How about a Starfleet Medical show?
News Kurtzman: Starfleet Academy Series On The Way
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Thus it is achievable.
Only if it stars Hugh Laurie as a cranky EMH.
That's bull crap and you should know it. Even your examples prove my point. The admiral who cusses at Picard, is her dialogue typical of what we have seen in the 10 episodes of that show? No it isn't. It's clearly not. Thus she is shown as a "Departure for the norm" to use your own words against you. Now if a larger number of characters were using the same terms, then you could have a valid argument.
Lets look through the lens of time. To again show what should be an utterly obvious thing. That Trek has always changed as the decades have.
How often did Trek use the term shit, before Star Trek Generations. TNG used Merde, which can mean the same thing, but you actually need to know that. But outside of that, in the 20 years before TNG did anyone utter the word shit?
How about bastard. Did TOS ever use the term bastard? Or did it take nearly 20 years after the start of TOS for to be used?
I like the idea simply because it would be a unique approach to tell Trek stories. My idea is to turn it into a family show. Have a mom and dad and their teenage son and 10 year old daughter basically travel around to different locations helping out. Also the parents are civilians. So the show would be dealing with unique medical mysteries that exist in the future while the kids would be seeing the Trek universe with a sense of wonder you don't really get with adults or Starfleet people who are use to aliens and weird stuff.
They could call it The Greys' Anatomy.
"It's not Space Lupus."
And Kirk's mom.
(edited because I realized what I posted could have an unintended double meaning... nvm)
I'm personally not innto medical shows, but if the fans like it... why not.
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"Over-emotion?" Having feelings does not make you "less evolved." If anything, those "evolved humanity" characters were shallowly-written cardboard cutouts that don't reflect any meaningful human psyhology.
Yeah, I think Star Trek can lend itself to a lot of formats. It doesn't just have to be military space opera. And if Paramount+ is serious about having a new Star Trek episode airing every week in the age of Peak TV, then they need to open it up to a lot of different formats to keep it from getting stale. They've already taken steps to that with PIC and LD.
I'll never understand the concept of less emotion = more evolved. I guess that means the motto of Starfleet is stiff upper lip.
Melodrama is at the core of Star Trek.
There's a fine line between melodrama and unabashed soap opera level histrionics. But I don't think Disco crosses that line.
There are some people in the Star Trek audience who associate being emotional with 'Emo' as a dirty word, which I think is silly. There is a point where showing too much emotion on the job might make them seem unprofessional, but again, Disco does not cross that line.
Trek can lend itself to a lot of formats, but the last thing the world needs is more lame sitcoms.
I always thought to myself that I should, if I had the time and skill, edit together all the scenes of Michael Burnham crying and emoting and see how long it lasted.
Thankfully this is the Internet! Someone naturally already did it:
This of course is only Season 2, excludes other characters like Tilly, etc. Over five minutes! I challenge you to watch it all. It feels long after the first minute. That's a hell of a lot in just ten episodes.
My point is, there's been a HUGE shift in the characterisation of Star Trek characters: it's a pseudo-military organisation and after the first six shows and 700 episodes spanning time before, during and after Discovery's era, we had come to expect a depiction of professionals who showed a greater command of themselves (a point referenced regularly by e.g. Picard in First Contact, or Troi in Time's Arrow).
The characters in Discovery, Lower Decks and Picard are really not very close to the established "norms" of Trek, over the previous 700 episodes. It's a creative choice to drag them down to our level: insecure, volatile, suffering, broken beings. And, clearly, there's enough of an audience/studio support for that approach.
With that in mind, I'd say it's very possible indeed that Mr Kurtzman's new Academy series will look far more contemporary and could well feature "mean teen" characters. His MO is showing 21st century-style broken people trying to do better and being directly relatable; rather than people who are already mostly there. What better way than to show us similar clichés to Tilly (yelling into her pillow, overtalking, having a stroppy chat with her mum, failing to meet the physical fitness criteria Academy graduates incessantly discuss)?
Previous Treks have broken people, they just get over it in three episodes. Or never appear again.
There's nothing Lorca did Admiral Pressman did not. No more 'Ends justify the means' behavior than Sisko exhibits.
And sure, she cries a lot. Does she do so in a manner that gets in the way of her duty in a time of crisis? If she was wallowing in self pity when her friends are out there putting their lives in danger, you'd have a point. She doesn't do that, she wears her emotions on her sleeve while doing her duty and protecting her friends.
Every show is more emotional than TNG. In TNG children don't cry when their parents die.
There is no theme, emotion, or depiction of the future in Picard and Discovery that doesn't exist in previous Trek incarnations. The only difference is the previous Trek incarnations get over it faster, or leave it behind and move onto the next adventure. KurtzmanTrek didn't make Trek dark. It just stopped sanitizing the darkness quite so much.
There's nothing Lorca did Admiral Pressman did not. No more 'Ends justify the means' behavior than Sisko exhibits.
And sure, she cries a lot. Does she do so in a manner that gets in the way of her duty in a time of crisis? If she was wallowing in self pity when her friends are out there putting their lives in danger, you'd have a point. She doesn't do that, she wears her emotions on her sleeve while doing her duty and protecting her friends.
Every show is more emotional than TNG. In TNG children don't cry when their parents die.
There is no theme, emotion, or depiction of the future in Picard and Discovery that doesn't exist in previous Trek incarnations. The only difference is the previous Trek incarnations get over it faster, or leave it behind and move onto the next adventure. KurtzmanTrek didn't make Trek dark. It just stopped sanitizing the darkness quite so much.
What version of Old Trek have you watched??? "Breaking" the characters is a reoccurring theme.
Quite. And I think the new series will continue in that vain.
I don't even think it's about the notion that trauma isn't wrapped up in three episodes. It's about the sheer proportion of screen time and character development spent on it. There is a surfeit of emoting, based on characters who spend most of their time in it - rather than being generallty stable people on an even keel who are at times challenged by circumstances.
(I for one buy the three episode idea. I mean, you'd hope that in three and a half centuries, we might actually have whole new tactics in dealing with mental health, just as we do today versus the time of the English Civil War).
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