Spoilers Star Trek Discovery Season 1: Overall Review Thread

Don't worry. You'll soon be depressed like everyone else

Only True Star Trek fans hate Disco

I have never had this problem with any serialized show, from Daredevil on forward. There are moments that I will rewatch, episodes that I think are great for dissecting and enjoying.

Far from having no rewatch value, I think it has greater value because I want all the details within the show.

 

I think it's fitting that Disco has a Starship that was designed in the '70s.

But now I wonder if "haters" will have any Disco Sucks rallies.

 

That hit the nail on the head. Serialized shows can be great, IF they can pull it off. If they cannot, the rewatchability of the whole season/series can go down the drain.
Episodic shows you can rewatch by watching just the good episodes (even TNG Season 1 had some) But imagine if TNG Season 1 was one long arc with no stand-alone episodes at all. The whole season would be wasted.

 

Production order, broadcast order, or continuity order?

Kinda like voting in an election?...

I trust you meant "bawling" there. Otherwise a whole different image springs to mind...

Mean or median?

Well, none. But I don't do that with any show. If I'm going to put a television show on, it's because I'm going to sit down in front of it and give it my focused attention.

And I think that's the standard shows should aspire to, really! Being "rewatchable" as something in the background that a viewer can semi-ignore isn't exactly a very high bar.

(FWIW, probably my most re-watched show in recent years is Game of Thrones. I've watched quite a lot of it multiple times, with multiple friends. With full, focused attention. Most episodes stand up to that remarkably well despite the show's heavily serialized nature. You pick up on terrific little nuances of storytelling and acting you might've missed the first time around...)

 

Mass Effect established a certain kind of design aesthetic that melded Trek curves with Galactica grit and its own flavor of hologram-based computer interface. You can definitely see its influence on Discovery, especially in set design, but also in smaller details like uniforms.

Take a look at this video, which is simply a walkthrough of the main player ship, the Normandy SR-2:

Half the rooms on the Normandy feel like they could be just behind those black doors on the Discovery, right down to the lighting scheme and lens flare.

(Thing is, you can see Mass Effect's influence in practically everything SF these days, so there's not necessarily a direct lineage. When it came out, Mass Effect felt like something really very fresh and new, which was remarkable, given all the other space-SF stuff that had come out in the previous ten years, from Enterprise to Farscape. But it's really suffered from the Seinfeld Effect, and doesn't seem fresh anymore because of its many imitators.)

I don't think Mass Effect's influence on Discovery goes beyond that, though. Mass Effect has a very different feel to it than Discovery, particularly in its first two, when you really felt like you were exploring a brand new galaxy.* Frankly, Mass Effect regularly feels more like Star Trek than Discovery does. In the early 2010s, I thought ME would be a good source of inspiration for a new Trek series, but Disco didn't really take from ME what I think it should have -- and put my design sense into permanent revolt when it decided to set the whole thing in the 2250s, when things were supposed to look quite different (and much brighter) than this.

*(Ironically, the final game in the series, Andromeda, which actually did claim to send you to explore a brand new galaxy, feels much smaller and more cramped than its predecessors.)

 

This illustrates my personal irritation with Mass Effect and why I don't regard it with anything more than mild eye candy.

 

It's called the TrekYards Comments Section

 

Hmm, okay, thanks. There's a definite aesthetic there, and I can see what you mean. I don't so much see any Trek influence in ME, although the BSG influence is obvious. But the influence of ME on DSC (and other shows) does indeed seem pretty clear.

Hear, hear.

 

I guess my preference is broadcast order, but continuity would do fine as well. Just as important, to me at least is to not skip episodes

Sorta, but not quite

 

Yes, fixed that. Thanks!

YouTube Comments Sections. To quote Spock, "Splendid examples of Homo Sapiens."

 

Production order - TOS
Broadcast order - everything else

 

Some good stuff, but a flat ending. Not as much character development as I'd have liked other than Staments. A Klingon war that never felt like a big deal. Lots of fun in the Mirror Universe. Some deeply shitty plot decisions (Mirror Lorca, taking a complex character and turning him into a WWE villain for his last episode) and somehow everything always felt rushed.

Hoping for better in season two.

 

I'm just sticking it here because I don't know where to put it, but I read a (mostly negative) review on my phone of the season last night which brought up a good point.

The reason L'Rell was in the brig for all of Arc 2 was because they knew they needed her for the last episode. We know this because by Harbets' own account they started with the ending and then filled in the middle. Yet they had no idea what to do with her up until the end of the season, which is why she just sat in the brig doing nothing (except occasionally talking to people who came in - and "fixing" Tyler) for five episodes straight.

 

Since I agree with everything you wrote, I'm just quoting because I can't be arsed to type it my self

Q2

 

Wish they had done more with her, but I was glad to see her in the finale. Good wrap up.

 

Well, they had perfect opportunity to create some sort of connection between her and the crew so that the ending would have not been so absurd, but they didn't. Because why would they. It is apparently enough if characters just do plot convenient things at appropriate moments without any sort of internal logic or emotional impact.

 

I found it logical and emotional

 

So you think there was a good buildup towards L'Rell being willing to relinquish her hostility towards the Federation? That she had an emotional connection with Burnham, so it made sense and had emotional impact that it was Burnham who convinced her?

 

Yeah. She was still defiant at the beginning portion of that very episode.

Although, trapped in the brig, what the hell could they have done? I mean I suppose they could show her data when they got back to the Prime Universe that the Klingon Empire was divided into factions, but she couldn't trust that it wasn't doctored.

Really, they should have found some way to get MU Voq onboard the Discovery. If he had a conversation with her, it might have made some sort of difference in her character arc.