Just have to rant a bit. Started watching this last month; just finished episode 13. I wasn't a big fan from the beginning, but figured I'd keep an open mind. Oh, and spoilers throughout, so if you haven't seen it and actually want to, don't read further. Some DS9 spoilers also.
Imagine if you were watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then about halfway through Season 2, you find out that Captain Picard has been an evil imposter the entire time, and then shortly after you find this out, he dies. Sounds pretty dumb, huh? You might think "but hey, 13 episodes into season 1 isn't the same as halfway through season 2!" But it is if you consider the total percentage of episodes that had gone by. Discovery isn't 7 years of full 25 episode seasons. It's 5 years of 10-15 episode seasons. By the time you find this out, the show is basically 1/5 over. Deep Space Nine had a rather great arc where you find out that a few characters including Julian have actually been changelings for the past few episodes. That's a twist that actually works quite well. The real Julian is still there, captured and working to escape. The fact that their primary enemy had the ability to infiltrate them in exactly that manner was well-established. That didn't just take a primary character and say that this character was never even this character the whole time you knew him!
Star Trek has never really had just 1 main character, but if you did have to pick one from any series, the answer would be The Captain. And while Discovery never tried to pretend that Lorca was the main character, he was still The Captain, and this was supposed to matter. But no, who cares. Apparently captains are about as replaceable as a Red Shirt. There never even really was a captain! And if that's not bad enough, they did basically the same thing twice within a couple episodes, by also saying that Tyler was never Tyler the whole time we've seen him, he's actually Klingon in disguise.
It's super hard to actually like or care about any of the characters if they're willing to just do stuff like that.
Star Trek: Discovery
Re: Star Trek: Discovery
Finished season 1. What surprised me more than it should is just how much like Picard this was. I know it's a lot of the same people making both, but man. Aside from the very distinct visual look that they shared, the overall season plot went much the same way. Both were something of a season-long arc, yet one that didn't actually start until a few episodes in. And then, the arc ends in the second-to-last episode, and suddenly the final episode is about something different. And then the next season is (presumably since I haven't started it yet), a whole different and unrelated thing.
Re: Star Trek: Discovery
Finished season 2, and I'm going to keep ranting. First off, did you know that Starfleet had always made its most important decisions by consulting with an AI Fits right in with everything we know about Star Fleet from the TOS days, right? And hey, the big bad guy of the season is that AI gone rogue. How about the part where they see some advanced technology, beyond anything they'd seen before, and conclude "it must be from the future, because we've never seen anything that advanced". I guess they forgot that other alien species exist? And that some are more advanced than they are? But who cares, because of course they were right, it was from the future.
And then the worst part... you remember that episode of The Simpsons where it turned out Skinner wasn't Skinner at all, but an imposter? And the real Skinner came back home, but no one liked the real Skinner, so they kicked him out of town, and then the mayor declared that from now on, the fake Skinner will be the real Skinner and everyone will promise to pretend like none of it ever happened? I've often heard people talk about that as being the moment that The Simpsons' good years ended, and it was so bad that it became the start of The Simpsons being bad. Well hey, because Discovery had been continually introducing continuity issues that made no sense whatsoever with anything we know about Star Trek from the other shows that take place later, they just did the exact same thing! Discovery disappears from their timeline, and Star Fleet promises that all the advanced technology and events that happened and the people involved will simply never be spoken of again. Whew, glad we avoided those plot holes!
Up next, season 3, in which half the crew is gone, including the captain ONCE AGAIN. I always did feel that the real problem with TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY is that they didn't replace the captain each season!
And then the worst part... you remember that episode of The Simpsons where it turned out Skinner wasn't Skinner at all, but an imposter? And the real Skinner came back home, but no one liked the real Skinner, so they kicked him out of town, and then the mayor declared that from now on, the fake Skinner will be the real Skinner and everyone will promise to pretend like none of it ever happened? I've often heard people talk about that as being the moment that The Simpsons' good years ended, and it was so bad that it became the start of The Simpsons being bad. Well hey, because Discovery had been continually introducing continuity issues that made no sense whatsoever with anything we know about Star Trek from the other shows that take place later, they just did the exact same thing! Discovery disappears from their timeline, and Star Fleet promises that all the advanced technology and events that happened and the people involved will simply never be spoken of again. Whew, glad we avoided those plot holes!
Up next, season 3, in which half the crew is gone, including the captain ONCE AGAIN. I always did feel that the real problem with TOS, TNG, DS9, and VOY is that they didn't replace the captain each season!
Re: Star Trek: Discovery
Season 3 was a marginal improvement. Going to the future helped it feel fresh, and more like its own thing. Although it did definitely give a vibe of "ok so we keep messing up with continuity things that don't make any sense, so we'll just avoid that by sending the ship to the far future where those things don't matter anymore". It still had plenty of flaws, but definitely better.
I feel like the discontinuity between seasons, along with the seasons being shorter, really hurts. Now from what I've seen of most modern "TV" (which isn't a whole lot really), this isn't as much Discovery's fault as it is modern "TV". I put "TV" in quotes for a couple reasons... one because streaming is a different medium than actual television. But also because the actual content being produced is simply less like what used to be called a TV show and more like a bunch of miniseries. That's a tangent somewhat, and I'm sure I sound like an old man yelling at clouds a bit. But to get back to the point...
Some of the best things about TNG and DS9 simply don't work in this new format. Every episode now is non-stop action and life-or-death situations designed to drive the overall season's arc forward. TNG and DS9 had plenty of time for characters to simply sit around and hang out; that's when we got all the character growth. Now, we just get to see how characters respond to a crisis; we don't get to see nearly as much about who those characters are. I'm assuming that's the reason I can barely remember half of their names outside of the main 3-4.
And it's not that I don't like serialized television or Trek. My favorite parts of DS9 are the last few seasons with the Dominion War. But even within those seasons, there were several episodes with self-contained stories that weren't just about the Dominion War. And even within individual episodes about the War, not every scene was dedicated to talking about it or showing it.
Anyway, 2 seasons remain. I'm not happy that they're having yet another new captain. Aside from making it hard to feel cohesion between seasons, it also just makes Starfleet look like a bit of a sloppy organization... "hey we just take turns being captain now, isn't it fun!"
I feel like the discontinuity between seasons, along with the seasons being shorter, really hurts. Now from what I've seen of most modern "TV" (which isn't a whole lot really), this isn't as much Discovery's fault as it is modern "TV". I put "TV" in quotes for a couple reasons... one because streaming is a different medium than actual television. But also because the actual content being produced is simply less like what used to be called a TV show and more like a bunch of miniseries. That's a tangent somewhat, and I'm sure I sound like an old man yelling at clouds a bit. But to get back to the point...
Some of the best things about TNG and DS9 simply don't work in this new format. Every episode now is non-stop action and life-or-death situations designed to drive the overall season's arc forward. TNG and DS9 had plenty of time for characters to simply sit around and hang out; that's when we got all the character growth. Now, we just get to see how characters respond to a crisis; we don't get to see nearly as much about who those characters are. I'm assuming that's the reason I can barely remember half of their names outside of the main 3-4.
And it's not that I don't like serialized television or Trek. My favorite parts of DS9 are the last few seasons with the Dominion War. But even within those seasons, there were several episodes with self-contained stories that weren't just about the Dominion War. And even within individual episodes about the War, not every scene was dedicated to talking about it or showing it.
Anyway, 2 seasons remain. I'm not happy that they're having yet another new captain. Aside from making it hard to feel cohesion between seasons, it also just makes Starfleet look like a bit of a sloppy organization... "hey we just take turns being captain now, isn't it fun!"