It seems there is a reason for the visual reboot and the producers aren't being honest about it.

By "build on what came before" I am also including building on what the show establishes. Look at DS9. There were some weak attempts in the first season to cash in on the TNG fanbase (a Q episode, the Duras sisters, etc). That ended pretty quickly, but as the show became more serialized, more and more plots were predicated on either earlier episodes, or at least the character development that earlier episodes allowed for. While it was never fully serialized, by Season 7, every single episode was at least partially, if not entirely, predicated by events which happened earlier in the series.

VOY and ENT (in the first two seasons at least) failed in large part because of the use of the "reset button" meant not only was there no real drama, but also that rather than follow up earlier stories, the writers had to go back to the well repeatedly, basically reinventing the wheel each time with a new wacky sci-fi concept to put the crew into. This is an insane way to do things, because the conflict that really drives stories comes from character, and without dynamic and growing characters, you're either going to be writing the same story over and over, writing your leads inconsistently, or scratching your head trying to find some completely off-the-wall new scenario to stick them in.

DIS is serialized, so it doesn't need to fall into this trap. But I really got the feeling at the end of the season that the writers were basically saying "sorry, forget all this, LOL!" Even with my dislike of the tortured plot logic of DIS, it's better they work with what they have created than discard it and have a soft reboot.

 

I think you don't exactly know what Star Wars "story group" actually is: They are NOT the writers. They are - so to speak - just the "keepers of canon". Which is probably not even their full-time job. Much like other producers, they are simply a desk the scripts go through. Then they ceck for continuity issues. And report those back. But they don't actually have any authority. The real writers, producers and directors are free to ignore them. They are just there, so that it gets NOTICED by the creators if there is an continuity issue, without the writers actually being the ones that have to be 100% familiar with ALL of the lore. And - simply by virtue of having those connections - they can also give ideas to the writers. But the people actually writing the stuff, and those checking for the details of continuity, are actually two different sets of people.

IMO Star Trek should do the same. I don't know. Maybe they even have. But it wouldn't hurt to have someone, who is not a writer, to check the scripts for accuracy.

In fact: DOES DISCOVERY AT THIS POINT ACTUALLY HAS A SCIENCE ADVISOR?? IF NOT, THAT CONTINUES TO MAKE ME ANGRY! And I'm not meaning a mycologist they can talk about mushrooms with. But I mean just a general physics/chemicist scientist, that actually knows this stuff. Because the errors in this regard have been embarrasing so far.

DIS really needs some people checking their ideas and scripts: science advisors, and continuity people. Not as a someone with the power to actually change things. But that the creators are at leas aware that they are making mistakes! That so far both spots aren't filled is honestly an embarrasement.

 

THIS! 100%
It's one of the reason, after the Kelvin movies came out, so many people said "Trek belongs on tv". Because Star Trek IS variety in storytelling. And HAS to be to survive. That they chose to instead tell one, single, action blockbuster movie storyline stretching it out over the course of 15 episode was IMO a gross miscalculation.

Serialized storytelling is great. And Trek needs to do it, at least with the character stuff, but having some ongoing plot threads doesn't hurt either. But they HAVE to include some more variety in the "filler" episodes/sideplots of their main storyarc. It becomes all very mushy if they don't start with that now.

 

Star Trek is like kind of like The White House.

TOS --> Building of the White House was finished in 1800. There were two stories.

TMP --> Everything but the stone wall exterior was burnt down in 1814 during The War of 1812, leaving the White House gutted. The entire interior had to be rebuilt. It was finished in 1817.

TNG/DS9/VOY --> A third floor and two additional wings (three new additions, three new series) were added to The White House in the Early-20th Century. The third floor added stress to the foundations of the White House which weren't built with three stories in mind. By 1949, the interior of the White House was falling apart. The interior was beginning to break away from the walls, the foundation was starting to sink, and the floors were becoming extremely wobbly.

ENT/DSC --> The Truman Reconstruction of the The White House began and lasted from 1949 to 1952. The entire interior of the White House was gutted and two sub-levels (prequels) were added while a new steel support-structure was added so there would now be a stronger foundation where there wasn't one before. While the first two floors were reconstructed to resemble the previous interiors as much as possible, everything was modernized. So the new White House is not the original White House but a reconstructed facsimile, except for the exterior.

My mind goes in strange places.

 

Well, they're doing neither.

 

Eh. I think it's 1005 okay to overrule those guys. The same way the science advisors usually gets ignored when the actual correct science would be in the way of an interesting plot.

It's just good to actually have those guys in the first place - so that you can avoid it when possible, and if not, at least be aware of and maybe even adress it in some form or way. Ignorance is no solution there, really.

 

But if these "advisors" can get ignored by the writers and don't have the authority to enforce the things they are advising, what's the point of them? The money spent paying them can be spent better elsewhere, and I'm sure there are more important things those people could be doing.

Doctor Who has been around fifty years and gets by just fine without a continuity advisor, or indeed any kind of reverence for continuity or canon. One of the franchise's most renowned producers has been quoted saying "continuity is only whatever I can remember on any given day."

 

1. Dr. Who is a time-travel story, that continually starts to overwrite it's own history. They have the changing backstories built in their premise. Star Trek has not.

2. Even Dr. Who has a proper science advisor, and always had. And it shows. They still do grossly unscientific shit - because it's fun and entertaining - but they (often) get the science shit in the background right, the one that isn't plot relevant. DIS does not. It's really embarrasing to be out-scienced by Dr. Who by the way...

 

Actually, the classic era was not really about time travel per se. Sure they traveled in time, but the show didn't do temporal paradoxes, timeline changes and all that. That's more of a recent addition, largely specific to the Steven Moffat era of 2010-2017. The quote I provided came from Terence Dicks, producer back in the early 1970s. Indeed, he ran the show during the Third Doctor's run, which actually was the period the show had the least amount of time travel. Hell, that era was largely set in contemporary times.

A completely false statement.

 

They had science advisors since the Hartnell era...
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Science_advisor

Star Trek was usually better about giving them screen credit though. Which makes the lack of one on Discovery extra embarrassing.

 

Well, no. There are only three mentioned in that link. Kit Peddler was an actual writer who had a scientific background. Of the other two, one was an actual writer's brother and provided him consultation, and the other was actually an advisor for Torchwood.

 

They’re a second opinion

 

Some of their advise might not be practical from a story, technological or financial perspective. The producers and writers have to factor that in as well.

 

I mean, all of this legal hullabaloo is really immaterial. They were never going to use 50 year old Atomic Age designs in a modern scifi show, anyway. Discovery would have looked as it does legal issues or not.

 

Instead, they used a 42-year-old design ... from the reject pile!

 

Basically, the equivalent of the consulting role De Forest Research provided for TOS way back in the day.

(Although if things only get reviewed at the script level, something like the "100 AUs" snafu would still get through...)

 

RE: Scientific advisers

If it is anything like historical advisers, I'm skeptical at their actual usefulness:

The joyous bits feel fleeting, and the body horror is annoying, distracting and unnecessary. I don't see it as grimdark, but I certainly don't feel that it is as optimistic as much of other Trek.

Also, it certainly doesn't need to be the gold standard by which all Trek films are compared.

 

IIRC you're a big fan of ENT Season 3. While there were a lot of things I didn't like about that arc, one thing I did like was despite it being serialized, they found a way to work in different genres, including straight up western (North Star) and horror (Impulse). It shows that you can have serialization which moves along a greater plot and yet still have the episodes differ in terms of things like tone, themes, and execution.

 

Yep.

Keep the fucking nerds as far away from the writers as possible.