Which only highlights how seriously they weren't taking it, in my book. Jason has made the irreverent Brit reply that I probably would have made and got a 'wind your neck in' slightly jokey response. I think we took that exchange way too seriously, especially since they then put out that it wasn't the case at all. Yup. Plus, it is a conceit of Star Trek that the English language hasn't changed noticeably, and so if we are going to take umbrage with whether we'd still be using religious references in 300 years, we need to look at the fact that it doesn't really make sense that they're still speaking recognisable modern English in general despite the enormous new influences they'd have encountered. If it bothers you, it's probably easier to think of the universal translator concept as including the audience - the speech of 24th century English is translated to 2017 English for our ears. It's not too hard for millions of Game of Thrones fans or Breaking Bad fans to follow their shows avidly and discuss every detail of where the plot might be going. It's perfectly fine to prefer episodic TV, but I don't think an argument that is easier to follow holds much water. If the show's good, it will attract an audience, if it isn't, it won't, regardless of format.
Which is why a lot of shows just do season long arcs now. There are a few shows who do one big arc over the course of the entire series, like @cultcross's example of Game of Thrones, but a lot of them, tend to do season like storyarcs, with a pretty solid beginning the premiere and end in the finale. The Arrowverse shows are probably one of the best examples of this, they tend to introduce their big bad and major plot points in the season premiere and then beat the bad guy and tie up those plots in the finale. Some shows, like Once Upon a Time have shortened that up even further to just half a season.
You know, Star Trek doesn't know how to do that. Not on TV. The Abrams movies manage it a bit, but everything we've seen of Discovery so far is the same solemn, self-important tone that became the signature of the Franchise in the 1990s.
Still desperately looking for something to like. It's not the writing or the acting. It's not the cast. It's not the serialized story telling. It's not the somber tone or the Klingons or the war with the Klingons. It's not the uniforms or aesthetics in general. It's not that I have to pay a monthly fee to see it. I do like the phaser...though it's all wrong for the era...as is everything else. Sigh. Is there going to be anything in this series that I'll like? Guess we'll see in a couple weeks.
I can't wait. I love the tone. I love the designs. I love the production value. I love the cast. I love the phasers. I love the ships. I love the Klingons. Granted, this is all based on a couple trailers, but I'm giddy with anticipation!
Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy, Bride of Chaotica, Inside Man, Little Green Men and The Magnificent Ferengi come immediately to mind, to say nothing of the little moments within other episodes. Voyager and DS9 had plenty of fun moments.
What if Sarek was a polygamist? Burnham is from one of his secret families that Spock and Amanda did not know about.
It's true that the Ferengi were the bright spot of DS9. Shimmerman and company got to play the only fully-realized human beings in the 24th century.
Orville not so much.. But DSC appears to have the gravitas of modern dramas while returning the adventure quotient to a higher level.
Nothing revealed about Discovery so far even hints that the show can ascend to the ranks of current first-class TV drama. Serialized stories are an entry-level requirement, not a goal.
It's kind of hilarious to use a meme from the worst-plotted Sherlock Holmes adaption when talking about serialized storytelling.
Interestingly, a few min after your response I saw another bad review for Orville from EW with this star trek observation similar to my own: Ever since the early 2000s, the actual Star Trek franchise has struggled towards some notion of newness, trending darker or more kinetic. This was true in the J.J. Abrams films, but it was already true in the later Next Generation movies, with their laser cannons and their spaceship smash-ups. There’s an official new Star Trek show debuting this month, Discovery, whose trailers promise war and complex motivations and all the other stuff Battlestar Galactica did last decade. :
Not at all. If you feel that despite a degree of serialization Sherlock is not very good, you've proven my point. If you don't, OTOH, consider Sherlock to be serialized, your observation is irrelevant to my point.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/09/11/star-trek-discovery-god-lives Here's the longer article quoted from elsewhere. On the topic of war: “So then the question becomes, okay, we’re in a war. What does it mean to win a war? At what cost? And for the writing staff, it really became, how do you solve a war? How do you end a war, how do you find peace, without crushing and annihilating your opponent? And to me, that’s the Star Trek way of doing a war story. It’s not the Federation annihilates the Klingons. It’s Starfleet and the Federation figure out a way to truly make peace. Now we know that when TOS picks up, that peace doesn’t last. But we have to find peace in our time, in our slice of the Star Trek pie. That’s a really important thing to us, and we’re going to offer up a way that these two warring factions come to an understanding.”
Love it. I'm really looking forward to this show. And it suggests it's not all doom and gloom war. There will be classic Star Trek moments of understanding between factions. In this case, th Federation and Klingons.
Then you really didn't find peace. Spock mentions seventy years of unremitting hostilities in The Undiscovered Country.