Season 2 an overall improvement?
- Thread starter ED-209
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Another convert from the Berman era...Good...Good...
Yes, welcome. Blessed be the body, and health to all its parts.
And if you opened up a Hershey bar and found green leafy spinach inside, you'd be rightly pissed.
I watch Star Trek because I like Star Trek. If I want to watch Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, I know where to go look to find it.
For over a decade I and every other fan in my country had the choice of paying for two episodes at a time on VHS (each costing more than a month’s subscription to All Access), or watching 3-5 years behind at 11pm or midnight (except whenever tennis or something else was on, bumping it for weeks at a time).
I struggle to muster sympathy in that context.
Plus Netflix ain’t free, and I watch nothing on it other than Trek.
Oh I ate one of those bars per accident. Putting spinach inside of it might actually taste better in this specific case. And that's not just the usual European chauvinism towards US food standards, that bar was disgusting af.
I still believe that season 1 of DSC was the best debut season of Trek since TOS. No contest.
That being said, I'm thoroughly enjoying season 2.
That being said, I'm thoroughly enjoying season 2.
That's exactly what worries me about this season. It feels more consistent than the first season, but that seems to be almost entirely because where season one was constantly smashing the accelerator and trying new things, even when it'd be better served by coasting a while and letting what it'd already done unfold naturally, season two is pumping the breaks, putting out a lot of crowd-pleasing fan-service to cram the show back to a late-Berman-era "TNG-lite" mold. Captain Pike, the show becoming all about Spock (like, seriously, to a "When Poochie isn't on-screen, other characters should be asking 'Where's Poochie?'" extent), forcing the recurring cast more to the forefront because on Star Trek, the bridge crew is definitionally the most important group of characters, and smoothing down everyone's personality into a blandly professional agreeableness except for explicitly plot-derived conflict or wacky guest stars. I worry that the ultimate destiny of DSC, and the other CBSAA Trek shows, is to be an inoffensive hour-ish block of Star Trek-flavored video content that's just good enough to keep people spending their ten dollars a month until, as with Voyager and Enterprise, people eventually get tired of intentionally-generic Star Trek and tune out, and the franchise goes on another hiatus. DSC doesn't necessarily need to be good to survive, just good enough to keep you from remembering to cancel your subscription, and while that kind of safety should be conducive to boldness and innovation, it doesn't seem to have been so far.
Star Trek shouldn't be so, well, self-consciously Star-Trekky. There's a way of making this a Star Trek show without just throwing out a lot of pop-culture Star Trek talismans at the screen like the Prime Directive and Mr. Spock or, God forbid, half-assed "issue" stories.
However, one area where I think the show should take a look backwards towards the '90s (and, for the matter, towards the '60s) in its second season is in character scenes. Not even, like, whole unrelated b-plots, just a little downtime, like the TNG poker nights or something. Everything this year has been rush, rush, rush, plot, plot, plot, drama, drama, drama, and it feels like there's hardly been any room to breathe. They could uncram the plots a little bit just to give everyone a chance to sit with the problem, or even talk amongst themselves about stuff outside of work, without continously blasting through the episode like a bunch of ping-pong balls in a dryer.
I think this season has been much better about that than last, when they didn't even give Stamets time to grieve Culber.
The endless twists of season one just sort of washed over me, without emotionallly connecting, because the characters were so secondary to the plot.
This. I remember going to elementary school, year was about 1998. I believe that was the first screening of TNG in my country in Europe. So, that was about 10 years after TNG premiered. I was lucky that it was shown at the time of lunch and I could watch it. 11PM would be way over my bedtime.
As bars go, that one is set pretty low
FWIW, I prefer DS9s first year, but other than that I agree.
Although I didn't enjoy this week's episode, season 2 in general has been a big improvement. Plotting, pacing, characters, direction, dialogue. All on the up.
I watched season one until about half way through, then quit in disgust at how awful and wrong it was. Then got argued into watching the rest on the promise that "it got better" and that "the mirror universe stuff is great". Which it did not, and is not.
I watched the first episode of season 2, because I was again promised that "it's much more better and much more like real Star Trek". Which it wasn't, and it isn't.
I do admit, I haven't watched any since then. I very much doubt it's improved any, though.
You can believe that or not, as you please; it doesn't really matter to me what you believe. But that's what happened.
And I thought the opposite. I think S1 is worse then Enterprise season one. I also think its found its footing in season two. For me Enterprise was a problem till the Xindi arc. Then I was hooked
Season two is not as good as season one in my opinion, mainly because the dam camera is shaking a lot more. It was bad enough having shakycam in S1 now it's getting out of hand. I wish they would STOP SHAKING THE DAM CAMERA... so at least I can see what's going on. Grrr.
I find the less they focus on the Klingons, the better STD seems to be doing. Pike is not as good as Lorca was, but is passable. He also seems to be taking away more time from Boringham, which is always good. The one problem is that Tilly seems to be off this year. I liked her season 1, not so much this year (so far). Stamets is pretty boring this year so far too. Only clear cut improvement is Saru. He was great last year, even better this year.
VFX are also definitely better this year. So I'd say overall a slight improvement over last year, but nowhere near perfection.
VFX are also definitely better this year. So I'd say overall a slight improvement over last year, but nowhere near perfection.
Different strokes, as they say! TNG, DS9 (my fave), VOY, and ENT had weaker first seasons than DSC.
DSC's first season was uneven and had flaws. But the other shows benefit from hindsight and nostalgia after Trek was off TV for 12 long years. The current one's had to claw its way up during a much tougher time in entertainment.
I have a soft spot for ENT. But I predict DSC will end up having more seasons, if not more episodes.
I think Season 2 is just different from Season 1, not better. Of course, my favorite episode from S2 is also the most S1-like. So there we are.
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