Whenever the question of characterization comes up in the context of DSC, I notice many people make comparisons between its main characters after 15 episodes and TNG, DS9, VOY main characters with 7 seasons worth of character development behind them. If I had to make a character assessment of Julian Bashir after his first 20 episodes, I would've dismissed him as an overeager, annoying douche who had nothing interesting about him and he basically was only there because they needed a doctor... of course, in his case it's just as much a question of character development as fleshing him out. But still, after a mere 15 episodes, I wouldn't expect to know everything about my characters already.
As for Piller Filler, those were always hit-and-miss for me in earlier series. DS9 managed to do them skillfully, as can be seen in the Quark scene linked before, but it had the advantage of having well-crafted characters, as these slice-of-life scenes often don't add any additional depth to the characters involved. We see Harry Kim playing the clarinet... okay, how does this make him any less of a cardboard cutout? My main problem about these scenes in TNG, VOY and ENT was that they often seemed nothing more than attempts to make the characters seem like real people because other than this they, with a few exceptions, only served as static devices through which the story could be told, serving their purposes, nothing more (I mean, did learning that Travis Mayweather grew up in outer space add anything to his character?). We might have not yet seen much breadth added to DSC's main characters but most of them feel much more like real people for me than Harry or Travis ever did.
Basically, what bugs me about Piller Filler is that when they're used, they're meaningless in terms of adding to the character, and when they would work well, they're not even necessary. Of course, they enrich a series greatly when they work well, like it was with DS9.
By the end of series one, we knew Harry well enough to know that now, in DSC, Tilly is more or less the same character archetype. Except Harry had made more friends, revealed more personal info, and had a job that put him where he was because of what he does well at. We knew most of these things about him by the end of Caretaker. We knew more about the entire Voyager senior staff by the end of Caretaker than we do about DSC characters by the end of series one. We knew more about bloody Neelix than we do about most of the DSC crew.
I like DSC plenty, now it’s progressed a bit, but pretending they are more ‘real’ based purely on what we actually see on screen, is a bit of a stretch. We know that in the old days, characters had full bios planned in many cases, even if they were altered further down the road.
We know of two characters with actual hobbies in DSC, and boating Ash only turned up in the last episode. By the end of Caretaker, we know about Paris Family and Academy background, Janeways dogs and relationship, Harry being the new boy, Tuvok working as a spy...by the end of series one, possibly half of it, we know Harry is a musician and has overbearing parents, Chakotay has his New Age Shaman stuff, B’Ellana is a Starfleet drop out and engineering genius, Neelix is a traveller with a shadowy past, Kes likes botany and is essentially curious about everything, Paris is a roguish figure...there are hobbies, likes, dislikes, history (we get two bits of character history unrelated to plot in DSC...boating Ash and When Stamets Met Culber.) things that shape the characters. For a range of characters. We can point at things and say ‘Tom episode’ ‘Neelix episode’.
This is in addition to publicity at launch giving those bios (and Jeri Taylor’s Mosaic and Pathways novels, a bit down the line.) meaning we know about B’Ellana being half Klingon etc.
In DSC, much as it is good, we still barely know over a handful of characters names, let alone why they have metal in their skull etc. The characters we do know about, it’s all plot, and they are mostly gone. It’s all about Burnham.
Travis...meh. I dropped out of ENT pretty damn fast. But those other shows? Particularly VOY? Much much more character work. The EMH never ever gets a name, but he gets more revealed about his character than flipping Saru does. (Is grumpy. Is prey. Is riddled with self-doubt. Same as day one to day 13.)
Is this a failing of going serialised? It’s certainly a failure of the writing this year.
