What would you like to see change for season 2?

[eschaton]

Since there is various whinging about the faults of Season 1 in several threads, I thought it might be helpful to consolidate things and put a more positive spin. What would you like Season 2 to do differently than Season 1?

My own thoughts:

• Either have a better thought out plan on how a season-long arc is going to work, or avoid having a serialized plot structure at all.
• Slow down the plot! There's a tension in TV between time which can be spent on plot developments and time which can be spent on characterization. Many classic episodes of Trek - including fan favorites like The Inner Light - barely had a plot to speak of and were constructed around character development.
• Serialize the characters, even if you don't serialize the plot. A big fault of the first season was characters were not given consistent arcs across the season as a whole, instead flailing about as needed for the plot twists within a given mini-arc.
• Stop doing "epic" - the first season kept raising the stakes to ridiculous levels, with the future of the entire Federation - and even at one point the whole multiverse - resting in the hands of the Discovery crew. This isn't needed, because people tune into a serialized show to see compelling character development first and foremost. Discovery doesn't have to be at the center of things. Just use the plot structure to tell emotionally resonant stories about the main cast.
• Give every character their place in the sun. I'm not the biggest fan of Micheal Burnham, but I don't care if she remains the "lead" insofar as she gets the most lines over the season. But every character should be given a "focus" episode - or at least one half of an A/B episode - in order to flesh them out better.
• Have the characters engage in more dialogue which doesn't have to do with teching the tech to plot the plot. As I've said before, this series needs more "Piller filler."
• Work on better providing the wide open sense of scale of the Trekverse. TOS had a relatively small cast, but there was still the idea that the Enterprise was in a huge, largely unexplored region of space. Discovery felt way too claustrophobic in contrast, with few away missions, and only four Klingons who were anything more than extras involved in the entire war arc.

I'd personally like if we avoid discussion about who needs to be fired (whether actors or in the writers room) but YMMV.

 

[Nyotarules]

Better characterisation of Michael Burnham. either give her better lines or make it more of an ensemble piece ala DS9 style.

 

[eschaton]

Better characterisation of Michael Burnham. either give her better lines or make it more of an ensemble piece ala DS9 style.

As I said in another thread, Discovery could learn some lessons from DS9, because although Sisko was clearly the main character of the series (which was more bound up in his personal character arc than any Trek before) they didn't feel the need to focus every single episode on Sisko. He often just popped in for a single scene in the beginning or the end of an episode so Avery Brooks could collect a paycheck. Which was good, because although Brooks's acting was serviceable, he was outacted by much of the remainder of the cast. Frankly the show wouldn't have worked if it was "all Sisko all the time."

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Dial it back a bit on all the BLUE.

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

• Either have a better thought out plan on how a season-long arc is going to work, or avoid having a serialized plot structure at all.
• Slow down the plot! There's a tension in TV between time which can be spent on plot developments and time which can be spent on characterization. Many classic episodes of Trek - including fan favorites like The Inner Light - barely had a plot to speak of and were constructed around character development.

Definitely these two. There were far too many half-assed, barely baked ideas that were shoved into the mix and never properly explored. For instance, Pahvo: supposedly a strategically important planet, with a whiz-bang neato natural antenna they could use for... something. And the glittery sparkle critters who wanted everybody to just get along... somehow. So Discovery fends off the DiscoKlingon's spearhead. Then, knowing full well more enemy ships are on the way, Discovery boogies out of there, leaving the strategically important planet with its supposedly defenceless natives unprotected from the impending DiscoKlingon onslaught. All because Discovery was needed somewhere for... stuff. Roll credits.

Being told a half-finished story isn't entertaining, it's aggravating.

 

[pst]

Serialize the characters, even if you don't serialize the plot. A big fault of the first season was characters were not given consistent arcs across the season as a whole, instead flailing about as needed for the plot twists within a given mini-arc.

 

[XCV330]

more planet visits, get to know the bridge crew better, and..

switch to DSC's version of the Cage uniforms. We've kinda sorta seen them, albeit blurry.

 

[eschaton]

Definitely these two. There were far too many half-assed, barely baked ideas that were shoved into the mix and never properly explored. For instance, Pahvo: supposedly a strategically important planet, with a whiz-bang neato natural antenna they could use for... something. And the glittery sparkle critters who wanted everybody to just get along... somehow. So Discovery fends off the DiscoKlingon's spearhead. Then, knowing full well more enemy ships are on the way, Discovery boogies out of there, leaving the strategically important planet with its supposedly defenceless natives unprotected from the impending DiscoKlingon onslaught. All because Discovery was needed somewhere for... stuff. Roll credits.

Being told a half-finished story isn't entertaining, it's aggravating.

I wouldn't have minded the Pahvo detour if they followed up in any way on the attempt to characterize Saru (which seemed the entire point of the episode). What I got out of it was for a Kelpien, fear plays the role that empathy does for humans. Take away one simple drive, and both species become sociopaths. Yet pretty much right after that episode, Saru retreats into just being the XO, with occasional comments related to his being a cow when dealing with MU Georgiou.

 

[Rhodan]

Definitely these two. There were far too many half-assed, barely baked ideas that were shoved into the mix and never properly explored. For instance, Pahvo: supposedly a strategically important planet, with a whiz-bang neato natural antenna they could use for... something. And the glittery sparkle critters who wanted everybody to just get along... somehow. So Discovery fends off the DiscoKlingon's spearhead. Then, knowing full well more enemy ships are on the way, Discovery boogies out of there, leaving the strategically important planet with its supposedly defenceless natives unprotected from the impending DiscoKlingon onslaught. All because Discovery was needed somewhere for... stuff. Roll credits.

Being told a half-finished story isn't entertaining, it's aggravating.

And that is , I would say, cardinal sin of writing. Writers don´t want too much think about their concepts and don´t want audience to think about them either. The best way how to prove that sci-fi is stupid.

 

[Ometiklan]

...My own thoughts:..

Wow! Though we may disagree on our opinions on Discovery in many aspects, I find that I agree with these points 100%.

The one thing I would add: for my tastes I would like to be able to just pop in for 1 episode (or 2-4 max) and enjoy a completed story. So I would add "have more defined storylines with actual endings, with later repercussions" to "serialize the characters not necessarily the plot". I like what DS9 did in this aspect, or Enterprise season 4.

Definitely these two. ...For instance, Pahvo: supposedly a strategically important planet, with a whiz-bang neato natural antenna they could use for... something...

A casualty of the serialized storytelling - they were going so fast with their intended storyline that they didn't have time, or money, or interest in really addressing the interesting technical, social, moral, biological, alien ideas that get brought up in these episodes as small side elements. In a way, this felt like TOS to me in that they didn't do serialization at all, and so any interesting element in one episode would never be revisited again. A loss for cool potential storylines and character impacts, but still TOS did generate a lot of neat one-off ideas.

 

[GeekUSACarl]

A.) Make the characters and their relationships the more recurring theme and give us a little more of an episodic flow and less of trying to cram this grand story with little time

B.) More nerdy shop talk. Sure don't bog it down but come on I wanna geek out over here at least a little

C.) If you're gonna make Mike the main character, then give us her character. More about her personally, she is such a great actress and season one's episodes did little to really bring her out. All it showed us is how rational and smart she is. which combined with how she looks in what constituted sleepwear in the MU is rather hot but still, we got so much more character out of B'elanna or Kira in one season and they weren't even the main character

D.) Destroy the spore drive. Seriously its way too magic to be fun for too long. Its the kind of thing that an alien racr uses in mystery for an episode or two that is always just out of reach of the federation...

E.) Old school uniforms. I know this is a little juvenole but I just think they looked cooler. I mean it won't make the show better Im just stuck on it.

F.) More Mudd

 

[Dijeirusan]

I think the spore drive will turn on them, and become a sentient villain.

 

[cultcross]

• Either have a better thought out plan on how a season-long arc is going to work, or avoid having a serialized plot structure at all.

• Slow down the plot! There's a tension in TV between time which can be spent on plot developments and time which can be spent on characterization. Many classic episodes of Trek - including fan favorites like The Inner Light - barely had a plot to speak of and were constructed around character development.

• Serialize the characters, even if you don't serialize the plot. A big fault of the first season was characters were not given consistent arcs across the season as a whole, instead flailing about as needed for the plot twists within a given mini-arc.

• Stop doing "epic" - the first season kept raising the stakes to ridiculous levels, with the future of the entire Federation - and even at one point the whole multiverse - resting in the hands of the Discovery crew. This isn't needed, because people tune into a serialized show to see compelling character development first and foremost. Discovery doesn't have to be at the center of things. Just use the plot structure to tell emotionally resonant stories about the main cast.

These I agree with completely. The arc needs to be toned down, slowed down, and better thought through, with more good stories and less bang-crash-end of the world.

I don't really agree about going back to the format of 'Saru episode', 'Tyler episode' and A/B plots. I feel that approach is old fashioned and wouldn't help Discovery do much beside be another identikit Trek show.

 

[the Sisko]

1. I want to see more of confident Michael Burnham. When she was matching wits with the emperor (both in Mirror Universe and on Kronos) and standing up for Starfleet values, she was at her best. Like when she told the emperor "Don't make me have to (come after you)" I believed that threat because it's earned. The series has never shied away from telling us she is smart (She is implied to be Spock's smarter sister, given she graduated from the VSA top of her class and he graduated from SFA not at the top of his). The series has never shied away from showing us that she is a brilliant tactican and fighter (She has killed one Klingon leader, poked the eyes out of another and fought a third to a draw before drawing up plans to take out emperor Lorca , and transform the Klingon civilization) She also came up with the idea to use the tartigrade for Spore travel. Now that her strengths are established and her position is set, it'd be nice to see her just do a great job as first officer and work well with the crew.

2. Captain Saru+First Officer Burnham: I love the idea that the alien POV character is the primary decision-maker. I also like the idea that she goes from undermining him on the Shenzou to being his most trusted confidant on the discovery.

3. Science experiments gone bad/gone well. TOS/TNG had a multitude of science experiement episodes for a ship that was an all-around ship. Discovery should have the same.

4. Stamets: His character is owed alot of explanation/development. Is he the pre-Tartigrade jerk, uninfluenced by mirror myceal corruption. Is he a happy scientist, no longer working for a madman? Is he a mourning survivor? Is he extra-motivated to his research, seeing it as connecting and controlling the fate of the multiverse?

 

[lawman]

Terrific thread! I agree with almost all the points in the OP, with the caveat that I don't think "avoid having a serialized plot structure" is a realistic option. Good TV doesn't work that way any more.

I think what they need to do to get the pace under control and allow for character development is actually to have a better planned-out arc for more than a season. It was revolutionary when Babylon 5 did it a generation ago (and I still consider that show to be one of the best ever at executing it), but it's a routine feature of serialized TV today. Shows that have used it to good effect in the last few years, just within the SF/fantasy genre, include not only the oft-mentioned Game of Thrones (which itself has suffered a bit since it went past GRRM's material and the showrunners became more plot-driven), but also shows like Colony, Sense8, Dark Matter, and The Expanse, among others (often on much lower budgets!).

That way not every episode needs to have a cliffhanger or a twist, and the show can take the time to tell some (relatively) self-contained stories along the way, while still advancing the overall plot and character arcs, without having to force a season finale to tie up all the loose ends.

These I agree with completely. The arc needs to be toned down, slowed down, and better thought through, with more good stories and less bang-crash-end of the world.

I don't really agree about going back to the format of 'Saru episode', 'Tyler episode' and A/B plots. I feel that approach is old fashioned and wouldn't help Discovery do much beside be another identikit Trek show.

Exactly. We do not want to emulate the Berman/Braga era.

...There were far too many half-assed, barely baked ideas that were shoved into the mix and never properly explored. For instance, Pahvo: supposedly a strategically important planet, with a whiz-bang neato natural antenna they could use for... something.

The problem with the Pahvo episode was that the whole McGuffin of the story was obviously just that, a McGuffin... the "natural antenna" was explained away with a sentence or two of technobabble dialogue that frankly made no sense, and the whole thing was obviously just a contrivance to do a "planet story" focused on Saru confronting a personal crisis. (So much the worse that Saru's shift in motivation seemed wildly over-the-top, although Doug Jones did his absolute best to sell it.) Nothing about Pahvo was ever meant to actually matter in the Klingon war, and that was painfully clear from the beginning.

D.) Destroy the spore drive. Seriously its way too magic to be fun for too long. Its the kind of thing that an alien racr uses in mystery for an episode or two that is always just out of reach of the federation...

E.) Old school uniforms. I know this is a little juvenole but I just think they looked cooler. I mean it won't make the show better Im just stuck on it.

I like these suggestions too. I'm actually really surprised they didn't do the first one this past season... they seemed to be setting up a perfect excuse for it, but then they pulled back.

I would also add (without actually touching on the "who to fire" point) that the show clearly needs better communication among its various creators. Between producers and writers, about what the show's big-picture goals (and constraints) are; between the writers themselves, so plot priorities and especially characterization don't veer wildly from one episode to the next (this was particularly evident with Stamets); between the writers and the designers and the effects people, so that what's intended (Klingon D7, 100 AU from Earth, and many other examples) is actually what winds up on the screen.

And just as a general thing, I'd really like it if the cinematography and the effects were reoriented to be closer to a traditional Trek-style approach (or heck, even a "realistic" approach like on The Expanse), with clearer lighting and longer shots to help clarify what's going on, and less of the visual clutter and heavy shadows and blue-tinting.

 

[NeoStar9]

More planets and clearer shots of ships while in space. Those are the big two for me going forward.

I want the story to stay serialized. I want Michael to remain the lead. That looks like it's going to be the case going forward thankfully!! For my own personal reasons I can't begin express how much I love that a black woman is the lead of this show. I know for a fact this is important to many others the same way Sisko being the lead of DS9 meant to world to me growing up. Her being the main character does not take away from others. I feel a lot of the other characters got decent story arcs as the season went. It wasn't Michael the entire time. There are many scenes in the series that she doesn't even factor yet people seem to want to ignore this. No.

I actually do want things to remain epic to a degree. Not everything needs to be multi-universe saving I agree. Sure get your slice of life episodes where it's just character moments. I love those. I do however want what the Discovery and her crew are doing to be important and to matter. Enterprise does not and should not get to the be only ship(s) of importance in Star Trek or even of this era.

 

[SJGardner]

I think what they need to do to get the pace under control and allow for character development is actually to have a better planned-out arc for more than a season. It was revolutionary when Babylon 5 did it a generation ago (and I still consider that show to be one of the best ever at executing it), but it's a routine feature of serialized TV today.

I'm really hoping the show won't go in the opposite direction instead and pull a 'just make the entire story arc up as we go forward' thing a'la The X-Files, resulting in a gigantic tangle of undecipherable plots with loose ends going nowhere. It's far too early to say how they will proceed but I continue to think that Season 2 will make or break the series. It would be really nice to see a Babylon 5-like, detailed story arc developed over the course of the whole series, up to and including what JMS called 'trap doors' providing a pre-written exit for each character just in case their actor would decide to leave the series before they're written out. I don't think DSC would actually get to this level of development at any point, sadly. Even having a well-planned storyline for Season 2 that's not changed in a hurry during development would be a huge improvement in itself, I think.

I'm very glad that B5 was brought up, because it really was able to provide a big part of what many here are seeking to change about DSC... a primarily character-driven show with many character moments, a planned-out story arc (even if it had to be rushed during Season 4) and full storylines for each main character, many self-contained episodes and so on.

 

[Mage]

Less producers.

 

[SJGardner]

Less producers.

Or, alternatively, show them all on the same title card. As annoying as it was, I liked the unintentional humor in reading names after names after names of producers by the dozen.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Moar Burnham Burritos - like a new recipe every episode.

Serialize the characters, even if you don't serialize the plot. A big fault of the first season was characters were not given consistent arcs across the season as a whole, instead flailing about as needed for the plot twists within a given mini-arc.

Exactly this.

I'll take serialized characters over serialized plot any day of the week and twice on Sundays. (Specifically 8:30 Eastern.)

On the other hand, I don't want an "ensemble show." The main premise here is about Micheal's [self] discovery, and I want it to stay that way. That's not to say the others shouldn't have their chance to shine - and I'd even like to see Keyla, Jo, and Airiam get elevated some. But all the other shows have been ensemble to a degree. I think a single-character driven show is a nice change of pace.

But I do agree they need to give her meatier dialog and really explore (show; don't tell) her personality and psyche. Because, like you say, she's basically just a techie-tech expo boom box. She's basically Carter as the lead. And Carter only worked as well as she did - even as a tertiary character - because of Tapping's incredible dedication and discipline. That's not to imply SM-G isn't capable (I admire both women equally.), but having that kind of requisite just to make a character function is a recipe for failure, especially in a lead.

In this way, my Burnham Burritos barb was semi-serious. It shows her being a human and not just Siri.