I spent a lot of time last night posting in another thread about how unnecessary it was to follow Gene Roddenberry's philosophy, or vision of the future, when making Star Trek. It was something that he came up with in his later years, and which he insisted applied to TNG. In the end, it was only something that rigorously applied to a few seasons of the entire franchise. What made it compelling is that the writers engaged with that vision without making it rote. To quote ISB, "this is the universe, let's explore it." They didn't take it for granted.
As much as I don't think that Discovery should be beholden to a strict interpretation of GR's ideas, I have to admit that I don't think it's clear that there is not some fundamental agreement about them. How the story, both the arc and the individual episodes, are presented makes it difficult to see where the series is going. First, there's the upstairs-downstairs thing, where our protagonist is mostly on the outside trying to make sense of things going on around her. Second, we don't know that the people our protagonist meets are trustworthy or not. The information isn't available. Third, the individual episodes don't park us in a place where we know in what direction things are going. Despite the serialization of DS9 and ENT, episodes still ended in a clear place such that we could get a sense of where the overall story was going. In Discovery, we get more mystery. All this makes it difficult to see how Discovery fits next to the other series.
If I am being honest, there is a long list of things that concerned me about the episodes that i have seen so far. I fear that some people in the production want a generic action-scifi show that they can hang the Star Trek label on. OTOH, there are things that gave me hope. Burnham's speech at the end of episode 3 did articulate concepts of morality based in human experience. The attitudes of the crew to being at war suggests that they might be a counterweight to excessive militarism, even if they seem especially pissy at the moment. And I suspect that they are pursuing a moral question about scientific discovery and its applications that will align well with some of the great moral arguments of TOS.
What I have the most confidence in is Bryan Fuller. There are at least a few people from the old years whom I think will keep Discovery from going too far off the rails. Fuller was let go from showrunning, but apparently his stories are still being followed.I can see elements of his previous series that show how character development will unfold. Burnham is the dead girl, who awakes to find that they must cope with reality from a new perspective. Lorca is an enigmatic boss, whose task may seem dubious, but which has a purpose in the greater order. Saru may be a toned down Emerson Cod, surfing the strange behaviors of the people around him.
In the end, or at the least by the end of the season, I'm going to want to see that Discovery aligns well with the franchise, both as a successor to the Berman era and as a story that follows ENT and that leads into TOS. The people don't need to be perfect;they just need to improve
As much as I don't think that Discovery should be beholden to a strict interpretation of GR's ideas, I have to admit that I don't think it's clear that there is not some fundamental agreement about them. How the story, both the arc and the individual episodes, are presented makes it difficult to see where the series is going. First, there's the upstairs-downstairs thing, where our protagonist is mostly on the outside trying to make sense of things going on around her. Second, we don't know that the people our protagonist meets are trustworthy or not. The information isn't available. Third, the individual episodes don't park us in a place where we know in what direction things are going. Despite the serialization of DS9 and ENT, episodes still ended in a clear place such that we could get a sense of where the overall story was going. In Discovery, we get more mystery. All this makes it difficult to see how Discovery fits next to the other series.
If I am being honest, there is a long list of things that concerned me about the episodes that i have seen so far. I fear that some people in the production want a generic action-scifi show that they can hang the Star Trek label on. OTOH, there are things that gave me hope. Burnham's speech at the end of episode 3 did articulate concepts of morality based in human experience. The attitudes of the crew to being at war suggests that they might be a counterweight to excessive militarism, even if they seem especially pissy at the moment. And I suspect that they are pursuing a moral question about scientific discovery and its applications that will align well with some of the great moral arguments of TOS.
What I have the most confidence in is Bryan Fuller. There are at least a few people from the old years whom I think will keep Discovery from going too far off the rails. Fuller was let go from showrunning, but apparently his stories are still being followed.I can see elements of his previous series that show how character development will unfold. Burnham is the dead girl, who awakes to find that they must cope with reality from a new perspective. Lorca is an enigmatic boss, whose task may seem dubious, but which has a purpose in the greater order. Saru may be a toned down Emerson Cod, surfing the strange behaviors of the people around him.
In the end, or at the least by the end of the season, I'm going to want to see that Discovery aligns well with the franchise, both as a successor to the Berman era and as a story that follows ENT and that leads into TOS. The people don't need to be perfect;they just need to improve
