Edit: Sean Ferrick… if you see this just know that while I am a massive dick and a terrible person I will love you forever please marry me
I kinda feel bad for Disco fans. I ain’t out there to yuck anyone’s yums, but it was such a different kind of show to previous Star Treks, I’m not surprised it didn’t land well with many fans. And it’s become so commonplace to shit on it (for many valid reasons but also some nasty ones and folks with the latter should fuck right off).
I wore a Star Trek shirt to a wedding and got many compliments, one from a guy who explained his favorite was Discovery, even named his cat after Michael, he felt it was really important to him and asked what I thought about it. I got a battery of polite things to say in this situation, but a more drunken attendee practically lept over to exclaim “Discovery? MAN that one blew chunks!! What were they thinking?? Shoulda been another sci-fi show without the Trek name.” and, jeez, read the room!
I guess what I’m saying is, we don’t gotta all like it, but Disco fans are Trek fans and we gotta be nice to em, they’re here for largely the same reasons we are and, hey, maybe one day they’ll go back and learn that the best Trek is Deep Space Nine.
I guess what I’m saying is, we don’t gotta all like it, but Disco fans are Trek fans and we gotta be nice to em, they’re here for largely the same reasons we are and, hey, maybe one day they’ll go back and learn that the best Trek is Deep Space Nine.
I’ve said many times that the best Trek is the Trek you like the most.
I remember when TNG was “bad Star Trek.”
I remember when DS9 was “bad Star Trek.”
I remember when Voyager was “bad Star Trek.”
I remember when Enterprise was “bad Star Trek.”
And you will find people who name any one of those as their favorites.
All Star Trek is bad Star Trek until it has aged a few years. It’s like whiskey, you gotta let the angels have their share first.
I can’t remember where I saw it, some Star Trek documentary, but it was pointed out that the Star Trek people first watched and grew up with tended to be their favorite one.
Oh I promise I’m being flippant about DS9 being the objective best, but you’re right.
Disco tried something different and that worked for some and didn’t work for others. That’s alright. Hopefully they can learn from what worked and what didn’t and we can all have more future Trek to enjoy because of it.
Awesome take. I tried to push through, but I similarly just didn’t see any Trek in it other than a coated layer. I felt especially vindicated when Strange New Worlds came out so amazing.
No need for hate or anger toward it. We want studios to try new things. I was initially very afraid that it was ostracizing trek fans though. Telling them to f off in exchange for a wider scifi action audience
Honestly? Thanks. That’s what bugs me the most. People just shit on Discovery for no reason other than to be an asshole and it’s incredibly common place. Everytime the show gets mentioned someone has to come in and say how they didn’t like it because it sucked for whatever reason. That doesn’t happen with anything else. Can you imagine if I rocked up and said how much I hate Deep Space 9 everytime someone mentioned that they loved the show? Because I do. I cannot stand Deep Space 9. There are characters in it that I love but other characters I despise to the point I can’t watch it. Personally I think it messed up a lot and made a lot of mistakes and I don’t like watching it or spending my time even really thinking about it which is why I post so few DS9 memes.
However.
I’ve said I don’t like Deep Space 9 like three times in the entire time I’ve been on Lemmy and it’s been in instances like this. There’s no reason for me to wander around saying “Hey yeah but like this sucks and for this reason and this is also ass and other reasons”. Discovery just became ‘cool’ to hate and is bashed relentlessly. That’s why I posted this video. A lot of the complaints are either unfounded or based on a misunderstanding. Not that there are not criticisms, but things like the dark tone and less utopian society (as you mentioned) are misunderstood. People can like it or not like it. Totally their right. My only hope and wish is that people like it for their own personal reasons from experience that are shaped with the full picture and not just based off of misunderstandings or, worse still, things heard from some random cunt on youtube.
The folks that complain about “pandering” or whatever when Disco comes up are morons, plain and simple. Folks that complain about the writing or style of the show, I think that’s got more legs, but it’s all been said already and it doesn’t serve a great deal of purpose to rehash it.
The actors are great, Sonequa Martin-Green in particular has a lot of really challenging scenes that she nails expertly. Doug Jones is so good at being a gangly alien that it’s taken for granted but that’s because he’s so truly incredible he makes it seem easy. Jason Isaacs plays his role so deplorably he’s easy to hate which is amazing for a villain, probably one of the best in the franchise only behind Marc Alaimo or Louis Fletcher. Anthony Rapp and Wilson Cruz have such chemistry on screen, especially in the more mundane scenes they share.
Maybe there will be this kind of retrospective revival for Disco, I dunno. But I do think the actors deserve better than to be associated with the problems the show had, manufactured or actual.
Oh the ‘pandering’ folks are completely fucking stupid because in the same breath they’ll say how the show ruined Klingons and everything else. Bro, either they’re pandering or they’re doing their own thing. Which is it? Yeah, if you wanna complain about writing or acting or something that’s fine but pandering? Pretty sure if they were pandering they wouldn’t have pissed off so many people in the fandom saying they did shit wrong.
Also I have nothing to add to the acting other than Mary Wiseman deserves an amazing amount of props for making a character that so many people on the autistic spectrum identified with. And a character who has had so much visible growth over the series that its astounding. I love that woman, both Tilly and the actress.
Also Oded Fehr. But that’s just because he’s Admiral Daddy.
People are just more likely to comment on what is current, because there is a combination of immediate relevance and the assumption that the current thing is an indicator of how something will be moving forward. The complaints about Discovery were a lot more frequent and angry prior to SNW taking off as having an alternate that someone likes makes it easier to ignore the stuff they don’t. Stuff that came out 10 years ago can be easily ignored, and to be honest most people got their frustration out already.
I watched the first couple seasons of Discovery and blame the writing for stopping. The actors did a fine job with what they had, the special effects were great, but boy howdy I did not care about anything plot wise after a while because everything was universe ending stakes and apparently insubordinate leads don’t need to succeed to justify being insubordinate. Or learning anything from failure, that is off the table!
The best characters were all the side characters, who acted like normal people that learn things and have rational reasons when they don’t listen to authority when authority is wrong. Again, I blame this entirely on the writing.
Off the top … this is my personal opinion and take … it’s a hot topic and from the start, I’ll apologize if I get anything terribly wrong or if I offend anyone.
After several of you encouraged me, I went and binge watched the entire series over about two months. The start was exciting and I was happy to see so many new ideas and story lines created for the show. As a person of colour (I’m Indigenous Canadian) I was also happy to see characters of varied colour, backgrounds, species, orientations and sexualities in the show … it made sense because a future open world won’t just be a cast of uniformly identical individuals everywhere. A uniform group of individuals that all look, act and present in the same way are always painted as villains like the Borg, so why would civilization aspire for universal conformity?
I loved the characters and potential for growth of their individual stories like Tilly, Saru, Owosekun, Detmer, Reno, Nahn … or the couple of Stamets/Culber, and Adira/Gray
I enjoyed Burnham at first and I loved the idea of a female woman of colour taking a lead of the show … but to me, they went overboard with her storyline and her personality. In the TOS series, Captain Kirk played a part in events in the galaxy … he didn’t become central in the fate of the universe. I think the problem they had was that Burnham almost became like a God-like character that was central to the future of the entire universe. I like making characters important … it just gets difficult when you surround the entire universe around one person because then the stories all become the same … the universe is in danger because of one person, so it can only be saved by one person. And no matter what is going to happen in the future, you know that it will always revolve around that one person.
All the other Star Trek leads were passive participants in a greater story (I’ve only ever watched TOS, TNG, VOY and some of DS9) … Kirk, Picard, Janeway, Sisko mostly played roles where they were part of events in the galaxy that involved them but their survival didn’t hinge on the fate of entire galaxy or universe … their stories are usually stories of survival that would have been resolved whether or not they lived or not. Burnham is different … all her stories revolve around her and the fate of the entire universe hinges on just her, which was exciting the first time … but lost it’s suspense every other time it happened.
But about the most disappointing thing for me in the series was a lack of seeing the character JET RENO. I would have loved to see Reno square off with Stamets more often in engineering and the science lab.
I would love a spinoff show that centred around Engineering with Reno … and maybe an episode where they could bring together all the Star Trek engineers … Scotty, Laforge, O’Brien and all the other engineer characters and even throw Data in their too in some time warp multiverse event that unexpectedly brings them all together for a brief moment.
I think that was my favourite part of Discovery … the potential for more … the potential to see more of a story from each of the characters that made up the show.
I started hating Discovery. I ended loving it. The things I hated to start off were the retcon of the Klingons and the fact that it felt closer to the reboot films than the previous Treks. But there’s so much to love about it. The story is pretty incredible. It was definitely more intense than previous Treks, the character development was great. There was just enough humor to break things up. The twists were actual twists for the most part.
I honestly think people were hoping for something more utopian, forgetting about the timeframe of the show comes before even TOS, so things are more chaotic. It’s not my favorite Trek, but I think I’d put it around TNG if not above it.
Honestly? Agreed on literally every point. When it was first announced I fucking hated it and refused to watch it. I heard a bunch from other Trek friends and fans talking about how it was pandering with the gay characters and saw some stuff on YouTube backing it up.
I was an absolute moron.
I caved and decided to watch it because I was itching for something new in Trek. HATED the first few episodes. Loathed it. I think it was like the second last episode when Stamets terraforms a moon with mushrooms that I started to finally come around. I started to watch the second season, cautious, and within 15 minutes I was on the edge of my seat with a giddy smile on my face and laughing like a fool.
Discovery is amazing. It’s not without its flaws but the hate it gets is undeserved. Lately I’ve just been saying that Discovery has been getting the Prequel treatment and will continue to do so. Prequels were fucking hated when they first came out. Mocked relentlessly. Child actor of Anakin bullied to a really extreme and depressing point. Now? Beloved. Memed to high heaven. Remembered fondly. Loved. Discovery will get that too.
I also hated it…fuckin’ hated it! I watched the first three episodes when they aired and gave up. I binged it a couple of years later, and I’m glad I gave it another chance. What got me was the fallout from Hugh’s fate in season 1, omfg it was just heartbreaking watching Paul come to grips and try to move on. And Ash, even though he was responsible, got my empathy eventually because of his struggles with all that overwhelming crazy PTSD and repressed memories. Yeah, really glad I gave it another chance.
My main issue with the show is Burnham, so I don’t think there’s anything they can do to fix it for me unless they kill her off and get a new lead. The show has been going long enough, I’d watch one last season, but I think they need to end it and focus on strange new worlds and more shows like that.
I get the criticism about production, plot, and dialogue decisions. I mean, I agree on quite a few of them. But a good chunk of the detractors are on the hate bandwagon because they just can’t stand women/minorities getting representation, and those dumbfucks need to GTFO. It’s Trek, for fuck’s sake. Yeah, Discovery is different, but I still dig the show.
You’re spot on. I have so many issues with the storytelling methodology, the decisions about how to treat the ST Universe and its canon, the use of the characters to tell the stories they chose, and more; but, it has been so hard to voice legitimate criticism of the show and the creators’ decisions because you always seem to end up lumped in with a bunch of chuds who are just upset about the diversity in the cast (which blows my mind, because it’s no more groundbreaking than a lot of other Trek, relative to the time of airing).
I’m with most people I’ve seen express a big meh for the show.
That show is only Star Trek by name. It’s got its own thing going (more science fantasy than science fiction), which isn’t my thing, especially not when you’re looking for a Star Trek fix which always had a nack for playing with real science but sticking with the plausibility of it.
I enjoy the other Star Trek show(s) and The Orville much more to get that.
So I watch them.
This constant “they are haters because minorities/women/other representation” is getting tired. It’s a couple loudmouth incels that have that sort of criticism and people like you seem to love getting baited in then saying everyone that doesn’t enjoy what you enjoy must be with them.
That show is only Star Trek by name
God, I’m so fucking tired of this line. This shit was said about the movies, and TNG, and DS9, and VOY, and ENT and the Kelvin movies. Everytime it’s wrong.
You could hide the words ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Enterprise’ from TOS and TNG and people would not know they were part of the same franchise.
