Should they make DSC more like Sliders for S4?

[starfleettanner]

Just curious: what do people think of the idea in making Discovery Season 4 be about jumping not only space, BUT TIME? What if at the season finale of S3, the future Federation or whatever becomes the dominant post Federation society, gifts Discovery with a time travel engine, and with Stamets using the spore drive, it doesn't send them at the right time or universe, and Season 4 is about universe and time hopping? I really would love such a thing to happen and to actually involve the Trek Multiverse as a main plot for the season. Anyone else thinking of something similar and how it would play out? Will S4 actually DO this?

 

[Dukhat]

I would rather they just cancel the show instead of coming up with some new gimmick each time they have to retool/reboot/whatever.

 

[starfleettanner]

I would rather they just cancel the show instead of coming up with some new gimmick each time they have to retool/reboot/whatever.

That's nice, but I speak for the general viewers too. They may have never seen Sliders or Doctor Who or whatother shows that involve Space Time theory, so to introduce it in the Star Trek format IMO would be an awesome idea, especially if it grows the fanbase and influences them to take STEM and fields that will help us evolve to that era.

 

[Dukhat]

No offense, but I’m really sick of time travel.

And BTW, Sliders was about traveling to alternate universes, not time travel. Which is also something I have no interest in seeing.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

Or as they take that quantum leap forward into the future, maybe they'll meet future Archer/Bakula (who's already been speculated about), and then they could all go back in time as do-gooders, fixing every heartbreak and misfortune along the way. They could also have a sassy EMH played by Dean Stockwell.

 

[gblews]

Well, the show has never retooled or been rebooted, but I wouldn't mind some Slider-like elements in season 3. But I don't think I want it to be the main focus unless they can write, produce, and act it, in an interesting way.

But that's my feeling about any storylines they present.

 

[starfleettanner]

No offense, but I’m really sick of time travel.

And BTW, Sliders was about traveling to alternate universes, not time travel. Which is also something I have no interest in seeing.

I know, hence why I added the time travel aspect. I just got this weird feeling if its renewed, that S4 is going to be about that, exactly. This is post Daniels, so we're talking about already existing tech in a probable use for a storyline.

 

[starfleettanner]

Well, the show has never retooled or been rebooted, but I wouldn't mind some Slider-like elements in season 3. But I don't think I want it to be the main focus unless they can write, produce, and act it, in an interesting way.

But that's my feeling about any storylines they present.

It would be a pretty cheap way to produce a season, having the same actors in each universe as an alternate version of themselves. They did that pretty well in Sliders, so they could do it easily here. EDIT: Forgot to add, that is IF they travel in the same time period as their counterparts exist in. If not, then that wouldn't make much sense storyline wise.

 

[NCC-73515]

An extended arc of something like Yesterday's Enterprise with its altered reality could be interesting, but it shouldn't be the 'parallel universe of the day' kinda storyline

 

[Dukhat]

I'm pretty sure they have no clue what season 4 is going to be like, since they haven't even finished filming season 3 yet.

 

[Lord Garth]

I'd love to talk about what direction I think the fourth season should go in...

... after I've seen the third.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

No I'm still mad that sliders killed arturo and wade ended up in kromag breeding camp and I was like 15 when those episodes first aired . I'm 37 and I'll never be able to let it go.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I would much rather they just remade Sliders. That show had so much potential that it never achieved, before it became mindless schlock with Kromagg Nazis and action movie knock-off episodes.

That said, I'd buy a one-off episode like Stargate Atlantis did with the ship stuck jumping between universes.

 

[Lance]

The thing is, they've already established jumping around alternative universes as a part of the format. Several of the lead characters have originated from such a universe. So, the concept of at least making that an 'arc' for one season -- maybe Sliders mixed with Quantum Leap, the Discovery hopping from one universe to another to another as the season unfolds, trying to find their way 'home' -- well, I quite like that idea.

 

[Ralphis]

I'll meet you halfway on this one and say that exploring the Star Trek multiverse is something I've always wanted to see. The TNG episode Parallels is one of my all-time favorites. And as we learned in season 1 of Discovery, the mycelial network connects to an infinite number of alternate realities, and not just the Mirror Universe. So the seeds are actually planted in Discovery to do something like this.

But I want to see how season 3 goes before I even think about season 4. I really think jumping ahead 930 years into the future is going to present enough obstacles for this crew that jumping around from alternate reality to alternate reality might be a little too much. I think Discovery just needs a chance to settle down and be its own show.

Now... a 'new' show with a crew jumping around the multiverse would be interesting to me. Maybe not episode-to-episode, but season-to-season. Those Myriad Universes novels come to mind.

 

[Reyman]

Maybe the jump into Kelvinverse for a season to tie in with the movie?

 

[eschaton]

IMHO one of the biggest missed opportunists of the first season was that the ability of the Spore Drive to travel through time and alternate dimensions was pretty much dropped. I mean, the conclusion to the first season even made little sense, since they could have fixed showing up months too late by jumping back at an earlier point. And in the second season they could easily have jumped backwards in time a bit to each of the Red Bursts to have more lead time on whatever was going down.

That said, I would be 100% opposed to doing it now. As was intimated upthread, one of the biggest issues with Discovery is they don't seem able to stick with any one thing. In a weird way it comes across like it's an episodic show, only each "episode" is a season. But Season 2 didn't build logically on Season 1, and it doesn't seem like Season 3 will build logically on Season 2 either. If they do another season arc which is promptly abandoned - if they show once again they still lack a long-term plan for the show - they might as well just pack it in.

 

[Qonundrum]

Just curious: what do people think of the idea in making Discovery Season 4 be about jumping not only space, BUT TIME? What if at the season finale of S3, the future Federation or whatever becomes the dominant post Federation society, gifts Discovery with a time travel engine, and with Stamets using the spore drive, it doesn't send them at the right time or universe, and Season 4 is about universe and time hopping? I really would love such a thing to happen and to actually involve the Trek Multiverse as a main plot for the season. Anyone else thinking of something similar and how it would play out? Will S4 actually DO this?

Sliders never did time travel, apart from the season 3 finale, that hinted at it. But season 4 quickly fixed that and restored the show to its original premise. It was parallel Earth development like in TOS only without a spaceship traveling half a galaxy to find one of several "rare instances".

I like the notion but what can they do in the 29th century that they couldn't do in the 23rd or 24th or 21st? Heck, "Sliders" was misunderstood in 1995... there's no way it'd survive even seven episodes nowadays. Get the DSC crew back to Earth and then something goes haywire when inventing a time travel mechanism to get back home and then they're doing episodes of that 80s show "Voyagers!" (which is far closer to "Quantum Leap" than "Sliders" ever could have been...) That might actually be cool, especially if the scripts find the right vibe.

As a time travel show where they obey the "Temporal Prime Directive"? Again, what else can be done to keep interest without heading back to Earth all the time and take pot shot guesses involving history (based on what's told down through the ages and as people forget stuff all the time, or even in summer camp in that exercise where you're all in a row and you're told something then you have to repeat it and the hapless person at the end has to repeat it to everyone and chances are what was announced to everyone wasn't remotely the same to what was first uttered) that would only serve to validate VOY's "Living Witness" that much more?

 

[Qonundrum]

The thing is, they've already established jumping around alternative universes as a part of the format. Several of the lead characters have originated from such a universe. So, the concept of at least making that an 'arc' for one season -- maybe Sliders mixed with Quantum Leap, the Discovery hopping from one universe to another to another as the season unfolds, trying to find their way 'home' -- well, I quite like that idea.

It's a novel concept but how to keep the premise going for long enough would be a big challenge.

Wasn't Lorca from "the mirror universe" or another one, or even Arnold Rimmer's double-double universe? TOS and DS9 kept the multiverse thing limited to ours and theirs (the sole mirror universe, which was okay for 1967 but got dated very quickly). ST2009 finally and officially opened up the option of multiple universes/realities/timelines (the movie IMHO is a mixed bag but the new alternate universe where even our Spock survived and got there was genuinely good!)

 

[eschaton]

I think - leaving Discovery aside - the idea of a Trek ship traveling between alternate universes is really cool. However, it would be very, very hard to develop it into a serialized story that developed across the seasons, since one would expect what happens in one universe would not affect another.

Time travel is a different matter. I think Dr. Who has shown pretty well that it's damn hard to develop a convincing long-term plot involving time travel before everything unravels into a mass of handwave.