https://www.boldlygo.ca/single-post/dsc-02 I'm going to post the full body of the article here as well, but please consider visiting the site. No ads, no financial incentive for me to say that, just working hard to write Trek content and hope to find some willing readers to visit on a regular basis and give me some sense of validation for the time I waste doing this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Welcome back to another entry in our "Guide to Discovery" Series! This week we'll be discussing last weeks homework assignment, "The Best of Both Worlds" and what insights it could possibly give us into Star Trek Discovery. The Best of Both Worlds is one of the most riveting two-part episodes Star Trek has ever produced, and certainly the first of its kind. (The Original Series had one two-part episode but it varies from this in many ways). Until this point in Star Trek history episodes more or less always wrapped up within their 45 minute run time, and there was very little reference to the events of any given episode after the credits rolled. The Best of Both Worlds is a defining moment in Trek history as it signalled that Trek was now ready to embrace longer form storytelling. In fact, the episode immediately following The Best of Both Worlds, entitled Family, is in many ways the conclusion of these episodes, while also beginning the setup for the next major two part episode, Redemption. As I mentioned in last week's article Star Trek: Discovery excites me because the writers and producers have promised dramatic character arcs throughout the course of the season. To me this follows firmly in the tradition established by Best of Both Worlds. In many ways the characters, particularly Riker and Picard emerge from the events of this episode as changed men. Picard now bears an incredible amount of guilt and trauma, and Riker has a new sense of confidence in his own abilities. The writers of Discovery have promised that the characters who we meet in the pilot will be different people because of the events that occur between that and the finale. Star Trek at its best has always embraced such character growth and change. The Best of Both Worlds isn't the only, or first example of this, its merely the one I chose for this article. I'm excited to see Star Trek truly come into its own in this new Golden Age of long-form television storytelling. This next point may be a little contentious among fans, but as this series is me sharing what excites me about Discovery, here goes. In The Best of Both Worlds we meet Commander Shelby, and ambitious young officer with her eyes set on taking Riker's place when he leaves for the Melbourne. Upon learning that Riker doesn't intend to leave the Enterprise, she quickly begins to show him up as an officer, revealing to him that perhaps he has grown too comfortable in his position under Picard. What I like about this is that it creates realistic human drama between characters on Star Trek. Their disagreements are not petty bickering based on differing personalities, Shelby seem genuinely concerned that Riker isn't taking the situation seriously enough, and she sets out to show him his error. For years writers on Star Trek were held to the rule, set by creator Gene Roddenberry, that there should be no interpersonal conflict between officers on Star Trek. As a result, there are very few examples of this sort of human drama in the series 50 year history. (Deep Space 9 is the notable exception to this rule.) In many ways this makes having compelling drama difficult. Instead writers focused on creating well thought out and thought provoking Science-Fiction stories. I'm not saying that was a bad thing! However, we live in a time when Television is produced very differently than it was in 1990. Season long plots are often developed and have begun being written long before the first actor is cast. As a result, writers have the time to create both well thought out plots andcharacter drama. The writers of Star Trek: Discovery have stated that they are disregarding "Gene's Law" regarding character conflict. I am hopeful that this means good things for the show, that it will combine well thought out and developed plots with meaningful and well thought out character struggles. I'll admit to a certain amount of trepidation however. Starfleet is meant to be made of the best and brightest humanity has to offer. What I don't want to see is petty squabbles over things that aren't important. The drama in Best of Both Worlds works for me because it is a matter of life and death, not only for the crew of the ship, but all of The Federation. The last thing that Starfleet officers should be arguing about is their romantic lives or other relative trivialities. That kind of drama can be found on every other television show in the world. In Star Trek if characters on the crew come into conflict with each other itneeds to be over something that matters. All that said, I'm hopeful that the writers will handle it correctly, they certainly seem to be saying all the right things, so I'm confident they understand the important value of Star Trek. It remains to be seen if they respect those values. With that said, it's now time for your next homework assignment! This week your assignment is to watch the riveting episode Duet from Season 1 of Deep Space 9. It's one of the most philosophically challenging episodes of Star Trek, and in my opinion a real nail-biter (Reminder: Clicking on the episode title will take you to the show on Netflix) Let us know what you think about Discovery, The Best of Both Worlds, or Star Trek in general in the comments below, or on Twitter using #BGStarTrek.
Regarding the article writer's statement I've bolded above: Oh, please - go actually watch and pay attention to TOS - there are plenty of examples of interpersonal conflict. It was TNG that had the 'no interpersonal conflict' rule, and it's WHY I think TNG is often overly preachy (yes, TOS occasionally got overly preachy too; but 'preachyness' was a TNG staple). Examples: TOS - The Corbomite Maneuver: (The first regular series episode filmed and for me probably still the franchises's BEST episode that really does a good job showing exactly what 'Star Trek' is about.) Kirk, comes up with thne Corbomite Manuever bluff AS he's arguing with McCoy about Lt. Bailey. TOS - Balance of Terror : Lt. Stiles is openly bigoted torwards Spock once he sees they are similar in appearance to Romulans and prior to that bigoted against Romulans in general due to family history. Prior to his outburst towards Sppock Stiles CORRECTLY reminds Kirk that based on all the circumstances, and that they don't know what a Romulan looks like, there could be Romulan spies on-board the ship (and Sulu agrees.) TOS - The Menagerie: Spock is so loyal to his former Captain (Pike) he lies, risks his career, and his good professional relationship with both Kirk and McCoy in an attempt to give Pike a better quality of life after Pike suffers a terrible accident. TOS - Journey To Babel: Okay, this one's all mostly Spock's personal family drama, but it's well done and compelling family drama plus Kirk is at odds with McCoy regarding his physical condition and effectively risks further injury to himself so Spock will do what's needs to give his father Sarek a better chance for survival. TOS - Obsession: Kirk is at odds with the entire senior officer staff on board because he is obsessed with destroying a malevolent cloud creature he encountered a decade earlier that killed half the crew (and teh Captain) of the ship he was serving aboard as a Lt. I could go on as there are many more examples of thios in the 3 season history of TOS (it was more the rule than the exception, unlike the TNG era) - but I think the point is made. As a TOS fan I too am very excited for ST: D; and all it needs to do to make the character drama work is EMBRACE the Star Trek era it's set in - where Humans actually acted liked Humans, and not the overly preachy, overly politically correct, utopianized mannequins that populated the majority of TNG. (and yeah, not so much DS9 - but even DS9 often went 'TNG' (IE "oh look the Federation was RIGHT..") by the end of a lot of their stories in the early seasons.)
Thanks for the feeback. You're absolutely right about TOS being a different animal altogether. I certainly could have worded things better. My previous article in this series was actually about Journey to Babel and discussed some of the conflict in it. The reality is however, that TOS is only about 10% of Star Trek, and for many new fans (the primary intended audience of my articles, thought I strive to make them readable for all) the TNG era is likely to be the Trek their more familiar with. A recent reddit poll showed that only 63% of those polled had seen "all or much of TOS", less even than Enterprise. Personally I think that's a shame. I've seen it all multiple times and think all fans should too. Ultimately I agree with you, there is absolutely a way to embrace human drama without becoming a soap set in space, and that was the primary point of that portion of the article. I definitely dropped the ball though. Thanks for pointing it out.
Good read. However: Well, it was their second attempt at doing so, seeing that their first attempt (TNG season 1, episode 25, "Conspiracy") went nowhere.
I've always kind of felt the same way, but given the tumultuous state of the TNG writers room its not surprising ideas got built up then dropped unexpectedly. I was saying to my wife (Who's seen all of TNG, and is almost done s2 of DS9) That had TNG had a clearer vision then BOBW may have been the S2 finale, and if that had been the case it would probably be the undisputed best Trek ever. As it is, it took the show so long top find it's proper footing.
I like what the folks at Star Trek Excelsior followed up on those "blue gills" as they referenced them.