this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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Spoilers! Ah, it's okay, I don't really care about it. I did try...
Admit it... you LOOOOOVE whisper-lectures.
Disco is not really a bad show. It's a bad show, a good show, a kind of decent not-star-trek show, and sometimes all of that in a single season. The whiplash is real.
Every once in a while I'd watch Discovery and think oooh this part of this episode is good, they're hitting their stride! They're figuring out what works and what doesn't!
And then it just collapses back into mediocrity or annoyance.
At least SNW has been almost entirely excellent, IMO.
SNW, Lower Decks and Prodigy have all been fantastic, it’s kind of a bummer Disco is the only one to five seasons so far
I've not seen Prodigy yet, and I mostly love LD, although it can be a bit too rick and mortyish for me sometimes. I honestly get the feeling that at any moment Mariner could shout "Wubalubadubdub!! [burp]"
I guess that makes sense because they poached some of the people that made R&M and the network only greenlit LD because they wanted to capture the success of R&M.
SNW is excellent.
Pike and crew are the best part of Discovery, SNW is miles better. Prodigy is so damn good and more Janeway! LD can feel like that but it’s all rapid fire Trek stuff, I rotate through the series’ as the bedtime show and I’ll rewatch an episode of LD and catch a TOS or VOY reference I missed the first time, it’s a Trek fan show that goes to 11 with the memes
LD pulls a bit of The Orville bait-and-switch where the humor never goes away, but there's clearly Star Trek bones under there and over the course of the first season it commits more to that than to being an anarchic romp. Frankly, while I enjoy both, I like LD a lot more than the Orville, which has some of the worst acting I've ever seen on network television, tends to resolve most (though not all) moral dilemmas by just aggressively picking a side, and cannot escape Seth MacFarlane's obsession with American pop culture, circa 1950-2000.
The finale of S1 of SNW is top-tier star trek IMO. They managed to show that even though Pike did everything "right" from his own frame of reference (on the basis that violence can escalate to war and war is to be avoided at all costs so violence must be extremely measured) . The Romulans are operating from a completely different frame, where not pressing an advantage is fatal weakness.
Pike was just not the right man for the job despite his intentions.
I will admit there's a few scenes here and there that were pretty good Trek. Just a shame it's embedded in the rest. I don't even mind the overall idea, just the execution is bad. And some of the resolutions of mysteries are...well, stupid. It's a bit like GoT all over again. I know writers and directors read their fan posts everywhere, so why don't they go with the best fan theories instead of...whatever shit they come up with?
Been watching through and was really thrown by the end of Season 2, where Tilly just... knows a Queen that's integral to the plot? Apparently there's a companion show of short side episodes? (also how the hell is she still a cadet? that whole side plot seems to just have been forgotten except for the occasional remark)
The character was interesting, the show has it's ups and downs, but that's only a tad better than Palpatine showing back up in a special™️ Fortnite event.
If you have extended universe stuff, that's lovely. If you reference it, that's fine. If you rely on it, that's troubling. If I only learn about it because I had to google WTF was happening and whether I'd completely missed an episode, that's bad.
The quality is really just insanely variable. There are some scenes where I’m like “yeah this is 100% exactly what Star Trek is supposed to be”, and then later in the episode something happens that’s just like “wat”. They’ve done some of the coolest concepts that Trek has had, and they’ve also done some of the stupidest. And the technobabble - sometimes it feels like they talked to a subject matter expert, but only listened to a third of what they said. And the deeply frustrating worldbuilding inconsistencies.
And then there’s the time Burnham thought it would be super cool to just start reading Alice in Wonderland aloud from memory. Definitely some deeply questionable weird acting and directing, but also, there are some truly outstanding moments in places.
All of that said:
I must admit I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for the show for two big reasons:It earns a lot of grace with me for its heart, and I also can't help but be entranced by the neverending meta-drama of the writers and producers trying to figure out what they want it to be and committing to absolutely nothing for more than a season.
This jives with my current understanding of Disco as Star Trek: Oops All Crunchberries!
What are crunchberries?
Crunchberries are a part of an American sugary cereal, Cap’n Crunch. They are colorful crunchy balls that were originally introduced to add color and differentiation to the uniform yellows base cereal mix, but became so popular upon release that a new cereal was introduced called Oops All Crunchberries that left out the original yellowy cereal all together.
My point is that Discovery’s essence as a show is that it can’t be nailed down to one central concept. Every major arc is the sort of thing one might have built an entire show around, but Disco won’t be bothered to stick to one, so it just says “screw it, let’s do them all!”. It wants to be all over the map - that is the show working by design. It’s an interesting idea, and not one I would begrudge older Trek fans for disliking, but it did confuse the shit out of me along the way before I figured this out.
Single season? Sometimes a single episode. It's great.
This is a great description. The conceptual design of the 10C aliens and the problem solving required to communicate with them was very cool and interesting. But for every one of those you have to tolerate a time bug or the fucking burn being caused by one dude getting really sad.
Agreed. Prime example is Booker, who is best man, worst man, conscientious objector, space terrorist, scoundrel, hero, resourceful, feckless, social pariah, best friend, the right man for the job, the worst man for the job, and all-round good guy, at the same time.
Edit: after typing that I'm starting to think that writers are having fistfights over where to take his character.