The issue isn't a redesign per se, as said on these threads several times, Kelvinverse also did their own take on Klingons, but the issue is that the Disco design is just bad since they overdid it on the makeup. Michael Dorn put it as such:
I am actually really glad that I am not in that makeup, because if you go online and look up YouTube of Mary Chieffo – just a wonderful, just a sweetheart, but what they do to that poor girl is mind-boggling. There are three makeup artists working the whole time on her…I mean, it’s okay. It’s just another iteration.
Gates McFadden: It’s an incredible look and she is able to do incredible things when she is wearing it. It is different, though.
Michael Dorn: That is the problem. There is nothing of her, at all…Nothing. Just her eyeballs. That’s it.
Like, the archetypical example on Disco is the climax of the Battle of the Binary Stars. T'kuvma using the Cleaveship to ram a Federation ship is supposed to be this moment with gravitas....but the actor can barely emote, so it just looks stupid and completely takes you from the scene.
Seriously the change to Klingons was just another in the long line of problems with how decisions seemed to be made on the show. There was no narrative or thematic reason for the change, it made things exponentially harder for literally everyone involved in actually making the show, and it felt like the only reason it was done was to feed someone's ego so that they could "leave their mark" on the franchise.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Yeah I just saw a heavily Klingon episode of Disco and they animate about as much as jrpg conversation portraits and sound like they’re talking through a pillow.
PSN: Honkalot
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Honestly the worst part was them forcing the actors to defend the change during their PR rounds as somehow rooted in the writing or in canon. As though the actors had any say or even knew enough about the franchise to do so.
At least have the balls to defend your own goddamn decisions, you fucking hacks.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
A redesign that I think is great are the Gorn.
The xenomorph style is a great fit. I was wondering how the youngling design could possibly translate to the adults. Like spacefaring and technologically advanced, it seemed like it wouldn’t mesh with the animal-like depiction of the youngsters.
But then seeing it I think the adult with space suit worked great as well.
Honestly the worst part was them forcing the actors to defend the change during their PR rounds as somehow rooted in the writing or in canon. As though the actors had any say or even knew enough about the franchise to do so.
At least have the balls to defend your own goddamn decisions, you fucking hacks.
Sending actors/performers, anybody on the operational level to defend crap management/executive decisions is always, always, always a sign of desperation and weakness.
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WeaverWho are you?What do you want?Registered Userregular
edited April 7
Then disco also took the old standy of "surgically altered to look human/alien" that was like a simple afternoon procedure due to future medicine, and turned it into a huge body-horror thing.
Disco S1 is a mess, only saved by Jason Issacs and the tweeeest. Burnham is insufferable in the early episodes and the show doesn't really deal with it's arcing very well at all (probably because of all the changes behind the scenes).
Disco S1 is a mess, only saved by Jason Issacs and the tweeeest. Burnham is insufferable in the early episodes and the show doesn't really deal with it's arcing very well at all (probably because of all the changes behind the scenes).
What do you mean with "the twist"? If you mean Lorca, I still mantain that the guy with a serial killer collection of knives and bones being evil is the least surprising thing ever.
Honestly, I'm not even entirely convinced disco isn't in it's own universe as it is. With Disco ending, I wouldn't be surprised if we never see the 32nd century again, and nothing presently in any of the other series requires Disco's canon to operate. Even the few Pike/Spock elements can be explained with a more... mundane disco.
Everything on the screen exists, come on now.
Of course now I have to wait forever for new Disco, because damned if I'm giving Paramount+ any money.
That reminds me that I need to see when Lower Decks blu ray drops.
I wasn't saying it should be memory holed. Before the post about Starfleet Academy being 32nd century (which seems like a good choice), my point was that, early season Disco stuff was wierd, and all the wierdness could be explained as "yet another timeline" like the Kelvinverse, so it can still be canon, still be something we can enjoy, without having to bend over ourselves to explain it. The comment about the 32nd century stuff was that it just only existed in disco, so knowing how Paramount operated, that might have been the end we heard of it in on screen canon.
The issue isn't a redesign per se, as said on these threads several times, Kelvinverse also did their own take on Klingons, but the issue is that the Disco design is just bad since they overdid it on the makeup. Michael Dorn put it as such:
I am actually really glad that I am not in that makeup, because if you go online and look up YouTube of Mary Chieffo – just a wonderful, just a sweetheart, but what they do to that poor girl is mind-boggling. There are three makeup artists working the whole time on her…I mean, it’s okay. It’s just another iteration.
Gates McFadden: It’s an incredible look and she is able to do incredible things when she is wearing it. It is different, though.
Michael Dorn: That is the problem. There is nothing of her, at all…Nothing. Just her eyeballs. That’s it.
Like, the archetypical example on Disco is the climax of the Battle of the Binary Stars. T'kuvma using the Cleaveship to ram a Federation ship is supposed to be this moment with gravitas....but the actor can barely emote, so it just looks stupid and completely takes you from the scene.
Seriously the change to Klingons was just another in the long line of problems with how decisions seemed to be made on the show. There was no narrative or thematic reason for the change, it made things exponentially harder for literally everyone involved in actually making the show, and it felt like the only reason it was done was to feed someone's ego so that they could "leave their mark" on the franchise.
Ignoring the fact that redesign was terrible from an acting standpoint.... Disco could have done a more "alien" Klingon look (and I kinda liked the Kelvinverse, even if it came out of no where), for the aliens that kicked off the party if they had said like, that ship of the dead caused some kind of exposure to some radiation that basically started changing their appearance and these specific Klingons were religious zealots that had lived isolated from the empire at large for the last few centuries or whatever, long enough for the damage to be evident, then after they kick off the Klingon/Human civil war, they also participate in the reunification of the Klingon Empire. You even have them taking overall control of the empire for a while, until the end of the war when the Klingon's lose the way they did and decide to exterminate these religious zealots, hence why we never see them again. The Klingons from that point on "don't talk about it with outsiders".
The issue isn't a redesign per se, as said on these threads several times, Kelvinverse also did their own take on Klingons, but the issue is that the Disco design is just bad since they overdid it on the makeup. Michael Dorn put it as such:
I am actually really glad that I am not in that makeup, because if you go online and look up YouTube of Mary Chieffo – just a wonderful, just a sweetheart, but what they do to that poor girl is mind-boggling. There are three makeup artists working the whole time on her…I mean, it’s okay. It’s just another iteration.
Gates McFadden: It’s an incredible look and she is able to do incredible things when she is wearing it. It is different, though.
Michael Dorn: That is the problem. There is nothing of her, at all…Nothing. Just her eyeballs. That’s it.
Like, the archetypical example on Disco is the climax of the Battle of the Binary Stars. T'kuvma using the Cleaveship to ram a Federation ship is supposed to be this moment with gravitas....but the actor can barely emote, so it just looks stupid and completely takes you from the scene.
Seriously the change to Klingons was just another in the long line of problems with how decisions seemed to be made on the show. There was no narrative or thematic reason for the change, it made things exponentially harder for literally everyone involved in actually making the show, and it felt like the only reason it was done was to feed someone's ego so that they could "leave their mark" on the franchise.
Ignoring the fact that redesign was terrible from an acting standpoint.... Disco could have done a more "alien" Klingon look (and I kinda liked the Kelvinverse, even if it came out of no where), for the aliens that kicked off the party if they had said like, that ship of the dead caused some kind of exposure to some radiation that basically started changing their appearance and these specific Klingons were religious zealots that had lived isolated from the empire at large for the last few centuries or whatever, long enough for the damage to be evident, then after they kick off the Klingon/Human civil war, they also participate in the reunification of the Klingon Empire. You even have them taking overall control of the empire for a while, until the end of the war when the Klingon's lose the way they did and decide to exterminate these religious zealots, hence why we never see them again. The Klingons from that point on "don't talk about it with outsiders".
Your mistake, IMO, is that you're thinking about continuity and the franchise first, rather than "ourfarts take on Star Trek will be so cool and different that from now on, they're all going to be copying us."
The issue isn't a redesign per se, as said on these threads several times, Kelvinverse also did their own take on Klingons, but the issue is that the Disco design is just bad since they overdid it on the makeup. Michael Dorn put it as such:
I am actually really glad that I am not in that makeup, because if you go online and look up YouTube of Mary Chieffo – just a wonderful, just a sweetheart, but what they do to that poor girl is mind-boggling. There are three makeup artists working the whole time on her…I mean, it’s okay. It’s just another iteration.
Gates McFadden: It’s an incredible look and she is able to do incredible things when she is wearing it. It is different, though.
Michael Dorn: That is the problem. There is nothing of her, at all…Nothing. Just her eyeballs. That’s it.
Like, the archetypical example on Disco is the climax of the Battle of the Binary Stars. T'kuvma using the Cleaveship to ram a Federation ship is supposed to be this moment with gravitas....but the actor can barely emote, so it just looks stupid and completely takes you from the scene.
Seriously the change to Klingons was just another in the long line of problems with how decisions seemed to be made on the show. There was no narrative or thematic reason for the change, it made things exponentially harder for literally everyone involved in actually making the show, and it felt like the only reason it was done was to feed someone's ego so that they could "leave their mark" on the franchise.
Ignoring the fact that redesign was terrible from an acting standpoint.... Disco could have done a more "alien" Klingon look (and I kinda liked the Kelvinverse, even if it came out of no where), for the aliens that kicked off the party if they had said like, that ship of the dead caused some kind of exposure to some radiation that basically started changing their appearance and these specific Klingons were religious zealots that had lived isolated from the empire at large for the last few centuries or whatever, long enough for the damage to be evident, then after they kick off the Klingon/Human civil war, they also participate in the reunification of the Klingon Empire. You even have them taking overall control of the empire for a while, until the end of the war when the Klingon's lose the way they did and decide to exterminate these religious zealots, hence why we never see them again. The Klingons from that point on "don't talk about it with outsiders".
Your mistake, IMO, is that you're thinking about continuity and the franchise first, rather than "ourfarts take on Star Trek will be so cool and different that from now on, they're all going to be copying us."
My mistake is assuming that a franchise that could Beyond out 3 MONTHS before the 50th anniversary, and disco a full year after that, and otherwise do almost nothing could be actually cogent in it's decision making, while also wasting the talents of Nicholas Meyer and Bryan Fuller.
The issue isn't a redesign per se, as said on these threads several times, Kelvinverse also did their own take on Klingons, but the issue is that the Disco design is just bad since they overdid it on the makeup. Michael Dorn put it as such:
I am actually really glad that I am not in that makeup, because if you go online and look up YouTube of Mary Chieffo – just a wonderful, just a sweetheart, but what they do to that poor girl is mind-boggling. There are three makeup artists working the whole time on her…I mean, it’s okay. It’s just another iteration.
Gates McFadden: It’s an incredible look and she is able to do incredible things when she is wearing it. It is different, though.
Michael Dorn: That is the problem. There is nothing of her, at all…Nothing. Just her eyeballs. That’s it.
Like, the archetypical example on Disco is the climax of the Battle of the Binary Stars. T'kuvma using the Cleaveship to ram a Federation ship is supposed to be this moment with gravitas....but the actor can barely emote, so it just looks stupid and completely takes you from the scene.
Seriously the change to Klingons was just another in the long line of problems with how decisions seemed to be made on the show. There was no narrative or thematic reason for the change, it made things exponentially harder for literally everyone involved in actually making the show, and it felt like the only reason it was done was to feed someone's ego so that they could "leave their mark" on the franchise.
Ignoring the fact that redesign was terrible from an acting standpoint.... Disco could have done a more "alien" Klingon look (and I kinda liked the Kelvinverse, even if it came out of no where), for the aliens that kicked off the party if they had said like, that ship of the dead caused some kind of exposure to some radiation that basically started changing their appearance and these specific Klingons were religious zealots that had lived isolated from the empire at large for the last few centuries or whatever, long enough for the damage to be evident, then after they kick off the Klingon/Human civil war, they also participate in the reunification of the Klingon Empire. You even have them taking overall control of the empire for a while, until the end of the war when the Klingon's lose the way they did and decide to exterminate these religious zealots, hence why we never see them again. The Klingons from that point on "don't talk about it with outsiders".
Ultimately like with their explanation that no-one would take the technology of the 23rd century as presented in the original series seriously, so they had to replace it all with tech that looked about a hundred years more advanced than the TNG era, you can justify the new Klingons as just being an isolated band of weirdos, but at some point, if you've changed the aesthetics of everything, and the only common element left is the proper nouns used, you have to ask why you're even making a show with the name of an iconic franchise attached. You could make this one group of Klingons look more "alien" than other Klingons, to go along with their highly ornate armour, weapons and ships that look nothing like the utilitarian brutalism of every ship we've seen from every era from Enterprise through Voyager. I really feel if they'd just set the show around a hundred years into the future of TNG, and made the religiously motivated band of isolationist warmongers a new group of aliens, they wouldn't have had to change a single aspect of the actual designs of either Federation of Klingon aesthetics. The only thing that actually tied Discovery to the TOS era was the really fanficy element of Spock having a super secret adopted sister that no-one ever mentioned. I honestly wonder if making everything revolve around Michael Burnham, youngest first officer in Starfleet and the secret sister of Spock started as a homage to the original Mary Sue, youngest lieutenant in Starfleet history who's universally loved by all the crew.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Yes but Michael Burnham in Season 1 made me want to scream. That was new for Star Trek.
I maintain if Disco Season one was season two it would have been better received
I think that might have worked better just because in S1E1 we're introduced to Burnham as the main character who is held up as being a generally awesome Starfleet officer, only to have a large portion of her actions in the episode be a hot mess of crazy and/or stupid. Having a season of her not sucking while hinting at some of the flaws in here character, with the season ending with the initial conflict with the Klingons and Burnham cracking and doing her thing. The whole thing of being told she was great while being shown that, no, she wasn't, didn't really work for me.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
The issue isn't a redesign per se, as said on these threads several times, Kelvinverse also did their own take on Klingons, but the issue is that the Disco design is just bad since they overdid it on the makeup. Michael Dorn put it as such:
I am actually really glad that I am not in that makeup, because if you go online and look up YouTube of Mary Chieffo – just a wonderful, just a sweetheart, but what they do to that poor girl is mind-boggling. There are three makeup artists working the whole time on her…I mean, it’s okay. It’s just another iteration.
Gates McFadden: It’s an incredible look and she is able to do incredible things when she is wearing it. It is different, though.
Michael Dorn: That is the problem. There is nothing of her, at all…Nothing. Just her eyeballs. That’s it.
Like, the archetypical example on Disco is the climax of the Battle of the Binary Stars. T'kuvma using the Cleaveship to ram a Federation ship is supposed to be this moment with gravitas....but the actor can barely emote, so it just looks stupid and completely takes you from the scene.
Seriously the change to Klingons was just another in the long line of problems with how decisions seemed to be made on the show. There was no narrative or thematic reason for the change, it made things exponentially harder for literally everyone involved in actually making the show, and it felt like the only reason it was done was to feed someone's ego so that they could "leave their mark" on the franchise.
Ignoring the fact that redesign was terrible from an acting standpoint.... Disco could have done a more "alien" Klingon look (and I kinda liked the Kelvinverse, even if it came out of no where), for the aliens that kicked off the party if they had said like, that ship of the dead caused some kind of exposure to some radiation that basically started changing their appearance and these specific Klingons were religious zealots that had lived isolated from the empire at large for the last few centuries or whatever, long enough for the damage to be evident, then after they kick off the Klingon/Human civil war, they also participate in the reunification of the Klingon Empire. You even have them taking overall control of the empire for a while, until the end of the war when the Klingon's lose the way they did and decide to exterminate these religious zealots, hence why we never see them again. The Klingons from that point on "don't talk about it with outsiders".
Ultimately like with their explanation that no-one would take the technology of the 23rd century as presented in the original series seriously, so they had to replace it all with tech that looked about a hundred years more advanced than the TNG era, you can justify the new Klingons as just being an isolated band of weirdos, but at some point, if you've changed the aesthetics of everything, and the only common element left is the proper nouns used, you have to ask why you're even making a show with the name of an iconic franchise attached. You could make this one group of Klingons look more "alien" than other Klingons, to go along with their highly ornate armour, weapons and ships that look nothing like the utilitarian brutalism of every ship we've seen from every era from Enterprise through Voyager. I really feel if they'd just set the show around a hundred years into the future of TNG, and made the religiously motivated band of isolationist warmongers a new group of aliens, they wouldn't have had to change a single aspect of the actual designs of either Federation of Klingon aesthetics. The only thing that actually tied Discovery to the TOS era was the really fanficy element of Spock having a super secret adopted sister that no-one ever mentioned. I honestly wonder if making everything revolve around Michael Burnham, youngest first officer in Starfleet and the secret sister of Spock started as a homage to the original Mary Sue, youngest lieutenant in Starfleet history who's universally loved by all the crew.
I see you haven't read any of my other posts. TLDR is that in general, Disco is it's own series smashed into being Star Trek. The fact that 32nd century Disco works so much better (much like Andromeda) only supports this point.
EDIT: That was an observation, not admonition. I'm not that important.
Yes but Michael Burnham in Season 1 made me want to scream. That was new for Star Trek.
I maintain if Disco Season one was season two it would have been better received
I think that might have worked better just because in S1E1 we're introduced to Burnham as the main character who is held up as being a generally awesome Starfleet officer, only to have a large portion of her actions in the episode be a hot mess of crazy and/or stupid. Having a season of her not sucking while hinting at some of the flaws in here character, with the season ending with the initial conflict with the Klingons and Burnham cracking and doing her thing. The whole thing of being told she was great while being shown that, no, she wasn't, didn't really work for me.
I think that's giving too much weight to what we're being told, not shown. Yes, Burnham is an academically excellent officer. But her introduction scene demonstrates that she often misses the obvious answer, as it shows her making plans to live out her life among the primitive locals while her captain just just smirks as she traces a giant delta in the sand to get themselves rescued.
And after that she just runs into a series of trauma triggers which her Vulcan upbringing (don't deal with emotions or trauma, just shove them down and ignore them) hasn't done anything to prepare her to deal with.
And the writers know it, too. There's multiple scenes with Spock where he calmly points out her habit of taking responsibility for things that weren't her fault (her parent's deaths, the Klingon war, etc), to the point that when they suggest that she will at some point in the future find the Red Angel suit and take personal responsibility for saving all life in the galaxy, he just nods and says "Yeah, that sounds like her." (paraphrased)
The issue isn't a redesign per se, as said on these threads several times, Kelvinverse also did their own take on Klingons, but the issue is that the Disco design is just bad since they overdid it on the makeup. Michael Dorn put it as such:
I am actually really glad that I am not in that makeup, because if you go online and look up YouTube of Mary Chieffo – just a wonderful, just a sweetheart, but what they do to that poor girl is mind-boggling. There are three makeup artists working the whole time on her…I mean, it’s okay. It’s just another iteration.
Gates McFadden: It’s an incredible look and she is able to do incredible things when she is wearing it. It is different, though.
Michael Dorn: That is the problem. There is nothing of her, at all…Nothing. Just her eyeballs. That’s it.
Like, the archetypical example on Disco is the climax of the Battle of the Binary Stars. T'kuvma using the Cleaveship to ram a Federation ship is supposed to be this moment with gravitas....but the actor can barely emote, so it just looks stupid and completely takes you from the scene.
Seriously the change to Klingons was just another in the long line of problems with how decisions seemed to be made on the show. There was no narrative or thematic reason for the change, it made things exponentially harder for literally everyone involved in actually making the show, and it felt like the only reason it was done was to feed someone's ego so that they could "leave their mark" on the franchise.
Oh right, this. People wanting to leave their mark on the franchise isn't a bad thing per se, the issue is that, you are going to be compared to previous iterations, and if your version is dogshit then you are going to get dunked at. The issue with Disco Klingons is not that they are vastly different, is that they are a bad design because it doesn't allow the actors to actually, you know, act. Hell, they actually look better on Star Trek Online because is a 3d model that can have actual expressions instead of an imobile pile of latex.
TryCatcher on
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
The issue isn't a redesign per se, as said on these threads several times, Kelvinverse also did their own take on Klingons, but the issue is that the Disco design is just bad since they overdid it on the makeup. Michael Dorn put it as such:
I am actually really glad that I am not in that makeup, because if you go online and look up YouTube of Mary Chieffo – just a wonderful, just a sweetheart, but what they do to that poor girl is mind-boggling. There are three makeup artists working the whole time on her…I mean, it’s okay. It’s just another iteration.
Gates McFadden: It’s an incredible look and she is able to do incredible things when she is wearing it. It is different, though.
Michael Dorn: That is the problem. There is nothing of her, at all…Nothing. Just her eyeballs. That’s it.
Like, the archetypical example on Disco is the climax of the Battle of the Binary Stars. T'kuvma using the Cleaveship to ram a Federation ship is supposed to be this moment with gravitas....but the actor can barely emote, so it just looks stupid and completely takes you from the scene.
Dorn generally seems like a pretty chill dude, so those are some pretty strong words from him. Especially when Gates complements the actress and he comes back with what sounds like '...no, seriously, you don't seem to understand just how bad this is.' Normally you'd think he'd go along with Gates complementing the actress' efforts because that's the sort of positive dude he seems to be, but he's focused on how bad the prosthetics are and how they basically negate whatever it is the actress brings to the scene.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Having just switched from seeing all of SNW season 2 to starting Disco season 2 I had completely forgotten that Burnham is Spock’s sister. I don’t think they mention her at all in SNW.
Having just switched from seeing all of SNW season 2 to starting Disco season 2 I had completely forgotten that Burnham is Spock’s sister. I don’t think they mention her at all in SNW.
They don't.
And that is fine.
For me Season 2 Disco is just Season 0 SNW so SNW has its beard when it starts Season 1. Like there are some good things in Season 2.
Disco for me really gets going with Season 3 though that had its uh moments.
Season 4 was good shit though. And ended in one of the most Star Trek ways. I loved it.
Season 5 has started with a good mystery. A bit of a call back. And lots of bits focused around different crew members.
Also for everyone going, "Disco is just another branch like Kelvin" is missing that Disco heavily leans on TNG and TOS and isn't a branch.
Im with Q - I prefer Riker without the beard. But I'll agree TNG gets its groove with bearded Riker.
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amateurhourOne day I'll be professionalhourThe woods somewhere in TennesseeRegistered Userregular
I feel like S4 through S6 of TNG, VOY, and DS9 were the best overall. It's like the first year no one knows who is gonna like what, because it's syndicated and shot a year in advance.
Then they have the comic con panels and hooplah and people can give feedback, and we get a shaky 2nd season that covers up the tracks of the first, and a third season that sets the tone.
It shouldn't work, and would not work by modern broadcast standards, but it did in this case, until Enterprise.
I think you're oversimplifying a bit. All four shows had very different histories, and you're trying to make a single narrative to cover all four of them at once.
TNG started off as a TOS knock-off. It even inherited some scripts from the planned-but-never-produced TOS Phase II series. Roddenberry was still around at the start, so it made sense that he pushed to recreate his earlier TOS success in TNG, both in tone and setting and in stringent rules for what writers could and could not do. By season 3 Roddenberry was out and B&B took charge, and that injected a fresh vision and also kneecapped a lot of Roddenberry's rules (since he wasn't around to enforce them and the new team didn't have his prestige and seniority in the franchise).
DS9 started off trying to grab an easy audience from TNG. That's why you get episodes like Q-Less, the Maquis, pathetic Ferengi, etc. Syndication was also a major constraint, and story-arcs are impossible when every episode has to self-contained and watchable out of order. By season 3 TNG was long over and Voyager was starting up and B&B were really more focused on that new show, so the DS9 folks were more free to do their own thing, and just once in a while tell B&B "yes sir we're wrapping up that Dominion War thing next episode and getting back to syndication-friendly episodic stories right away sir."
Voyager started off with a great vision. If you read press releases back when it came out, it promised a lot of new things for the franchise - "Discord on the bridge!" "No starbases to restock and repair after each episode!" "Lasting consequences!" But of course none of that happened, because the pressure from syndication and Roddenberry's vision were just too strong, and the first seasons were a mess as a result. They did a major shake-up after season 3 and basically set the show on a new course.
Enterprise suffered mostly from B&B being completely creatively drained at that point. They had been doing Star Trek for some 20 years at this point, and they were out of ideas and figurative steam, and it shows. The series only took off when they were pushed out of creative roles in season 4.
I feel like S4 through S6 of TNG, VOY, and DS9 were the best overall. It's like the first year no one knows who is gonna like what, because it's syndicated and shot a year in advance.
Also, that part is very wrong. Back then, shows were produced while the season was under way. You'd have a production pipeline; while one episode is being aired, the next one is in post-production, two more are being filmed, and a half-dozen are being written. It's hard to get exact dates for production steps, but just as an example DS9's season 1 finale's final draft is dated April 2, 1993, which would put it more that midway through season 1.
One of the main advantages of this ongoing-pipeline approach is precisely that it allowed the production to adapt to public feedback during the season, and adjust later episodes based on what they saw work or not work in early episodes.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
For what it's worth, unlike TNG and DS9, Voyager wasn't syndicated first-run, it was exclusively broadcast on UPN (what is now CW.) I'm sure the rerun syndication revenue from TNG was enough to make that a down-the-line consideration but there was no external pressure from buyers demanding they hit the reset button at the end of every episode.
The actual executive mandate was 'Make TNG Again', the reset button was built in.
I think one of the more damning things you can say about Voyager's writing wasn't that they had the reset button even though the entire premise of the show was that the reset button wasn't available, it's that the writers didn't even really manage to incorporate the reset process into the stories. Have them stop at some civilization to stock up on food and the aliens give them a free case of booze that gets you a fun medical issue to solve. Do an episode where they're looking to build an industrial scale replicator to sort out the proton torpedo issue and they end up having to deal with a Ferengi-lite bunch who send them on a series of fetch quests or something. They need the hull repaired and run into a fleet of nomadic types who are willing to help and the issue is the crew needing to keep tabs on the repair crew in order to try and limit their access to the Starfleet tech.
If the suits want TNG with the reset button and the premise of the show is no reset button, the correct action is to make the reset button part of the storytelling, not just 'yep, reset button'.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
They did sort of do all this - numerous plotlines are 'Captain's Log, We're out of the coffee I need to not flay everyone alive so we've beamed down to McGuffin IV to trade with the natives...'
Certainly early on they at least paid lip service to the concept. They even had consistent ongoing villains in the Kazon (terrible villains but consistent). Perhaps the biggest oversight was everyone becoming happy families instantly.
The biggest waste was pilot Tom Paris is far more interesting than series Tom Paris. In the pilot he's a sassy, out spoken but competent in a jam crewmember who was fun to watch - basically New Hope Han Solo. And they turned this character into a 'yes maam' nobody. Basically Return of the Jedi Han Solo.
Consistent villains was the other problem.
The entire concept of their mission was 'draw a line to Earth, follow it as fast as we can'.
A race showing up for more than a couple of episodes would need to cover an enormous amount of territory, and specific recurring villains would have to be able to keep up with this ship that's built for speed. Anyone without transwarp or whatever should have a hard time keeping up. Given that the Kazon were specifically outmatched by Voyager's tech, it makes Kallah in particular managing to show up time and again seem far-fetched.
The Kazon, I remember reading the making of Voyager Book and there where some unfortunate implications in their creation. They where envisioned as LA gangs in out space type aliens, with various factions willing to fight or ally with Voyager as a result. Being led by young leaders because their society was so violent that leaders got killed on a regular basis. So the faction you allied with one week would hate you the next because the last gang leader got offed in the meantime. They where even named the (Blood/Crip) aliens in the early scripts before they got the name Kazon.
Then of course they made it so that they had no redeeming traits or culture other than unpredictable violence. Their tech was stolen from other races and was inferior to Voyager and they couldn't even maintain it on their own.
So yeah, pretty racist from the get go. There is a reason nobody wants them on screen anymore.
(For those that don't know; The Bloods and the Crips are two major LA street gangs with majority African American membership. They have a history of violently feuding with each other. They are also heavily involved in drug sales. Like every bad stereotype of African American Gangbangers pretty much originated with these two gangs and their mere existence is used to tar regular African American kids by various Karens and Police).
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Consistent villains was the other problem.
The entire concept of their mission was 'draw a line to Earth, follow it as fast as we can'.
A race showing up for more than a couple of episodes would need to cover an enormous amount of territory, and specific recurring villains would have to be able to keep up with this ship that's built for speed. Anyone without transwarp or whatever should have a hard time keeping up. Given that the Kazon were specifically outmatched by Voyager's tech, it makes Kallah in particular managing to show up time and again seem far-fetched.
Recurring villains would make sense if Voyager was in worse shape and was, like, hiding out trying to make repairs while dodging Kazon or something. But that would require more serialized plotting. And a brain.
The Kazon actually were pretty interesting because they took the Klingon backstory that is never explored ever for some reason of being a slave race that rose up to overthrow their masters. They stole their tech but fractured into clans. I think you could do something interesting with exploring that but instead they just became annoying gnat of the week.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Consistent villains was the other problem.
The entire concept of their mission was 'draw a line to Earth, follow it as fast as we can'.
A race showing up for more than a couple of episodes would need to cover an enormous amount of territory, and specific recurring villains would have to be able to keep up with this ship that's built for speed. Anyone without transwarp or whatever should have a hard time keeping up. Given that the Kazon were specifically outmatched by Voyager's tech, it makes Kallah in particular managing to show up time and again seem far-fetched.
Recurring villains would make sense if Voyager was in worse shape and was, like, hiding out trying to make repairs while dodging Kazon or something. But that would require more serialized plotting. And a brain.
Or they ended up in the middle of the Kazon Empire which is actually a whole bunch of fiefdoms that make the Klingon Empire look like the Borg when it comes to political unity, but still functional. Kind of how the Ferengi have hyper-capitalism but also a functional society. Have them be closer to Voyager's tech level, but still far enough behind to be very interested in snarfling up the ship and the only reason nobody does it is because if the other houses found out about it they'd be ganged up on in order to stop them from gaining an advantage. And then you could have a bunch of fun as Voyager scoots through their space, trying to leverage each house against the other while dealing with various shenanigans the houses come up with to try and grab the ship.
The whole thing where the Kazon are a bunch of primitive screwheads who can't even sort out how to find water in space (fuuuuu) while being way behind Federation tech levels while also somehow also being a serious threat and covering enough space where Voyager keeps running into them and not having any traits other than bad hair and violence was just bad.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
The Kazon would be more interesting if Worf were around, late TNG or better yet DS9.
Worf would be the one to recognize that the Kazon are basically Klingons untempered by the wisdom of elders. He would actually see potential and value in them where Voyager saw nothing.
Voyager could have done recurring villains easily enough if they were smart about it. The Delta Quadrant is littered with trans-warp tech, both in currently-existing species (the Borg, the language-smart race that wanted revenge on Janeway, the hippies that didn't want to share their tech, the Equinox, etc.) and in older now-gone races (the dragon tooth race, the Caretaker, etc.), and the Trek universe has even more to draw from (Iconian portals, Preserver tech, unstable wormholes, god-like races, etc.). You don't need an impossible race that holds a quadrant-spanning empire while being too primitive and incompetent to find water. You just need a madman with a ship, a grudge against Voyager, and a bit of luck to stumble upon or steal access to a speed booster.
I just think the Kazon are a young, warrior race. So yeah - theire tech is dumb and they don't seem to understand how sensors and warp drive work, but give them time, they could become a powerful empire. They are literally just the Klingons 500 years ago. I assumed the reason the Kazon were a threat to Voyager was not that each ship was dangerous but that a) they had a lot of them - swarm b) their capital ships were frickin' enormous - so they could bring strength if they wanted. Voyager wasn't a heavy cruiser and not designed for extended combat.
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Seriously the change to Klingons was just another in the long line of problems with how decisions seemed to be made on the show. There was no narrative or thematic reason for the change, it made things exponentially harder for literally everyone involved in actually making the show, and it felt like the only reason it was done was to feed someone's ego so that they could "leave their mark" on the franchise.
At least have the balls to defend your own goddamn decisions, you fucking hacks.
The xenomorph style is a great fit. I was wondering how the youngling design could possibly translate to the adults. Like spacefaring and technologically advanced, it seemed like it wouldn’t mesh with the animal-like depiction of the youngsters.
Sending actors/performers, anybody on the operational level to defend crap management/executive decisions is always, always, always a sign of desperation and weakness.
What do you mean with "the twist"? If you mean Lorca, I still mantain that the guy with a serial killer collection of knives and bones being evil is the least surprising thing ever.
I wasn't saying it should be memory holed. Before the post about Starfleet Academy being 32nd century (which seems like a good choice), my point was that, early season Disco stuff was wierd, and all the wierdness could be explained as "yet another timeline" like the Kelvinverse, so it can still be canon, still be something we can enjoy, without having to bend over ourselves to explain it. The comment about the 32nd century stuff was that it just only existed in disco, so knowing how Paramount operated, that might have been the end we heard of it in on screen canon.
Ignoring the fact that redesign was terrible from an acting standpoint.... Disco could have done a more "alien" Klingon look (and I kinda liked the Kelvinverse, even if it came out of no where), for the aliens that kicked off the party if they had said like, that ship of the dead caused some kind of exposure to some radiation that basically started changing their appearance and these specific Klingons were religious zealots that had lived isolated from the empire at large for the last few centuries or whatever, long enough for the damage to be evident, then after they kick off the Klingon/Human civil war, they also participate in the reunification of the Klingon Empire. You even have them taking overall control of the empire for a while, until the end of the war when the Klingon's lose the way they did and decide to exterminate these religious zealots, hence why we never see them again. The Klingons from that point on "don't talk about it with outsiders".
Your mistake, IMO, is that you're thinking about continuity and the franchise first, rather than "our farts take on Star Trek will be so cool and different that from now on, they're all going to be copying us."
My mistake is assuming that a franchise that could Beyond out 3 MONTHS before the 50th anniversary, and disco a full year after that, and otherwise do almost nothing could be actually cogent in it's decision making, while also wasting the talents of Nicholas Meyer and Bryan Fuller.
I maintain if Disco Season one was season two it would have been better received
Ultimately like with their explanation that no-one would take the technology of the 23rd century as presented in the original series seriously, so they had to replace it all with tech that looked about a hundred years more advanced than the TNG era, you can justify the new Klingons as just being an isolated band of weirdos, but at some point, if you've changed the aesthetics of everything, and the only common element left is the proper nouns used, you have to ask why you're even making a show with the name of an iconic franchise attached. You could make this one group of Klingons look more "alien" than other Klingons, to go along with their highly ornate armour, weapons and ships that look nothing like the utilitarian brutalism of every ship we've seen from every era from Enterprise through Voyager. I really feel if they'd just set the show around a hundred years into the future of TNG, and made the religiously motivated band of isolationist warmongers a new group of aliens, they wouldn't have had to change a single aspect of the actual designs of either Federation of Klingon aesthetics. The only thing that actually tied Discovery to the TOS era was the really fanficy element of Spock having a super secret adopted sister that no-one ever mentioned. I honestly wonder if making everything revolve around Michael Burnham, youngest first officer in Starfleet and the secret sister of Spock started as a homage to the original Mary Sue, youngest lieutenant in Starfleet history who's universally loved by all the crew.
I think that might have worked better just because in S1E1 we're introduced to Burnham as the main character who is held up as being a generally awesome Starfleet officer, only to have a large portion of her actions in the episode be a hot mess of crazy and/or stupid. Having a season of her not sucking while hinting at some of the flaws in here character, with the season ending with the initial conflict with the Klingons and Burnham cracking and doing her thing. The whole thing of being told she was great while being shown that, no, she wasn't, didn't really work for me.
I see you haven't read any of my other posts. TLDR is that in general, Disco is it's own series smashed into being Star Trek. The fact that 32nd century Disco works so much better (much like Andromeda) only supports this point.
EDIT: That was an observation, not admonition. I'm not that important.
I think that's giving too much weight to what we're being told, not shown. Yes, Burnham is an academically excellent officer. But her introduction scene demonstrates that she often misses the obvious answer, as it shows her making plans to live out her life among the primitive locals while her captain just just smirks as she traces a giant delta in the sand to get themselves rescued.
And after that she just runs into a series of trauma triggers which her Vulcan upbringing (don't deal with emotions or trauma, just shove them down and ignore them) hasn't done anything to prepare her to deal with.
And the writers know it, too. There's multiple scenes with Spock where he calmly points out her habit of taking responsibility for things that weren't her fault (her parent's deaths, the Klingon war, etc), to the point that when they suggest that she will at some point in the future find the Red Angel suit and take personal responsibility for saving all life in the galaxy, he just nods and says "Yeah, that sounds like her." (paraphrased)
Oh right, this. People wanting to leave their mark on the franchise isn't a bad thing per se, the issue is that, you are going to be compared to previous iterations, and if your version is dogshit then you are going to get dunked at. The issue with Disco Klingons is not that they are vastly different, is that they are a bad design because it doesn't allow the actors to actually, you know, act. Hell, they actually look better on Star Trek Online because is a 3d model that can have actual expressions instead of an imobile pile of latex.
Dorn generally seems like a pretty chill dude, so those are some pretty strong words from him. Especially when Gates complements the actress and he comes back with what sounds like '...no, seriously, you don't seem to understand just how bad this is.' Normally you'd think he'd go along with Gates complementing the actress' efforts because that's the sort of positive dude he seems to be, but he's focused on how bad the prosthetics are and how they basically negate whatever it is the actress brings to the scene.
They don't.
And that is fine.
For me Season 2 Disco is just Season 0 SNW so SNW has its beard when it starts Season 1. Like there are some good things in Season 2.
Disco for me really gets going with Season 3 though that had its uh moments.
Season 4 was good shit though. And ended in one of the most Star Trek ways. I loved it.
Season 5 has started with a good mystery. A bit of a call back. And lots of bits focused around different crew members.
Also for everyone going, "Disco is just another branch like Kelvin" is missing that Disco heavily leans on TNG and TOS and isn't a branch.
Then they have the comic con panels and hooplah and people can give feedback, and we get a shaky 2nd season that covers up the tracks of the first, and a third season that sets the tone.
It shouldn't work, and would not work by modern broadcast standards, but it did in this case, until Enterprise.
TNG started off as a TOS knock-off. It even inherited some scripts from the planned-but-never-produced TOS Phase II series. Roddenberry was still around at the start, so it made sense that he pushed to recreate his earlier TOS success in TNG, both in tone and setting and in stringent rules for what writers could and could not do. By season 3 Roddenberry was out and B&B took charge, and that injected a fresh vision and also kneecapped a lot of Roddenberry's rules (since he wasn't around to enforce them and the new team didn't have his prestige and seniority in the franchise).
DS9 started off trying to grab an easy audience from TNG. That's why you get episodes like Q-Less, the Maquis, pathetic Ferengi, etc. Syndication was also a major constraint, and story-arcs are impossible when every episode has to self-contained and watchable out of order. By season 3 TNG was long over and Voyager was starting up and B&B were really more focused on that new show, so the DS9 folks were more free to do their own thing, and just once in a while tell B&B "yes sir we're wrapping up that Dominion War thing next episode and getting back to syndication-friendly episodic stories right away sir."
Voyager started off with a great vision. If you read press releases back when it came out, it promised a lot of new things for the franchise - "Discord on the bridge!" "No starbases to restock and repair after each episode!" "Lasting consequences!" But of course none of that happened, because the pressure from syndication and Roddenberry's vision were just too strong, and the first seasons were a mess as a result. They did a major shake-up after season 3 and basically set the show on a new course.
Enterprise suffered mostly from B&B being completely creatively drained at that point. They had been doing Star Trek for some 20 years at this point, and they were out of ideas and figurative steam, and it shows. The series only took off when they were pushed out of creative roles in season 4.
Also, that part is very wrong. Back then, shows were produced while the season was under way. You'd have a production pipeline; while one episode is being aired, the next one is in post-production, two more are being filmed, and a half-dozen are being written. It's hard to get exact dates for production steps, but just as an example DS9's season 1 finale's final draft is dated April 2, 1993, which would put it more that midway through season 1.
One of the main advantages of this ongoing-pipeline approach is precisely that it allowed the production to adapt to public feedback during the season, and adjust later episodes based on what they saw work or not work in early episodes.
I think one of the more damning things you can say about Voyager's writing wasn't that they had the reset button even though the entire premise of the show was that the reset button wasn't available, it's that the writers didn't even really manage to incorporate the reset process into the stories. Have them stop at some civilization to stock up on food and the aliens give them a free case of booze that gets you a fun medical issue to solve. Do an episode where they're looking to build an industrial scale replicator to sort out the proton torpedo issue and they end up having to deal with a Ferengi-lite bunch who send them on a series of fetch quests or something. They need the hull repaired and run into a fleet of nomadic types who are willing to help and the issue is the crew needing to keep tabs on the repair crew in order to try and limit their access to the Starfleet tech.
If the suits want TNG with the reset button and the premise of the show is no reset button, the correct action is to make the reset button part of the storytelling, not just 'yep, reset button'.
Certainly early on they at least paid lip service to the concept. They even had consistent ongoing villains in the Kazon (terrible villains but consistent). Perhaps the biggest oversight was everyone becoming happy families instantly.
The biggest waste was pilot Tom Paris is far more interesting than series Tom Paris. In the pilot he's a sassy, out spoken but competent in a jam crewmember who was fun to watch - basically New Hope Han Solo. And they turned this character into a 'yes maam' nobody. Basically Return of the Jedi Han Solo.
The entire concept of their mission was 'draw a line to Earth, follow it as fast as we can'.
A race showing up for more than a couple of episodes would need to cover an enormous amount of territory, and specific recurring villains would have to be able to keep up with this ship that's built for speed. Anyone without transwarp or whatever should have a hard time keeping up. Given that the Kazon were specifically outmatched by Voyager's tech, it makes Kallah in particular managing to show up time and again seem far-fetched.
Then of course they made it so that they had no redeeming traits or culture other than unpredictable violence. Their tech was stolen from other races and was inferior to Voyager and they couldn't even maintain it on their own.
So yeah, pretty racist from the get go. There is a reason nobody wants them on screen anymore.
(For those that don't know; The Bloods and the Crips are two major LA street gangs with majority African American membership. They have a history of violently feuding with each other. They are also heavily involved in drug sales. Like every bad stereotype of African American Gangbangers pretty much originated with these two gangs and their mere existence is used to tar regular African American kids by various Karens and Police).
Recurring villains would make sense if Voyager was in worse shape and was, like, hiding out trying to make repairs while dodging Kazon or something. But that would require more serialized plotting. And a brain.
Or they ended up in the middle of the Kazon Empire which is actually a whole bunch of fiefdoms that make the Klingon Empire look like the Borg when it comes to political unity, but still functional. Kind of how the Ferengi have hyper-capitalism but also a functional society. Have them be closer to Voyager's tech level, but still far enough behind to be very interested in snarfling up the ship and the only reason nobody does it is because if the other houses found out about it they'd be ganged up on in order to stop them from gaining an advantage. And then you could have a bunch of fun as Voyager scoots through their space, trying to leverage each house against the other while dealing with various shenanigans the houses come up with to try and grab the ship.
The whole thing where the Kazon are a bunch of primitive screwheads who can't even sort out how to find water in space (fuuuuu) while being way behind Federation tech levels while also somehow also being a serious threat and covering enough space where Voyager keeps running into them and not having any traits other than bad hair and violence was just bad.
Worf would be the one to recognize that the Kazon are basically Klingons untempered by the wisdom of elders. He would actually see potential and value in them where Voyager saw nothing.