Yeah. Upon deeper thought I'm going to say that all of the plots that required the sci-fi to work are middling to truly awful (like Threshold). If people have counterexamples I'm all ears.
Discovery and "The Orville" Comparisons
- Thread starter Jedi_Master
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Yeah. Upon deeper thought I'm going to say that all of the plots that required the sci-fi to work are middling to truly awful (like Threshold). If people have counterexamples I'm all ears.
It's one of the reasons I'm happy we have both. I like the differing styles and like that I can get what I want from either or.
We had that in Firefly, such a shame really.
Hah! I made my first professional sales to that incarnation of AMAZING, edited by George Scithers, who, yeah, only bought my humorous stories! And I sold two stories (both comedies) to ABORIGINAL SF as well, back when I was just starting out.
Ah, youth!
We can blame Paramount for a lot of things, but execution will always come down to Berman and Braga. Archer isn't written like a doofus in the early seasons because of Paramount, it's because of B&B's awful judgement. I'm sure if Paramount allowed Braga to do the original ideas did Enterprise we would still have had the issues that plagued the first two seasons. I don't hate them like a lot of the fanbase did. Braga had genuinely great work under his belt during the TNG days and Berman was a better producer than a writer. I always keep that in mind. But it's no coincidence that ENT got better when they stepped back and had new writers contribute.
Plus I think Braga's input was much better when he was paired with someone that brought the best out of him. When he worked with Piiller, Moore, or Menosky, there's some genuinely great stuff. When paired up with Berman... not so much.
To be fair, I can't speak for other editors or publishers. We all have our individual tastes and quirks, even at the same companies. I have occasionally passed a submission on to another editor because "this seems more like your kind of thing" and vice versa.
Not every submission fits every editor. But, yes, the "concept over character" school of SF--or STAR TREK--doesn't push my buttons.
And this where I brag about a book I edited, ALL THOSE EXPLOSIONS WERE SOMEONE ELSE'S FAULT by James Alan Gardner, making B&N's List of the Best SF & Fantasy Books of November, which I just found out about yesterday.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/best-science-fiction-fantasy-books-november-2017/
(Which has nothing to do with THE ORVILLE, I know, but can't resist sharing.)
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I don't care for Mr. Braga, but even I will concede the point above. Brannon Braga could probably always be counted on to come up with a 'high concept/wacky idea' - and when paired with a partner that understood how to write a good story; said partner helped work an actual story around that idea that was okay to very well done at times. But Branon Braga on his own (or paired with someone equally 'burned out') usually =
Just looking at his shows (e.g., discounting the stuff he wrote with Moore, since people tend to presume Moore wrote all the good stuff) he managed to pen Cause and Effect, Birthright, Part 1, and Parallels, which shows he's capable of top-quality Trek.
Which were all under showrunner Piller, to be fair. It's when Braga became showrunner himself that his work wasn't living up to his pre-showrunnning years.
Agreed that Braga didn't really shine as a showrunner. Though it's hard to judge how this really affected his writing, because to the best of my knowledge he only directly wrote seven Voyager episodes without someone else being involved, and at the very least Berman took co-writing credit on every Enterprise episode he touched.
Really? You're not referring to all the Orv characters, are you? You think John Lamarr and that goofball who sits next to him (actually, the're both goofballs) are more fleshed out as characters than Lorca, Burnham, Saru, and Tilly? I'd be willing to bet that you know more about the latter in terms of background, likes and dislikes, personal history, etc, than you know about the former.
I know I've gotten a lot more mileage out of TOS, the first couple of seasons of TNG and TMP than I have out of the rest of Trek combined.
I've probably seen "Spock's Brain", "Code of Honor" and The Motion Picture more than "The Best of Both Worlds", "The Inner Light" and "In the Pale Moonlight".
I'm very curious, what is it that makes the first two seasons of TNG work better for you than the remaining seasons, and is there anything from that Michael Piller era that works for you on any level?
Same here. I am truly baffled by this. Not sure what kind of character development is expected, but if I miss an episode of Discovery then I feel like I missed something important, character wise.
I know people hate these comparisons, but it's like...what...character development like in the other Treks? Aside from the TOS movies and a little in DS9, generally no character development in the franchise is static.
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Every series devotes a few episodes almost entirely to one character. I think the fans of Discovery hate the comparisons with Orville because they hate being reminded that Discovery can do so much better and are confronted with the evidence of that with new episodes of Orville every week. Hopefully the writers over at CBS learned something
That's not my reasoning at all.
Here is some character development from TNG's first season
TNG - Hide & Q, 11001001 (Riker)
TNG - Datalore (Data)
TNG - Hear of Glory (Worf, Geordie in the beginning of the episode)
TNG - Justice (Wesley & Beverely)
TNG - When The Bough Breaks (Wesley)
TNG - We'll Always Have Paris (Picard)
TNG - Code of Honour (Tasha)
TNG - Haven (Deanna and Lwaxana Troi)
TNG - The Arsenal Of Freedom (Geordie, Beverly & Picard)
They devote to each character see?
TNG - Hide & Q, 11001001 (Riker)
TNG - Datalore (Data)
TNG - Hear of Glory (Worf, Geordie in the beginning of the episode)
TNG - Justice (Wesley & Beverely)
TNG - When The Bough Breaks (Wesley)
TNG - We'll Always Have Paris (Picard)
TNG - Code of Honour (Tasha)
TNG - Haven (Deanna and Lwaxana Troi)
TNG - The Arsenal Of Freedom (Geordie, Beverly & Picard)
They devote to each character see?
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