Please lower the stakes

[urbandk]

I'm usually the first to overlook flaws in Trek and am more than willing to suspend my disbelief for all the random silliness inherent in Trek's sci fi/fantasy.

However, a consistent issue I have with trek, going back to TNG and the TOS movies is the constant end-of-the-universe stuff.

• V'ger
• Genesis
• Whale aliens
• Borg
• Black hole space drill
• Xindi
• Spore multiverse destruction
• Control apocalypse
• Etc.

I'm not even going to get into how the Enterprise is going to be destroyed every other week. Ironically, Discovery has been above average about eschewing the gotta save the ship within 45 minutes every other week plots.

However, Discovery has been a big offender in the fate of the universe rests with us season arcs.

Just a small request for TPTB: please dial it back a bit. Perhaps the Federation can be in jeopardy without the whole entire multiverse for once. You know, the death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic.

Thx!

/rant

 

[ITDUDE]

Too late: https://trekmovie.com/2019/04/19/al...ason-3-destination-hears-fans-on-pike-series/

All I can tell you is that Control is officially neutralized, but there will be much bigger problems when they get to the other side of that wormhole.

Destruction of all sentient life was not big enough. Next year gotta go bigger!

 

[Alan Roi]

I'm usually the first to overlook flaws in Trek and am more than willing to suspend my disbelief for all the random silliness inherent in Trek's sci fi/fantasy.

However, a consistent issue I have with trek, going back to TNG and the TOS movies is the constant end-of-the-universe stuff.

• V'ger
• Genesis
• Whale aliens
• Borg
• Black hole space drill
• Xindi
• Spore multiverse destruction
• Control apocalypse
• Etc.

I'm not even going to get into how the Enterprise is going to be destroyed every other week. Ironically, Discovery has been above average about eschewing the gotta save the ship within 45 minutes every other week plots.

However, Discovery has been a big offender in the fate of the universe rests with us season arcs.

Just a small request for TPTB: please dial it back a bit. Perhaps the Federation can be in jeopardy without the whole entire multiverse for once. You know, the death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic.

Thx!

/rant

I think you forgot a few existential threats: Nomad, Space Amoeba, Doomsday Machine, 20th century Nuke platforms, Guardian of Forever, Manheim's Experiment, Year in Hell etc.

Yes! The overarching theme should be the slow death by ennui of Captain Everyman! Maybe a whole episode devoted to his soul crushing consternation whenever he asks for a drink and all he get is something that is almost completely unlike Earl Grey hot!

Oh, the tragedy. We must save Captain Everyman!!

 

[urbandk]

Too late: https://trekmovie.com/2019/04/19/al...ason-3-destination-hears-fans-on-pike-series/

Destruction of all sentient life was not big enough. Next year gotta go bigger!

Yes, I am very specifically reacting to this quote. Are you there, Kurtzman? It's me, urbandk.

 

[NewHeavensNewEarth]

As long as you're not advocating more "Insurrection" snooze fests.

 

[urbandk]

As long as you're not advocating more "Insurrection" snooze fests.

Just from TOS, "Amok Time," "Space Seed," "Devil in the Dark," "Trouble with Tribbles," "Balance of Terror" were all extraordinary episodes in which the threats were real and sometimes terrifying, but never overwrought.

Randomly thinking of "Inner Light" from TNG, "The Visitor" from DS9, and even the Dominion war arc was not the end of the universe.

All I'm saying is there are lots of great stories to be told without this kinda damn-the-torpedoes we're-all-gonna-die stuff.

 

[Alan Roi]

Just from TOS, "Amok Time," "Space Seed," "Devil in the Dark," "Trouble with Tribbles," "Balance of Terror" were all extraordinary episodes in which the threats were real and sometimes terrifying, but never overwrought.

Randomly thinking of "Inner Light" from TNG, "The Visitor" from DS9, and even the Dominion war arc was not the end of the universe.

All I'm saying is there are lots of great stories to be told without this kinda damn-the-torpedoes we're-all-gonna-die stuff.

And there have been plenty of episodes in each Discovery season which were not damn-the-torpedoes we're-all-gonna-die stuff.

 

[urbandk]

And there have been plenty of episodes in each Discovery season which were not damn-the-torpedoes we're-all-gonna-die stuff.

Quite right. As I noted, Discovery has been well above average in each individual episode. TNG was maybe the worst offender. I mean, who would let their kids be on the Enterprise-D?

I'm just hoping for a season arc that is meaningful, and big, and frightening, but not cheap.

 

[eschaton]

Just a small request for TPTB: please dial it back a bit. Perhaps the Federation can be in jeopardy without the whole entire multiverse for once. You know, the death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic.

Here here.

Hope this isn't diving into politics too much, but the best real world example of this was this picture:

Mod edit: Picture of dead child removed. It really wasn't necessary to post that to make your point. If you're going to post something like that, it needs to be behind a link or in spoiler code with a content warning for other posters to decide whether or not they want to see it. Also, I don't know if MSNBC allows hotlinking, so please upload any photos to an image host like Imgur in the future.

The Syrian Civil War is just too big for us to fathom in terms of casualties. But I don't think anyone who isn't a psychopath - least of all a parent - can look at a drowned three-year old child washed up on a beach and not get at least a little misty eyed.

Yes! The overarching theme should be the slow death by ennui of Captain Everyman! Maybe a whole episode devoted to his soul crushing consternation whenever he asks for a drink and all he get is something that is almost completely unlike Earl Grey hot!

One of my favorite episodes of Trek of all time is The Visitor. The only stakes in that episode involve Ben and Jake Sisko. Ironically enough, things turn out better if Sisko vanishes, with the Dominion War somehow butterflied. But in no way do we end that episode - even with the hindsight of knowing that - and think "well, maybe on balance it would have been better to have Ben lost in time and Jake's life destroyed, to save all those millions of people." Human psychology just doesn't work that way. Stories are about characters, not statistics.

 

[fireproof78]

I don't mind the stakes if I am invested in the characters. Best example for me is the first Avengers movie. Pretty harrowing stakes, but it was the characters that made that story work.

Just give me good characters. So far, I'm ok with DSC.

 

[Alan Roi]

Here here.

Hope this isn't diving into politics too much, but the best real world example of this was this picture:

Mod Edit: Photo removed again.

The Syrian Civil War is just too big for us to fathom in terms of casualties. But I don't think anyone who isn't a psychopath - least of all a parent - can look at a drowned three-year old child washed up on a beach and not get at least a little misty eyed.

What you brought up has nothing to do with lowering the stakes. Its a completely different discussion. Its this one:

Shall we talk further?

 

[urbandk]

I don't mind the stakes if I am invested in the characters. Best example for me is the first Avengers movie. Pretty harrowing stakes, but it was the characters that made that story work.

Just give me good characters. So far, I'm ok with DSC.

Yes, I agree. This is more an issue in the aggregate than in any specific instance. You know, as Q put it "'The anomaly, my ship, my crew;' I suppose you're worried about your fish, too. If it puts your mind at ease - you've saved humanity, once again."

Just a plea for balance/variety. How many times can the same crew save the universe? Maybe saving everything isn't the only big story to be told?

 

[ELURIA]

All I'm saying is there are lots of great stories to be told without this kinda damn-the-torpedoes we're-all-gonna-die stuff.

Writing nuanced stories such as Balance Of Terror or The Visitor isn't Alex Kurtzman's strong suit. STD is very much razzle dazzle spectacle first, deeper meaning second. If that

 

[fireproof78]

Just a plea for balance/variety. How many times can the same crew save the universe? Maybe saving everything isn't the only big story to be told?

Variety, for me, comes from how characters react, not just to the stakes. But, I can see the point.

 

[ITDUDE]

With arc based shows your arc always has to be "epic" or at-least so the producers believe. Yeah, in any arc based season you may get one or two stand alone episodes where the Universe is not at stake, so for those you better hope the writers put out a gem. For the rest of the arc, something "big has to be at stake" otherwise it could be solved in one episode.

So basically, if you want to end huge stakes, you gotta convince producers to switch to none-arc based story telling. I think that ship has sailed (for Star Trek anyway)
Picard show is going to be "one big movie" so you gotta believe the universe is going to be at stake (again)
Section 31, have no clue what its going to be about (or even what century it takes place in) but I bet it's going to be "one huge epic tail"

 

[eschaton]

What you brought up has nothing to do with lowering the stakes. Its a completely different discussion. Its this one:

Shall we talk further?

You're right that personalizing a story is a separate thing than the stakes involved. A story with a good character involvement can have epic or small-bore stakes.

My point though is just establishing epic stakes doesn't make for a good story if that character work isn't done. I think it largely wasn't in Season 1, which is why the resolution of the Klingon War felt like an afterthought to the season arc. I felt like much better work was done on it for Season 2. However, there was really no dramatic reason to make Control's future victory seem so total. Just the destruction of The Federation, or even the enslavement of all humanoids within it, would have been sufficient. The conflict was that Control fucked up the Federation's future, and Discovery needed to solve it in the present. The hypothetical deaths of billions versus quadrillions of people we don't see really doesn't matter to the arc.

 

[David cgc]

There's something Damien Lindelof said in an interview that's stuck with me about modern action-adventure screenwriting. I know he's not involved with DSC, but Alex Kurtzman is part of his clique and seems to share a lot of sensibilities.

“Once you spend more than $100 million on a movie, you have to save the world,” explains Lindelof. “And when you start there, and basically say, I have to construct a MacGuffin based on if they shut off this, or they close this portal, or they deactivate this bomb, or they come up with this cure, it will save the world—you are very limited in terms of how you execute that. And in many ways, you can become a slave to it and, again, I make no excuses, I’m just saying you kind of have to start there. In the old days, it was just as satisfying that all Superman has to do was basically save Lois from this earthquake in California. The stakes in that movie are that the San Andreas Fault line opens up and half of California is going to fall in the ocean. That felt big enough, but there is a sense of bigger, better, faster, seen it before, done that.”

“It sounds sort of hacky and defensive to say, [but it’s] almost inescapable,” he continues. “It’s almost impossible to, for example, not have a final set piece where the fate of the free world is at stake. You basically work your way backward and say, ‘Well, the Avengers aren’t going to save Guam, they’ve got to save the world.’ Did Star Trek Into Darkness need to have a gigantic starship crashing into San Francisco? I’ll never know. But it sure felt like it did.”

Did Discovery season one need to end with a threat to all life in the multiverse withering and dying off? Did Discovery season two need to spend half the season threatening the extermination of all life in the galaxy by Starfleet's internal news aggregation service? We'll never know, but apparently, it sure felt like it did.

I don't think I agree, but there's a well-earned conservatism in the entertainment industry (after all, if you're the person who's signing a check for $100 million to give to a director to make a movie, you're well-motivated to be sure that money's coming back). Thinking about it, I'm reminded about the scene in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Arthur Dent is trying to force himself to understand the totality of the Earth being destroyed, testing out different framings until one is small enough to not be immediately rejected by his mind as absurd. His family, his friends, local landmarks, until finally the idea that the concept of the cheeseburger had been erased from history is enough for the idea to get its foot in the door.

The revival of Doctor Who also had an issue with disaster-inflation, but helped compensate for it by always pairing the situation with personal stakes, that the real intention of putting the world, then the galaxy, then the universe, at stake was to make the characters more desperate than we've seen them, making it so as the stakes got bigger, the story got smaller (for instance, the season five finale, where they needed to save the universe, at a point when the universe had been reduced to four people in one building), and even then they got off the galactic peril train entirely after season six, and their finales moved back to saving single planets, frequently ones the audience doesn't live on.

 

[feek61]

I am really tired of these season long arcs (of nonsense). I sure would love to see some "seek out new life and new civilizations" stories that are wrapped up in an episode or two. The level of call-outs to so many things we've seen in other iterations of Trek is distracting and to me shows limited writing skills and imagination. It's as if that is the only way they feel they can rope in the older fans or something. At least the show looks cool despite the spinning spore drive thing which is just stupid on so many levels.

 

[Alan Roi]

You're right that personalizing a story is a separate thing than the stakes involved. A story with a good character involvement can have epic or small-bore stakes.

My point though is just establishing epic stakes doesn't make for a good story if that character work isn't done. I think it largely wasn't in Season 1, which is why the resolution of the Klingon War felt like an afterthought to the season arc. I felt like much better work was done on it for Season 2. However, there was really no dramatic reason to make Control's future victory seem so total. Just the destruction of The Federation, or even the enslavement of all humanoids within it, would have been sufficient. The conflict was that Control fucked up the Federation's future, and Discovery needed to solve it in the present. The hypothetical deaths of billions versus quadrillions of people we don't see really doesn't matter to the arc.

Yes, I agree, at a certain point it doesn't matter how much the stakes are raised. Which is why I don't get obsessed about those stakes once they get that high. The only failure I'm concerned with on the human scale. And, IMHO, that's where the story matters, and I have yet to see she show fail at that level.

 

[fireproof78]

Yes, I agree, at a certain point it doesn't matter how much the stakes are raised. Which is why I don't get obsessed about those stakes once they get that high. The only failure I'm concerned with on the human scale. And, IMHO, that's where the story matters, and I have yet to see she show fail at that level.

Same.