Spoilers Strange New Worlds General Discussion Thread

[eschaton]

This is probably the best place to discuss this, because it's not a critique of the current episode, but the way Season 3 is shaping up, it feels like "Discovery disease" is starting to hurt SNW. That is to say, the writers are juggling too many serialized character/plot arcs, meaning each episode is losing narrative focus due to the need to touch on everything else.

Right now we have:

• Batel's sickness/transition into a Gorn hybrid, and the resulting Pike relationship drama
• Chapel/Korby new relationship drama, and any potential issues Spock still has
• Spock's new FWB thing with La'an
• Uhura and Beto's flirting
• Ortega's Gorn-related PTSD
• The whole "inexperienced Scotty nearly fucking things up" arc

So far, I think there were two episodes which were significantly hurt by this (3 and 5), though bits of this impacted the rest of the season as well.

Essentially, the show has three different responses, none of which are particularly good:

1. Just ignore the subplot entirely for a week, which leads to complaints (like how Batel doesn't figure into Episode 4).
2. Quickly say "well, that's done for now" (Episode 4 does this with Ortegas, while Episode 5 essentially does that with the Spock/La'an situationship).
3. Awkwardly shoehorn in a subplot where it doesn't belong.

The problem I think is the showrunners desperately want to have DS9-length seasons, and are trying to shoehorn DS9-level character development across only ten episodes.

 

[Noname Given]

I doubt a Human/Gorn hybrid would be a danger to the original species, other than to eventually waterdown their DNA and not be "Pure" anymore.

Very much like how the Klingon augments were disparaged and shunned by 'Normal' Klingons.

Obviously, bigotry is not exclusive to the Human race.

Unless as M'Benga has said, the Gorn DNA is very aggressive in how it interacts with other species DNA.

But yeah, we'll most likely see the writer's resolution to Captain Batel's character arc before the series run of SNW concludes.

 

[V'Lias]

The problem I think is the showrunners desperately want to have DS9-length seasons, and are trying to shoehorn DS9-level character development across only ten episodes.

I can see this too, there's a lot that feels pretty rushed. There are several episodes that have two different stories crammed in that could probably each be their own episode. I know there are some people that don't want longer seasons anymore, but I think they could have done a better job with a 15-18 episode season. It would give all these threads more room to breathe.