Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Yeah, fair point.

Although that is just back to it being a matter of taste, rather than any of them being inherently more disposable than the others. Nobody wants an episode they don't enjoy.

The singing episode wouldn't be top of my sh!t list anyway, for example. I wouldn't go out of my way to defend it (any more than I am now, I guess) but it was fun, they did it well. There's a good handful of episodes from the first two seasons that I'd sooner do without.

Not at all, those two you mentioned are two of the absolute best episodes they've ever made. In any season of TV with a 'monster of the week' style writing (most series from the 70s onwards) you'll have episodes that don't advance the overall story arc of a season, but they do advance the characters and 'fit' within the overall story.

In those two examples, Inner Light gives us HUGE development in Picard and real, genuine emotion from a character who hides emotion whenever possible. As well as the idea that an entire race of people can be gone and forgotten about in the blink of an eye, given the vastness of the universe and the tiny spec that humans are within it.

Darmok gives us more Picard development and the art of diplomacy, one of the central tenets of the Federation.

These episodes, although they exist in isolation and can be enjoyed by anyone, can be considered world building episodes. They flesh out the world of Star Trek. Help us see the 'bigger picture'.

Episodes like the musical one don't manage to get there. Fluff/Fun episodes absolutely have their place - Elysium Kingdom for example was grand - fun, nonsense, pushed M'Benga a little further and gave us fun moments that could be explained away and add to the overall world.

So that's basically what I mean by advancing something, it doesn't have to be a masterplan overall story arc every week (DS9 sometimes fell down on this) but when we only have 10 a season, I'd personally rather fill those with as much quality as possible, especially because we KNOW these writers and, particularly, this cast - are capable of really great things.

Looking forward to the new one tonight! I know it is likely a fluff one, but I still go in open minded!! 😄

Please God let them go back to the quality that they showed us in S1 and S2. Drop the nonsense down to 1 or 2 episodes. Squeeze the rubbish into those. I understand there is a market for them, and that the actors enjoy them. Crossovers, animated rubbish, pop culture references, fun, frolics and hijinks - condense it all into one or two episodes so I can let them wash over me and then enjoy the great writing and characters that they created over the first 20 episodes.

So much potential that they now have right on the cliff edge after S3. I still have hope!

If they can write truly great episodes like 'Under the Cloak of War' and 'Ad Astra per Aspera' and have compelling, fully rounded characters like La'an and M'Benga then they absolutely can recover from the nonsense.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure the Discovery writers have admitted issues on a few occasions and then fucked things up even more by trying to correct. The jump to the 32nd century being the most egregious example but they also watered down all the more interesting edgy aspects from season 1 (such as morally grey captain).

@breezy1985: Thats a load of bollix from them. Season 4 is already way too progressed to make something that responds to criticism. It has a literal puppet episode ffs.

In fairness they didn't really say anything about course correcting as a response to criticism. They said season 3 had setbacks and challenges during production which season 4 didn't (past tense, because production is pretty much done as you say).

“We didn’t have staffing changes. We didn’t have a strike. The strike caused change. Those things are real. And starting up and shutting down and starting up again is complicated.”

Doing something big with La'an to 'break up' the SNW crew and link it to the TOS era would be a really good narrative device. A big death, deception, murder etc., would be useful to make the big changes to their personalities that they'd need to do. For example, Spock lets his emotion get the better of him, which leads to her death? Would give a 'reason' for him to lean away from his human side. Maybe give a reason for Una to want to distance herself from the Enterprise. Hell, if they wanted to be truly brave, have La'an turn and betray the crew!

Lots of options for the writers, hopefully they knew that Season 3 was a poor effort and they've redeemed themselves in Season 4.

Yeah, very true. She's certainly the most compelling character in the series. Killing her off just to launch old Spock™ would be a waste for sure but whatever they do with her could be the key device to wrap up, end, destroy, propel or otherwise affect the SNW/TOS crew.

Don't even mention mid-dance, the writers might be reading this!!!

The really sad bit is that they've PROVED that they are capable of building solid, realistic, complete characters from scratch, within the overall canon. Arguably the 'worst' characters in SNW are the ones that are tied to TOS, and therefore tied into a certain path of development and a fixed end point. This is a good thing in terms of Pike because the show starts out with him struggling to come to terms with knowing his fate. This is a great hook around which to spin his story, but it stunts the growth of others like Spock and Uhura.

The overall take home point is that it's still possible to make great Star Trek, it just needs to be less tied to past series but completely within the canon. Prequels just don't work unless there is some clamour for lore, for unanswered questions, for deeper diving. We don't need that with Star Trek. It's already fecking brilliant to dive into the past using the already made series! We need future, we need sci-fi, we need characters wrestling with decisions. (and please drop the zany stuff or Marvel stuff, just give us Trek!)