How would you feel if the final ep ended like this?

[Mirror Mirror]

Was already done. In re-imagined BSG that's pretty much what ended up happening (no time travel, but they did send the whole fleet into the sun). As I recall, The Internetz reaction was exactly what you would think it would be.

Worse ending of any TV show, ever.

 

[Wowbagger]

So, 'The Cage'?

Since you mention it, yeah. In many ways, "The Cage" was brilliant and groundbreaking. You can see why NBC asked for a second pilot. On the other hand, it was ugly and -- worse -- joyless. You can see why NBC asked for a second pilot.

he or she probably never watched all the episodes of TOS. I rewatched some of it last night, like Thorlian's Web and Mirror Mirror so I can relate it to DISCO. Then I made the mistake of watching more of the final season 3. Have you watched Spock's Brain? OMG, it was so bad, I can't believe it was even aired! No wonder TOS was canceled after 3 seasons. What a garbage, 1960 or not.

Yeah, there's a reason "Spock's Brain" was the proverbial "worst episode of Star Trek" for 25 years. It's very, very bad. I've seen it three or four times over the years, and my opinion of it only falls each time.

However, there are very, very few episodes of TOS Season 3 that are as unambitious and unsuccessful as DISCO's "Choose Your Pain." Heck, even "Spock's Brain" at least has an outline that aims for something fresh. Even though it misses the mark, lands in the dumpster, and somehow bursts into flames, I give it a modicum of credit for that. The best thing I can say about an hour like "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For the Lamb's Cry" is that it's competent. Which, fair dues, is no small thing. The little fan podcast I make is frequently not at all competent. "Spock's Brain" isn't, either. Competence is hard. But it's also not enough to make a show good, or even enough to hold a viewer's attention for an hour.

Can you elaborate on your opinion that the storytelling is aimless, childish, and boring?

I found it to be none of those things so I'd be interested in why you feel differently.

[darn typos]

Other posters have compared DISCO Season 1 to TNG Season 1, and I think that's very fair. I'll even agree that DISCO S1 is better than TNG S1. TNG dipped into the "let's retell a TOS episode really badly" sauce in its second episode, and it was a catastrophe. DISCO managed to avoid that all the way up to "Despite Yourself," which is the first MU episode after "Mirror, Mirror" to completely refuse to even try to find a new angle on the MU... but it at least managed to avoid descending into self-parody the way "The Naked Now" did. ("The Emperor's New Cloak" was a terrible failure of execution that should have been foreseen the moment it was pitched, but it was nevertheless a good deal more of a fresh take on the Mirror 'verse -- and thus, to me, more entertaining -- than "Despite Yourself" at its most daring.)

Much of TNG Season 1 was, like the first season of Discovery, all too self-consciously trying to imitate what came before while simultaneously trying to distance itself from it and become something new. The result was aimless, wooden, and heavy-handed, like we were play-acting setpieces from better series rather than making our own show good. TNG eventually became good, which is something I remind myself every time I watch an episode of Discovery and want to punch a wall.

Another very fair parallel that fewer people are drawing is to ENT Season 1, which is strange, because they are remarkably similar in a lot of ways. ENT's first year saw a lot of "prequel shock," as the writers slowly (soooo slowly) realized that deliberately setting yourself up in the past of a well-established fictional universe means you can't just write Voyager stories with Zefram Cochrane namedrops; you have to either fundamentally rethink your approach to storytelling or (as early ENT usually did) give the finger to continuity and make a lot of people very annoyed. It took them really until Season 4 to figure out how to function as a prequel, and a lot of the damage done in Season 1 wasn't fixed or even addressed until then. DISCO, so far, has gone the same route.

ENT's first year also saw a lot of scholky, derivative plotting that could have been ripped from the pages of many of its contemporaries and immediate predecessors (SG-1, Voyager). Fans kept nodding off mid-episode because they could see so much of it coming from a mile away, and the actual character stakes seemed so meaningless so much of the time. DISCO was born into a very different era of television, and so its schlocky, derivative plotting feels very different from ENT's, but (as I've written elsewhere) it feels for all the world like a TV show written by a Bravo Fleet simmer who just discovered Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse. Characters are forced into Tough Moral Choices and experience Shades of Gray that don't really make any sense for the story or for the character or for the franchise (Saru's fall into evil in "Si Vis Pacem" and Sarek's in "Lethe" are the standouts in my mind, but this is basically a weekly occurrence). Other characters are killed off in Shocking Deaths that aren't really shocking (they even imported Dualla from Galactica and killed her to make the circle complete!). They've watched other shows keep Big Secrets for months or years only to have a Stunning Reveal later on, and they aped it with a Voq storyline that everyone in TV audience land figured out seven seconds after Tyler first appeared on camera. This is dull.

Finally, ENT's first season(s) were also marked by a determined attempt by the producers to take the franchise to "edgy" and "cool" places that "pushed the envelope." This gave birth to all manner of juvenile nonsense, from the butterfly girls of "Broken Bow" to 85% of all decon scenes to that dumb moment in "Shockwave Part II" where Hoshi loses her shirt for no reason to "neuropressure massage" in Season 3 -- all of which you could tell at the time was in there because Brannon Braga was chuckling creepily to himself about what a daring artiste he was by taking Star Trek into this territory. I think it's pretty safe to say that, fifteen years from now, we'll look back on the "fucking cool" sequence and the Klingon booby scene with the same eye-rolling sigh we give when we watch Archer's "freudian slip" in "A Night In Sickbay." This is childish.

ENT's attempt to be edgy also led to its infamous theme song choice. Now, to be fair, the theme song grew on me eventually, much like root beer, and it's a creative choice I defend. But it was such a massive breach with Star Trek's prior aesthetics that many fans were never able to make their peace with it, and "Faith of the Heart" remained an obstacle to their enjoying the series throughout its run.

In other words, "Faith of the Heart" was to Enterprise what the "visual reboot" is to Discovery.

I'm not giving up hope for Discovery by any means, and I don't begrudge those of you who like it. God knows I was a massive ENT fanboy, even during its first year. I really hope DISCO grows up into Star Trek I can enjoy someday, and the examples of TNG and ENT show me that there's good grounds for hoping it will.

 

[Bay17]

Since you mention it, yeah. In many ways, "The Cage" was brilliant and groundbreaking. You can see why NBC asked for a second pilot. On the other hand, it was ugly and -- worse -- joyless. You can see why NBC asked for a second pilot.



Yeah, there's a reason "Spock's Brain" was the proverbial "worst episode of Star Trek" for 25 years. It's very, very bad. I've seen it three or four times over the years, and my opinion of it only falls each time.

However, there are very, very few episodes of TOS Season 3 that are as unambitious and unsuccessful as DISCO's "Choose Your Pain." Heck, even "Spock's Brain" at least has an outline that aims for something fresh. Even though it misses the mark, lands in the dumpster, and somehow bursts into flames, I give it a modicum of credit for that. The best thing I can say about an hour like "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For the Lamb's Cry" is that it's competent. Which, fair dues, is no small thing. The little fan podcast I make is frequently not at all competent. "Spock's Brain" isn't, either. Competence is hard. But it's also not enough to make a show good, or even enough to hold a viewer's attention for an hour.



Other posters have compared DISCO Season 1 to TNG Season 1, and I think that's very fair. I'll even agree that DISCO S1 is better than TNG S1. TNG dipped into the "let's retell a TOS episode really badly" sauce in its second episode, and it was a catastrophe. DISCO managed to avoid that all the way up to "Despite Yourself," which is the first MU episode after "Mirror, Mirror" to completely refuse to even try to find a new angle on the MU... but it at least managed to avoid descending into self-parody the way "The Naked Now" did. ("The Emperor's New Cloak" was a terrible failure of execution that should have been foreseen the moment it was pitched, but it was nevertheless a good deal more of a fresh take on the Mirror 'verse -- and thus, to me, more entertaining -- than "Despite Yourself" at its most daring.)

Much of TNG Season 1 was, like the first season of Discovery, all too self-consciously trying to imitate what came before while simultaneously trying to distance itself from it and become something new. The result was aimless, wooden, and heavy-handed, like we were play-acting setpieces from better series rather than making our own show good. TNG eventually became good, which is something I remind myself every time I watch an episode of Discovery and want to punch a wall.

Another very fair parallel that fewer people are drawing is to ENT Season 1, which is strange, because they are remarkably similar in a lot of ways. ENT's first year saw a lot of "prequel shock," as the writers slowly (soooo slowly) realized that deliberately setting yourself up in the past of a well-established fictional universe means you can't just write Voyager stories with Zefram Cochrane namedrops; you have to either fundamentally rethink your approach to storytelling or (as early ENT usually did) give the finger to continuity and make a lot of people very annoyed. It took them really until Season 4 to figure out how to function as a prequel, and a lot of the damage done in Season 1 wasn't fixed or even addressed until then. DISCO, so far, has gone the same route.

ENT's first year also saw a lot of scholky, derivative plotting that could have been ripped from the pages of many of its contemporaries and immediate predecessors (SG-1, Voyager). Fans kept nodding off mid-episode because they could see so much of it coming from a mile away, and the actual character stakes seemed so meaningless so much of the time. DISCO was born into a very different era of television, and so its schlocky, derivative plotting feels very different from ENT's, but (as I've written elsewhere) it feels for all the world like a TV show written by a Bravo Fleet simmer who just discovered Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse. Characters are forced into Tough Moral Choices and experience Shades of Gray that don't really make any sense for the story or for the character or for the franchise (Saru's fall into evil in "Si Vis Pacem" and Sarek's in "Lethe" are the standouts in my mind, but this is basically a weekly occurrence). Other characters are killed off in Shocking Deaths that aren't really shocking (they even imported Dualla from Galactica and killed her to make the circle complete!). They've watched other shows keep Big Secrets for months or years only to have a Stunning Reveal later on, and they aped it with a Voq storyline that everyone in TV audience land figured out seven seconds after Tyler first appeared on camera. This is dull.

Finally, ENT's first season(s) were also marked by a determined attempt by the producers to take the franchise to "edgy" and "cool" places that "pushed the envelope." This gave birth to all manner of juvenile nonsense, from the butterfly girls of "Broken Bow" to 85% of all decon scenes to that dumb moment in "Shockwave Part II" where Hoshi loses her shirt for no reason to "neuropressure massage" in Season 3 -- all of which you could tell at the time was in there because Brannon Braga was chuckling creepily to himself about what a daring artiste he was by taking Star Trek into this territory. I think it's pretty safe to say that, fifteen years from now, we'll look back on the "fucking cool" sequence and the Klingon booby scene with the same eye-rolling sigh we give when we watch Archer's "freudian slip" in "A Night In Sickbay." This is childish.

ENT's attempt to be edgy also led to its infamous theme song choice. Now, to be fair, the theme song grew on me eventually, much like root beer, and it's a creative choice I defend. But it was such a massive breach with Star Trek's prior aesthetics that many fans were never able to make their peace with it, and "Faith of the Heart" remained an obstacle to their enjoying the series throughout its run.

In other words, "Faith of the Heart" was to Enterprise what the "visual reboot" is to Discovery.

I'm not giving up hope for Discovery by any means, and I don't begrudge those of you who like it. God knows I was a massive ENT fanboy, even during its first year. I really hope DISCO grows up into Star Trek I can enjoy someday, and the examples of TNG and ENT show me that there's good grounds for hoping it will.

Thanks for that analysis, appreciated