Star Trek

Yeah, I agree in part with your points. Any Star trek show should be an ensemble effort, and that's why, of the newer shows, Lower Decks is much more my bag.

FWIW, I thought the Burnham focus worked in season 1 as our POV into the war setting and previously unseen Trek periode. We got to know the crew through her as she worked her way back into Starfleet. But yeah, past that the "it's all about Michael" approach became a detriment to the show. There was literally a whole crew to explore like they did, only somewhat, with Saru.

With Picard, I expected the new crew of La Sirena to crystallise around the main character and become a new constellation — but no. Season 2 turned into a strange Gothic exploration of Picard's past, and one that actually contradicted what we know about the character. If Chabon hadn't left the writer's room, I think we would have seen a more compelling story.

I did enjoy parts of the final PIC season, but it felt like it was written by somebody who didn't really get what TNG was about. The old crew felt two-dimensional, like clichés of themselves, showing up for a cameo and dropping a quip. But I'm already veering way off from the Disco focus of my post 🙂

This is exactly what got me into Discovery! The willingness to go beyond convention and subvert viewer expectation.

So often throughout season one they'd hit me with something that I'd never seen done in Star trek before, and I'd be in the edge of my seat until next week. The whole introduction of the USS Discovery — which wasn't until the third episode — had so much of a weird science vibe, I was blown away. And then the body horror of the USS Glenn.

Spore drives! Feral tardigrades! Space whales! All that, and pitting Starfleet in a war against Klingons that were really, truly alien for the first time in decades. Oh man, that was a wild ride, until they moored it with the dutiful canon connections in season two...

I agree about fluctuating rates of technological progress, but surely not at the scale of almost a millennium. I did expect some more creative choices from a production standpoint; like the thoughts and development that went into the (far closer) future technology of Minority report.

Yes, Disco's personal transporter in the 32C was a pretty big deal, but only a logical progression from what had already been established throughout the series. "Programmable matter" was really just techno babble for hand held replicators, or 3D printers really — and detachable nacelles, how does that even work?

I will rewatch the show before the final season, and I look forward to another peek at the pre-Burn ships you mention. As I recall we barely saw them before they exploded but your description definitely makes me want to revisit those scenes!

On the balance between ensemble and lead focus — I think we're more aligned here than it seems. I wanted more scenes from crew perspectives because what we got was so good in terms of acting and chemistry, and the cast were clearly up to carrying the show to a greater degree if they got the chance.

[Edit because apparently I can't spell "development"]

Discovery also seems to employ the dimensional technology that the pod from the future employed on Enterprise, being much bigger on the inside

Man, I was so not into seasons one-three. I watched each one hoping it would just calm tf down and tell one story well instead of bouncing all over the place. But then season four came along and it was one of my favorite Trek seasons ever of any series. And what do people say about it? That it was too slow. I can't win! Looking forward to five tho.

I think we have one obvious reason why season 1 was so solid: Bryan Fuller. He came to Trek with fresh ideas and thoughts about how to use them creatively in that setting. And he envisioned Disco as an anthology show that would focus on different eras each season, so the Burnham arc was one season, on to the next.

A lot clearly changed even before the show went into production, at which point he was out and Paramount probably reneged on doing new casting and design work for each new season. We'll probably never know what could have been, and perhaps an anthology show would have the same dip in interest as it moved on.

For what it's worth, the jump between seasons 2 and 3 did make that kind of radical change in setting that an anthology sets out to — but preserved the characters who had just fulfilled their mission to hide the sphere data, so there's a contradiction in terms. And more to the point, the writers didn't seem to know what to do with the characters once they made it to the future.

The evolution of Zora was an inspired idea (and literally cripped from Michael Chabon's Calypso) but only became a detached plot strand, and Detmer's PTSD was a gut punch only dealt with too superficially. So you're right, despite some character highlights season three was meandering and listless. The crew had a whole future to explore, but no mission.

Rebuilding the Federation should have filled that hole with direction (or at least directives) but there wasn't a lot of purpose to the space UN once it was restored. Maybe that dead water feels so frustrating because we're seeing its literal mirror image in the deterioration of diplomacy and parliaments on the news every day. When Disco gets political it doesn't mess around, but here it couldn't deliver a show of common purpose because it was barely coherent itself. But I digress.

[Edit: misleading preposition]

I genuinely think Trek needs to get over its Kirk/Spock fetish. Beside SNW, there are still talks about another Kelvin film. If I'm honest, when that stalled over negotiations with Chris Pine, I hoped they'd just go on and make a one-off film where Sulu, McCoy and Uhura get to save the day on their own. Even then, why stick with that period?

I'm cautiously optimistic about the Starfleet academy show if it materialises. It could fall into either "The OC in space" or some kind of Top gun, West Point show bound to reenact "The first duty". Tawny New some seems to be on board as a writer, so I'm hopeful.

I think a lot of people enjoyed S4 quite a bit, and would agree with you in saying it's best of the series so far (I personally prefer S3, but they're both pretty solid IMO).

S5 should be an interesting project - based on what they've said so far, it's still going to be a single arc, but with more of a scavenger hunt/adventure tone.

You're right, for my part I don't have a distinct memory of season 4 — maybe because I haven't rewatched it yet in preparation for s5 🙂 Season 3 felt lacklustre to me, the 32nd century was decidedly underwhelming, and my esteem for s4 may have been coloured by that Discovery fatigue.

As I recall, there was a lot of build-up before actually meeting the 10-c, and that I found the Arrival-style challenges of even communicating with them more interesting than whatever that guy from The expanse had going on? His character was as unconvincing as Jake Weber's bored pirate in s3.

I'm looking forward to rewatching all of the first four seasons again to catch up before the last one, and hopefully on this wuewing s4 has as much kick as you describe 😉

Oh, you read as far as you needed to find an easy angle for... whatever point you're trying to make. Good for you. This is what I wrote immediately after:

I’m not here to argue for or against

I needed to type out my feelings about Discovery, not to be dragged into poorly manufactured conflicts. Feel free to pick a fight somewhere else unless you have something to say, and LLAP.

That is pretty much exactly my feelings about the show, only I felt the high stakes in season 1 were warranted given we were seeing the Federation at war, which in itself is a nightmare for an essentially peacekeeping operation. Bringing in the Terran empire as a reflection on Starfleet's warlike posture in that situation was inspired, I think.

I have to say again, this being the first new Trek on TV since Enterprise, I gave that season a lot of leeway in terms of story and stakes.

As for character development, you're right — we did get to see small character arcs for Tilly, Saru, and Detmer. They were kind of drip-fed to us though, unlike the more ham-fisted Burnham bits like season 2's "let's telegraph her broken relationship with Spock by having her dead mother plant signals across the galaxy". There were a lot of nice character bits in there, but it was mostly plot acrobatics to centre everything on Burnham, again.

I loved Tilly and her friendship with Michael, but I'm split over the journey Tilly did get. One of the first things she said was "I'm going to be captain one day," but as it became clear that Michael was headed for that seat, Tilly got an abrupt arc of self discovery that made her decide to be a teacher instead.

Is it cool to realise that your goals are maybe fulfillments of somebody else's dreams, and finding your own way? Yes, I love it! Did it smell a bit like the writer's room backpedaling to make Michael even more awesome? Yes. Yes it did.

For what it's worth, I'll maintain that Burnham's character was great in driving action forward (ie. throwing herself blindly into conflicts), and I think Sonequa Martin-Green has been a terrific actor and ambassador for Trek and Disco. If the show instead had put that much focus on Saru or, heck, Bryce over the course of four (soon five) seasons, that would have been a bit much, too.