""Discovery" may not have felt like Trek to start with, " Topic

…but it does now.

"Last year "Star Trek: Discovery" began with a few elements that didn't seem very "Trek". It spotlighted a hero other than the captain. It followed an ongoing arc rather than standalone episodes. And for a ship called USS Discovery, there was very little seeking out new life and new civilisations.

But now the first season has drawn to a climax with episode 15, "Will You Take My Hand?" it seems like the show wasn't about discovering new life after all. It was about discovering what made "Star Trek", "Star Trek". And in the season 1 finale the show came full circle back to its own genesis and to "The Original Series".

With spoilers, here's some thoughts about season 1 -- and some questions for season 2…."
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Also….

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Wonder to see Young Spock….

Amicalement
Armand

More ads for STD from Tango. No Tango, this is not Star Trek. It may, or may not, be passable sci-fi in some dark sort of way. It's obvious you really enjoy it, and I'm happy for you. I just wish they hadn't misnamed it Star Trek.😄

Except that it is Star Trek. It stands on the shoulders of all the franchises that have gone before it.

I just wish the ship designs, especially the Klingon ones, weren't so awful. They are truly forgettable, which is a real shame.

Discovery's shares a problem with many series and films today, the primacy of ideas over story.

"Wouldn't it be awesome if ?" That's how you sell a series, an episode or even a scene in an episode.

You can watch Discovery and see exactly where somebody inserted an idea instead of writing a proper story.

"Wouldn't it be awesome if they made Georgiou a full captain ?"
"What if instead of what Discovery are told the plan is, they have a different plan ?"
"What if Burnham manages to defuse the plan ?"

It's mostly a string of reveals with some minor drama and character work thrown in mostly as filler.

The pilot is a good example. They started off with the idea "What if somebody in the Federation makes a critical mistake, starts off a war with the Klingons and gets the blame for it ?"

Everything then become subservient to this build-up. From the get go the Federation are "Happy Space travellers" who come in peace and therefore nothing bad can happen to them. They then get their teeth kicked in, which is always good for the drama quota. And then we get to the bit where the Vulcans for no good reason have been holding back useful information about how to deal with the Klingons, diplomat and political leader Sarek saw no need in sharing this with the Federation ? How wonderfully impractical !

Notice that Burnham's trial is expedited in ten seconds tops because there is no way that Burnham is going to get convicted, unless they tied up her lawyer in a broom cupboard and burned critical evidence.

Here's where the notion that ideas are enough to sustain any narrative breaks down. They have a cool idea, but getting there is too difficult or the idea breaks down, so rather than change things, they just expedite it and ramp up the drama from the next scene onwards so nobody would go "Hold on a minute, this doesn't hold up !"

And we get another arbitrary character setting, because by that same next scene the name Burnham is almost a kill trigger for 99% of the Federation all of a sudden.

Happy, carefree space explorers get a serious case of the nasty and spiteful apparently … One reversal and holy smokes we're burning witches at the stake, so far for progress.

If you must deconstruct the idea that the Federation is concerted effort by people to be more enlightened do it in a proper and mature way, not by arbitrarily switching people's personalities 180° whenever the plot requires it.

Like I said, too busy with their ideas and too lazy to work it out properly just throw some extra drama at it and hope nobody notices.

Pfffft, whatever you say…. BUT, I liked it! And I'm really, really looking forward to more of it!!

"I just wish the ship designs, especially the Klingon ones, weren't so awful. They are truly forgettable, which is a real shame."

This. I just can't get past this and the redesigning of the Klingons in general. No thanks.

Cyrus the Great as you say It stands on the shoulders of all the franchises that have gone before it but in doing so it CRAPPED all over those franchises IMHO.

I admit there were moments(not many)that I liked but as a whole it was BAD.

The main thing I hated were the Klingons(if you can call them that)the ships were horrid and the Klingon's themselves were no better.

And I won't go into the Federation.

Cyrus the Great as you say It stands on the shoulders of all the franchises that have gone before it but in doing so it CRAPPED all over those franchises IMHO.

Yeah, I get the commercial reasons why they did this, but the setting choice was really stupid. There was no need to reboot TOS into a Kelvinverse-type setting and do so much re-imagining of stuff that had already been done. It's funny how the word "canon" has gotten a bad rap, but I think of it as consistency.

Trek established a setting/universe with TOS in the 1960s, and then has been advancing in tech-look and storyline since then through hundreds of episodes, a dozen TOS timeline and x2 Kelvinverse major motion pictures. That establishes firm precedence and plot lines, a history, against which any Trek will always be measured.

It could have been a source from which to draw for new stories and ideas, to ties things together, but instead STD (or "DISCO" as the studio prefers) throws all of that out in favor of a shallow reboot that re-imagines TOS, ignores all that has come before, has already had to run to the Mirrorverse to keep breathing, and gets attention by positioning itself as basically "woke" scifi…and clueless.

Look, the first female Captain! Uh, Janeway??

Look, the first black lead! Uh, Sisko??

Look, the first black female officer! Uh, Uhuru??

Meh.

All avoidable if they'd chosen to set this Trek-like series after DS9, then they could take it any direction they wanted to.

1. Want a darker Federation? Then use the disruption to Federation society caused by the brutal war with the Dominion which saw mass destruction and shape changing assassins attacking Federation officials. Heck, you probably wouldn't need the Mirrorverse since DS9 already established the presence of secret cabals within the Federation that were willing to kill to gain power.

2.Want even more warlike Klingons, even a Klingon War? Hard to get there, already enough established, but you could have taken the whole Kahless plotline up in a post Dominion War setting rather easily, when Klingon society would be open to someone claiming to be Kahless and who promised to bring back their golden days of Empire. Could have led to plotlines and stories with civil war in the Klingon Empire and the Federation sending in STD to support a faction, spy, etc.

3. Spore drive and new tech with lens flares? No worries, brand new stuff with no comparisons to TOS.

All so stupid, what a waste, STD/DISCO could have been sooo much better…

Well, there are those, like me, that really like it. There are those who really dislike it. I don't think any minds are going to change.
I will leave you with this.

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Calico this made me spill my tea 😁.

"More ads for STD from Tango"

Let's say that line reads a lot different over here 😊😷

Well, there are those, like me, that really like it. There are those who really dislike it. I don't think any minds are going to change.
I will leave you with this.

LOL! Like any former Star Trek actor, most of whom peaked in their Trek roles, are gonna dis the new show when Trek conventions and Trek stuff makes up a bunch of their income stream.

I guess I'm not in the really dislike category, more that the show is a let down from what it could have been. Oh well.

It's not my fault that the series suffers from sloppy writing, the gaps are there for all to notice. I could easily dismiss it by saying "I hate it", which I don't, but I do like to explain why I find it lacking. I often hear people say that are no mistakes, you only need to read the subtext. If the crew of a starship makes a stupid mistake "Oh, it's the early days of the Federation, they are still learning how to discern what works and what doesn't …"

If you rely on subtext, you better make sure you have it underpinned. Unless you do at least allude to it in some way the subtext is a free-for-all and it's easier to assume that if the crew act like they have been forcibly made to hold the idiot stick so you can have a nice dramatic moment for the audience to gasp at, it's probably because the writers couldn't think of anything better. Appeal to subtext borders dangerously on apologism.

Another claim I have heard several times is that "Well the old series had some terrible stinkers in their day !" So ? Did the forces that caused these stinkers come back to haunt the writes today ? Is there a magical curse that forces you to write three bad seasons before the show gets any decent ? Aren't we in a perpetual race upwards towards getting it better and better all the time ? So what's the excuse ? Dad lost a race once, therefore I came last ? Oh and don't forget, if you say the older series had stinkers, you admit by default current writing is just as bad, just saying …

Discovery does have a few good points, the imagery is pretty amazing, it looks even better than many of the films. They have some pretty good actors like Doug Jones, Tilly, Georgiou, Burnham etc. I think they are much better than some of the material they got.

I'm not really against the visual upgrade, you can get only so much traction out of the 1960's original design, on the other hand they probably would have spared themselves a lot of trouble by simply stating that this was all occurring post-TNG which might have made for a better fit overall.

I have have heard a rumor that this series is actually tied to the 09 Trek movies for certain copyright reasons and that's why they can't actually use anything post TOS. Take it with a customary grain of salt.

There is a huge potential for new ideas and even exploring old ones from another perspective. Personally I think they approached it much the same way DC/Warner did with the comic book universe, they were much too worried about the Stat Trek universe being far too constraining to modern writing standards that they didn't know where to concentrate, and rather than embrace Star Trek's strengths (fifty years and counting, they gotta have done something right) they very tepidly tried to subvert these conventions and it wasn't even clever. Like I said in my OP, they are very good at building up to the idea they had during their brainstorming sessions where undoubtedly somebody must have shouted "this episode writes itself !", everybody high fived and they had pizza, but when it comes to the aftermath it usually fizzles out and returns to an uneasy status quo.

Maybe next season they hit their stride and learn to work with the material and come up with really interesting episodes.

LOL! Like any former Star Trek actor, most of whom peaked in their Trek roles, are gonna dis the new show when Trek conventions and Trek stuff makes up a bunch of their income stream.

Didn't stop Mark Hamill.

Dang, I forgot what role Mark Hamill played on Star Trek -- can you remind me??

He was the Joker.

He was the Joker.

bing bing bing bing!!

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

OK, I have watched the entire 1st Season and suspended judgement for the incredibly bad decision making on the part of Starfleet and Federaation leadership, but the finale left me blinking in disbelief. OK, our enemy the Klingons (BTW I'm probably one of the few who likes the new Klingons) are about to reach Earth. Even the strictest hidebound Starfleet functionary acknowledges that their attack will be total and merciless beyond all imagining. Billions and billions of humans will die, horribly, be eaten for dinner or at best enslaved for life, while the Vulcans, Andorians and Tellurites will soon follow as the central nerve system of the Federation is destroyed.

So when presented with an opportunity to do it to them before they do it to us, saving literally trillions of lives,the crew of Discovery decides that our principles are more important than the survival of the human race.

Are you kidding me? Where do writers get these ideas of human behavior. As someone once said, the Constitution is not a suicide pact and neither is the Federation Charter presumably. Would the Russians or the Chinese hesitate for a second before blowing Qo'Nos (Sp) up? Even American leadership would feel a moment of angst, but still press the button and they would be right.

Just once I'd like to see pragmatic, realistic human reactions to having to do distasteful things in a Star Trek show. One example comes to mind: Sisko concealing the murder of the Romulan ambassador by Garek in DS9 and allowing it to be perceived as an attack by the Dominion thus bringing the Romulans into the war on our side.

Maybe it was roddenberry idea?…. he always show as an idealist…

Amicalement
Armand

+1 Patrick R