It would be interesting to have them do something Star Trek has never tried to really explore before (beause of world-building, they really can't), the Dark Forest theory as to why the Fermi Equation fails: some powerful civilization with a decent head-start just wipes out any emerging neighbor as a potential threat and so there may be vast regions of space that are either unoccupied or at best have civilizations that could reach out or achieve interstellar flight, but know better than to try. They stick to their home systems, or even just their home world and seal off any giveaway signals.
After 6 seasons of serialized Trek, 1 was okay, Disco Season 2. There rest were kinda Blah, Basically for me, they didn't have enough material to fill 10-13 episodes. If they done a Enterprise S4 where they done mini arcs, it would have worked better, Tackle 10c and finish it in episode 5, but set up something else for the rest of the season. Basically, let the story dictate the amount of episodes. SNW has done this well. So has Prodigy.
Actually, Spock was not supposed to be in season 2 under Berg and Harberts, at least not as a grown-up. They only wanted to shows Spock in flashbacks to his and Michael's childhood, a fact which has also been confirmed by Jonathan Frakes. Indeed, Ethan Peck didn't even audition until after Harberts and Berg were fired.
Yeah, that may be true and s3 and s4 might be more even and coherent than 1 and 2, but I wouldn't call 3 or 4 big successes. All 4 seasons have had significant issues - I barely finished 4 after taking a little break (and my watch party friends both bailed on season 4 partway through), something I haven't done with any Trek since ENT s2. Regardless of the behind the scenes troubles or lack thereof, so far out of the 7 heavily serialized Trek seasons (4 DIS, 2 PIC, and 1 PRO) I would only consider PRO a success. Those 6 attempts were not run correctly or given enough time or resources to do serialized well. S31 was not directly in S3, but it is part of Gorgiou's character arc. It is also still being advertised as one of the up coming Trek shows with the implied return of Georgiou and Tyler. So, until we get either a statement from the powers that be that it is no longer in the pipeline or info showing they have taken a different tack, S31 as envisioned in DIS s1 and s2 (and referenced by proxy in 3) is still very much in the cards. Throughout those two seasons S31 was presented as cool, powerful, and valued as part of the Federation/Starfleet (see: badges, "cloaked" starships, etc.). Only Control as an evil AI was ever really criticized by the text of the show itself. A random viewer of DIS s1 and 2 who didn't know better would come away thinking the tactics and approaches of S31 were acceptable to a large part of Starfleet (minus some of our lead characters), which is totally not what Starfleet is about. Outside of a "let's bring them down from the inside story" ala "Alias", I wouldn't want to see a S31 show based on its DIS depiction. I know this is a personal bug of mine but it just stands out so strongly wrong to me that the show runners did (and to some extent, still) seem to think Mirror Georgiou and S31 are good characters/topics for more Trek.
Of course they are good topics. Star Trek is about humanity, the good and bad, and how we can grow. Section 31 was never coded as cool to me. They were fringe, treated as necessary until shown their power went too far. Georgiou also grew, becoming more than a snarky pain in the ass. Like Garak.
Serialize storytelling itself isn't the issue. The issue is the story that The Writers come up with and how they execute it. I don't think the people writing Star Trek Discovery season 3 and 4 really know how to execute a decent serialized story. Neither one of those Seasons really grabbed me in any way. And it's the same with Picard seasons 1 and 2. In season 1 they spent way too much time repeatedly showing Picard resigning from Starfleet. In season 2 I don't think they made good use of a lot of the characters and the pacing was honestly poor over the run of the story.
I think S1 of PIC is one of the best-executed “serialized” stories in the franchise. I do think that because people don’t like some of the character decisions concerning Picard’s life and career, and because some people don’t like the ending (I don’t mind it, but admit it could have been better), there’s a tendency to dismiss a lot of good-to-great storytelling in that season. The structure, pace, complexity and development of the story was first class. Honestly, DSC S1 was a good serialized story as well. It’s just that the ending was a bit daft, and that taints our view of the entire thing, which I think is a bit unfair. The most irritating question is why these season-long stories are not given more time and planning on the white board. It feels like they just aren’t planned out carefully enough. Something is always “off.” DSC S1 failed to stick the landing DSC S2 changed focus mid-stream (we all know why). So whatever was on that proverbial whiteboard got quickly erased and replaced. DSC S3 just wasn’t very good…they relied on new characters, new settings and new villains who just couldn’t deliver. DSC S4 had a good ending but was poorly paced and whose most interesting character was (for better and for worse) a guest star antagonist. PIC S1’s ending didn’t live up to the excellent 8 episodes that built to it, but I refuse to ignore the high quality of the bulk of the season because of that. PIC S2 had a horrific train-wreck of a mid-section book ended by some pretty awesome stuff. Really quite a painful thing to behold. SNW S1 wasn’t really serialized, but the threads they did lay down were pretty well paid-off PRO is really the only one that hits the mark without too much to point at and say “yeah, but…” If they want to go balls-out serialized with a future series, they need to commit to a full-out multi-season plan. They need to contract a showrunner to get onboard and plot the general story out (beginning, middle, end) and commit to a thematic core that will remain consistent throughout the story. So that way, even if they lose the showrunner or key writers, they still have the blueprint and still have Kurtzman to ensure things don’t just topple off the tracks. They also need to create the core characters to have reasonable arcs that are resilient and can either fit-in with the direction of the over-arching story or can be respectfully written out in an organic and reasonable way. One of DSC’s biggest problems is that the characters were written for the original premise, and the further and further away from S1 we get, the more difficult it has been to organically work this group of characters into the different stories they are trying to tell. Stamets is a perfect example, but even the series lead, Michael Burnham, has less of a cohesive/organic connection to the story lines because she was really tailor-made for the tone/themes/events of S1. Anyway, that’s just my thoughts on the whole thing. I think a serialized Star Trek show, done well, would still be a welcome and highly entertaining piece of the franchise. But, the “done well” part is, as always, the key.
One of the most endearing things about LD is that it's not serialized. And indeed, the serialization of PIC and DSC is, in and of itself, one more reason to wait for the DVD set, rather than pay for several months of a streaming service (for which I still have neither the bandwidth nor the iron).
I don't think DSC is quite as serialized as PIC. Seasons 3 & 4, and to some extent season 2, started out being more episodic, with an overall situation that drove things but with a variety of different, individual stories catalyzed by that situation. (The whole "search for seven signals" thing in season 2 seemed to me like it was meant to be an excuse for a series of episodic adventures, like Doctor Who's Key to Time season, but then things got more serialized with the showrunner change.) It was only toward the ends of the seasons that full serialization took hold, or about halfway through in the case of season 4. Prodigy is kind of the same. There was an overall quest driving the season, and the characters grew and the situation evolved, but each episode was its own story, its own situation, up until the final few. That also describes Lower Decks to an extent, since it has loose arcs over its seasons. People always want to talk about episodic vs. serial like it's a binary, mutually exclusive choice, but as with most things, it's actually a spectrum. Instead of choosing one extreme or the other, we should be seeking a healthy balance between them.
They could be good topics if they are approached correctly. DS9 did it right with S31. All of the heroes recognized and acted as though S31 was anathema to Starfleet ideals. It was left up to the "badmirals" of the Starfleet brass to support the org, thus giving us its existence and dramatic conflict. At no point in DIS is S31 itself treated as bad or negative. It is an active, open part of Starfleet, and Control was even a critical element of all senior Starfleet briefing and planning. The only time it is referenced as negative was when Control went "evil" and tried to take over. It was even treated as a "normal" kind of assignment when Georgiou and Tyler were both working for them competing for who was the better officer. And when Control went rogue the rest of S31 was ordered to help hunt it down. After Control was defeated, its not like Starfleet even realized that S31 was itself inherently wrong, instead they did blame S31 for Control's failure and vowed to reform it. And appointing one of DIS's main characters (at that time) as the new head (as well as the intent for it to be a whole new show), suggests the CBS powers-that-be still liked it. Unless there is some major change of direction, S31 will likely be another "look how cool spec ops is" thing (much like the MACOs in ENT) instead of a proper cautionary tale or examination of how to balance intelligence collection and security vs openness and other Federation ideals. As for Georgiou, she didn't really grow all that much. Up until practically the very end she was still a snarky pain in the ass, advocating for bad policy/tactics, and insulting all around her; her behavior at the little crew party (I think Culber organized it? I don't really remember) shows she hadn't changed much and no one beyond Burnham liked her at all. Then all of a sudden, once she had departed, everyone suddenly was sad over her departure and the show acted like her minor growth (recognizing eternal genocide was a bad path) was a major reformation. And Garak, while snarky, an occasionally a pain in the ass, was also intelligent, friendly, helpful, and dedicated to both his friends and his people. Nothing like Georgiou.
Yes, but with the DVD set, you're paying for something tangible, rather than paying for hundreds of things you have precisely zero interest in, to get the handful you want. And you need neither iron nor bandwidth. And quite true, Mr. Bennett. There's not a whole lot that's purely one or the other. Even with the (non-ST) franchise that I like to describe as "JMS's Five-Year Miniseries" (i.e., B5), there were plenty of episodes (especially in the early seasons) that had precisely nothing to do with the Vorlon/Shadow conflict that would dominate the later seasons.
Not including PIC Season 2, which is a whole separate thing, the only time I thought a season of DSC or PIC didn't "stick the landing" was DSC Season 3 where I think they tried to condense too much into too little time at the end. I'm happy with the way DSC Seasons 1, 2, and 4 and PIC Season 1 tied up things. Now excuse me while I celebrate New Year's instead of argue here.
Babylon 5 is a very good example of what I'm saying. People call it serialized, but that's a misuse of the term. A true serial is something where every installment is just a chapter in a larger story. Like, if you have subplots A, B, and C, then each episode advances all three of them a little bit, the next episode advances all three a little more, and so on. But B5 was more episodic in structure. One episode would tell a complete story about topic A, then the next about topic B, then one about topic C, then the next one might tell another story about A, then one about D, then one about E, then another about C, then another about B, etc. B5 did pioneer the modern format of having a unifying seasonal story arc coming to a climax in the finale, but the individual installments were structured episodically, not serially. Each one (2-parters excepted) was a complete tale from beginning to end, not just fragments of several parallel stories. It wasn't a serialized show so much as an arc-based episodic show.
Which I felt it did in Season 2. Mileage will vary, but it definitely wasn't a positive. I felt it was, and even Burnham recognized that there was a change to her. And a murderer. No, I don't buy in to Garak like others do. He's a former intelligence officer of a belligerent power and I don't find him friendly or helpful in any way save to support his own ends and for Cardassia.
I guess I should go back and watch S2 (the best season of DIS, imo), because I don't remember them having much of an opinion on S31, other than blaming it for Control at the end of the whole story. Yeah, I think you and I have wildly different opinions of Garak. First, we never see Garak being belligerent to the Federation (the closest he comes is when he tortures Odo to serve Tain and regain his old life) - we really don't know anything about his past operations. Second, he is friendly to Bashir and Ziyal, and to varying degrees with the rest of the main characters. And there were many times Garak was helpful. Sure, many of those he was also helping himself at the same time, but that doesn't mean he wasn't helpful. And he was a murderer, but generally either while serving as a "authorized" intelligence operative for his government (so not strictly a murderer as far as it is generally defined) or while trying to save his people during war against the Dominion. Sure that doesn't excuse it, but Sisko is equally a murderer in that one case and that doesn't "disqualify" Sisko from being considered as something other than a murderer. Sure, Garak is not a squeaky clean character (no one on DS9 really is), but I think like many lovable rogues (like for another example, Bender in Futurama), while they can be self-serving, in the end you can (mostly) count on them to do the "right" thing.