I finally got around to watching the last aired episode of Discovery this weekend, and for the first time I found myself downright excited. I'd enjoyed the rest of the series to date, but I thought it was okay and had a lot of promise but it wasn't great; this ep was a marked improvement in terms of pacing, I felt. At the same time, I do think that the writing is the series' weakest link; at best it's functional, at worst it's clunky. The actors are all doing a great job, but they're working hard to make the script work.
Also: the universal translator introduced in the episode is obviously the series' new MVP. I didn't mind the subtitles, but I definitely minded the actors playing Klingons struggling to make their scenes dramatically interesting while fighting the prosthetics/language combo.
It's been really really good so far compared to the other non-TOS first seasons. Just hope they can maintain what we've seen so far as minimum quality. I think with the less self-contained episodes and shorter seasons the tolerance for bad eps will be much lower.
I would also say that there's simply much more very good TV around these days (though there's still a lot of garbage, obviously). Back when TNG was on, I obviously watched it because I was a nerdy teenager, but I also watched it because there simply wasn't that much to choose from and what there was, well, it wasn't particularly good. If I'd had more and better choice back then, I might've stopped watching during the second season.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
There are a lot of things Voyager should have done better, but I am increasingly annoyed with the idea that the problem was that it wasn't enough like BSG, mostly for the reasons Jake outlined earlier in the thread talking about TNG.
I think it really depends what you mean. What Voyager needed, that BSG did really well especially at the start, was take it's premise seriously and establish consequences for the actions taken. Voyager didn't need to be gritty and brutal or anything like that, but it needed to use the situation it's opening sets up to do and say something interesting. And it so frequently just doesn't. (and BSG is itself not near as nihilistic or grimdark as many like to remember it)
Ultimately I think Voyager should have been about a group of people clinging to their ideals in the face of extreme hardship. Basically take TNG, strip them of everything that makes the Enterprise safe and powerful, and run with it. As dumb as it is, the ending of the Voyager premier establishes this idea: we could go home right now or we could do the right thing, follow through on what we, as the Federation, believe in, and make the hard choice. The problem is that Voyager lacks the courage or the direction to follow through. And whatever you say of BSG, when it was running on all cylinders it was dedicated to following through on the settings and themes it established.
They specifically set Voyager up to have a significant portion of the crew be Maquis, who were terrorists and Starfleet deserters. Conflict between the crew was built into the premise of the show.
Year of hell should have been a whole season (a year if you will.) Introduce the reset halfway through and they work to trigger it during the season finale. Or just use that as the last season and have Q magic them back home at the end. Would beat the weird Q Civil War thing that happened, and would save the Borg for another time.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
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"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Anyway, this has nothing to do with Discovery and is a followup to a post in the Holiday Forums:
I think it really depends what you mean. What Voyager needed, that BSG did really well especially at the start, was take it's premise seriously and establish consequences for the actions taken. Voyager didn't need to be gritty and brutal or anything like that, but it needed to use the situation it's opening sets up to do and say something interesting. And it so frequently just doesn't. (and BSG is itself not near as nihilistic or grimdark as many like to remember it)
Ultimately I think Voyager should have been about a group of people clinging to their ideals in the face of extreme hardship. Basically take TNG, strip them of everything that makes the Enterprise safe and powerful, and run with it. As dumb as it is, the ending of the Voyager premier establishes this idea: we could go home right now or we could do the right thing, follow through on what we, as the Federation, believe in, and make the hard choice. The problem is that Voyager lacks the courage or the direction to follow through. And whatever you say of BSG, when it was running on all cylinders it was dedicated to following through on the settings and themes it established.