I tuned out of Discovery midway through season three. It didn’t turn my crank. Well, actually it did, initially. I enjoyed the first four episodes of season one, and then it just started going south. I tried, though, I really tried to stick it out.
I loved the concept of fleshing out the Klingons beyond a Viking monoculture. I loved the idea of a protagonist rising up from a place of disgrace, and having to introspect on the root causes of that disgrace. Michael Burnham was a fantastically conceived character, and was beautifully portrayed by Sonequa Martin-Green. I loved the concept of Saru, a being driven by fear. Ditto praise for Doug Jones. Same goes for Lorca. Same goes for Georgiou. Same goes for the groundbreaking representation. The cast had chemistry. I dug the design of the ship. The 70’s brutalist aesthetic works with Trek, in my opinion.
There have been lots of complaints registered about the quality of the writing on the show. Some justified, many meritless, but almost all vague and ill-defined. In my view, the writing in and of itself wasn’t *that* bad. Rather, it was the overarching structure of the seasonal format, forcing the writers to tick off mystery box clues & shoehorning in occasional un-earned beats of emotional development that was the show’s downfall. I believe the concept could have worked, and worked well had Brian Fuller been left in control and the original vision for the show executed. What we ended up with was a first season narratively improvised-on-the-fly. And a second season narratively improvised in reaction to poor audience reaction to the first season which was improvised-on-the-fly. And a third season where the production team gave up completely on the original, nuanced premise, and retooled the show as Seaquest 2032, I mean, Space Patrol in the 31st Century.
I gave up on the show when it abandoned its own premise. It continued to exist because there was a business imperative for it to exist, not an artistic one.
Discovery’s cast and crew deserved better. They deserved a chance to execute a coherent artistic and narrative concept. They deserved to be given the chance to try something different all the way, with no interference from the studio.
They deserved a working, locked script for a whole season before even getting in front of the cameras. Narrative arcs need to be planned. Plans need to be stuck to.
My only pleasure in this comes from hoping that, perhaps, the head honchos of Star Trek have realized that they just have to let each show breathe and be it’s own thing. But that’s a long hope.
I loved the concept of fleshing out the Klingons beyond a Viking monoculture. I loved the idea of a protagonist rising up from a place of disgrace, and having to introspect on the root causes of that disgrace. Michael Burnham was a fantastically conceived character, and was beautifully portrayed by Sonequa Martin-Green. I loved the concept of Saru, a being driven by fear. Ditto praise for Doug Jones. Same goes for Lorca. Same goes for Georgiou. Same goes for the groundbreaking representation. The cast had chemistry. I dug the design of the ship. The 70’s brutalist aesthetic works with Trek, in my opinion.
There have been lots of complaints registered about the quality of the writing on the show. Some justified, many meritless, but almost all vague and ill-defined. In my view, the writing in and of itself wasn’t *that* bad. Rather, it was the overarching structure of the seasonal format, forcing the writers to tick off mystery box clues & shoehorning in occasional un-earned beats of emotional development that was the show’s downfall. I believe the concept could have worked, and worked well had Brian Fuller been left in control and the original vision for the show executed. What we ended up with was a first season narratively improvised-on-the-fly. And a second season narratively improvised in reaction to poor audience reaction to the first season which was improvised-on-the-fly. And a third season where the production team gave up completely on the original, nuanced premise, and retooled the show as Seaquest 2032, I mean, Space Patrol in the 31st Century.
I gave up on the show when it abandoned its own premise. It continued to exist because there was a business imperative for it to exist, not an artistic one.
Discovery’s cast and crew deserved better. They deserved a chance to execute a coherent artistic and narrative concept. They deserved to be given the chance to try something different all the way, with no interference from the studio.
They deserved a working, locked script for a whole season before even getting in front of the cameras. Narrative arcs need to be planned. Plans need to be stuck to.
My only pleasure in this comes from hoping that, perhaps, the head honchos of Star Trek have realized that they just have to let each show breathe and be it’s own thing. But that’s a long hope.
