Were Discovery's early misteps actually Bryan Fuller's fault?

[Christopher]

I'm pretty sure most of the first episode is directly what Fuller wrote. Except some special scenes.

The credits to "The Vulcan Hello" say "Teleplay by Bryan Fuller and Akiva Goldsman, Story by Bryan Fuller & Alex Kurtzman." Note the difference: in credits, an "&" means the two authors worked on the same draft, while an "and" means they worked on different drafts. And the one who did the later draft is listed second. So that tells us that Goldsman rewrote Fuller's script, which makes sense because Goldsman apparently joined the show after Fuller left. It also tells us that Goldsman's additions or changes to the script were sizeable enough that he was entitled to credit, which wouldn't be the case if he'd just tweaked a scene or two.

Oh yes. Those are Fuller-picked producers, they work from Fuller's guidelines. BUT. They are probably a lot more likely to incorporate the notes from the producers and change what Fuller intended to do to fulffill their demands - since they don't have as much devotion to the original material than the guy who created it in the first place.

It's a given that no two showrunners (or teams thereof) will write a show in the same way. No shocker there. They'll do their best to build on what he started, but they'll do it in their own way.

Hell, the tardigrade was supposed to be a bridge officer - that means the entire Tardigrade-subplot that dominated the first few episodes was a very late addition.

It just means that the plans changed along the way. That is normal in writing. It happens all the time. Creativity is a process of trial and error and experimentation, testing things out to see what works and discarding or changing what doesn't work. In TNG, Geordi was supposed to be the liaison with the ship's children, Data was supposed to be built by advanced aliens and have the memories of hundreds of dead colonists inside him, and Worf wasn't even mentioned in the original series bible. In DS9, originally, the station was supposed to be inside an asteroid belt (which was dropped because the FX would be too costly) and ships were supposed to require engine modifications at the station so they could pass through the wormhole without hurting its inhabitants. In VGR, the Doctor was supposed to adopt the name Zimmerman after a while, and the crew was eventually supposed to stop worrying about getting home and just embrace the wonder of exploring the Delta Quadrant.

You're trying to make this whole thing a lot more sinister and melodramatic than the evidence really suggests. Yes, there have been a few staff changes, which is understandable given how much the production was delayed. But TNG went through a hell of a lot worse in its first season.

The silver lining is - now that things actually are in production, there is a more stable creation process with less interference, and the feedback mostly comes from audiences, and not producers anymore. Leaving (hopefully) for more creative freedom for the writers down the line, so they can fix their future storylines earlier and have more times to smoothen the bumps.

You're talking about writers and producers as if they were mutually exclusive categories, but most of the credited producers are writers. Aside from Fuller, I count Alex Kurtzman, Gretchen Berg & Aaron Harberts, Akiva Goldsman, Jesse Alexander & Aron Eli Coleite, Lisa Randolph, Ted Sullivan, Joe Menosky, and consulting producers Nicholas Meyer and Craig Sweeny (although consulting producers are just advisors with no authority). Yes, there are several staff writers who aren't at producer rank yet, like Kirsten Beyer, Kemp Powers, Bo Yeon Kim, and Erika Lippoldt, but they and the writer-producers work together as a single writing staff. Well, Kurtzman probably isn't very hands-on, because he has a lot of other shows and movies to supervise, but he and his partner Heather Kadin are basically the top dogs that the writing staff reports to. Otherwise, the only non-writing executive producers are Rod Roddenberry and his partner Trevor Roth -- who are mainly just contractually involved because of the family's stake in the property -- and Olasunde Osunsanmi, who's mainly a director, so I'd guess he's in the role of a producing director, i.e. basically a director who has a permanent role on the show and supervises the directorial side of things, giving it a consistent look and style and so forth.

So the chaotic situation you're imagining just doesn't exist. There aren't a huge number of changing, conflicting masters giving marching orders to powerless writers. There's a single, fairly large staff of writer-producers working together as a unit under the leadership of the showrunners, who answer in turn to Kurtzman & Kadin. None of the other producers are in a superior position to the showrunners; they either work alongside them in parallel, like Osunsanmi, or they're just in an advisory capacity.

our hypothetical Lt. Water Bear

Heh. I see what you did there.

 

[Mudd]

IIRC, Episode 3 was originally meant to be written by Nicholas Meyer, but since he wasn't credited at all in the aired version, it would seem his script was thrown out entirely.

Yep.

 

[Rahul]

The credits to "The Vulcan Hello" say "Teleplay by Bryan Fuller and Akiva Goldsman, Story by Bryan Fuller & Alex Kurtzman." Note the difference: in credits, an "&" means the two authors worked on the same draft, while an "and" means they worked on different drafts. And the one who did the later draft is listed second. So that tells us that Goldsman rewrote Fuller's script, which makes sense because Goldsman apparently joined the show after Fuller left. It also tells us that Goldsman's additions or changes to the script were sizeable enough that he was entitled to credit, which wouldn't be the case if he'd just tweaked a scene or two.

This was, like, exactly what I said before you tried to correct me:

Don't give too much on the "writer's credit" for the first three episodes. There are WGA-rules who has to mentioned in what order. Since Fuller was clearl the creator of the characters and the concept, he had to be mentioned. That doesn't mean some unnamed writer didn't "polished" the script and basically changed every single line.

There was likely a whole lotta' small changes, and likely at least a few significant - like how the mutiny played out.

It just means that the plans changed along the way. That is normal in writing. It happens all the time. Creativity is a process of trial and error and experimentation, testing things out to see what works and discarding or changing what doesn't work. In TNG, Geordi was supposed to be the liaison with the ship's children, Data was supposed to be built by advanced aliens and have the memories of hundreds of dead colonists inside him, and Worf wasn't even mentioned in the original series bible. In DS9, originally, the station was supposed to be inside an asteroid belt (which was dropped because the FX would be too costly) and ships were supposed to require engine modifications at the station so they could pass through the wormhole without hurting its inhabitants. In VGR, the Doctor was supposed to adopt the name Zimmerman after a while, and the crew was eventually supposed to stop worrying about getting home and just embrace the wonder of exploring the Delta Quadrant.

"Normal" writing does not include delaying the premiere of your show for almost a year. You're comparing having different backstories in the original pitch (which happens ALL the time), way back before production even started, to actively changing major elements of the series way into production.

You're trying to make this whole thing a lot more sinister and melodramatic than the evidence really suggests. Yes, there have been a few staff changes, which is understandable given how much the production was delayed. But TNG went through a hell of a lot worse in its first season.

I don't know where you got the "melodramatic" or "sinister" vibe from. That this show has had a troubled production from the start is really no secret. And it shows in the episodes on screen.

TNG had one early on, too. The difference is, the TNG creators were able to deliver their product on time.

Again: The development hell this series went through has obvious consequences visible on screen. Pointing them out is not "sinister", it's an observation, and it's not even the first time that has happened on Trek (nor will it likely be the last time).

You're talking about writers and producers as if they were mutually exclusive categories, but most of the credited producers are writers. Aside from Fuller, I count Alex Kurtzman, Gretchen Berg & Aaron Harberts, Akiva Goldsman, Jesse Alexander & Aron Eli Coleite, Lisa Randolph, Ted Sullivan, Joe Menosky, and consulting producers Nicholas Meyer and Craig Sweeny (although consulting producers are just advisors with no authority). Yes, there are several staff writers who aren't at producer rank yet, like Kirsten Beyer, Kemp Powers, Bo Yeon Kim, and Erika Lippoldt, but they and the writer-producers work together as a single writing staff. Well, Kurtzman probably isn't very hands-on, because he has a lot of other shows and movies to supervise, but he and his partner Heather Kadin are basically the top dogs that the writing staff reports to. Otherwise, the only non-writing executive producers are Rod Roddenberry and his partner Trevor Roth -- who are mainly just contractually involved because of the family's stake in the property -- and Olasunde Osunsanmi, who's mainly a director, so I'd guess he's in the role of a producing director, i.e. basically a director who has a permanent role on the show and supervises the directorial side of things, giving it a consistent look and style and so forth.

Fair point. I didn't went through the names who exactly is a "producer" or a "writer/producer". I just noticed a crap-ton of producers in the credits, which usually points towards a "many-cooks-in-the-kitchen"-type of situation.

So the chaotic situation you're imagining just doesn't exist. There aren't a huge number of changing, conflicting masters giving marching orders to powerless writers. There's a single, fairly large staff of writer-producers working together as a unit under the leadership of the showrunners, who answer in turn to Kurtzman & Kadin. None of the other producers are in a superior position to the showrunners; they either work alongside them in parallel, like Osunsanmi, or they're just in an advisory capacity.

Well, that on the other hand clearly depends on how you define "chaotic". Having your show be delayed by almost a year, and then deliver a product that is clearly rushed (not bad, the writing in dialogue is quite good, but clearly "rushed", as in many sub-plots are half-backed and not entirely thought through in advance) certainly can be called somewhat "dramatic". Not critical - they deliverd a finished product that is capable of being scrutinized on screen.

But to pretend "everything-is-normal" is equally as naive as the "everything-is-doomed"-forecasters.

 

[Rahul]

No, it doesn't. The concept for the creature design originated as an alien Starfleet officer, yes, but our hypothetical Lt. Water Bear didn't have anything but appearance in common with the Ripper we ended up with. There could always have been some sort of creature planned to be used as part of the spore drive, and once they realized they couldn't build the tardigrade puppet they wanted to make it a practical background character, they decided they still liked the look and used it for Ripper, instead. It happens all the time developing movies and TV; a character (or whatever) is cut, but they like the design, so they apply it to a different one that's still around.

I'm pretty sure that "a crewmember has to navigate the ship in a scary chamber" and "that process takes a toll on the crewmember" (very comparable to the guild navigators in "Dune") was always the plan, maybe even that it would be Stamets who'd be doing that. But the way we got there, and really the whole detour with the monster/tardigrade subplot on the Glenn, likely was a last-minute addition.

Note: This is entirely only speculation by myself. But I think it lines up great with what little we know so far - that the script for episode 3 was completely reworked, that the tardigrade was originally supposed to be a sentient crewmember, and that this entire monster-subplot has already been finished as of episode 5, with the release of the tardigrade.

Would be interesting to know what Fuller originally intended to happen in the episodes 3-5. But personally, I think "mirror stamets" and "crewmembers having to enter the scary chamber to navigate the ship" is again closer to what Fuller had intended for the season arc. Only that the exact plotting on how we got into this situation (and likely how it will be resolved) have changed from the way Fuller originally envisioned it.

 

[Christopher]

This was, like, exactly what I said before you tried to correct me:

No, it really isn't. You said "changed every single line," which is obviously not true, or Fuller wouldn't still have a teleplay credit. The fact that both Fuller and Goldsman are credited on the teleplay means that the final draft contains a significant amount of both writers' work. You went from one extreme ("changed every single line") to the opposite extreme (all Fuller except one or two scenes), and as with most things in life, the real truth is probably in between the extremes.

There was likely a whole lotta' small changes, and likely at least a few significant - like how the mutiny played out.

You're purely guessing. The word "likely" has no applicability to guesswork.

"Normal" writing does not include delaying the premiere of your show for almost a year. You're comparing having different backstories in the original pitch (which happens ALL the time), way back before production even started, to actively changing major elements of the series way into production.

You keep putting that into scare italics as if it's some shocking anomaly, but a lot of shows make changes along the way. That's just the nature of creating an ongoing series. Things get changed for all sorts of reasons, sometimes before production starts, sometimes during. Lots of shows' first seasons have evidence of growing pains, things being tried out and abandoned, things retooled in midstream, things that get dropped by the second season.

I don't know where you got the "melodramatic" or "sinister" vibe from. That this show has had a troubled production is no secret. And it shows in the episodes on screen.

It's had a few hiccups, but that's hardly unprecedented.

TNG had one early on, too. The difference is the TNG creators were able to deliver their product on time.

Which is an unfair comparison. As a syndicated show on commercial TV, it had to be delivered on time, because its premiere date was locked down in advance. Part of the reason the studio was even able to delay DSC was because the streaming platform meant it wasn't locked into an immovable release date and could be held off until it was ready. Which is a positive, because the production would've been a lot more rushed and messy if they hadn't been able to take the time to solve its problems before release.

But to pretend "everything-is-normal" is equally as naive as the "everything-is-doomed"-forecasters.

I'm doing neither. I'm merely trying to point out that you're making factual assumptions that are incorrect or misinformed, or confusing unsupported speculation for guaranteed truth. You're assuming you know enough to have absolute certainty about what's going on behind the scenes, but it's clear from your comments that your actual understanding of how television production works is quite limited, and that's leading you to jump to some highly premature and erroneous conclusions -- in particular, the manifestly false assumption that it's unusual or disruptive for a modern TV show to have a large number of producers. If you had bothered to do a modicum of research first, you'd be able to see how false that conclusion is. I've tried to do the research for you and give you the information you need to refine your understanding, but you've chosen not to listen. So there's nothing more I can do.

 

[Rahul]

No, it really isn't. You said "changed every single line," which is obviously not true, or Fuller wouldn't still have a teleplay credit. The fact that both Fuller and Goldsman are credited on the teleplay means that the final draft contains a significant amount of both writers' work. You went from one extreme ("changed every single line") to the opposite extreme (all Fuller except one or two scenes), and as with most things in life, the real truth is probably in between the extremes.

You're purely guessing. The word "likely" has no applicability to guesswork.

As a writer, you should be familiar with the concept of "hyperbole". Or reading. I said he could have changed every single line (as in, changed the exact working of the dialogue), not that he did, and that Fuller wuld still be credited if the entire scene structure follows the first draft of Fuller.

And that there a -likely- more severe changes made by Goldsman as well - otherwise why the need for a re-write in the first place at all? This is not "purely guessing". This is pretty much "basic observation".

The only "guesswork" I did was which part exactly of the episode was drastically changed. And I picked the one thing that really stood apart from the rest of the episode and didn't fit with the entire rest of the storytelling arc - the specifics of the mutiny. This ain't no rocket science.

You keep putting that into scare italics as if it's some shocking anomaly, but a lot of shows make changes along the way. That's just the nature of creating an ongoing series. Things get changed for all sorts of reasons, sometimes before production starts, sometimes during. Lots of shows' first seasons have evidence of growing pains, things being tried out and abandoned, things retooled in midstream, things that get dropped by the second season.

Yeah, guess what? Many shows have problems and behind-the-scenes troubles. Pointing out this show does as well really shouldn't trigger you the way it did.

Which is an unfair comparison. As a syndicated show on commercial TV, it had to be delivered on time, because its premiere date was locked down in advance. Part of the reason the studio was even able to delay DSC was because the streaming platform meant it wasn't locked into an immovable release date and could be held off until it was ready. Which is a positive, because the production would've been a lot more rushed and messy if they hadn't been able to take the time to solve its problems before release.

This is NOT an unfair comparison. Having the launch of your show be delayed by almost a year IS a major problem, not some small "hic-up". ESPECIALLY if the original launch date was heavily advertised, and not just some internal planning.

This is akin to a major blockbuster movie delaying it's release date. It's something that really shouldn't happen, and only happens if there are major problems that need to be worked out before publishing the final product. Which -by all accounts- this show looked like to had, too.

I really don't get why you are so defensive about it? They managed to solve (most) of their serious problems and deliver a fine, finished product, even if it still has some smaller problems.

I'm doing neither. I'm merely trying to point out that you're making factual assumptions that are incorrect or misinformed, or confusing unsupported speculation for guaranteed truth. You're assuming you know enough to have absolute certainty about what's going on behind the scenes, but it's clear from your comments that your actual understanding of how television production works is quite limited, and that's leading you to jump to some highly premature and erroneous conclusions -- in particular, the manifestly false assumption that it's unusual or disruptive for a modern TV show to have a large number of producers. If you had bothered to do a modicum of research first, you'd be able to see how false that conclusion is. I've tried to do the research for you and give you the information you need to refine your understanding, but you've chosen not to listen. So there's nothing more I can do.

Yes, you're doing. You're pretty much chastisising me for pointing out this show went through some major development problems. If they were bigger or smaller than TNG at the time is something we all don't know at this point, for lack of behind-the-scenes knowledge. We only know the consequences, the many delays and changing of showrunner mit-production, are far greater than on every Trek series before.

To pretend this didn't have consequences on quality would be wishful thinking on your part, especially since it's pretty much obvious how disjointed different parts of the series on screen are. The production style varies from "extremely faithful" (Phaser and other props) to "complete reboot" (klingons, D7), the production values vary from "extremely professional" (the sets and make-up) to "very clearly fiddled with up until last minute" (the CGI models, especially of the DIS), the writing and characterisation varies from "extremely good" (Brunham, Stamets, Saru) to "very poor" (Lorca's actions and backstory in the latest episode).

There is clearly money and talent behind this production, but also very clearly major differences between the creators about what type of show exactly they want to do.

I still believe they are on a good path. The mistakes can be worked out in the long run, and they got the most important parts (the main characters) completely right so far.

But again: Pretending this show didn't have problems is exactly as foolish as pretending this show will immediately sink and burn.


Edit:
I'm sorry if this came across as more adversial than it was intended. I think we are on the same page with more things than not. I'm just delving deeper into the "what probably went wrong"-guesswork - This being the topic of the thread and all.

 

["Q"]

Eschaton, I agree 100%

 

[lawman]

We know from interviews that the controversial Klingon redesign fell squarely on Bryan Fuller's shoulders. He insisted they be bald, and he personally okayed the new design before he left the show.

You're not the only one to have mentioned this, but no one has provided a link and I've never read this anywhere outside these boards. What's the source?

And why would Fuller be so insistent on specific visual changes to the Klingons, anyway, when it seems the main change to them in this series is actually thematic, involving their internal politics and religious views?

Actually, according to studio insiders, the reason Fuller was let go was because he was trying to make the show essentially identical to the 90s shows and CBS wanted something more for modern television.

I'm with Christopher on this — that supposition seems wildly at odds with both (A) Fuller's body of creative work, and (B) most of what CBS produces and broadcasts.

Until Tribbleations, the look of Klingons post-TMP was never a big deal. It was accepted. They had better budgets for fx. Until Relics, the discerning viewer probably wasn't so literal to think that a starship was controlled by a series of unmarked backlit colored buttons...

Over the years episodes that have referred specifically to the look of past episodes have been more problematic than anything. They were really nothing more than winks and nods to the fans until Enterprise came up with augment virus. Sometimes its ok to have some suspension of disbelief on this stuff. Warp travel isn't real...

It baffles me that people keep posting this sort of thing, as if they're either unfamiliar with Trek history or indeed some basic concepts of how fiction works, or deliberately trying to rewrite those things.

On "Trials and Tribble-ations" and "In A Mirror, Darkly," you have the causation completely backwards. Many fans, for many years, had in fact considered the changed appearance of the Klingons to be "a big deal," and had speculated at length about possible explanations. That was why those episodes touched on the issue as they did... itt's not as if those episodes provided cues that somehow set off fans who had never cared before.

Moreover, this isn't about suspension of disbelief, because you're blurring the distinction between diagetic and non-diagetic elements — things that are internal to the story, versus things that are external to it. It's fine that warp drive is fictional, because it's easy to say "within the fictional reality being depicted, warp drive is real," and thereby suspend disbelief and immerse yourself in it. It's an entirely different thing to say "the Klingons look completely different within this fictional reality because, in the reality where it's all just a TV show, makeup budgets changed," and then immerse yourself in the fiction — indeed, it's pretty much the exact opposite, because it requires disbelief to make sense.

Beyond that, all I can say is that you are apparently not a TOS fan in the first place, because to those of us who are, the episodes just mentioned, and others like "Relics," remain some of the highlights of latter-day Trek. In my personal opinion, the actual design work on TOS — particularly the ships, both interiors and exteriors, and notwithstanding the budget and technology constraints of the late 1960s — was some of the best that's ever been done on any SF series, period, and every Trek series and movie since then has just been playing watered-down riffs on those brilliant originals.

Bryan Fuller was behind the new Klingons and the new designs of their ships so I'd day that the lack of consistency began with him...

Here's that attribution again, and this time Fuller is being credited/blamed for the Klingon ships, as well. This puzzles me, since the Klingon ships so far (to the limited extent that we've seen them) have been stunningly non-distinctive, and they just don't seem like the kind of thing the (then) showrunner would have prioritized. They seem (and I use that word deliberately, because this is sheer speculation) far more like something that came along at a later stage of production (possibly once Fuller was already gone), to which someone with authority might have said "okay, these designs look pretty half-assed, but we need to keep this production moving; we're already months behind schedule and we really don't have the time to go back to the drawing board on these for a few seconds of screen time, so let's sign off on them."

I think the first few episodes did suffer from too many cooks, but now that it seems to be Berg and Harberts in charge, we're seeing stronger writing and more consistency. Berg and Harberts seem to be pretty invested in discovery and have apparently already planned out season 2 and begun an outline for season 3. I think by the end of the season we're all going to pleasantly surprised with the results

One can only hope you're right. One can also hope that the tone of the visuals as the show progresses will be a better match for the tone of the writing, but we can only wait and see...

I don't personally give a rat's ass what the D7 looks like. ... They really want these Klingon's ornate. For me they made them too inhuman to be relatable. No one would relate to Worf if he'd been in DSC costume. ... Plummer and Lloyd would have been absolutely ridiculous in these costumes, let alone Colicos. Going this route visually hobbles actors and it also limited what they can do going forward with Klingons unless there is some plot related fix to the problem.

Not quite sure what point you're trying to make about the Klingons here, since you seem to be blowing off one visual change while zeroing in on another.

FWIW, I think anyone who would give a rat's ass what a D7 looks like (including whoever wrote that line) would presumably want it to look like it always has, while to anyone who doesn't care the line would be wasted anyway, so the discontinuity between the ship identification and its actually appearance was pointlessly jarring.

That said, I'd agree that the visual change to the Klingons themselves is even worse. As you note, it's not only alienating to the audience, it does no favors at all for the actors involved.

Correct. I've seen some of the scrapped work from their time on the VFX team. The problem was NOT that it was "exactly like TOS."

Can't help but be curious. What did the early VFX work look like? I can't imagine it being a whole lot less TOS-like than (most of) what we've been seeing so far, but I suppose it depends on what particular things the folks you mention were working on. It seems clear enough that different aspects of the show have different visual teams' fingerprints on them.

IMO, I think the entirety of Burnham's "mutiny" would have shaken out completely different in Fuller's version, with her actually being at fault for something. And then some of the producers came in with notes like "our main character can clearly not do this thing" or "that has to be changed".

I'm not a fan of many things that were clearly "Fuller", for example the klingon re-design, or the fact that the entire show is a prequel (in-between-quel?) in the first place, and I don't think serial storytelling on this level is a good fit for Star Trek - I'd have preffered more singular plots as part of an over-arching arc, à la DS9 or ENT season 3 & 4. Star Trek MOVIES have always been the weak point of Trek, it worked much better as episodic tv, so I don't really see the benefit in trying to basically do a 13-hour movie.

This show, at the moment, is clearly the brainchild of very different approaches. And it shows. Some things fit seamlessly, other's are completely out of hand. But I think already Fuller's basic premise was a bit incoherent - some things very close to previous Trek (he wanted the original tri-color uniforms, using TMP-concepts for the main ship), OTOH the atrocious klingons are very obvious his brainchild as well - and I hate them, as much as the idea of the "klingon-Federation" war overall.

Interesting, once again... you seem to have info attributing specific visual approaches to Fuller even above and beyond the Klingons. (And why would he want to keep some visuals the same, yet drastically change others?) Perhaps it's just that I spent the last year or so before the actual premiere doing my damnedest to avoid spoilers, but none of this is "obvious" to me. Where is all this behind-the-scenes information from?

Beyond that, I'm inclined to agree with your (admitted) speculation that the biggest chunk of rewriting on the premiere involved the details of Burnham's mutiny, if only because it played out with such questionable story logic. I'd have to say the whole episode feels less like Fuller's work than Goldsman's, though, with AG's (IMHO) typically hamfisted and tone-deaf approach to human interactions.

Beyond that, we're into YMMV territory. I agree that the Klingon revamp is a mess, but I quite like the pre-TOS setting and the more serialized approach to storytelling.

Naw, I wouldn't go that far. Early TNG, DS9 or VOY, while now very shoddy in retrospect, were very much on the level or even way above the regular television series competition of their times.

No, they really weren't. Those shows at their best (well, okay, maybe not Voyager IMHO) could compete with some of the better television on in the '80s and '90s, but none of them started out remotely close to their best, and by no stretch did they ever get "way above" the competition. Berman-era Trek was episodic genre fiction with weekly reset buttons, excessive technobabble, and forehead-of-the-week aliens. For all its clichés it was still mostly pretty good genre fiction, and it benefited from a few really talented actors, but it hardly broke new ground.

Let's see. The Klingon scenes in there entirety - nothing but T'Kumva being on the viewscreen was needed for story purposes (and the scenes themselves were dreadfully plodding). The flashbacks to Micheal's childhood and beginnings on the Shenzou. The dumb "Katra vision" scene with Sarek. The EVA scene was visually cool, but unneeded for story purposes.
... My own personal view is they should have began with episode 3 and slowly revealed the important parts of the prologue via flashback.

Yep, I'd say you've pretty succinctly summed up the story problems with the premiere two-parter.

Note the difference: in credits, an "&" means the two authors worked on the same draft, while an "and" means they worked on different drafts. And the one who did the later draft is listed second.

Huh. Thanks for the information! I'd often wondered exactly what those kinds of obvious hairsplitting distinctions in writing credits indicated.[/QUOTE]

...it's pretty much obvious how disjointed different parts of the series on screen are. The production style varies from "extremely faithful" (Phaser and other props) to "complete reboot" (klingons, D7), the production values vary from "extremely professional" (the sets and make-up) to "very clearly fiddled with up until last minute" (the CGI models, especially of the DIS), the writing and characterization varies...

There is clearly money and talent behind this production, but also very clearly major differences between the creators about what type of show exactly they want to do.

I can't argue with any of that. Well stated.

 

[CorporalClegg]

This thread presents a faulty premise. The show is still 'misstepping.' While it has gotten a little better in some areas - the dialog is more tolerable and the characters more compelling - the main issue with the pilot - poor plot framing/consistency/logic - still persists.

In essence, the individual parts (scenes/character moments) work better on their own, but the whole is still an absolute mess - which was the same with the pilot. On their own most of the bits (outside the Klingon stuff) were fine. But when fitted together, the whole thing fell apart.

 

[Rahul]

You're not the only one to have mentioned this, but no one has provided a link and I've never read this anywhere outside these boards. What's the source?

And why would Fuller be so insistent on specific visual changes to the Klingons, anyway, when it seems the main change to them in this series is actually thematic, involving their internal politics and religious views?


I'm with Christopher on this — that supposition seems wildly at odds with both (A) Fuller's body of creative work, and (B) most of what CBS produces and broadcasts.


It baffles me that people keep posting this sort of thing, as if they're either unfamiliar with Trek history or indeed some basic concepts of how fiction works, or deliberately trying to rewrite those things.

On "Trials and Tribble-ations" and "In A Mirror, Darkly," you have the causation completely backwards. Many fans, for many years, had in fact considered the changed appearance of the Klingons to be "a big deal," and had speculated at length about possible explanations. That was why those episodes touched on the issue as they did... itt's not as if those episodes provided cues that somehow set off fans who had never cared before.

Moreover, this isn't about suspension of disbelief, because you're blurring the distinction between diagetic and non-diagetic elements — things that are internal to the story, versus things that are external to it. It's fine that warp drive is fictional, because it's easy to say "within the fictional reality being depicted, warp drive is real," and thereby suspend disbelief and immerse yourself in it. It's an entirely different thing to say "the Klingons look completely different within this fictional reality because, in the reality where it's all just a TV show, makeup budgets changed," and then immerse yourself in the fiction — indeed, it's pretty much the exact opposite, because it requires disbelief to make sense.

Beyond that, all I can say is that you are apparently not a TOS fan in the first place, because to those of us who are, the episodes just mentioned, and others like "Relics," remain some of the highlights of latter-day Trek. In my personal opinion, the actual design work on TOS — particularly the ships, both interiors and exteriors, and notwithstanding the budget and technology constraints of the late 1960s — was some of the best that's ever been done on any SF series, period, and every series and movie since then has just been playing watered-down riffs on those brilliant originals.


Here's that attribution again, and this time Fuller is being credited/blamed for the Klingon ships, as well. This puzzles me, since the Klingon ships so far (to the limited extent that we've seen them) have been stunningly non-distinctive, and they just don't seem like the kind of thing the (then) showrunner would have prioritized. They seem (and I use that word deliberately, because this is sheer speculation) far more like something that came along at a later stage of production (possibly once Fuller was already gone), to which someone with authority might have said "okay, these designs look pretty half-assed, but we need to keep this production moving; we're already months behind schedule and we really don't have the time to go back to the drawing board on these for a few second of screen time, so let's sign off on them."


One can only hope you're right. One can also hope that the tone of the visuals as the show progresses will be a better match for the tone of the writing, but we can only wait and see...


Not quite sure what point you're trying to make about the Klingons here, since you seem to be blowing off one visual change while zeroing in on another.

FWIW, I think anyone who would give a rat's ass what a D7 looks like (including whoever wrote that line) would presumably want it to look like it always has, while to anyone who doesn't care the line would be wasted anyway, so the discontinuity between the ship identification and its actually appearance was pointlessly jarring.

That said, I'd agree that the visual change to the Klingons themselves is even worse. As you note, it's not only alienating to the audience, it does no favors at all for the actors involved.


Can't help but be curious. What did the early VFX work look like? I can't imagine it being a whole lot less TOS-like than (most of) what we've been seeing so far, but I suppose it depends on what particular things the folks you mention were working on. It seems clear enough that different aspects of the show have different visual teams' fingerprints on them.


Interesting, once again... you seem to have info attributing specific visual approaches to Fuller even above and beyond the Klingons. (And why would he want to keep some visuals the same, yet drastically change others?) Perhaps it's just that I spent the last year or so before the actual premiere doing my damnedest to avoid spoilers, but none of this is "obvious" to me. Where is all this behind-the-scenes information from?

Beyond that, I'm inclined to agree with your (admitted) speculation that the biggest chunk of rewriting on the premiere involved the details of Burnham's mutiny, if only because it played out with such questionable story logic. I'd have to say the whole episode feels less like Fuller's work than Goldsman's, though, with AG's (IMHO) typically hamfisted and tone-deaf approach to human interactions.

Beyond that, we're into YMMV territory. I agree that the Klingon revamp is a mess, but I quite like the pre-TOS setting and the more serialized approach to storytelling.


No, they really weren't. Those shows at their best (well, okay, maybe not Voyager IMHO) could compete with some of the better television on in the '80s and '90s, but none of them started out remotely close to their best, and by no stretch did they ever get "way above" the competition. Berman-era Trek was episodic genre fiction with weekly reset buttons, excessive technobabble, and forehead-of-the-week aliens. For all its clichés it was still mostly pretty good genre fiction, and it benefited from a few really talented actors, but it hardly broke new ground.


Yep, I'd say you've pretty succinctly summed up the story problems with the premiere two-parter.


Huh. Thanks for the information! I'd often wondered exactly what those kinds of obvious hairsplitting distinctions in writing credits indicated.

I can't argue with any of that. Well stated.

There are various sources for this stuff. For example the klingon re-design:

https://trekmovie.com/2017/08/03/st...ar-trek-discovery-klingons-are-bald-and-more/

The important part is "by decree of Fuller". That is, he was the one giving the notes to the designer, and he the one who approved the final design. That's why everyone attributes the new klingons to Fuller.

Same thing for the various iterations of the Discovery-CGI model.

 

[Rahul]

No, they really weren't. Those shows at their best (well, okay, maybe not Voyager IMHO) could compete with some of the better television on in the '80s and '90s, but none of them started out remotely close to their best, and by no stretch did they ever get "way above" the competition. Berman-era Trek was episodic genre fiction with weekly reset buttons, excessive technobabble, and forehead-of-the-week aliens. For all its clichés it was still mostly pretty good genre fiction, and it benefited from a few really talented actors, but it hardly broke new ground.

The important part is "compared to their time". Remember: The show with the biggest audiences at the time was Baywatch. TNG was dramatically, storytelling- and production-wise way above that, or at least comparable, even in it's early years.

And yes, TNG of course broke new ground. Otherwise it surely wouldn't have entered pop-culture mainstream the way it did. For example TNG had the very first "cliffhanger" in a dramatic television show ("BOBW") - before that was purely a soap-opera thing. TV generally was episodic at that time, and mostly more "fluff", not daring to handle tougher themes (there was a seperation between "tv-actors" and "movie-actors" at the time - being able to have someone like Patrick Steward a serious dramatic actor for a television show, was something extremely novel, and meant people were meant to take this stuff seriously). Compared to what other things were on television at the time TNG was "serious drama". TNG already did much to advance bigger storytelling arcs, having re-curring characters, arcs, themes that developed over time. Not on the same level as later shows, but that it had them at all was some serious 'breaking-new-ground'-shit at the time.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Indeed. I've been having some insomnia issues due to some medication that I'm on. The first season of DS9 helped me get over that

I tend to sleep better with TNG Season 1... speaking of which, g'night all

Whereas I would have gone with Enterprise, but to each their own.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Lots of shows these days have a really large number of producers. Steven Spielberg's Terra Nova back in 2011 had 13 different executive producers, a co-executive producer, three producers, three co-producers, and five consulting producers. Just to pick one recent Netflix show, Luke Cage also had 13 executive producers as well as three co-execs, three producers, etc. It's got nothing to do with "serious behind the scenes drama," because it's not particularly unusual these days. Heck, Discovery only has about 8 executive producers. It doesn't even break double digits, which makes it a relatively streamlined production by modern standards. Keep in mind that many executive producers aren't part of the creative staff, they're co-owners of the intellectual property or financial backers of the production or business partners of the production companies.

Yup. Crediting producers isn't what it used to be like it was back in Berman's era where most of the time it was primarily the showrunners that were credited "executive producer".

 

[Gepard]

What did the early VFX work look like?

Like...silver steampunk is the best way I can describe it. An alternate USS Discovery design that looked like a squat version of LordSarvin's design, with pipes and layering all over it in a color scheme of blue-grey and silver/chrome. I don't know much about how far that design lasted, but it was presented to me as "what we could have had" etc etc.

(I thought it was really ugly, actually. Massively over designed and busy. Would have fit in right along side the hideous Klingon vessels, though.)

 

[lawman]

The important part is "compared to their time". Remember: The show with the biggest audiences at the time was Baywatch. TNG was dramatically, storytelling- and production-wise way above that...

Okay, fair enough... I think we're arguing apples and oranges here. You originally compared TNG and its successors to "the regular television series competition of their times," whereas I see in my reply I compared them to "the better television on in the '80s and '90s." I have never watched an episode of Baywatch in my life, nor wanted to; you were setting the bar lower than I realized.

And yes, TNG of course broke new ground. Otherwise it surely wouldn't have entered pop-culture mainstream the way it did. For example TNG had the very first "cliffhanger" in a dramatic television show ("BOBW") - before that was purely a soap-opera thing. TV generally was episodic at that time, and mostly more "fluff", not daring to handle tougher themes... Compared to what other things were on television at the time TNG was "serious drama". TNG already did much to advance bigger storytelling arcs, having re-curring characters, arcs, themes that developed over time. Not on the same level as later shows, but that it had them at all was some serious 'breaking-new-ground'-shit at the time.

I'm not trying to make this personal at all, but I can't help wondering about your age, in terms of whether you were personally watching other shows during those decades. Sure, a lot of TV was fluff (still is — Sturgeon's Law applies), but a lot of it was really excellent, as well.

Thinking of quality TV in general, shows that spring to mind from that specific era (1987-2001) would include LA Law, Cagney & Lacey, The Simpsons, Quantum Leap, Picket Fences, Twin Peaks, Friends, Frasier, Northern Exposure, Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The West Wing, Freaks & Geeks, The Sopranos, Gilmore Girls... lots of fantastic memorable viewing in there, of every genre. In terms of SF on the air at the time, I'd have to say Babylon 5 was head and shoulders above any of the Trek series, and not just by way of long-term story arcs.

Thinking of groundbreaking shows in particular, predating TNG, what springs to mind are shows like Hill Street Blues. M*A*S*H. Moonlighting. Lou Grant. All In The Family. The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The original Star Trek, to be sure. TNG just isn't in that same league, not least because it was so obviously a revamp of its predecessor in so many ways.

And not to quibble (because it's not really a central point), but the cliffhanger in "BOBW" in 1990 was hardly a first. Doctor Who had been using cliffhangers for years, of course. You might object that it was British, and those were typically cliffhangers between episodes rather than seasons. Okay, then... Dallas used a season-ending cliffhanger in 1980 ("Who shot J.R.?") to generate the most-watched TV episode ever (to that time) when it returned. You might object that it was a "prime-time soap," not a "regular" show. Okay, then... Cheers used season-break cliffhangers between several early seasons, usually involving the Sam-and-Diane relationship. You might object that that was a sitcom, not a drama... and so on, but at this point you'd really be getting into some special pleading!...

Seriously, I bow to no one in my admiration and respect for the talent of Patrick Stewart. But if I had been introduced to Trek via TNG (especially early TNG), without ever having seen TOS, I honestly don't know whether I'd have become a fan.

 

[Charles Phipps]

I'm reminded of Young Indiana Jones and Hollywood Follies.

The TV movie was made by George Lucas as basically a way to try to explain his frustrations as both a director as well as a producer with artists as well as executive meddling as he'd been on both sides of the camera. The short version being that executives very much are people who want certain things and very often the artists are people who don't give a shit and try to turn what they're paid money to make into what they want to do.

CBS wanted a new Star Trek show.

Fuller wanted to do his own anthology thing. He was also working on another project.

Sometimes executive meddling isn't a bad thing. Basically, if you want a doghouse, you can step in if they build you a treehouse,

 

[Rahul]

Okay, fair enough... I think we're arguing apples and oranges here. You originally compared TNG and its successors to "the regular television series competition of their times," whereas I see in my reply I compared them to "the better television on in the '80s and '90s." I have never watched an episode of Baywatch in my life, nor wanted to; you were setting the bar lower than I realized.

It's an "apple vs. apple" (late 80/ealry 90s tv) vs a "oranges vs. oranges" (modern 2010's tv) thing.

TNG WAS one if it's trendsetters at the time. Straight up from the beginning. DIS so far isn't - but it IS playing ball with the more abitious television series of our time. So that's really fine.

I'm not trying to make this personal at all...

Thinking of quality TV in general, shows that spring to mind from that specific era (1987-2001) would include LA Law, Cagney & Lacey, The Simpsons, Quantum Leap, Picket Fences, Twin Peaks, Friends, Frasier, Northern Exposure, Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The West Wing, Freaks & Geeks, The Sopranos, Gilmore Girls... lots of fantastic memorable viewing in there, of every genre. In terms of SF on the air at the time, I'd have to say Babylon 5 was head and shoulders above any of the Trek series, and not just by way of long-term story arcs.

So. All your example shows came to life after TNG and were heavily influenced by it, some even started after TNG has already ended. EVERY genre show you just listed was directly influenced by the juggernaut genre-show of it's time, TNG.

You really have no idea that Babylon 5 came atfer Trek, and was heavily influenced by it? So no wonder it's "comparable" in quality...

Man, get your facts straight.

Thinking of groundbreaking shows in particular, predating TNG, what springs to mind are shows like Hill Street Blues. M*A*S*H. Moonlighting. Lou Grant. All In The Family. The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The original Star Trek, to be sure. TNG just isn't in that same league, not least because it was so obviously a revamp of its predecessor in so many ways.

And not to quibble (because it's not really a central point), but the cliffhanger in "BOBW" in 1990 was hardly a first. Doctor Who had been using cliffhangers for years, of course. You might object that it was British, and those were typically cliffhangers between episodes rather than seasons. Okay, then... Dallas used a season-ending cliffhanger in 1980 ("Who shot J.R.?") to generate the most-watched TV episode ever (to that time) when it returned. You might object that it was a "prime-time soap," not a "regular" show. Okay, then... Cheers used season-break cliffhangers between several early seasons, usually involving the Sam-and-Diane relationship. You might object that that was a sitcom, not a drama... and so on, but at this point you'd really be getting into some special pleading!...

Seriously, I bow to no one in my admiration and respect for the talent of Patrick Stewart. But if I had been introduced to Trek via TNG (especially early TNG), without ever having seen TOS, I honestly don't know whether I'd have become a fan.

So I said TNG was the first dramatic television show to use a cluffhanger. Before that was purely a soap opera thing. And you cite ...a soap opera... to disprove my point? You really don't know what you're doing kid, right?

You're kinda' mixing the entire 90's scifi-craze into one bucket, and then pick examples that feel more modern than TNG. And entirely missing the point that TNG STARTED this entire 90's scifi-surge.

You may personally not like TNG. Everybody has his own personal taste and stuff, and it is kinda' talky. But to pretend it wasn't the groundbreaking mainstream success, whose pop-cltural influences are still felt even today on the genre, is just a gross misrepresentation of television history.

 

[lawman]

TNG WAS one if it's trendsetters at the time. Straight up from the beginning. DIS so far isn't - but it IS playing ball with the more ambitious television series of our time. So that's really fine.

I do agree with the second point — Discovery is competitive with some of the better TV out there in recent years. It's not The Wire or Game of Thrones, but it is taking advantage of a lot of the changes in TV storytelling over the last couple decades, and doing a pretty decent job of it so far.

It's your first point I'm quibbling over: I just don't think TNG, DS9, or VOY were that great. Certainly none of them stood out in their early seasons. TNG didn't start to get decent until season 3, so that's 1989-'90; over the long haul DS9 was probably the best of them, but OTOH I'd say VOY never did hit a consistent standard of quality.

So. All your example shows came to life after TNG and were heavily influenced by it, some even started after TNG has already ended. EVERY genre show you just listed was directly influenced by the juggernaut genre-show of it's time, TNG.

Well, that was the comparison you started with — other shows on the air at the same time as TNG/DS9/VOY, competing with them directly — so I confined myself to that date range. (Technically LA Law premiered in '86, but I threw it in anyway.) I think it's a huge stretch to claim that all the shows I listed were influenced by TNG, though, even all the "genre" shows.

When I started thinking about "groundbreaking" shows in general, I reached much further back. You haven't really addressed any of the potential comparisons there. (In fact, now that I'm thinking of it, let me reach even a little further back and add Twilight Zone to that list.)

You really have no idea that Babylon 5 came atfer Trek, and was heavily influenced by it? So no wonder it's "comparable" in quality...

Of course I know the dates involved — B5 was on the air from '93 to '98. Obviously it bears superficial similarities to Trek overall (if not to TNG in particular); any futuristic space-based show with an ensemble cast would find those comparisons hard to avoid. But it seems more like something done in response to Trek than something influenced by it... more like JMS's notion of how he would do a Trek-like show unconstrained by the actual trappings of Trek. The behind-the-scenes stories about how Paramount specifically developed DS9 in reaction to what JMS was developing with B5 make a lot of sense... but although DS9 certainly broke some new ground relative to TNG, it still couldn't be as innovative as B5, and doesn't really measure up in comparison.

So I said TNG was the first dramatic television show to use a cluffhanger. Before that was purely a soap opera thing. And you cite ...a soap opera... to disprove my point? You really don't know what you're doing kid, right?

You know, I think you and I agree on far more than we disagree on here, and you might've noticed that I specifically said I wasn't trying to make this personal. So why the cheap shots?

Anyhow, I could mount an argument that Dallas was by any reasonable standard a "dramatic television show" comparable to many others in prime time, by no means a "soap opera" as one usually thinks of the term (i.e., low-budget daytime programs broadcast daily)... or I could go searching beyond my personal recollections for other shows that used cliffhangers prior to 1990... but it's hardly worth the trouble, since as I said it was a side point to begin with. I don't think season-to-season cliffhangers are a particularly noteworthy creative innovation anyway, certainly not compared to long-term novelistic story arcs (like, say, on B5).

You're kinda' mixing the entire 90's scifi-craze into one bucket, and then pick examples that feel more modern than TNG. And entirely missing the point that TNG STARTED this entire 90's scifi-surge.

I never thought there was such a thing as the "90's scifi craze." The period was certainly a high-water mark for the popularity of Trek, in particular... but speaking as a long-time SF fan, I'd say there's been no shortage of what we might call "genre" material on TV before, during, and after that period... some of it similar to Trek, and some very different indeed.

You may personally not like TNG. Everybody has his own personal taste and stuff, and it is kinda' talky. But to pretend it wasn't the groundbreaking mainstream success, whose pop-cltural influences are still felt even today on the genre, is just a gross misrepresentation of television history.

I wouldn't say I don't like it. It's not my favorite Trek series, and I don't think it ever managed to hit the same average level of quality as TOS, but it had a decent run overall. (FWIW, my personal ranking of Trek shows from best to worst would be TOS>DS9>TNG>ENT>VOY.) I would certainly never argue that TNG wasn't a "mainstream success," in terms of popularity and ratings; that's not what I'm trying to say. But I'll stand by my position that it didn't really stand out as creatively groundbreaking.

But hey, de gustibus non est disputandum. If you personally want to think of it as "the juggernaut of its time," that's perfectly fine. It's not going to affect what you, I, or anyone else has to say about the good or bad of Discovery, at least.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

The first season of TWIN PEAKS ended with a cliffhanger one month before TNG's finale.

To be fair, that doesn't take anything away from "The Best of Both Worlds". Whether it was a trendsetter or not isn't actually important. What's really important is that it's one of the most memorable cliffhangers in television history. That's a bigger achievement than merely being a first. It did more than leave audiences at the edge of their seat, it singlehandedly took TNG out of the shadow of TOS and become a bonafide pop culture hit. The days of Trekkies dismissing TNG and claiming it wasn't "Real Star Trek" became a thing of the past.