Especially when they are just an amalgamation of various assimilated beings.
Besides, the Klingons were just flat whipping a technologically similar foe, they didn't have some super weapon or a superior unbeatable technology.
Would Star Trek Discovery have benefited from an episodic format?
- Thread starter Yassa Justice
- Start date
Especially when they are just an amalgamation of various assimilated beings.
Besides, the Klingons were just flat whipping a technologically similar foe, they didn't have some super weapon or a superior unbeatable technology.
The whole TUC conspiracy, the forced relocation of the Ba'ku, the planned genocide of the Borg, including a former Cardassian spy to assassinate a Romulan senator, use of Section 31 tactics to eliminate the Founders, among others.
The TUC and Founder plague scenarios do not count, because they undertaken by a faction within Starfleet. This is entirely different from something with official sanction from Starfleet itself. Sisko's conspiracy with Garak falls under the same general pattern, though the reason for it was inverse. Sisko is the one who makes the benighted decision, but the core of the Federation/Starfleet arguably remains "pure."
As for the Ba'ku in Insurrection, due to the story being inexpertly put together, it arguably doesn't count. The Ba'ku are neither indigenous to their planet nor the only representatives of their race. As it is shown onscreen, it reads not as a case of potential involuntary ethnic cleansing, but a village of a few hundred where the government declares eminent domain in order to construct a highway through its center. Considering the potential vast improvement in quality of life which was available if they were relocated, it's a shame that the movie didn't weigh all the options carefully before coming to its conclusion, because the best Trek stories don't have an easy answer, but the attempt to make it into something greater than a Trek episode of the week meant the moral quandary didn't get the focus it needed.
As I said, I'm not sure the planned Borg genocide works. First, as I noted, given the Borg are arguably not a race, but a single individual (or a disease) it might not be considered genocide. Second, the original idea for the genocide came from the TNG crew before being discarded. Although we know Nechayev was in favor of releasing the virus, there still is a bit of ambiguity about whether this was a direct order from Starfleet Command, or just an Admiral making her own personal judgement on the matter.
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Part of the Founder plague came from Starfleet Medical as Bashier noted. So, it wasn't Sloane or S31 alone. Same thing with Admiral Ross and his use of S31's tactics to manipulate the Romulans further.
As for the Ba'ku, I appreciate the points and the how it is presented in the film doesn't due a lot. But, we are facing the fact that as presented in the film and story the Federation Council endorsed this plan when the Ba'ku were considered primitive natives.
Also with the Founder Plague, even once the facts about it, its origin, and that Bashir had developed a cure, both Starfleet and the Federation Council were all "Yeah, we ain't curing them."
The problem with the serialized format is that there are no standalone episodes to develop secondary characters like Rhys, Owosekun, Detmer, etc. Heck they don't even develop the main characters. I had to look up some of their names on Memory Alpha.
All of the other series have had standalone episodes focusing on individual characters. From Deep Space Nine, for example:
Odo - A Man Alone, A Simple Investigation
O'Brien - Captive Pursuit, Whispers, Tribunal, Hard Time, The Assignment, Honor Among Thieves
Quark - The Nagus, Family Business, Business As Usual
Dax - Invasive Procedures, Equilibrium, Rejoined
Bashir - Distant Voices, Doctor Bashir I Presume, Statistical Probabilities, Inquisition, Chrysalis
Garak - The Wire
Kira - Second Skin
Worf - Rules of Engagement
Jake - Nor The Battle To The Strong
All of the other series have had standalone episodes focusing on individual characters. From Deep Space Nine, for example:
Odo - A Man Alone, A Simple Investigation
O'Brien - Captive Pursuit, Whispers, Tribunal, Hard Time, The Assignment, Honor Among Thieves
Quark - The Nagus, Family Business, Business As Usual
Dax - Invasive Procedures, Equilibrium, Rejoined
Bashir - Distant Voices, Doctor Bashir I Presume, Statistical Probabilities, Inquisition, Chrysalis
Garak - The Wire
Kira - Second Skin
Worf - Rules of Engagement
Jake - Nor The Battle To The Strong
Also a good point.
1) They're not main characters, so they're not required to be developed.
2) Even taking into account that shows these days do develop regular recurring characters, they manage to do so despite being serialized. After all, being serialized didn't stop BSG from developing characters like Gaeta, Dee, the Chief, Cally, or even Colonel Tigh.
Only three of those episodes you mention were from the first season. Kind of unfair to measure one season of Disco to seven seasons of DS9.
Considering Bashir tried a number of legitimate avenues to get the information before proceeding with the ruse that got Slone to come out to DS9 - Sorry, that doesn't add up. It's pretty clear Star Fleet in general was 100% aware of what they were doing and were willing to go that far to end what they saw as a real threat to the Federation.
Hell, it wasn't a Section 31 operative who dressed Picard down for the actions he took in TNG: "I Borg" to return 'Hugh' to the Collective WITHOUT the Borg destroying Fractal virus implated, it was a ranking Starfleet Admiral:
http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/252.htm
Frorm TNG (S6) - "Descent (Part 1)"
And I doubt she was alone in her assessment - Star Fleet Command sent her out to deliver the above message to Picard to get him in line with the program. Star Fleet had ZERO issue with possibly committing Borg genocide because of the treat Command saw them as (which was yet again borne out two years later in the feature film: "Star Trek: First Contact")
So yeah, sorry, but Star Fleet isn't above doing what it takes IF it sees a threat as dire enough (and even more so in the 23rd century too.)
Fair enough. Though there is a difference between actively causing someone to die and just doing nothing to stop it. If the U.S. was involved in a war against China, then smallpox broke out and began to impede the ability of China to fight, do you think we would offer humanitarian aid? Even if it was shown that it was the result of a rogue unit within the CIA acting without official sanction from the President?
My issue with the potential Klingon genocide suggested in the penultimate episode of Season 1 wasn't only that it was unusually evil for Starfleet though. It was that it was stupid and evil. There was absolutely no way to conclude that the destruction of the Klingon homeworld would result in the armada withdrawing. What if they jump to the conclusion (not unexpected, given the timing) that the Federation was behind things, and decide to go out in a blaze of glory to avenge the honor of the fallen? What if the Klingon factions which survive the destruction decide that since there is no home base left it's better to rule the ashes of Earth as conquerors than to limp home? I can't think of anything which seems less Klingon in all incarnations than helping with relief efforts after all. Maybe we're supposed to believe that if this attack goes forward they'll beat a hasty retreat Mongol style to argue about succession, but given the houses are already squabbling I don't see any reason to believe that to be the case onscreen.
As I said earlier, there are basically two structures to serialized drama. BSG is the looser sort of structure. The entire series has an arc, as do individual characters. But the individual episodes are structured very much like Trek episodes - which isn't surprising given the series was created by Ron Moore, and had contributions by other Trek writers like Thompson/Weddle and Micheal Taylor. Every episode has a beginning, middle, and ending - unless it happens to be a two parter. There is often a "plot of the week" which is generally the A plot (with the recurring aspects the B plot). Sometimes the show has an outright "message episode" ala Trek, or fiddles around with different genres.
This stands in direct contrast with something like Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones generally does not have recognizable episodes - save for the once-per-season "action piece." Basically every single episode is just periodically checking in on each of the main characters wherever they may be. In the case of GoT, this structure makes sense, because it began as an adaptation of a series of novels, and novels generally do not have a separate plot in each chapter.
Discovery fooled around with both structures in its first season Episodes 1/2 were a pretty much self-contained two-part prologue. Episodes 3-6 were all serialized in the sense of BSG, with mostly self-contained "A plots" for each episode (though we checked in with the Klingons and the like which offered more serialization). Episode 7 was the closest the series came to a true a standalone. From 8 onward, it was basically completely serialized, with each episode following the previous in a direct fashion (more shades of GoT than BSG).
The entire first half of Season 1 of DS9 was purposefully constructed to give each of the main characters a "focus episode" to help us understand what made them tick:
Sisko - Emissary
Kira - Past Prologue
Bashir - The Passenger
Dax - Dax
O'Brien - Captive Pursuit
Odo - A Man Alone
Quark - The Nagus
Thus by the 11th episode, everyone other than Jake got something. In many cases the resulting episodes were not good, but they were attempts by the writers to develop (or at least establish) the characters. Which is much more than DIS did for anyone who wasn't named Micheal Burnham. Save for a few mid-season episodes like Choose Your Pain, Lethe, and Si Vis Pacem, where the writers did try to provide some depth to Lorca and Saru. Depth they immediately threw in the garbage in the second act.
Like others have said it wouldn't be Discovery with out these season-spanning arcs.
I, for one, like both formats, and I think there is room for both in Discovery & Star Trek, as shown by a few of the season 1 eps.... the Saru one, The Harry Mudd takes over ep, etc.
Feel like Enterprise season 4 did this best though. Several episode arcs, and some standalones thrown in.
I, for one, like both formats, and I think there is room for both in Discovery & Star Trek, as shown by a few of the season 1 eps.... the Saru one, The Harry Mudd takes over ep, etc.
Feel like Enterprise season 4 did this best though. Several episode arcs, and some standalones thrown in.
There's the issue of context here. When Discovery returns to the Prime Universe and they see just some of the destruction that's happened, this is a Federation on the verge of extinction. We've never seen the Federation on the verge of a total defeat like this (though maybe you can count the Borg invasions to be fair). L'Rell also doesn't give them much hope when she is blunt about the Klingons tasting their blood and not quitting. So, when it's an issue of the Federation's extinction versus the destruction of the Klingon homeworld-one planet- then the choice to go with Mirror Georgiou is very drastic, but isn't so unthinkable. If the Federation is defeated, that consigns the member worlds to Klingon control and the series did show us to some extent how ruthless the Klingons could be. (We also did see some discussion of a similar nature in Star Trek 6, though the hard edged reactions were given to Cartwright, Valeris, and Kirk, with two clearly bad guys by the end of the film, and Kirk having a change of heart to align back with Federation values. But my point is how Discovery writes Starfleet isn't that different than what we've dealt with before, especially when the Federation is in some precarious spot).
In Discovery, Starfleet wanted to wipe out Qo'noS, whereas Picard potentially wanted to wipe out the entire Borg Collective. And just how much untold chaos would that have unleashed? As for the other dark moments for the other captains, it's just a matter that their situations were smaller in nature, but still along that road that we saw Starfleet on at the end of Trek. Just recalled, that Admiral Nechayev also ordered Picard to destroy the Borg the next time he had a chance after he chose not to infect Hugh.
"I, Borg" took on the idea you proposed about the Borg and showed the opposite, that they were individuals, just shackled to a hive mind. Once Picard understood that, he couldn't go through with wiping them out, however Nechayev-and I would say she was speaking on behalf of Starfleet Command and the Federation Council-didn't care and wanted Picard to destroy them if given another opportunity.
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If you combine the ENT S4 approach with the DSC S1 approach (whoever wants to scream "Fanwank times Fanwank!" I'm going to cut you off at the pass, because that's not where I'm going with this), you can have an overall arc with mini-arcs within it. Each part a different piece of the main puzzle. And said part could be as many episodes as it needs to be before moving on to the next group. That would work in a story where they're on a quest and going from place to place along the way.
I can't argue about quality here. I mean that's more subjective. I liked Discovery far more than you did it seems, but the first season wasn't perfect. I look at Discovery's first season compared to some of the other first seasons of Trek I've watched and in comparison I thought Discovery looked pretty good.
Though DS9 is my favorite Trek series I'm not going to say it had a great first season-it had enough jewels in it though that kept me watching (and was better than TNG's first season), but DS9 became my favorite over time.
Your question about what Discovery added that was different is a good one. But I got to say that what exactly did Voyager or Enterprise add that was all that different, besides better production values? Most of the Trek series have dealt with some of the same themes that Discovery did, keeping that show in the Trek tradition. What Discovery has I suppose is that it's really the first 21st century Trek series, with a look and feel that's supposed to appeal to contemporary audiences. Enterprise, IMO, was a holdover from the '80s-'90's Berman era, while Discovery is coming after the mostly successful Abrams-Lin films and critically praised genre shows like Battlestar Galactica, and some of the others I've previously mentioned. I can't say Discovery has offered much new in themes compared to other Treks, and I do think a debate about how well the show conveys the themes it does explore is a worthy one, though I wonder if Discovery is a show that is designed to some extent to hook new and younger fans who aren't that familiar with previous Treks and aren't inclined to sit through 700 something hours of the older series. The idea of returning to themes, remixing them, or putting a contemporary spin on them, isn't something unique to Trek.
Discovery's production values, how it approaches diversity, and the willingness to have a harder edge does make it stand out from the other Trek shows.
I really wish I could see what Fuller's vision for Discovery was and how it was changed after he left. I'm not sure I would've been on board with said vision though, if he's the one that wanted the Klingon re-designs for example. Not really a fan of that, though when it comes to behavior, the Discovery Klingons aren't that different than in previous Treks. I found Enterprise's take on the Vulcans more jarring and vexing.
I do think the flow for Discovery Season 1 could've been better. They had this big opening and then a time jump and a swerve with Burnham being a prisoner. But the arc of her redemption I thought worked for the most part. I did feel that the final two episodes were tacked on, felt rushed, and felt like someone had told the writers to get the show back in line with some fans' expectations of what Trek should be, and as I've written before, the speeches about Federation values felt too obvious.
I wonder now if they should've opened the show with Klingon raid on Burnham's planet and then jump to her and Georgiou to better explain her mindset. Or intercut scenes of childhood terror with present day Burnham as she mutinied to better show the audience what was driving her. I do give the writers some credit for putting their lead character in such a position and then attempting to bring them back. It's like if Paris had been the lead character on Voyager. Though Chakotay perhaps would be the better comparison. Paris sought at one time to save his own skin, whereas both Chakotay and Burnham flouted Starfleet rules for principled reasons-at least in their minds.
The only thing I wanted to say was that Discovery wasn't intended to be an ensemble show, it's a show about Burnham, her journey, and the first season did do that. She started out in one place, hating the Klingons, prepared to do anything to stop them, than where she was by the end, in love with a Klingon (the follower of the man who killed Georgiou no less), would not wipe them out, and a defender of Federation values. She had been to the edge and come back.
We got some character moments with others, and we also got quite a bit with Mirror Lorca, but the show wasn't an ensemble piece really. They were supporting characters to Burnham. I mean who many TOS episodes dealt with characters other than Kirk or Spock really? Not many.
I do think Discovery Season 2 is going to be more of an ensemble show. It felt like they were shifting toward an ensemble show as the first season went on. I also think the 'Short Treks' are a way to flesh out some of the other characters as well.
Agreed.
And yeah, while I have nothing against arc based storytelling, I prefer the "old fashioned" episodic format.
I think it's absolutely fair to say that VOY and early ENT were failures as shows over a much longer run than DIS had to date, insofar as they didn't try and add to Trek. That is why I don't think DIS is the worst Trek, even though the writing flaws were glaring at times. The show was always well acted, expertly directed, and the visuals (aside from the weirdly grainy ship shots which looked straight out of a early aughts video game) looked amazing. I never felt outright bored by Discovery, as I did by Voyager. Exasperated with the choices made some times, but not bored.
Aside from finally having an explicitly LGBT character, I don't see what Discovery did better than earlier shows. I mean, looping back to DS9 again, O'Brien was the only white male human main cast member on the show. And even on LGBT issues, the show got about a half dozen references past the "Berman homophobic filter" without getting caught.
I think people are a little too trigger happy to blame all of the problems of Season 1 on Fuller. I admit I haven't seen any of his post-Trek work, but he was a cut above most of the Voyager writing staff when he was young, and seemed to get Trek. I really wonder (albeit with little evidence) if he's succumbed to some addictive behavior in recent years, since he was essentially fired from three shows within a period of less than two years.
I think her arc worked great up through the end of Act 1. She transitioned from being shattered by her own failure into being a confident member of the team, and from a pariah to accepted. However, there was basically no arc in Act 2 - it was Burnham being emotionally tortured as she was betrayed in turn by Ash and Lorca, then irrationally latching onto MU Georgiou - basically showing that she had not made substantial character growth over the season.
I concur. The editing in the speech seemed really, really weird. I do wonder if they wanted to have either a darker ending or to stretch the Klingon War into the second season, and CBS told them to put the kibosh on it. They had no plan B, so they engaged in pure asspull.
My own two cents are they should have toned down the epicness of the season. There's no reason to have Burnham blamed for the start of the Klingon War. Or to have her former captain be one of the most decorated in the Federation. Or to then put her on a ship which is instrumental in defeating the Klingons.
Basically take all of that out, and make Burnham an XO who made a really bad decision, got her captain killed, and have her dishonorably discharged (not imprisoned). But as the Klingon War heats up, Starfleet needs more warm bodies, and she's recruited back into the force. GIven CBS didn't want to spring for the big budget needed for a large cast to pull off an epic show, this tighter focus - the POV of a single crew on a not-so-amazing ship - would have allowed Burnham's personal story of redemption to come to the fore. It would also stop canon nerds from complaining about why we never heard of this awesomsauce woman before - because she was just another Starfleet officer doing the best she could.
Ultimately, the stakes that make us enjoy stories are personal ones. Get the characters right, and people will follow them anywhere. Get the characters wrong, and even spectacle of universe-destroying scope won't be enough.
Here's my thing-if you want episodic that's fine. But better have someone on continuity in order to track character development and some sort of progression otherwise it will lose me fairly quickly.
As much as I respect the other opinions around here, the thing that makes a show unwatchable for me is when things feel like they don't matter. Even sitcoms like MASH or "Two Broke Girls" managed to demonstrate this in some way. Star Trek is mixed at best, but I'll grant Discovery this-they at least tried.
As much as I respect the other opinions around here, the thing that makes a show unwatchable for me is when things feel like they don't matter. Even sitcoms like MASH or "Two Broke Girls" managed to demonstrate this in some way. Star Trek is mixed at best, but I'll grant Discovery this-they at least tried.
This is a good point, and they'd be wise to heed it for future arcs. Discovery is in a box most serialized shows aren't, both because it is a prequel and, more importantly, because the Trek values are so well and thoroughly enshrined. I can invest in Burnham's story, because her future is unwritten, but when they raise the stakes to the very soul of the Federation, I lose interest fast. I don't need to slog through a dozen hours to reach an inevitable conclusion we've reached time and again in 45 minutes.
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