Would Star Trek Discovery have benefited from an episodic format?

[Karha of Honor]

Also would it had benefited one from having no season long arcs for season 1 considering they have more behind the scenes drama than the Ferengi Socialist Party?

Or maybe having a Burn Notice type compromise where you can easily enjoy it without caring about the season long story arc...

Would the bad pills be easier to swallow that way and would the good parts be more enjoyable?

Also the behind the scenes drama might have less of an effect on the final product in that case.

[Yukaphile]

Not unless the characters stopped being massive dicks.

[Yukaphile]

And as always, continuity, continuity, continuity! Adhere to continuity!

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I feel it was missing a bit in terms of the season arc. I don't think it necessarily needed filler plots though.

[CharlesPhipps]

I feel like Discovery would have benefited from a dozen things.

[chaos42]

i don't think episodic format would have worked because that is a relic of the past and would be a step back. Consider WHY are series of tv shows episodic in the first place. The reason for episodic tv is because most people didn't always start a series from the start and frequently in the middle and it was deemed safer to make them something any one can start from any point, plus home video and what we have now was very expensive, consider that a single episode or 2 of a series could cost upwards of 20 dollars a pop. Dvds didn't change that till much later when they became cheaper to mass produce and box sets replaced the older single volumes that we bought which were like 3-6 episodes of tv on one disc. Now streaming and box sets of entire seasons cost less and its easier to get an entire tv shows run of episodes. But now that we can all watch from the start what is the reason to do episodic shows. Consider that all the time you can spend developing the characters and everything, would give you the ability to make the show better. So i don't think its and issue of format but of simply they didn't do a good job. Plus partially serialized as it is some of the episodes are episodic like but have elements that contribute to the over all story. I think the idea is sound but the execution is what is lacking as discovery was just poorly written and was a bunch of rebootists as i like to call them. People who want to reboot everything and change everything to be cooler. Its like the 4th edition of d&d trying to make it cool and new didn't work, i think its why we are seeing the klingons going back to the post tos design in some of the stuff we have seen and other elements working to fix things.

[Nessus]

I've seen both formats done well. We all have. So I don't see how it'd make a difference versus just, y'know, writing better regardless of format.

I mean, that's glib, but there it is. We know by many examples that the continuity-driven format works when it's written properly. If your writers aren't good enough, switching format won't help substantially, and certainly not more than just getting better writers, so I don't really see the point of the question.

Since both formats can be done well, why wonder if the current writers would do better if they were writing for a different format when you could be wondering what better writers could do with the current format? Seems like the latter has much higher ceiling.

[Karha of Honor]

It's like asking if a Ford Pinto would be improved by installing different tires. Maybe? But as long as we're dealing purely in hypotheticals, why even bother asking that when you'd get far better results by putting either tires on a better car?

It's like asking do you wanna drive shitty car or do you wanna use a shitty cab company.

[Nessus]

I'm afraid I don't follow the logic of that metaphor.

[Karha of Honor]

I'm afraid I don't follow the logic of that metaphor.

Telling a bunch of shorter stories means there is a chance for more ups and downs despite the behind the scenes chaos opposed to one long plot writing process where the story gets wrecked by 20 jackhammers of the behind the secnes drama.

1 car

Lots of cabs.