Well, watching an episode / series grants you the right to bitch about it. Not watching it somehow excludes you from the club
Spoilers Star Trek Discovery Season 1: Overall Review Thread
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Well, watching an episode / series grants you the right to bitch about it. Not watching it somehow excludes you from the club
So, you watch just so you can bitch? Again, I just don't get it.
Middle Ground: Watch some episodes, decide if you like it or not, stop if you don't, then you can complain while still saying you gave it a chance.
If the show re-tools itself down the road, watch some re-tooled episodes, then your complaining is updated.
If the show re-tools itself down the road, watch some re-tooled episodes, then your complaining is updated.
Yeah. I've never subscribed to that approach either. I don't think I've ever hate-watched something - and if I'm not watching, I won't drop in to post in the thread either. It's just not for me.
I may drop in to the thread after the last episode I watched to say I give in and (try to) politely and logically give any reasons why, but after that I won't even bother opening the thread again. (Well, at least unless anyone gives me a reasoned argument why and gets me to start watching again).
There are certain shows I've given up on and then returned to later (Some of which I've grown to love).
Dude (or I assume dude), it's difficult to convey tone in a post - but I had a little laughing face at the end... it was meant as a joke. I haven't watched over 700 episodes of Trek so I have something to bitch about. The world is different from my childhood in many ways, not least of which is the way we get information and converse. I feel old even saying that. In the early 70's when I started watching ST there was no message board, and quite honestly there weren't many people to talk to about trek or sci-fi. I just watched it and I think there's something to be gained from watching all of it - even the stinkers. Of course it takes a lot of commitment if you've just started watching the franchise. For me it was throughout my life and watching trek has been an interesting ride indeed.
Now GET OFF MY LAWN
(note laughing face here).
Dude (or I assume dude), it's difficult to convey tone in a post - but I had a little laughing face at the end... it was meant as a joke. I haven't watched over 700 episodes of Trek so I have something to bitch about. The world is different from my childhood in many ways, not least of which is the way we get information and converse. I feel old even saying that. In the early 70's when I started watching ST there was no message board, and quite honestly there weren't many people to talk to about trek or sci-fi. I just watched it and I think there's something to be gained from watching all of it - even the stinkers. Of course it takes a lot of commitment if you've just started watching the franchise. For me it was throughout my life and watching trek has been an interesting ride indeed.
Now GET OFF MY LAWN
You'd be correct. I am a dude. As for everything else, again, to each his own. Have a great day.
But get your haircut and turn off that damned music first of all.
I think it's important to remember that there are different ways of interpreting the scale as well. Are we rating against modern prestige TV? Against other Star Trek? How much we enjoyed the show in the moment? Some people rate very viscerally -- every episode can be a 10 -- while others rate very comparatively. Personally, I looked at the scale and thought if 10 is awesome and 1 is awful, five is about average, or OK. Frankly, I think Discovery was below par, so I gave it a three. That doesn't mean I hated it, or that there weren't parts I quite enjoyed, just that I was very disappointed in what they gave us overall.
The way I'm looking at this is we're all working off of our own rubric when it comes to grading. We all have different expectations going in. I'm not going to deride anyone for their ratings if they give someone a 0 or a 10 on every episode, because it comes down to the subjectivity of it all. I don't understand hate watching but if that's what people want to do, that's fine by me. My experience was Discovery was relatively positive. No, it was not a perfect series. There were a lot of issues with it, but I had fun. To me, that rated it slightly above average at a 7 for the year. But I wasn't going in with a checklist either. I actually had rather low expectations.
Interstellar is a film I watched where, towards the end I was bawling my eyes out. It never happened before when I went to see a movie, at least not to that extreme. It was intense. The crying was so bad, as I was leaving the theater I had to get out of there as fast as I possibly could while hoping no one I knew saw me. It was that powerful of a movie. Clear 10.
Nothing in Discovery comes close to that. Nor am I expecting it to. So that's why I curve. I look at what's the best for this series and compare everything else in the series to it. Otherwise, nothing would get a 10.
The Passion of the Christ was an intense film. Another clear 10. I don't ever want to watch it again. I saw it, it made its point, and that one time experiencing it is all I feel I needed.
I wouldn't want to watch a season with a constant, steady stream of episodes like DS9's "The Visitor" for instance. It's riveting but watching something like that all the time is too much.
I had some friends over the other day. We were celebrating Abraham Lincoln's birthday. It was a silly thing but it was a good excuse to hang out. I thought about putting on Lincoln, the Steven Speilberg film from 2012, but given the overall vibe, I decided against it. We didn't want to watch something like that on a Monday night while we were all just hanging out.
Nothing in Discovery comes close to that. Nor am I expecting it to. So that's why I curve. I look at what's the best for this series and compare everything else in the series to it. Otherwise, nothing would get a 10.
The Passion of the Christ was an intense film. Another clear 10. I don't ever want to watch it again. I saw it, it made its point, and that one time experiencing it is all I feel I needed.
I wouldn't want to watch a season with a constant, steady stream of episodes like DS9's "The Visitor" for instance. It's riveting but watching something like that all the time is too much.
I had some friends over the other day. We were celebrating Abraham Lincoln's birthday. It was a silly thing but it was a good excuse to hang out. I thought about putting on Lincoln, the Steven Speilberg film from 2012, but given the overall vibe, I decided against it. We didn't want to watch something like that on a Monday night while we were all just hanging out.
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It's just my personal opinion, but there are only a small number of "10's" across all of Trek. Maybe a dozen episodes at most, with all but a handful from TNG and DS9. I can't think of a single ten yet for this series. ENT had none either, although there were individual episodes I enjoyed very much (and I probably liked the series more than VOY on the whole - it just didn't have a Living Witness)
And as it comes back around to it again, opinions on the show are nothing less than subjective. That's not to belittle anyone's opinion on it. I don't see a single episode below a 3. But I get that you might not feel anything above a 7. Cool by me!
What get me is anyone who completely dismisses someone's opinion if they don't agree with them. I'm not seeing a ton of that in this conversation, which is great!
I'd actually rate most of the episodes this series as between 4 and 7, with Into The Forest I go an 8 or 9. On the whole, I already think it's better than VOY or ENT. The difference though, is I think bad episodes on those series, by and large, are just boring and didn't have much potential to begin with. Mostly because the Berman/Braga formula meant that the characters didn't grow, and since drama didn't come from character development they kept on going back to the well with the same warmed-over TNG concepts. In contrast, I feel like Discovery had a lot of good ideas, but completely effed up the execution. This makes it a lot more frustrating as a series, because there was the potential to be the next DS9 - potential it has not yet come close to reaching.
Not trying to make an excuse for it, but we are in the first season with relatively untried writers, particularly when it comes to Star Trek. They're finding their footing, and it seems they inherited a bit of a mess from Fuller. They worked with what they had with a concept they obviously didn't love and made it work the best they could. Like I said, no excuses, but I do give them a lot of a credit for that. I certainly hope season 2 is a marked improvement.
i keep seeing reviewers online praising discovery's first season by comparing it to TNG's dreadful first year. the thing is, i can name half a dozen worthwhile (if not spectacular) entries from TNG season 1: where no one has gone before, 11001001, datalore, the big goodbye, skin of evil, the neutral zone.
now tell me which episodes of star trek: discovery you throw on while you're folding the laundry, cooking dinner, bored on a sunday afternoon, or are just bummed out and needing a pick me up.
discovery has numerous flaws in writing, structure, tone, character development, even in its fundamental concept. but i think the fatal flaw in star trek: discovery is its total lack of value as a show that you can rewatch.
now tell me which episodes of star trek: discovery you throw on while you're folding the laundry, cooking dinner, bored on a sunday afternoon, or are just bummed out and needing a pick me up.
discovery has numerous flaws in writing, structure, tone, character development, even in its fundamental concept. but i think the fatal flaw in star trek: discovery is its total lack of value as a show that you can rewatch.
Is that a problem with Discovery in particular or a side effect of the modern approach to serialized storytelling, you think? I love the new Twin Peaks, for example, but I don't know that I'd throw on an episode unless I was in a particular mood. Most serialized dramas don't hold a lot of rewatch appeal for me in general.
Curiously, classic Doctor Who is serialized, but I find it very watchable in the way you describe. Maybe because it's lighter and more fun.
Curiously, classic Doctor Who is serialized, but I find it very watchable in the way you describe. Maybe because it's lighter and more fun.
None. But that’s not because I don’t like the show. I quite like it. Rather, it’s because I don’t find any of the episodes boring enough to have on as “background filler”. However, I could spend the rest of the day listing VOY and TNG episodes that would be just fine for such purposes. (Though I still liked each of the series overall). Perhaps when DSC has 100 or so episodes, it’ll have a number of examples I can use as “filler”.
i've thought about that too and you're absolutely correct it is a symptom of modern television. i loved stranger things, house of cards, westworld, etc, but have never watched episodes of those series more than once. they're meant to be digested as season long stories.
and so was discovery.
but discovery could have could have been more, could've been made to last and still told the story it wanted to tell. the series could've followed the model of a show like battlestar galactica: that series told an overarching story over multiple seasons and arcs that still managed to contain standalone episodes that fit into the larger narrative (i can name more rewatchable episodes of that series' first season than i can discovery's too). discovery's individual episodes feel flimsy without the episodes that come before or after. and the twist endings damage them even more.
and speaking of doctor who, i think the past couple series have been too standalone compared to series 5 and 6. but discovery could even have gone that route and told the klingon war and mirror universe stories it wanted to tell and had episodes that would stand the test of time.
fair enough, but i don't mean to imply those TNG episodes are "filler". i meant more that they're classics... that you know every beat of by now... that you can watch any time, out of context of the larger series, and feel satisfied and happy.
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It is really difficult to compare a season of an show using an episodic format such as TNG to a season of a show using serialised format such as DIS. Sure, TNG first season had some pretty terrible episodes. It had some good ones too. And whenever I rewatch it, I can just skip the dud episodes, and it is not a problem. You cannot really do that with a serialised show, and I really have no desire to rewatch this season of DIS, as I already know that the overarching story as a whole was a dud.
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