Star Trek Discovery Writing Staff
- Thread starter The Habs Fan
- Start date
Dude, you're a DSC fan, like the rest of us. You watch DSC and you go online and spend your time talking about it. Same for the rest of our hyper critical little friends here. You're just a different kind of fan from most of us, enjoying criticizing the show as much as others like general discussion or gushing about what they like.
Some like the acting, some like the stories, some like the look of the show etc, so called "hate watchers", a term I don't like, I prefer, "fans", enjoy nitpicking the show. Not a big deal. What you enjoy about the show is your business.
Hey, what do you think you're going to dislike most in season 2?
Oh HELL yes, Edward!! Some of the friendly and knowledgeable posters out here would have that shit cleaned up in 3 minutes easily! 80 million viewers in the US alone, and multiple Emmy awards too. And every Trek fan would absolutely LOVE the end result almost uniformly! It's just so frigging simple. To heck with the drooling, simple minded fanboys who just eat whatever gets fed to them.
If only they'd LISTEN to the REEL FANS!!!1!1!
To be fair - is that concept any stupider than the "Picard will destroy humanity by creating an anomaly in the future that travels backwards in time; and do so because Q tells him of said anomaly..." concept of the much loved by many TNG fans TNG series finale??
Or future Janeway going back in time to save Tuvok? Why not undo it all?
I barely remember the TNG finale maguffin, but it's not really the point. Similarly, I'd be more forgiving of Discovery's plot devices if the writing had succeeded in investing me in the characters or other aspects of the show. But the Discovery characters largely existed to serve the plot, and the plot was ... not good.
This is definitely the pattern I've seen with people who don't like it.
Yep.
"This plot was stupid and forgettable! I hated it!"
"The plot of the other show you liked was stupid and forgettable, though..."
"Yeah, but I don't care about these characters at all!"
"You didn't care about half the characters on the other show you liked..."
"But... the writing is terrible!"
Well, suspension of disbelief is kind of key to enjoying fiction. At least dramatic fiction - since comedy is often based upon the unexpected happening, comedic fiction can get away with a lot of shit (breaking the fourth wall, out-of-place cultural references, etc) that drama cannot.
If you can't - whether through fault of the writer or your own personal foibles - sit back and turn off your critical thinking skills to enjoy the story being told, you're going to approach it not as a cohesive story, but a collection of events and dialogue constructed by the writers.
You know, I agree with a lot of the things you say about the show itself. But about the creators? Not so much.
The show's writing is a dumpster fire by any means - and the exact level of qualiy one can expect from Kurtzman and Goldsman doing a high-concept show. They're shitty storytellers. But they never intended to make bad Star Trek.
Here is the thing: Both Goldsman and Kurtzman say they love Trek. And I belive them! Wholeheartedly! I would even go so far as to say they probably even understand Star Trek pretty good.
You know why? I love Star Trek. I would even claim I understand Star Trek, and what makes it appealing to so many people. But you know what? I would utterly suck at writing a Star Trek show. I'm just not a good writer. I have many ideas for a good Star Trek show, and can clearly say what DIS so far does good, where it is lacking, and what can be done to improve it. But I would utterly FAIL if I had to write it myself.
Some writers/creators just can't do everything. Stanley Kubrick is one of the (if not THE) best filmmakers of all time. I bet he would totally suck doing a romantic comedy. I'm sure he knows what makes a good romantic comedy. And he might even be a big fan of romantic comedies (we know he LOVES Steven Spielberg's sentimentality, and one of his regrets is not being able to pull it off himself). He just wouldn't be a good fit to make a rom-com.
I'd argue the same holds true for Kurtzman and Goldsman. Kurtzman is a very compelling writer. He writes fast and snippy dialogue, and his output is extremely fast and reliable. But IMO he's just. not. capable. of telling an exploratory "science" story. He needs a clear antagonist-stopped-in-three-acts structure to write around. His writing is not so much logical, as emotional. He can write great character scenes. But he's (IMO) just utterly incapable of creating complex, intricate plots.
It's just not what he does best.
He's one of the best when it's about to bring a very standardized scene to live, to fill it with character and emotions. He just doesn't come up with good plot and scene structure himself. And sadly, that is exactly what is needed of a Star Trek show. Trek is, as all science fiction, at least if not even more about the plots than the characters. Especially if you don't have a clear badguy, it#s GOD DAMN FUCKING HARD to come up with a compelling central conflict in a weird, hard-to-understand high concept hypothetical scenario. Which is what science fiction, at it's core, often is. I know I can't do it. And I think the current showrunners can't do it either. They'd probably be very good to bring someone elses weird sci-fi idea to live with interesting character dynamics. But they can't come up with great story ideas themselves.
But there is no malevolence.
They 100% intend to do Star Trek justice. And they do so with a passion. And it's very visible they are deep fans of Star Trek, from their interviews, their amazingly fucking deep knowledge of Trek, and the things they say they love about the show. It just seems, they admire the one thing, and chose to DO the one thing, they are not very good at. That doesn't make them bad people. Not even incompetent ones. Just people that aren't a good fit for the job they are currently doing, and would be better doing a property that is more in their comfort zone.
I agree with almost everything you wrote wholeheartedly, with the exception of this.
I hate to bring up The Orville here, but the one thing that Seth McFarlane clearly has down cold is he's Trek fan who understands the appeal of the show, and 90% of what it takes to execute a Trek episode. The last 10% - the part he doesn't get - is how to do an original sci-fi concept. Which was (aside from the often incongruous attempts to inject humor) the main problem with Season 1 of The Orville - most of the plots heavily borrowed from episodes of TOS, TNG, DS9, etc.
I also don't think that intricate plotting is really needed in Trek. Some of the greatest Trek episodes are really simple, structurally speaking. The Inner Light doesn't have that much going on in terms of plot, for example, as it's all about character. Some excellent Trek episodes have a single twist at the end which causes you to reconsider everything, but this isn't required for every story.
However, having detailed and complex ploting is very much an element of "modern TV." Discovery backed itself into the corner it was in not because the writers didn't understand how to tell Trek stories, but because they decided to be far more ambitious in terms of storytelling than even DS9 attempted to be - and DS9 spent its first few years mostly as a warmup.
I guess suspension of disbelief works differently for me. I can sit down, watch the events and dialogue unfold and be fully engaged in the characters without turning off my critical thinking skills. I enjoy because of my critical thinking skills, not because *click* and they're off.
For me, I don't do mindless entertainment. I guess that's why accusations against the production team of mindless "pew-pew" bother me so much. There is little for me in the watching that makes stop thinking.
If it's bad writing, then it's bad writing, and I'm OK with that. I can accept that it is bad writing. Do I wish it was better? Of course, but I'm not going to sit there and act like I know exactly how I would make it better.
All the stuff that I know about Star Trek, it's history, the lore, the constant hours of reading books, that all informs me regarding Discovery, not just "Does it fit?" Because, well, that doesn't fit for me. It's taking Discovery, and really Star Trek, as it is, and not what I think it should be. Because, if it were up to me, TNG forward would vanish from existence all together. If I'm truly honest about it, I wouldn't even have TOS films. Just TOS and let it stand upon its own laurels.
Good thing I'm not in charge, right?
I guess suspension of disbelief works differently for me. I can sit down, watch the events and dialogue unfold and be fully engaged in the characters without turning off my critical thinking skills. I enjoy because of my critical thinking skills, not because *click* and they're off.
For me, I don't do mindless entertainment. I guess that's why accusations against the production team of mindless "pew-pew" bother me so much. There is little for me in the watching that makes stop thinking.
If it's bad writing, then it's bad writing, and I'm OK with that. I can accept that it is bad writing. Do I wish it was better? Of course, but I'm not going to sit there and act like I know exactly how I would make it better.
All the stuff that I know about Star Trek, it's history, the lore, the constant hours of reading books, that all informs me regarding Discovery, not just "Does it fit?" Because, well, that doesn't fit for me. It's taking Discovery, and really Star Trek, as it is, and not what I think it should be. Because, if it were up to me, TNG forward would vanish from existence all together. If I'm truly honest about it, I wouldn't even have TOS films. Just TOS and let it stand upon its own laurels.
Good thing I'm not in charge, right?
For me personally, if I'm truly engrossed in a work of fiction (which happens more with reading than watching movies or TV) it basically quiets down the internal voices. I just let the experience wash over me, and only really think about it after it's over. Almost as i a good book or movie is an act of meditation, and the self breaks down entirely. If I'm having internal monologue in the middle of it, chances are I'm losing interest.
I remember seeing The Blair Witch Project when I was in college. The beginning portion of the movie had me very heavily engrossed. Then, with about 15 mintues left in the movie, my bladder could hold out no longer, and I had to get up and take a piss. When I got back the movie was basically ruined. Just getting up and going to the bathroom "broke the spell" and I didn't feel any of the tension or fright the movie was supposed to be cultivating any longer. It just seemed silly.
Everyone is different.
But, personally, I loathe the whole "shut your brain" off garbage argument. No, my brain is fully engaged, taking it all in and being mindful of that full experience and how it all connects together.
Interesting. I can relate to this; it's pretty much how I experience entertainment, even when it's thoroughly immersive. There's basically no experience in life for which I do turn off my critical thinking skills; they're an essential part of who I am. It's definitely not a meditative experience, like Eschaton describes (FWIW I suck at meditating).
The thing is, that means I generally prefer works that live up to and provoke and reward that kind of critical thinking. Which is why...
..this is where you lose me. I just don't see how this follows from the sensibility you describe.
Yeah, I'm mostly inclined to agree with you here. Some of it is fun, but very little of it actually adds anything to what Star Trek is.
(Like I commented to someone else in (I think) a different thread: consider Sherlock Holmes, about as close to an immortal fictional creation as you can get. His canon is fixed — 56 short stories and four novels — and it will never grow. Everything else beyond that is an adaptation or a pastiche. And that's fine; the original Holmes canon is more than enough to keep the character engaging for generations of readers.)
I can find a reward in almost anything. I don't need it to "live up to" some standard to provoke and reward my investment.
Actually, now that I think about it, I don't need a reward for watching something at all. I can think deeply about just about anything if I choose.
I think - from what I read from their interviews - is that they understand Star Trek pretty well. In fact, Akiva Goldsman's favourite TOS episode - the menagerie - also happens to be mine, and for almost similar reasons. There's a GREAT article about the writers talking abour their favourite TOS episodes, I man, I mean it, they understand TOS:
(https://www.cbs.com/shows/star-trek...rs-pick-their-favorite-classic-trek-episodes/)
The problem is, they aren't that great at recreating what makes Star Trek work. That's in part, because it can't be recreated. It's not the 90s anymore. Television isn't that episodic anymore, and so far EVERY serialized threat on Trek has been about a clear enemy - the Dominion, the Xindi. But Trek doesn't live by that, in fact Trek lives by most plots not featuring clear and obvious Hollywood-type villains. But having an ongoing arc on Star Trek, without relying on a major villain, simply has never been done before. And now they HAVE TO do that, or else Trek will immediately become repetitive again and die as a franchise again. But it's uncharted territory, and I'm not sure Kurtzman and Goldsman are the people to pull it off.
It probably didn't came across as I intended: I don't mean Star Trek needs complicated plots, it needs complex ones. That aren't clear cut and easily solvable, but still get (somewhat) solved at the end of each episode. That is fucking HARD to accomplish.
The main problem is, every story needs CONFLICT to be a "story" and move the plot along. The "complex" part now is to create a "conflict", without having an enemy. In the past, Star Trek has done that often via different viewpoints: Aliens have abducted a human child and raised them as one of their own, now they should give him back, but the child doesn't want to go back, instead stay with his "new" people. So what to do now? This is an example from a TNG episode. It's a fucking NIGHTMARE to make that into a compelling "story", where each scene changes the situation and moves the plot along. If the final result is a pretty straightforward, "simple" episode, with a clear cut beginning, middle and end, it's a masterpiece of complex story writing. And the final result still might come across as somewhat "bland". Having a clear badguy immediately gives an episode a narrative. But that's why Star Trek has become so repetitive over the years: Suddenly, every single episode needed to have a badguy. And that became not just also boring, but uncreative as well.
I wouldn't say so much. Season 3 of Enterprise was a complete story of it's own, almost completely seperated from what came before. It was much more complex, had a LOT more dangling plot threads at the same time, multiple recurring themes and plotlines, ranging from various political fractions in badguys that were a completely new introduction, to space anomalies and freaking TIME TRAVEL being part of the pre-planned plotline. And it STILL came across as a lot smoother nonetheless.
I think the main problem of DIS was not having clear character developments planned out in advance. In the Dominion war arc, each character was put in a situation they weren't used to - the action guy Sisko needing to plan from behind a desk, the resistance fighter Kira becoming a collaborateur with the enemy, the loner Odo dealing with his people. On ENT season 3 every character also had a clear and obvious storyline and development they went through: Archer struggling with "leading" in the face of unclear and morally ambigous situations, Trip dealing with the trauma of the death of his sister, learning to cope and forgive, even in the face of the "enemy", T'Pol becoming more human-like, struggling with addiction, emotions, and the limits of logic.
The only character development we saw in DIS season 1 was of Burnham, and that wasn't so much a clear redemption arc, as just a collection of scenes. She didn't came across as "learning", because from episode 3 onwards she ALWAYS made the right choice - just with a lower rank. And NONE of the other characters had anything resemling a personal storyarc, let alone clear character development. Season 1 purely lived with the plot, dangling from one shocking twist to another, but losing steam and integrity on the way, until it all ended in utter schlock, a handheld bomb threatening the homeworld of the enemy, and throwing all logic and internal plot consitencyout of the way (Hey! Why didn't TKuvma tried to unite all klingon houses by holding the homeplanet hostage? Seems a surprisingly easy and effective way!).
What they need for season 2 is a more concrete vision of what to do with each of the characters. So that they need fewer plot twists, and we come back to see were the characters go, and thus they can have a more well-rounded story-arc that only has one or two major twists, which then in turn actually MEAN something.
I'm not, either. I'm equally unsure about Ted Sullivan, and Berg and Harberts, and the rest of the less-senior people in the writing room, but Kurtzman and Goldsman are the easiest to evaluate based on their writing track records.
It's a challenge, sure, but IMHO not as arduous a challenge as you make it out to be. Seems to me that any reasonably talented professional writer should be able to pull it off, and come up with story-driving conflicts that don't involve a "villain." Just look at the real-world news, where clear-cut villains are in short supply, but conflict definitely isn't. It could be a conflict over priorities, or over values, or over political principles, or over resources. It could be a challenge against nature. It could be a mystery to figure out, a discovery to make, a secret to keep, a problem to solve.
It's not as if examples are in short supply in fiction, either. Consider Asimov's robot stories... they almost never involve a villain. Or outside of SF, take Sherlock Holmes... relatively few of his mysteries involved a villain to be defeated. Look at classic movies, SF and otherwise —there's no end of them (indeed I'd say a majority) that aren't about defeating a villain, from Pulp Fiction to Back to the Future to Blade Runner to Close Encounters to Chinatown to Butch Cassidy to The Graduate to To Kill A Mockingbird to Spartacus to West Side Story to 12 Angry Men to On The Waterfront to It's A Wonderful Life to Casablanca to His Girl Friday and I'm just spitballing here, I could go on at length, but the point is none of them are lacking in conflict.
Bring it home, look at other examples of quality TV. Babylon 5 and Lost and nuBSG were serialized, but weren't about defeating "bad guys"; instead they featured conflicts from multiple viewpoints, with audience loyalties often shifting as the shows evolved. (Okay, those last two really dipped in their final seasons, but that's another issue.) Same goes for Game of Thrones. Or The Wire. Or Rome. Or heck, consider an earlier era of TV: M*A*S*H managed to transcend the genre boundaries of a comedy and involved downright compelling drama, without ever having a villain. And to circle it back to SF, there's the original Twilight Zone, the exact opposite of serialization, yes, but telling memorable mind-bending stories involving every kind of conflict and hardly ever a villain in sight.
The thing about Star Trek, as you've pointed out upthread, is that it was ingeniously conceived to be able to tell almost any kind of story, in any genre, within an SF framework. It's almost a stealth anthology show, but with continuing characters. A more serialized storytelling format shouldn't interfere with that. TOS season one involved maybe ten episodes at most that were about defeating "villains," and that's if you count the Romulans, the Gorn, and Harry Mudd, none of whom had typical villainous motivations.
A thought experiment: what if one were to remake season one of TOS, in a serialized format? How would one go about it, storywise? I'd imagine you'd take maybe a half-dozen or so of the best stories, and figure out how to weave them together. Let's say "The Naked Time," "Balance of Terror," "Conscience of the King," "Devil in the Dark," "Errand of Mercy," and "City." Lots of thematic comparisons and contrasts to play with: a couple of those are in-depth character-background pieces (including both stories with Kevin Riley); a couple involve serious ethical dilemmas ("Conscience" and "Devil"); a couple introduce major enemy powers (and draw a clear contrast between them); a couple touch on the dangers of remote space outposts (one for research, one for mining); and "City" is really in a class by itself, but (like "Naked Time") underscores Kirk's dedication to his ship and his mission above all personal considerations. Intersperse a little foreshadowing for some of those (e.g., about events around the Neutral Zone, or rising tensions with the Klingons, or Kirk's personal history on Tarsus IV), spread across multiple episodes. Turn a couple of them into two-parters. Play out Spock's developing friendship with Kirk over the whole span. And boom, you've got a season there!... and a much more coherent one than we got from DSC. No "big bad" necessary.
Yeah, that finale still really throws me for a loop. It certainly undermined any pretense of showing respect for Klingons as a culture. In literally any other story (certainly any story set on Earth!), a character who attempted to unify all the world's governments under his/her personal control by threatening to blow up the planet would (unquestionably!) be the villain of the piece, and all the protagonists would be devoting their efforts to defeating this person. In this story, L'rell did exactly that with the help of our protagonists, and everyone went along with it, and it was treated as some sort of happy ending.
That wouldn't be a solution in itself, but it would certainly help. We can only hope.
Ending a war? Yeah, I'd be happy about that, even if I don't like the means.Yeah, that finale still really throws me for a loop. It certainly undermined any pretense of showing respect for Klingons as a culture. In literally any other story (certainly any story set on Earth!), a character who attempted to unify all the world's governments under his/her personal control by threatening to blow up the planet would (unquestionably!) be the villain of the piece, and all the protagonists would be devoting their efforts to defeating this person. In this story, L'rell did exactly that with the help of our protagonists, and everyone went along with it, and it was treated as some sort of happy ending.
Secondly, and maybe this is just me, but "respect for Klingon culture" hasn't seemed present to me since "Barge of the Dead" with a small dose in "Into Darkness." Again, just me, but I felt ENT's handling of Klingons was "meh" at best.
Oh, I agree that the Klingons have been treated as more of a plot device than a legitimately credible culture for a long time. I'm just saying that DSC promised to do better than that, to explore them in greater depth — and then completely bailed on that.
As for ending a war... it's easy for everyone to agree on that as an objective. The means are what the storytelling (and the dramatic conflict) are all about. Or should be. In this case I don't even find the means plausible, because there's just no way any other self-respecting Klingon houses would have knuckled under to L'rell's (unverifiable) extortionate demands. To them, at least, she very much would have been the villain.
As for ending a war... it's easy for everyone to agree on that as an objective. The means are what the storytelling (and the dramatic conflict) are all about. Or should be. In this case I don't even find the means plausible, because there's just no way any other self-respecting Klingon houses would have knuckled under to L'rell's (unverifiable) extortionate demands. To them, at least, she very much would have been the villain.