And when those actors' names appear in the main credits, your equivalency will no longer be false.
Spoilers Is Morn in Season 3?
- Thread starter The Wormhole
- Start date
No character "needs" to be developed. However, it would be nice to have more on these mysterious bridge characters than seemingly just 1 dimension. If Barclay, Morn, Nog, Rom, and even Joe Carey could get some writer attention, then why not these unknown heroes?
Michelle Paradise did such a good job with Airiam in season 2 of STD, that I'd welcome something similar during S3
Kinda difficult to do when so much time of the main credits is taken up by the 20+ producers
We cannot be fair to DSC here!!!!
In all seriousness, this critique of developing the Bridge crew is an odd one. DSC had a focus on specific characters, Burnham, Saru, Stamets, Culber and Tilly, as well as Lorca, Pike and Spock. The rest of the Bridge crew is the equivalent of various people who ended up at the Navigation slot in TOS. Extras. And that's neither new nor offensive in Trek.
As I've said in the past, I think part of the issue DIS had, at least in the first season was the following:
1. They decided - unlike earlier Trek series - to have the "bridge furniture" essentially always the same people, and to make some of them quite vsiually distinctive (Airiam, Detmer, to a lesser extent Owo's awesome hair).
2. I feel like there wasn't really great coordination between the script and the direction. The scriptwriters clearly just wanted the bridge crew to be furniture, giving them basically no lines beyond typical Trek bridge babble. But the directors decided to have close-up reaction shots of their faces, which led people to view them as characters, not just objects in the background.
I'd say that Season 2 mostly eliminated this. Even discounting Airiam getting an entire friggin episode, Owo got to go on an away mission, and both she and Detmer both got some lines (including some comedic banter) which showed a bit of personality.
Fair enough, as Airiam's episode in the limelight was indeed superb. However, Discovery has a different format than previous Trek series; with half-length seasons written as a part of a continuous storyline and focusing on a small group of specific main characters to tell that story, it just doesn't have the same amount of opportunities to develop the secondary cast to the same degree that DS9 did with its full-length, largely episodic seasons. They probably will get a bit of development as the episodes accumulate, but mostly in the vein of the brief moments we've got in Season 2.
As for Morn, well, he received practically all of his character development vicariously, culminating in his near-total non-appearance save for a single scene in his own focus episode (in which Quark had all the lines), not counting the hologram Quark made of him. I'd hardly call that actual development.
This is one of the best arguments against modern short seasons and serialized plots that I believe I have ever read.
Edit: Though the obvious retort here is Game of Thrones, or even The Expanse, where they manage to develop loads and loads of characters despite the same sort of time constraints.
Who? Jason
Screw that! Christi Haydon deserved the spotlight!
And he we go again. Lets make a list because I like making lists.
Main characters who get significant amounts of development and backstory after two seasons (29 episodes plus a couple shorts):
Burnham
Lorca
Stamets
Culber
Tilly
Saru
Tyler/Voq
Pike
Georgiou
Recurring characters who receive development and backstory:
Cornwell
L'Rell
Sarek
Amanda
Reno
Leland
Spock
Poor Airiam
Mudd
Number One
One-off characters who receive more backstory than Morn:
Gabrielle
Siranna
Poe
Tenavik
So, not even counting the one-offs, we have 19 characters who are more fleshed out than Morn, the literal prop for a running gag, whose bits of backstory we do get comes mostly from an episode where he's just providing the McGuffin inciting Quark's story. By the way, how much do we know about Morn after 29 episodes of DS9? Because the bulk we know about him stems from said season 6 episode.
But I get it. Previous Star Trek stories were a bit formulaic, weren't they? You fill out your Bridge crew/command positions and there, your cast. No need to figure out if the character and position they are in actually are that compelling, or lend themselves to tell good stories about them (like the oft maligned Mayweather).
But here? There's characters on the bridge, and they are not in the focus of the story?! Clearly the story sucks at developing characters because the people who would be the focus by custom in other shows aren't in this instance. How?!
All snark aside, there's plenty of characters developed way more than Morn, but somehow they don't count because they don't fill the specific slots main characters used to fill in the other shows.
And by the way, having visually distinct, named background characters isn't a weakness. It provides visual continuity and having a reservoir of pre-existing characters to pull from if you need them is good, because you can pull an O'Brien, who if you recall started as a named recurring face in the background.
Rather, he started as a nameless recurring face. Meaney was "Conn" (i.e. the battle bridge helm officer) in "Encounter at Farpoint" and "First Security Guard" in "Lonely Among Us." Then in season 2 he was "Transporter Chief" on a recurring basis, eventually getting the name Chief O'Brien and his first prominent guest star billing in "Unnatural Selection." He didn't gain a first name until "Family" in early season 4.
Morn's development is more impressive because they did it without him saying a word. The fact some like him better than some regulars isn't about who had more or less development but whose development was more interesting. It is a quality issure more than a quanity issue. They maximized his appeal unlike Mayweather or the wowmen pilot and navigator and alien who had a cold on Discovery who have interesting backstories that constantly overlooked yet on DS9 they took a interest in a extra and turned him into a person just for a laugh. Jason
Again, people "loved Morn more" after 29 episodes of DS9? Can you tell me what parts we learned about him that were so compelling during these early episodes? Because again, the bulk of things we know about him that isn't the repeated gag of "he is really chatty but we never hear him on screen" is from season 6. And as far as gags go, how much has he really on Linus, who's also mostly a background character for comic relief (biased because I really like Linus and I actually like him more than Morn)?
If by "women pilot and navigator" you mean Detmer and Owo, Owo isn't the navigator. She's the Ops Officer, same job as Data and Harry Kim.
What we know about Mourn is he is chatty with a crush on Dax. He has double digit siblings and seems to love Quark as a friend. Then later we learn about his shipping business and use to be a crook. Not much if he was more than extra but that he feels to have more dept than some with speaking parts is impressive but bad for those others. The boomer stuff with Travis or the disability stuff or we nothing about Linus or his people is interesting stuff but they haven't done much with it. Granted they are kind of like Sulu,Chekov and Uhura on TOS but I think people just want more and it is connected to how people want to be more of a ensemble and less about how all stories lead to Burnham. I think many miss how on DS9 Sisko was the lead but most of the characters had stuff that had nothing to do with him. Quark and the Ferengi often did their own thing and Bashir and O'Brien had theirs. Some of this of course comes down to more episodes and more variety of stories. People are feeling the limits of only 14 episodes and if most of those episodes are about a single character people don't love it shows. Your almost screwed if you don't like Burnham. On the other hand if you didn't like Picard, Sisko or Janeway that much it was okay because they had more going on elswhere. Don't like Picard to much. That's fine because next week is a Data episode and then Worf and then Q shows next and etc. To do what Discovery does well people have to be all in on Burnham and many aren't which is why people want it to be more of ensemble show. Jason
Broken into paragraphs to make this easier to read.
Morn:
Enterprise:
Deep Space Nine:
Shorter Seasons:
Now that it's easier to read, I have to say you have to compare DSC more to the movies than to TNG or DS9. In the movies, the focus is on Kirk and Spock or Picard and Data, with other characters being given some things to do but the main focus isn't on them.
In DSC, the focus is on Burnham, Saru, and the guest captain of the season with Tilly, Stamets, Georgiou, and eventually Spock playing main supporting roles. Culber, Cornwell, Sarek, Amanda, etc., play secondary supporting roles. And then, on the "other" side, you have L'Rell and the other Klingons in Season 1, and in the second season you have Leland et al in Season 2. I think it's pretty spread out. Burnham is the center but she's not the sole focus.
Is this a move away from TNG (as a TV series) and DS9? Yes.
Is it a move away from TOS, VOY, and ENT? Not really. TOS obviously focuses on the Big Three: Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. VOY eventually had its Big Three: Janeway, Seven, and The Doctor. ENT's big three were: Archer, T'Pol, and Trip.
The Big Three on DSC (so far) have been Burnham, Saru, and The Captain.
Morn:
Enterprise:
Deep Space Nine:
Shorter Seasons:
Now that it's easier to read, I have to say you have to compare DSC more to the movies than to TNG or DS9. In the movies, the focus is on Kirk and Spock or Picard and Data, with other characters being given some things to do but the main focus isn't on them.
In DSC, the focus is on Burnham, Saru, and the guest captain of the season with Tilly, Stamets, Georgiou, and eventually Spock playing main supporting roles. Culber, Cornwell, Sarek, Amanda, etc., play secondary supporting roles. And then, on the "other" side, you have L'Rell and the other Klingons in Season 1, and in the second season you have Leland et al in Season 2. I think it's pretty spread out. Burnham is the center but she's not the sole focus.
Is this a move away from TNG (as a TV series) and DS9? Yes.
Is it a move away from TOS, VOY, and ENT? Not really. TOS obviously focuses on the Big Three: Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. VOY eventually had its Big Three: Janeway, Seven, and The Doctor. ENT's big three were: Archer, T'Pol, and Trip.
The Big Three on DSC (so far) have been Burnham, Saru, and The Captain.
Last edited:
Morn also got a cool action figure in the very first wave of Playmates' DS9 figures. 
Perhaps Morn and all those other characters are hologram or android protectors that have to protect the Trill and the Federation president guy. We might see a old races vs new alien races conflict on the show. Also we might see the spore drive allow us to see the Gamma and Delta quadrant again. Jason
No, they seem to be on the bad guy faction side, since earlier we see Andorians and white humans dressed in the same outfits as Morn, the Cardassian and their group fighting against Michael and Cleveland Book.
Incidentally, I find it very amusing the only white male humans we see in the 32nd century are with the bad guys, while the non-white people are with the good guys.
Why are people calling the Lurian in that clip "Morn?" What started as a humorous speculation in this thread seems to have become accepted as fact, which makes no sense. Presumably it's some future Lurian and the makeup artists forgot the joke line from "Who Mourns for Morn?" that Morn had lost his hair.
