I think from a maturity stand point, he'll handle them fine. Though I can imagine him rolling his eyes at them now.
And violent brain spatter of about six dudes.
How is/isn't Discovery Star Trek?
- Thread starter seigezunt
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And violent brain spatter of about six dudes.
Family Guy and The Orville aren't the same thing
Nice to see some Stamets appreciation. I feel like he doesn't get enough recognition.
Stamets was one of the standout characters for me. I didn’t think I was going to like him at first but he quickly grew on me. A bit like Saru and Tilly as well. I’d like to see Stamets have a larger role in s2.
He reflected the whole mood on the ship. Seems to some degree the ship's mood is set by the captain, and Discovery was VERY much Lorca's ship. It will be interesting to see how the on-board dynamics change with Pike aboard.
I believe that was touched on by the writers/producers on after Trek. Lorca was very controlling, not very personable and the crew reflected that.
In The final episode of the Mirror arc, when Saru takes command, there is a noticeable tone shift.
The leader always sets the tone, in reality as well as in fiction. Lorca fostered an atmosphere of paranoia and loyalty to him personally, and leveraged wartime patriotism to his own advantage. Compare with, say, Picard, who was all about values based leadership, and listening to opinions.
I once, when I was much younger, went through every TOS and TNG episode and classified whether they were actually about exploring. I believe I even gave the benefit of the doubt to episodes tha started out being about exploring, but immediately got side tracked by another plot.
It was less than 20% if I remember correctly.
Yeah. It doesn't so much matter if the situation at hand is unexpected to the characters, so long as it's unexpected to the viewer.
VOY was the most exploration-focused Trek by far, and so many episodes were as exciting as watching paint drying. Mostly because they didn't seem to understand how to plot anything other than "an anomaly" or "aliens just like us except for one weird trick."
Right! That's exactly how I feel.
I actually wouldn't mind a Star Trek that was truly about exploration of the unknown...but it would need to be really well done and have some great characters to support it.
I think, as odd as it sounds, it would be unique in the franchise to have that heavy focus.
That's interesting @Vger23 but I tend to lean towards the "boldly going" "seek out" "voyage" (mission statement) theme. It's what I associate with Star Trek as opposed to it being a Western or a Medical drama etc. It's what I look forward to the most and probably why I enjoyed, say Voyager the most. I also like with Voyager that they didn't have all that Starfleet/Alpha quadrant baggage other Treks were beholden to. If Discovery could do even a few alien or planet of the week episodes it would feel more adventurous to me.
Honestly, I think for any Trek - not just Discovery - to do this well you'd have to not only hire good writers, but good sci-fi writers.
TOS was the best at this by far. Space was a wacky place in TOS, but it was very creative. You had Greek gods, giant space amoebas, gangster planets, Nazi planets, advanced alien computers, etc. And remember - it was the Trek where actual sci-fi authors penned stories (even if Roddenberry fucked them up a lot).
But as Berman Trek wove onward, all of this was forgotten. The godlike aliens of TOS were for the most part gone, except for cases like Q which were already in canon. Every alien race was - more or less - exactly as technologically advanced as the Federation. And nearly all of them had cultures which were not only similar to humans, but similar to 20th century California. I think a lot of this is because the writers were not from a SFnal background, didn't want to spend the time fleshing out a culture for a throwaway alien of the week, hence just wrote them as if they were any other human character.
Don't get me wrong...I agree with you in that the romantic notion of "space exploration" as part of Star Trek is a good thing. It's just amazing how little it's part of the actual package.
My dream format for a Star Trek show would be season long missions at a specific planet or anomaly, composed of 2 or 3-part stories, a couple stand alones, and have the stories connected as individual parts to a long mission, ending with the missions success or failure. Each season could tackle a classic Trek allegory in the new format, or think of something new like how science vs. faith is supposedly going to be the theme of season 2.
Like, what if the mission to fix the well for the Crepusculans was a season long (stay with me here, I know it sounds crazy). The premiere of the series could be a two-part episode where the Shenzhou (or, if we wanna make this a hypothetical Discovery series, either way) is dispatched for a rescue mission to the drilling site that caused the radiation exposure. Standard action/adventure with the looming threat of polluting a pre-warp culture. Maybe we pick up one of the main cast from that mining crew. Have the episode end in success in saving the miners, but a complete failure to protect the Crepusculans. Next episode could be about stopping a displaced asteroid from falling to the planet as a result of the mining accident. Maybe an episode where they have to chase down Mudd as he is trying to steal stuff from the Crepusculans while the crew is trying to figure out a way to restore potable water to the natives, or have an ethical crisis trying to decide whether or not to help the natives at all. Throw in a Data's Day with Tilly writing home about how great her first mission is, where we get to see the characters from a more personal level, while also seeing ship duties and how the Starfleeters science or tech a solution to the problem. Maybe Georgiou and Michael butt heads on what to do about the natives, and it causes all kinds of problems during the mission. You can throw in sibling rivalry with Saru and Michael, there'd be tons of secondary stuff for the background characters to do based on their departments. Then have it all lead up to the missions climax, along with the emotional climax between Georgiou and Michael figuring out a simple way to complete their mission together; shoot it with a phaser, to save lives!
A tropey TNG mission spread out over a season like ENT, with DS9 character development and drama, with DSC production value and trendiness. This wouldn't even have needed to be set in the TOS era. This is what I would have wanted for a post 24th series. And if they wanted to do the fanboy prequel stuff, they could have done it the way the Drastic Measures book did it; something that was talked about in TOS, but only used as a jumping off point.
I don't mind seeing similar stories in Star Trek being told over again (that's been a standard Star Trek thing since TNG (or TWOK, arguably). I just hate it when they are retold poorly. I'd love it if DSC had taken old tropes and subverted our expectations of them, rather than how ENT takes the old tropes and just remixes them together. ENT suffers because the production value and writing isn't good enough or remarkably different to the series before to mask that its retelling old stories. However, the characters themselves and the performances, even when bad, are enough to keep me watching. This morning I saw Travis cry for the first time and I was honestly upset by it even though he is one of the worst written characters in the history of ever. I never thought I'd see a character get more shafted than Harry Kim, lol.
Like, what if the mission to fix the well for the Crepusculans was a season long (stay with me here, I know it sounds crazy). The premiere of the series could be a two-part episode where the Shenzhou (or, if we wanna make this a hypothetical Discovery series, either way) is dispatched for a rescue mission to the drilling site that caused the radiation exposure. Standard action/adventure with the looming threat of polluting a pre-warp culture. Maybe we pick up one of the main cast from that mining crew. Have the episode end in success in saving the miners, but a complete failure to protect the Crepusculans. Next episode could be about stopping a displaced asteroid from falling to the planet as a result of the mining accident. Maybe an episode where they have to chase down Mudd as he is trying to steal stuff from the Crepusculans while the crew is trying to figure out a way to restore potable water to the natives, or have an ethical crisis trying to decide whether or not to help the natives at all. Throw in a Data's Day with Tilly writing home about how great her first mission is, where we get to see the characters from a more personal level, while also seeing ship duties and how the Starfleeters science or tech a solution to the problem. Maybe Georgiou and Michael butt heads on what to do about the natives, and it causes all kinds of problems during the mission. You can throw in sibling rivalry with Saru and Michael, there'd be tons of secondary stuff for the background characters to do based on their departments. Then have it all lead up to the missions climax, along with the emotional climax between Georgiou and Michael figuring out a simple way to complete their mission together; shoot it with a phaser, to save lives!
A tropey TNG mission spread out over a season like ENT, with DS9 character development and drama, with DSC production value and trendiness. This wouldn't even have needed to be set in the TOS era. This is what I would have wanted for a post 24th series. And if they wanted to do the fanboy prequel stuff, they could have done it the way the Drastic Measures book did it; something that was talked about in TOS, but only used as a jumping off point.
I don't mind seeing similar stories in Star Trek being told over again (that's been a standard Star Trek thing since TNG (or TWOK, arguably). I just hate it when they are retold poorly. I'd love it if DSC had taken old tropes and subverted our expectations of them, rather than how ENT takes the old tropes and just remixes them together. ENT suffers because the production value and writing isn't good enough or remarkably different to the series before to mask that its retelling old stories. However, the characters themselves and the performances, even when bad, are enough to keep me watching. This morning I saw Travis cry for the first time and I was honestly upset by it even though he is one of the worst written characters in the history of ever. I never thought I'd see a character get more shafted than Harry Kim, lol.
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Yeah, having done a recent rewatch of TNG, the networking buffets outweighed the exploration missions by a fair margin.
100 percent of Voyager by definition really, 100 percent of Ds9 (whole series is prolonged examination of two or three first contacts...the prophets, the dominion, and sort of the bajorans, but really that’s a relationship with an unknown culture to some extent. Even the Klingon stuff is people dealing with an alien culture....ferengi and Cardassian too.) and probably more of TNG that it gets credit for. The problem is defining exploration more as cartography...here’s a new place...here’s a new place...here’s a new place...whereas exploration also involves interacting with a new place, not just turning up and sticking a flag in it or drawing on a map. There’s also the times that something comes to them, and the very definition of an ambassador is tied into some form of cultural difference or exploration. Otherwise you wouldn’t need an ambassador.
This is one of the best explanations of DS9 I’ve ever read. Exploration doesn’t just have to mean “charting nebula” and stellar phenomena (or whatever it was Q said in AGT), it can mean exploring other cultures and peoples. DS9 explored the nature of the paradisical federation- turns out it was only a paradise when it wasn’t under threat; it explored the Ferengi and made them three dimensional in some of the best episodes of Trek ever filmed; and it gave us a deep exploration of Bajoran culture and the nature of our own linear existence through the prophets.
Compared to DS9, there wasn’t much in the way of exploration of either space or culture in DSC. What do we learn about the federation? That they’ll resort to genocide to win a war? Well we already knew that thanks to DS9. What did we learn about the Klingons? That without a leader their society will crumble - but we knew that already from TNG when Khaless shows up. What did we learn about the mirror universe? That they don’t like bright lights. Well we already ... wait - ok that’s new. Do I feel fulfilled based on this exploration of the mirror universe? Not really. And we only really got as many episodes in the MU as there have been in DS9 - only DSC presented them back to back rather than over a few serieses. So the “well they’re only on season one” argument doesn’t really hold water there.
I’m hoping DSC is able to pull its socks up in relation to exploration in season 2 - something which the trailer seems to suggest - so fingers crossed!
Which is why I enjoy exploration of the human condition. I certainly agree that DSC could benefit from more "new life, new civilizations" but part of Star Trek is exploring humanity. And I think they did that in a way that kept me engaged.
With the exception of Michael (who gives us an outsiders view of humanity but in a way that is in no way universally relatable), I didn’t feel that they really did explore humanity that much in DSC.Which is why I enjoy exploration of the human condition. I certainly agree that DSC could benefit from more "new life, new civilizations" but part of Star Trek is exploring humanity. And I think they did that in a way that kept me engaged.
But my brow was heavily furrowed whilst I was watching it so I may well have missed something - how else did they explore the human condition? (I mean that sincerely as well - not in a confrontational way)
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