I wouldn’t have hated a two hour finale and certainly the show deserved more than a 15 minute post credits scene, but Discovery was overall a weak Star Trek show.
Enterprise only got four seasons (although it had more episodes) and that was a much better show.
Now if any of the characters want to come back, I’m all for it. Sonequa Martin-Green was great. I hope they can write a script and she comes back and gets the finale she wants, but Discovery is over and I’m ok with that.
Enterprise was meant to go onfor longer but Les Moonves hated the show, and made sure it ended the way it did.
Std and Picard was pretty weak, Picard could’ve had better arcs if it managed to stay away from STD style writing
The entire premise of the show makes more sense if you assume the entire crew was tripping spaceballs off space spores. While Sonequa was great, and the rest of the acting talent was there… there wasn’t a lot they could do to salvage the premise. i take a great deal of issue with everything else.
the first time I tried watching ST:Discuotheque, I had to pause it every five minutes to google what the fuck I was missing. Which was a lot.
IMO the core issue started with script writers and produces wanting to tell a story and trying to mold that story into a trek universe. And that hardly ever makes sense. Is telling a store with in the middle of Trek hard? absolutely. but if you’re gonna do it, you have to start with the established universe and ask if the story you’re telling makes sense in that context, and discovery simply didn’t.
IMO the core issue started with script writers and produces wanting to tell a story and trying to mold that story into a trek universe.
That’s sadly been a very common thing in recent years. Writers noticed that fewer and fewer original shows were being made, and latched onto existing IPs or adaptations. And then try to force their idea onto that, which drastically change how people act in comparison and often entire premises of how story-universes work. And Discovery had staff officers acting more over-the-top with emotional outbursts than in Lower Decks. So I might finish it with the “they’re high on spores all the time” headcanon.
Spores were the plot distraction for the first 2 season, they almost stopped using it in 3rd going forward
I wouldn’t necessarily blame the writers for the shift. The bigwigs making the decision believe that using existing IP means that half the marketing job is already done.
Look at Babylon 5 vs DS 9- the networks aired them opposite each other and DS9 dominated. Even though ds9 was more or less inspired by an early show bible for bab5, that was left with UPN.
The problem is… people know what Star Trek is, and when it’s “not trek”… well, people walk away pissed.
Edit to add: with the prevalence of streaming on demand, there’s a lower amount of completion. If DS9 and Bab5 came out today, most of us would happily watch both.
I wouldn’t necessarily blame the writers for the shift. The bigwigs making the decision believe that using existing IP means that half the marketing job is already done.
I don’t blame them for the shift at all, that’s all on the higher ups who only see dollars. I do however blame them for doing things like not engaging with the source material and actively changing character personalities to fit their own idea of the story. Specially when it is so drastic that it goes against the overall story and it has to be retconned or explained in unbelivable ways.
(Yes I’m still bitter about The Witcher show)
And their constant virtue signalling that they need for marginalized groups,
Absolutely agree that Enterprise is the far better show. Discovery was a lot of spectacle and little substance.
There were still actors and characters I liked - Culber and Stamets, Keyla Detmer, Saru.
But I had a completely different experience of Sonequa Martin-Green. She overacted and shredded most scenes into teen melodrama, while supposedly portraying a highly trained elite officer. I thought her work in Discovery was amateurish at best, so much crying and emotional outburst that it lost any weight. If a cadet’s constant state is lack of emotional regulation you they’d never make it through the academy.
Michelle yeoh too, she made the first season somewhat watchable
All the forced melodrama is so freaking weird. As an adult, I miss watching a show about, you know, adults (even young ones). People who act maturely.
Mary Wiseman (Tilly), Tig Notaro (Reno), and Oded Fehr (Admiral Vance) are already slated to return in Academy. Likely we could see others appear as a second season has already been greenlit.
Tilly is one of my favorites on the ship and Admiral Vance was fantastic, probably because he’s the first competent Admiral (that we didn’t previously see in the series). Reno is fine, but I like Tig Notaro, so I just head cannon it’s Tig always and it works.
They’re also adding Robert Picardo, hopefully as THE Doctor, which is another favorite of mine.
The far future isn’t my favorite timeline, I’d love to go back and pickup after 90s Trek. We got that a little with Picard, but that show also had some issues. But I want to explore, proper explore, that time more.
That said I’m hoping Academy works out.
(And if not I still have Strange New Worlds to enjoy.)
It’s definitely The Doc. From showrunner Noga Landau:
“I don’t know if Bob knows this, but the Doctor, like, raised me. So I was worried… that I would come on [the video call to pitch his return] and scare him away. But then I realized that nothing scares Bob Picardo! I sent him the script and told him a little bit about the part he would have in the show for the first season. He’s going to do things we’ve never seen The Doctor do before — and The Doctor’s done a lot, think about it! — and he said ‘yes.’ I don’t think we had to twist his arm too hard, actually.”
As for the early 25th Century, there’s another show in development with Tawny Newsome concerning a resort planet. More of a workplace comedy and less exploration, though.
They had the foresight to deny a two hour finale, but still gave the go-ahead to Section 31!?
I wouldn’t have made it that far … I really enjoyed the first two seasons, the 3rd one started to shoehorn in false sentiment but I still enjoyed it over all, and the 4th one felt like work just to watch.
I’ve not seen the final season, even though I have it saved.
The main problem, which I have with all “nu trek” is that it needed about twice as many episodes to flesh out and develop characters at a natural pace so that emotional moments are earned.
They denied us a great finale, and shoved us that monstrosity called Section 31? They really hate success…
I was really disappointed in the last season of Discovery, but I was able to watch it to completion.
However, I watched the first 15 minutes of Section 31 and turned it off without any intention of every watching it. I love Star Trek and have seen everything ever aired. I doubt I’ll ever see whatever remains of Section 31. It was that bad. No one asked for or wanted “Suicide Squad but Star Trek”, but they did it anyway. They even took the carefully crafted lore of Section 31 throughout all of Star Trek and flushed the intelligent, noir, difficult philosophical questions, and flushed them with gag humor and “over the top characters”.
Oh, trust me on this—Section 31 only got worse and worse and worse, to the point where you think it couldn’t get worse… then it blew my expectations even more. The only Star Trek source material included in the entire movie was the title and the name of two protagonists. Absolutely NOTHING about it was Star Trek, or even remotely a parody of.
It managed to outdo the absolute desecration and crime against humanity that Luc Besson did with Valerian.
Actually, both movies should go in the same garbage bin, then set on digital fire, never to be recovered again.
This movie should be disavowed even more than those two Star Wars spin-off movies made in the start of the 80’s…
You mean the Holiday Special?
They had made two spin-off movies set in the universe, one with the ewoks…
Oh, those! I vaguely remember the Ewok Adventure one. Thanks for refiring that memory, I think. ;)
