Star Trek: Discovery Catch-All [Spoilers]

While there is a bit of scaling issues, it's been implied in the past that Discovery's secondary hull contains a lot of empty space. The notion of a starship having empty space within the inner hull dates back to the old TNG tech manual, where the empty space was empty in anticipation of the installation of new habitation or work modules.

The turbolift scene was like

Star Trek is dumb as rocks and I love every single bit of it, I don't care.

It used to be way less dumb

I mean...

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I liked the end credits.

I meant the Next Gen - DS9 years

PaladinTom wrote:

I meant the Next Gen - DS9 years

Yeah, way less silly.

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I liked this season, but it’s not a good sign that apart from Saru, Michael, Stamets, Hugh and Tilly I still have a hard time remembering the other crew members’ names. They tried give them more screen time, but I really have no idea who they are.

Is Tilly a lieutenant now?

Just my 'pinion yall. Not judging.

I also said “less dumb” not “silly.” And I meant the overall storytelling of the series. I actually quite like the silly humor and interactions among the Disco crew.

I enjoyed the finale. Good action. Burnham is probably my favorite ST character. I'll agree that I'd like them to move away from the big arc stuff because it is less satisfying then just the show and characters.

Star Trek has never been consistent in its ethos, science or anything really. No reason to get upset that Discovery just continues the tradition in that manner.

Although this season has definitely hit ‘the dumb’ on more than one occasion I’ve actually thoroughly enjoyed it, and thought as finales went it was pretty good. The - er - inconsistencies in the storytelling don’t detract too much from the central plot I guess, and it all moves along quite happily.

Discovery does try to do its own thing and it’s so much better for it, and these season especially it feels like it’s finding it’s own voice. I know it’s obvious but when you look at what they’ve done with Picard, it’s just all around better.

I did love that Gray finally got to interact with people and I look forward to a VOY doctor style holo emitter in the next season so we can see him more.

But that turbolift scene? Cummon, there would not be vast swaths of empty space inside a spaceship. Every time DISCO went into battle those suckers would be ping ponging around, causing insane amounts of internal damage. Who the heck thought that was a good design choice?!

I think the turbolift scene was supposed to be inside the Veridian, the Emerald Chain command ship. Discovery was being carried in the Veridian's cargo bay during those scenes. Not 100% on that, but we were bugging out about that when it first happened and that's the only thing that makes sense to me.

The season finale worked for me, at least it worked a lot better than the last few episodes have.

I've been having the damnedest time trying to figure out why this season hasn't been working for me, and I'm just not quite seeing it. It feels like they're not quite using their time efficiently. They really want to be a character-focused drama, but it never feels like characters develop naturally. We'll get an interesting setup, and what should be a satisfying resolution, but there's rarely more than a single point in between those two, which is why I think a lot of the show feels kind of hollow.

Very little about Adira worked for me this season. I don't understand the ruse that they enacted to send out a Federation signal. I'm not really sure why they're on Discovery. I cannot do anything but react with horror to the idea of being stuck with your high school boyfriend inside your head for the rest of eternity. The parental plotline with Stamets is just strange, man. Adira hasn't shown any sign that they need or want any kind of parental relationship. Stamets kind of jumps the gun about claiming to be Adira's father. Again, they have kind of an interesting starting point, and they know where they want to go, but they don't quite connect the dots in between. I think the representation is great, but they're really at sea with this character.

The plotline for this season seems to be an allusion to Ursula K LeGuin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, but without any of the philosophical underpinnings. I'm not sure if this is intentional. I feel like in a room of sci-fi writers it must have come up at least once. I think it bothers me because they've posited a world in which utopia has engineered its own collapse, and they haven't used that to say anything about the nature of utopia or political organization or really anything at all. So I keep trying to make Omelas fit in there somehow because it's the only shape I've got that remotely looks like it might work.

They're trying to have it both ways with the crew, where they want them to be interesting characters on their own, but also mostly want them for background purposes, so they end up being this weird collection of traits that largely act as a greek chorus. It makes me grind me teeth every time we do the thing where the crew shows up to support the main cast with unquestioning smiles and beaming pride. We don't know these people. This is the only way we ever see them interact with the main characters, which is again, why these grand gestures are so irritating. Some of this is probably due to budget/contract issues, so maybe it's a little beyond the writers' room. Also, this show has barely been able to handle juggling the four or five characters it cares about, so adding half a dozen more probably wouldn't have improved things much.

Here's my thing with Tilly: when Discovery wants to show that she's a capable Starfleet officer, they don't actually have her do anything consequential. She like, solves a math problem. But in virtually every other difficult scenario she's been put in, she's failed. Guys, have her solve a math problem with a time limit or something. I get that they want to show her struggling, but they really need to show her succeeding a little more. Case in point: she never actually got that redemption plotline that we thought was coming in the season finale. The bit players revue took over and escaped pretty much on their own.

The turbo lift was definitely in the Discovery; they had a similar looking setup for the Short Trek "Q&A"

I agree with you on Adira. They seemed pretty independant before they ended up on Discovery, and the short backstory we've been given about them doesn't show that they were missing any parental guidance? But then again, they did loose their parents pretty early on and we don't know how long they've been orphaned for... so maybe they really were missing some parental guidance, but the show doesn't do a good job of showing that?

Part of me feels like they're trying to combine the long story arcs of DS9 with the episodic content of TNG and VOY? But those shows had 26 episodes a season*, and DISCO gets 10 to 13 a season, so it's a little hard to get that long term character development going.

*Does anyone know when or why TV shows went from 26 episodes a season to 10 - 13? I kinda really hate it, especially when some shows (*cough*Agents of Shield*cough) take a year and a half break between seasons

I know in some cases the actors specifically requested it. For example I heard Kristen Bell asked for The Good Place to be a 10-13 episode season so she could spend more time with her family.

Yeah, everything I've heard from cast, crew, writers, and producers is that 26 episodes was a back-breaking schedule, with 16 hour days being the norm. I'm all for people working much more realistic and life-friendly schedules.

NSMike wrote:

Yeah, everything I've heard from cast, crew, writers, and producers is that 26 episodes was a back-breaking schedule, with 16 hour days being the norm. I'm all for people working much more realistic and life-friendly schedules.

Oh wow, I never thought about that. I'm definitely all for shorter seasons if that makes everyone else's quality of life that much better!

Not only scheduling, but let's all be honest how many episodes of TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY were just "filler" episodes? I think a 10-15 episode season is the sweet spot.

That said, I think the season-long story arcs for the most recent finales of Discovery and Picard (_especially Picard_) would have benefit from an additional episode.

I don't think Tilly made any mistakes in regards to the Disco getting captured. (Besides it needing to happen for the plot).I think she did everything right she could have done. The super personal teleporting has not been real fleshed out yet so I have no idea how that gets stopped regularly. She directed the personnel well during the issue and REAL well afterwards to take back the ship. I also really liked in charge sassy Tilly!

They probably should have named this series 'Star Trek: Burnham' since evidently everything revolves around her. While I don't have an issues with the character per se, I do dislike the series so utterly revolving around a single individual and a long-arc, rather than using a whole cast to tell a wide array of stories. I suppose there's room for both, but holy crap it seemed like the whole universe revolved around one person at times.

T-Prime wrote:

Not only scheduling, but let's all be honest how many episodes of TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY were just "filler" episodes?

Other then DS9, all of them. TOS, TNG, VOY were episodic and really didn't tell a coherent story across a season.

Coldstream wrote:

They probably should have named this series 'Star Trek: Burnham' since evidently everything revolves around her. While I don't have an issues with the character per se, I do dislike the series so utterly revolving around a single individual and a long-arc, rather than using a whole cast to tell a wide array of stories. I suppose there's room for both, but holy crap it seemed like the whole universe revolved around one person at times.

Hey, just be happy that the Burn doesn‘t have anything to do with her even though it’s half of her name. As I said earlier, I have never known so little about a star trek crew by the end of its third season. (Granted, all other series had much longer seasons, so this is basically 1 1/2 seasons of any other Star Trek show...)

Trachalio wrote:

Part of me feels like they're trying to combine the long story arcs of DS9 with the episodic content of TNG and VOY? But those shows had 26 episodes a season*, and DISCO gets 10 to 13 a season, so it's a little hard to get that long term character development going.

My wife was saying the same thing as you last night, and I think y'all are basically right, but it's more like they're trying to cram too much plot into a single season and it's squeezing out everything else.

Battlestar Galactica was able to pull off exactly this format in its first few seasons, so I don't think it's a limitation of the format itself.

kazooka wrote:
Trachalio wrote:

Part of me feels like they're trying to combine the long story arcs of DS9 with the episodic content of TNG and VOY? But those shows had 26 episodes a season*, and DISCO gets 10 to 13 a season, so it's a little hard to get that long term character development going.

My wife was saying the same thing as you last night, and I think y'all are basically right, but it's more like they're trying to cram too much plot into a single season and it's squeezing out everything else.

Battlestar Galactica was able to pull off exactly this format in its first few seasons, so I don't think it's a limitation of the format itself.

I think part of Discovery's issues are that each season is very distinct from another, and to some extent you've got the central characters - Burnham, Stamets & Saru in particular - having to form new relationships between themselves and with new character who they all then lose again, and having to start all over again the following season. Given everything that's happened to them they are getting lost in a 13 episode season, where there isn't really the time for the characters to process previous seasons, grow as characters themselves (or at least aren't being consistent in how that's handled) and then establish new relationships with whoever comes on board for the new season.

I also think the show is going to really miss Michelle Yeoh. The mirror universe stuff did go on too long, but as a character Phillipa was pretty much the only one with enough agency to keep Burnham grounded.

In the end as story arched as BSG was, it was still the same story across all 5 seasons. I think that gave them time to develop the characters better as there was at least some consistency across each season. So far Discovery has dealt with Klingons and usurper mirror universe captains, homicidal AIs and some deep Star Trek lore and has now catapulted them into a timeline Star Trek has never explored before. I actually think that's all to the show's credit (apart from dragging out the mirror universe stuff a little too long) but proper character development that makes sense seems to have been something of a casualty of all that.

I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but Game of Thrones -- and plenty of other shows -- handle a massive cast of characters with even fewer episodes than Discovery. The idea that 13 hours a year isn't enough time to develop half a dozen main characters is nonsense. They have more than enough time; they're just not using that time well.

Warning: A bit of rambling coming up, please feel free to ignore

These last few months I've been watching Voyage at lunch 'cause I never did finish it back in the day (same with DS9 and that's next) and I had a thought: I think one of the reasons Discovery doesn't feel like "proper" Star Trek in my brain, as opposed to Lower Decks, is that story arc we've mentioned a few times. Older Trek's would have episodes with no continuity with a previous one. Heck, sometimes they wouldn't even have a lead in.

I just watched The Chute at lunch today, and they open with Kim having the sh*t kicked out of him after being dumped in a prison. No lead up, no scene that shows why he's there, no explanation at all. Just Paris punching him in the stomach before they cut to commercial.

TheBrennil and I talked about this a while back. Discovery doesn't have the "engineering disaster of the week" or "subspace anomaly of the week" or "political intrigue of the week" or "Q comes to mess with the humans again" serialness to it. Just a long story arc each season.

Which has me thinking, why do I feel that this serialness(?) is a requirement of Star Trek? Does Discovery really need more of this? Less choreographed fights scenes and more weird space sh*t? Or am I just an aging Trekie that needs to let the new kids have some fun?