What was your impression of Season 2 overall?

Critic Emily Todd VanDerWerff writing in Vox online about a different franchise, really encapsulates what I feel about both seasons of DSC. Maybe the writers need to go back and watch old serials or read lit that was serialized (Dickens, say) to get the feel of how each ep needs to be its own thing as well as part of a whole.

"And so [it] appears to be following the dreaded “X-hour long movie” model that afflicts so many streaming dramas, where the action is padded, the storytelling is lax, and the character development is trapped by the cinematic model of tracing a character’s gradual progression from one thing to another over two-ish hours."

 

ENT and DS9.

 

This isn't a criticism of the show, it's a criticism of the genre. It's criticizing a novel for not being a collection of short stories. It would appear that Emily has a very short attention span. IMO, the only problem that comes with the stretching out of single stories over 10+ episodes is when they get repetitive or very little happens for long stretches to fill out time. But, IMO, that has never been an issue with DISCO, even where it has bee with some other series, most notably Game of Thrones for being glacially paced and the Marvel Netflix shows, for their repetitive tendencies.

And neither Dickens newspaper serials nor movie serials behave like you claim. Each weekly 4700 word Dickens chapter or 30 minute weekly episode were not 'their own thing'.

 

Yes, she was really criticizing that genre, I agree. But earlier serials knew each installment also had to be gripping on its own or fickle readers or viewers would lose interest. When sales of Martin Chuzzlewit were down, that's when Dickens had him go off to America for adventures.

I would posit viewers are not now as fickle. Most Trek fans are going to watch the whole season because it is called Trek. I could be wrong. I don't think there is the economic incentive to keep each part as interesting as there was in the past.

I've actually read all of Dickens' novels and took an awesome course from a great Dickensian. Each installment, of course, was not totally self-contained, or a novel would be a series of vignettes, though Pickwick was in fact, that. But in the novels, each installment does have a structure and integrity to it that I found DSC lacking.

Oddly I am loving the Mandalorian. So far each ep has its own plot and is-ness to it than I found with DSC. Plus I just like the quiet and the vistas so far.

Obviously ymmv.

 

Many Trek fans recommend skipping large chunks of the Berman era because a whole lot of the discrete episodes are considered, even by fans as filler and not very interesting. I gave up quickly on the series (although with TNG and DS9 I was lured back) because they are pretty dull exercises for the most part even to me as a lifelong Star Trek fan.

As for the Mandelorian, I've seen both eps and IMO, they are no more or less discrete than Disco eps were to start of with, 1) kind of boring and derivative of the Spaghetti Westerns esthetic with the first episode (Favreau has clearly watched examples of the genre, but appears to be blissfully unaware that they are a deconstruction and critique of the western genre), and a tribute to Despicable Me franchise cartoon level storytelling with the second (made most obvious by the reverse engineering of Jawas into characterizations indistinguishable from cartoonish Despicable Me Minions). Both eps so far are kind of dumb and silly, even with an occasional flash of something more, but IMO, just flashes. Disco has offered far more grown-up and nuanced storytelling in every respect even in its worst stretches, at least so far as I am concerned.

 

Right, Mando is a couple of action/adventure romps so far. Obviously ripping off spaghetti westerns so much that it is ironic: how far.can they go? Of course. SW ep4 ripped off Flash Gordon patently.

Each is its own little adventure. They'll all tie together, I assume.

It's a little unassuming, which I think DSC was originally, back in the Fuller era? It got epic-bloat as better writers than I have.put forth here and in other threads.

 

I don't think this is something unique to Berman Trek though. TOS was famous for having poor quality control (even if you discount Season 3, which was mostly garbage), and the Trek movies tended to alternate between "meh" and awesome frequently enough there was that common joke that only odd numbered Trek movies were good (not entirely true since TSFS was a good movie, but Nemesis finally killed that meme).

 

Which is why the insistence that poorly received entries now are somehow unthinkable is laughable to me. It's not like the showrunners now were around for all the struggles of prior productions.

 

Although as others have noted, the serialized nature of Discovery means there's a lot more riding on actually getting the season as a whole right.

I mean, if you have an episodic show where only 50% of the episodes are good, that still means - even in the modern era of short seasons - something like 7-8 decent episodes. But if you have only a 50/50 chance of getting the season arc right, that means that half the time the entire season will be "spoiled" more or less because you flubbed something.

 

Like turning a mystical mystery into a defeat-the-evil-AI.

 

That's a fair point, though I work hard not to let the bad override the good. Even if it is serialized, that doesn't automatically make it "spoiled" because something gets executed less than ideally. I don't know. I try to balance between noting the whole and parts, and taking them both in stride, rather than letting one flub ruin my enjoyment.

YMMV.

 

If you feel the need to look at it on the most cursory of levels, sure. I would think a Trek fan would be able to look deeper than that.

 

In my experience having to sit through 8 crap discrete episodes in order to maybe find 8 that are worth watching is a very unpleasant experience. And I've abandoned every Star Trek series after TOS at some point because of too many crap episodes in a row because a 45 minute story Star Trek ep almost always lives and dies on the one point it's trying to make, and if it fails that single point that's it.

But an 800 minute story has multiple points that carry on from episode to episode and across an entire season because no one episode is built from one single point. So, everything balances out because its almost impossible that any single episode will fail in its presentation of most of the threads going on. There aren't really any filler eps who blow their single point, even if there might be fewer eps that manage to nail every single point the series or season is trying to make.

I get that there are people who are willing to sit through a season of meh Star Trek in the hopes of one or two sterling episodes they can put in a box. I'm not one of them. I will take a season long story that offers me a lot of interesting ideas even if it crosses its lines a few times along the way, because that means I'm rarely bored as I can shift from one way of viewing of the narrative to another, be it micro or macro level, be it interpersonal development or the overarching season long plot because each aspect covers an entire seasons worth of weight. Honestly, Disco is the first time ever I've watched every ep of the first 2 seasons of a Star Trek series in order and haven't felt I've wasted my time doing so. As much as I adore TOS, even that show doesn't so it for me due to the reset button being pressed every 45 minutes.

IMO, an 800 minute story isn't going to get it as a whole 'right' or get it as a whole 'wrong'. and that's its strength. Can't say the same for 45 minute stories though. In my opinion they have far more riding on getting it 'right'. And in my experience, Star Trek has struggled to do that with any consistency ever.

 

And oddly, I feel wasting my time watching DSC. I watch it b/c my wife likes to watch it, so we do together. I like doing things with her, so that's not a waste. I'll certainly never rewatch it. To me it is faux-deep. I'll stop posting now, b/c on matters of taste there can be no disputing. Be well.

 

I dunno, since it's been so long since I've seen any Trek on broadcast. Over the last decade plus, the way I've watched Trek has been on streaming services, skipping the awful episodes and focusing on the good ones only. Really Discovery is the only Trek right now that I have experience with tuning in each week and thinking "hope it's good this time around...oh well better luck next time."

I mean, there's only a handful of Voyager episodes I consider good (instead of merely passable) but I can just go on basically any streaming service and just watch those episodes and ignore the rest, which works well for me.

That can also be a liability though. I mean, I love Deep Space Nine - it's my favorite Trek by far - but I know that if I am going to start rewatching it - unlike other Treks - I will feel the need to start from the beginning and work my way through, which means a commitment of months if not the better part of the year (I probably only have about two free hours a day on average, and I don't always want to spend them watching things). When you add to this a serialized show with which I have major reservations about sections of - like say Game of Thrones due to its last few seasons - taking on a rewatch becomes even more of a chore, often feeling more like taking medicine than something related to enjoyment.

Keep in mind though the first two seasons of Discovery have the same runtime as the first season of any other Trek show. Less runtime than a TOS season actually.

I'm not a big TV watcher, as I've said in the past. I'm much more of a reader, and I've gone through big periods of time where I haven't watched any TV at all. I stopped owning a TV around the year 2000, and until Netflix started doing streaming, I didn't really watch much TV at all unless I happened to be in a hotel or something.

That said, I've watched a fair number of serialized shows which have held my interest in recent years through the entire season with little complaint, like Stranger Things, Lost in Space, Altered Carbon, Good Omens, Carnival Row, etc. I've also tried to watch other serialized shows where I frankly lost interest halfway through the arc and stopped watching entirely. Discovery is in that middle section - like the last few seasons of Game of Thrones - where it holds my interest enough to finish the season (in part because of my commitment to the material), but it also seems replete with narrative errors which make it impossible to totally suspend disbelief.

 

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Seem, I'm different. Thus far, I don't just skip episodes on a streaming service if I cannot get in to the first couple. Star Trek or no, TNG and VOY have not been able to hook me and I don't go "I hope I find a good episode." I have no desire to sift through episodes people say are good and hope.

Versus DSC and DS9 which got me via characters and I care about what happens to the characters, narrative failings and all.

 

Now that the DVD set is out, I'm five episodes in, and I have mixed feelings. The show itself is very "meh" overall. I like Pike though. Too bad he's only in this year. The woman engineer (don't recall her name) that they found in the wreck of that other ship is a nice addition too. Burnham remains as boring as she was last year.

My one complaint: Who the hell decided it was a good idea to bring Cubert back from the dead? I hate that. What happened to "death is serious and should be permanent"?

 

who said death is permanent in star trek? since everyone's complaint last year was that discovery unceremoniously offed a gay character, the producers had been pretty unsubtly indicating culber would be back from the get go.

 

That went out the door with:
TOS S1 - "Shore Leave" when Dr. McCoy was killed by a Knight on horseback with a Lance - then the body removed without anyone noticing and McCoy coming back 100% at the end of the episode. (circa 1966)

TOS S2 - "The Changeling" - Scotty was dead, McCoy pronounced him dead, and NOMAD brought him back. (circa. 1967)

The feature film - "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock" (circa 1984)

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