Why the hate for Disco?

Akiva Goldsman is the co-creator of Picard and Strange New Worlds and co-executive producer/co-showrunner on Picard and Strange New Worlds.

 

Here's my take from observing the fan base. One, fans want safe and familiar. No, I don't believe for one minute they want good stories. They want to to tickle their ears, warm their arts, and be that comfort food that Star Trek has morphed in to over the years. Now, obviously, as you say, this is going to vary from fan to fan. Bu,t what has largely been demonstrated as selling well is TOS. Having huge fan film projects recreating the era, as well as various other markers, TOS is still that familiar touchstone for fans and non-fans. So, it makes sense to go with that, rather than, as you say, just ahead 100 years and do TNG all over again.

But, this is a duel edged sword. That safe and familiar is far more the hallmark of the Berman era, with its soothing colors, and relatively safe storytelling style. So, now we see the swing back towards TNG safety with Picard and the familiar nostalgic trappings.

Every time I see "Oh, Discovery did it wrong! No one asked for this?" I'm like, "Yeah, I watched the fan base and what they were buying. This is exactly what people were buying at the time-TOS era, more action adventure, having some nostalgia trappings."

 

I agree very much with this. Most fans just want the same old same old that they grew up with. And it's "doing it RONG" if the franchise dares to be anything else. I for one was totally burned-out on the same old Trek formula by the time VOY hit midway through S1. DS9 was different enough, but VOY and later ENT took interesting foundational premises and wasted them on "more of the same." You can only have so many 100's of hours of the same thing before I start to get a little bored with it.

One of the reasons I like DSC and PIC is that they throw that traditional comfort food formula out and dare to do something different, much the same way DS9 did. Are they perfect? Nope, not at all. But....at least they are not dull and template-based McStarTrek productions like most of what we got in the late 90's and onward.

I also agree that it's more than a little obtuse for fans to act like they don't understand why CBS put out the type of product we are seeing. The most widely popular Trek stories (I'm not talking about what the hardcore fans look at, I"m talkng broad casual fan appeal) have typically been darker action-oriented stuff (TWOK. TUC, DS9, Best of Both Worlds, Star Trek 2009, etc etc etc). Yes, "Measure of a Man" is well-regarded, but that ain't gonna make money at the box office or as the basis for a weekly series because, let's face it, it's dreadfully dull to most people.

It's the same argument we've been having since 2017 (or, really, since 2009): You either resonate with it or you don't. If you like it, you can forgive a bunch of warts and some suspect writing and story choices because it entertains you overall. If you don't like it, you find 1001 reasons why it sucks and it's an insult to everything Gene holds dear.

It gets pretty tiresome having the same exact arguments fueled by the exact same personal biases over and over again.

 

Another reason why I think the 23rd century was told was because of storytelling possibilities. By TNG, DS9, the Federation had become more "enlightened"--the Section 31 stuff couldn't really have been done then without Bashir and his friends knocking them down (which is what they did in DS9). The Federation was supposed to be at peace, and they can't just unleash another war in the 24th/25th century without looking like a retread of the Dominion war.

That's why Picard is basically self contained non-Starfleet stuff. And even the darker take on the Fed there had a lot of criticism. It's easier to do that sort of thing earlier on in the Fed's history.

23rd century was a wilder time with more opportunities for action, thus the Klingon war and Section 31 conflicts. And action sells.

 

The Federation wasn't dark at all in Picard.

But this isn't the thread for that.

 

Yeah, Admiral Clancy being grumpy and using F-bombs doesn't make the Federation a dark political union.

 

spoilers for Picard season 1

Spoiler

If letting Riker and Troi's son die over an absurd synth ban isn't dark, what is?

 

The Federation in DS9 had a Section 31 that wanted to commit genocide against the Founders of the Dominion and about 120 years before Starfleet hatched a plot to destroy the planet Qo'noS from within the world itself. Admiral Nechayev in TNG wanted Picard to find a way to use Hugh to destroy the Borg Collective. Starfleet and the Federation have always had a dark side dating back to the start of the Trek universe.

Admiral Cartwright and Colonel West, anybody?

 

It's easier to do dark stories before said events than afterwards, when the Fed was supposed to have learned from them. While we were all waiting for Vance to have some dark secret in Discovery (my favorite theory was that he was really Osyraa's lover), he ultimately didn't have any. Even Kovich was just some guy who wasn't responsible for Mirror Georgiou's deteriorating health.

 

I guess we're meant to look at this as the Federation taking a very long time to learn from bureaucratic and military-industrial mistakes due to its immense size and complexity. That's how I prefer to view how the Federation seems to be operating post-Dominion War and NEM.

 

People call things "dark" so often it is starting to lose its meaning. Honestly, it is very, very difficult to take seriously at this point.

I mean even in the Dominion War there was paranoia, and there admirals trying to manage the crisis. It isn't so far a stretch to see that these crises have created a lot of anxiety and fear in the operations and viewing of threats.

The idea that the Federation could never struggle in this area again is odd to me, at best.

 

Now, had Admiral Leyton and his co-conspirators managed to stage their planned coup and overthrow the elected government of the Federation in 2372 then the UFP could well have become dark. An authoritarian government ruled from the top by the military and imposing strict cultural limitations on its citizens to keep the Founders of the Dominion and other enemies from infiltrating and destroying it.

 

I heard SF Debris put it in a way that has always informed my view of the Founders threat. Basically, the Founders are a far more serious threat to the values of Starfleet and the Federation, who rely on honesty, and trustworthiness in each other to maintain their organizations. As a collection of cultures there is a need for mutual trust to get things done. The Founders can completely un do that in a way that the Borg can't. You can see a person becoming a Borg, see them turning against you, but you don't know if the person next to you has already been turned against you. Sisko's moment with his dad is emblematic of this idea that even the closest people to us could be against us.

That's not something you just recover from. Sorry to the utopist Federation.

 

Well, the Borg can just turn Earth into a heap of drones. I don't think the Dominion can top that.

 

And hence why if the post-Dominion War Federation feels a lot more cynical there are good reasons that make sense both in-universe and in our real world.

 

Which ignores the larger point I was making that fear of the Founders would make the Federation struggle with trust, which is at the foundation of their sense of mutual cooperation.

Exactly. I get that people want to the utopian escapism of Star Trek to be unsullied by the real world but that is not how art works. But, sadly, that is how Star Trek often treats horrible things is walking it off.

 

The Federation probably lets a lot of people die that could be saved if it weren't for the generic engineering ban.

The Federation isn't perfect, nothing is.

 

Picard gave Riker an atta-boy for allowing people to die and not saving a little girl. The Federation has demonstrated time and again that it is not perfect, especially if very overreaching bans due to fears of one possible outcome. So, if that's dark, then the Federation has struggled with this for a long time.

 

Except we have no proof in canon that the genetic engineering ban was taken to the extent that the Federation let people die over it, and proof in Enterprise that Rigellian gene therapy was used to prevent deaths: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rigellian_gene_therapy .

 

Who said he got it legally? He was a terrorist.

Earlier in that season Soong said people still die from things that could be cured by Generic Engineering.

Edit: But it seems by the 24th some limited genetic engineering is allowed to treat pre-existing conditions

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Genetic_engineering