Seth would be over the moon with that. Massive TNG fan there. Not sure NDGT would be terribly interested, but maybe?
I hope it isn't. I hate the season-long or even series-long arcs. I had high hopes for DS9 when it started and it seemed the first season or two were indeed adventure-of-the-week stand-alone stories, which I liked. Then about season three it devolved into The Dominion soap opera. Even adding Worf later couldn't save it from its further demise into Soap Opera Hell. As for Voyager, they were the opposite. They started off as a Soap Opera with the Federation and Marquis having to (forced to) team up because of their circumstance and for the next two years have internal strife amongst the crew while having to battle one foe (Kazons.) Boring as heck, while not making much progress of getting home. After the second season, I said that they better make progress getting back to Earth or this show will never be resolved before it ends. It was nice that they were able to find some shortcuts throughout the remaining 5 seasons to get back home (some of the shortcuts seemed plausible. The only shortcut that was eye-rolling was the final shortcut. That one was forced on them since it was announced the show would end that season and the writers had to come up with something since they were still only about halfway home.) Those final 5 seasons of Voyager became more like an adventure-of-the-week series that I enjoy instead of the Soap Opera it started out to be. There was so much potential for DS9 and Voyager since they both took place in unexplored distant quadrants. They could've dedicated each week to discovering new things and species and having each story revolve around the new discovery. There is no reason to have soap opera-type primetime shows on with season-long or series-long story arcs. I lose interest after awhile, especially when it is pure action/drama without any comedy or adventure.
DS9 took an X-Files approach to the ongoing story arc approach, alternating between self-contained stories and the Dominion War story arc. In my opinion, the self-contained stories were stronger.
I liked DS9 from seasons 3-6. The first two seasons were slow, and season 7 was horrible, and I never really cared about the Bajoran storylines. But there were some great characters, and I happen to like the Ferengi episodes. Wallace Shawn as the Grand Nagus is good silly fun, although his ear hair is pretty disgusting. But DS9 had some amazing episodes like The Visitor and In The Pale Moonlight that are right there with classic Trek like The City At The Edge Of Forever and Darmok. It seems like all the Trek shows save the original needed a season or two to settle in. I sure hope for their sake this one doesn't have that same flaw. Will CBS be patient if it's slow going at first?
Wasn't the idea of this series to in fact do just a one-season arc story and then move on? That's what I read somewhere ages ago - that they'd do a one-season story set somewhere in a Trek timeline and explore it to conclusion. Then the next year would be a different ship, different cast, different time period - sort of a season-long anthology set in the Star Trek universe. Given the long and painful process of getting this show to launch, perhaps that philosophy has changed. ?
That sounds familiar. It may may have been a rumor. It would seem to be a bit too difficult to pull that off season to season, having to recast the show year after year. A possibility, and one that also sounds vaguely familiar, is a season-long story arc each season with the same characters.
If anyone gets (is) frustrated, it will be Netflix which paid for this in the first place (expecting the original Fuller pitch/vision).
No, I don't think that's right. That was just fan musings based on nothing more that a couple of lines in an early press release, where everyone went crazy trying to divine meaning out how the press release was phrased. I think a season long arc was always the case, but not the changing of crews etc each season. It was never meant to be an anthology series. What it was meant to be was a series set in pre-Kirk era centering around an incident which was part of canon, but never explored to any degree in other series. It would have respected the timeline and the aesthetic (if visually updated) of that era. But this is the time that Moonves started meddling, wanting to 'sex' things up (note, he has admitted that he knows nothing about scifi, let alone Trek) and make it more like a JJ movie. They even had these weird HR Giger-like ship designs/interiors etc. Fuller pushed back, saying that it would really piss off the fanbase. After a while, Moonves fired Fuller and started changing the original vision to what we're apparently getting now - a hotchpotch of JJ elements and visuals set in the prime universe!
Mileage. I thought the Bajoran stuff was great, when they focused on politics and intrigue and the relationship with the Cardassians, and not the ridiculous wormhole aliens and their shifting "powers of the week". The initial arrival of the Dominion and some of their plotting to take over the Alpha Quadrant was interesting, but when the program turned all war, all the time I think it got dull fast. Especially when they ran around remaking old Combat episodes. Even worse were the stupid holodeck stories and other junk they littered up the "war" arc with - if you're gonna break from the war, you've gotta do something better than that. DS9 went completely off the rails with the end of the Dominion occupation of the station (which was some of the best work they had done and almost redeemed the whole "war" story for me). From there on out everything felt anticlimactic and the characters started to get very cardboard and began to exist merely to serve the (increasingly recursive and meandering) plot. The worst part was that they turned Dukat - who had been the most complex villain in Trek history - into a moustache twiddling loon. (They also pretty much ruined Garak.) That final season was a complete mess, although it did have a few great moments - like when Ezri tells Worf just what she thinks of the Klingon Empire and what should become of it. If the whole thing had been up to that standard, it would have been the best season of Trek, ever.
Hmmm, I somewhat agree. I liked the final seasons of DS9, including the Vic Fontaine holodeck episodes. The Dukat & the wormhole aliens bit was kind of hokey but there were still many episodes I liked with him ingratiating himself to Adami to get to the fire caves and ultimate power. I never liked the whole wormhole alien thing to begin with. It would have been much better if they remained purely as mystical objects of Bajoran beliefs/culture, not actual aliens with 'random powers' who seem to be perpetually mystified by 'linear' creatures to the point of obtuseness. The finale could have been a physical power struggle between religious extremists and Federation values, so avoiding the battle of glowy energy beings in other peoples' bodies - bah!
Wouldn't be Star Trek if religious beliefs weren't explained by physical alien beings. This, however, would have been nice. Might have been too many historical parallels though, especially if the Federation wins said physical struggle and that's the only way Bajor joins...
Oh, I couldn't stand those. We're in the middle of a war, so let's mess around in '60s Vegas on the holodeck. What a failure of imagination. I could handle the wormhole being full of weird aliens the Bajorans worshipped, but the way the series handled them - almost right from the start - was just ridiculous. I've always thought they missed a great opportunity with the wormhole to not only explain Sisko away but also tie it into the TNG finale by having the Sisko detonate some kind of anti-time bomb to close off the wormhole for good, revealing that it's this act which actually created the wormhole in the first place (it only exists backwards in time from that point), making him the Emissary. The wormhole aliens were simply ensuring their own creation.
Well, just saw the trailer. So this is supposed to be 10 years before Kirk? Well, they blew it. It looks like it 100 years after Kirk. Boring. You know, they blew a great opportunity here. They could have done something really different from the last 26 Star Trek shows after TOS....they could have gone Retro and in a Man Men vein and it would have really looked interesting. This just looks like another dark, muted modern reboot. Not sure I'm even gonna pony up for this. A shame.
I feel the opposite. I felt that the Dominion arc was superior to the first two seasons. It only became a soap opera in scenes where Worf started romancing Dax but even then it held its own.
I don't agree. The holodeck eps were mostly meant as fun and I did get a kick out the Bashir/Bond episodes in all they campy glory. But there were also the eps where Nog was suffering from PTSD and he withdrew into the Vegas simulation which turned out to be ultimately therapeutic. I thought that was done well. I guess it depends on the degree to which you're willing to accept the fun episodes as well as the serious ones. Over time, I've found myself liking the fun episodes more than perhaps I would have done during the original run.
That was pre-war though, if memory serves, and was really creative and featured the program's best character - Garak. The idea of a real spy caught in a '60s spy fantasy was hilarious. Holo-Vegas? Not so much. And I've got no problem with "lighter" moments inside of the war arc - there was a great episode which managed to combine a crank inventor, Jake and Nog, and the Dominion into a truly improbable and bizarre stew that I loved. Unfortunately as the series progressed they lost some their better writers and as a result, we got what we got.
We have some more (iffy) news. Looks like the first ep will air on Sep 24. But guess what? You won't get a chance to see the full season thereafter, because CBS is cutting it in two! They'll show the first 8 eps and then we'll have to wait till Jan 2018 for the next 7. And this is on a frelling streaming platform! If they need more post-production time, why not just wait till Jan next year at release it in one tranche? There would at least then be the nice symmetry of being exactly 1 year late!
Anything can go wrong, but nothing will go wrong, I'm guessing. With the help of the Internet, we are living in an age of hypercriticism run amok, especially when it comes to the fandom of a long-existing franchise. Hardcore fans of long-existing franchises are predisposed to hating everything new that the franchise produces without giving it a chance, evidenced by some of the comments in this thread.
Geez, it's obvious what's going on here...they don't want people to subscribe, binge the season and then quickly cancel....it's exactly how they should be doing it.
Instead, they will encourage the audience to take the high road and subscribe, binge half the season and then quickly cancel until the rest of the episodes go up. Solid plan.
Exactly. And if people don't want to subscribe when the show isn't airing, they can simply unsubscribe and subscribe when the show begins airing again. It takes about 30 seconds to cancel your account or put it in hold.
Some will do that. Many won't. But they'll be getting themselves new subscribers who will be sticking around.
Perhaps, but they are only releasing one ep a week and are assuming most diehards can't wait until the whole batch has come out...
And now for something positive about the series. EXCLUSIVE Star Trek: Discovery star Sonequa Martin-Green breaks her silence Former ‘Walking Dead’ star talks details her mysterious character JAMES HIBBERD@JAMESHIBBERD POSTED ON JUNE 20, 2017 AT 11:22AM EDT CBS Ready to learn a bit more about the lead character in Star Trek: Discovery? We spoke to star Sonequa Martin-Green about her mysterious role for this week’s upcoming issue of Entertainment Weekly. Her character, First Officer Michael Burnham (deliberately a man’s name), has been shrouded in mystery so far, with the show’s trailer hinting at a Vulcan past. Is she human? Vulcan? Martin-Green is ready to clear things up (a little). We can tell you that Burnham is fully human (not half-Vulcan as some have speculated) and is the first human to attend the Vulcan Learning Center as a child and then the Vulcan Science Academy as a young woman. She has a close relationship with Sarek (James Frain), the father of Spock. For the past seven years, she’s been serving on the U.S.S. Shenzhou. “I’m the first officer on the U.S.S. Shenzhou that is captained by Captain Philippa Georgiou, who is played by the amazing Michelle Yeoh,” she says. “I have an inner war and it’s a journey of self discovery and finding out what it means to be alive, to be human, to be a Starfleet officer, what it means to be a hero.” The producers searched long and hard to find an actor who could pull of Burnham’s divided nature. “We read a lot of people and they either went way too robotic or and chilly or way too emotional,” says Aaron Harberts, who serves as showrunner on the series along with Gretchen J. Berg. “What’s beautiful about Sonequa’s performance is she’s capable of playing two, three, four things at once. She’s got such a great command of her craft, she’s able to be aloof but warm; logical but able to surrender her emotional side to the audience.” Adds Martin-Green: “I have the Vulcan conflict in my life from Sarek and Amanda so there’s always going to be that inner conflict with me. But I think it’s relatable because we all have some kind of inner conflict going on — who we are versus who we present ourselves to be. There’s a lot to be discovered.” On Monday, CBS announced Star Trek: Discovery will debut Sunday, Sept. 24 (first on CBS, then shifting to CBS All Access streaming service). EW has more scoop to come, follow @jameshibberd for more. 'Star Trek Discovery' Star Sonequa Martin-Green Breaks Silence on Mysterious Character
