Just once I'd like a post where everyone is chill and positive about stuff instead of focusing on negative
Edit: I dunno why I expect people to ever be capable of being positive anymore. Dunno why I bother.
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Risa
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Come on'n get your jamaharon on! There are no real rules—just don't break the weather control network.
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I gave discovery a chance. I ended up quitting around the third season.
It wasn't just that it was bad. It was how it was bad. 90s trek did an extremely good job at discussing important and relatable concepts through the lens of sci-fi. It also did a great job of introducing us to fairly whacky and diverse ideas that made space seem vast and unknowable.
Discovery seemed to abandon a lot of that. It's kinda there on the surface, but under further inspection it falls apart. The discussion of serious topics was extremely shallow to the point where it felt low effort. The entire world seems to revolve around what the main characters are doing, which makes the entire setting feel small. A lot of the justification for this was spending that time on better character development, but when I stopped watching every character except Saru felt sort of underdeveloped.
Not to mention it does things that made me feel like that writers either didn't know or didn't care about previous star trek TV shows. Those Klingons neither looked nor acted like Klingons. Most of the discovery crew don't act like Starfleet officers. I finally lost it at the Burn. I guess it's technically canon, but it really doesn't feel that way. We saw multiple different types of FTL methods in 90s trek, and we saw Wesely grow dilithium as part of a high school science project. Plus the idea of there being one element the entire galaxy uses for Warp travel, again, makes the entire setting feel extremely small.
Finally, I feel like Discovery was being reviewed by people who were more interested in propagating the culture war than watching Star Trek. I remember reading articles gushing about how Burnham was the first black captain. Or how Tilly breaks the mold because all other major female characters in Trek were more stereotypical women. Or how the negative reaction to Discovery was from bigoted fans too fragile to watch a show that doesn't mostly consist of cis straight white men.
The last part was the most infuriating. It's incredibly obvious they were toning down a lot of what I star trek to appeal to the mass market. Fine. I've watched a lot of mid sci-fi. I watched all three JJ Abrams Star Trek movies, the first two sequel star wars movies, Dark Matter before it got good, etc. However it's infuriating being attacked for it.
The older star trek also usually had one story in each episode, and just a little bit of an overarching plot, so much of the time of the episode was actually used to tell a story.
Discovery adopted this soap-like storytelling, where there is one long story broken up into episodes. Each episode has something interesting at the start, then just a lot of filler, and when it finally starts to get interesting again the episode is over and they spoil half of the next episode with the "coming next" segment.
So instead of making something people want to watch because its interesting, they just manipulate you to watch it because they string you along.
Picard does the same, but at least they have some interesting content in the middle of an episode sometimes.
Yeah I think their insistence on a low episode serial format is a huge part of the problem. DS9 is a great example of how narrative storytelling can work in Star Trek, but it only came after they did years of character development and world building.
I think SNW S2 has done a good job taking a step back and just having individual episodes that let the setting and character grow. "Under the Cloak of War" was one of the best Trek episodes of all time.
Yes, Strange New Worlds is the best new Star Trek imo