Please lower the stakes

[urbandk]

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.

Yes this is exactly what I'm talking about. It's a failure of imagination and audience expectations that's bigger than Star Trek. I'm not being snarky or condescending to anyone here; writers and producers are overall doing an exceptional job IMO, but I do think they have the imagination and the vision to tell a poignant, strong story in which it's not armageddon or bust.

 

[Alan Roi]

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 really loved that movie where the Avengers saved Guam, though.

 

[fireproof78]

I really loved that movie where the Avengers saved Guam, though.

I prefer when Captain America writes an op-ed piece opposing that one piece of legislation.

 

[David cgc]

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.

They could split the difference. I think Enterprise season 4, with its two and three episode mini-arcs, and season-long slow-burn background story, would be a perfect model for a modern more-or-less serialized Star Trek show. If they went to an alien planet and spent a few episodes there, they could get some adventure-of-the-week stuff in, and strange new worlds stuff, while still playing out things over time in the style of today. Plus, spending multiple episodes on an alien planet would let them amortize the costs, so they could make some fancier sets, costumes, and makeup than they would if the planet was only going to appear once.

 

[eschaton]

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 dunno. I mean, this is the convention for a certain sort of action-adventure movie, it's true. But even there, there is some diversity. Lots of comic book movies, for example, are essentially origin stories, and don't have stakes quite as epic. I mean - Ant-Man had a budget of at least $130 million and there was no world-saving.

I also don't see why this has to be transferred to television. Even where it is, a good serialized show should develop the epic stakes over its entire run. Look at Game of Thrones. The existential crisis of the White Walkers has hung over the story since its beginning, but it is only now that it's coming to a head. In contrast, the stakes in each of the preceding seasons were lower - basically whether one faction or another was going to "win" the season in question.

 

[eschaton]

They could split the difference. I think Enterprise season 4, with its two and three episode mini-arcs, and season-long slow-burn background story, would be a perfect model for a modern more-or-less serialized Star Trek show. If they went to an alien planet and spent a few episodes there, they could get some adventure-of-the-week stuff in, and strange new worlds stuff, while still playing out things over time in the style of today. Plus, spending multiple episodes on an alien planet would let them amortize the costs, so they could make some fancier sets, costumes, and makeup than they would if the planet was only going to appear once.

I don't think mini-arcs would work as well given the modern short seasons. 3-4 mini arcs would basically fill out the season.

My preferred method of structuring a season - presuming there's no "greater plan" ala Game of Thrones - would be basically similar to NuBSG, Dark Matter, Defiance, etc. Basically have each of the episodes be largely discrete and have its own themes, but also have an impact on the characters and world at large which are felt on an ongoing basis. DIS was pretty close to this in the first half of season 2, but it began to fall prey to The Arc in the back half of the season.

Alternatively, just tell the stories in as much time as is needed. Don't have either an arbitrary 45-minute or 14-episode structure that you need to utilize. So if Discovery has 14 episodes next season, a nine-episode main arc, a three-episode mini-arc, a two-parter, and a standalone would be just fine.

 

[Jackson_Roykirk]

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!

Q will take Burnham back 13.7 billion years...

Q: Oh looky there, Michael -- That little singularity is about to go bang...but alas it didn't, and it's all your fault.

 

[urbandk]

Q will take Burnham back 13.7 billion years...

Q: Oh looky there, Michael -- That little singularity is about to go bang...but alas it didn't, and it's all your fault.

Michael [agonized expression]: how do I defeat Q? The only way is to tell him no. No, I am not a merry man. No, I don't smoke cigars. No, you can keep your fantasy women. We are Starfleet.

 

[plynch]

"agonized expression," thank you. I have expressed her ONE EXPRESSION in less perfect terms several times. She is Jamie One Note. Well no, there is also SERIOUS, too. Tonya Two-Note.

On-topic: Yup, neither arc did I care about. Some stupid Klingon war we never saw, only heard about; and, convoluted, galaxy-might-die-but-we-know-it-won't plot.

You need some jeopardy/undesired consequece that puts a character in a bind or tough decision. That jeopardy can be just to one person we care about. ALMOST Airiam in my case, but it was a nice attempt. If only . . . if only . . . they had developed her in previous eps so I truly cared what happened to her. A near-miss, though, and props for tryin'.

That damned Saru thing that almost happened (not sure if there's a spoiler tag on this): another near-miss, though B WAS willing to do the deed apparently. Jeopardy to one character I cared about and Burnham being faced with doing it.

As to a big arc jeopardy: f it's a prequel, the jeopardy has to be plausible in light of future canonical events. So DSC couldn't have, say, Vulcan be threatened, since we know it survives, but get us to care about some threatened other planet or colony we don't know is still there in TOS. Then make it so somebody, Burnham, I guess, has to make a gut-wrenching decision that then affects her in future arcs/eps. The T'Pol/Trip stuff was good in this sense, I think. Pike making his decision was IMHO the best moment of the whole show.

 

[XCV330]

I really loved that movie where the Avengers saved Guam, though.

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When a Georgia congressman actually was afraid Guam would "tip over and capsize".
Fortunately Captain America was not needed.

 

[Amasov]

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 don't think it's a matter of lowering the stakes; it's more the writers being brave enough to actually make good on the threats they create. The inherent problem is, like the Xindi, it's a prequel setting and you can't actually follow through with it.

 

[Refuge]

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

Hadn't thought about that. I love Year of Hell (Voyager), it was like planet destroying obscenity on a loop and it was painful to watch the crew deteriorate, blindness, burns and a battered ship. However the payoff of seeing Voyager smash into Annorax's time ship was kind of cool. The big stakes require big heroics.

 

[Longinus]

The important thing is to get viewers to care about the situation, to emotionally connect with it. On this season I cared more about the fate of the Kelpiens or the Terralysians than the fate of all the sentient life on the galaxy. The latter threat was just too big and abstract, while the former was personalised to the people we met.

Also, the main threat was introduced in a really weird way. It was basically a prophecy with little logic of how and more importantly why such a thing happened. The Control must be one of the lamest Trek villains ever (yes, worse than Shinzon.) There's pretty much zero set up to the whole thing. It's a computer program which becomes evil, wants to kill everybody because, I guess why the fuck not? If you want to make this sort of a story you absolutely need to show the program working properly at first, and show us the clitch in logic that sets it on the path to delivering Armageddon.

 

[F. King Daniel]

As spectacular as the finale was, I was far more invested in the Sarek family drama in season two than Star Trek's version of Skynet.

I suspect they will either be rebuilding the Federation (a la Andromeda) or taking down a darkside Federation (a la Blake's 7) in season 3. That's still much smaller than "all sentient life" in season 2 and "the entire multiverse"(!!) in season one.

After the entire multiverse, there is no way for the stakes but down

 

[fireproof78]

The Control must be one of the lamest Trek villains ever (yes, worse than Shinzon.)

Can't agree. I can understand Control far more than Shinzon.

 

[Delta Vega]

How come when there's a threat to "all sentient life in the galaxy" its always Starfleet who have to save the day ?
Where are the Romulans, The Cardassians, The Breen, The Borg (yes, even the Borg)?
Where are The Thasians, The Tholians, The Metrons, The Gorn etc ?
Why do none of these dufuses ever call and say "Hey Federation scum, we need a hand to sort out a grave danger to us all"

 

[Alan Roi]

How come when there's a threat to "all sentient life in the galaxy" its always Starfleet who have to save the day ?
Where are the Romulans, The Cardassians, The Breen, The Borg (yes, even the Borg)?
Where are The Thasians, The Tholians, The Metrons, The Gorn etc ?
Why do none of these dufuses ever call and say "Hey Federation scum, we need a hand to sort out a grave danger to us all"

They don't make a big deal of saving the universe when they do it. its how they're different from us, kinda reserved. They keep their skeletons in their closets. We display our on our front yards to scare the neighbors (Stolen from the Hooded Swan series by Brian Stableford - ironically about a crusty old star pilot who also moans repeatedly about the high stakes of the missions he always seems to be sent on.).

See:

 

[urbandk]

Can't agree. I can understand Control far more than Shinzon.

Just wanted to pop in here to second this. Shinzon was an embarrassment. I'd watch TFF on loop before subjecting myself to nemesis

 

[Delta Vega]

They don't make a big deal of saving the universe when they do it. its how they're different from us, kinda reserved. They keep their skeletons in their closets. We display our on our front yards to scare the neighbors (Stolen from the Hooded Swan series by Brian Stableford - ironically about a crusty old star pilot who also moans about the high stakes of the missions he always seems to be sent on.).

Starfleet should have called The Organians
They would have rendered Control powerless just by thinking it

 

[Alan Roi]

Starfleet should have called The Organians
They would have rendered Control powerless just by thinking it

Why would the Feds think a planet of grinning goat herders would be of any help?