News Starfleet Academy Nielsen Ratings

[Nerys Myk]

Idk man. After almost 9 years I still dislike most stuff from season 1-4 of Disco. I never disliked previous Trek like that before and never had to a timeframe to appreciate it later because I liked them well enough in the beginning. Generally speaking. All the shows have had their bad episodes of course. I will say this though. As bad as SFA is ...I just may be able to stomach Disco 1-4 a little more. But tbh I'm at the age where rewatching stuff really is not in my best interests unless it's REALLY good.

How exactly does that tie into how a show ages? I disliked Voyager when it debuted. I dislike it today. But that has nothing to do with how it aged. The elements that scream "it's the 1990s" have nothing to do with why I don't like it.

 

[Starflight]

Discovery might age like milk because tonally and structurally it's very tied to a certain era's idea of how television should be made.

TOS/TNG have the shield of pulp to hide behind, which help to prevent them aging as badly because they always read as surreal and disconnected from reality in a way that DSC, by design, doesn't.

The dialogue also, for want of a better term, often feels very late-2010s Bay Area HR deparmtent, which is a register that already sounds grating to most people in the world, and will probably sound even more bizarre a decade from now (unless, I suppose, future generations regard it as inadvertently amusing and take joy from it in that way).

 

[Dar70]

How exactly does that tie into how a show ages? I disliked Voyager when it debuted. I dislike it today. But that has nothing to do with how it aged. The elements that scream "it's the 1990s" have nothing to do with why I don't like it.

I thought you were talking about how some people end up liking a show years later after they initially hated it. Sorry

 

[Nerys Myk]

Discovery might age like milk because tonally and structurally it's very tied to a certain era's idea of how television should be made.

And TOS isn't???

TOS/TNG have the shield of pulp to hide behind, which help to prevent them aging as badly because they always read as surreal and disconnected from reality in a way that DSC, by design, doesn't.

TOS is about as 1960s as a show can get, even though it takes places in "the future." That future is very much seen through the lens of 1960s America. TNG is a bit of an odd one. While there are some 1980s elements, its style of production seems more at home in the 1960s than the decade that gave us Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere.

Not sure what is meant by "pulp" here. While Trek was influenced by Pulp SF, it aspired to be "serious literature." TOS in tone wasn't all that different than the Adult Westerns or Dramas that were it's contemporaries and predecessors.
Surreal and disconnected are odd word choices to me as well. As stated, TOS is very much a product of it's time.

The dialogue also, for want of a better term, often feels very late-2010s Bay Area HR deparmtent, which is a register that already sounds grating to most people in the world, and will probably sound even more bizarre a decade from now (unless, I suppose, future generations regard it as inadvertently amusing and take joy from it in that way).

I haven't lived in the Bay Area since 1997, so I've no idea "Bay Area HR department" dialog would sound like or why it grates on people. Nor how it would sound more bizarre to future audiences than say, 1960s or 1980s dialog.

 

[Starflight]

TOS is about as 1960s as a show can get, even though it takes places in "the future." That future is very much seen through the lens of 1960s America. TNG is a bit of an odd one. While there are some 1980s elements, its style of production seems more at home in the 1960s than the decade that gave us Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere.

Not sure what is meant by "pulp" here. While Trek was influenced by Pulp SF, it aspired to be "serious literature." TOS in tone wasn't all that different than the Adult Westerns or Dramas that were it's contemporaries and predecessors.
Surreal and disconnected are odd word choices to me as well. As stated, TOS is very much a product of it's time.

You might have read "pulp" as an insult rather than the way I intended it - when people remember Star Trek, they tend to go to things like Kirk fighting the Gorn (often gleefully described as "rubber lizard suit"), Lincoln flying at them in space, Apollo's hand grabbing them out of the sky, etc.

"High-concept" might be a less loaded description if you like, whatever term you prefer for entirely fantastical concepts. 1960s sitcoms set in real world locations have already aged to the point where they feel almost alien, but Spock going "PAAAIN" as he learns that a lava monster is a mother is far more resistant to aging because it's not rooted to any specific cultural moment or idea; someone could reasonably have come up with that same plot and executed it in broadly the same way in 2026 or 1926.

Discovery's plots - from what I saw of the first two seasons and a tiny bit of the third - tend to get backgrounded to focus on characters discussing their feelings and sense of identity in dialogue, which is far more culturally fragile and prone to aging than "Kirk bounds across a styrofoam cave set and tells aliens to stop the war".

I haven't lived in the Bay Area since 1997, so I've no idea "Bay Area HR department" dialog would sound like or why it grates on people. Nor how it would sound more bizarre to future audiences than say, 1960s or 1980s dialog.

This is hard to describe, but there's a certain narrative voice that does permeate a lot of modern American television, and has been prevalent throughout Kurtzman-era Star Trek. It might read as more immediartely odd and jarring to people like myself who aren't American. I don't know if anyone else will come along and back me up on this.

 

[Nerys Myk]

You might have read "pulp" as an insult rather than the way I intended it - when people remember Star Trek, they tend to go to things like Kirk fighting the Gorn (often gleefully described as "rubber lizard suit"), Lincoln flying at them in space, Apollo's hand grabbing them out of the sky, etc.

Perhaps you meant "camp?" Pulp is more rooted in sensationalism. Sex and violence in a cheap fast paced often gritty environment. Camp is more over the top seriousness with a humorous intent. It can be unintentional as in the examples you mention. At the time all three were pretty much state of the art for SFX and costuming. So they might be examples of aging badly. While they do stand out, they aren't the bulk of what TOS was about.

"High-concept" might be a less loaded description if you like, whatever term you prefer for entirely fantastical concepts. 1960s sitcoms set in real world locations have already aged to the point where they feel almost alien, but Spock going "PAAAIN" as he learns that a lava monster is a mother is far more resistant to aging because it's not rooted to any specific cultural moment or idea; someone could reasonably have come up with that same plot and executed it in broadly the same way in 2026 or 1926.

The concepts aren't really that "high." Stripped down to the basics, a lot of the plots could be found in contemporaneous dramas of the day Which is what Roddenberry was going for. He wasn't about High concept, but relatable situations with a veneer of Science Fiction.
Yes, Spock's moment is universal. But those are not the types of scenes or dialog being discussed here. I'm sure there are similar scenes in DISCO that are universal.

Discovery's plots - from what I saw of the first two seasons and a tiny bit of the third - tend to get backgrounded to focus on characters discussing their feelings and sense of identity in dialogue, which is far more culturally fragile and prone to aging than "Kirk bounds across a styrofoam cave set and tells aliens to stop the war".

Thing is TOS isn't a show about Kirk in a cave set. It is a show about feelings and identity with an emphasis on dialog. Kirk (or Picard for that matter) monologuing is a trope for a reason. Spock coming to terms with who he is several times a season is also what TOS is about.

This is hard to describe, but there's a certain narrative voice that does permeate a lot of modern American television, and has been prevalent throughout Kurtzman-era Star Trek. It might read as more immediartely odd and jarring to people like myself who aren't American. I don't know if anyone else will come along and back me up on this.

I can see a cultural divide when non-Americans come across our shows and films. I'm sure the opposite is true as well. I've heard some of the nuance and themes of Godzilla were lost in translation and that the original German dub of Star Trek changed it to a kid's show,

 

[Starflight]

The concepts aren't really that "high." Stripped down to the basics, a lot of the plots could be found in contemporaneous dramas of the day Which is what Roddenberry was going for. He wasn't about High concept, but relatable situations with a veneer of Science Fiction.

I think you might be overstating this; all fiction obviously hinges on an ability to relate to the characters, but high concept ideas absolutely are central to Star Trek. There's no real-world situation that echoes being held captive by an alien child who thinks he's a naval officer, or having to decide what to do with a 1960s pilot who's seen your futuristic spaceship, or stopping a war fought between computers, or fighting a genetically engineered superman in an engine room.

Sure the plots revolve around basic human states like being in danger, being in love, standing up for friends, making moral stands, and showing empathy to the other, but those are universal ideas found in all fiction. I'm not sure I'd describe "City on the Edge of Forever" as a relatable situation; it's rooted in common human experiences like love and sacrifice, but the situation is completely fantastical to the point where it reads as essentially mythic, which I think is part of why it's barely aged.

Thing is TOS isn't a show about Kirk in a cave set. It is a show about feelings and identity with an emphasis on dialog. Kirk (or Picard for that matter) monologuing is a trope for a reason. Spock coming to terms with who he is several times a season is also what TOS is about.

This might be where the differences between TOS and DSC start to emerge - Kirk monologues tend to be obvious things like "war is bad", "hate is bad", "trust is good". Picard monologues generally go the same way even if they're dressed up more.

Does Discovery speak to universal experiences in the same way? I'm not sure it does, in part because it's always a bit hesitant to really say anything specific - the plots themselves could lend themselves to that (Culber being killed then reformed by the mycilleal network, for example, feels very classic sci-fi) but the presentation, the choice of language, the specific psychological concepts the characters are written to model, and where the focus is placed all feel much more contemporary and culture-locked to me than TOS typically does.

The first season's plot, from what I remember, basically involves a series of bizarre events that are thinly-drawn - Lorca is from the MU and wants to "Make the Empire Glorious Again" and then dies by falling into a death-field, T'Kuvma is leading a Klingon movement that seems to be ethnonationalist but is again vaguely defined, Tyler is Loq and has a memory of being assaulted by L'Rell as he was surgically altered, Mudd appears for a while, Starfleet is torturing a tardigrade but then lets it go, Burnham is caught in the middle of all this and generally reacts with shock and dismay. There's a war going on which ends when L'Rell and Burnham acquire a superweapon. I'm just not sure any of these threads resolve in a way that echoes TOS' universally-applicable model of "here's the plot, here's the resolution, here's Kirk saying 'war is bad'"; instead it's a very MFA-y idea of "the feeling is foremost, the plot is secondary, and we must reject easy resolutions", which I think again ages like milk, is a very transient model of how television "should" be, and reads as muddled.

Barring the post-season-one sexism (which really is the big thing that cripples TOS), the only thing that dates TOS in the same way is when Kirk occasionally slips into a very mid-century notion of equating "hard work" with "freedom", like in "The Apple", and tellingly those are parts where modern viewers tend to laugh/cringe.

 

[fireproof78]

Barring the post-season-one sexism (which really is the big thing that cripples TOS), the only thing that dates TOS in the same way is when Kirk occasionally slips into a very mid-century notion of equating "hard work" with "freedom", like in "The Apple", and tellingly those are parts where modern viewers tend to laugh/cringe.

And anti-utopia.

 

[Troi]

Barring the post-season-one sexism (which really is the big thing that cripples TOS), the only thing that dates TOS in the same way is when Kirk occasionally slips into a very mid-century notion of equating "hard work" with "freedom", like in "The Apple", and tellingly those are parts where modern viewers tend to laugh/cringe.

Curious about how much you think the other shows are held back by sexism? For me, TOS's sexism really doesn't bother me in most cases (enemy within is a big exeption), but the sexism in the Burman era is very frustrating and really holds those shows back for me. I feel like I have more tolerance the older something is. I think Enterprise is really the only show I would say is 'crippled' by sexism.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I think you might be overstating this; all fiction obviously hinges on an ability to relate to the characters, but high concept ideas absolutely are central to Star Trek. There's no real-world situation that echoes being held captive by an alien child who thinks he's a naval officer, or having to decide what to do with a 1960s pilot who's seen your futuristic spaceship, or stopping a war fought between computers, or fighting a genetically engineered superman in an engine room.

Are those the actual plots or the SF veneer that's being applied? Trelane can be a an over indulged rich kid who lures a US Navy ship to his island for fun and games. The Sixties pilot can be the member a primitive culture he can't be allowed to return to his people. The computers are just metaphors for warfare that distances people from the horrors of war, like say high altitude bombing (Hello Vietnam) Khan is an just a Nazis Ubermensch writ large. The engine room battle could take place on a sub, aircraft carrier or battleship.

Does Discovery speak to universal experiences in the same way? I'm not sure it does; the plots themselves could lend themselves to that (Culber being killed then reformed by the mycilleal network, for example, feels very classic sci-fi) but the presentation, the choice of language, the specific psychological concepts the characters are written to model, and where the focus is placed all feel much more contemporary and culture-locked to me than TOS typically does.

As someone who lived through the Sixties, I view TOS very "culture-locked" into the that decade and the presentation, the choice of language, the specific psychological concepts the characters are written to model. There is a very Sixties idea of better living through chemistry and technology vibe that permeates TOS

Sure the plots revolve around basic human states like being in danger, being in love, standing up for friends, making moral stands, and showing empathy to the other, but those are universal ideas found in all fiction. I'm not sure I'd describe "City on the Edge of Forever" as a relatable situation; it's rooted in common human experiences like love and sacrifice, but the situation is completely fantastical to the point where it reads as essentially mythic, which I think is part of why it's barely aged.

COTEOF is very relatable once you strip away the time travel. Kirk falls in love with a woman he shouldn't. He needs to contact his ship and get back, but he is hesitant. Spock is there to remind him of his duty. The woman dies. They return to the ship. That not mythic, that's down to earth.

 

[Starflight]

Are those the actual plots or the SF veneer that's being applied? Trelane can be a an over indulged rich kid who lures a US Navy ship to his island for fun and games. The Sixties pilot can be the member a primitive culture he can't be allowed to return to his people. The computers are just metaphors for warfare that distances people from the horrors of war, like say high altitude bombing (Hello Vietnam) Khan is an just a Nazis Ubermensch writ large. The engine room battle could take place on a sub, aircraft carrier or battleship.

It's telling that switching the skin doesn't really nullify the plot hook - a story about a rich kid (who can control material reality with his mind!) trapping a US Navy ship on an island and preventing them from leaving by physically moving the island itself to intercept them would absolutely still read as a surreal fantasy story.

You could theoretically do this with any story ever written - you could say that there's no difference between Lord of the Rings and crime drama because you could swap Middle Earth for New Jersey and replace fantasy races with mob families, and turn the One Ring into meth or something - but the attempt gets strained very quickly and still results in a story that feels very fantastical, since it's baked into the story's DNA.

So I've got to disagree with the "sci-fi veneer" assertion - it's clearly true in some cases ("Balance of Terror" obviously is just "The Enemy Below" but nominally set in space), but there really are a lot of Star Trek episodes that only work as sci-fi/fantasy, which again I think is a mode of storytelling often far more aging-resistant than other forms of storytelling - I mean, there's a reason we're talking about Star Trek 60 years later and not Wagon Train.

COTEOF is very relatable once you strip away the time travel. Kirk falls in love with a woman he shouldn't. He needs to contact his ship and get back, but he is hesitant. Spock is there to remind him of his duty. The woman dies. They return to the ship. That not mythic, that's down to earth.

If you strip away the time travel, you've surely stripped away the driving force of the plot, and the reason the romance is doomed! It's really hard to recreate the same "the person I love must die for the fate of the world" plot in a non-genre-fiction context, and it won't land in the same way.

Curious about how much you think the other shows are held back by sexism? For me, TOS's sexism really doesn't bother me in most cases (enemy within is a big exeption), but the sexism in the Burman era is very frustrating and really holds those shows back for me. I feel like I have more tolerance the older something is. I think Enterprise is really the only show I would say is 'crippled' by sexism.

Interested in hearing more about this; I do think there's a few attitudes that run through the Berman shows but I'd class TNG and Voyager as both being relatively good in that regard. The only episodes I really didn't like in the Berman era were the ones dealing with Ferengi subjugation of women because the writers seemed to think it was best played for laughs and had no idea of the horror of what they were writing. I don't remember Enterprise having anything super-appalling but it's been a long time since I saw it (and I think the Orion episode was very cringeworthy).

 

[fireproof78]

COTEOF is very relatable once you strip away the time travel. Kirk falls in love with a woman he shouldn't. He needs to contact his ship and get back, but he is hesitant. Spock is there to remind him of his duty. The woman dies. They return to the ship. That not mythic, that's down to earth.

Yup. While not including death definitely seen a similar "doomed romance" plot elsewhere.

 

[Nerys Myk]

It's telling that switching the skin doesn't really nullify the plot hook - a story about a rich kid (who can control material reality with his mind!) trapping a US Navy ship on an island and preventing them from leaving by physically moving the island itself to intercept them would absolutely still read as a surreal fantasy story.

That's more SF veneer. In a contemporary story the rich kid wouldn't have "superpowers." His power would revolve around material wealth and power not controlling material reality with his mind. Nor would he move his island.

If you strip away the time travel, you've surely stripped away the driving force of the plot, and the reason the romance is doomed! It's really hard to recreate the same "the person I love must die for the fate of the world" plot in a non-genre-fiction context, and it won't land in the same way.

No, time travel is just away to get Kirk into the situation where he falls for Edith. The doomed romance doesn't have to be "fate of the world".

 

[Starflight]

If you strip it down to "doomed romance", by that metric every story ever written surely can be reduced to "something happens".

The time travel isn't incidental, it's the catalyst for the story, the factor that lends the plot its stakes, the concept that drives the drama (Kirk unable to reveal his knowledge of the future and the truth about himself to Keeler), and is what ultimately causes the dilemma that results in Kirk ensuring Keeler's death. Trelane's powers, similarly, aren't incidental - they're not only what trap the crew, but also what allow the twist ending to exist at all, as Trelane is able to change his appearance to mask the fact that he's a child and a non-humanoid alien.

Again, you might as well say LOTR has a "fantasy veneer" and the plot could be replicated in modern-day Estonia if we simply removed the Ring, reimagined Sauron as a mundane businessman, and summarised the entire thing as "friends undertake a journey".

Though it's all a bit beside the point - if your stance is that Star Trek is just stock soap opera/Western plots with a sci-fi skin, that skin is apparently still doing a lot of heavy lifting and keeping the show in the popular consciousness (hence us talking about it obsessively to this day, while not generally bothering to go back to Wagon Train or Bonanza). So I suppose the question would be whether Discovery's plots match that level of universality, and whether it embraces its genre - even if you think that's mere framing/surface-level texture - to achieve the same enduring effect.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

The dialogue also, for want of a better term, often feels very late-2010s Bay Area HR deparmtent, which is a register that already sounds grating to most people in the world, and will probably sound even more bizarre a decade from now (unless, I suppose, future generations regard it as inadvertently amusing and take joy from it in that way).

I've been struggling to define how Discovery's dialogue sounds, especially in season 4, and this is closer than I've ever gotten. It was definitely kind of alien to me.

 

[Nerys Myk]

If you strip it down to "doomed romance", by that metric every story ever written surely can be reduced to "something happens".

That something is "doomed romance" Other stories would have a different something.

The time travel isn't incidental, it's the catalyst for the story, the factor that lends the plot its stakes, the concept that drives the drama (Kirk unable to reveal his knowledge of the future and the truth about himself to Keeler), and is what ultimately causes the dilemma that results in Kirk ensuring Keeler's death. Trelane's powers, similarly, aren't incidental - they're not only what trap the crew, but also what allow the twist ending to exist at all, as Trelane is able to change his appearance to mask the fact that he's a child and a non-humanoid alien.

Yes it's the catalyst. But it is one that can be replaced, as can the stakes in a contemporary drama
Trelane's alien powers can easily be replaced by material powers. The twist ending is his parents show up. Again easily replaced by well, the rich kid's parents. He's still just a naughty boy.

Again, you might as well say LOTR has a "fantasy veneer" and the plot could be replicated in modern-day Estonia if we simply removed the Ring, reimagined Sauron as a mundane businessman, and summarised the entire thing as "friends undertake a journey".

No, you replace the ring with a different MacGuffin. Sauron would be a powerful businessman not a mundane one. Why would he be some "mundane" business man? He needs to be a viable threat to our fellowship. So mundane is off the table. And yeah a journey by friends through Estonia could be every bit as compelling as one through Middle Earth.

Though it's all a bit beside the point - if your argument is that Star Trek is just stock soap opera/Western plots with a sci-fi skin, that skin is apparently still doing a lot of heavy lifting and keeping the show in the popular consciousness (hence us talking about it obsessively to this day, while not bothering to go back to Wagon Train or even once-popular shows like Bonanza). So I suppose the question would be whether Discovery's plots match that level of universality, and whether it embraces its genre framing to create the same enduring effect.

Most SciFic stories are stock plots, as are Westerns, Crime dramas and others. Yes, they differ in the skin. Maybe that skin does the lifting or may it's the appeal of the characters, message and themes. If we could figure out why Hollywood would beat a path to our door.

 

[fireproof78]

if your stance is that Star Trek is just stock soap opera/Western plots with a sci-fi skin, that skin is apparently still doing a lot of heavy lifting and keeping the show in the popular consciousness (hence us talking about it obsessively to this day, while not generally bothering to go back to Wagon Train or Bonanza

Yes, the veneer does a ton of heavy lifting. The actors so the rest, elevating common story tropes to something that fires the imagination.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Remember this was part the Writer's Guide for TOS
AND SO, IN EVERY SCENE OF OUR STAR TREK STORY...
... translate it into a real life situation. Or,
sometimes as useful, try it in your mind as a scene
in GUNSMOKE, NAKED CITY, or some similar show.
Would you believe the people and the scene if it
happened there?
IF YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE WHO ANSWERS: "THE CHARACTER ACTS THAT WAY
BECAUSE IT'S SCIENCE FICTION", DON'T CALL US, WE'LL CALL YOU.

 

[Rahul]

Ultimately I think DIS will age very similar to something like "Fringe", or the new Hawaii-Five-0:

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It's not a bad show by any means. It's well acted, and incredibly well produced for its time.
But it's also pretty shallow, and absolutely a product of its time, and worst thing is it doesn't really have much of an identity on its own (re-inventing itself every season) and doesn't really have anything that meaningful to say or voicing any opinion on its own.
Especially compared to it's role models (X-files / 90s Trek) - which were way less exciting and flashy, but had a much more iconic style, identity and values on its own.
(And I would group SFA there as well - I'm fine watching it - but will never rewatch or sweat if I missed anything)

The dialogue also, for want of a better term, often feels very late-2010s Bay Area HR deparmtent, which is a register that already sounds grating to most people in the world, and will probably sound even more bizarre a decade from now (unless, I suppose, future generations regard it as inadvertently amusing and take joy from it in that way).

This is one of the greatest descriptions I ever read here.

As someone who lived through the Sixties, I view TOS very "culture-locked" into the that decade and the presentation, the choice of language, the specific psychological concepts the characters are written to model. There is a very Sixties idea of better living through chemistry and technology vibe that permeates TOS

TOS is incredible campy - even back then. Some things have aged great, others horrible, and some of the stuff is really cringe inducing.

But! If you compare it to other stuff from that time - let's say "I dream of Jeannie", or some of them Western tv shows - that shit is downright offensive and unwatchable now!
Only then you can really see how incredibly timeless TOS actually was, and laugh about how their flip-phones are already horribly outdated.

 

[Starflight]

That something is "doomed romance" Other stories would have different something.

This seems highly reductive, is all I'm saying - we could similarly boil "Come and See", "Saving Private Ryan", and "Where Eagles Dare" down to "a war is happening", but we're talking about three entirely distinct stories, despite all sharing a historical context and basic premise.

I'd be interested to hear which non-fantasy/sci-fi stories you think echo COTEOF and Gothos to the point where you'd say "this is the very same plot, only in a different skin". I mean, if we boil it down to "doomed romance" then yeah, we can say "Brief Encounter" and a million other things fit that arch-descriptor. But are "Brief Encounter" and COTEOF the same story in different skins? I'd say obviously not, unless we force ourselves to say that only four stories have ever been written (probably "someone is in danger", "someone is in love", "something funny happens", "a journey is undertaken").

And yeah a journey by friends through Estonia could be every bit as compelling as one through Middle Earth.

It could, but it wouldn't be Lord of the Rings anymore, in the same way you could set The Sopranos in London in the year 1600 and it wouldn't be The Sopranos anymore, even if you strained to keep as many things parallel as humanly possible.