The Dismal Frontier (Thinkpiece on Discovery, Star Trek and Utopian Science Fiction)

[SpocksOddSocks]

I disagree with the article, and feel Disco does have a place. One of Lorca's line about poverty and hunger making a comeback give discovery it's place. Showing that the TNG era ideals had already started to surface in the Federation, but had a setback due to the war. It was tested, and then ended up in the "not quite there yet" state we see in TOS.

 

[BillJ]

One of Lorca's line about poverty and hunger making a comeback give discovery it's place.

Maybe? If we had actually seen it and it had a place in the story. A one-off line does not mean it has anything meaningful to say on the subject.

 

[nightwind1]

Bad as fans think it was, TNG's first year was massively more successful and creative than STD's.

NOPE...

 

[Christopher]

I disagree with the article, and feel Disco does have a place. One of Lorca's line about poverty and hunger making a comeback give discovery it's place. Showing that the TNG era ideals had already started to surface in the Federation, but had a setback due to the war. It was tested, and then ended up in the "not quite there yet" state we see in TOS.

How is the elimination of poverty and hunger not a TOS-era value? Just because they hadn't gone full moneyless yet, that doesn't mean they were tolerant of poverty. The fact that people were paid in credits is consistent with a sort of universal basic income system where everyone is allocated a certain minimum amount to live on, at least.

Kirk told the Organians in "Errand of Mercy" that the Federation could teach them how to end hunger and "feed a thousand people where one was fed before." That could've been propaganda to win them over, but it suggests that the UFP had solved the problems of hunger and want.

 

[Vger23]

As I've been saying, anyone who thinks Discovery isn't respecting Trek's values must've stopped watching pretty early. The heroes' commitment to Trek's values is what saves the day over and over, from Burnham and Saru's refusal to continue torturing the tardigrade to Saru convincing L'Rell to save Voq to Tilly showing kindness and acceptance to Tyler/Voq to Burnham trusting L'Rell to make peace. The whole season's recurring arc is about the Starfleet heroes refusing to compromise their values despite all pressures to do so.




And DSC gives us the first canonically gay series regular and onscreen same-sex romance in Trek, as well as the first black female lead and probably the first Asian female starship captain. It also made a point of portraying the Terran Empire's evil specifically in terms of genocidal racism, more so than any prior production has done. It's also got an unprecedentedly diverse (for Trek) writing and production staff behind the scenes.




And DSC shows the crew forgiving Tyler for his crimes and accepting that he's not to blame for them, rather than giving in to vengeful feelings.




And DSC shows Burnham, Saru, and Stamets coming to recognize the sentience and innocence of the horrifying, deadly "tardigrade" creature, as well as learning to overcome their fear and prejudice toward Klingons and reach out to make peace with them.

As always, though, people have already staked out their positions for "not liking" the show...so they are not going to see or acknowledge any of this.

And S2, which I suspect will be completely different in terms of tone and story arc, will be no different.

 

[Groppler Zorn]

presumably because its writers assumed that you'd have to invent warp drive to make contact with alien life. Which I've always thought was silly, because there's such a thing as SETI and radio telescopes.

I always imagined an episode where they find an unmanned probe near an inhabited system where they weren’t warp capable. The probe has detected the starfleet ship and is programmed to send that information back to the home world. The crew (whichever one it doesn’t matter) then has an ethical dilemma of whether to destroy or erase the probe or to initiate contact. There’s the additional complication of the probe also having detected a Klingon / romulan / cardassian /hirogen* ship and the enemy is on their way to colonise the primitive planet (*delete as appropriate). Star Trek ensues.

I will never knock Sir Stewart's performance

Me neither I was just joking around that is a terribly awkward scene though!

who shot his own clone (or time loop version) to prove a point.

Haha this is so true! Picard was always weird about clones - he rammed the Enterprise-E into his other clone’s ship to prove a point a few years later too...

 

[Jadeb]

As I've been saying, anyone who thinks Discovery isn't respecting Trek's values must've stopped watching pretty early. The heroes' commitment to Trek's values is what saves the day over and over, from Burnham and Saru's refusal to continue torturing the tardigrade to Saru convincing L'Rell to save Voq to Tilly showing kindness and acceptance to Tyler/Voq to Burnham trusting L'Rell to make peace. The whole season's recurring arc is about the Starfleet heroes refusing to compromise their values despite all pressures to do so.

Yeah, I'm with you on this. Their heart was in the right place. The point of the exercise was clearly to affirm the Traditional Trek Values, but I don't think they did it very well. Partly that was due to some major storytelling problems -- like the bizarre decision to make the finale a choice between genocide and, well, that unfortunate business they gave us. But I also think part of the problem is the setting. If they want to show how the Federation reached enlightenment, as they've said, setting the show so close to TOS is an odd choice. Change is gradual and often painfully slow -- even at the personal level. Part of the genius of TOS is that it didn't try to explain how humanity had much such great strides in so little time. Instead, it just promised we'd get there. That was the key point: Eventually, we'll get there. The people of the future are still fallible, the show showed us, but they will be better and try to do better. That's all Discovery needed, IMO.

At a broader level, I think the writing is really weighed down by focusing on uber-fannish concerns like "demonstrating the Federation's values." They don't need to make everything fit tidily into the existing Trek paradigm by the end of each season. Lorca, for example, would have been fantastic as a conflicted human making difficult choices. We could have eight years with that character as a slow burn, with a tremendous payoff at the end. But, no, he's not really complex, he's a cartoon. That's what I find so frustrating about the show: In the era of prestige television, we could have that sort of nuance, yet it remains out of reach. Discovery is the first Trek series ever to have the luxury of time, but they're still writing it like Captain Kirk needs to deliver the moral before the final commercial.

 

[Christopher]

Lorca, for example, would have been fantastic as a conflicted human making difficult choices. We could have eight years with that character as a slow burn, with a tremendous payoff at the end. But, no, he's not really complex, he's a cartoon.

I agree the show could use more nuance, but I don't think the current era calls for that kind of morally ambiguous protagonist. This is a time when standing up for clear, unambiguous morals like inclusiveness and compassion is more important than it's been in decades.

Besides, some people seem to forget that this isn't Lorca's show, it's Burnham's. If there's to be a character struggling with difficult choices, make it Burnham. Or make it Saru, the breakout character.

 

[eschaton]

Yeah, I'm with you on this. Their heart was in the right place. The point of the exercise was clearly to affirm the Traditional Trek Values, but I don't think they did it very well. Partly that was due to some major storytelling problems -- like the bizarre decision to make the finale a choice between genocide and, well, that unfortunate business they gave us. But I also think part of the problem is the setting. If they want to show how the Federation reached enlightenment, as they've said, setting the show so close to TOS is an odd choice. Change is gradual and often painfully slow -- even at the personal level. Part of the genius of TOS is that it didn't try to explain how humanity had much such great strides in so little time. Instead, it just promised we'd get there. That was the key point: Eventually, we'll get there. The people of the future are still fallible, the show showed us, but they will be better and try to do better. That's all Discovery needed, IMO.

At a broader level, I think the writing is really weighed down by focusing on uber-fannish concerns like "demonstrating the Federation's values." They don't need to make everything fit tidily into the existing Trek paradigm by the end of each season. Lorca, for example, would have been fantastic as a conflicted human making difficult choices. We could have eight years with that character as a slow burn, with a tremendous payoff at the end. But, no, he's not really complex, he's a cartoon. That's what I find so frustrating about the show: In the era of prestige television, we could have that sort of nuance, yet it remains out of reach. Discovery is the first Trek series ever to have the luxury of time, but they're still writing it like Captain Kirk needs to deliver the moral before the final commercial.

Yeah, I don't think that the showrunners attempted to consciously shit on the Trek legacy or anything. I just think that - on a fundamental level - they don't seem to understand it. Or they were left in such a lurch by Fuller leaving that they just tried to write their way out of the corner they plotted themselves into, and didn't think about the big picture enough.

Honestly, writing Trek is probably harder than normal writing. You have the typical concerns about writing a plot that makes logical sense and characters which are compelling and consistent. Then you also need to make sure your story hews to canon. Finally you need keep to the historic "spirit" of Trek in mind, whether you decide to uphold it or partially deconstruct it.

 

[Jadeb]

I agree the show could use more nuance, but I don't think the current era calls for that kind of morally ambiguous protagonist. This is a time when standing up for clear, unambiguous morals like inclusiveness and compassion is more important than it's been in decades.

Besides, some people seem to forget that this isn't Lorca's show, it's Burnham's. If there's to be a character struggling with difficult choices, make it Burnham. Or make it Saru, the breakout character.

Yeah, I don't want a show just about Lorca. He's just an example. I'd like all the characters to be presented in that sophisticated a fashion, a la Mad Men. I'm so frustrated by Burnham because I still have no real sense of her as a character. Turns out she was there to deliver the important Star Trek speech at the end. She's less a character than a chess piece. That's a real disservice to SMG.

And the show doesn't need to abandon its morality, I don't think. We can still have those moments during the journey, with some characters better than others and helping others to become better. That's what I'd like to see, anyway.

If we're going to do old-school Trek, where the world is black-and-white, no need to dress it up in Discovery's new clothes. Right now, they're telling us this is sophisticated, modern TV, but the writing doesn't back that up. That's offputting both to fans who want the old, comfortable Star Trek and to newcomers who expect that today's prestige TV won't be written in the heavy-handed Star Trek fashion.

 

[Christopher]

If we're going to do old-school Trek, where the world is black-and-white

I don't think that's fair to TOS. There was a fair amount of moral ambiguity there. An episode where the hero has to let a good, saintly person and the love of his life die in order to save the world is plenty ambiguous, as is an episode where he has to trap an innocent culture into an escalating arms race to protect them from extermination. And several episodes, like "Devil in the Dark" and "Arena," were about the characters discovering that they had actually been the ones in the wrong and that the monsters they were fighting were defending themselves. (I love both those Gene Coon episodes, but frankly, they're the exact same plot twice in one season.)

 

[eschaton]

Yeah, I don't want a show just about Lorca. He's just an example. I'd like all the characters to be presented in that sophisticated a fashion, a la Mad Men. I'm so frustrated by Burnham because I still have no real sense of her as a character. Turns out she was there to deliver the important Star Trek speech at the end. She's less a character than a chess piece. That's a real disservice to SMG.

Indeed. One of the strangest things about DIS by far is that it didn't provide the modern, character-based storytelling that was promised. Characterization veers widely between episodes based upon the needs of the plot. Sometimes Burnham is stoic, sometimes she's crying. Sometimes Tilly's akward, sometimes she's a bubbly social butterfly. Sometimes Stamets is grieving over Culber, other times he's oohing and ahhing about teching the tech to make the spore drive work. I mean, maybe it was too much to expect the level of character focus of say DS9, but I really feel like even after the first season of say Enterprise I could have written a short bio on each of the main characters with more detail than for the DIS cast.

 

[Jadeb]

I don't think that's fair to TOS. There was a fair amount of moral ambiguity there. An episode where the hero has to let a good, saintly person and the love of his life die in order to save the world is plenty ambiguous, as is an episode where he has to trap an innocent culture into an escalating arms race to protect them from extermination. And several episodes, like "Devil in the Dark" and "Arena," were about the characters discovering that they had actually been the ones in the wrong and that the monsters they were fighting were defending themselves. (I love both those Gene Coon episodes, but frankly, they're the exact same plot twice in one season.)

TOS is the Trek I love most, so I agree. I should amend my wording. I don't mean that the TOS "world" is black-and-white, but that it often draws sharp distinctions between "good" and "bad." There are heroes and villains, as you would expect from a show of its era. But even by those standards, it was much more sophisticated than most of what was on TV then. I'd like to see Discovery pick up that flag and carry it.

 

[Mudd]

As I've been saying, anyone who thinks Discovery isn't respecting Trek's values must've stopped watching pretty early. .

Sorry,but Nope. I watched half the season including the finale. Everything being said about the show's general disregard and disinterest in "Trek's values" - well, in a lot of basic humane values - is dead-on accurate.

 

[BillJ]

Sorry,but Nope. I watched half the season including the finale. Everything being said about the show's general disregard and disinterest in "Trek's values" - well, in a lot of basic humane values - is dead-on accurate.

But they had a line about food and hunger! Surely that covers everything!

 

[fireproof78]

Indeed. One of the strangest things about DIS by far is that it didn't provide the modern, character-based storytelling that was promised. Characterization veers widely between episodes based upon the needs of the plot. Sometimes Burnham is stoic, sometimes she's crying. Sometimes Tilly's akward, sometimes she's a bubbly social butterfly. Sometimes Stamets is grieving over Culber, other times he's oohing and ahhing about techning the tech to make the spore drive work. I mean, maybe it was too much to expect the level of character focus of say DS9, but I really feel like even after the first season of say Enterprise I could have written a short bio on each of the main characters with more detail than for the DIS cast.

Since I've met people like the crew, I guess I don't struggle as much.

But they had a line about food and hunger! Surely that covers everything!

Fans have made bigger deals over smaller lines.

 

[eschaton]

Since I've met people like the crew, I guess I don't struggle as much.

Real people also talk with a lot of ums and uhs. And we get to see our friends, family, and acquaintances way, way more than we do characters in media. For this reason to some extent any depiction of a character has to be considered to be intentional - emblematic of their normal behavior, and not just an "off day." Unless, of course, the "off day" is a part of the plot.

 

[fireproof78]

Real people also talk with a lot of ums and uhs. And we get to see our friends, family, and acquaintances way, way more than we do characters in media. For this reason to some extent any depiction of a character has to be considered to be intentional - emblematic of their normal behavior, and not just an "off day." Unless, of course, the "off day" is a part of the plot.

Sure, I think it's intentional. I think that it reflects a little more of a real world dynamic, even with the variation in mood from situation to situation. Individuals do not respond the same way in each situation.

 

[AlanC9]

Maybe? If we had actually seen it and it had a place in the story. A one-off line does not mean it has anything meaningful to say on the subject.

What does "meaningful" mean in this context? Beyond establishing that they're still possible things in the setting, which the speech does well enough for me, what else would you have wanted?

 

[AlanC9]

Sorry,but Nope. I watched half the season including the finale. Everything being said about the show's general disregard and disinterest in "Trek's values" - well, in a lot of basic humane values - is dead-on accurate.

I don't see it. Which is OK as long as neither of us is trying to pass off his personal perception as objective fact.