Would Star Trek Discovery have benefited from an episodic format?

Also would it had benefited one from having no season long arcs for season 1 considering they have more behind the scenes drama than the Ferengi Socialist Party?


Or maybe having a Burn Notice type compromise where you can easily enjoy it without caring about the season long story arc...

Would the bad pills be easier to swallow that way and would the good parts be more enjoyable?

Also the behind the scenes drama might have less of an effect on the final product in that case.

 

It would have benefited from better writing, regardless of format.

 

Can of worms. It would've been a different series. If it were another episodic TNG, VOY, or Early-ENT, I wouldn't have been interested in DSC.

At the same time, if you don't like the arc, it kills the entire season for you. So, it depends upon whether or not you like the arc or mini-arc within. I can watch older Trek because I know which episodes to skip. As I was watching it, and finding out in Real Time what those episodes I should skip were, it wasn't fun. So, if I like the arc, I'll probably like the entire season. Less chance of running into episodes I don't like (if at all) because I'm following a story I'm interested in. That's been the case with every serialized season of anything I've watched in the last 10 years.

The Shorts are proof they can still do good stand-alones. But I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with breaking a story into 13 parts. "It's too much like a soap opera!" I think that's more part of a viewer's own cultural programming. Elephant in the room: "Ick! I don't like soap operas because it's for housewives! Ewwww!!!!"

Ultimately, these episodes are being made to be binged in the future. To go from one episode to the next in an unbreakable chain. That's also why seasons are shorter. So, theoretically, someone with a day off or a total couch potato or someone who decides to "Netflix and Chill" can watch an entire season in a day and, to them, it's all one main story.

 

They'd have benefited from having the same people wrap up their storylines as they had begin them. If season 2 is 14 episodes of damp squib as the finale to the Klingon War was, we know the current regime sucks.

 

The behind the scenes drama is irrelevant to whether the episodes were stand alone or arc driven.

 

How do you know?

 

The behind the scenes drama of season 1 was because of Bryan Fuller dicking around with delays and spending the budget like it was unlimited. And since leaving Disco, he's been fired from two other shows for similar reasons. Let me guess, those shows should have known better than to do story arcs too, eh?

 

If the season long story arcs are going to be as crap as the Klingon War then I'd go back to episodic storytelling. The episode where Mudd killed Lorca over and over was the best of the season and was a standalone so they can certainly do it.

I don't think Star Trek is at its best serialised. DS9 had continuous arcs but it was episodic enough to take breaks from those storylines. Discovery should follow that model because it does the best of both worlds. Enterprise put all their eggs in one basket with the Xindi arc and if you liked that story then Season 3 was enjoyable but if you didn't it was one to skip because there was nothing else to watch that season.

But I can see that Discovery is trying something different and if that's what it wants to be then so be it.

 

I disagree completely.

Aside from a few missteps early on in the season, the Xindi storyline on Enterprise is a really well-crafted storyline that really delivered. Even now, fifteen years later is still as engrossing as it was in 2003-2004.

 

I think you could've boiled it down to 10-12 episodes and not really missed anything. One of the big flaws I've seen in many arc-based shows is pacing. Where things end up seemingly drawn out to fit an episode count, so the story has unnatural lulls.

 

Which is primarily what I meant by missteps.There were a few standalone episodes which didn't contribute much if anything to the storyline. Most of those were still damn fine episodes that I enjoyed, but yeah, they were trying to meet the over twenty episode quota. If today's standards were in place back then, we probably would have gotten a thirteen episode season with a much tighter narrative.

Although it was kind of neat how later in the season they drew from earlier episodes that seemed throw-away at the time. Like how the Vulcan zombie episode sets up for T'Pol's addiction arc later on. They really did an impressive job mapping the season out, and IMO many writers today could look at that season as an example of how to do a season long storyline.

 

Wasn't there also similar trouble on season 2?

 

Truth be told, I'm pretty much done with episodic storytelling in ANY series.

But I'll also watch anything starting with "Star Trek : "

 

Troubles? Yes. Similar? No.

But from the sounds of things, it was resolved quickly, and midway through the season so most of the pre-filiming work it would have been done already.

 

I loved that Mudd was an evil, reprehensible character in Discovery
That episode you mention was great
He was so much better in Discovery than that old pirate fart portrayed for fun in Star Trek.

 

Couldn't have hurt.

 

I think a standalone format would have sapped the overall tension and drama that a slow 15 hour build up created. That kind of drama and gravitas is more difficult, or actually maybe impossible, to replicate in just 40 some odd minutes.

 

I have no interest in watching episodic Star Trek any more. Been there, done that (and really well I might add), but the old format has worn out its welcome.

 

It confuses me how episodic trek can be seen as a negative thing when they can now afford to come up with new and exciting worlds to show the audience.