It's a challenge to invent a new alien, there will be a reaction to it. In some ways they did okay with Ripper in my opinion. They need to step up. I was obviously under the misinformed impression that 'Discovery' had a healthy budget. Unless they spent it all on a myriad of writers and management.
Magic to Make the Sanest...confirmed "bottle episode"
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The figures cited in the press suggested a healthy budget. But I believe that Bryan Fuller blew a lot of the money early on. Decisions like the location shooting in Jordan in the first episode couldn't have been cheap (while earlier Trek used location shooting, I don't think any of the series ever shot outside of SoCal). They also blew a lot of money on practical effects for things like the Klingon spacesuit which are only really seen for a few seconds.
On the other hand, there were many places it was obvious the show later went on the cheap. Few away missions, limited extras, and continued reuse of the same 5-6 standing sets. Indeed, a lot of the decisions (like having episode 3 be in a "twin" of Discovery, or the ISS Shenzhou) seemed to have been driven by being able to cheaply reuse standing sets.
That decision in particular makes absolutely no sense to me in retrospect. The scene in the episode lasts all of 5-6 minutes; even for a well-funded TV pilot, it's incredibly stupid to do location filming in another country. Any line producer worth their salt should've instantly told Fuller and David Semel "abso-fucking-loutely not, the time and equipment necessary to move the first unit to Jordan will blow the budget for half and episode or more." I'm more lenient on DSC than many in this thread, but even I recognize the whole management structure behind the first season was a joke, even more than the problems in the writer's room.
If they absolutely had to set the scene in a desert, they would have had to go on location, anyway. Canada doesn't have a lot of desert areas, and I'm not aware of anything in the Toronto area that would suffice. The Carcross Desert is about all we've got, that I can think of, and it's up in the Yukon. The Alberta Badlands are visually quite interesting, but in photos I've seen I don't see a lot of sand, so the tracing out of the Starfleet delta in footprints wouldn't have worked.
Now, one could argue that the footprint thing was too "cutesy" and the writers could have found a different way to do it - maybe they could have done it in snow. We didn't get a lot of snow until late in the winter, but there was plenty a few hours' drive north when the episode was being filmed.
Canada doesn't have deserts, but, California and Nevada sure do. Most of the actors are based out of California and they have to travel to the studio in Toronto. They could have driven a truck to a southwest desert location and shot the scene. Instead they sent the actors,crew and equipment to the other side of the globe.
I like Supergirl. I wish Discovery was half as much fun and entertaining.
what does it say about the state of our society, if people prefer that unwatchable CW cheesefest to a solid show like DSC?
Unwatchable to you maybe, I'm pretty sure there are more people here that watch both shows, including me and Jinn.
I was going to suggest wherever SG-1 shot their desert scenes, but then I remembered they were in Vancouver, not Toronto, and IIRC, their desert location was slowly receding and, Google tells me, was completely eliminated over ten years ago.
Still, there are solutions that don't involve going to another continent.
About the "time crystals," how is that different from the magic time orb used to transport the DS9 crew back to "The Trouble with Tribbles"?
And here's the thing: that's not a case of using one case of "lazy" writing to defend another. DS9 handled it perfectly and so did DISCO, because the story was not about the technobabble; that's just a plot device to set up the situation and the more time you waste trying to justify it, the less time you have to spend on the actual time-loop fun and games. To my mind, the DISCO ep would not have been improved one bit by a bunch of technobabble about "a recursive chroniton matrix generated by a localized quantum displacement field."
Besides, seriously, does Mudd seem like the kind of guy who likes to expound on the finer points of temporal theory? Maybe he's just calling them "time crystals" because that's pithier than some fancy scientific label. I call my TV remote a "remote" because I don't know or care how it works, just what buttons to push. It's just a magic TV wand as far as I'm concerned.
The "time crystals" are just a plot device to justify the time loops. And that's all they need to be.
One more example: compare "Trials and Tribble-ations" to, say, VOYAGER's "Flashback." DS9 got Sisko and Co. back to TOS before the opening credits just by evoking a "Time Orb." By contrast, VOYAGER made us suffer through endless technobabble about Tuvok's neuro-something-something before we finally got Janeway meeting Sulu, which was the whole point of the episode.
Bottom line: Sometimes "Time Crystals" save a ton of boring exposition.
(P.S. I like SUPERGIRL.)
And here's the thing: that's not a case of using one case of "lazy" writing to defend another. DS9 handled it perfectly and so did DISCO, because the story was not about the technobabble; that's just a plot device to set up the situation and the more time you waste trying to justify it, the less time you have to spend on the actual time-loop fun and games. To my mind, the DISCO ep would not have been improved one bit by a bunch of technobabble about "a recursive chroniton matrix generated by a localized quantum displacement field."
Besides, seriously, does Mudd seem like the kind of guy who likes to expound on the finer points of temporal theory? Maybe he's just calling them "time crystals" because that's pithier than some fancy scientific label. I call my TV remote a "remote" because I don't know or care how it works, just what buttons to push. It's just a magic TV wand as far as I'm concerned.
The "time crystals" are just a plot device to justify the time loops. And that's all they need to be.
One more example: compare "Trials and Tribble-ations" to, say, VOYAGER's "Flashback." DS9 got Sisko and Co. back to TOS before the opening credits just by evoking a "Time Orb." By contrast, VOYAGER made us suffer through endless technobabble about Tuvok's neuro-something-something before we finally got Janeway meeting Sulu, which was the whole point of the episode.
Bottom line: Sometimes "Time Crystals" save a ton of boring exposition.
(P.S. I like SUPERGIRL.)
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In defense of the desert filming, it kinda made sense to pull out all the stops for the first episode, considering it was the only one the vast majority of the U.S. population would have a chance to see. The rest of the season didn't matter so much, as long as that first ep made All Access look interesting.
About the "time crystals," how is that different from the magic time orb used to transport the DS9 crew back to "The Trouble with Tribbles"?
And here's the thing: that's not a case of using one case of "lazy" writing to defend another. DS9 handled it perfectly and so did DISCO, because the story was not about the technobabble; that's just a plot device to set up the situation and the more time you waste trying to justify it, the less time you have to spend on the actual time-loop story. To my mind, the DISCO ep would not have been improved one bit by a bunch of technobabble about "a recursive chroniton matrix generated by a localized quantum displacement field."
Besides, seriously, does Mudd seem like the kind of guy who likes to expound on the finer points of temporal theory? Maybe he's just calling them "time crystals" because that's pithier than some fancy scientific label. I call my TV remote a "remote" because I don't know or care how it works, just what buttons to push. It's just a magic TV wand as far as I'm concerned.
The "time crystals" are just a plot device to justify the time loops. That's all.
One more example: compare "Trials and Tribble-ations" to, say, VOYAGER's "Flashback." DS9 got Sisko and Co. back to TOS before the opening credits just by evoking a "Time Orb." By contrast, VOYAGER made us suffer through endless technobabble about Tuvok's neuro-something-something before we finally got Janeway meeting Sulu, which was the whole point of the episode.
Bottom line: Sometimes "Time Crystals" save a ton of boring exposition.
(P.S. I like SUPERGIRL.)
I 100% agree with you here. But I will say this is why the spore drive was mostly a misstep by DIS. The show was not content to just introduce it and move on. Instead it became a major plot element across the entire effin first season, and was steadily one-upped until it became something which could travel to any point in time, space, or in any alternate universe. The more time that was spent on it, the more ridiculous and "magic" it seemed.
I have to ask, though: Has STAR TREK really ever spent all that much time explaining how exactly "dilthium crystals" work, not counting Technical Manuals and magazine articles and fan theories? On the air, in the actual episodes, it was usually just a case of "Oh, no, our dlithium crystals have been compromised, so the warp drive is on fritz! Unless we can use the MacGuffin particles to reenergize the lattice."
In other words, magic crystals powered by technobabble.
Which, again, is not a bad thing, because the stories generally aren't about the technical details; they're about putting our heroes in stressful situations that test their character and resourcefulness. Or maybe just amusing situations to entertain the audience.
Look at STAR TREK IV: Does it really matter how exactly the radiation from the aircraft carrier is going to fix the dilithium crystals on the Klingon ship? Of course not. It's just a pretext for a fun, exciting comedy sequence.
Works for me.
In other words, magic crystals powered by technobabble.
Which, again, is not a bad thing, because the stories generally aren't about the technical details; they're about putting our heroes in stressful situations that test their character and resourcefulness. Or maybe just amusing situations to entertain the audience.
Look at STAR TREK IV: Does it really matter how exactly the radiation from the aircraft carrier is going to fix the dilithium crystals on the Klingon ship? Of course not. It's just a pretext for a fun, exciting comedy sequence.
Works for me.
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And I'm sure the producers were kicking themselves in the ass by the time they got to mid-season and had to start cutting sets and effects budgets because of it.
Got no problem with dilithium crystals. My point was that, really, they're no less magic than the Time Crystals on DISCO--and that's fine.
Both TOS and DISCO were smart enough to realize that you don't need to go nuts "explaining" how they work when, really, you just need something to make ship go or justify a time-loop.