Star Trek Discovery Season 3 [ SPOILERS WITHIN ]

EltonJohn69 · 09-03-2021 09:38AM

Just finished 5 seasons of the expanse. Wow ! That’s the. Best sci fi since battler star. It is so far ahead of discovery. Discovery probably has a bigger budget and more resources but they squandered it. The expanse makes you have to watch everything episode to find out what happens, I was watching discovery out of obligation.
When you see the expanse and mandalorian, it is kinda shocking how bad they got did with discovery. They should have never got rid of Lorca.

Rawr · 09-03-2021 10:00AM

EltonJohn69 wrote: »

Just finished 5 seasons of the expanse. Wow ! That’s the. Best sci fi since battler star. It is so far ahead of discovery. Discovery probably has a bigger budget and more resources but they squandered it. The expanse makes you have to watch everything episode to find out what happens, I was watching discovery out of obligation.
When you see the expanse and mandalorian, it is kinda shocking how bad they got did with discovery. They should have never got rid of Lorca.

When Discovery is all done and dusted (If it is ever gets done and dusted), it would be interesting to see how inside the production evolved over time. On paper, Discovery has had a lot of ingredients for being a successful Trek show, and if handled correctly may of even been one of the best.

However, something happened that sort of knee-capped that potential early on and appeared to have gotten worse over time. It's hard to know if this is due to any individual or the group as a whole, or even the current state of Television production in the past few years, but some factors had appeared to remove the production's ability to stitch together an enjoyable sci-fi series.

This is ignoring all of the canon and Burnham issues, but it does feel like this people people have forgotten how to make entertaining Sci-fi. Early on, I was actively using my own head-canon to explain away their continuity mistakes because to a degree I was enjoying myself. But that ended, and by the time we get through Season 3, watching Discovery had become a chore. Up until mid-way through Season 3 I was actively avoiding these forums whenever a new episode was coming out in order to give the episode a spoiler-free first impression. But as Season 3 continued, this had become a tedious chore. Eventually I dropped it entirely and for the last few episodes I ignored the spoiler-warnings here, and read about the episode ahead of watching it. I had even spent a lot of the time fast-forwarding through scenes that I could instinctively feel would not add to the episodes at all and would just eat into the runtime with emotional slokk. So there was that added level of tedium.

I think I'm at the point of only watching a future episode if a lot of good stuff is being said about it here. Otherwise I don't see the payoff of even watching anymore. This for me is mostly down to entertainment value. I'm a Trekkie because Trek entertains me, and that universe has usually been a source of entertainment in so many different forms. Alas, Discover stopped being entertainment for me a long time ago.

Banana Republic 1 · 09-03-2021 11:53AM

Rawr wrote: »

When Discovery is all done and dusted (If it is ever gets done and dusted), it would be interesting to see how inside the production evolved over time. On paper, Discovery has had a lot of ingredients for being a successful Trek show, and if handled correctly may of even been one of the best.

However, something happened that sort of knee-capped that potential early on and appeared to have gotten worse over time. It's hard to know if this is due to any individual or the group as a whole, or even the current state of Television production in the past few years, but some factors had appeared to remove the production's ability to stitch together an enjoyable sci-fi series.

This is ignoring all of the canon and Burnham issues, but it does feel like this people people have forgotten how to make entertaining Sci-fi. Early on, I was actively using my own head-canon to explain away their continuity mistakes because to a degree I was enjoying myself. But that ended, and by the time we get through Season 3, watching Discovery had become a chore. Up until mid-way through Season 3 I was actively avoiding these forums whenever a new episode was coming out in order to give the episode a spoiler-free first impression. But as Season 3 continued, this had become a tedious chore. Eventually I dropped it entirely and for the last few episodes I ignored the spoiler-warnings here, and read about the episode ahead of watching it. I had even spent a lot of the time fast-forwarding through scenes that I could instinctively feel would not add to the episodes at all and would just eat into the runtime with emotional slokk. So there was that added level of tedium.

I think I'm at the point of only watching a future episode if a lot of good stuff is being said about it here. Otherwise I don't see the payoff of even watching anymore. This for me is mostly down to entertainment value. I'm a Trekkie because Trek entertains me, and that universe has usually been a source of entertainment in so many different forms. Alas, Discover stopped being entertainment for me a long time ago.

Two points:
The problem with the show and current Star Trek was/is Kurtzmann
Real criticism didn't start here until the tail end of season 3 the show was a turkey long before that.

Rawr · 09-03-2021 12:30PM

Banana Republic 1 wrote: »

Two points:
The problem with the show and current Star Trek was/is Kurtzmann
Real criticism didn't start here until the tail end of season 3 the show was a turkey long before that.

I would certainly agree on both counts.
You could argue that the show stopped having any potential of being good Trek during the run of Season 1. There was still a slither of hope though Season 2 (although that was dwindling fast) and prior to Season 3 there was at least some hope of a soft reboot of the show, which alas came to nothing.

I think for me, Discovery went from being bad Trek, to tediously unwatchable Trek during the tail-end of Season 3. By that I mean I had gone from watching episodes that I was fairly sure I would not rewatch, to watching episodes that had me questioning why I was even watching....during the process of actually watching said episode. It was the same feeling I had when I finally stopped watching new episodes of the The Simpsons a couple of years back. I think I haven't bothered for at least 2 seasons now, and I had reached that point by realising that it was better to not watch a show just to get frustrated by it. That's where I think I am with Discovery now.

GreeBo · 09-03-2021 12:41PM

^ You know its bad when a show turns a fan into a hate watcher.

ilovesmybrick · 09-03-2021 12:42PM

Rawr wrote: »

I think for me, Discovery went from being bad Trek, to tediously unwatchable Trek during the tail-end of Season 3. By that I mean I had gone from watching episodes that I was fairly sure I would not rewatch, to watching episodes that had me questioning why I was even watching....during the process of actually watching said episode.

Fully agree with this. I think around Unification part III I found myself watching for the sake of watching, rather than enjoyment. Even with all the criticism of Picard I never felt that the episodes were as, hollow maybe? I'm not sure exactly. I think the difference is that Picard had a thought out plot and structure, for all its faults, and there was a sense of momentum. Discovery season 3 began to feel like a paint by colours or something.

Rawr · 09-03-2021 06:45PM

GreeBo wrote: »

^ You know its bad when a show turns a fan into a hate watcher.

Not as much a “hate watcher” Greenbo,
More of a “hope out of hope that this one will somehow actually be good- watcher”.

But alas there’s only so much of that you can do before you run out of hope.

pixelburp · 09-03-2021 06:52PM

I don't hate watch Discovery either, but season 3 kinda broke me in failing to hit the biggest open goal the show yet conceived. I forgave seasons one and two because I knew behind the scenes there was chaos. So chaos was seen in the final product. Season 3 was just so disheartening. A genuinely great pitch for the show, undermined by bad structure. Not the writing now - cos even crap writing can be fun to watch if the story's good (see the CW superhero shows) - instead it was like there was no communication to the writers to stick to a form or arc. Guys you're supposed to be reforming the Feder... oh, no, we're just going to arse about for 11 episodes.

breezy1985 · 09-03-2021 07:10PM

pixelburp wrote: »

I don't hate watch Discovery either, but season 3 kinda broke me in failing to hit the biggest open goal the show yet conceived. I forgave seasons one and two because I knew behind the scenes there was chaos. So chaos was seen in the final product. Season 3 was just so disheartening. A genuinely great pitch for the show, undermined by bad structure. Not the writing now - cos even crap writing can be fun to watch if the story's good (see the CW superhero shows) - instead it was like there was no communication to the writers to stick to a form or arc. Guys you're supposed to be reforming the Feder... oh, no, we're just going to arse about for 11 episodes.

I have zoned out of the final half of every season of DIS and fully gave up half way through the first too.
Final 2 episodes of PIC are crap too. We seem to have a group desperate to do arcs who are crap at it

ilovesmybrick · 09-03-2021 07:18PM

breezy1985 wrote: »

We seem to have a group desperate to do arcs who are crap at it

I'm not sure that the arcs per se are the problem, having an underlining story arc can be a real benefit. I think the problem is the complete lack of any smaller little storylines or sub-plots that flesh out the universe. It's just one, quite weak, story arc with little else. If Discovery season 3 had kept the main arc, and if they had fleshed out the hinted at PTSD lines storylines, dislocation story, or even the (really poorly drawn out) Adira story line, it could have been a decent season. However, they had sweet f all development of those potentially interesting side plots and focused almost exclusively on the weak burn story, which could have been stronger if there had been some other meat on the season.

For obvious reasons I'm going to exclude the Georgiou waste of time....

breezy1985 · 09-03-2021 07:21PM

ilovesmybrick wrote: »

I'm not sure that the arcs per se are the problem, having an underlining story arc can be a real benefit. I think the problem is the complete lack of any smaller little storylines or sub-plots that flesh out the universe. It's just one, quite weak, story arc with little else. If Discovery season 3 had kept the main arc, and if they had fleshed out the hinted at PTSD lines storylines, dislocation story, or even the (really poorly drawn out) Adira story line, it could have been a decent season. However, they had sweet f all development of those potentially interesting side plots and focused almost exclusively on the weak burn story, which could have been stronger if there had been some other meat on the season.

For obvious reasons I'm going to exclude the Georgiou waste of time....

I don't mind arcs at all but they need a start, middle and end of the story to arc and this crowd seem unable to write some of those steps. Another problem is a desperate need for a big CGI finale

Evade · 09-03-2021 07:23PM

I think Kurtzman must have some sort of ADD or something. I started watching Salvation on Netflix but I had to pack it in a few episodes into season two. It's an asteroid heading towards Earth series but it couldn't just be that there's about five of six secret plots piled on top of one another and it just gets so convoluted.

breezy1985 · 09-03-2021 07:31PM

Evade wrote: »

I think Kurtzman must have some sort of ADD or something. I started watching Salvation on Netflix but I had to pack it in a few episodes into season two. It's an asteroid heading towards Earth series but it couldn't just be that there's about five of six secret plots piled on top of one another and it just gets so convoluted.

All his shows remind me of "Lost" wannabes

RandomViewer · 09-03-2021 07:51PM

Finished "The Expanse" last weekend, secondary characters have more backstory than Discovery main cast,

breezy1985 · 09-03-2021 08:00PM

RandomViewer wrote: »

Finished "The Expanse" last weekend, secondary characters have more backstory than Discovery main cast,

Prax vs Sarcastic Engineer or Fred Johnson vs High 5 bridge guys

RandomViewer · 09-03-2021 09:54PM

breezy1985 wrote: »

Prax vs Sarcastic Engineer or Fred Johnson vs High 5 bridge guys

Sakai, Bull, Monica, even Bobbi's team in series 2 had more character development

EltonJohn69 · 09-03-2021 10:56PM

Is it possible that Star Trek just fades away ? Star Wars is going to continue being huge, I think the expanse has huge potential for more spin off series/movies, battle star galactic is back with a great show runner. Star Trek movies have no demand, the numerous show are only there to try and get people in for a streaming service . If Star Trek doesn’t do something radical it isn’t going to survive.

H3llR4iser · 10-03-2021 12:04AM

Evade wrote: »

I think Kurtzman must have some sort of ADD or something. I started watching Salvation on Netflix but I had to pack it in a few episodes into season two. It's an asteroid heading towards Earth series but it couldn't just be that there's about five of six secret plots piled on top of one another and it just gets so convoluted.

It's the virus that infests modern "narrative", not just TV shows.

I've read more than one book lately where I found myself fighting the urge to skip past entire chapters as they stray away from the main storyline to explore "side quests" which, usually, have little to no relevance to the main thing.

EltonJohn69 wrote: »

Is it possible that Star Trek just fades away ? Star Wars is going to continue being huge, I think the expanse has huge potential for more spin off series/movies, battle star galactic is back with a great show runner. Star Trek movies have no demand, the numerous show are only there to try and get people in for a streaming service . If Star Trek doesn’t do something radical it isn’t going to survive.

The problem is that Star Trek is in the hands of people who do not understand what it is and what it is supposed to be. They see it as just any other "generic space opera".

The demand for Star Trek exists, the problem is that what they've been putting out is NOT Star Trek. The writers/showrunners took a franchise with six decades of history, the biggest following of any IP ever made (only effectively rivaled by Star Wars), that effectively didn't have any real additions to it for nearly 20 years and, instead of looking at its core strengths and how to build upon them, they toyed with it a little, poked it with a stick, failed to understand how it worked and declared "we need to change everything".

By removing the core concepts that made Star Trek unique and different from any other random "monkeys in space" sci-fi, they ended up with just any another "monkeys in space" pile of crap, that competes with plenty of similar material - which however happens to be better thought out.

silverharp · 10-03-2021 09:04AM

there is a lot to be said for a normal episodic shows, I watch the Expanse but I it doesnt really keep my attention so I kinda forget who everyone is and what they are supposed to be doing.

GreeBo · 10-03-2021 09:54AM

silverharp wrote: »

there is a lot to be said for a normal episodic shows, I watch the Expanse but I it doesnt really keep my attention so I kinda forget who everyone is and what they are supposed to be doing.

But you can get your fix for that from The Orville or Lost In Space, The Expanse isnt trying to fill that gap, its trying to tell a story, along the lines of lord of the rings. I think the Expanse would have made an excellent 3 part movie.

pixelburp · 10-03-2021 10:05AM

Ah lads, a bit of a smell of "old man yells at cloud here", nostalgia ain't what it used to be

Let's not completely turn Discovery into some totem to modern storytelling, cos it ain't even close to emblematic. Golden Age of TV n all, TV is where the good writing exists now IMO. And the episodic format isn't that dead either, it just changed itself slightly so that often was bookended by a main arc. "Procedural" is generally how they go by.

Discovery is just mush for the brain, and has never ever hit the utter cringeworthy lows of something like Sub Rosa. Episodic TV under the strain of 26 episodes produced a lot of utter tosh that non Trek people use to slate Trek

breezy1985 · 10-03-2021 10:09AM

EltonJohn69 wrote: »

Is it possible that Star Trek just fades away ? Star Wars is going to continue being huge, I think the expanse has huge potential for more spin off series/movies, battle star galactic is back with a great show runner. Star Trek movies have no demand, the numerous show are only there to try and get people in for a streaming service . If Star Trek doesn’t do something radical it isn’t going to survive.

Trek will be fine when someday someone who knows how to make good TV gets a hold of it. It's just bad luck that Trek got the guy who can't put a story together and tries to be the next Michael Bay with his CGI shots. Even doing arcs and single character stories it could have worked with someone else

GreeBo · 10-03-2021 10:12AM

breezy1985 wrote: »

Trek will be fine when someday someone who knows how to make good TV gets a hold of it. It's just bad luck that Trek got the guy who can't put a story together and tries to be the next Michael Bay with his CGI shots. Even doing arcs and single character stories it could have worked with someone else

They could have even just copied the Trek Shorts and made them full episodes, at least we got to see the characters (sans-Burnham)

silverharp · 10-03-2021 10:26AM

GreeBo wrote: »

But you can get your fix for that from The Orville or Lost In Space, The Expanse isnt trying to fill that gap, its trying to tell a story, along the lines of lord of the rings. I think the Expanse would have made an excellent 3 part movie.

2 nice shows. An Expanse film would need to be tight so would probably enjoy that. in the current series i liked the one about the settlement that was going to be flooded, too much of it though is like Eastenders in Space, at least give me Sopranos in Space

pixelburp · 10-03-2021 11:00AM

breezy1985 wrote: »

Trek will be fine when someday someone who knows how to make good TV gets a hold of it. It's just bad luck that Trek got the guy who can't put a story together and tries to be the next Michael Bay with his CGI shots. Even doing arcs and single character stories it could have worked with someone else

Trek hasn't been consistently great in 20 years, not if you factor in Voyager and Enterprise into the equation. Oh sure, you got the odd good season, maybe some standout episodes amongst the dross, but a solid, efficiently executed Trek show? Unseen since DS9 IMO. Nostalgia is doing a lot of heavy lifting in those 20 years and while I doubt Disco will have as many standout episodes that soften the memory, let's be blunt here: for me this is a franchise in search of itself for longer than Kurtzmann was on the scene. Berman and Braga started the rot.

Heck Abrams and Kurtzmann came on board precisely because it was a franchise that was a spent force. Nemesis was garbage, a dying scream from a series on its last cultural legs. But unlike someone like Russell T Davies who took an extinct property (Dr who) and revitalised it while remembering the things that made it great, Kurtzmann tried to remove those genetic links; a shot in the arm for the 2009 film but ultimately a dead cat bounce. But that he appeared at all said a lot about the state of Trek.

RandomViewer · 10-03-2021 11:02AM

GreeBo wrote: »

But you can get your fix for that from The Orville or Lost In Space, The Expanse isnt trying to fill that gap, its trying to tell a story, along the lines of lord of the rings. I think the Expanse would have made an excellent 3 part movie.

Don't like the Orville,too many smug gits, Lost in Space is very good technically, vehicles ,ships etc..

Evade · 10-03-2021 11:35AM

pixelburp wrote: »

Discovery is just mush for the brain, and has never ever hit the utter cringeworthy lows of something like Sub Rosa. Episodic TV under the strain of 26 episodes produced a lot of utter tosh that non Trek people use to slate Trek

I'd gladly take more Sub Rosas and Thresholds if they came alongside the Chains of Commands and Inner Lights. Being very uneven is better than consistently bad.

breezy1985 · 10-03-2021 11:38AM

pixelburp wrote: »

Trek hasn't been consistently great in 20 years, not if you factor in Voyager and Enterprise into the equation. Oh sure, you got the odd good season, maybe some standout episodes amongst the dross, but a solid, efficiently executed Trek show? Unseen since DS9 IMO. Nostalgia is doing a lot of heavy lifting in those 20 years and while I doubt Disco will have as many standout episodes that soften the memory, let's be blunt here: for me this is a franchise in search of itself for longer than Kurtzmann was on the scene. Berman and Braga started the rot.

Heck Abrams and Kurtzmann came on board precisely because it was a franchise that was a spent force. Nemesis was garbage, a dying scream from a series on its last cultural legs. But unlike someone like Russell T Davies who took an extinct property (Dr who) and revitalised it while remembering the things that made it great, Kurtzmann tried to remove those genetic links; a shot in the arm for the 2009 film but ultimately a dead cat bounce. But that he appeared at all said a lot about the state of Trek.

Abrams and Kurtzmann both make vacant flashy shows and we're completely the wrong fit and add to that Paramount/CBS and Badrobot don't have the guts the likes of HBO have to do their own thing and just followed trends and fed people memberberries.

Trek wasn't any more dead than BSG or Dr. Who it just got the wrong people to restart it

Rawr · 10-03-2021 11:49AM

Evade wrote: »

I'd gladly take more Sub Rosas and Thresholds if they came alongside the Chains of Commands and Inner Lights. Being very uneven is better than consistently bad.

Kind of my own thinking too. Pre-Kelvin Trek is choc full of stuff that's truly awful compared to the later stuff, but the pay-off was a load of classic stuff too. A bad episode one week was just bad luck...something good was probably a short while down the road.

Discovery and to a lesser extent Picard lack this impact either way. I was hopeful with Picard, but alas the final impact of that show felt dull and disappointing. At least with shows past there was some impact and some lasting impression. With Discovery it behaves as if has impact....but this appears exist solely within the script...but really there's no impact of note despite their best efforts to get the cast to emote to extreme levels or their efforts to throw every CGI trick at us to make the show visually interesting. Secret Hideout (or probably Kirtzman himself) appear to be wholly incapable of delivering a scifi show with any real "Ooomf" to it, despite the wealth of resources available to them.

It is my hope that CBS eventually realise this, and either demand a better showrunner, get Kurtzman to back off from the productions himself (which I still feel happened with Lower Decks), or give the license to another production company. Then maybe those resources could go to better use.

pixelburp · 10-03-2021 12:02PM

Evade wrote: »

I'd gladly take more Sub Rosas and Thresholds if they came alongside the Chains of Commands and Inner Lights. Being very uneven is better than consistently bad.

I think we're into quibbling on degrees of bad because I wouldn't class the badness of Disco in the same vein as that of Sub Rosa. The latter is just a phenomenally awful piece of fiction top to bottom, Discos consistent crime is its refusal to engage (oho!) with its own franchise in a meaningful way. Bad writing, but I'd speculate easier to forgive were it more "Trek", as has often been the accusation. Either way, Trek hasn't hit a stride in years. It needs better stewards than Berman or Paradise (let's be accurate here an keep things to showrunners I guess)

breezy1985 wrote: »

Abrams and Kurtzmann both make vacant flashy shows and we're completely the wrong fit and add to that Paramount/CBS and Badrobot don't have the guts the likes of HBO have to do their own thing and just followed trends and fed people memberberries.

Trek wasn't any more dead than BSG or Dr. Who it just got the wrong people to restart it

I did say as much, that he was the wrong person to lead, but I don't agree Trek was still a living franchise. It was dead, the flirtations of old school nerds that weren't seen worth catering for. Like I said, Nemesis was the cultural death rattle of a series out of steam.

Star Trek Discovery ***Season 3*** [** SPOILERS WITHIN **]

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Star Trek Discovery Season 3 [ SPOILERS WITHIN ]