My only major critiques for Discovery are that they walked back a Calvin-verse reboot after fan backlash (my interpretation), and that the theatrics usually don’t mesh well with the action-oriented flow of the rest of the episodes around it.
The reboot thing was, to me, overly clear with the changes in aesthetics and technology. Especially the Klingons. And I get it: it’s hard to dazzle audiences through vibrant creative direction, with decades of canon on your back. All that older stuff has compromises from old effects tech and budget baked in, so breaking from it is incredibly tempting. But the fans will not let you do this: just ask the Dr. Who production people. So we get some really oddball stuff happening in the first few seasons.
To the latter point, we get moments like: “The ship is going to explode in one minute, so let’s argue for at least ten before we deal with that.” This kind of thing happens a lot in Discovery and a binge-watch would have you thinking that the ship’s counselor is either dead or contemplating transporter suicide. The dissent between characters feels valid most of the time, but other times is just jarringly out of character or contrary to self-preservation as to break suspension of disbelief. But there’s usually angry, loud, arguing dissent. Which is a shame since these same episodes is hitting the mark on every other metric, IMO.
Don’t get me started on ds9. A black captain? A trans lesbian officer? A gay interspecies couple? The federation using fear from war as an excuse to become a police state? Can’t believe they made my colorful space communism show woke.
A gay interspecies couple?
Rick Berman:
You hated Discovery because it was too woke.
I hated Discovery because it wasn’t woke enough.
We are not the same.
I hated it because half of the characters annoyed me and the other half didn’t have enough screen time
was there even one gay character in TNG?
Riker is clearly pan
I’m going with Alexander.
Ro Laren
I was hoping more for any character, even a one off, where they wrote and openly had the character that way rather than ones people might feel is gay. I doubt there is one but part of me is sorta hoping they snuck one in someplace.
Wesley /s
No. Fuck you. We reject him. We have standards.
Sincerely, the gay community.
Never understood the wesley hate. sure he was a trope character but I had more issue with data as he just filled to many roles and minimize other characters. stronger/more resilient to damage than worf, smarter than wesely, more experience than any other member of the crew.
Because Wesley was a stand in for Genes son basically. Wesley had a lot of unearned praise or unearned moments where he ends up saving the day or having a vital role in something that he just shouldn’t. The other characters had earned their place but he didn’t. He was just annoying and there. The reason I don’t like him is because he just feels like a fanfic character that was shoved into the show.
I mean if he saves the day how is it unearned? I dunno I never felt that way. It felt to me like a trope. the boy/girl genius but really I felt his role was more to bring in the whole family aspect of the ship. A main character that would be regularly interacting with other kids on the ship and their families and a reference for beverly to bring up that she is a mom and has to be concerned for her family.
I didn’t especially hate Wesley, but I also didn’t enjoy his character. Part of it is that the narrative often framed Wesley from the perspective of Picard, who often seemed to be irked by Wesley, priming the audience to feel the same way. In many of his earlier appearances, before he was a cadet, I recall some Wesley plots involving him being over-keen and meddling with things he shouldn’t. But it all turns out fine in the end, because Wesley is so precocious and special. This is likely a reductionist and possibly incorrect summary, but it’s how I remember it.
When I try to think about faults or arcs that Wesley had in TNG, I really struggle to think of anything that made him feel like an actual character. There was an episode where he was considering giving up after doing badly on the academy entrance test, until he had a rare bonding moment with Picard. Then there was the academy shuttle crash coverup in which Wesley doesn’t feel like he has any real agency or real conflict for his character.
I agree with you that his key role was about giving the family aspect, which I think was useful, but especially when combined with the young genius trope, he felt more like a prop than a real character (part of this criticism is also aimed at how they explored themes of family through Beverly — I see what they were going for, but it didn’t fully land for me).
Now that I’m writing this, I’m thinking of episodes I wish I could’ve seen to develop Wesley more. Such as a “Lower Decks” (the TNG episode) style look at other young people on the enterprise, before Wesley is allowed on the bridge. I could see him framing himself as having more access or knowledge than he actually does and lying to make himself seem impressive to his peers. Then he gets peer pressured into doing some dumb stuff to gain that access he pretends to have, and it causes complications that threaten to reveal Wesley’s deceit to both the crew and his peers.
I’m just spitballing. My main point is just that he seemed simultaneously overused and underutilised — for the screen time he gets, he doesn’t really get to be an interesting character. He doesn’t need to be edgy — idealistic boy genius who can’t wait to join Starfleet fits in great with TNG’s general tone. However, without something to temper the optimism with, TNG could be saccharine sweet.
Westley was also a viewer-insert character for kids to relate to. As a little kid watching TNG, I liked him as a character and thought he was cute. I didn’t start to find him irritating until I got a few years older than him.
oh yeah I could see it being done way better. I just did not especially hate him and I did like data but again I sorta gated he was sorta the end all be all. I mean spock was like that in a way but scottie still knew more about engineering and bones knew more about medicine, and he did not do well in things like poker, etc.
Not to mention, programmed in a variety of techniques…
More Casanova than Riker
I find many of these shows and movies that are accused of being woke is because they create protagonists without flaws, out of fear of making non traditional characters look bad I guess? But protagonists without flaws are boring.
I’m trying to think what Burnham’s fatal flaw is, or her deadly sin. It’s mostly stuff that has happened to her and she has to overcome but that’s not the same thing. Interesting protagonist have flaws like hubris, vice, hypocrisy, greed, something that makes them more real. You look at characters like Rey from star wars and again, flawless except for her past, which again is something that happened to her not something she is.
That’s why people didn’t like when Han Solo didn’t shoot first. Yes Han Solo is overall a good guy, but he’s also ruthless and a gangster when we meet him. If he’s already a flawless good guy at the start,that just sucks. Anakin as well, good but arrogant and controlling
I think i agree with the general premise that flawed characters are more interesting, and i also feel (with no data to back up that feeling, so bear with me) that these ‘woke’ characters sometimes fall into a pitfall where they’re just so boringly written that it does feel like the writers are either afraid of being perceived as ‘punching down’ or (edit: finishing this thought) want to misguidedly write a perfect character for the sake of superficial representation of some group.
That said, for this show in particular (i have watched TNG/DS9/Voyager but not Discovery), is it a valid criticism for this captain that couldn’t be applied to the older series? Picard’s flaws are heavily understated - sure, he was a violent little shit off screen when he was younger, and he can be a little more of a hardass than called for occasionally, but I always felt he was pretty consistently portrayed as the voice of reason, and his flaws were only relevant in a couple episodes. I think I would say that’s also true of Sisko and Janeway, though Sisko has a lot more nuance to his pragmatism that is really interesting as DS9 continues.
You’re not wrong. Picards biggest flaw that people point towards is either not being great with kids or just emotionally stunted. Janeway has so few flaws overall that the only one you’ll hear follow her around is “Genocidal” because of Tuvix. Most of her other flaws are episodic like with hunting the Equinox.
Edit: Even then, her flaw in hunting the Equinox is that she cares too much about Starfleet to let them abandon their morals. She’s so aggressively pro-Starfleet/United Federation of Planets that when tasked with not getting home for 200 years (it was 70 years at max warp without ever stopping) she put Starfleet morals first and stuck her crew in the Delta Quadrant. Multiple times. So her flaw is shes too Starfleet.
No issue with what you’re saying but I will say that Burnham does have some fatal flaws that are throughout the show and not past things she’s overcoming.
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As you mentioned, hubris. Throughout the entirety of the series she thought she knew what was best or had to shoulder every single responsibility single handedly. Spock openly mocked her for it in front of other crewmen during Season 2 and other crew constantly kept saying that she does it or doesn’t need to.
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She’s hypocritical as hell but that seems to be a thread through most Starfleet officers. Hypocrisy when it serves you. Look at the Prime Directive for every ounce of proof you’d ever need for any other Captain and hypocrisy but she does it pretty regularly too. Again something Spock pointed out in Season 2.
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She’s hot-headedly emotional because she was a human raised as a Vulcan. She suppressed the everlovingfuck out of her emotions and by the time she was embracing her human side and starting to cope with those emotions she was already well into adulthood. A significant crux of the show is that Burnham has trouble regulating emotion because its new to her. People point this out as a complaint saying she “cries too much” but her character is literally someone who feels things more overwhelmingly because she was never raised to cope. Every season is her overcoming that little by little with Season 4 being all of that coming to a head. Her listening to Rillak and trying to do everything she could that she felt was right while also not doing the stupid shit like abandoning Starfleet to go save Book without asking for permission that would have been granted or freaking out over her biological mother and letting those emotions cloud so much of Season 2.
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I loved it
Yep. This greentezt is all just “dont threaten me with a gokd time”. Let anon fawn over one another’s griftcoin acumen and wallow in their oblivious unfuckability.
Short of DS9, Discovery is my fav ✨️
heck yez
I just couldn’t get into Discovery or Picard because they felt… weird? Not that it wasn’t like Star Trek in the stories or that it was “woke,” but it just didn’t have the same vibe as what I grew up with. Lower Decks has the vibe, but not the tone or anything else. I need to check out Strange New Worlds. It looks like it might be what I’m really missing.
It’s because the only “woke” thing nu-trek writers understand is representation, which even that is pretty tame by treks standards. Yeah there’s more POC and lgbtq representation, which is important, but is also pretty standard for our time. There is nothing as groundbreaking as the first interracial kiss on television, or one of the first gay kisses.
Nu-trek writers don’t understand Treks optimism and idealism at all. Gene Roddenberrys vision of a post-scarcity socialist utopia is simply beyond their ability to understand and write. They’re a bunch of Neolibs who can’t imagine a world without capitalism and just write dystopian scifi filled with interpersonal drama because that’s what’s in and what sells right now.
Yes, watch Strange New Worlds! It really does get at the vibe and tone of TNG and the other 90s Trek shows. It’s a breath of fresh air
I’ve heard good things about that enough that I had already decided to watch it in abstract, but you have just tipped me over the edge and I’ve decided to actually give it a try. Thanks for the push, I will think of you when I do watch it
I just watched Season 2 of Picard and all I could think the whole time was “TNG crew would have wrapped this up in 1 or 2 episodes…”
Yup, in order to make Discovery and Picard work, the writers had to give everyone the idiot ball.
Trek is at its best when it’s competence porn.
As a note, to be in star fleet requires 4 years at the start fleet academy. You need to be somewhat good at your job and somewhat disciplined to even be considered for a slot on a ship.
I’m not a fan of Picard Season 2 but I will give it the argument that it only takes place over the course of like 2-3 days, just like most TNG episodes when you factor in warp speeds and all the time delays that are needed for the things talked about in the episodes.
Yeah I know. It just felt like it dragged on. I guess I just prefer more episodic Star Trek. Probably in general… all these 8 episode per season “prestige” shows are getting tiresome.
Both Picard and Discovery were season long plots without episodic filler episodes to shake things up which made it painfully obvious that their overarching plotlines were terrible. Add some poorly done melodramatic scenes about how the leads are the most important people ever without showing why (and in a lot of cases showing the opposite) and we have two series that were just a slog to watch up to the point that I stopped.
Both sounded good on paper. Both had great casts. Both seemed to suffer from terrible writing and direction.
The final season of PIC was fun, and the second one had some good moments, mostly with Q. But that first season was still being written as they were filming and the second season had part of its budget appropriated for the third season and it shows in both.
without episodic filler episodes to shake things up which made it painfully obvious that their overarching plotlines were terrible
The other series are episode-based with some random simple overarching plotlines thrown at them so they don’t feel repetitive. Yes, those plotlines can’t sustain a series, but that was never the goal.
I can’t talk about Picard, but Discovery has a series of really interesting ideas that were completely destroyed by the overwhelmingly bad details. The plots are not exactly terrible, they have some more complex issues, and the insistence on emotional solutions to galaxy-wide physical problems is a recurring issue there (to the point that in season 4, where a “My Little Pony” plotline makes sense, it feels empty and repetitive).
I bounced off Picard because the only thing I liked about it was Jeri Ryan.
I liked the whole alt-dimension humans are evil shit in Discovery, but everyone is so fucking weepy the whole time. It’s depressing. I don’t think it helps that everything seems to be filmed in tiny green screen box sets so everyone has to stand still or they run out of room.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the green screen box thing for Discovery. They didn’t use a whole lot of green screen. They built fairly massive sets that were all reused for other shows. The screens that you see in the show as well, like the see through ones and the ones in the consoles, are not added in post. They mass bought those screens and they actually function in real life. Honestly the amount of CGI used in Discovery, at least outside of space based stuff and effects like transporters/phasers/progammable matter is pretty low. Even then the green screens that they did use were replaced by the video wall for Season 4 and 5.
I’ve no idea why it all looks so cheap then.
I honestly thought David Cronenberg had died and they’d had to use a CGI version of him.
Everything just look so… off…
I’ve heard so many complaints about Discovery over the years. Hundreds.
Cheap is a new one.
Pretty sure the downvoters didn’t finish reading that…
They sure didn’t and only frothed as soon they saw WoKe.
Didn’t even get down to “unrelentingly woke” smh
woke is the new sheeple
…in that anytime anyone uses it to support their argument you immediately know they’re a grade-a fuckewit.
I’m saving that. Not sure if and how I could use it as I (at least try…) avoid fanning flames, but…
Yeah, those woke sheeple are ruining everything!
To be fair, woke is a really annoying right now, essentially a conservative dog whistle for “I want to be racist but don’t want to be called racist”, so I don’t blame a lot of people for not finishing. If I read everything that started off with woke I’d have a much higher blood pressure.
I find it funny that not a single anti woke politician will say the word removed.
They understand woke. But they know they won’t get punched in the face for saying tranny.
So Bald IS a hairstyle!
BALD?? I have hair! Why else would I visit the best barber in Starfleet?!
I assume because the writers thought it was hilarious
Because if he didn’t, he would wind up looking like Hector Salamanca
Well, yes, obviously. “Broken” is a financial state, “empty” is filling amount, “dry” is an amount of humidity…
And you can look at any programing language the type of NaN.
Bald is zero. Having no head is null
Yeah, I’d say having no head isn’t a hair style.
What’s the “gay agenda” reference for TNG?
idk Riker turned me gay
When I was a kid watching TNG with my parents, my father would sometimes say things like “Man, that guy is too handsome” when Riker was on screen.
Gratis your dad is gay/bi
I also don’t think the TNG cast is particularly overly-emotional.
Plus TNG didn’t retcon Klingon appearance, it had been that way for like 10 years already by that point, from the TOS films.
The TNG cast is pretty human. They don’t avoid anger, happiness, frustration, empathy, sexual tension, etc.
To the chuds of 4chan, showing a normal range of human emotion is over emotional, which this greentext is mocking.
First one that comes to mind is “The Outcast”. Not really gay, but for anyone who is triggered by anything different they would consider it “woke”.
There’s also:
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The Host which has Crusher dealing with falling in love with a Trill who moves hosts. It can be seen in some very specific ways as a trans allegory and just challenging heteronormative assumptions about love and attraction.
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The show really pushes a lot of ‘Found Family’ stuff which ends up being super popular in most LGBTQ+ media because we’re disowned by other people. (Data accepted and accepting himself as part of the crew, Worf and Alexander aren’t too awesome but Deanna steps up a bit there. You’ve got Wesley who’s kind of adopted by most of the upper ranks after a while.
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TNG is purely “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations” which people see as gay agenda because they wanna collapse anything pro-diversity as just being LGBTQ+ because they have fragile pathetic minds.
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Q is aggressively queer coded. The hyper dramatic and flamboyant personality, the penchant for being a theatrical whore, openly flirting with Picard (and Riker) in such a way that you genuinely aren’t sure if he’s joking or not, he rejects every type of rigid norm from humanity, Voyager and a few other things even hinted in such a way that due to his ability to change form he’s above gendered norms too and sort of gender fluid. Not to mention being the campiest motherfucker this side of the Alpha quadrant. “It matters to me. YOU matter to me. Even Gods have favorites, Jean-Luc. You’ve always been one of mine.” There’s also his deep fucking loneliness, something that a metric fuckload of people in the community suffer from. Part of a whole but ostracized and on the outside? Yea.
Q is Queer? I never would’ve guessed.
“The Host” was another, and of course introducing the Trill species concept opens up for further things later on. The biggest flaw of that episode is how Beverly didn’t seem to consider a continued relationship after the new host ends up being female. Which is a fine reaction, but for the show pushing boundaries they could have at least had her ponder the idea even if she didn’t act on it. After all, who did she love? In that initial version of the Trill, the host was seemingly not in control, unlike later versions like Dax where the symbiote and host mix to create a shared personality.
DS9 did specifically pick up that torch, so it’s clear they wanted to explore that more.
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Yeah, I was gonna say I don’t remember anybody being gay in TNG. Am I missing something?
Oh, and IMO the cast of TNG is the opposite of emotional. They are calm and collected 90% of the time. 5% is Riker being horny, and the other 5% is Picard losing his shit over the amount of lights or something.
retconned Klingons to look super weird
TBF the Klingons were retconned in TMP
From now on, every Star Trek show should change the appearance of the Kinglons and the Trill. And also add a new color of Andorians.
Polka dot Andorians
DO IT YOU PUSSIES
Discovery did update the look of the Ferengi for the 32nd Century, looked kinda cool in my opinion. I can handwave a lot of stuff from Season 3 onwards of Discovery because it’s nearly a thousand years ahead of what TNG/VOY/DS9 are at. Things gonna change so meh, tweaks like that don’t bother me so much.
I will 100% admit to absolutely fucking hating Discovery when it was originally launched. The Klingons were one of the reasons although not a primary one. Took a while for me to come around and even now I’m like “Eh, I don’t mind it.” I did appreciate trying to alien them up a little bit more while trying to keep some stuff the same. Season 2 had an okay blend of that.
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I love Disco but it’s not exactly Trek.
Well, it sort of is due to it being a Star Trek show. That sentence is extremely gatekeepy. It assumes that Star Trek is definable in what type of show it creates (it isn’t), is uniform in its types of shows (it isn’t) and that anything different than status quo is not applicable. It’s utterly nonsense and the same nonsense that was parroted about TNG, and DS9 and Voyager and Enterprise and every other show that wasn’t TOS. Remember everyone whining about the Kelvin timeline and “ItS nOt ReAl StAr TrEk!” Sure seems like most of them are gone now and the movies are getting loved.
Star Trek goes out of its way to scream about diversity, to allow differences and celebrate those, and that not every path has to be the same. I don’t understand the insistence that the shows themselves cannot be diverse either.
The themes of celebrating diversity are absolutely the same. The difference I see is mainly the cinematography, story structure, and pacing. SNW and Lower Decks are a lot closer to what Trek has been in those aspects than Discovery was.
Again: Not saying Disco is bad at all. (Except for having a reaction shot of every one of the dozens of people on the bridge any time anything interesting happens. Those irk me.)
EDIT: After further consideration, I’ve decided that Disco is Trek, but it’s a series of Trek movies and not a series of TV episodes. But the last season is still the same premise as Andromeda.
My guy, that’s nonsense. Suggesting that Discovery is too different to be Star Trek is just hilariously bad. That presumes that the cinemetography, story structure and pacing has been consistent with no dramatic changes across TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT or the Kelvin films.
That comparison just does not make sense. TOS and TMP couldn’t be more different. Nevermind TAS or how dark DS9 is.
I’m not saying that you’re saying Discovery is bad. I’m saying that you’re suggestion that it isn’t real Trek because there’s too much variation is nonsense and an affront to the series that pushes diversity more than anyone else.
You might not have seen my edit, but I’ve changed to viewing it as a series of Trek movies rather than a TV series, which makes much more sense. Right down to the multiple reaction close ups.
Which I also just do not understand. Why can’t the show just be a different type of show? Why must there be an argument needed to be made that it’s either more of a movie or this entire discussion in general where it’s not ‘Real Trek’. TV has evolved. It’s not quite the same as when syndication was readily availab.e. TV in general has moved into an era with shorter seasons and more linked together narratives.
I just cannot fathom in anyway whatsoever where the show being different causes such intense feelings in people that an argument needs to be made to distance itself from the rest of Star Trek in general. Star Trek screams diversity from the top to the bottom and fans seem to be fine with that until it touches the TV shows themselves and if it’s not the exact same carbon copied and outdated format then it’s a problem? I just do not get it. I didn’t flip shit about DS9 and say that it was too dark to be part of Star Trek. (People wanna complain about Discovery starting that but all they did was carry the torch that was stuck in the promenade.) I just went “Neat! Inifinite Multitudes!”
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People have expectations of things based on past experience. If those expectations aren’t met some people won’t like it. See also: Episodes 1-3 and 4-6 of Star Wars.
Star Wars is probably not the best example considering literally everything since A New Hope has been complained about by fans in some regard. Empire Strikes Back was critically panned at release and even Return of the Jedi had some complaints. Then literally every movie since has had fans rabid. Moreover, Star Wars didn’t paint itself as a paragon of diversity.
But thank you for reminding me not to ever post an opinion on Discovery again because I’m gonna get into a flamewar with someone I like and respect and that makes me sad.
I asked questions because I just did not get where you were coming from. You started all of this by saying that it wasn’t real Trek. You don’t get to complain when someone calls you out on gatekepeing behavior. I’m not getting into a flamewar over an opinion, I was questioning you over your gatekeeping because I find that to be antithetical to everything that Star Trek stands for. I’m sorry that you’re upset here but you said that Star Trek Discovery wasn’t real Star Trek and then are surprised that the dude who is named after a Discovery character and who is known for defending Discovery… defended Discovery?
These points being interpreted as “gatekeeping” is wild.
Disclaimer: Only Trek I had watched beforehand was Lower Decks (loved it) and SNW (loved it) in that order. With that said, here are my opinions nobody asked for:
- S1 had its flaws but I was there for dark, depressing, and moody.
- SNW cast carried the fuck out of S2 and the plot was good too imo.
- First half of S3 was promising…but they fucked it up so utterly and completely in the second half that it was hard to take the rest of the show seriously afterwards.
spoiler
SPOILER START
They COMPLETELY lost me with the source of the burn, it was one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in a hot minute.They had me again with the Giorgio redemption stuff in S4(?), but it was all downhill from there.
SPOILER ENDI had to forward through starting from the second half of Season 4 just to get through it. It got so ridiculously boring. I was hoping it’d get better and I could watch normally again but it just didn’t.
Watching TNG now and I’m loving it. Can be a bit slow sometimes but still enjoyable.
Edit: Does boost not do spoiler tags?
Ah, thanks! It was driving me mad
I watched them all, and I loved them all too. I had opinions and favorites, but now that I’m done with everything Trek I just wish I could watch it all for the first time again.
