I don't watch Marvel movies. Maybe that's why I'm not burned out on "We have to save everything!" unlike a lot of people here, and why I'm not triggered by even the hint of it.
Spoilers General Disco Chat Thread
- Thread starter Lord Garth
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You can't do a third act without a first and second act though. Like, sure, the earlier movies didn't do bazonga like Infinity War/Endgame, but you could not have gotten those ticket sales without the legwork done to create those character arcs. Which is why it's failed since then - they think they can recreate the spectacle without the setup.
This is also one of the biggest issues I have with Discovery, come to think of it. There's no sense of progression at all. It's effectively five standalones, rather than a single long-form arc. Obviously the writers had no idea this would be the final season at the time it was written/shot, but imagine if every season increased the tension/stakes and built on what came before, rather than shaking the etch-a-sketch.
Star Trek was literally born from the syndication sales method. The only time "progression" really worked in Trek was DS9's Dominion War. Everything else was mostly standalone before new Trek.
There wasn't really any progression in Picard either. They could've just put Season 3 as the first season and after removing some references to a synth body nothing would have been different in any real way.
I wouldn't have been interested in five seasons about the Klingon War or five seasons of Control. Nor do I think five seasons of the Mirror Universe would've really felt like a Star Trek series. A lot of this stems from I don't think Discovery belonged in the 23rd Century.
Once Discovery is in the 32nd Century, that's a different story. Yes, I would've liked to have seen the universe in the background develop more, even if the immediate stories came to a close at the end of a season. I'd like things like the Emerald Chain sticking around maybe there's alliance between them and the Breen. Just now do I feel like I'm starting to get more of a sense of the 32nd Century.
EDITED TO ADD: Between five seasons of Discovery and three seasons of Picard, we've had eight one-season arcs. Clearly, I liked them better than you do, since I only had issues with DSC S3 and PIC S2. But at this point, I do feel like I'm ready for a series that's serialized and doesn't wrap everything up after a season and actually is something that stretches out for years.
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Yeah. As I've noted before, PIC also failed at long-term planning. Arguably failed worse than DIS, since there was some attempt at limited long-form storytelling regarding the rebuilding of the Federation from seasons 3-5.
I want to be clear that I don't think you'd need to have something like the Dominion War arc to make this work. I just mean if there was a linear sense of the progression of the level of threat across Discovery as a whole, I think it would have worked better.
I mean, broadly considered, these are the scope of the stakes in Discovery by season:
- Season 1: If the Klingons win, Earth will be invaded/ravaged/devastated. Plus the whole "all life in the multiverse dying" thing floated by Stamets before they left the MU.
- Season 2: If Control wins, all life in the galaxy will be ended by AI
- Season 3: If Osyraa wins...uh...I guess the Federation doesn't get reborn? The Emerald Chain continues to be the major power of the quadrant?
- Season 4: If the DMA isn't turned off by Discovery, Earth gets destroyed inadvertently by Species 10-C
- Season 5: If the Breen get the progenitor tech...I dunno, I guess Starfleet HQ gets blown up?
Imagine if, instead, we went from lower-level to more epic. Maybe in Season 1, Michael helps save a major starbase, playing a key role in settling the Klingon War. Season 2, Michael helps uncover a clandestine effort by an evil AI to undermine Starfleet from the inside. Season 3, she saves Earth. Season 4, she saves the Federation as a whole, Season 5, she saves the galaxy. Then there would be a sense of forward movement, and her growing power as the protagonist.
I'm not sure Star Trek was ever about "power escalation" in that sense, but it's an easy mistake to make. Shatner himself who's been with Trek from the start took that road when he decided to have the Enterprise fight God, and they didn't really know where to go from there, leading to ST6 with the crew dealing with prejudices etc and while that movie is flawed also, I think it probably is "closer" to what Trek is about than ST5 was.
While it was not consciously planned as such, I think TOS mostly focusing on smaller-scale crises in far away corners of unexplored space helped make the escalation to higher stakes in the TOS movies feel more earned. I'd also argue that if TNG started off with a story like Best of Both Worlds, it wouldn't have worked - even presuming identical levels of execution on an episode basis.
But the TOS movies, even if they don't show a power escalation, do have a coherent arc for Kirk across all of them (other than STV). TUC doesn't really work from a character basis without the death of Kirk's son in TSFS, for example.
Hmmm. I'd have to think about how this works with the structure of the series as is, and then compare what you're proposing to the series as it exists. Not a cop-out answer, but I'm going to need some time with this.
Some predictions from TrekMovie:
https://trekmovie.com/2024/05/28/12-predictions-for-the-star-trek-discovery-season-5-finale/
The one about Kwejian is interesting.
https://trekmovie.com/2024/05/28/12-predictions-for-the-star-trek-discovery-season-5-finale/
The one about Kwejian is interesting.
I highly doubt this one:
Kovich’s story will be revealed
Kovich’s story will be revealed
I can imagine all the characters sitting cross-legged on the floor as Kovich stands near the front and says "My story begins in the year 2205..."
"This lady I knew named Pelia was trying to get me to buy one of her personal stash of old 20th century American paintings...."
Yeah. Kovich is just going to be... Kovich.
Honestly, alot of that stuff won't happen. There's one episode left and like... ALOT of things to tie up. We won't get much of this.
Zora seems like something of a waste. The AI borne out of the ancient sphere data... just kind of.. exists as the ships computer.
I like the idea of somebody having to stay behind and guard the tech, and that 100% SHOULD be Burnham. Will it be? I don't know, Burnham is the most important person to have ever existed in Star Trek ever so she might be too important to leave behind there.
I don't think a legacy cameo will happen. I can think of scenarios where it could possibly make sense, but I don't think you would actually need the actor to show up and just use some kind of stock footage.
I AM very much looking forward to ISS Enterprise showing up. I don't think they can dangle that, with two characters on it, and now have it show up.
That may be what you want (for more than one reason), but they thought they were making a Season 6, so that's not what's going to happen.
I agree with you here. If they were going to have a Legacy Character, they would've promoted the Hell out of it by now. So, they won't.
They did reshoots.
The idea of Burnham being the one to stay behind is absolutely not coming from a place of "I don't like Burnham". It is true, Burnham may possibly be my least favorite character in all of Star Trek. But... that's not why I think she should stay behind. It makes more sense in the context of the show and the story that is being told.
I don't think they will, because SFA is in this time period, and Burnham will have to show up there too.
I'm going to start a riot if they kill off Saru.
In hindsight, what would have been even better is if there was more of a plan and the Burn wasn't resolved at the end of S3, with them still having to deal with that through the next two seasons, culminating in the Progenitor tech being the key to fixing that.
Good enough.
Only Walking Dead fans can say that about killing Darryl. And even then, it's been over ten years since anyone believed there was ever a serious chance of Darryl getting killed.
Heh, the irony of that one is that Darryl being Character-Shielded from harm is one of the reasons I stopped watching Walking Dead.
I thought you were going to do all the 800+ episodes (yeah, I am not counting the cartoons) but you just did TOS.but I mainly agree with your ratings.
Okay. I've now done this for TNG, where I said I thought 73% of the episodes were either "good" or better. So, similar to TOS.
The Best/Worst Seasons of TNG by my arbitrary judgment. | Page 3 | The Trek BBS
I got a "Top 35" out of all the episodes I rated "Excellent". So, proportionately, TOS fared a little bit better there with a "Top 20".
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It's kind of overstated though isn't it? Discovery tells a lot more story in its season than this, and it been basically 5 novels with chapters telling us some big scale stories and that doesn't feel like too much. It's often so dense 3 or 4 viewings are needed to capture the essence of it.
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