“Jean-Luc Picard is back”: will new Picard show eclipse Discovery?

[jaime]

This would be accurate if the measure of good writing was perpetually strict prefabricated characters.

It’s one of them. As is not splurging the intricate backstory a writer has worked out all onto the page at the beginning. Think of Rowling and Tolkien...the backstories were all well and truly worked out, but they unfolded a bit at a time. Strider...he’s just a mystery man, friend of Gandalf in the pub. He doesn’t rock up in full Returning King Aragorn mode, we don’t get all his history in day one.
Harry Potter? We get quite a bit for him, but in the beginning it’s just ‘orphaned by evil wizard, world of magic’.
Worldbuilding happens off the page and on. And in TV, sometimes that stuff gets changed before it hits the screen...look at Jeri Taylor and her Pathways book for Voyager. Look at the TNG writers bible.
Yes. Making a character well is part of the game.
Prefabricated?
Part of the problem is how much of Burnham is made from characters we already know, just stuck in a blender.

 

[jaime]

Explain what you mean by "nothing but backstory".

Ah in other words, Burnham was the show's main protagonist. Yeah, in Trek shows and others, that sometimes means that character gets most of the attention. I think this is once again, a case of forgetting that in DSC, the captain isn't the main character.

So perhaps seeing what would usually be a secondary character (the ship's first officer), get most of the backstory, the kind of diverse background usually reserved for the captain character, makes it seem like it's too many backstories. I'm going to start calling this "Lord Garth Syndrome", since he was the first to diagnose it. BTW, you didn't explain why "too many" backstories is a problem.

They dropped NONE of Burnham's backstory. Which parts do you think were dropped?

Burnham's "trauma" from the Klingon attacks had been resolved at some point prior to her joining the Disco crew. It was not a factor during the season. Also, I think she acted as Vulcan-like at the end of the season as she did from when we see her and Georgiou together at the start of the pilot. However, spending so much time with humans (again), no doubt had an affect on her as we've seen it have on half Vulcans and full Vulcans like, Spock, T'Pol, and Tuvok.

Well, IMO, as to when Burnham became a fully fleshed out, fully realized character, I would only disagree with you as to when it happened. I saw the character this way by the end of the third episode. That it didn't happen for you until season's end is not that big a deal. At least it happened in the first season. Some shows take much longer to get even their main character to this point.

No character in Trek history had this much backstory exposited on screen before. It was all shown or added a bit at a time. This wouldn’t be a problem, but in Burnham case, she is surrounded by characters who get almost zero backstory shown. Some of them don’t hav names. We get a fair chunk for Lorca, but guess what? Some of it isn’t his (relationship with Cornwell) and most of it is spread over the episodes. We get literally three things for Stamets (he was a lab worker, how he met his boyfriend, his working with the other guy on the Glenn.). Tilly gets what...two or three details? (Mum don’t like her hair, she doesn’t get on with mum, she went through a band boy fancier phase...I can’t believe how terrible this is as I write it down.)
It’s uneven, and something they need to fix up, because it’s detrimental to the show I think.

 

[Rahul]

Explain what you mean by "nothing but backstory".

Backstory is something that needs to be carefully sprinkled out over the course of the real story.
This is one of the hardest challenges as a writer, and even the best writers can be hit or miss in this regard. But the point is, the important part in a story is the actual story itself, not what happened before or afterwards. Those can (and should!) have a profound influence in where the story goes, but it can't replace the story itself.

In actual terms what that means - we get to know Burnham by seeing her making decisions. That's what her character is. Everything else - they WHY she made certain decisions - is not as important as the decision itself.

In the pilot episode, we saw Burnham make a decision exactly once. Her mutiny. Which actually wasn't really well informed by her backstory, and it wasn't made clear why or how she actually came to this decision. It was treated as a plot point, a cliffhanger, to shock the audience. Not a character moment. Apart from that, everything else she did was by-the-books Starfleet stuff, like her spacewalk, something that literally any other Trek character would have done the exact same way.

The problem DIS had was that they replaced character decisions with giving us backstories about that character. Which amounted to a MASSIVE infodump instead of a character story. A big exposition pile, where we were told lots and lots of different things, but never actually witnessed anything firsthand. It only happened later in the series, when Brunham was faced with decision in various situations - how to treat other people, klingons, Tyler, handle situations, going undercover, the way she apporaches situations etc. - that she was given an actual character, instead of a wikipedia sheeet of stuff that has happened to her before the show started.

 

[CorporalClegg]

The problem is not "a" backstory. The problem is nothing but backstory.
When she was introduced, she had the backstory of Tom Paris, Seven of Nine and Worf all combined.

Two of those are redundant. The third came to pass over the course of the show and is therefore - by definition - not backstory.

And SMG had (justifiably) absolutely no idea how to play that - she tried the Vulcan-like emotional distant outsider, that also is completely in emotional turmoil and doing completely unhinged gut-decisions (logically!).

She knew exactly how to play it and did so excellent. This is a clear case of the actor having a much better fundamental grasp of her character than someone on the interwebz.

The flashback scene where she was introduced to the Shenzhou in that Vulcan haircut the first time felt like some of the worst fan films out there.

It looked ridiculous because it was supposed to look ridiculous in that "silly things kids do to impress their parents" way. She was trying really really hard to be Vulcan, but take one look at her and she she clearly isn't.

What happened during the run of season 1 was that the creators simply dropped half of her backstory - her acting like a Vulcan - gone

She stopped acting Vulcan because she realized she wasn't Vulcan. She acted in a way she thought only true Vulcans -- or her father -- acted and got tossed in the slammer for it.

Then her surrogate father, who is personified by qualities inhibited by only the "truest" of humans betrays her. In the end she realizes the only way she needs to act is in away that's true to her self.

It's not that during the season we got to know her character better. It's that they needed the entire season for her to actually become a character in the first place.

Yes. It's her journey.

Backstory is something that needs to be carefully sprinkled out over the course of the real story.

Yes.

In the pilot episode, we saw Burnham make a decision exactly once. Her mutiny. Which actually wasn't really well informed by her backstory, and it wasn't made clear why or how she actually came to this decision. It was treated as a plot point, a cliffhanger,

Nope. First of all, she makes several "decisions" throughout the course of the episode. But the mutiny is the defining moment of the character. It's the launching point for her entire arc. Every scene in Vulcan Hello is preface to that. The entire episode is used to demonstrate her thought processes and give focus to how she came to the decision.

Not a character moment.

Erm. It's the pivotal decisive character moment of the entire season. It's the moment she realizes that the whole core ideal of her existence , the thing that defined her existentially - her 'Vulcanness' - was a charade.

Apart from that, everything else she did was by-the-books Starfleet stuff, like her spacewalk, something that literally any other Trek character would have done the exact same way.

You mean the spacewalk she had to talk her "by the book" captain into letting her do? Or was it by the book when she took an unwarranted risk after she was out of contact range (thus acting on her own accord) and almost died of radiation poisoning?

It’s one of them. As is not splurging the intricate backstory a writer has worked out all onto the page at the beginning. Think of Rowling and Tolkien...the backstories were all well and truly worked out, but they unfolded a bit at a time. Strider...he’s just a mystery man, friend of Gandalf in the pub. He doesn’t rock up in full Returning King Aragorn mode, we don’t get all his history in day one. Harry Potter? We get quite a bit for him, but in the beginning it’s just ‘orphaned by evil wizard, world of magic’.

Seriously? You're complaining about "backstory overload" and then cite Tolkien as a good example?

Part of the problem is how much of Burnham is made from characters we already know, just stuck in a blender.

The whole point of Burnham is that she's not like any other Star Trek character. The whole introductory scene shows this. She show's up on screen spouting a bunch of technobabble about the pending storm and makes a prediction, just like we've seen Spock or Data or Seven or Dax or T'Pol do 100s of times But the prediction turns out to be incorrect. Spock and Data always got it right.

Then they get to the well, and Georgiou asks her about the weapon setting. She spews some numbers, Georgiou fires and nothing happens The captain waits a moment, gives a look, and fires twice more. Burnham was off again. Like before, Spock or Data would have only needed one shot. In either case, she wasn't exactly "wrong," but it clearly shows she doesn't have the honed mental faculties of a Vulcan or android or ex-Borg, even though she thinks she does.

And then, when they're pacing-out the delta in the sand, She just blindly follows her captain. Anyone else, Riker, Paris, Chuckles, whoever would have sussed out what their captains were doing.

No character in Trek history had this much backstory exposited on screen before.

Let's try applying your list from up thread (and whatever nonsensical criteria you used to create it) to someone else. We'll call him "Sisko."

In the first five minutes, he goes from

First Officer of the Saratoga.
To administrator of the Utopia Planitia yards.
To the commander of Starfleet's newest deep space outpost.

He likes to fish with this son.
Is obsessed with baseball.
His father was a gourmet chef and taught him how to cook.

He was the protege of a famous diplomat.
Was one of the few people to survive Wolf 359. Is wife, however, was killed.
Has a strong pagh.

During the course of the pilot episode he:

Befriends a religious leader.
Has an existential religious experience.
Discovers an incredibly significant celestial body that is to have massive geopolitical ramifications.

Becomes the first human to set foot in the Gamma Quadrant.
Makes first contact with non-corporeal, omnipotent entities who serve as the diaties for an entire race.
In turn, becomes a religious figurehead.

Oh. And he "Puts Bajor on the map." ™

I'm sure I could make similar lists for the other captains if it was really required. This whole argument is really silly. And blatantly biased.

**Oh. As far as the others, go watch the first fifteen episodes of a single-character driven show and see how much builing the other characters get. I can assure you it won't be much.

 

[jaime]

Two of those are redundant. The third came to pass over the course of the show and is therefore - by definition - not backstory.

She knew exactly how to play it and did so excellent. This is a clear case of the actor having a much better fundamental grasp of her character than someone on the interwebz.

It looked ridiculous because it was supposed to look ridiculous in that "silly things kids do to impress their parents" way. She was trying really really hard to be Vulcan, but take one look at her and she she clearly isn't.

She stopped acting Vulcan because she realized she wasn't Vulcan. She acted in a way she thought only true Vulcans -- or her father -- acted and got tossed in the slammer for it.

Then her surrogate father, who is personified by qualities inhibited by only the "truest" of humans betrays her. In the end she realizes the only way she needs to act is in away that's true to her self.

Yes. It's her journey.

Yes.

Nope. First of all, she makes several "decisions" throughout the course of the episode. But the mutiny is the defining moment of the character. It's the launching point for her entire arc. Every scene in Vulcan Hello is preface to that. The entire episode is used to demonstrate her thought processes and give focus to how she came to the decision.

Erm. It's the pivotal decisive character moment of the entire season. It's the moment she realizes that the whole core ideal of her existence , the thing that defined her existentially - her 'Vulcanness' - was a charade.

You mean the spacewalk she had to talk her "by the book" captain into letting her do? Or was it by the book when she took an unwarranted risk after she was out of contact range (thus acting on her own accord) and almost died of radiation poisoning?

Seriously? You're complaining about "backstory overload" and then cite Tolkien as a good example?

The whole point of Burnham is that she's not like any other Star Trek character. The whole introductory scene shows this. She show's up on screen spouting a bunch of technobabble about the pending storm and makes a prediction, just like we've seen Spock or Data or Seven or Dax or T'Pol do 100s of times But the prediction turns out to be incorrect. Spock and Data always got it right.

Then they get to the well, and Georgiou asks her about the weapon setting. She spews some numbers, Georgiou fires and nothing happens The captain waits a moment, gives a look, and fires twice more. Burnham was off again. Like before, Spock or Data would have only needed one shot. In either case, she wasn't exactly "wrong," but it clearly shows she doesn't have the honed mental faculties of a Vulcan or android or ex-Borg, even though she thinks she does.

And then, when they're pacing-out the delta in the sand, She just blindly follows her captain. Anyone else, Riker, Paris, Chuckles, whoever would have sussed out what their captains were doing.

Let's try applying your list from up thread (and whatever nonsensical criteria you used to create it) to someone else. We'll call him "Sisko."

In the first five minutes, he goes from

First Officer of the Saratoga.
To administrator of the Utopia Planitia yards.
To the commander of Starfleet's newest deep space outpost.

He likes to fish with this son.
Is obsessed with baseball.
His father was a gourmet chef and taught him how to cook.

He was the protege of a famous diplomat.
Was one of the few people to survive Wolf 359. Is wife, however, was killed.
Has a strong pagh.

During the course of the pilot episode he:

Befriends a religious leader.
Has an existential religious experience.
Discovers an incredibly significant celestial body that is to have massive geopolitical ramifications.

Becomes the first human to set foot in the Gamma Quadrant.
Makes first contact with non-corporeal, omnipotent entities who serve as the diaties for an entire race.
In turn, becomes a religious figurehead.

Oh. And he "Puts Bajor on the map." ™

I'm sure I could make similar lists for the other captains if it was really required. This whole argument is really silly. And blatantly biased.

**Oh. As far as the others, go watch the first fifteen episodes of a single-character driven show and see how much builing the other characters get. I can assure you it won't be much.

Trek hasn’t got a series with fifteen episodes of a single character driven show, so since we are talking about Trek...
And Burnham isn’t driving anything for most of the series. That would be Lorca.
And I mentioned the closest we have is Sisko, and even then, every thing made logical sense, was not borrowed from anywhere else in Trek, had direct relevance to the story we then followed AND most crucially, we also had other characters get some space, in just the pilot. Particularly Kira and Dax. We also had basic frames for a handful of characters and an entire planet, all whilst telling a story with a beginning, middle, and end, that still managed to kick start a seven year arc.
Tolkien is the perfect example for characters backstories, specifically the one I mention. The feat his are so wrought and detailed, yet are spread through a story, is exactly the point. Heck, some of it is just in appendices.

Incidentally..2 what are redundant? Burnham is basically Tom Paris and Worf stuck in the personality of seven of nine then given an amusing haircut, and grafted onto Spock, like Tuvok playing with an orchid.

I like your points about her overreaching in the pilot, but I am not sure ‘actually she’s even less observant a first officer than Chakotay, a man who had more spies than crew in his own command staff on the Val Jean and was sleeping with his arch-enemy for years without noticing her suspicious kanar habit’ is a glowing endorsement.

 

[Rahul]

It looked ridiculous because it was supposed to look ridiculous in that "silly things kids do to impress their parents" way. She was trying really really hard to be Vulcan, but take one look at her and she she clearly isn't.

"The show visually looked ridiculously cheap in it's opening two-parter because the makers wanted it to look ridiculous."

Yeah, as far as excuses go, this one is really reaching...
DIS had a rocky start. More than any Trek series since TNG, and probably more than even that. And it really, really shows on screen. That doesn't have to doom the entire series - indeed the show has IMO lots of potential - but it is also in serious need of improvement, and that means having an objective look at the things that went wrong.

Seriously? You're complaining about "backstory overload" and then cite Tolkien as a good example?

Tolkien starts his first book with "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
That's quite enough backstory for the very beginning. He didn't put the entire fucking Silmarillon in the first chapter of his book - which is kinda' how it feels like what Discovery did.

 

[CorporalClegg]

"The show visually looked ridiculously cheap in it's opening two-parter because the makers wanted it to look ridiculous." .

Yeah. That's not what I said.

Anyway I'm done.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

In my defense, the series was conceived in 2015/2016. I think the creators all have the same political leanings as I do, so it's safe to say I think we all thought Hillary Clinton would be President. So DSC was intended to be a Star Trek series of the Hillary Clinton Era. Which is why they tried so hard to forcibly say T'Kuvma's followers are like Trump Supporters... Then Trump actually got elected.

So, now, here we are.

The thing is...DSC starts off with the Klingons winning, with all the Feds' carefully considered rules and principles and procedures utterly failing to prevent it, and Burnham's desperate attempts at throwing out that rulebook and trying to play by theirs instead doing no better. From there, it's all about them grappling with those failures and searching for themselves again. That strikes me as more evocative of the Democrats, and others who opposed Trump, in the wake of his victory. We also have the angle of struggling to adapt to life in a parallel universe where wrong is held up as right, night as day, etc., feeling the toll that takes day by day, especially in having to come to terms with the revelation of some who have thereto worn the guise of trusted friends/family/confidants/allies/lovers as foes working directly against one's own dearly held values and beliefs, and on top of it all, the sickening realization that one may even have been unwittingly active—or at least complicit—in such efforts oneself.

So, whatever the original conception or intention might have been, as actually written and produced, I very much see the first season as clearly Star Trek for the Trump Era. (But of course, others may well see it quite differently.)

-MMoM

 

[Rahul]

The thing is...DSC starts off with the Klingons winning, with all the Feds' carefully considered rules and principles and procedures utterly failing to prevent it, and Burnham's desperate attempts at throwing out that rulebook and trying to play by theirs instead doing no better. From there, it's all about them grappling with those failures and searching for themselves again. That strikes me as more evocative of the Democrats, and others who opposed Trump, in the wake of his victory. We also have the angle of struggling to adapt to life in a parallel universe where wrong is held up as right, night as day, etc., feeling the toll that takes day by day, especially in having to come to terms with the revelation of some who have thereto worn the guise of trusted friends/family/confidants/allies/lovers as foes working directly against one's own dearly held values and beliefs, and on top of it all, the sickening realization that one may even have been unwittingly active—or at least complicit—in such efforts oneself.

So, whatever the original conception or intention might have been, as actually written and produced, I very much see the first season as clearly Star Trek for the Trump Era. (But of course, others may well see it quite differently.)

-MMoM

To be honest, I think that's vastly overthinking stuff. Discovery is extremely unpolitical as a series.
It's kinda' progressive on identity issues (but nothing that goes in any way above already reached mainstream concensus), and it's very reactionary in it's depiction of war, violence and general approach to things.

Bryan Fuller might have intended for more political overtones when he was still in charge, but they barely surviced the final product. Trump supporters aren't cannibals, and Burnhams arc boiling down in the final episode to her realizing klingons can be actual feeling people and not just monstrous carricatures of brown people is kind of offensive in it's own right.

The closest to a real argument someone can make is perhaps the depiction of the Mirror Universe as a fascist state. But the sliding of American politics into facism is neither a sudden new phenomen nor did noone saw it coming - friggin' MARVEL made a movie about it years ago (CA: The Winter Soldier), which is btw way more political than DIS is by any means. Really, the depiction of the Mirror Universe is really just the most obvious warning of facism possible - about as subtle as the Empire in Star Wars, probably even less so, because it is depicted so much more schlock-y. There is no actual observations how facism really works, it's power dynamics, ideology, or how it influences and sways people, let alone how it can be effectively fought (with compassion!). MU characters are just mustache twirling cannibals bent on galactic domination that need to be stopped with the power of the gun. Yeah.

 

[fireproof78]

MU characters are just mustache twirling cannibals bent on galactic domination that need to be stopped with the power of the gun. Yeah.

If that's what people are taking away from the MU then no wonder people don't like it.

 

[CorporalClegg]

The point of the mirror universe is to emphasize and exaggerate the most extreme characteristics of humanity (negative or otherwise).

Not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.

As it were.

 

[fireproof78]

The point of the mirror universe is to emphasize and exaggerate the most extreme characteristics of humanity (negative or otherwise).

Not till I set you up a glass
Where you may see the inmost part of you.

As it were.

And I have no problem with it, largely because it is a reflection of the fact that human beings like to think themselves as civilized, and yet the legacy of the jungle is not so far removed in our history. "Moustache twirling" is far too dismissive of a term to appreciate that fact perhaps due to the discomfort of such an idea.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

To be honest, I think that's vastly overthinking stuff. Discovery is extremely unpolitical as a series...

I don't think what I'm talking about can be reduced to anything simply or particularly "political" either, although there is an undeniable intersection with current politics in it. I assure you, there are people left, right, and center who are struggling to come to terms of understanding with respect to what's been happening in this country and others over the last few years, and to cope with the breadth and gravity of its implications. There is a real battle for the soul and identity of humanity playing out—and you're quite correct to say it's one that didn't begin with Trump, and won't end with him either, but nevertheless, there are issues of conscience and principle and morality and reality being brought to a head in the present era that touch everyone and everything on this planet, in ways both obvious and subtle. It would be very naïve indeed to think that the writers of DSC, whatever their political leanings, have not observed and been affected by them, and that the content of the show is in no way a response to or commentary on this. It can't help but be, whether consciously or unconsciously, textually or subtextually. I don't agree with your interpretations of it, and you may not agree with mine, but to suggest that this iteration of Star Trek concerns "the human adventure" any less so than each and every previous one is really an untenable argument.

-MMoM

 

[Lord Garth]

Just got back from camping out the last two days. So I'll keep this short. I like The Mighty Monkey of Mim's interpretation of DSC's first season when viewed through the prism of the Trump Era.

May it have been what was intended? Maybe, maybe not. I like it anyway. In much the same way that I now retroactively view TOS's "Turnabout Intruder" through the lens of this era. Lester-as-Kirk is Trump, Kirk-as-Lester is Hillary, Spock is Mueller, Sulu is The Resistance, and Scotty & McCoy are Congress. Try watching the episode through this lens sometime, it's a way to have some fun with an otherwise not-too-great episode.

 

[Samurai8472]

Wouldn't it be great if they just had a youtube series having dinner?

 

[CorporalClegg]

Every time I see him, it seems like LaVar is channeling his inner Morgan Freeman more and more.

 

[jaime]

Every time I see him, it seems like LaVar is channeling his inner Morgan Freeman more and more.

I don’t see it myself....but it does look like Frakes was behind the camera again here, so it’s a thumbs up.

 

[CorporalClegg]

I don’t see it myself....but it does look like Frakes was behind the camera again here, so it’s a thumbs up.

Well, he's always had that beautiful voice meant for reciting great literature thing going. (Heck, that was literally his job for 30 years.) Now he's got the graying goatee thing going. Plus the shirt and vest and earring, like he going out to watch some horn and keys masters. All that's missing is the fedora, really.

I guess the question is, can he still pull off the Indy roll whilst wearing said fedora?

#coolantleak

 

[Nerys Myk]

Maybe Burton will play the President in the Picard Show?

 

[CorporalClegg]

Geordi 2380
"He'll make us go."