Spoilers So now Discovery is 'synched-up' with canon

I can understand critics feeling slapped (though I thought that wore off after Season 1), maybe first timers but followers? I mean, I don't feel slapped in the face.

But, when you get positive feedback for doing some (like the D7 ) then they'll keep doing it. It's simple behaviorism at its best. Star Trek fans have spent years demonstrating an interest in prequels and TOS era (Star Trek Continues, Phase 2, Kelvin Trek's financial success, Axanar, etc.) so they look at this and decide to give it a try. It gets critiqued so they change more, closer to "Star Trek" look than before. And, the stuff that looks more like Star Trek gets praised and the other stuff gets looked down upon. So, what will they do? Lean in to more like "Star Trek" and the critics.

Welcome to fandom.

 

We dictated most of Enterprise season 4, and after letting the writers loose for one season of another show, we reigned them in to make season 2 of DSC.

That's something that does happen a lot in franchises, but not to this scale.

 

I guess what the creators didn't get is - fans don't like the stuff they are fans of being invalidated.

You can get away with a WHOLE lot of you're still winking at the audience saying "the original stuff still exists as well". TNG is at times completely at odds with TOS, and DS9 with TNG. And yet - people make it fit themselves! All it really ever took was one character appearing on the other show, and fans were happy to accept all the revamps the creators felt doing.

That's why fans hate reboots - not because the original was so much better. But because it makes them feel the original doesn't matter anymore.

That's also why fans go apeapeshit happy once the original is acknowledged - just remember how people HERE loved TOS footage appearing in DIS!!

The correct way to go forward would have been to continue the path of season 2 - slowly bringing the visuals closer, while still being in continuity with its own series.

What happened was absolutely wrong - because it made fans feel again as if the previous stories (now on DIS) simply didn't matter. Which is the exact problem the series had in the first place - only now amplified, and also for the fans of THIS show.

 

I struggle with understanding why fans feel invalidated when the material still exists. GR distanced himself from TOS the moment he could yet that doesn't change my enjoyment of TOS.

I don't need production team approval.

 

As I've said in the past, I've come to the conclusion that the writing problems of Discovery are actually showrunning problems. There is enough talent in the writer's room to put a decent script together. But between both seasons to date involving a mid-stream change in showrunners, along with probably CBS and others in the food chain interfering, it makes a mess out of everything. People call for last-minute edits of scripts which make earlier episodes (or even acts of a single episode) ultimately conflict with what is currently being shown.

If you look at most of the highly successful "Peak TV" series there is generally either a single showrunner or a pair who work closely together. Often most of the episodes are written by a very small crew as well. The more people you involve in the process, the less coherent things are going to seem.

 

That's a massive failure in the side of the creators though, not the fans. If you're using a specific IP, which comes with a lot of fans built in, you have to deliver in the customersc expectation, or at least something equally good.

You can't take the Porsche-brand, build a new car, tell everybody is a Porsche, sell it for the prize of a Porsche, and then deliver what is essentially a Toyota.

Don't get me wrong - Toyotas are awesome! Toyota has its fair place in the world, and any right to exist. But you simply can't sell one and tell people it's a Porsche, and then be surprised if you got people with torches at your front door.

 

Tell that to Sonic Team, they've let fans dictate game design to them since 1998. I mean it's partly what crashed Sega as a hardware developer and made them dependent on others like Nintendo since 2001 or so.

 

Right. The fans liked the TOS era show looking at least somewhat like TOS. What a surprise! One would have imagined that the whole point of setting the show into this era to take advantage of that nostalgia. And now that they pretty much got the prequel part of the show working (they only needed to bury the spore drive for good, and the rest was fine) they instead just abandon the whole concept and sashay the whole show into some distant future, and everyone in the setting just pretends that none of this happened.

 

Customer expectations are one thing. Fan expectations are often unreasonable, and very hard to judge. No matter what, fans are not easily pleased.

For me, I imagined that it isn't a part of nostalgia, but recognition, and then expansion upon the mythos, rather than strict adherence. What they got though is the expectation of strict adherence and constant criticism to the point that they would rather fall on to nostalgia for a bit. But, that doesn't change the fact that there are facets of the Discovery crew and story they still want to tell. So, they chose to move away from the 23rd century for now and get pissed on for failing other fan expectations in the far future.

 

Oh, don't get me wrong - even if you somehow deliver the absolute perfect product - there will still be a reasonable large part of fans complaining regardless.

That's simply in the nature of franchises itself - Star Trek is so many different things to so many different people, no matter what you do, some part of the fans will be disappointed.

What would have been needed was a REASONABLE response - if the criticism is THAT loud, something probably went wrong. That means you should FIX things. Specifically those that went wrong (a well-known era or species being unrecognisable for example). And they even did that soo good for a while! NOT throwing out EVERYTHING entirely, especially your characters backstories and their mark on the fictional world.

 

I think this 'the fans are never pleased' thing is pretty much bullshit. I really haven't heard many 'but canon' complaints about Discovery's second season, whereas they were loud and frequent about the first. Minor quibbles at most. It perfectly clear that the fans are much more pleased of this aspect of the show on the second season than on the first. There has been plenty of criticism, but it has been mostly about how the main story was handled, and it has really nothing to do with the canon quibbles. So it kinda frustrating that now that they got the prequel thing to work, they abandon it.

 

It's really weird, isn't it? They fixed it! Why did they throw out the part that they already fixed?

Why didn't they just move on to address the next biggest complaint, and start with a bit more early plotting and pre-planning for their next season's arc, for better set-ups and pay-offs, instead of having to find solutions for everything in the very final episode again?

 

They were just shit at it. It was a great concept. But ENT's problem was mainly that they didn't utilise the earlier era enough, and ended up just doing the same thing than other Treks, when the whole point should have been to show that things were different.

But this is really not a problem if you set a show in an established era. Just limit your tech to that which was available in that era, and avoid doing giant setting shattering plots. How fucking hard can that be? A ship in the space, explores stuff, encounters aliens, weird shit and dangerous situations. It's a solid concept and it works.

 

Yes, exactly!

 

I never understand creators fascination with prequels anyway, and in the realm of science fiction actually have never heard of one being universally beloved.

Which makes it SO weird that they decided to make ALL their future Trek shows (from Section 31 to the Picard-show) into fucking prequels! For DIS season 3 now.

That's really asking for troubles. Ugh.

 

Which, personally, I don't think they did. I don't think they threw out everything that makes the world identifiable. I think they went through a long process of BTS chaos that made it difficult to get done what they wanted to get done. So, they are stuck because of wanting to utilize Discovery and its characters, and turning in to more of fan expectations.

It's a painful and terrible juggling act that I don't expect them to get right. So, I'll let them tell their story and move on from there.

Sorry. I still hear complaints around Klingons, the Enterprise design, the way phasers work, and Michael Burnham's relationship with Spock. So, if it's bullshit then I guess I just have a shitty experience...

Yes, fans are more pleased. But, that doesn't change the fact that they want to tell stories about Burnham and they keep running up against a critical eye against her and her relationship with Spock. So, they'll move away from it. Once bitten, twice shy and all that.

 

The writers asked us to accept something fairly odd in the first season by introducing Burnham as the never-before-mentioned sister of one of the most important characters in the franchise, so they were always going to get some flak from people, and they must have fully expected it. There was a very strong and totally unreasonable online reaction before the series had even aired, sure, but they had to have known what they were dealing with when they chose to give Burnham that connection to Spock, and that they'd need to "prove themselves" so to speak.

With the fan reaction to Spock's presence in season two being overwhelmingly positive from everything I've seen - which must have been the payoff they were hoping for - I still can't bring myself to believe the decision to change the series' setting to the far future was made in response to fan feedback.

 

The only reason that worked at all, is because there was precedent.

 

Granted I have limited knowledge, but, in my opinion, the far future plan was something they wanted to do and I think the canon arguments just added fuel to that fire.

 

Ah, yes. Commander "since they are here, I guess I have to tell you about them: may I present my parents/half-brother/ betrothed" Spock.