Star Trek: Discovery Catch-All [Spoilers]

I enjoyed watching ST: Discovery for what it is, but I vastly prefer the more pure "episodic" nature of ST:TNG (et al), where a complete story is told within the boundary of one 44-minute episode; in the rare circumstance that "to be continued" showed up at the end, you just about lost your sh*t because it was already an insanely good story being told, and then you got to look forward to another 44 minutes!

Could ST: Discovery have been made into a movie (per season?), with a lot of fluff trimmed out?

Trachalio wrote:

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.

Deep Space Nine is heavily serialized and fans certainly consider that proper Trek. Among fans it's considered the best one.

Djinn wrote:
Trachalio wrote:

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.

Deep Space Nine is heavily serialized and fans certainly consider that proper Trek. Among fans it's considered the best one.

I didn't care much for DS9. That might explain why.

DS9 was serialized, but those stories were, at most, 25% of the season. Discovery is running at close to 100%.

kazooka wrote:

DS9 was serialized, but those stories were, at most, 25% of the season. Discovery is running at close to 100%.

I think that is because it only has 1/3 as many episodes per season.

The older I get, the more I think there's room for whatever as part of a fictional universe I generally like, and it's fine if I don't like whatever it is. Whether it's because I wanted a repeat-but-different of an earlier experience, I lack chemistry with it, there are technical things my brain won't get past, whatever... all in all, entertainment is a purely subjective medium which doesn't exist solely for my benefit.

(This isn't to stifle discussion, by the way. I like the discussion!)

As far as Discovery is concerned, it generally clicked with me. The emotional aspects, the implicit social commentary, the magical tech... all felt like Star Trek brought forward. The serial nature of the show was different from most, but consistent enough that I was fine with it.

Funny thing, the Terra Firma episodes actually knocked me out of it a bit this season. For me it was the low point. I kept wondering stuff like, "Why am I not excited to see the guardian of forever? These bizarro performances are pretty good, why isn't it resonating?" The only thing I can think of is that it interrupted the flow of the story more than I wanted, even though it tied off a loose end pretty well. (Oh... and Paul Guilfoyle was the perfect personification of the guardian.)

kazooka wrote:

DS9 was serialized, but those stories were, at most, 25% of the season. Discovery is running at close to 100%.

But even then, DS9 was still episodic. It was just 25% of the episodes touched on an overarching story. But they would rarely rely on what happened last episode as the leadoff into the next episode.

I seem to remember seasons 5-7 of DS9 pretty much being one long continuous arch, with random filler episodes here and there (Quark's trip to Roswell for example) I think it was a lot more story that people remember?

Deep Space Nine was a mix between episodic and serialized with the latter type becoming more common as the show went on. Once the Dominion War started, it was rare to have an episode that didn't involve the war in either the A or B plot of the episode. I scanned through Memory Alpha and I'd say season 6 had 17/26 episodes that were connected with the Dominion War.

Djinn wrote:

Deep Space Nine was a mix between episodic and serialized with the latter type becoming more common as the show went on. Once the Dominion War started, it was rare to have an episode that didn't involve the war in either the A or B plot of the episode. I scanned through Memory Alpha and I'd say season 6 had 17/26 episodes that were connected with the Dominion War.

Yeah, but there's a difference between having an episode advance the storyline connected to the war and one where the war is the backdrop.

Y'all talkin' sh*t about DS9 better recognize it's the best Trek.

Sorbicol wrote:

I seem to remember seasons 5-7 of DS9 pretty much being one long continuous arch, with random filler episodes here and there (Quark's trip to Roswell for example) I think it was a lot more story that people remember?

Roswell was season 4, prior to the Dominion war.

As far as DS9's structure, I'd say the show was prone more to doing 2 to 3 part arcs specifically on the Dominion War, scattered throughout the seasons, along with some non-war episodes in between, with the war in the background or as a backdrop (You Are Cordially Invited, for example). We got a 9? 10? episode arc that took us to the end of the war, culminating with the season finale, but that's as long as the arcs got in DS9. It's a bit too much, IMO, to call DS9 "serialized." It was still very much flirting with the idea.

The first real serialization happened with Enterprise S3, with the Xindi arc. Enterprise was slipping away from Berman and Braga, and I think the season-long arc was a moonshot to save the show. They got one more season and the worst finale you could ask for.

I'd argue though that Enterprise S4 hits that just-right balance: 2-3 episode story arcs mixed with standalone episodes.

I would love it if Discovery did that next season.

Every Star Trek series is serialized to some degree. Even TOS used the Treaty of Organia signed with the Klingons in Errand of Mercy (1x27) as a plot point to explain why StarFleet officers and Klingons were mingling in a bar in The Trouble of Tribbles (2x13) rather than killing each other.

Deep Space Nine definitely takes more of a middle ground though. It uses heavy story arcs like in Game of Thrones, but it breaks them up with episodic shows to space the arcs out. However, the Dominion War drives the show and that arc is what makes Deep Space Nine such a good show, On the other hand, Voyager has a poor reputation and they avoided arcs like the plague. My point is only that Star Trek fans -- even the older ones -- do not have a problem with serialization and that's not why Discovery is so divisive.

I agree it would be nice t have a sci fi series that focuses on the sci-fi or non-action a bit more. I just don't think Star Trek was ever that. I mean, read up on how many times Marina Sirtis burned her arse due to all the banger effects during its run!

Star Trek absolutely was low-action in the past. TNG was criticized as boring -- including from an admittedly funny The Onion video -- because characters sat around conference tables talking about ethics, politics, and social issues. Sure, even TNG had the occasional action heavy episode, but talking over fighting was absolutely the norm.

We only really got our first taste of more action in DS9. Many of the Dominion War scenes were much more complex, but that's because at that point they had moved on to CG models.

I suppose you could say TNG had "action" if you consider camera shakes and pyrotechnics action. Most of the time the action was off-screen, though.

For a good comparison, let's look at the battle in Yesterday's Enterprise and the battle against Control. Both clips are 4 minutes long and they both involve a space battle, but the difference in tone is lightyears apart.

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Yesterday's Enterprise)

Star Trek: Discovery (Such Sweet Sorrow)

They both are effectively the same story. Protect a ship/person going into an anomaly against overwhelming odds. It is interesting that as special effects get better, the engagement with the viewer diminishes. That Discovery battle looks great, it was fun to watch but it was so noisy that you get distracted from the consequences. TNG was the same but because it was slower and focused on only a few characters the stakes seemed real and more dire. But I feel that to really show how much we have fallen we have to go back to the TOS episode Balance of Terror which had almost no special effects but was one of the most intense space battles in Star Trek.

Also something to be said about the slow, ponderous movement of the TNG ships and the frenetic arcade energy of a lot of the space battles in Discovery. That lack of pace allowed a little more natural tension in those sequences and gave the scene a little room to breathe instead of dialing it up to 11 the whole time. This is at least somewhat intentional, as Rodenberry envisioned the Enterprise as more of a Victorian ship-of-the-line rather than an F-16.

This is, incidentally, one of the big issues the Star Wars prequels had with their space combat scenes, as well as a problem with the industry as a whole. For some reason, only a few people in films and television have internalized that more-stuff-faster does not necessarily mean better.

edit: I don't even think Discovery is particularly bad about it, it just really stands out next to those old TNG shots.

When I first watched Yesterday's enterprise (early 1990s? We were a year or two behind the US release schedule over here in the UK) I was blown away that Star Trek - in any of it's forms available at that time, TV or film - could actually be that tense or exciting. I still remember it distinctly, sat down eating tea with my Mum & Dad (my brother was off at university by that point) and then my Mum giving up in slight disgust that my Dad and myself had practically forgotten to eat our tea because we were too busy watching the show.

Re-watching it about 3 years back it looked more than a little slow and ponderous. Not dull exactly, but very much a product of the CGI available at the time. Still tense - sort of - but nothing like with the intensity that I remember first time I saw it. Still good, but it very much felt it's age

It's really hard to compare what was happening near 30 years ago now compared to now, given the change in TV generally and what modern audiences are looking for. I think the point I'm making is that first time it aired that episode of TNG looked & felt as exciting and frenetic as that episode of Discovery looks now. Star Wars has the same issue, I know I've spoken about it before it's really really hard to get across just how revolutionary A New Hope was when it came out, and for just how long it managed to remain relevant before it started to a look a little dated.

And yes, it really has been 30 years since that episode of TNG first aired. Holy Crap.

Both cool vids. I don't really see that the TNG one has much more tension. That may be just the 30 year difference. The ships are moving so slow. Kind of how a lot of TOS does make you think future.

Sorbicol wrote:

eating tea

Uh... I think if you're "eating" it, you're making your tea wrong...

Spoiler:

;)

Man, I love both of those clips.

This isn't part of the current discussion, but one thing about TNG (and much of the rest of Trek) that always bothered me was its sense of scale and distance. In that clip, Picard says "Keep us within 200 km of the Enterprise-C", and the very next exterior shot you see the Ent-D, Ent-C, and two Klingon ships within probably the same cubic kilometer.

Suspension of disbelief is more difficult when applying common real-world metrics to it.

Hey, same cubic kilometer is still within 200km

Also, considering the Enterprise is roughly 700 meters, it's probably more like 10-20 cubic kilometers.

Star Trek sh*tposting proving once again that it's still the best Star Trek fan group:

IMAGE(https://scontent.fybz2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/p526x296/138940154_10158468714811281_6926160873964293184_o.jpg?_nc_cat=109&ccb=2&_nc_sid=825194&_nc_ohc=zNuTaadQL74AX9YLTX3&_nc_ht=scontent.fybz2-1.fna&tp=6&oh=00957f62928124e7ed72b860d5f7e0c0&oe=602883C1)

Welp, can't unsee Vance's disappointed dad energy.

Oded Fehr did a really great job as a horrifying character in Sleeper Cell, which was a really good little series from the early 00's that no one watched. That includes an especially horrific 'disappointed dad' scene. I didn't recognize him in Discovery, but I think I've been seeing him as having much more sinister energy than I think the show intended.

kazooka wrote:

Oded Fehr did a really great job as a horrifying character in Sleeper Cell, which was a really good little series from the early 00's that no one watched. That includes an especially horrific 'disappointed dad' scene. I didn't recognize him in Discovery, but I think I've been seeing him as having much more sinister energy than I think the show intended.

The man's got great presence. I remember thinking so waaaaay back during the original Mummy movie.