Your postmortem thoughts on DISCO
- Thread starter Charles Phipps
- Start date
At least season 3 of Picard was a bit more exciting. Even if most did come from nostalgia.
I still think the story for season 5 of Discovery would have worked better for the first season of Picard.
One thing I'll give to the Discovery creators is that they were bold and took a big risk in their approach starting with the first episode. They had to know a lot of the older fans wouldn't like it and were thinking about drawing a younger fanbase in the future. Did tying Burhnam to Spock really help that much? I'm glad they didn't go back to that in the later seasons.
What made that even weirder in S1 was that they originally had a rule in place that Spock would never make an appearance. Which is bizarre. Why would you introduce a new character as the adoptive sister of an iconic franchise character and NOT have them share a scene??
So when they decided to drop that rule and have Spock make appearances I did commend them for actually trying to make use of their relation in some capacity. Then of course comes S3 and her relationship with Spock no longer holds any relevance. I’m sure that was by design.
Say what you will of the writers of DISCO, they actually did try to listen to fan criticisms and addressed them. It wasn’t always perfect (the makeover of Klingons in S2 is very nonsensical and at odds with what we saw in S1).
The only real criticism they seemed to actively ignore was how Burnham was always the focal character. I don’t mind the fact that she was, and I don’t think every show needs to conform to Berman era ensemble dynamics. They could go back to the old method of TOS having three main cast members and I’d be okay with that. Hell, ENTERPRISE might as well have dropped Reed, Sato, and (especially) Mayweather altogether and that wouldn’t have made a substantial difference in the show.
It battles it out with Enterprise for me – but, you know what, I did eventually go back and finish Enterprise. I have a hard time imaging I ever will with Discovery.
I feel that was the greatest failure of DISCO that they always chased the people who hated the show versus its fans.
What if you LIKED The Klingon War, Section 31, and Michael's relationship with Sarek?
For me Star Trek at it's best can be described as "great characters, on great sci-fi adventures".
Discovery had great characters.
It utterly sucked though at sci-fi, as it felt nothing was ever thought through, and any sci-fi concept only used as backdrop on a moment-by-moment basis.
Worse, it also sucked at "adventure", as only very, very few episodes managed to tell a strong, exciting story.
In the end, like the Kelvin movies, it was the second big chance to bring Trek back into the limelight, and, like the Kelvin movies, it managed to do so for a very short moment, only then to completely fizzle out and disappear into obscurity.
Discovery had great characters.
It utterly sucked though at sci-fi, as it felt nothing was ever thought through, and any sci-fi concept only used as backdrop on a moment-by-moment basis.
Worse, it also sucked at "adventure", as only very, very few episodes managed to tell a strong, exciting story.
In the end, like the Kelvin movies, it was the second big chance to bring Trek back into the limelight, and, like the Kelvin movies, it managed to do so for a very short moment, only then to completely fizzle out and disappear into obscurity.
You can blame me then! I didn’t dislike the show when it first came out, but I knew what I didn’t like!
At least Ford built something. Musk has done nothing buy buy things and slap his name on them. But this is veering into TNZ territory. lol
I just think whoever wrote that episode bought into the propaganda and here we are. The joke that Lorca is from the Mirror Universe is it makes sense he would worship Musk is funny, but I doubt that was the actual intent.
We got as much Klingon War as we were ever going to get, so no one missed out there. The series spent some time setting up a Section 31 spin-off, so that certainly wasn't abandoned. And Sarek stuck around for two seasons, so they weren't racing to get him out the door.
But I think if Discovery really wanted to focus on only pleasing its own fans, it wouldn't have had anything to do with Star Trek in the first place. Tying into a franchise purely to take advantage of its built-in fanbase and then driving the existing fans away is counter-productive.
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DISCO has many flaws but it can't exist without Star Trek. Everything in the show is tied to something related to Star Trek.
Both Discovery and Strange New Worlds should have divorced themselves from continuity and "boldly" (to use a familiar term) done their own thing.
It would still be Star Trek, just a different version of Star Trek. And they could have the freedom to do whatever they wanted to do and it would have opened up all the possibilities to do Xenomorph Gorn, fishhead Klingons and whatever else they could think of.
And, honestly, in the end I think that's what will end up happening with this property. I truly believe some future version of Star Trek is going to shunt at least some of the Paramount+ stuff into its own reality and not feel compelled to have to live with "The Burn" and the choices Discovery made for the future, and retcon it into its own reality.
It would still be Star Trek, just a different version of Star Trek. And they could have the freedom to do whatever they wanted to do and it would have opened up all the possibilities to do Xenomorph Gorn, fishhead Klingons and whatever else they could think of.
And, honestly, in the end I think that's what will end up happening with this property. I truly believe some future version of Star Trek is going to shunt at least some of the Paramount+ stuff into its own reality and not feel compelled to have to live with "The Burn" and the choices Discovery made for the future, and retcon it into its own reality.
Oh almost surely.
In fact, given Star Trek's own rules for Time Travel it should already have done so with the first timeline change Michael's mom made.
I think CBS noticed well that fans demanded a “Prime Universe” setting and went out of their way to assure fans this was what it would be. It was all about branding. They might have feared fans would reject a confirmed third Trek universe apart from Prime and Kelvin. At least, that’s my guess.
Absolutely. That's a choice they made though. They could've easily told the same story in their own brand new setting and they wouldn't have even had to change the uniforms or Klingons. Keep Sarek, call him Keras. Michael Burnham is now Kcops' brother. If audiences are asking 'Who is Kcops and why should I care that Burnham is his sister?' then that's a problem with the story.
The Kelvin Universe movies had some success with that, but I think one thing that makes Star Trek (and Star Wars) special is that it's not a mess of reboots and alternate continuities like you get with other long running universes. New authors add to the story, but the history remains intact. Every new series is a jumping on point for new viewers but every old series happened. That's something that should be celebrated, encouraged and protected.
It’s unfortunate that Disco got saddled with being the first true “social media era” Star Trek (not counting the JJ movies) and all the good and REALLY bad that comes along with that. But someone had to be first I suppose.
For me the show ended up being much better on rewatch except for S2 which got so much worse (thank god for Anson Mount the lone bright light). But I would still rank the series below Enterprise and right about the same as Voyager. But that’s not a diss. I don’t hate any Star Trek I just like some series better than others.
The single biggest mistake they ever made was making the show a prequel and I don’t say that simply because of the visual reboot of the TOS era it started. And IMO nothing proves that more than how much better the show got in the 32nd Century setting. It very much feels…to me…like they wasted 2 seasons. Ideally the show would have been set 25 years or so after Nemesis and if you had to tie MB to a classic character, make her the daughter of Sisko or Janeway or Geordi, etc…
in my head canon, Disco and it’s mirror-verse are a part of a different quantum reality like what Worf encountered in TNG S7. Same as SNW.
I do think SMG was fantastic in every season, even when they made Burnham a grating know it all in S2. And her chemistry with Ajala was off the charts good. Arguably as good or better than Troi/Riker, Odo/Kira and Jadzia/Worf, etc…
That said…the best character was clearly Jet Reno.
I still think it’s funny that after how badly they bungled the Klingons and the reaction they got to them, Kurtzman essentially took his ball and went home with them over the last 3 seasons.
I don’t know if I will ever revisit Disco as much as I revisit the Classic 5 or Lower Decks. But given enough time I’ll rewatch eps from time to time especially once they release the series boxed set on blu ray.
For me the show ended up being much better on rewatch except for S2 which got so much worse (thank god for Anson Mount the lone bright light). But I would still rank the series below Enterprise and right about the same as Voyager. But that’s not a diss. I don’t hate any Star Trek I just like some series better than others.
The single biggest mistake they ever made was making the show a prequel and I don’t say that simply because of the visual reboot of the TOS era it started. And IMO nothing proves that more than how much better the show got in the 32nd Century setting. It very much feels…to me…like they wasted 2 seasons. Ideally the show would have been set 25 years or so after Nemesis and if you had to tie MB to a classic character, make her the daughter of Sisko or Janeway or Geordi, etc…
in my head canon, Disco and it’s mirror-verse are a part of a different quantum reality like what Worf encountered in TNG S7. Same as SNW.
I do think SMG was fantastic in every season, even when they made Burnham a grating know it all in S2. And her chemistry with Ajala was off the charts good. Arguably as good or better than Troi/Riker, Odo/Kira and Jadzia/Worf, etc…
That said…the best character was clearly Jet Reno.
I still think it’s funny that after how badly they bungled the Klingons and the reaction they got to them, Kurtzman essentially took his ball and went home with them over the last 3 seasons.
I don’t know if I will ever revisit Disco as much as I revisit the Classic 5 or Lower Decks. But given enough time I’ll rewatch eps from time to time especially once they release the series boxed set on blu ray.
The internet was invented to argue about Star Trek and I'm only slightly exaggerating.
