If you have to have a callback to everything that happens in the show, nothing would ever get accomplished in the 45 minutes or so of every episode. Yes, you could say "they could have a line of dialogue about (insert subject here)," but you know that won't always work, and people would still complain.
Personally, I haven't found anything jarring. If they just decided to not talk about the red angel anymore, that would be something I would consider jarring. But just, for example, not having Cornwall in a couple of episodes doesn't really bother me.
I must admit, I was taken aback to see Tyler fighting fit this week That stab wound looked like it could be fatal I even expected a sub plot where Culber would have to save the life of the guy who killed him But no, no mention of a serious stab wound to the stomach
Exactly. If you can understand what's going on, you've seen all you need to see. Everything beyond that is spoon-feeding.
*Edited just to add spacing so to stop the "wall of text"* If you want to do serialized storytelling, there is no question that you need to address the things that happened in the last episode, even if that is to defer them to a future episode. You call it a callback, but that's not what it is at all in terms of serialization. It IS the story, or as modern TV writers and producers like to call it "A (insert number) hour movie". The disappearing story elements and characters are not a problem in episodic television because their arrival and departure are not relevant to the next story, but they certainly are to a story that's still the same story. This applies doubly in SF settings where the rules of the universe matter to those stories, ie- you need a ship to get somewhere unless its close enough to transport, you can't do either at warp unless... if you do one of those things at warp its definitely worth mentioning and might be a story all on it's own because its so out of the usual for that universe. And you are certainly right that people would complain if they "have a line a dialogue" to deal with an existential societal change. Yes, this is something you can criticize older Treks for, but by their episodic nature, they NEEDED to move on, whereas by DSC's serialized nature, it NEEDS to deal with the repercussions of their actions or else it isn't really serialized so much as episodic but with no story structure.
To be fair Burnham got a piece of molten metal right through leg and was up and about a couple of hours later. It's the 23rd century man
I know this is just a stupid nit, but could you please put a few paragraph breaks or even start new sentences on another line in your posits? When it's all run together like that, it very difficult to read. I'm not sure about anybody else, but I tend to just gloss over posts like that. And that's not fair to you and the effort you put into creating them.
I just watched an episode of DS9 where Sisko gets sliced up, fade to commercial, all better! In fact, he'd been out of the hospital for two hours when it faded back in.
Yes, done. Thank you for the reminder. And it's quite fair to criticize that if it's relevant! The trick is that DSC is a different style of television, demanding to be taken seriously (I should say "seriously") in a way that Trek never has before. Not that Trek wasn't serious, but it was tonally lighter, even when it was at it's most bleak, in part because (for the most part) the next week would be something different. And no, recoveries need not always be shown, but if they are portrayed as super important, they should at least be addressed. The intensity of the stakes and presentation makes what would otherwise be minor nitpicks into actual problems (sometimes). That's not treating DSC unfairly, it's treating it on its own terms. **Edit to add - The fact that you knew he was out of the hospital for 2 hours when it faded back in means they addressed it, which means it's not at all like the examples in DSC being discussed here.**
I'm not sure why there would be a distinction. Medical problems by ample precedent are solvable in Trek; the last thing we have the right to expect to see is external signs of past injury, such as scar tissue (heck, even L'Rell is currently only keeping a tiny bit of hers, despite being culturally motivated). And the characters specifically involved in DSC are not the type to show psychological trauma, at least ot on top of what they already show... The suddenly disappearing characters are annoying. The "we may have this previously pressing issue on back burner, but we aren't telling" bits are annoying. But miracle healing is what we ought to expect from Trek without comment, regardless of story format. Timo Saloniemi
We got William Adama shaving the Frito Bandito™ mustache off, the least we should get is Spock at the Bolian barber.
it's because (atleast in the case of the BBC) they outsource the work and the company charges per second of use. If they did it internally they could reuse the CG model. It's really cost ineffective model.
In this particular case I think it's more about the fact that it's Star Trek than the style of television or how serialized it is. Deciding that the recovery doesn't need to be shown is treating DSC on its own terms, as a show that takes place in the Star Trek universe. Asking how Tyler has recovered the next episode is kind of like asking how our heroes ended up on a planet thousands of kilometers away after a scene break - we know about transporters and we don't need to see them in use every time. It's also understood that their ability to heal injuries is advanced, and they are treated differently than they would be in other shows. There have been many times where the drama isn't an injury itself but the fact that they're cut off from their ship (and therefore sickbay), and we know the resolution is reached as soon as they're able to beam back. In context, Tyler's injury was never portrayed as "super important" because it was never implied that it was unusually serious relative to other injuries that they have no problem fixing in this universe. As long as it's believable that he could have returned to sickbay in time, I don't know why we need to give it a second thought.
That's a slippery slope: they didn't need to show any recovery because super tech --> they didn't need to show warp because warp is common --> they don't really NEED to show anything. This isn't "Star Trek: the Franchise" or "Star Trek: the Setting", this is Star Trek: the Serialized Melodrama where things have (supposed) consequences. They show Burnham recovering because it's essential to the melodrama. They don't show Tyler recovering because his injury was written in a different episode and they don't feel like dealing with it because it's Burnham's story, which isn't a terrible reason at all. That's not the hill I'm going to die on. I don't care if they show recoveries here or there, unless it's vital to the story: if they make a big point of the injury being plot/character important, then it should at least be mentioned. In this case... eh. 50/50. No big deal. It's more indicative of the issues with DSC's structural writing than a problem in and of itself. On the other hand, I might die on the hill of appearing/disappearing characters. These matter immensely to the serialized melodrama. Their nonsensical presence or absence absolutely matters, or at the very least begs questions that have no answers and reduces the impact of the intended stories because unlike a perfectly reasonable assumed offscreen recovery by tech, the setting has no such outs for disappearing at warp or not showing up when relevant because the character is only in x number of episodes despite being just out of frame or in the next room or something. That's what I mean by judging the show on its own terms. If we were judging it as Another Trek Show In the Usual Format, these don't matter and, in fact, are rendered moot because of the separation of time and plot. But DSC screams: "this isn't just Another Trek Show in the Usual Format, characters' arcs matter, things have consequences and long term repercussions, otherwise we wouldn't be serialized!"
If the Enterprise in ST:TMP is supposed to be the very same ship as the Enterprise in TOS, then the terms "K'Tinga" and "D-7" are unquestionably describing the same kind of ship. Kor
You're right - they don't, and often, they aren't. To remind you what I said: "we don't need to see them in use every time." That's a universal fact of storytelling, not a slippery slope. Calling it that and ignoring the fact that I was talking about occasional omissions is simply a strawman. Indeed, warp travel, beaming, medical recoveries and so on have all been omitted before, and that's fine. Being serialized doesn't change that. Right, but again, I don't know where you're getting that from. The fact that he got attacked was important, but the injury itself wasn't. Ash's injury and subsequent recovery wasn't part of his "arc" nor do we have any reason to expect such an injury to have long-lasting consequences here.