What was your impression of Season 2 overall?

Discussion in 'Star Trek: Discovery' started by Lord Garth, May 20, 2019.

  1. Nenya

    Nenya Commander Red Shirt

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    I'm pretty sure we were sold on the idea that this Star Trek wouldn't be afraid to kill people and keep them dead. Which it kinda did with Landry but was quickly abandoned.
     
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  2. Jadeb

    Jadeb Commodore Commodore

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    I’d expect something different from modern serialized drama than a piece of ‘60s whimsy like “Shore Leave,” but the decision to fridge half of Trek’s first significant gay couple was so awful that I will overlook the decision to undo it.
     
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  3. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Star Trek has pretty much given up on it, including with Discovery. So, Discovery is following the grand Star Trek tradition of ignoring people dying.
     
  4. Jadeb

    Jadeb Commodore Commodore

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    I really hope they don’t. That’s one change I think is very important in terms of modernizing the franchise.
     
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  5. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I agree, but I doubt it will happen.
     
  6. Amasov

    Amasov Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    This is pretty spot on. But if I could just add a little bit! I think the minor difference on the TV end is I don't think we'll have overlapping shows as far as when the seasons are released. I think one will end and another will start not long after since we aren't in the 22-26 episodes a season anymore. So while it may seem like oversaturation, I don't think anything will be airing at the same time. I could be wrong, though.

    Plus I'd like to also factor in that we're in a different world now. Entertainment and how it's ingested is so fractured now an IP could have eight shows on a streaming platform somewhere and it could go totally unnoticed if you're not subscribed to it.
     
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  7. eschaton

    eschaton Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I feel like killing fan favorites permanently really only happens when it's either a show based upon an existing body of work or there's a very strong showrunner with a set path for the show. Otherwise the pressure on the writers to give the fans more of what they already love is just too great.
     
  8. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Pretty much. And it sucks, but that's the world we are at.
     
  9. Alan Roi

    Alan Roi Commodore Commodore

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    That's the world we've always been at.
     
  10. ATimson

    ATimson Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    But CBS isn't releasing the show like a novel, like Netflix does; they're releasing it as a series of short stories. So the criticism is completely reasonable.
     
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  11. DarthTimon

    DarthTimon Commander Red Shirt

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    I can agree with every word! In fact, I can't think of a way to add to or expand upon what you said!
     
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  12. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    We have a quicker way of seeing that world now.
     
  13. Alan Roi

    Alan Roi Commodore Commodore

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    Except the critique isn't about how the show is released but how much content it offers over the course of each individual chapter and how that chapter is structured (and its not even about Disco anyway, its a critique of the Mandalorian for its glacial pacing, something Disco does not suffer from, I might add). I get it. Some people rate a show's artistic merits whether or not it has a story that can be wrapped up in a bow each and every 45 minute chunk that's served, and whether or not that hews to different way stories can be structured. But if it isn't and doesn't and isn't even intended to, how does it make any sense to apply that critique and have it be anything more than just insisting short stories have greater artistic merit than novels?
     
  14. eschaton

    eschaton Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I don't think anyone has really argued that episodic TV is inherently a higher art form than serialized TV. Some people have argued that it's been really, really overdone though, since almost all dramatic (and even some comedic) television is serialized now.

    I think it's also pretty fair to say that if you're doing serialization without either a "net" (e.g., an established and completed series of books to work from) or with a very solid plan for a multi-year arc, you're not going to end up with "peak TV" level quality, because there's fundamentally no difference between winging it with an episodic show from week to week and winging it with a serialized plot from week to week (and season to season).
     
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  15. Alan Roi

    Alan Roi Commodore Commodore

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    I'm not convinced, with all I've watched that what you say guarantees "peak TV" quality or not. Fact is a television has too many moving parts and too many things going on that cannot be anticipated to guarantee that say a 5 year plan will produce better art than a series of one year plans.
     
  16. eschaton

    eschaton Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Winging it is winging it though. It's not like writing a novel. I mean, when you write long-form fiction, sometimes the story evolves in a direction you don't intend, but you can always go back and fix the beginning in a later edit to align better with the ending. That's really not a possibility with TV, because there's the big sunk cost involved in scenes which have already been shot. And we know for both seasons of Discovery they were still writing episodes for the end of the season while they were filming episodes for the beginning of the season, meaning they didn't have the luxury of fixing the beginning to align better with the ending.
     
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  17. Lord Garth

    Lord Garth Admiral Admiral

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    I don't think it'll be over-saturation either. I think new content all year round but never overlapping with each other would only qualify as "There's a ton now!" instead of "There's too much!"

    There's another thing too. It's hard to tell what general consensus is. Everyone has always had an opinion but now we have YouTube and algorithms on the Internet that will give you news and information that you agree with, so it's all confirmation bias. One of the advantages of TrekBBS is that you get all kinds of opinions at the same time instead of hearing or reading just the ones you agree with.

    But we're all still only a vocal minority and somewhere like YouTube just amplifies it further. Numbers don't lie, but CBSAA doesn't make its numbers available. Neither does somewhere like Netflix. So the way I'm going to gauge when the general feeling has reached "They're doing another one?!" is when CBSAA is ramping down the Star Trek content instead of up. Talk is cheap, actions are what matters. CBSAA's actions. So that'll be my way of filtering out all the noise to see what's really going on.
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2019
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  18. Alan Roi

    Alan Roi Commodore Commodore

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    This sounds like you're still buying into the idea that both seasons ended wildly different from were they were conceived when the seasons started, and there's really zero evidence of that and even some proof that refutes such claims. and makes little sense as you so succinctly point out, sunk cost where you can't throw out sets, costuming, FX willy nilly and costing your production in big overruns. So at worst there's been some tinkering along the way each season but not wholesale changes.

    And any decent writer, or group of writers, and AFAIC Discos writers are decent enough, don't need to change the beginnings if later stuff alters where you're going. You write a decent start, throw in some mystery and put in enough callbacks at the end to make it work. Not rocket surgery in this genre.

    There is another reason there are problems with setting a TV show in stone for a 5 year arc or similar. Because, as almost every producer finds out, most of those shows whose showrunners do set that up last 1,2 or 3 seasons, leaving all your major payoffs in the garbage bin. I've seen enough of that to say, no thanks.
     
    Last edited: Nov 21, 2019
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  19. DarKush

    DarKush Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I guess this is the best thread to voice my thoughts on Season 2, since I recently watched it on Blu-Ray. Overall I thought it was in many ways a step forward while also taking steps back.

    They improved when it came to character development, adding new layers to Burnham's character while also developing other members of the crew/cast, and shifting the show more to resemble the ensemble feel of the other Trek series, particularly the Berman era. I liked when Pike had everyone say their names and we got to see more of the bridge crew, etc. show more personality. (The downside is that it felt a bit rushed, or forced since many of these characters were blank slates last year and it was hard for me to buy their close friendships this year. It felt like CBS/Kurtzman heard some fan complaints and just jumped to sort of creating an ensemble, family-like crew instead of showing us how they got there; and this was apparent the most with the death of Airiam; a well-made/well-acted episode, but it left me a bit cold because I didn't know enough about this character ahead of time to really care that much about her sacrifice/loss, and how much it affected the crew. They almost gave her a Wrath of Khan Spock send off, or even a Worf Season 4 finale send off and it didn't work for me). I didn't quite buy that all of the bridge crew would willingly leave the 23rd century behind for each other. I wish one or two didn't.

    I also felt they rushed Emperor Georgiou's character arc as well, turning her more sympathetic to Michael, making her more of an antihero (I can see why they would do that, to make it easier for her to be the lead of the Section 31 series) but it felt like it was happening too fast to me. I did enjoy how Stamets and Culber's relationship was handled; I thought it was interesting to have Culber be almost a new person and has to approach his marriage, feelings, for Stamets through that new experience. I wasn't a fan of Tilly and her ghost friend and how they got to the new Culber however, and I was also iffy on Jet Reno. Sometimes I thought the character was a breath of fresh air, other times I thought she was too abrasive and insubordinate. I did find it weird though that Reno was gone for a good part of the series after her introduction and then pops back up.

    I enjoyed Anson Mount's Pike quite a bit. He was a great antidote to Lorca's command style, though at times I felt he was too deferential and allowed crew members to interrupt him. I think they made him a bit too accommodating at times. I liked the Section 31/Control big bad plot. And I enjoyed how Leland wasn't completely depicted as bad. I'm not a fan though of Section 31 being so well-known (but I chalk that up to Kurtzman and how they were depicted in Into Darkness). I liked the choice for Number One, but they didn't do much with the character.

    The production values remain top notch. Each episode was cinematic. My only quibble was when they had the nanites attacking Burnham. That looked surprisingly cheap and I wasn't sure what they were going for there. I was okay with the Discovery Enterprise, and the new take on the TOS uniforms grew more and more on me.

    When it came to taking steps back, I felt the writing wasn't as tight as the first season, the arc (s) weren't as strong. I thought the mystery surrounding Spock wasn't that compelling, and the show spent time building up this great betrayal of Spock by Michael, but when we get that scene, it was underwhelming. It was just kid Michael being very mean to kid Spock. How that would hurt him so deeply for years just didn't make sense to me. So I was iffy with how the Spock-Burnham relationship was depicted, though I thought Sonequa Martin-Green and Ethan Peck worked well together. I did find it weird that they had Sarek and Amanda come see only Burnham before she made the big time jump, and then the show had to twist itself a bit to keep them from seeing Spock while they were there; I can see Sarek not speaking to him, but not Amanda, especially after what she did during the season.

    I also thought the Red Angel twist with Burnham's mom wasn't bad; though I wish there had been more of a mention of her father. I did think the actress playing Gabrielle Burnham was a good fit. She resembled Martin-Green.

    I didn't care for a lot of the Klingon stuff. One of the few times I don't think the show's designs worked well was when it came to Klingon architecture. I did appreciate that the Klingons have hair again and also the inclusion of the D7. I still wish here that they would show different kinds of Klingons. We are too close now to TOS to ignore the smooth-head Klingons. To me, Tyler is too human looking (being a human explains that of course) to be a stand-in for them. I'm also not a fan of how Discovery has their Klingons pronounce "Qo'noS" and "Kahless".

    I think the second season got better once we got to Control and the mystery of the Red Angel was solved. The first half meandered a bit, as if the writers were trying to find their place.

    I liked how the second season ended, and the catapulting of Discovery into the future and how it's fate has been covered up, which neatly explains why Spock or no one else ever mentioned them. I wonder now though if the ship will remain in the future. I hope so because it opens the door for them to tell all kinds of stories, to go all kinds of places without worrying about continuity. The downside is that the Tyler/L'Rell-Section 31/Klingon storyline won't be resolved, unless that's for the Section 31, or fingers-crossed Pike series.
     
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  20. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I love that. It's very Sean Connery and I love the idea of accented Klingon.
     
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