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Your postmortem thoughts on DISCO

Charles Phipps

Charles Phipps

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Exactly what it says on the tin.

Basically, in hindsight, what did you think of DISCO as a whole?

I feel DISCO never really found its footing. It came close in Season 3 but they didn't want to engage with rebuilding a galaxy and democracy. It was all magically solved by finding a planet sized ball of dilithium. It forwarded family as much as the Fast and the Furious movies but refused to give any development to the crew. It said that Burnham was to a fantastic character but constantly tinkered with her so that we never got to know her. The constant "oh no, the universe is DOOMED" of every season stopped working after Season 2. It rarely introduced new elements and the few it did like the Kelpians and Ba'aul got overshadowed.

The show had its merits: no ST show has anywhere near the LGBTA representation and it blew them away all put together. It gave us a happily married couple in space, rare for any show. It never lost sight of Star Trek's "message" of peace and diplomacy. It was rarely boring. It gave us SNW. We had some admirals who weren't evil. Plus, Tilly, Book, Raynar, Stamets, Culper, and Saru were awesome. I still want a tardigrade plushie.

DISCO had a lot of flaws but it also had its merits.

B- overall.

I liked it more than ENTERPRISE but it put too much focus on spetacle and action when it could have functioned on its characters and setting(s).
 
Overall, I liked Discovery but when comparing it to all of the series, it’s near the bottom for me. I definitely preferred seasons 1 and 2 compared to seasons 3 - 5. I feel that Michelle Paradise was not a strong show runner. Seasons 1 and 2 took chances and were thrilling with great twists. Going to the future should have opened up so many creative ideas, but didn’t feel different enough.

There are two main things I feel would have made Discovery better:
- stop focusing on Burnham
- a new, scary, truly alien, ongoing threat

On a positive note, Saru is one of the best alien main characters in the franchise. And the episode, If Memory Serves, is a true classic episode of Trek, up there with the best of the franchise.

I’m looking forward to re-watching the entire series as a whole now that it’s done.
 
As much as I love Discovery, I think Michelle Paradise was ultimately the wrong choice for Showrunner. Paradise was very strong when it came to the characters but weak at the worldbuilding. I think a lot of the worldbuilding got glossed over because Paradise felt that it wasn't entirely relevant. On one hand I love Discovery's focus on character and emotion but my little inner child trekkie wants to know how fast warp is in the 32nd century :D.

Overall I think Discovery was successful. It lead to a new era of trek on television and a new era for the franchise to explore. Discovery came at a time when my life was not going so great and it gave me something to look foward to. It ties first place with DS9 as my favourite Trek series. I'm going to miss it.
 
I'd say middle of the road is a good description for it. 90s Trek was all over the place in quality, sometimes you'd get a classic, sometimes something close to unbearable, but Discovery was usually okay. It was fine.

The show did have massive shortcomings that were plainly obvious to everyone, but they weren't always the same shortcomings. It evolved over time and it seemed like the writers were making a real effort to respond to feedback. You can mock season 2 for making no sense and for how Burnham cries in every single episode, but you can't make the same criticism of season 3. Season 3 has the absurd turbolift dimension, but it's never seen again. Season 4 has bizarre dialogue and an obsession with 'connection', but season 5 is more natural and has a first officer who hates hugs.

I could write a whole essay on the things that continued to bother me, like the ugly 32nd century Starfleet aesthetic, or the way that characters were written, but even at its low points I was always there watching the next episode the first chance I got, so the series must have been doing something right. Either that, or I was just hoping that the next episode would be the one where Detmer and Owo got something to do.
 
I would say my main thoughts are that Discovery had three real problems.

1) A lead who was hired to be a very specific character for a single season who wasn't really capable of carrying that character where the writers and directors ended up taking her after they decided to make her a more standard Star Trek lead in a multi-season show.

2) Bad writers who due to the short season format never really got the experience necessary to become good.

3) Behind the scenes bullshit.
 
Discovery got me back into Star Trek. I like the earlier part of its run and the later part of its run equally, but for different reasons. It's my second-favorite of the New Trek series behind Picard. I'll definitely revisit Discovery again from time-to-time. The series might be over, but my interest in it never will be.

I'd say Discovery is the most misunderstood Star Trek series. If you don't get it, you don't get it. But if you do get it, you get so much more out of it.

Little anecdote: I was told I used to dance to disco in my crib. So, in a way, I've been a Disco Fan all my life. ;)
 
I tend to like episodic better than serialized. So, in comparison to other live action shows, DISCO does not fare particularly well.

Tier 1: TOS, TNG, DS9, SNW
Tier 2: VOY, ENT, DISCO, PIC

I am gonna stress the positives.

1) I love that it kickstarted a new era of Trek.

2) I think it did intrapersonal relationships amongst the crew the best. Trek romances are not done particularly well IMHO outside of Odo/Kira, but I think Culber/Stamets and Saru/T'rina are on the medal stand. And Burnham & Book are pretty good, too. But the platonic ones are good too (Saru/Burnham, Tilly/Burnham, Georgiou/Burnham, Adira/Stamets, etc).

Too far into emo sometimes, but true nonetheless. They did relationships well.

3) I think, behind the scenes, this was the tightest cast since TNG/S3 PIC. And that shines through. SMG deserves credit for it.
 
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A missed opportunity that was flawed from the beginning.
  1. I'm unsure whether Bryan Fuller's original vision for the show would have been better or worse, but I think it would have probably been more coherent, and I believe a big problem with the direction of Discovery is that whomever was responsible at Paramount didn't fully commit to it. And, failing that, if at some point in the process they believed it just wasn't working, they would have been better off just going back to the drawing board and rethinking the entire concept. The result they ended up with a series that's muddled and had issues figuring out what it was and what exactly it was trying to do.
  2. In my opinion, they should have divorced Discovery, Strange New Worlds, etc., from being tied to canon and just let it exist in its own continuity and not felt compelled to fit it all in the "Prime Universe." By trying to fit all of this into a continuity, while at the same time the people making the shows are open about "reinterpreting" the original IP and the series having a strange idea of fidelity to the source material, it just invites the kind of questions, distractions, and debates about how does all of this fit together? DC/Warner Bros. has put out movies with 4 different Batmans and as many Jokers over the past 10 years. If they can do that, the audience will accept different iterations of Star Trek. And by allowing for different continuities, you free up these writers to go in ANY direction they would like with things without the most strident fans of the TOS/Berman-era feeling like you're fucking up the continuity of those shows.
  3. The need to structure every season around a serialized crisis did not serve the show well. I think the show would have functioned so much better if starting in season 2 they had abandoned that format and went more episodic, similar to the way Strange New Worlds is structured.
Since this is a post-mortem, and admittedly I'm not the biggest fan of this series, but I'm curious and I'm trying to have an open mind about this ... What do fans of Discovery consider to be examples of the series' best storytelling? What are the top-tier episodes of Discovery that people feel are in the conversation with the best episodes from the other series (i.e., "Best of Both Worlds," "The Visitor," "City on the Edge of Forever," etc.)?
 
The timeskip is something I had a lot of issues with because I feel like the Klingon War, Sarek relationship, Logic Extremists, Kelpian Civil War, and other stuff may not have incredibly well-loved plotlines but they grounded the crew with continuity and that got all thrown out.

The Burn was very interesting.

But they didn't stick with it.

So the show gutted its own backstory.
 
I dropped the show in season 3 and have tried probably half a dozen times or more to pick it up since then, including at the beginning of seasons 4 and 5. I just can't do it, so for me that puts Disco at the bottom of the franchise. Even the less popular older shows (specifically Voyager and Enterprise) I can find a lot to like/love and there are many episodes I can return to. With Disco the only thing it did that I liked was introduce the SNW characters, and I did end up really enjoying the Season One Starfleet ship designs even if they don't match the era at all. Besides that its a show I just can't connect with at all, a first for the franchise for me.
 
Citiprime said:
Since this is a post-mortem, and admittedly I'm not the biggest fan of this series, but I'm curious and I'm trying to have an open mind about this ... What do fans of Discovery consider to be examples of the series' best storytelling? What are the top-tier episodes of Discovery that people feel are in the conversation with the best episodes from the other series (i.e., "Best of Both Worlds," "The Visitor," "City on the Edge of Forever," etc.)?
Click to expand...
This will be a mix of Consensus Favorites and Personal Favorites.

"Context Is for Kings" (I have to credit THE episode that got me officially hooked)
"Lethe"
"Despite Yourself"
"Will You Take My Hand?" (this one is an Unpopular Opinion)
"Calypso" (technically Short Treks, but I'm still counting it)
"New Eden"
"If Memory Serves"
"Perpetual Infinity" (a personal favorite because my mother died when I was 18, so I don't expect most people to get out of this what I did)
"That Hope Is You, Part I" (especially the final scene)
"People of Earth"
"Terra Firma" (both parts)
"Stormy Weather"
"... But to Connect"
"Rosetta", "Species 10-C", and "Coming Home" all blend together to me, so I'll include them as one.

I'm still processing Season 5. "Face the Strange" would probably be on the list, as would "Labyrinths".

I'd say "Project Daedalus" is probably THE litmus test for a Discovery Fan.
 
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I don't know if I'd say any of these are Best of Both Worlds or City on the Edge of Forever tier exactly, some are guilty pleasures that clicked with me personally, others I just don't remember well enough to make any claims about their storytelling quality. But this is my own personal top ten for Disco:
  1. 2-14 - Such Sweet Sorrow
  2. 1-13 - What's Past is Prologue
  3. 1-09 - Into the Forest I Go
  4. 5-07 - Erigah
  5. 2-09 - Project Daedalus
  6. 1-10 - Despite Yourself
  7. 2-01 - Brother
  8. 4-06 - Stormy Weather
  9. 2-04 - An Obol for Charon
  10. 3-01 - That Hope is You, Part 1
I stopped being able to get invested in Disco's space battles once they installed the flame jets on the bridge, I can't turn my brain off completely, but in the early seasons I got swept along with the chaos during the fights against Control, the Charon and the Sarcophagus ship. Down at the bottom, Obol of Charon was a quieter kind of madness but it still went way off the rails, and That Hope is You, Part 1 promised a season of fun and adventure. It lied, but I forgive it.

For the sake of balance, my least favourite episodes of each season were Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum, Saints of Imperfection, There is a Tide..., All is Possible, and Jinaal.
 
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Discovery was a good series, not bad and not great. I like the other Kurtzman shows (SNW, Picard) better. But I think Discovery was a great experiment, with a storytelling style much different than any other Star Trek series especially in the first 2 seasons.
 
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Season 1 was excellent. Season 2 was not bad. Lorca and Pike did some heavy lifting in those seasons but what I loved about season 1 was that I had no idea where it was going.

Seasons 3~5 were rinse and repeat of season 2. Some big mystery to solve and we are forced to watch a season of melodrama before getting to a highly unsatisfying resolution. Season 3 had limitless potential going forward but it was boring. Seasons 3~5 were basically the Book and Burnham show. Great characters like Stamets got pushed aside for wooden planks such as Book. Evey time Book showed up I rolled my eyes thinking "here we go again". The man has no emotion. His "i love you" to Burnham at the end of the series is delivered so plainly as if he was ordering a cup of coffee.
It's a real shame where the series went in the end. I was on the fence with the visual reboot of the show but season 1 really grabbed me. Future seasons just went on autocruise and relied on flashy effects and action to keep fans.
 
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