Unfortunately, what also impacts it is time, limitations and a pandemic impacting who is available when.
I agree, it can be done. But saying "hire better writers" is about as useful as Lucas' feedback of "faster, more intense" during the prequels.
Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 4x11 - "Rosetta"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
I agree, it can be done. But saying "hire better writers" is about as useful as Lucas' feedback of "faster, more intense" during the prequels.
Actually, getting better writers and spending more advance time preparing scripts is a very specific and actionable bit of recommendation. It comes down to where they're going to allocate their resources, focus their efforts, and personnel hiring. It's clearly not a priority at this point in time.
Like I've said before, it's clear they're telling the story that they want to tell. They've got the general direction and premise down. They're just failing at the execution.
I've actually liked bits and pieces of this season. I think the story they want to tell is a good one that fits very well in Star Trek. Even though it's got a great ST premise, it just hasn't been griping me consistently.
Some of it has been silly little problems like the whole EV suits thing that takes you out of the story. Sloppy mistake that is easy to avoid. Another issue is more structural one with how the serialized story has been spread out. But they've also botched Book's reaction to his situation in a non-realistic way.
There's just no umph to the narrative structure. I'd almost rather have episodic stories with ongoing personal storylines that evolve than what we got (i.e., episodic plots but serialized character development).
I'm not saying Discovery has been terrible, but this season really hasn't griped me even though this arc is fully in the ST wheelhouse.
I agree that they could. Defining better writers is appreciated in terms of deadlines and planning. Though, as one of my friends who worked in the VFX industry would say "On time, under budget and good. You can have two out of three more often than not."
Next year will be even worse, I promise
I will add that this was literally my experience watching TOS. So, unfortunately, it is solidly in Trek's wheelhouse, both good and bad. lol
Well, we can safely say it is Star Trek then 
which is what prodigy and lower decks have been doing.
For me the big problem is characterization. I enjoyed the first 3 seasons as we got to know all of the characters and while things weren't perfect there was at least some intent, especially last season, to give each character a unique voice and make them all interesting. This season everyone talks like a therapist all the time. It seems like most of the non-plot inter-character dialogue is centered around the same concepts of contemporary social media trauma discourse. This flattens the characters into having the same voice. Burnham, Saru, Culber, Stamets, etc....they all sound the same, even when it's not organic or natural for such characters to speak this way. Take the cool shady spy guy: even he now is a therapist. Can you imagine Sloan talking this way on DS9?
I am not anti therapy! Such discourse can be important! Trauma is real and dealing with trauma is a common and dare I say universal human experience! But it is not entertaining on DSC. Every time we get into that area of dialogue I check out and pick up my phone.
Very true.
The funny thing is I've seen it done way better. The Magicians - which I absolutely adore - was a heavy drama show, where the main character has had multiple suicide attempts and been institutionalized in the past. And he's not alone - there's a character who battles heroin addition, another with a bad drinking problem, another who gets raped - tons of trauma. But the characters respond to one another as friends, not as therapists. They are compassionate, not "correct."
I loved the magicians! And this is a great comparison that I think does a good job getting to the core of why the tone of DSC seems off for me this season.
It's interesting that if you take "allyship" and "supportiveness" to its logical conclusion, it robs interactions of any sense of intimacy.
It's funny to me because as a therapist I don't come in as correct either.
Stone me, but I still love Season 2 the most. That being said, I don't really have a problem with the pacing to be honest; Season 4 has been a definite improvement upon Season 3 for me, even with the abrupt departure of Mary Wiseman for an Academy series that has a permanent rented space in mañana-land next to Section 31. Yeah, not gonna lie, her absence robbed the series of the kind of comic relief Wiseman was seemingly effortlessly able to provide (not to mention Tilly's magnetic personality) and left a hole that no character seems to be able to fill. Maybe Tig Notaro could come close with her different brand of humor, but she's only available for one, maybe two days a year, tops. The apparent replacement doesn't really have any personality other than "cringe," and while cringe comedy can be executed well (as has arguably been demonstrated by Wiseman herself in the past years or by Doug Jones whenever T'Rina enters Saru's field of view), they don't seem to be able to get it right with Adira.
I mostly liked the episode, even with the junk science that I don't really care much for anyway. I've seen worse things in Star Trek than an EV suit letting through something that should be big enough to be blocked by a 21st century hazmat suit. The episode was exciting, the aliens really interesting and truly alien, at least as far as Star Trek goes, so I certainly won't go around popping veins about how this or that doesn't make scientific sense. But to offer an alternative way the writers could've done this, at first I was wondering if Keyla was unaffected by the hallucinations because the (then) unknown phenomenon affected a part of the brain that was replaced with cybernetics in her. We never learned how extensive her cranial damage was as far as I remember, so there might be some replacement parts inside.
Overall I really enjoyed the planetside exploration, because the whole premise brought back vivid memories of the countless hours I've spent playing Stellaris. I can absolutely see this episode as an explorable Planetary Anomaly or an Archeological Site; the game already has precursor civilizations both extinct and alive but reduced to shadows of their former glory, ruined or even broken worlds including former gas giant cores, Niven Rings (to use the common term for what the writers erroneously called a Dyson Ring)... even the DMA could be implemented as a quite challenging Endgame Crisis. Looks like my habit of always naming my first explorer Michael Burnham and my first science vessel Discovery is finally paying off. Let's just hope that the 10-C don't turn out to be Fanatic Purifiers who see all life other than their own as abominations to be purged or a Militant Isolationist Fallen Empire that can awaken if poked hard enough and reform into Jingoistic Reclaimers who steamroll through the galaxy.
Another pleasant surprise is that as much of an asshole Tarka is, I can't really see him and Book as truly antagonistic. In the dramatic sense, they are, because their actions are at odds with that of Discovery, but at the same time, their motives are sympathetic and I don't feel any malice from them, to the point where I often find myself rooting for them during their scenes. Their uneasy alliance is one of the best part of this season for me along with President Rillak and of course Saru's relationship with T'Rina. Ndoye, however, feels like she's being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian and no matter what Burnham, Rillak or T'Rina suggest, she can be relied on to oppose it, which is becoming really boring.
I mostly liked the episode, even with the junk science that I don't really care much for anyway. I've seen worse things in Star Trek than an EV suit letting through something that should be big enough to be blocked by a 21st century hazmat suit. The episode was exciting, the aliens really interesting and truly alien, at least as far as Star Trek goes, so I certainly won't go around popping veins about how this or that doesn't make scientific sense. But to offer an alternative way the writers could've done this, at first I was wondering if Keyla was unaffected by the hallucinations because the (then) unknown phenomenon affected a part of the brain that was replaced with cybernetics in her. We never learned how extensive her cranial damage was as far as I remember, so there might be some replacement parts inside.
Overall I really enjoyed the planetside exploration, because the whole premise brought back vivid memories of the countless hours I've spent playing Stellaris. I can absolutely see this episode as an explorable Planetary Anomaly or an Archeological Site; the game already has precursor civilizations both extinct and alive but reduced to shadows of their former glory, ruined or even broken worlds including former gas giant cores, Niven Rings (to use the common term for what the writers erroneously called a Dyson Ring)... even the DMA could be implemented as a quite challenging Endgame Crisis. Looks like my habit of always naming my first explorer Michael Burnham and my first science vessel Discovery is finally paying off. Let's just hope that the 10-C don't turn out to be Fanatic Purifiers who see all life other than their own as abominations to be purged or a Militant Isolationist Fallen Empire that can awaken if poked hard enough and reform into Jingoistic Reclaimers who steamroll through the galaxy.
Another pleasant surprise is that as much of an asshole Tarka is, I can't really see him and Book as truly antagonistic. In the dramatic sense, they are, because their actions are at odds with that of Discovery, but at the same time, their motives are sympathetic and I don't feel any malice from them, to the point where I often find myself rooting for them during their scenes. Their uneasy alliance is one of the best part of this season for me along with President Rillak and of course Saru's relationship with T'Rina. Ndoye, however, feels like she's being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian and no matter what Burnham, Rillak or T'Rina suggest, she can be relied on to oppose it, which is becoming really boring.
Here we go again...
Yea, but The Magician's writers were so far above the writers on Discovery that it's not even a contest.
And of course ever single one of the main cast in Magician's actually had the ability to act out those complex emotional storylines.
Compare that to Discovery? Where the only actor/actress they really have that's capable of pulling that sort of thing off is Doug Jones... It... Really does not measure up...
Fortunately, one of the two showrunners on The Magicians is now running the writer's room at Strange New Worlds, meaning I have high hopes for that show.
Yeah, but for what reason would she report that, unless someone called for her and she didn't answer. People routinely would come and go from the ship (maybe not now and where they are,) but there'd be no reason for Zora to report.
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