the setting. It's just extremely grim and dire drama non-stop.

Discovery is in every way, a generic grimdark action-scifi series with a Star Trek aesthetic skin plastered on top. If you changed some of the ship designs, changed the aliens and didn't call it Star Trek, I would make a bet almost nobody would recognise it as such, where say The Orville a show I don't really like either because of the lame humour, everyone instantly sees it as Star Trek, because it actually captures the feel and hope of a Star Trek show and even tries to explore social problems and issues. The Orville, a Fox sitcom parody show written by Seth Mcfarlane, one of the hackiest writers in Television and film, has smarter writing, than an actual Star Trek branded show and that is actually a problem.
I'll give Star Trek Discovery to the end of the first season, but I don't know what I expect to change, I don't think I will ever get from Discovery an actual Star Trek show because honestly, it's not even trying to be a Star Trek show. It's a generic scifi show riding on the brand name aimed at 20 year old Star Wars fans.

So...is this kind of your chance to "turn the tables?" I'm sure if you were an ENT fan, you must have been uneased by all the a-hole "fans" trashing the show endlessly online.

So, now you don't like DSC, join this board, and make multiple massive posts in no time expressing your displeasure.

Just seems kind of...I don't know...ironic.

I've definitely noticed a trend that the loudest, most relentless detractors are generally ENT or VOY fans. Almost as if the attitude is "now is my chance for payback and / or to try and ensure that this series gets maligned even more than the one I liked did"
 
Not really. Just in regards to Star Wars TLJ and STD. Interesting that both properties had strong SJW political agendas behind them and were very upfront about their agendas.

In any franchise, when you try to mess with it's history and rework it in a 'bold' new direction, you're bound to get divisive reactions. Especially if it's executed in a half-assed way.

Makes me really appreciate how Kevin Feige is handling the Marvel Universe. It helps when the people in charge are actual fans.

I'm not seeing why showing diversity would be a problem. Especially in a show with aliens in the crew and where Earth should be represented by all of its continents and gender equality has been achieved.

If anything DSC is not diverse enough. Mid-23rd Century Starfleet should have even more diversity than what's striven for in Early-21st Century America.
 
I'm not seeing why showing diversity would be a problem. Especially in a show with aliens on the crew and where Earth is represented by all of its continents and gender equality has been achieved.

If anything DSC is not diverse enough. Mid-23rd Century Starfleet should have even more diversity than what's striven for in 21st Century America.

I'm fine with diversity (Sisko is one of my favourite Trek characters ever, inspirational even), but forced diversity that makes the show weaker as a result is what I don't care for. Jason Isaacs would have made a far better and more compelling lead and Captain than anyone on the STD cast.... but that's the discussion of another thread.
 
I'm not seeing why showing diversity would be a problem. Especially in a show with aliens on the crew and where Earth is represented by all of its continents and gender equality has been achieved.

If anything DSC is not diverse enough. Mid-23rd Century Starfleet should have even more diversity than what's striven for in 21st Century America.

Yeah, but for many people, even 21st Century levels of diversity is too much. If you haven't already, check out the wailing and gnashing of teeth over female and minority chacters in Star Wars.
 
I'm not seeing why showing diversity would be a problem. Especially in a show with aliens on the crew and where Earth is represented by all of its continents and gender equality has been achieved.

If anything DSC is not diverse enough. Mid-23rd Century Starfleet should have even more diversity than what's striven for in 21st Century America.

I don't think that diversity itself is an issue with at least some of those who are complaining. I think that possibly the issue for them is that it feels like forced (and hence fake) diversity.

When, for example, the actor that on these very forums who had consistently polled at being the best on the show with no one else even coming close to him, when it appears that his straight white southern American character is being written out of the show and possibly made into a mustache-twirling villain -- I can see how that could make people get irritated. If that is what is being done, it would literally be a case of "Let's knowingly make this show much less entertaining for fans in order to make it more politically correct."

Hopefully, that isn't happening. I'm still willing to give the writers the benefit of a doubt since this is a serial show and we're not done with this story arc yet. But if they do make Lorca into a one-dimensional "He's evil because he is from the Mirror Universe" villain, then it is quite possible that at least for myself I might start to lose interest in continuing to pay for a show that makes itself less entertaining in order to check off another few "diversity" boxes.

I mean, if on the one hand they're pushing diversity because bigotry and prejudice are wrong (and they most certainly are) but on the other hand are telling us in their story that the mirror characters have to be evil because everyone from that place is evil... they are contradicting themselves with an incredibly stupid story, LOL. #MirrorLivesMatter ;)
 
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So...is this kind of your chance to "turn the tables?" I'm sure if you were an ENT fan, you must have been uneased by all the a-hole "fans" trashing the show endlessly online.
No, I legitimately just do not get why Star Trek fans are putting up with Discovery as a Star Trek show when it's just not a Star Trek show. It's extremely poorly written compared to other shows, it shows no respect at all for Trek and it's setting, it deals with none of the themes that has made Star Trek popular over the years, The "characters" (There barely are actual characters, just people acting according to what the plot accords) are all miserable.

Why is this show called Star Trek? Why is it set in the Star Trek universe? Why are they retconning a era of Star Trek for this stuff?

This is not just a problem with Star Trek, Nu-Star Wars is the same thing, a new series that just doesn't get Star Wars nor it's fandom nor the setting while smashing in a generic marvel formula.

Literally the best Episode of Star Trek that came out in 2017? To Boldy Go, Star Trek Continues. This had miles better writing, acting and Star Trek spirit than all of Discovery combined. A budget fan film, is literally a better production and show, than the actual real show.

Discovery isn't good. It's a cynical cashgrab literally made to push a streaming service to people who don't care about scifi. People should demand better.
 
Star Trek Continues had the right heart behind it, but the end result in execution was really cheesy.

If you want a Star Trek fan production done amazingly well, it's all about Star Trek Axanar:
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You can tell the people behind it knew what they were doing:
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Essentially Paramount shut this production down to launch a far inferior take on the story of the Klingon war with STD.

Imagine the Axanar storyline done on an 8 Mil per episode budget, as opposed to the 80K they had.
 
CBS shut it down because it was theft and a con job. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Creatively it was on a far better track than the current Trek show.

There was respect for the canon and source material. They weren't trying to drastically reinvent and deconstruct the ST franchise.
 
Yeah, but for many people, even 21st Century levels of diversity is too much. If you haven't already, check out the wailing and gnashing of teeth over female and minority chacters in Star Wars.

Oooooooo.... you know what?... I wasn't going to -- I'm not much of a Star Wars person -- but now... I think I will. :D

Yes. Something popped into my mind. I'll do it later. It'll be good. Not now, though. It's too late at night. Back to arguing about Discovery. ;)
 
Literally the best Episode of Star Trek that came out in 2017? To Boldy Go, Star Trek Continues. This had miles better writing, acting and Star Trek spirit than all of Discovery combined. A budget fan film, is literally a better production and show, than the actual real show.
No, it didn't. It was fan service through and through. It was well done for what it was supposed to be, but if you give me Discovery vs. Star Trek Continues I will take DISCO.
Essentially Paramount shut this production down to launch a far inferior take on the story of the Klingon war with STD.
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