Yep.
MacFarlane understands what the essence of this thing always was. The folks making up STD don't.
Would Star Trek Discovery have benefited from an episodic format?
- Thread starter Yassa Justice
- Start date
MacFarlane understands what the essence of this thing always was. The folks making up STD don't.
The only people who "understand the essence of this thing" are people who realize that there's no "right or wrong" way to do Star Trek. There are only individual tastes satisfied or not satisfied.
It's far too diverse and varied a franchise to proclaim to know "the essence of" or to have the singular arrogance of believing you know what "good" looks like.
Different people like different shit. Good for you that you like MacFarlane's show. That means nothing to anyone but you, I'm afraid, though.
I've made the point before that flubbing the second part of a two-part story is a classic Trek issue going back all the way to BoBW. A lot of this is because Trek two-parters were often season cliffhangers, and typically the attitude was "we have months to figure out how part two works out." This is asinine, but it was how the writer's room worked on every Trek other than DS9. They purposely started stories they had no idea how they were going to conclude.
The thing is that if you flub the second part of a two-parter - even the first episode following a season cliffhanger - you really only screw up one tiny portion of a series. On the other hand, if you fuck up the conclusion to a season-long arc, it retrospectively turns everything into dross. Which is pretty much where the season finale left me, once I collected my jaw off the floor.
There was a right or wrong way to do Godfather 2. If Michael Corleone goes back to the army and never does jack with the Mafia there is a riot.
There was a right or wrong way to do James Bond. You cannot have him be a hippie anarchist. A punk rocker with spiky hair, a man with a disfigured ugly face, a man who speaks with a thickk Russian accent.
When it comes to the 'essence' of Trek, Trek is about the human condition. And Discovery explored that. Was it always great? No. Could it have been at times better? Yeah, but when it comes down to it, Discovery explored the human condition like the previous live-action Trek series and the films as well have done, albeit in its on way.
On top of that, we got some science with the spore drive, a little exploration, a little first contact, a kind of classic Trek time loop episode, a Mirror Universe arc, and the season concluded with a vocal defense of Federation values, pulling the show back from the darkness. I think as much as TOS was influenced by the westerns that dominated its time, Discovery is a reflection of our times and our tastes, or what the writers/producers think are our tastes. Discovery premiered at a time of arc-based storytelling, and the popularity of grittier, harder hitting genre shows like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and Westworld. And with streaming allowing for edgier content, and also there are some Trek fans who don't mind edgier content or war themes, I don't think Discovery is so different than what came before.
On top of that, we got some science with the spore drive, a little exploration, a little first contact, a kind of classic Trek time loop episode, a Mirror Universe arc, and the season concluded with a vocal defense of Federation values, pulling the show back from the darkness. I think as much as TOS was influenced by the westerns that dominated its time, Discovery is a reflection of our times and our tastes, or what the writers/producers think are our tastes. Discovery premiered at a time of arc-based storytelling, and the popularity of grittier, harder hitting genre shows like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and Westworld. And with streaming allowing for edgier content, and also there are some Trek fans who don't mind edgier content or war themes, I don't think Discovery is so different than what came before.
Almost every movie is about that. You can interpret them that way. Does not make Discovey unique.
True, but it does mean it's not different from previous Treks, which also explore the human condition. Plus, Discovery explored that in a way that is unique and ultimately promotes Trek values. If anything, Discovery might do that better than some shows since it really tested the characters and Federation on a sustained basis for a long period not seen since Deep Space Nine.
DSC talked about testing the characters and the Federation. This is not the same as dramatizing them being tested. This is something that is less of an issue in episodic storytelling because it's simply the nature of the time constraints to simplify.
Episodic doesn't mean the reset button is hit, though that can be true as well. It simply means that each episode has a dang beginning, middle, and end. And that can be utilized in shows that have longer overarching stories with character beats across multiple episodes. At its best, serialized storytelling means a longer time to tell the more intimate or epic details of a story. But a lot of the time, and certainly with DSC, it's a game of pushing pieces around a chessboard with no real storytelling, just lots of plot, and lots of "we swear this is going somewhere" and then it doesn't.
Exactly so.
The show fits the current political moment, with the people in charge of it lying about what great things they're doing.
When you look at Burnham's arc, I'm not sure how you can say that wasn't dramatized. We saw her take a big fall and then climb her way back up. There's speechifying in all of Trek. If Discovery didn't do that, then that could be said it wasn't like the other Treks. The darker take on the Federation, typified by Mirror Lorca and even the decision at the end by the Federation Council to commit genocide against the Klingons dramatized how far the Federation had been pressed to the breaking point, but we also saw how Burnham helped reconnect our heroes back to the values of the Federation. I'm not going to argue and say any of it couldn't have been done better-I'm fine with that argument-but there was dramatization here. It might not be too everyone's liking-it wasn't always to my liking-but it was there.
It jumped the shark with me when they accepted mirror Michelle Yeoh as part of the crew temporarily.
Sorry, that is not what the Federation does. If i want that i read realistic historical fiction or watch the X Files...
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We've seen the Federation and Starfleet do it before.
This is the part that grates from what I've read. Discovery is not optimistic enough to be "Star Trek."
What was the closest to it that they did?
I did not say Discovery is not Trek. They did not alienate me that much yet.
We like what we like. I enjoyed the Mirror Georgiou twist and wished it had gone on longer than it did. What I didn't like was Burnham attempting to out Mirror Georgiou to the crew. That didn't make much sense to me in the context of the story at the time they set that scene. But the idea of Mirror Georgiou assuming command was a cool idea. I liked when she first stepped out of that turbolift.
I think the idea of what the Federation does or doesn't do was the point of having Mirror Georgiou pretend to be Prime Georgiou. It showed that the Federation was on the verge of defeat, or actually had been defeated (wasn't clear on that) and had been pushed to the brink. We've seen every other Trek captain, as symbolic of the Federation IMO, also be pushed to the breaking point and have to be reeled back in. Burnham started off the season being that character that went extreme so it was fitting that she be the character who pulled Starfleet back at the end of the season.
With Discovery we're looking at less evolved Starfleet officers than in the 24th century, but despite that we've seen Picard contemplate genocide against the Borg, Sisko poison a planet and abet Garak's murder of a Romulan Senator, and Janeway torture the crew of the Equinox. Comparing Discover to ENT (to which it is closer in time), we saw how dark Archer and Trip could go for example when it came to the Xindi. Even Kirk proclaimed, "let them die" when it came to the Klingons in Star Trek 6.
Section 31. A completely unsanctioned, unaccountable agency outside the control of Star Fleet or the Federation which carries out black ops. Star Trek Insurrection. The Star Fleet explicitly condones working with the Son'a in order to move an indigenous people off of their planet without their consent or knowledge. Etc.
This is like using superpowered Hitler to beat the Russians. It does not compare.
This is relying on Space Hitler to beat the Klingons. Farther than other Trek's have gone. I am not sure of the Borg count as human or properly sentient in TNG.
I agree that the issue with Season 1 was more one of execution than of conception. But this is still a critical failure. Basically everything Discovery tried to do - long form character arcs, serialized plots, the Federation at war, exploration of Klingon culture, testing the boundaries of Federation morality, characters with divided loyalties and identities, etc - was done first by DS9, and done much, much better. Discovery's first season ultimately added nothing to the Trek corpus, other than a mess of things which hardcore canon nerds now have to square away, and one cool little footnote about Spock's backstory in Lethe.
But on a broader sense, it seems clear that once Fuller left they were drifting. No one involved really had a central vision of what Season 1 was supposed to be - it just stumbled along zombie-like due to the sunk cost fallacy and CBS demanding that something come out of its investment. So, for example, the show couldn't decide if it wanted to do an epic quadrant-spanning war plot or an intimate character study - so it tried to do both and failed at both - giving us no feel of the awesome scope of the war and muddling the hell out of Burnham's arc.
Arguably since the Borg are a single hive mind, destroying the entire race is merely murder of a single individual, not genocide.
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