Sfdebris.net

TGLS wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2024 1:31 am

McAvoy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 04, 2024 1:23 am Whereas all I am talking about is just a background character who may not even be given a name having a handful of lines in an entire season?

I quit the series like half-way through the fourth season. It seemed like the show kinda had a problem with having an extended main cast like that in general.

That is true. You really do not know who those characters are that's on the bridge. I think some of them were more prominent in the first season and it's as if the writers forgot about them.

I get it though. Discovery did not have 26 episode seasons to dive into every character on that bridge and they did break up the usual Trek tradition of not having the bridge crew or the senior officers being the main characters. So they didn't have enough time in theory at least, to give them some sort of extended background story or development.

I say in theory because I am sure someone with more time than me could point out in each episode of each season where they could cut out some parts in exchange with some interactions with these background characters.

But really, if you think about it, the older shows didn't do that much with the characters outside the main cast or recurring ones like DS9 or Barclay. We had that engineer that in the second episode of Voyager got his nose broken and he appears randomly on the show. Nurse Ogawa had some nice scenes but not alot though she did get to sit in the conference room when she was being turned into I think a monkey.

Hell O'Brien could have been counted among those in the early TNG seasons until someone realized Colm Meaney could act!

I feel like if you want to start a new generation of Star Trek maybe prove you can fill the mold before breaking it

Spore Drive. Why was this necessary in Discovery? I just never got it. Like I said, it just felt like they tacked on a super power to the ship that no other ship had to make the ship different.

Maybe to make the show different from other Trek shows? Why couldn't the show stand on its own with the standard established Star Trek technology that we all know? New fans? What's the difference between warp drive and spore drive to a new viewer? None. It's just another sci-fi FTL drive to them. Just only the added complication to explain warp drive.

Star Trek has enough fantastical technology in its lore that you don't need to add to it with something the older shows ever had. Like wouldn't Voyager have loved to have that Spore drive?

The 2250's for is a little explored time frame for Star Trek. Could have been plenty of original stories that could have been made from that period.

Yes. Spinning it's wheels is an apt description of Discovery. Just never really making an identity of itself. Like what is Discovery? Is it the Michael Burnham show? At least with the other Disco shows we know what they are.

I do wonder if in twenty years people will look at Discovery more fondly or will it be like the enterprise of it time, forgotten unless people want to complain about it.

Thebestoftherest wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 2:08 pm I do wonder if in twenty years people will look at Discovery more fondly or will it be like the enterprise of it time, forgotten unless people want to complain about it.

It depends on the Trek product in the next 20 years. Enterprise and Voyager both gets about the same amount of criticism that they got 20 years ago.

Its not like the Star Wars Prequels being looked better because the Sequels in comparison sucked.

McAvoy wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 6:05 am Spore Drive. Why was this necessary in Discovery? I just never got it. Like I said, it just felt like they tacked on a super power to the ship that no other ship had to make the ship different.

Maybe to make the show different from other Trek shows? Why couldn't the show stand on its own with the standard established Star Trek technology that we all know? New fans? What's the difference between warp drive and spore drive to a new viewer? None. It's just another sci-fi FTL drive to them. Just only the added complication to explain warp drive.

I disagree. The first few episodes of the show make a big deal about the spore drive. A new or casual viewer will understand that the spore drive is different from the warp drive because the characters make a big deal about the spore drive. As the series moved on they made it progressively less important. Bad move.

Part of the idea was probably to make this unique technology that they could trivially remove by saying "And then the Discovery was lost!" and conveniently sweep the spores under the rug and not affect the rest of canon. I think part of it was to allow, "And then the Discovery goes to the Mirror Universe!"

Discovery frustrates me because...well, I don't think I care much for it, but holy SHIT, are there a lot of people who hate it for the wrong reasons, and then there are even more people who hate it but don't know how to be normal about that. Also, without it paving the way, we wouldn't have Lower Decks, and right now Lower Decks ranks pretty high on my "reasons to live" list.

But yeah, file the Spore Drive under "huge, game-changing ideas that they don't seem to fully know what to do with."

hammerofglass wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2024 3:34 pm Discovery was a lot of interesting concepts that never quite jelled in a story that could never decide on a tone. And then every season they would dump those concepts and create a new set of interesting concepts that never quite jelled.

The first season where they were apparently going for what a twelve year old considers edgy and cool was the worst by a significant margin, two was ok, three I really liked even if I thought they were far too eager to wrap up the mystery and slam the reset button to restore status quo instead of continuing with the new setting they had built, four left no impression on me good or bad to the point I barely remember it, five was a shaggy dog story but it had it's moments.

Overall 5/10, it was OK.

Very much where I'm at. Might bump it up to 6/10 for myself, I had a higher opinion of season 4, but yeah, the show's definitely mostly... fine, only fine.
Season 3 especially kills me because it's the best season of the show but it would have been better AND made the later seasons better if they'd just... not 'solved' The Burn that season. Like, leave it a mystery, either for later seasons or just something that never ends up being solved. Have a partial solution that sets the galaxy on the path to recovery, maybe Ni'Var has a breakthrough that helps restore a weaker form of warp drive and some time in the next season is spent trying to refine and improve it, sorta reinventing the wheel. Or maybe they find a much smaller dilithium deposit but are sparing with it because they don't know for sure if the Burn could happen again. Just a little piece of the mystery that sticks around and colors future events while not needing to dominate the storyline.

McAvoy wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 6:05 am Spore Drive. Why was this necessary in Discovery? I just never got it. Like I said, it just felt like they tacked on a super power to the ship that no other ship had to make the ship different.

The idea in the first season was that experiments were being done by a renegade exploiting the federation to get back home.

The next season used it as a casual device to help them discover new worlds more easily and also have a little bit of drama on its own with Stamitz and his development of it.

In the future it was useful in giving Discovery the edge on hyper travel given the outcome of the burn. The federation had become highly disenfranchised and Discovery's arrival changes a lot of things for them.

BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Sun Jun 09, 2024 2:52 am

McAvoy wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 6:05 am Spore Drive. Why was this necessary in Discovery? I just never got it. Like I said, it just felt like they tacked on a super power to the ship that no other ship had to make the ship different.

The idea in the first season was that experiments were being done by a renegade exploiting the federation to get back home.

The next season used it as a casual device to help them discover new worlds more easily and also have a little bit of drama on its own with Stamitz and his development of it.

In the future it was useful in giving Discovery the edge on hyper travel given the outcome of the burn. The federation had become highly disenfranchised and Discovery's arrival changes a lot of things for them.

Its not about the why they did it in the show itself (in show) but why they needed to have it from a writer's or producer view.

Like why was there a need to include the Mirror universe anyway. The show already had a decent storyline going. War with the Klingons and us following Michael who committed a mutiny who started the war. Also having the war from the Klingon's point of view.

I don't think this is nitpicking IMO. Nitpicking would be like complaining why the uniforms were so different or how did that saucer spin like it did when they spun up (literally) that drive.