Would Star Trek Discovery have benefited from an episodic format?

[Lord Garth]

I'm not interested in what that person has to say. The last straw was at the end of October. And I'll take the warning for this, because this one time and this one time only, I don't care: He can kindly fuck off.

That and "Tin Man" was a total piece of shit.

 

[The Wormhole]

* The only exception to this is if the end of S2 ends up somehow connecting to "Calypso", then all bets are off. That would be a massive shakeup.

I have a theory on how the could incorporate that into the show and go back to the status quo. I even worked in a way to do a potential crossover with the Picard show with this theory.

 

[gblews]

It wasn't so much the writers "didn't care." Quite the contrary, attempts were made to do long term story arcs. Indeed, Year of Hell was originally pitched as a season long story arc. It was UPN that rejected the idea of long term arcs and told the writers they couldn't do a story any longer than a two-parter.

This doesn't surprise me. Extended arcs are the best way to present drama in TV sjows. That Voy's writing staff wanted to do this speaks to their interest in presenting the best dramatic show possible.

To be clear, I am not saying fanwank is necessarily a bad thing. But there were a ton of it in Season 1.

Oh please. "Fanwank" and it's bastard cousin, "fan service", are both negative terms. You know this as well as anyone because you have used it many times in this very forum always as a criticism of DSC.

Lets not play games.

 

[Damian]

Really when you think about it Star Trek has been evolving toward serialized story telling for years. TNG was definitely episodic, but things that happened in past episodes did carry forward. There was largely a coherent progression from the start of the show to the end. Deep Space Nine took this further. There was still plenty of episodic shows but there was certainly more serialized storytelling then in prior Star Trek, and they had mini-serials within the various seasons. Voyager had an overall serialized nature in the sense that the crew were trying to get home during the entire series, and older stories were many times developed further in later episodes. Enterprise went the next step with an entire serialized season, and the 4th season continued that. In a way Discovery is simply the next step in that evolution.

And of course the relaunch novels run a continuous story as well. I personally am ok with either. For instance even in season 3 of Enterprise, there were some standalone episodes within the season. I'd be ok with something like that, where there's an overall plot we're following from point A to B, but throw in the occasional standalone episode that gives is a bit of a breather.

 

[tomswift2002]

Funny bit of symmetry about the two shows is how they flip sides: By the time SMALLVILLE hits its fourth season it starts committing the same sins that ENTERPRISE did in its earlier seasons with character inconsistencies and tired plots, while ENTERPRISE then started taking continuity and character growth more to heart. And while ENTERPRISE got cut short just as it got good, SMALLVILLE went on way longer than it should have and from my memory got worse as it went.

Yeah, with “Smallville” I found that once Jonathan Kent was killed off and Martha became a senator, the show stagnated till the last 5 episodes. Of course, overall, I found “Smallville” to be the weakest of all the Superman live action shows, and even Enterprise and Discovery, I’m finding the serialization just did not work. 2- or 3-part stories or even a story spread across a season with an episode here and there would work better, as some of the serialized episodes I find they get into too much minutiae, and it kills the pace of the season. Even the first season of Disney’s “Zorro” from the 50’s was constructed where each individual episode contributed to the arc it was in, but each episode was also its own story, so you didn’t feel like you were being dragged down into minutiae.

 

[Monka]

Personally, the episodic nature of shows like Voyager is preferable. Each show can explore an idea all unto itself. There is the larger context of the bigger story arc about Voyager trying to make it home, as well as the same core crew member cast to give it a feel of continuity, but the same characters are put in a new situation with a different idea to explore and contemplate each episode. Each episode is largely a self contained exploration of an idea which may or may not be referenced in future episodes. A season long story arc becomes tedious. It is like a soap opera where one must follow the storyline continuously to know what is going on in the series. The episodic nature of a show like Voyager is preferred personally. It has the continuity of the big story arc (trying to get home) along with the same core characters, but explores lots of different ideas in individual episode stories. A season long story arc holds little interest, especially if the storyline isn’t great. Episodic series can just wait for the next episode if the current one isn’t of interest.

 

[Rahul]

Oh please. "Fanwank" and it's bastard cousin, "fan service", are both negative terms. You know this as well as anyone because you have used it many times in this very forum always as a criticism of DSC.

Lets not play games.

I don't know. To be honest, I'm an absolute sucker for "fan-service". I really enjoyed it when ENT re-created the original TOS sets, when DS9's characters interacted with Kirk and Spock, and I was absolutely floored by the "previously on Star Trek"-opening of the Talosians DIS-episode. I really enjoy "fan-service".

But I absolutely want that to be some kind of secret in-jokes. Little references. It should absolutely NOT take center stage! The DIS episode on Talos was really great, because it told it's own story. The stuff for the "old" fans - the scene between Pike and Vina, and the recap in the beginning - was just a small part of it. The same way, I would have hated it if DS9 had turned their TOS visit into a whole season arc.

I think the barrier between "fan-service" and "fan-wank" is extremely fluid. For me personally, it's "fan-wank" when it feels like there would be no original story without it. Like, take that one TOS episode out of DS9 - and that show still has it's very own identity, own storylines, own issues. In fact, this was the odd-one episode in the bunch. Whereas on DIS - it often felt like there was no show, if it weren't for the references. Especially in season 1, both main arcs (Klingon war and Mirror Universe) felt like lesser references/attempted reboots of older concepts, not good-willed in-jokes. If you take Sarek and Spock out, most of Burnham's characterisation would vanish (this got better later on, when she started to develop as her own character, instead of being defined by her backstory). That's why - even though I really don't like how the red angel plotline turned out - I still prefer it over season 1, because it at least felt like an original idea, a complete unique concept, that's not defined by it's relationship to previous Trek stories.

 

[Rahul]

To answer the very main question of the thread:

Would Star Trek Discovery have benefited from an episodic format?

No.

I think - structurally - DIS managed to get it absolutely right. I think you cannot have a modern prestige television show without heavy serialization. Now, "Star Trek" as a franchise lives from it's one-off concepts and episodes and ideas. So you absolutely cannot take them out entirely. Something like "Game of Thrones" - where every episode is just a chapter in one single story - wouldn't fit the Star Trek format. So I think DIS did it absolutely right - have a larger plot thread every season, and sprinkle many one-off episodes in-between, especially the first half of the season, and connected them only in their sub-plots to the main arc. And at the end of each season, concentrate on resolving the main arc.

Where DIS struggled was the content of these main arcs. The premise "Save the entire Federation/galaxy/multiverse" simply sucks balls as a story. A simple overwhelmingly large mystery (like, "what are the seven signals") would have been entirely sufficient. Star Trek is really not about saving the universe, but exploring it. Of course a good story needs some conflicts and dangers. But the stakes don't need to be "fight for all life in the multiverse". It really can be "solve this puzzle-box/moral dilemma/no-win scenario". Often times the episodes where the stakes are a single life or only an idea are the most powerfull episodes.

 

[Alan Roi]

To answer the very min question of the thread:



No.

I think - structurally - DIS managed to get it absolutely right. I think you cannot have a modern prestige television show without heavy serialization. Now, "Star Trek" as a franchise lives from it's one-off concepts and episodes and ideas. So you absolutely cannot take them out entirely. Something like "Game of Thrones" - where every episode is just a chapter in one single story - wouldn't fit the Star Trek format. So I think DIS did it absolutely right - have a larger plot thread every season, and sprinkle many one-off episodes in-between, especially the first half of the season, and connected them in their sub-plots to the main arc. And at the end of each season, concentrate on resolving the main arc.

Where DIS struggled was the content of these main arcs. "Save the Federation/galaxy/multiverse" simply sucks balls as a story. A simple overwhelmingly large mystery (like, "what are the seven signals") would have been entirely sufficient. Star Trek is really not about saving the universe, but exploring it. Of course a good story needs some conflicts and dangers. But the stakes don't need to be "fight for all life in the multiverse". It really can be "solve this puzzle-box/moral dilemma/no-win scenario". Often times the episodes where the stakes are a single life or only an idea are the most powerfull episodes.

I get it that fandom is about people taking some personal ownership of what they like and then putting it into the box of what they like. But Star Trek can't be defined by a *this is what Star Trek is about* and *this is what Star Trek isn't about, and suggests that by being one thing it isn't allows to be another. Satar Trek can be and has been from practically the beginning about Saving the federation/galaxy/universe. High Stakes have shown up again and again and again. And it has also been about exploring it as well, not to mention a hundred other things that aren't an either/or. Where No Man Has Gone Before was about certain ideas, about characters and relationships, and also about saving the Federation, just like season 2 of Discovery wasn't only about saving the Federation from bad future Control, but a whole number of ideas, characters, worlds, civilizations, that were put forth and... you guessed it, explored!! My advice, when looking at the metaphorical forest that is a season-long single story of modern Trek, remember that its also a large number of individual trees, not just a green amorphous blob All the same elements of a Star Trek season are there. The difference is they are laidd out a little differently. In the same way a Novel is laid out differently than a collection of short stories.

 

[BillJ]

Oh please. "Fanwank" and it's bastard cousin, "fan service", are both negative terms. You know this as well as anyone because you have used it many times in this very forum always as a criticism of DSC.

Fanwank and fan service can work, see "If Memory Serves...", it can also be poorly done and over used. The reason why fanwank comes up so often in regards to Discovery is because the show has overused it in a poor way.

It has become negative because Discovery has made some folks hate it.

 

[Alan Roi]

Fanwank and fan service can work, see "If Memory Serves...", it can also be poorly done and over used. The reason why fanwank comes up so often in regards to Discovery is because the show has overused it in a poor way.

It has become negative because Discovery has made some folks hate it.

The terms fanwank and fanservice and their negative deffinitions predate Disco by a few decades. Many of the same people who complain about Disco give previous Star Trek spinnoffs a pass not because they were especially skilled at fanwanks or fanservice but because that's their Star Trek, and when one decides a particular iteration of a franchise is their iteration, its gets a free pass regarding its objective shortcomings.

 

[BillJ]

The terms fanwank and fanservice and their negative connotations predate Disco by a few decades.

I don't see it as positive or negative until applied. You can have fanservice that isn't negative.

 

[Alan Roi]

I don't see it as positive or negative until applied. You can have fanservice that isn't negative.

i didn't say it couldn't be used either way, people like to take words and make them mean whatever they want to. I merely pointed out that the term fanservice has been used pejoratively for decades. i was first exposed to the pejorative usage of the term in the 80s, for instance.

And when a certain subculture is flailing around for a pejorative for something they don't like, its very common for them to latch onto a term which has been in use for decades to slap on what they don't like with whatever current meaning they want it to have. And they wrest control over its current meaning so that even when someone attempts to use an older meaning, it comes across as that subcultures usage by modern audiences who don't know any better if they aren't versed in its history of use. For instance, the original usage of the term came from Japanese Anime and its original specific usage has nothing to do with how its used as a pejorative with regards to Disco. But there's plenty of crossover between anime fans and Star Trek fans, so it's very likely a case of, if they can use it there for that, we can use it here for this.

 

[BillJ]

i didn't say it couldn't be used either way, people like to take words and make them mean whatever they want to. I merely pointed out that the term fanservice has been used pejoratively for decades. i was first exposed to the perjorative usage of the term in the 80s, for instance.

This is the only fan place I hang out, so I didn’t really have any exposure to the term beyond its use here.

 

[Alan Roi]

This is the only fan place I hang out, so I didn’t really have any exposure to the term beyond its use here.

Well now you do.

 

[fireproof78]

I've generally heard fan service as negative.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

ORLY?
- They remade TOS - "The Naked Time" as TNG's - "The Naked Now" (in with they also mentioned the original 1701 and Kirk) as its first regular one hour episode after the two hour pilot TNG - "Encounter At Farpoint"

It wasn’t purely a remake, but OK, it was the first regular episode of S1.

- The original concept for TNG -"Too Short A Season" was that it would actually BE "James T. Kirk" and not "Admiral Jameson" (Yes, they were talking to Shatner during teh concept phase, he turned them down immediately.)

Where do you have this from? I couldn’t find anything on Memory Alpha or in Nemecek’s Companion, but even if that was the idea, it failed in S1.

- Take a look at ALL the TOS era ship and Shuttlecraft models in the backgrounds of various Conference and Ready Room scenes.

Sure, in the background as something that’s an indelible part of their history, not a legacy character usurping the show.

- In TNG Season 2 - they PURPOSELY brought in the character of Dr. Katherine Pulaski who was a female clone (right down to being "an old country doctor" annd believing the Transporter would "scatter one's atoms across space"; and further tried (unsuccessfully) to revive the TOS Spock/McCoy dynamic between Data/Pulaski; but because Data was naive about hummanity in a way that Spock was not, it came across more like she was verbally abusing a child, so it was dropped

Perhaps, but the preventative mechanism of the TNG time jump ensured it couldn’t actually be McCoy and the character was dropped after one season (out of seven), so it was a failure once again.

So yeh - don't give me that - "...NG was very conscious not to be heavily referential regarding TOS..." bit as it's BS.

I’m supposed to believe you over Ron Moore, Mike Okuda and my own observations of the show? If you need an example of what I mean and what TNG could’ve been, look no further than S4 of ENT. Where are the Tholians? Where is Vulcan history (aside from the few episodes exploring Vulcan/Romulan connections)? Where are the Gorn? Where is the Defiant? And most importantly, where is all that at the kitchen-sink frequency of once every three episodes or so, not just once every two or three seasons? Hardly anywhere, because those working on TNG either weren’t fans or were required to check their fandom at the gate.

They were VERY conscious of wanting to appeal to TOS fans because that was there base audience starting out - in Season one (as a TOS fan who hung out with many other TOS fans) they failed. Many TOS fans didn't bother giving TNG a shot again UNTIL it's third season and TNG - "Yesterday's Enterprise".

Early in S1, perhaps, but even the S1 series bible makes it clear that such callbacks weren’t supposed to be the rule and mentions the original characters’ descendants as one element to be avoided. It was a battle even to mention Spock in “Sarek”. (I wasn’t aware Sarek was Spock’s father before I saw more of Star Trek.)

The end result was that TNG managed to develop its own characters so that now we have a Picard show which also features Seven of Nine for that matter (not that I wouldn’t prefer the next-next generation to a mere continuation of a successful concept).

 

[Alan Roi]

I've generally heard fan service as negative.

MCU 'fanservice' seems to generally be viewed as a positive aspect to those movies.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

MCU 'fanservice' seems to generally be viewed as a positive aspect to those movies.

Serving long-time comics fans doesn’t count since they’re a tiny part of the worldwide audience by comparison. With the MCU, the most I can think of are references to tentpole movies early in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but otherwise, it’s not like every MCU film is trying to recapture the glory of Iron Man or The Avengers. Sequels tend to be vastly different, like The Winter Soldier compared to The First Avenger. When comics are referenced, the MCU takes quite a bit of risk even with the most famous characters, and that’s on top of adapting obscure properties as a rule and letting the Netflix shows feel like they aren’t even part of the MCU (barring a reminder from time to time).

 

[Lord Garth]

Steering this back to Star Trek...

It wasn’t purely a remake, but OK, it was the first regular episode of S1.

Where do you have this from? I couldn’t find anything on Memory Alpha or in Nemecek’s Companion, but even if that was the idea, it failed in S1.

Sure, in the background as something that’s an indelible part of their history, not a legacy character usurping the show.

Perhaps, but the preventative mechanism of the TNG time jump ensured it couldn’t actually be McCoy and the character was dropped after one season (out of seven), so it was a failure once again.

I’m supposed to believe you over Ron Moore, Mike Okuda and my own observations of the show? If you need an example of what I mean and what TNG could’ve been, look no further than S4 of ENT. Where are the Tholians? Where is Vulcan history (aside from the few episodes exploring Vulcan/Romulan connections)? Where are the Gorn? Where is the Defiant? And most importantly, where is all that at the kitchen-sink frequency of once every three episodes or so, not just once every two or three seasons? Nowhere, because those working on TNG either weren’t fans or were required to check their fandom at the gate.

Early in S1, perhaps, but even the S1 series bible makes it clear that such callbacks weren’t supposed to be the rule and mentions the original characters’ descendants as one element to be avoided. It was a battle even to mention Spock in “Sarek”. (I wasn’t aware Sarek was Spock’s father before I saw more of Star Trek.)

The end result was that TNG managed to develop its own characters so that now we have a Picard show which also features Seven of Nine for that matter (not that I wouldn’t prefer the next-next generation to a mere continuation of a successful concept).

Regardless of the approach TNG took, I think you can have characters specific to a series and characters from other series co-exist at the same time.

Burnham, Saru, Tilly, Stamets, Culber, Tyler, L'Rell, Cornwell, Georgiou, Leland, Kol, T'Kuvma, Reno, etc., etc., etc. are all DSC original characters. People blow the appearance of TOS characters in DSC's first two seasons way out of proportion. Sarek and Amanda aren't main characters. Mudd made a grand total of two appearances in the series proper. You can make a stronger case for Pike, Number One, and Spock. But Pike and Number One barely showed up in TOS, so DSC was making use of characters with potential that was never tapped into. With Spock, they put him in a spot that was sufficiently different enough from where he was in TOS, so they could tell a new story with him.

I think the DSC character composition is enough to withstand the presence of TOS characters showing up. With TNG taking place 100 years after TOS, it wouldn't make sense for anyone from TOS to show up. With DSC having previously been set 10 years before TOS, it made more sense for TOS characters to appear in DSC than it ever did for them to appear in TNG.

Also, there was a change in mentality in Star Trek over time. I became a fan in 1991 and I remember that Star Trek was distinctly TOS and TNG. Having Spock make an appearance in TNG was a big deal because they were so segregated. After that, TNG became more comfortable with TOS. DS9 and VOY spun-off from TNG. So, instead of there being two series that were kept as separate from each other as possible, you had four series that were forming something larger instead of being two smaller, separate things. ENT, DSC's first two seasons, and PIC kept moving in the inter-connected direction Star Trek in general moved in after 1991. DSC's third season is the first time Star Trek's 1987 mentality might come back, since we're now going to be once again separated from everything else that was ever made before.

EDIT: Before someone mentions it: yes, I know Burnham was introduced as being Spock's foster-sister. Her Vulcan upbringing becomes less relevant after the first two episodes except when she's interacting with Sarek, Amanda, and Spock. They also re-framed Burnham's character toward the end of the second season.

Now that she knows what really happened to her parents, she's a character whose mother was displaced through time and space who briefly reconnected with her mother before losing her again and now she's in a time and place her mother kept being pulled back to. Or, since she won't be at Terralysium like she thought, she'll be trying to get back to the place her mother kept being pulled back to. Her story is now one about loss and getting to a destination that has nothing to do with Spock or his family whatsoever.

If Michelle Paradise has control of the show for the entire season, she has a chance to remake the show in her own image. Season 3 is when I think the definitive version of Discovery will be established. We'll have one consistent vision and no ties to another series.

PIC, on the other hand, looks like a pure TNG/VOY sequel. And by design it's meant to appeal squarely to fans of '90s Trek. They want to rope in the TNG crowd.

When DSC started, it was off the heels of the Kelvin Films, so the TOS elements there made sense. They wanted people who were paying for the service to be excited about it, so they were hoping having TOS stuff would get potential subscribers more interested. Now they're moving on to doing the same with TNG. The bottom line for CBSAA is to bring in as many subscribers as possible. And they'll do whatever they can to rope in Star Trek fans in order to get them to want to watch. TNG didn't have to worry about roping in subscribers. DSC and PIC do.