Spoilers Strange New Worlds General Discussion Thread

I rewatch Discovery every year in the leadup to a new season. I haven’t rewatched Picard yet, but I figure I’ll do so reasonably soon.

I quite enjoy both.

 

Lower Decks is episodic though.

 

It's not that serialized shows can't be brilliant, it's that so many people who write them don't seem to ever have first learned how to write an hour with a proper beginning, middle and end.

 

A lot of them also suffer because they really only have an hour or two of plot, and then feel like they have to throw up a bunch of roadblocks to stop the season arc from quickly finishing.

The best serialized dramas tend to either be nearly direct adaptations of books (so all the hard work is done) or have identifiable episodes.

 

When you have three hours' worth of story and ten to fifteen hours of programming to fill it makes things pretty...clunky.

 

i really hope they don't change the enterprise back to the TOS model

he was talking about Picard not DSC

 

There are people who are still using "STD"? Seriously? They think to be edgy or what?

 

I just realized, Goldsman saying they needed to make modifications to the bridge because it was only meant to be a small part on Disco but is now the centerpiece of this series. But the Enterprise bridge is the most expensive set built for Disco, and it's still unsuitable to be the centerpiece of another show?

 

I gather the purpose in DSC was to make the thing look cool, while the purpose for SNW would be to make the thing work as a set. Those might be mutually exclusive, in modern terms: the empty football fields around the consoles and chairs are there for a reason...

As for "resetting the ship to TOS", Trek has a long track history with nudging things back towards what used to sell in the 1960s, and DSC is the current champion of backpedaling. I wouldn't wonder a bit if we got a few more TOS-style display graphics, possibly a reshaping of the main viewer, and a couple of new sets where the corridors would be more obviously TOS and less obviously Discovery-revamps. They are hardly going to change the exterior to the 1960s version, though. But who knows? There could be minor adjustments there, too - say, fiddling with the pylons or whatever. Certainly there's nothing whatsoever to stop them from modifying things, as we have seen in all Trek of late (and old).

Timo Saloniemi

 

I tend to enjoy serialized shows more when I can binge them in a short period of time. When they drop once a week, I tend to forget the smaller, more subtle moments. On rewatch, I appreciate the intricacies more. It tends to help the story feel more cohesive. That has been the case when I've rewatched Discovery. I haven't yet rewatched season 1 of Picard, but I'll probably do so before season 2 begins.

 

Has anybody heard who the "Guest Star" was that brought COVID to the set of SNW?

Any rumors?

 

I think the problem with serialized shows which drop week by week is it helps to spur "thinkpieces" which dissect each individual episode and potentially take all of the joy out of viewing. In addition, if you have a couple mediocre episodes in row, you have weeks to stew over it, whereas you can kinda ignore flabby middle of a show dropped all at once.

 

It might not be as adaptable to shooting requirements as they work week to week. If it only had to look good from certain angles, for limited shots, vs. every week shooting.

 

It's been a while but I thought they just redressed the DSC bridge for ENT?

 

Probably some background extra.

 

Whole new build, from what I recall. The two-level S31 bridge was, I believe, a redress of the original Shenzhou bridge.

 

I can't believe I just read City on the Edge of Forever described as 'hard sci-fi'.

looks askance at magic time travel donut...

 

That's correct. The Enterprise bridge set was actually build on a steel frame, which was much more durable than the others. This launched a lot of speculation that there would eventually be a Pike/Enterprise spinoff, since they put so much effort into it (which of course panned out in the end).

 

Nope

 

I hope they reduce the shine and glare for the ongoing series. Make the floor a little more matte and dim some of the ceiling lights, maybe. (Would love some colored gels over the ceiling lights, like in TOS, but I dare hope for only so much.)

I kinda think they’ll have to do something with the floor. That high-gloss finish would be a nightmare to keep clean in HD.