Star Trek: Discovery - Season 4 (With Spoilers)

[Frustration]

I don't mean to dismiss "The Mandalorian", but it's a single TV show. The "Clone Wars" cartoon was also received well - but it was a small project that seems to have succeeded because it wasn't considered significant enough to control by the larger corporation, and thus managed to be done well.

The wider world of Star Wars hasn't done nearly as well.

This parallels the case of Star Trek. SF/F fans generally don't think much of the last, what, twenty years?

[Riedquat]

I don't mean to dismiss "The Mandalorian", but it's a single TV show. The "Clone Wars" cartoon was also received well - but it was a small project that seems to have succeeded because it wasn't considered significant enough to control by the larger corporation, and thus managed to be done well.

The wider world of Star Wars hasn't done nearly as well.

This parallels the case of Star Trek. SF/F fans generally don't think much of the last, what, twenty years?

I get the impression (not really based on anything else mind you, so it might be total nonsense) that the impact of The Mandalorian has been considerably greater than The Clone Wars. Being the first live-action Star Wars TV series made it notable anyway and unfortunately a cartoon series generally won't be taken as seriously. Hard to tell until another film appears.

True enough with Trek I suppose, although I found Picard OK-ish (despite some very prominent flaws) and I enjoyed Lower Decks once it settled down.

[Frustration]

The Original Series movies were very hit-or-miss, but the good ones were great, and the okay ones were still pretty good - certainly compared with the Next Gen movies, which weren't very good at all. The very strongest of them was, IMO, weaker than OS' films.

DS9 did good work stretching what "Star Trek" could mean, even though it had no consistent plans for its storylines and ended weakly, it still had some of the best episodes the entire franchise has ever had. Voyager was weak and whiny, I didn't watch enough of Enterprise to form an opinion but fandom isn't all that enthusiastic, and the latest series...

There are excellent reasons why Star Trek was always a niche program. (It was cancelled with barely enough episodes for syndication, remember, and it was resurrected only because the fans it had were extremely dedicated.) The newer series are clearly angling for mass market appeal, which explains much of their decline in quality, although it's pretty clear that the people in charge know nothing about storytelling.

LOST was wildly popular, and as intriguing as some of its early episodes were, it quickly became clear that it was garbage. But it was wildly popular. Game of Thrones nosedived as soon as it ran out of novels to provide it plot and direction - by the end it couldn't showcase a coherent battle scene much less Machiavellian political intrigue. Yet it has loads of devoted fans.

Star Trek's fate has been the same.

[Riedquat]

I suppose it always was a niche but it's still managed to have a massive, lasting effect on popular culture; who hasn't heard of Kirk and Spock? More recent series haven't recaptured that, and that's getting more and more the case. I doubt all that many people not interested in science fiction have even heard of Discovery. Mind you that's got to be put up against the fact that there's so much more TV out there these days, spread over such an area. It's much harder for anything to start up that'll have a big, lasting cultural impact.

[Frustration]

It also takes quality, and OS had actual SF writers doing some of the scripts.

[Mabus]

Having seen people mentioning fandom here, as well as in other places, I can't help but recall seeing not long ago a Reddit post about Rick Riordan's opinion of the Percy Jackson film adaptation script (Riordan being the author of the respective books), from an e-mail he sent to the producers back in 2009, which he posted on his blog back in 2018:
https://rickriordan.com/2018/11/memorie ... xperience/

Having said that, here’s the bad news: The script as a whole is terrible. I don’t simply mean that it deviates from the book, though certainly it does that to point of being almost unrecognizable as the same story. Fans of the books will be angry and disappointed. They will leave the theater in droves and generate horrible word of mouth. That is an absolute given if the script goes forward as it stands now. But the bigger problem is that even if you pretend the book doesn’t exist, this script doesn’t work as a story in its own right.

He then tried to sugarcoat the script, and was of the opinion that it still could be saved by altering some plot points, but it's clear that never happened. Needless to say, both films were shit, they might have been a financial success, but it was clear that the onscreen story just didn't work.

So what do you do here? You have both the fans of the book trashing the film series, and the original book author doing the same, with the author even specifying what fans might not like (age lift, various character changes, etc.). After all, if something worked in the books, and the film adaptation changes that to something that doesn't make sense, then how could anyone argue that it's "fan entitlement" when you already have a better version of your shitty script that you could use to improve your shitty script, namely, oh... I don't know... the original work? Or, because the original author complained, now it's also "author entitlement"? I just get the feeling that what's often called "fan entitlement" is just "customer feedback". I mean, films and other entertainment are just products, and if you can't deliver a good product, then people are not going to buy it. Duh. Telling fans that "you're not entitled a better product" feels like crass ignorance, since in that case, the fan/customer can just say "well, in that case, you're not entitled to my money anymore". But if you don't know why your product is shit and why the customers don't like it, then maybe the people in charge of the franchise/adaptation are at fault and maybe they should be replaced with more compe...lmao who am I kidding, the people in charge are never at fault, it's always others who are at fault. Just ask Amy Baking's Company: I heard it was the entitled customers and internet trolls review-bombing the company that caused the most beautiful business on planet to shutdown. Entitled pricks! /s

Yes, it's true that there are plenty of shitty parts of the fandom, but this does not negate in any way the fact that sometimes the adaptation/continuation of a series aka product is just plain bad. You can have both at the same time: a shitty product criticized by shitty fans. Which doesn't change the fact that your product is still shit.

[Deledrius]

I'm enjoying Season 4. So far it's been really good. They're doing well building on Season 3 and making it even better. It's not perfect, but at this point the problems are nitpicks and not fundamental flaws.

Yes, it's true that there are plenty of shitty parts of the fandom, but this does not negate in any way the fact that sometimes the adaptation/continuation of a series aka product is just plain bad. You can have both at the same time: a shitty product criticized by shitty fans. Which doesn't change the fact that your product is still shit.

This is 100% true.

[Procstar]

I'm liking Season 4 as well. I thought Season 3 was a massive improvement from Season 2 and this season is doing the same for the previous season.

While I'm not too happy about another world-ending disaster, they at least are putting it in the background as the characters deal with other issues and desires.

[Deledrius]

I'm liking Season 4 as well. I thought Season 3 was a massive improvement from Season 2 and this season is doing the same for the previous season.

While I'm not too happy about another world-ending disaster, they at least are putting it in the background as the characters deal with other issues and desires.

I'm kinda hoping the "threat" fizzles out in some way; the real meat is how it's pushed many together and some apart and at this point it's already done that. It doesn't have to lead to anything bigger or more threatening, in fact that would detract from all of the good stuff that's been set up now. I want them to dissolve the thing, and either realize it was a natural, unique anomaly, or else put the (still unsupported hypothesis) alien originator on a backburner out of reach for now. Between the evil scientist, Book, Earth's independence, the re-emerging Starfleet, the suspiciously-unmentioned Klingons, the Emerald Chain, Tilly's subplot, and everything else... they could fill a normal 26 episode season with all of the delicious plot- and character-driven stories they've made hooks for.

I think that's been one of the show's biggest consistent weaknesses: the new short-season format rushes all of the good bits.

Not enough of a good thing is not a bad problem to have, of course. But it would be nice if they loosened up the episode order now that they're firing on all cylinders. A hot rod is useless in a residential cul-de-sac! Let's get it out there on a racetrack with plenty of room and see what this show can really do!

[Procstar]

I'm liking Season 4 as well. I thought Season 3 was a massive improvement from Season 2 and this season is doing the same for the previous season.

While I'm not too happy about another world-ending disaster, they at least are putting it in the background as the characters deal with other issues and desires.

I'm kinda hoping the "threat" fizzles out in some way; the real meat is how it's pushed many together and some apart and at this point it's already done that. It doesn't have to lead to anything bigger or more threatening, in fact that would detract from all of the good stuff that's been set up now. I want them to dissolve the thing, and either realize it was a natural, unique anomaly, or else put the (still unsupported hypothesis) alien originator on a backburner out of reach for now. Between the evil scientist, Book, Earth's independence, the re-emerging Starfleet, the suspiciously-unmentioned Klingons, the Emerald Chain, Tilly's subplot, and everything else... they could fill a normal 26 episode season with all of the delicious plot- and character-driven stories they've made hooks for.

I think that's been one of the show's biggest consistent weaknesses: the new short-season format rushes all of the good bits.

Not enough of a good thing is not a bad problem to have, of course. But it would be nice if they loosened up the episode order now that they're firing on all cylinders. A hot rod is useless in a residential cul-de-sac! Let's get it out there on a racetrack with plenty of room and see what this show can really do!

I think they confirmed that this entity is probably artificial in nature. Knowing Michael though, they're probably going to use the Starfleet gospel to fix the issue, not shoot it in the face.