Discovery is losing me in Season 3, anyone else?

I don't know, focus groups? See what the critics are saying? There's guesswork involved. You won't know if it worked until you do it, air the episodes, and see an uptick in your ratings. But in the long run ratings always decline, so you gotta do what you can to stay fresh and keep (and ideally grow) your audience.

 

Which seems to be exactly what they are doing.

 

She's since shown up in the fourth one, and all have been narrated by Patrick Stewart.

 

It's almost as if they are combining the franchise in to one piece!

 

I have no idea what they are doing or not doing.

 

The shift in focus in Season 3 seems like an indication of their trajectory.

 

The fans know far less about what they really want out of DSC than the writers do.

 

Oh, for sure. Which makes the writers' job rather difficult.

 

Until season 3 the writers knew very little about what this fan wanted out of everything.

 

Edited:
Whoops, misread.

 

Makes sense. I’m sure they have your name pinned up on their cork board.

 

No doubt DSC is losing me in S3… to the extent that I haven’t rewatched a single episode nor do I plan to, whereas I’ve seen each S2 episode twice and each S1 episode at least twice (for novelty more than anything else). I’m still a fan, which means I’ll watch the show to see what happens next on ST, but I don’t believe in these generic “I enjoyed it” or even “I was entertained by it” comments I often see here, along with grades that settle for a B and basically rate the show on a curve, not in relation to everything TV could be.

Let’s face it, Star Trek is a franchise, which means it’s unlikely to lend itself to a scenario where an experienced writer comes in with a great idea and the studio just lets them do their thing for five years. The product must begin with the property owners, who then hire and fire as needed to keep an iteration going for as long as it brings in decent returns, with little regard for continuity of vision, innovation or the avoidance of tropes. That’s just the way it is, and there should be no inconsistency between watching a show and giving it a 2/10 or a 3/10 in relation to maximum potential, which Star Trek fans would be aware of by watching the best of other television also even if it has nothing to do with Star Trek (consistent with IDIC).

Does DSC even try to avoid the obvious choice on the level of an episode? When

Spoiler

Booker went to visit his planet, was anything more classic than the ending featuring reconciliation with Kyheem, a character who stayed behind?

Would it be too hard to just pick one of the bridge characters and develop them throughout an episode? There is TV regardless of genre that can actually avoid tropes, so it should always be recommended over DSC — but, if you’re a Star Trek fan, you’ll probably watch DSC anyway.

 

I see a lot of people complain that they’re dying to see more of the bridge crew and have their roles expanded. But I never recall people during TNG’s days crying out for us to learn more about Ensign Gates, Ensign Ragar, or whatever other extras populated the bridge.

Maybe it would be good to learn more about these characters, and maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe they’re simply not interesting enough or connected enough to the plot? I’ll never forget the disastrous Nicki and Paolo in Lost—why force background characters centre stage when there’s no need to and the plot doesn’t warrant it?

 

You’re correct in that the background bridge characters appear to have the same real-world position as actors — but, in that case I should know as much about them as I know about Ensign Gates or Ensign Ragar, which is absolutely nothing without going on MA right now. On the other hand, we already have early-O’Brien levels of awareness of several DSC background characters (who, unlike those TNG crew members, also appear in publicity materials!), so the next logical step seems to be more for them to do, or for one of them at least — and this is when either contractual limitations or perceptions of their acting ability kick in.

That’s not the same because those characters on LOST were created specifically for that purpose in S3, whereas these bridge characters have been around since the beginning. They can be as interesting as the writers choose to make them, so we’re saying the writers can’t do that, or they could but are limited by contractual obligations, and yet it’s not like they’re allowed to replace them with rotating personnel either? Even one episode is too precious to be spent on one such character, just as an experiment (not counting Airiam since that episode was her last)?

 

My big criticism of S1 was that they wasted valuable screen time doing fan service and going to the Mirror Universe. I've been coaxing people to get into DSC by telling them that they wouldn't make that mistake again.

Well, then came the two parter this season.

 

That Mirror Universe two parter was excellent.

 

Spoiler: Shouldn’t the entire thread allow for spoilers?

Only in that it removed mirror Georgiou from the series. Prime characters were treating her past as entirely inconsequential to their own universe, as if to them she were a fictional character with fictional crimes and fictional offensive lines not to be taken seriously. Burnham was desperately trying to twist her into prime Georgiou, but that makes no sense in the context of what she actually did as Emperor. The character should have exited the show much earlier and I was glad to finally see her go, especially since MU stories are too easy in allowing the writers to do what they want with little consequence to the prime universe (and here they needed an additional out with the Guardian’s disposable timeline).

 

Complaining about the lack of character development of the bridge crew is incomprehensible. After all, it's clear from the beginning of the series who is billed as stars and who as co-stars. Even so, the most popular characters in this group (Detmer and Owosekun) got TNG-style character development at least on the level of Troi, whose character development was about knowing she liked chocolate. More neither of these characters will get until the actor or actress playing them is promoted to main credits.

 

Agree to disagree. Excellent episode, interesting character work that was a culmination of the tension between Georgiou and Burnham, and their own perception of the other. It's very Trekian in highlighting the capacity for change.

Mileage, etc.

 

It would have been a great two-parter in a 26-episode, mostly episodic season of Trek. But given the limited number of episodes and the way it more or less sidelined the major plot arc of the season for two weeks, it seemed needlessly self-indulgent.

As I had said before, my preferred way of dealing with this would be if it was made the "prequel" of the Section 31 series. Essentially Georgiou could have stayed behind in the 23rd century with Ash, then gone to the Guardian of Forever by herself. Then the arc within the MU could have been done basically identically (they have the sets, and all the actors after all). The only thing that would have been left out I suppose is the sense of closure between Georgiou and PU Michael, but I could have lived with that.