Star Trek: Discovery - Season Four

[Makeshift Python]

youtu.be/sJ4CkuDx5LE


Funny, I thought YouTubers claimed this show was cancelled before it even hit streaming.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Really the whole premise of the 3rd season made the series in itself original and took care of all the temporal problems of the setting.

[Deledrius]

I'm not excited about Yet Another Galactic Threat, and those new uniforms look awkward, but after Season 3 I'm ready and willing to see where it goes.

[Al-1701]

Well, it seems to be a specific event in this case. And it fits into the year-long arc format of Discovery. Plus, I would consider a five light year across gravitational pot hole a legitimate threat.

But I do think they got things together with the third season. Odd how Star Trek shows seem to do that. Here's hoping the strives made will continue into Season 4.

[HumanXeroxMachine]

Next week on Bellhop Discovery!

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I was going to post this in the season 3 thread, but it is just as obscure here.

I'm watching TOS again and I was thinking how much I would enjoy Discovery if it was just filled with backflips in rationalizing why TOS setting is so dated to us even though it's supposed to be in the future.

Like it wasn't that great how they were like, "oops sorry for frying your holodeck." But if they cleverly wrote a circumstance for everything from the Woodstock colors to box design and rudimentary computers, all with answers that have nothing to do with being inspired by 60's design.

[Thebestoftherest]

I was going to post this in the season 3 thread, but it is just as obscure here.

I'm watching TOS again and I was thinking how much I would enjoy Discovery if it was just filled with backflips in rationalizing why TOS setting is so dated to us even though it's supposed to be in the future.

Like it wasn't that great how they were like, "oops sorry for frying your holodeck." But if they cleverly wrote a circumstance for everything from the Woodstock colors to box design and rudimentary computers, all with answers that have nothing to do with being inspired by 60's design.

INstead they need to waste time making a characters only the writers like become even more 'important' again.

[McAvoy]

The biggest problem with a short ten episode season is that you really can't do stand alone episodes like old Trek did. You have to make each episode count and make it connected. Especially in today's method of TV storytelling on short seasons.

So that causes a bit of a bottleneck in terms of storytelling. You have to make a big event for the season and each season. Discovery decides that it has to be a huge event, galactic sized.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The biggest problem with a short ten episode season is that you really can't do stand alone episodes like old Trek did. You have to make each episode count and make it connected. Especially in today's method of TV storytelling on short seasons.

So that causes a bit of a bottleneck in terms of storytelling. You have to make a big event for the season and each season. Discovery decides that it has to be a huge event, galactic sized.

I don't think it's that different. They just need a very concise story. It's an extended movie and a truncated show at the same time. You can place at least 1-2 standalone episodes in the format, 3 if it's 13 I bet, but the story has to be navigated better.

[Deledrius]

The biggest problem with a short ten episode season is that you really can't do stand alone episodes like old Trek did. You have to make each episode count and make it connected. Especially in today's method of TV storytelling on short seasons.

So that causes a bit of a bottleneck in terms of storytelling. You have to make a big event for the season and each season. Discovery decides that it has to be a huge event, galactic sized.

I think "An Obol for Charon" is possibly the best episode of Season 2, and it managed to be exactly what the show needs: standalone events that are part of both the larger arc (it introduces the sentient data) and advances characters (Saru undergoes metamorphoses both physically and psychologically). It even continues a minor C-plot that was running through previous episodes, ending in a surprising cliffhanger that leads directly into the next episode's A-plot.

None of those were about a massive galactic plot (though it was eventually woven into one, it came out of this rather than being driven by it), none of those elements were about how important Michael Burnham is (but she got to be the central viewpoint for all three plots, and served a role in each), and it still managed to advance the season, advance the characters, and tell a quintessentially-Trek story with the Sphere.

"An Obol for Charon" was an episode that connected to everything going on because it did important things. It wasn't an episode that was connected because it just happened to be where the episode landed on the path through a planned-out path through the season.

Incidentally, it also strikes me as interesting that the better episodes of this type were in the first half of the season before the second showrunner-wipe and CONTROL took over the storyline at the midpoint. It does leave me wondering what the original plans were for the spore engine plotline, as well as the original Red Angel.

I'm watching TOS again and I was thinking how much I would enjoy Discovery if it was just filled with backflips in rationalizing why TOS setting is so dated to us even though it's supposed to be in the future.

Like it wasn't that great how they were like, "oops sorry for frying your holodeck." But if they cleverly wrote a circumstance for everything from the Woodstock colors to box design and rudimentary computers, all with answers that have nothing to do with being inspired by 60's design.

This seems like something right up the "fan-service" alley of Lower Decks.

I don't need backflips to fill in the gaps, my mind does that automatically, assuming the gaps aren't as big as Discovery made them (seemingly intentionally). It would be nice for them to try once in a while (even Enterprise tried this, for heaven's sake). I'm of the opinion that you can make things inspired by those design elements that look both futuristic and modern. Clearly some of the people in the production design team feel it's a lost cause, or else they were told to treat it that way by their bosses. I couldn't guess. It's a shame though. They did make an honest effort with the Enterprise bridge, even if I think the obsidian mirrored floor is entirely impractical and ugly.
The real key is to not start yourself off in a position where you need to make those sort of fourth-wall leans at all if you can help it. That goes back to the oft-discussed question "is this trying to bet on nostalgia, or shake itself from it?" problem that contemporary Trek seems to struggle with, of course.