Has Season 2 made use of any of the background characters?

At least it's not her patients.

 

Lap dances only for Picard.

 

Remember, TNG actually had a rule in the writer's room that being interesting was being lazy, you earn your paycheck by being bland.

I exaggerate but not by much.

 

Here are 4 examples of scenes with high stakes and pressing circumstances...

Abrams Trek:


TOS:


Discovery:


TNG:


In the Abrams one, it's basically constant chaos, except for the hail scene in the middle. The camera is constantly moving with flashes of blinding light, everyone is running around and almost every line is a panicked shout.

In TOS and Discovery, the action is easy to follow. It's clear that everyone understands the urgency and seriousness, but they remain calm and professional.

In TNG, well, they're a little too calm and professional. Troi says "we have to get out of here now" like they're in a store that's about to close. After realizing they have 36 seconds to live, they discuss what to do as if they're in a classroom suggesting answers to the trolley problem. Riker doesn't even move his damn foot.

I think TOS and Discovery are both easily within the happy medium.

 

I have no issues following action.

 

I have no issues reading anything on this forum, but that doesn't mean a wall of text is equally eloquent as any other post.

I don't mean hard to follow plot-wise, it's just overwhelming and disorganized (by design).

 

Agree to disagree. If it is by design then I do not see it....

 

The Abrams movies do make scenes way too frantic and by extension confusing. I'm especially not a fan of how everyone's constantly talking over each other.

 

Kelvin --> Way, way, way too hyper. If I were 7 or 8, and had too much sugar, I'd be all over this. But I'm not.
TOS --> Had me on the edge of my seat no matter how many times I've seen it.
DSC --> Dynamic, well choreographed, paced just right, and hits the right dramatic beats.
TNG --> Another day at the office, including asking for suggestions, some shakiness, technobabble doesn't work, Picard shouts "all hands abandon ship!", then it's too late.

Wow. This sums up what I think of all four of those incarnations of Star Trek.

 

I doubt it's an accident. It seems like a concerted effort across acting, camerawork (both real and CGI), editing and post-processing all to evoke feelings of chaos and confusion.

Bringing it up because apparently some people think Discovery falls into the same style, which to me it clearly doesn't. There's more to it than just rotating cameras and lens flare.

 

Strangest complaint to me is shakycam. DISCO certainly uses handheld shots, but it’s done so mildly compared to how Abrams shot his films it’s no where near frantic. The handheld work is more comparable to the latter seasons of ENTERPRISE when it tried to move away from the static camera work of 90s Trek photography for a more contemporary look. DISCO just uses more dolly work.

 

tbh, JJ Trek was hardly the most frantic camerawork either, compared with other movies

 

DSC first season had some problem with shakycam during some action sequences and fights, but not to the level that it is done in the JJ movies. I'm all for shaking the camera but you should at least be able to tell what's going on, I guess? I dunno, this is a funny way to use the phrase 'show, don't tell' because I feel like in the JJ movies, he's shaking the camera so damn much to specifically tell us frantic things are happening, rather than letting the scene show us by itself, with the addition of some camera movement. Lately, though, DSC has been fine with it's action sequences; you can totally tell what's going on and it looks gorgeous and dramatic.

However... they kind of do that thing where they circle around characters talking to each other to the point where it sometimes looks silly.

 

Abrams has some really weird camera techniques in general. I remember the "My name is Khan" scene in STID the camera is for some reason swaying when that line is spoken.

 

The camera and cameraman were actually pushed by the wave of gasps from everyone because the reveal was just so damn surprising.

 

Certainly, I mean for Trek the Abrams movies had the most frantic camerawork. Outside of Trek you can look no further than Michael Bay style.

Abrams was just applying modern blockbuster techniques with his films. The close up of Khan you cited as an example is something commonly used in the Bourne films, particularly the Greengrass directed entries. Given that the concept of Harrison was originally a Bourne-type character, it kinda makes sense. The Bourne films were heavily influential to blockbusters. The Russo brothers also used that type of camerawork for Captain America 2 and 3.

 

This is done way too much, at way too fast a pace, people are complaining all over the place on Reddit boards like /r/Startrekdiscovery that they get literally motion sickness from it, and I experienced it for the first time in the latest episode as well.

Honestly I can't stand modern Hollywood film techniques. I've gone back and watched a whole bunch of 80s action film from both Hollywood and Hong Kong cinema and they just look so much better especially the action. Alita Battle Angel as well seems to ape a lot from Hong Kong action cinema (I mean they flat out said Bruce Lee films) and has the best looking action scenes I've seen in Cinema in years.

 

You nerds and your motion sickness.

 

Well, I shouldn't have watched it from the front row

 

I'm waiting for the mini-sode which will focus entirely on them. As long as they're doing Short Treks I'd consider this inevitable, really. They're a likeable bunch and now that this season has proven that they add nicely to teh entire crew dynamic, they'll slowly get a bit more to do (as long as the actors wantt to stick around). I doubt they'll ever achieve the status of replacing a departing cast member, though.

Mark