Your postmortem thoughts on DISCO

[Quantum21]

I thought Season 1 got off to a bad star, just to much pointless grim darkness for me. I think this peaked around The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry, which I would also put as my least favorite episode of the series. It got better around Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad and I think stayed pretty enjoyable from there on out. I felt like it made more appropriate use of violence and having our characters being tested by what they're going through much better in the Mirror Universe stuff than earlier. The ending felt a little rushed but it was mostly fine.

Season 2 is probably my favorite season of the show. I like the mystery, I like all the new characters introduced, I liked the big spaceship battle at the end, and I overall had a really good time.

Season 3 was a bit of a miss for me. I think of all of them this is the one that would have benefited most from the old 20+ episode seasons. They're trying to do too much and some of it was really good, but it never really came together. I really like Terra Firma I/II but in the grander context of the stuff around the Emerald Chain and the Burn I think it was maybe a mistake to heavily commit two episodes to Georgiou's story.

Season 4 had a weak start for me, but got significantly better as it went along. The scenes of Tarka's backstory in the Galactic Barrier are some of the best I think I've seen Trek period, it might be my favorite episode of the series just for that.

Season 5 was consistently enjoyable, I liked the way it balanced connecting back to older works and building out the 32nd Century setting.

Overall I think Discovery did a fine job, but had one of the most drastic changes I've seen in spirit and tone of a tv series. It went from incredibly dark and violent at the beginning to extremely optimistic and wearing its heart on its sleeve by the end.

The costuming and makeup are the best Trek's ever made. I didn't care for the Season 1 uniforms or the Klingon look but so much work went into every detail of all of it, and the ability to have a character like Saru with so much screentime is amazing.

I'd probably put it above The Animated Series, Enterprise, Picard, and Voyager in my personal rankings.

I thought season 1 of DSC was an immediate success. It didn't suffer from the usual teething period, and by mid-season, when it took a break it reached a fever pitch of buzz.

After that it made dozens of best of year lists, and awards and so on. It was the first real season 1 franchise triumph since the 60s!

 

[donners22]

I finally got around to watching season 5. It was decent but pretty forgettable; Face the Strange was the only outstanding episode.

Overall, it's probably my third favourite Trek series behind DS9 and TOS. It does frustrate me though because the first two seasons were so good (aside from the inability to finish season arcs effectively), but it never reached those heights again.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

After that it made dozens of best of year lists, and awards and so on.

Dozens? Really?

 

[Alex1066]

I tried so hard to like DISCO. There are things that I like about it. I generally like the cast, most of the characters, the production values, and some of the visual aesthetics. Most of the posts on this forum has explained the problems with the show better than I can. However, I would just add that the problems that I had with Discovery were present in the other modern ST shows to one degree or another.

I think the problems lie fundamentally with a studio that seems to want Trek to be more of a quippy sci fi action series that generally focuses on melodrama rather than good sci fi storytelling. Paramount seems so desperate to broaden the appeal of ST that they forgot the things that people liked about it in the first place. (looking at you, Section 31). To aid in this venture, they contracted Secret Hideout to remake the franchise into its present form.

The modern form of Star Trek seems to have two modes. In the first mode, what I think of as Star Trek Dystopia mode, they try to make something new and different, dark and edgy. Lots of space battles, morally ambiguous characters, etc. DISCO S1 and the first two seasons of Picard fall into this first mode. It seems that this is what they really want to produce, the problem is that most of the audience rejected or tuned out of this conception of Trek.

When their new ideas don't work they shift into Trek Nostalgia mode. Lower Decks, Picard S3, etc. This is where they try to remind audiences what they like about the franchise in the most superficial ways possible. It seems that this mode works better for the masses and that is fine, but I wonder how long the franchise can run on the recycled fumes of its past glory.

I think the two modes kind of evolved with Discovery, where they tried to balance the unpopular new tone with classic characters in the second season and then apparently determined that the problem was that the show was not different enough so they moved it into the 29th century where the show floundered for a few seasons without finding a large enough audience to keep it going.

To me, Paramount screwed up by tossing decades of worldbuilding out the window in favor of their new conception. Continuity aside, New Trek does not have any of the feel of classic Trek. I think they would have been better served to introduce the Star Trek that people were familiar with and then gradually modernize the franchise while, hopefully, bringing along old fans and creating new ones. I just dont think either Paramount nor Secret Hideout were up to the task.

To close, I am happy for anybody who likes Discovery or any of the rest of the modern franchise. I just think it could and should have been better that what they served us by and large. Whoever buys out Paramount will face some tough choices concerning the future of the franchise. My hope is that they try to learn from the mistakes and come up with some great Trek that can get the franchise back on track.