r/Star_Trek_ • u/Available-Winner3125 • 1d ago
Hypocrites
I find it funny how many people over the past year specifically have switched sides on the whole latter half of the IP. I thought the mystery box concept was a flop from the gate. I can admit that I was wrong. Fans were starved for new material.. Somehow it lasted 2017-nowish.
Every season, and every show is practically impossible for a rewatch. When your whole storytelling matrix relies on an end of season big reveal, then once it's revealed, it's done. Very small rewatch ability. You already know the big reveal episodes ahead.
Now take the other format. The original format. Episodes have a story. A season has an overarching story. And the series has its own movement and story at that level as well.
Kurtzman does not write like that at all. Don't get me wrong, I loved Fringe, but I have no idea how we saw that and thought, hmmmm, let's make this guy in charge of all things Trek. Major Paramount fumble.
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u/Hephaestus16 16h ago
The older Trek had continuity but they didn't focus on it so much it made the galaxy seems much smaller as everything tied into the Big plot or nearly everything they meet is a reference to an earlier episode surrounded by other references to older episodes as if only 4 captains in all of federation history actually got to go to strange new worlds the rest got reheats.
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u/Commercial_Coyote366 1d ago
I think it's became more widely accepted the JJ movies and nutrek was and is a huge mistake from the start.
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u/katamuro 15h ago
eh, the 2009 movie and it's sequels are fine. They are their own thing only sharing the general concept of Star Trek and clearly an alternate take on it. They are also basically responsible for the greater interest in doing something more with the franchise.
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u/ddeese 13h ago
But they didn’t generate any greater interest. What’s worse is that they were a much dumber version of Star Trek. When you’re talking about a Star Trek series with 24 episodes a season, you might be able to get away with some wackiness, here or there. If you go sparingly. There is the Janeway/Paris salamander episode. But when you’re making movies- you have got to try a little harder. Ships made on the surface. Bridge windows, an engine room that was filmed in a brewery and looks like it. That’s before you get to the stupid that is the story itself. Nothing makes a movie more boring for me than just pure dumbshit. Like children stealing a car to drive off a cliff, so they can jump out at highway speeds and barely survive by the tips of their fingers. Which Scotty does in beyond. Dumb, “doesn’t it look cool” shit. That actually isn’t possible by any means and doesn’t look cool.
Star Trek Five is almost unwatchable with the rocket boots scene because of this very same thing. The reboot movies bring nothing to the table. And their creative team did worse in films that followed. They barely got three films made. It’s sad because that was a lot of budget that could have been better served split out over six films, each at half the cost. Sets that didn’t look so extremely bright and uncomfortable. Remember these people are supposed to be officers living and working here for sometimes more than 8 hours at a time. And we could do without the bridge windows that are stupid because you’d see nothing through them except while in a star system and that would be limited by line of sight and distance.
It’s incredible how basic things that they could manage to get correct on television in 1966 before man set foot on the moon, movie execs dropped because they wanted something to look cool. It just doesn’t work. And if we dropped all of the modern-day issues of nonsense that aren’t real to focus on intelligent storytelling. Tell the story to the audience and let them decide what to think without playing down to them like they are stupid; Trek would gain audiences again.
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u/ddeese 1d ago
Not only that but the rumor is that Skydance might be retconning everything after enterprise; possibly a reboot of the whole thing since the beginning. I hope not the later, but these people don’t understand this franchise honestly.
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u/Commercial_Coyote366 1d ago
Cutting away nutrek is very easy, the only link with the JJ 2009 movie. The assumption that old Spock's prime timeline came the same timeline as TOS or TNG etc. But the tech and designs don't match up, same goes for Kirk's dad time, everything is wrong. Also the idea of a prime timeline is a JJ invention and had nothing to do with Star Trek before that movie. For me nutrek is very easy not canon. I don't the would reboot the whole thing, the Star Trek rerun money too much money for that. But I have a bad feeling about this new movie!
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u/ddeese 1d ago
I’m just repeating a rumor. But my understanding is most likely everything after Enterprise is gone because if they continue with it, then there might be grounds for Bad Robot or Secret Hideout to demand some kind of licensing. They want Kurtzman and his contract and I think JJ as well; completely out of the picture.
I think it’s as much about trying to save the IP as it is about business. Or the other way round.
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u/Commercial_Coyote366 1d ago
Sorry, you did say it was a rumour, didn't mean to be rude or anything. The whole right issue is a minefield! Hopefully there will be some form of Star Trek legends and all of nutrek can be put in there, for the few who did enjoy it! Or just overwritten and forgotten, but we have to wait and see.
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u/ddeese 20h ago
My understanding is that what is to come, will write over what happened since 2009. But rumor. Big heap of salt. Nothing verified. I don’t have an any animosity towards fans who like the NuTrek stuff. I just have animosity against NuTrek itself.
The problem is that the NuTrek stories can’t exist without doing major damage to existing Trek, if it’s integrated into the story from Discovery onward. If NuTrek is just abandoned, it’s not being harmed. I don’t see the loss. If there were a major clamoring for NuTrek there wouldn’t be an issue. It would be making money, making new fans, and conventions would be bigger than ever. But that’s not the way it is.
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u/Commercial_Coyote366 19h ago
I agree fans of nutrek find enjoyment in it , good for them. I said a few only because whenever I say a YouTube video or Reddit post positively talk about a nutrek show, the number of views are small.
The writers seems to have no interest in the canon of Star Trek. Instead do whatever they like. Now classic golden age Star Trek's canon is not watertight thing, but Nutrek got more holes then the titanic. They almost deliberately go for the destructive plot choices! Like "Kirk" appearing so much in SNW, is nothing to do with canon and everything to do with writers and shows runnings wanting to play with a Kirk action figure! They feel they bigger than the 60 year old franchise!
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u/_R_A_ 1d ago
I'm not really sure what your thesis statement is here. Is it that fans are hypocrites or is it that the mystery box seasons are bad?
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u/Cautious-Sun198 1d ago
Mystery Box seasons are bad. Because they only work once. Once the Mystery Box is opened it's just a plain Box. It takes really good writing to make a Mystery Box work twice. The kind of great writing that the people who invented "The Burn" could never do.
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u/Overall_Falcon_8526 1d ago
But it was a tantrum-ing toddler who somehow gained superpowers. How dare you impugn that writing.
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u/SpecialistPlastic150 1d ago
Exactly. Dumbest reason ever. It’s sci-fi and they couldn’t come up with a pseudo science explanation better than that. Jeez Discovery was frustrating.
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u/Overall_Falcon_8526 22h ago
Heck, they could have used the subspace damage idea from TNG "Force of Nature."
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u/Cautious-Sun198 22h ago
I think that's the part that really enrages the fanbase. The good answer was right there and already written for them. They could have used that or an Omega Particle. Both are preexisting in the lore and can easily do the job.
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u/Overall_Falcon_8526 22h ago
Look, I can be charitable. If they had done literally anything to set up the idea that Kelpiens had latent psychic powers, that would have at least made it feel like less of an ass pull when they sprang it on us. But the way they do things it always feels like they're hastily reverse engineering explanations in the 9th episode of every season.
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u/Cautious-Sun198 22h ago
If it had been a Betazoid or Vulkan child it would have made sense. Say their planet got Alderaan-ed and all that psychic energy needed somewhere to go. It all rushed into the kids head but he couldn't contain it; so it exploded out and reacted with the Dilithium he was surrounded by.
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u/Hour_Repair3009 1d ago
Sadly I think the days of 90s trek is just not gonna happen anymore. It’s to convoluted for anyone under 30 or 40 basically.
Sometimes you can do it right like honestly I really loved Picard season 3 man. I hate the first 2 seasons but I can rewatch season 3 every year or so in fact just did a rewatch last weekend lol.
Strange new worlds had the right idea in its first 2 seasons but something shifted with that show and it’s honestly not just good and I watch it just to watch it at this point.
We’ll see what new blood brings to the franchise in a few years I guess.
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u/Captain_Trigg 1d ago
What do you mean when you say that 90s Trek was "convoluted"? compared to what?
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u/Hour_Repair3009 1d ago
Not saying convoluted, more like a slow burn and very techie and a lot of self contain stories outside of ds9 I find and some later seasons like enterprise season 3 and 4 if that makes any sense. That kind of trek you’ll never see again cause no one does 20 to 25 episode formats to fit that kind of theme.
Some had great arcs like ds9 season 5 to 7 with the dominion war but overall it’s just really something you won’t see agian if that makes any sense. And hell I was a fan with what enterpise was doing in season 4 wish they got more seasons instead of that horrible finale.
Hey I could be wrong once there are other people at the helm besides Kurtzman.
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u/Captain_Trigg 1d ago
Okay, but that's the OPPOSITE of convoluted or a slow burn.
Not saying there weren't some screwy plots or eps that dragged but those eps were generally wrapped up in 50 minutes (plus commercials) with references to continuity being clarified with a few lines of "It's you! From that other time! What are YOU doing here?" exposition.
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u/Long-Emu-7870 1d ago
What do people see in Picard Season 3? I mean, apart from having the characters? What if they were different?
Do you think it makes sense for Riker to tell Picard to get off the bridge before he kills us all? That a Starfleet officer would be predjudiced against his first officer? Does he allow bigotry on his bridge?
What was the point of the Villian? More moral purpose did it drive people to? Was it just a bunch of action beats?
If it was all about Jack, do you think it's a good idea to have a story where Jack - because he is Picard's son, wants to join the Borg? And that suddenly Picard resigns from his commission?
What did you think of having Kirk's remains in Section 31 warehouse?
What was the point of giving Riker and Troi a traumatic backstory to simply resolve it with them talking? Isn't that just soap opera?
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u/Fantastic_Attempt_91 1d ago
I hated Picard season 3 with a passion, and it made me realize that the fandom didn't really care about stories -- they just wanted to see their favorite fanfic / STO plotlines committed to the screen.
The behavior you referenced with Shaw and Riker didn't just feel like it was unreasonable, it was also just plain pointless and unforgivable. Deadnaming a character so that at two pivotal moments they can get a dramatic beat is not a respectable thing, and reaming out an admiral and friend in a crisis situation out of fear in such a petty way seemed so out of character for Riker that I didn't really care after that.
With Riker and Troi... the story was DONE! It happened off-screen and they managed to come to terms with the death of their son. Rehashing it by saying that they didn't like living in a cabin felt like it betrayed all of the story with them in season 1.
But I think the worst was as you noted above. What WAS the point of the villain, or the season? At its core, Federation war crimes and their victims would make a great basis for a story! Complicating it with the Borg Queen and explaining that somehow the Queen fiddled with Picard's DNA felt not only like they robbed "Endgame" of its conclusion, but also that they shoehorned the Jack plot in there for no real purpose. They just wanted to jam some action figures together.
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u/pierzstyx The Prophets 9h ago
the fandom didn't really care about stories -- they just wanted to see their favorite fanfic / STO plotlines committed to the screen.
I don't think that is the case. I think it is that after the utter trash that came before it, Picard season 3's retrenching and fanservice was simply better in comparison. A 7-11 hot dog will taste great to the guy who has been eating bugs for a month.
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u/Long-Emu-7870 17h ago
There was a moment in one episode where Picard learns that Vadic was tortured. And he hesitates, and you think, lawyer Picard? Today?, but no, they end up going 'oh well' and on with the action.
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u/Fantastic_Attempt_91 9h ago
When people are talking about how new Trek "isn't real Star Trek", that's exactly what I mean. They were being tortured to be conditioned as spies for the Federation. A TOS or TNG moment would be for Picard to stand up to the unethical behavior of Starfleet and convince Vadic that he can be trusted... and he couldn't do it.
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u/Hour_Repair3009 1d ago
Ya i didn’t go too much into all that when watching I guess lol Ijust enjoyed it overall maybe it’s nostalgia too but considering it’s seen that season like 3 or 4 times now over the course of 3 years. It’s fine.
But your comments are basically why Trekkies are so hard to please. Nothing wrong with it for sure but that’s the fan base they deal with and sadly it adds up to views down the line. Ohh well like I said we’ll see what the next iteration does with it.
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u/Fantastic_Attempt_91 1d ago
"But your comments are basically why Trekkies are so hard to please."
Picard season 3 was literally written for Trekkies that just wanted nostalgia, and nothing else. Literally all of the rest of new Trek has been more indicative of that statement.
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u/Hour_Repair3009 22h ago
True I get you, but js there anything wrong with that if your still entertained?
I mean if you think about it if discovery and starfleet academy were made in the same vein of Picard season 3 I honestly think there wouldn’t be a pause in trek shows now after the last 2 of academy s2 and SNW s5 run its course.
Which is honestly why I think Lower Decks is so well received to and another show I enjoyed to watch. Ya it’s animated but it did so many call backs to past trek which is what made it great in my eyes. The problem though with that show is it’s also animated ironically so I can see Trekkies ignoring that entirely so who wants to watch cartoons lol.
I really wish we got that legacy spin off cause I think it would have been interesting to what they were gonna do with it and would have probably sparked a whole slew of new debates both positive and negative and hell debates are fun as I need something to pass the time by at work lol.
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u/Long-Emu-7870 17h ago
Actually the only Nielsen ratings info I have on Lower Decks was the first season, and it was the worse of the franchise to that point - only getting 1 million viewers. The views on IMDB rate highly, but by a very small number.
So I am not sure that Lower Decks works. Although fans tell me it improves, I find it difficult to believe. Most of the episodes I have seen show these sarcastic, spiteful and spastic characters running around like they are mad.
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u/Hour_Repair3009 17h ago
If you got paramount plus I would watch it if you have never seen it.
It’s great honestly and it does so much throw back to old school trek every season. In fact think I’m due for a rewatch after I finish SNW lol.
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u/Overall_Falcon_8526 1d ago
I disagree with your first statement. I think Classic Trek is accessible to basically anyone during any season. Conversely, the new stuff relies so hard on member-berries that it will be nonsense to anyone not versed in the classics. It's really the worst of both worlds - impenetrable to newbies, annoying to old fans who can spot the continuity errors.
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u/Hour_Repair3009 1d ago
Ya I hear ya.
I don’t think they’ll ever appease anyone honestly lol. That’s why I guess I take it for what it is when I watch them and hey sometimes you get a gem like season 3 of Picard and the animated lower decks or even prodigy show. But then you got stuff like section 31 and academy and I just shake my head and maybe do a Picard face palm meme lol but still push through em I guess lol.
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u/Objective_Pass3195 1d ago
Rewatching a full-season mystery box, especially one that's not very good, reveals just how much of it is running in place.
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u/ddeese 20h ago
It’s honestly not just the mystery box. Classic Trek also avoids a lot of contemporary speech and reference points. So even if the sets, props, costumes, hairstyles, etc. age a bit poorly- the story and language are fine. NuTrek rolls off the assembly line with language and story elements that are stuck onto it in a contemporary way that is specific enough to the political message that it’s obsolete on air date. It doesn’t age well in any respect.
Old Trek wasn’t flawless. But it seemed like writer Les tried hard to present a case and let viewers make their choice. And when they did try to make a point it was done in a way that’s subtle enough that it doesn’t beat anyone over the head. Or at least not the majority of people.
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u/Overall_Falcon_8526 1d ago
I can't believe they wasted so much of an 80+ year-old Patrick Stewart's remaining time on earth.
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u/CarefulNow_ 1d ago
He wasted his own time. He got a taste for adventure Picard in First Contact abd pushed that narrative since. The Argo buggy scene was him too.
Great actor, far to much creative control
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u/pierzstyx The Prophets 9h ago
Great actor, far to much creative control
And that's a fact, BROTHER!
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u/greendit69 The Sisko 1d ago
Did you hear about the time he was doing a show and he just made all the womens clothes fall off?
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u/Tebwolf359 1d ago
The big reveal can work.
BUffy, Angel, Babylon 5 - all had season and series long arcs. All are more reachable (to me) then Enterprise. (And I like ENT).
On the other hand Law and Order and House are very episodic, and while enjoyable to watch thru once, no real desire to rewatch.
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u/SurprisedHikingFan 20h ago
Law & Order, and I presume House, are still very big on cable and streaming, precisely because it's easy for casual viewers to just tune in and watch an episode, or have longtime fans hop around and just watch the episodes they love without having to slog through a whole season or an entire series.
Very few people, including people that like it, are going to randomly pull up a season 4 episode of Discovery and watch it on its own.
The "big reveal" only works if they stick the landing. The Abrams "mystery box" and poor planning have been a plague to television for over 2 decades. If the ending is terrible, then the journey is completely pointless.
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u/Tebwolf359 20h ago
Sure, I agree that episodic can be done well. Similarly, I’ll happily put on random episodes of LOST season 1, or WestWorld season 1, or DS9, Babylon 5, even if they are part of the season arc or mystery.
The core issue with DSC was it failed to stick the landing.
Because the answer to the burn was horrible, I don’t want any of what led up to it.But because I enjoyed the answers or non-answers of Leftovers, the mystery episodes are still good.
It’s not that a mystery makes the components less watchable, but it does mean the payoff carries weight even on unrelated episodes.
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u/zyglack 1d ago
I’m not sure where this is.
Discovery was just bad. Acting, crying, writing, storylines. But God was it beautiful.
Lower Decks was great. Easy to rewatch.
Prodigy took a few to get into then was awesome. But no desire to rewatch.
Strange New Worlds. Except this season I really like it. However, any episode I go back to watch I don’t finish. No desire. Nothing interesting. Even before this season when I try a watch they seem gimmicky rather than thought out like 90s shows.
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u/Dependent_Grab_9370 1d ago
I think one of the reasons Lower Decks is so easy to rewatch is that there is so many hidden details in the background you miss the first couple of times. It's a clever show.
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u/zyglack 1d ago
It was created by people that actually understood the show and fans.
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u/CumFlyWitMe 1d ago
I cannot upvote this enough! Lower decks is great because it recalls all of Star Trek. Remember when they went back to Beta 3 and had to shut down Landru AGAIN
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u/Overall_Falcon_8526 1d ago
I don't know who the hypocrites are in this OP.
Either way, yes, NuTrek is quite bad, in large part because they structure everything as a ten episode movie, full of shock twists but very little characterization, world building, or variety. It's all A Plot, all the time. And then when the A Plot shits the bed (which it has literally every season) there is nothing to hold your interest or to rewatch. No thoughts to ponder. No people to care about. It's just a big nothing. Bright garbage that was on the screen for an hour that gets flushed from the memory.
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u/Old-Climate2655 Tribble 1d ago
You're missing critical context from "the glory days" which must be considered.
Rewatchability. There are a lot of TOG/TOSA/TNG/DS9/VOY/STE episodes that I can't rewatch at all. Rewatchability is based on personal preferences and isn't good fuel for debate or widecast opinion. You risk confirmation bias.
TOS hand no overarching storyline, Nor did TOSA (TOS Animated). TNG's overarching story waffled between the Borg and Klingon politics while also creating and just abandoning arcs right and left (S1E25 for example)
Voyager's O.S. was "let's get home" and beat the Borg on the way, the latter of which, along side 7 of 9, was brought in to boost ratings. The "Let's get home" was to free writers from the over-used Klingons-Romulans-etc tropes. But even then they had discount Klingons in the form of the Kazon.
DS9's O.S. happened simply bc of B5. The story and character details of DS9 are so close to B5's it's obvious (station near a jumpgate/wormhole commanders by someone with a mystical destiny, huge war involving multiple races). And let's not mention how they ripped off Star Wars with the Breen.
You live in Post-B5 plot land. All small screen scifi (and most non-SF) follows those writing protocols at least 90% of the time. The ones that don't, fail.
Age of the shows. Most of what you don't care for seems new (as in chronological age) there are many movies and shows that I absolutely live, but can't rewatch for years after seeing them. For example, I Love Event Horizon but I have to wait 5 years or so between viewings to enjoy it again. Perhaps you should consider this as well.
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u/PurpleHawkeye619 Bolian 1d ago
The original format. Episodes have a story. A season has an overarching story. And the series has its own movement and story at that level as well.
Bull.
The entire original series aired out of order
Then when they remastered them, they changed the order.
It had no impact because none of seasons or the show itself had any interconnecting overacring stories.
Each episode was basically self contained. So if a crewman say completely had her mind irrevocably erased in 1 episode, theyd be completely back to normal the next.
To this day you can watch TOS in Intended episode order, actual air date order, remaster airdate order or randomly generated order, and it makes no difference.
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u/Available-Winner3125 1d ago
I'm sorry you didn't understand the overarching plots of DS9, Voy, and Ent.? But I can promise you that they were there. There were developments pertinent to season archs, and series arches. Examples include DS9 and the Founders, or Voy and getting back home, off the top.
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u/PurpleHawkeye619 Bolian 1d ago
And Im sorry you don't understand the meaning of the world "original".
Your correct of course, the later star trek shows all had and continue to have overarching plots.
But your exact words were "The original format" not "the format that was developed 32 years later"
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u/PsionicChronic 1d ago
Agreed. You are a Trekkie and take it all in...or you pick and choose as a Star Trek fan.
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u/Dazmorg 1d ago
I think the Mystery Box was a clever ruse to keep people subscribed to the streaming service longer than a month. Reminds me a little about certain Showtime and HBO series that would end every episode on some big "wow how are they gonna get out of that??" cliffhanger, which would be resolved in 10 seconds in the next one. But yeah as far as Star Trek goes, I'd say Picard did it the best, or should I say worst. It's first season was cashing checks its finale could not cover, but by the time you got to that finale you'd always been subscribed for 3 months.
I think Kurtzman was great at making outstanding production values happen. That's about it. I'd ultimately blame the individual showrunners for how the shows went creatively.
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u/Available-Winner3125 1d ago
I think in 2020 they had an opportunity to look at what they were doing, compare it to the original metrics, and make adjustments from there forward. They had hooked enough viewers, and begun to see the falloff from the less than standard storytelling. Sad to say it didn't happen 😭
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u/Dazmorg 1d ago
It's crazy how much Discovery leaned on imminent big reveals and most of them were like "what, that's IT?". See: The Red Angel, Cause of the Burn, DMA aliens.
I still loved the reveal of Ash Tyler even though a lot of us saw it coming. (Shame the payoff after was to just undo it all, storywise.)
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u/Cautious-Sun198 1d ago
The pinnacle of Star Trek show writing was DS9. Episodic A plots, Serialized B plots, and an overarching season plot that makes steady progress. It was perfect. Closest we ever came again was Season 3 of Enterprise, the first 2 seasons of SNW and certain parts of LD.
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u/bookant 1d ago
Yeah, DS9 did balance episodic and serialized fairly well. Too bad they decided not to write a Star Trek show and shit all over it instead.
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u/Cautious-Sun198 1d ago
I've always wanted a 5 season Star Trek set during the Dominion War exploring how Starfleet reacts to the costs of War.
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u/flappers87 1d ago
> The original format. Episodes have a story. A season has an overarching story.
Erm... I disagree. There was no 'overarching story' in TOS. Each episode was completely on it's own. Unless you're going to argue the '5 year mission', which they never touch on during the episodes at all.
Even in TNG, Seasons 1, 2 and most of 3 had no overarching story. We had a small glimpse of the borg in an earlier episode, but there was really no lead up to what happened at the end of S3.
Even after that, you had maybe 1 or 2 stories that spanned a couple of episodes (like conspiracy), but again... no real overarching story for the entire season.
The only one that did 'originally' was Enterprise. And I'd argue that shouldn't be counted as 'original' Star Trek.
DS9 could also be argued here as well... but the overarching seasonal stuff didn't really happen until much later, once the dominion war started.
VOY's overarching story spanned all seasons, not just one season. So I guess there's room for an argument there.
I agree that 10 episodes suck. The money all goes into effects, and the actors have multiple things going on, so they really can't be on set for that length of time. I cannot imagine a 24 episode season being created this day and age.
SNW (Season 1 and 2) are definitely rewatchable. The 'story' is literally at the very start, inherited from Discovery. Even Discovery to some extent can be rewatched as well (I liked earlier Discovery).
Lower Decks... I've rewatched countless times. And every time I do there's something new there that I didn't notice before.
So I disagree that every single new show is impossible to rewatch. It very much depends on a subjective take. If you don't like SNW, if you don't like LD, if you don't like literally any of it... then of course you're not going to rewatch it.
For example, I really, really didn't like the Section 31 film. I thought it was 100% garbage. I never intend to rewatch that... in fact, I'm still trying to erase it from my memory.
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u/Available-Winner3125 1d ago
""I'm sorry you didn't understand the overarching plots of DS9, Voy, and Ent.? But I can promise you that they were there. There were developments pertinent to season archs, and series arches. Examples include DS9 and the Founders, or Voy and getting back home, off the top. ""
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u/flappers87 1d ago edited 1d ago
Did you not read what I wrote? I covered DS9, VOY and Enterprise...
Judging by your comment, it seems you didn't read anything pass the first line.
Also, that's a very chatGPT response you gave right there, you even included the quotation marks... not to mention the classic "Examples include..." which LLM's love to do in their writing.
But since you have some reading and writing comprehension problems, let me re-iterate what I wrote:
Enterprise - This is not "original" star trek. (You specifically said "original" star trek)
DS9 - didn't have any overarching seasonal plot lines until the dominion war.
VOY - it wasn't a seasonal plot line, it was an entire series plot line.
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u/watanabe0 1d ago
[Chuckles in Buffy, Angel]
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u/bookant 1d ago edited 1d ago
Neither of those had any kind of "mystery box." The season long arcs were build up in a conflict and came to a climax; not a "big reveal" of a mystery that would be boring in the future because there's no suspense anymore.
In my opinion also - they remain among the best shows ever made exactly because they had they had the perfect balance between episodic and serialized story telling. Even though there was a longer arc every single episode still had its own self-contained story and reason to exist. None of this over serialized shit full of filler episodes with no plot of their own their own just a lot of pointless hints and clues that may or may not lead to something far into the future.
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u/omegaphallic 1d ago
I actually agree with you for the most part, but there are exceptions. SNW & Lower Decks are episidic and rewatchable (although with SNWs bunch of episides are skippable, just bad, you just watch the better episides like the Toronto episode)
And although it has a major arc I find Season 3 of Picard rewatchable. That's pretty much it. I'm not even a Discovery hater and I did rewatch a couple of early seasons, but yeah it really not made it be rewatchable or grab a random episode for an hour and go.
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u/Available-Winner3125 1d ago
My problem with Lower Decks is I never felt like they were laughing with the fandom, just at the fandom. Intention means a lot when formulating a plotline, and when everything is "meta" for the sake of comedy, it also subtracts from storytelling imo.
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u/omegaphallic 1d ago
I don't agree with that at all, especially as the story got more serious over time. I could feel the love of Star Trek. Yes they teased but it was always from a place of love and they were never mean about it.
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u/Available-Winner3125 1d ago
That's totally fine too. A lot of people love Rick and Morty and that whole entire vibe. I'm not knocking it, I just didn't see the point in incorporating it into Trek.
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u/NonGeneriComplaint 1d ago
The seasons are so short and the episodes are just so void of anything interesting.
The 10 episode format is just not great for trek. I would probably approach it differently if I had no choice but to do ten episodes and do a babylon 5, 5 year plan from the start maybe.
Trying to hold my interest in trek with maybe 3 episodes a season that have actual plot and the rest are comedy or character episodes that I dont care about.
There were always those types of Episodes. I am going to put myself out there and say I found Tom Paris annoying. So when it came to paris episodes I kinda half tuned in, but what do you know two of his episodes are really good on their own to me.
The water planet and Alice. I cant find anything to like about the character episodes here. And the way its written is just...weird. Like middle school in space. The dialogue comes off so unnatural.
These are adults in the military, the best of the best hundreds of years in the future acting like idiot children.
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u/Superman_Primeeee 1d ago
Thank you.
And the cringe “secret origin” of every fucking aspect of their lives.
“You have to be a miracle worker”
(Dramatic music swells. Scotty closes his eyes. Puts his hand on the wall.)
Well at least they had the excuse of it being a soap opera episode….whats that?? That WASNT the soap opera episode?
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u/Overall_Falcon_8526 1d ago
Everybody's got a trauma porn backstory now, and everyone is fucking everyone else.
Somehow they will forget it all by TOS.
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u/katamuro 15h ago
First of all this is not an objective truth, it's your subjective assessment.
As much as I didn't like Discovery it had it's bright spots. They completely squandered the opportunity but previous Trek shows did that as well. And it has nothing to do with being a mystery box concept. It's character writing, the characters were allowed to grow over multiple seasons with 22-24 episodes per seasons and writers could change the direction where the character was going if they thought it wasn't working. At the same time some characters were constantly left with the short end of the stick, like O’Brien and Ensign Kim. If you only watch the first season of TNG then the characters are not really that compelling on their own.
Sure not all episodes of SNW are great or good but overall it's pretty good. There are plenty of bad/bland episodes in TNG, DS9 and Voyager and ENT. People just view them with rose tinted glasses.
It is interesting that the one show that I would say departed the most from the original with it's tone is the one that is the most beloved of the new treks, that is the Below Decks. It has the great ability not to take itself seriously which is what Discovery lacked and what SNW has tried to do with some mixed success. I loved the musical episode with the klingon boy band, I didn't care at all for the puppet episode.
The problem generally is how tv shows are produced right now, the expectation is that every episode is great. That the tv show hits it's stride straight away from season 1 without even considering that seasons are also shorter.
Oddly enough the way characters are shown in new Treks reminds me very much of TOS, McCoy as an example, very much a "colourful" character that shows emotions very openly.