The show that many of us have been hoping for is actually happening. Pike, Spock, and Number One are getting their own series.
Of course it's still going to be the Discoprise. We can't have everything, of course. But if they can capture the same spirit that Pike showed in Discovery's second season, I won't care.
I've kind of enjoyed Discovery, I really enjoyed Picard, and this show, just based on its premise and what we saw last season, sounds like it'll be amazing.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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On the one hand, Mount's Pike was easily the best part of Disco S2 and Romijn's Number One was awesome as well. I definitely look forward to seeing more of them.
On the other hand, Ethan Peck hasn't wowed me as Spock. He was merely okay as a bearded half-insane Spock, but once they shaved him and put him in a Starfleet uniform, he just seemed off. Plus, while I've overall enjoyed both Disco and Picard, I feel that they both have deep issues that prevent them from being anywhere near as good as they could be, and I don't think the current showrunners have sorted those out yet.
Plus, that brings us to how many Trek series now? At the very least, let's get Section 31 and Lower Decks out the door first, which we've been waiting on for way too long.
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Shik
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This will be 6 simultaneous series, 7 if you count Short Treks.
I am very disappointed. I, too, enjoyed Mount's Pike, but this is just further oversaturation of material as part of a franchise dilution that still has yet to produce a consistently good show. If production focus was not so wide, there would be better quality to the content.
But perhaps that's the issue here. Quality.
Modern writing & layout has seized upon the continuing story as the necessary thing for all television, welding that to whiz-bang-wowee VFX & turning science fiction into science action. Because of that, it all becomes cheapened. There's no real meat to any of it.
Compare what we've seen from this refitted franchising to what came two decades ago & the differences are glaring. The scene in DS9 where Kira whispers nine small words to Damar & they hit with the force of an asteroid impacting a moon: "Yeah, Damar, what kind of people give those orders?" I recently watched the VGR episode "Pathfinder" & it hit me how clearly Barclay is autistic & no one interacts with him properly & there's still that power 20 years on. But there's none of that in DSC or PIC. I've enjoyed things about them, but they're junk food when compared to the full meals we had in the past.
I would much rather all of these new concepts just....stop. Just stop, take a hard look at what's already been created, & fix it to make it better. It's like houses: older houses still stand because they were made to do so, to endure; meanwhile, modern construction often settles on the McMansion method, where they might look good (but not often) but the actually construction is incredibly shoddy because the actual plan is to just get them finished & sold, no matter what shortcuts are needed. I'd rather the production team focus on one or two things to make the best product possible rather than giving us a slew of McMansion-like Twinkie crap.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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I still don’t agree with the saturation issue at all. At this point, it’s going to be at least 18 months, probably more considering the current lockdown, before this new series is ready for release. It was about the same amount of time between the announcement of Picard and its release.
Also consider that each season is much fewer shows, between 10-13 instead of 22-26. So in terms of amount of stuff to watch, we’re still looking at roughly the same number of episodes compared to the years that DS9 was on the air alongside TNG or VOY.
They’re also going for more variety with these shows... Lower Decks seems likely to have a very different tone compared to Discovery. And then there’s the upcoming kids’ show, which I will probably check out for curiosity’s sake but have no plans to care much about.
(Also, I don’t think Short Treks count as a series. They’re promotional appetizers, not the main course.)
I do agree that the latest series have lost something compared to the episodic formula of previous shows. They’re focusing on fewer, bigger stories, and that leaves less time to explore deep details in the characters. Postmodern Trek has become very plot-heavy.
But this is also a side effect of the limited run of each season. With 26 episodes to fill, you had plenty of time to explore each main character at least twice, give them time to shine in the spotlight. I think that Picard did a better job of that than Discovery (**cough**AIRIAM**cough**), but there’s still room for improvement.
Here’s my two personal philosophies that keep me sane in this. First, I think that the writers have had to learn how to adapt modern storytelling to the Trek formula as they go. The improvements aren’t nearly enough, but they’re there. And though none of them outshine my beloved DS9, I don’t dislike them.
Second, I’ve chosen to take the opposite approach of what the producers have intended concerning visual continuity. The Discoprise we saw doesn’t really look like that, Enterprise will always look like it did in the 60’s.
Regardless, these concerns are all basically growing pains. I’ve never been a comic book fan, but how many soft and hard reboots have happened in the different universes over the years, to the point where consistency is strained to its limit? I spent untold hours complaining about continuity issues in the VOY/ENT years, but in retrospect they overall did an amazing job keeping things consistent with previous shows (with notable exceptions, of course). But it’s now 50 years since TOS, and it’s understandable that they can’t make everything look exactly the same.
Are there people out there who argue that the original comic book Iron Man is the only true Iron Man? I’d be shocked if there weren’t at least a few. But we’ve gotten some great stories out of the modern Marvel films, despite what I can only guess are massive changes in certain respects. It’s going to be the same with Star Trek.
If there’s one thing I wish Star Trek would adopt, it’s the multiverse theory. Back in the first season of Discovery, when Lorca foreshadowed the mirror universe to Stamets, I was hoping that they were implying that Disco would become a universe-hopping explorer, and that the Disco timeline was not the prime universe. The producers didn’t go that route, sadly. I still think they should.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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Ironically, Star Trek:Sliders is sometging I could definitely get behind, along with Fuller's original anthology concept.
It's just....these are such bad writers, y'know? And they honestly have no grasp of Trek's soul & substance, & it shows, & it...bothers me. A lot.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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It's only a matter of time now until they announce the next batch of shows: Star Trek: JAG Star Trek: CSI Star Trek: 90210 Star Trek: ER
I just don't get it. The STD makers constantly disrespected the restrictions of a prequel. And then they finally found a way out with the half-assed "we don't talk about it" order and the jump to the future. And now they're going back again to this time period with another show?
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You say that, but I remember the painful filler shots of Bashir: CSI on DS9 when they had him gathering Ibudan's cellular samples with some hand-vac that looked even less advanced than the blood quicker-picker-upper from ST6:TUC . . . not to mention the whole vat thing from that ep, "A Man Alone".
In both cases a 'simple' tricorder scan should've been sufficient. Given the show's sometimes-tenuous grip on real science and the consistency of certain things, Star Trek: CSI would be infuriating . . . it'd probably be like Abby from NCIS forgetting what fingerprints were after using her vapor-deposition gizmo to assess them the episode prior.
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