I don't understand the hate Disco gets / still gets.

I'm curious. What's your idea of Star Trek that isn't mindless entertainment? Because Discovery doesn't come off that way to me. You may not always like what they do, but they do seem to be putting thought into it.

As a longtime Star Trek fan, I personally think Star Trek works best on TV, not as movies.

 

Precisely so. Discovery may not be everyone's Trek, but that's fine because it is clearly enough people's Trek to make Paramount money, and that's what keeps them on the air.

 

How is Discovery mindless?

 

They are putting some thought into it, but its different from what I love from TOS and TNG. DISCO lacks the kind of substance I cherish about Star Trek but that doesn't mean the series should not exist; its a fluff show and that's okay. Star Trek is a format which could be anything, action adventure, drama, comedy and pure non sensical serial based story series. Those things are never going to move the pendulum when it comes to a proper narrative, these serials goes from A to B to C to D and something explodes and move on until its final chapter. Its brainless fun.

Come on, this series would be incredible on the big screen. The showrunners are geared to produce movie quality presentations and the characters are are light enough for a general audience to like. They don't feel like the traditional Starfleet characters I've grown to love, sort of like J.J. Abrams direction to Star Trek.

 

I’m actually a big fan of Star Trek in the movies. I get why people prefer it on television, but I love Trek films.

 

Coming back to this for aoment, you're right. It's possible to do both.

But a good story only needs to do one of them.

 

It’s probably worth pointing out that there were a lot of TOS fans who hated TNG when it came out. “It’s not real Trek!” Heck, there still are.

Of course, the internet didn’t exist back then. So their voices were a lot quieter.

 

Yeah, the internet being relatively rudimentary and not yet widely adopted until the very late 90s had a role in masking the ton of nerd rage over TNG, DS9, and early VOY to most casual viewers (but you had fanzines).

 

Good point! The internet probably did exist back then, but not in the form it is now.

 

Yeah, looking at many Twitter and YT posts (since when the internet truly took flight by the mid to late 00s), it has giving a global megaphone to everybody who's unfun at social gatherings.

And more logical internet discourse has fallen off an f'ing cliff since 2014-ish.

 

The best thing about the Internet is it gave everybody a voice.

However, that's also the worst thing.

 

And, as always, a small group of assholes with loud voices are usually the ones that get heard.

 

You're just basically repeating yourself rather than making your point. What is it about Discovery -- a show that puts all its characters through the wringer and portrays considerable character growth for Burnham, Saru, Culber, Stamets, Tilly, and several others; a show that provides new insights into Spock and his family; a show that deals with everything from trying to rehabilitate people who've done horrible things to giving up everything you've known and almost everyone you know to save the galaxy; a show that has characters trying to live up to the ideals of the Federation and Starfleet in trying circumstances -- what is it that's fluff? What kind of substance is missing?

If you asked me for a list of my top 20 filmed Star Trek stories, or my top 50, there might be one or two movies in the list. Star Trek is a TV series, and its best stories were created for that medium. Movies have different storytelling requirements and Star Trek doesn't always lend itself to them very well.

They don't feel like the relatively unchanging and underdeveloped characters of TOS or TNG. They feel more like the characters in DS9, who grew and changed over that show's seven seasons. I like characters who have some depth and growth, and most of those on TOS and TNG didn't get that.

 

I think the biggest problem is people sticking around out of habit after they're no longer a fan of something. So you have someone who hasn't liked any Star Trek that's come out after the 1990s talking about Star Trek coming out in the 2020s.

It's the equivalent of someone who likes oldies music from the '50s and '60s listening to a radio station that plays '90s music. Of course they're not going to like any of it! It's moved away from whatever they enjoyed. So why would they want to keep listening to that station? They wouldn't. But something about the Internet makes people stick somewhere once they find their spot because it keeps in their head something that would've gone out of it by now, otherwise.

I guarantee you that, if wasn't for the Internet, a lot of people who came up with TNG/DS9/VOY but don't like DSC/PIC/SNW wouldn't even be bothering to keep up with the new shows. Star Trek would've been "out of sight, out of mind" for the past 20 years.

EDITED TO ADD: The only paradox to what I typed above is that Streaming Trek exists because the Internet makes it possible, along with many other shows. (I have to put that in there before someone beats me to the punch) I'm not talking about the Internet enabling further content, I'm talking about how Human Nature itself and the Internet affect each other.

 

The TOS movies are good movies. The TNG movies, though mostly enjoyable do suffer from basically being extended length TV episodes. The Abrams movies, though they do have some entertainment value, really aren't that good at all.

 

"bUtt ey eM A LoyAL stAr TRak faN!! I want to watch it with the hopes it will get better."

Next Post: 4 paragraphs of bashing

 

I don't think fans has bashed it, they've had some issues but most critiques has been positive.

 

DSC has dealt with themes of grief, parenthood, war, PTSD, depression, gender fluidity, loss, redemption, revenge and the nature of sentience itself. To name a few.

I don't always like DSC but It's not a 'fluff show' and neither is it 'mindless'.

 

There were some issues being a prequel but now they've taken themselves into the future, where I originally thought DISCO should be. Why would there be any criticisms of that? The fans asked and was received There's nothing more cooler for a Star Trek series to open the canvas and spreading their wings. It's bold, challenging and fun.

 

Meanwhile, lots of Discovery bashers are excitedly praising Strange New Worlds, which is a prequel series that doesn't look very much like TOS. It's almost enough to make me wonder whether Disco being a prequel that didn't look much like TOS was really the problem that people were saying it was.