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Star Trek: Discovery


Werthead

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3 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

Rainn Wilson cast as Harry Mudd.   Sounds they've gone completely episodic and given up on telling a season-long story.  That's disappointing.

I'm not sure I follow you. It's totally possible to tell a season long story and still have time for some unrelated "monster of the week" type episodes where character development advances but the season arc does not. That's actually a complaint I heard of the Marvel Netflix shows, that without those single episode diversions (Jessica Jones did do one, and it was kinda lame) the season's plot are stretched too thin over 13 episodes. 

In any event that's some spot on casting. They've already broken continuity with TOS so much that it's hard to see a modern version of Mudd being a problem. 

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Yeah, I can actually see a major backlash against season-long arcs coming along. If you're Joe Straczynski or Joss Whedon, or you're adapting a relatively plot-dense novel, you can write a tightly serialised story that spans 12 or 13 episodes no problem. If you're not, you either need to mix things up a bit more or go for shorter seasons (Stranger Things being 8 episodes was absolutely, by far, the best decision the creators made).

I appreciate the fact that the Daredevil team did try to mix things up with the smaller four-episode story arcs in Season 2 (which Iron Fist copied, to some degree), but that came undone because the Hand arc was total crap.

I think 12-13 episodes is too much for one story, but too little for a good story mixed in with several stand-alones. That structure, which 1990s shows did really well, requires the longer 22-episode seasons.

With Star Trek, it's easy to forget that the old shows were absolutely at their best with stand-alones. City at the Edge of ForeverFar Beyond the StarsThe VisitorThe Inner Light, Yesterday's Enterprise etc were all single eps unrelated to anything else. Even Best of Both Worlds was a two-episode arc (and it was helpful but unnecessary to have watched Q Who? beforehand). The most arc-heavy of the all-time classic episodes was In the Pale Moonlight, and even in that the context of what was going on (the Federation is trying to the manipulate the Romulans into joining a war) is pretty easily picked up by a casual viewer.

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20 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, I can actually see a major backlash against season-long arcs coming along. If you're Joe Straczynski or Joss Whedon, or you're adapting a relatively plot-dense novel, you can write a tightly serialised story that spans 12 or 13 episodes no problem. If you're not, you either need to mix things up a bit more or go for shorter seasons (Stranger Things being 8 episodes was absolutely, by far, the best decision the creators made).

I appreciate the fact that the Daredevil team did try to mix things up with the smaller four-episode story arcs in Season 2 (which Iron Fist copied, to some degree), but that came undone because the Hand arc was total crap.

I think 12-13 episodes is too much for one story, but too little for a good story mixed in with several stand-alones. That structure, which 1990s shows did really well, requires the longer 22-episode seasons.

With Star Trek, it's easy to forget that the old shows were absolutely at their best with stand-alones. City at the Edge of ForeverFar Beyond the StarsThe VisitorThe Inner Light, Yesterday's Enterprise etc were all single eps unrelated to anything else. Even Best of Both Worlds was a two-episode arc (and it was helpful but unnecessary to have watched Q Who? beforehand). The most arc-heavy of the all-time classic episodes was In the Pale Moonlight, and even in that the context of what was going on (the Federation is trying to the manipulate the Romulans into joining a war) is pretty easily picked up by a casual viewer.

Yeah, I think I was discussing in another thread that it's only a matter of time before stand-alone episodes come back in tv. Basically things are getting a bit oversaturated with the technique - especially via netflix and I think as soon as someone brings out a show with 12 episodes with full stories done well people will be claiming it as "fresh" and "fast-paced".

22 hours ago, RumHam said:

I'm not sure I follow you. It's totally possible to tell a season long story and still have time for some unrelated "monster of the week" type episodes where character development advances but the season arc does not.

I wasn't sure how this casting makes it impossible either. Plus, a season-long story arc could be trying to find a place, be involved in a war or even more simply about the character arcs eg tension between the captain and the second in command. Season 1 of BSG and SG:U (a show that sadly died too soon) essentially had a season of 1 and 2 parters where they dealt with a given problem in the space of an hour. The ongoing arc was tensions between the crew and trying to figure out a way to survive. It's not that different from Voyager besides the key difference of you could probably watch episodes of Voyager in a random order and it wouldn't be that confusing (the characters don't really change that much and the voyage home was essentially always the same). You could jumble up episodes of most Trek shows to be fair. You couldn't do that with BSG and SG:U - so Discovery may just have that factor as part of longer story arcs.

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I don't see a problem with this series being largely episodic, with a few season long threads thrown in as sub-plot. It's nice to tell multiple complete stories in a sequence of one broadcast hours with mostly the same characters and some regular irregulars.

TV should be all one way or the other. It's better when there is a variety of modes.

I'm not so invested in the Star Trek verse that I particularly care one way or the other.

I also don't know how the inclusion of one irregular character is proof of the series being totally episodic. He could appear in the occasional episode as part of the season arc, or he could appear as a momentary diversion from the season arc, or he could do both at different times or the series could be completely episodic. It could be any one of these possibilities.

The quality of the series will still come down to the writing and how good of a story they can tell, whether it be a series of smaller stories or one big story.

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I wonder if they can find that magic formula that B5 and DS9 had - they had a combination of episodic and season, even series long story arcs, and it always seemed to work.

Any new Trek is something I'm happy to see coming, it's been far, far too long.

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B5 really didn't start out with an obvious pan-season story, like say Star Trek Voyager or BSG. I never watched more than a handful of episodes of DS9, so I don't know how that played out. Straczynski may have had the grand vision right from the start, but he revealed it gradually if he did.

 

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55 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

B5 really didn't start out with an obvious pan-season story, like say Star Trek Voyager or BSG.

The arc is more subtle in the first season, but it's certainly there - eg the hole in Sinclair's mind, Mr Morden and his associates, relations between the Narn and the Centauri, Babylon 4 - there's clearly still unfinished business with all those at the end of the season. A big difference from say TNG season 1.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 2017-4-3 at 6:13 AM, felice said:

The arc is more subtle in the first season, but it's certainly there - eg the hole in Sinclair's mind, Mr Morden and his associates, relations between the Narn and the Centauri, Babylon 4 - there's clearly still unfinished business with all those at the end of the season. A big difference from say TNG season 1.

The unhappiness in the Klingon Empire with the treaty (in Heart of Glory), the alien parasites infiltrating Starfleet (in Conspiracy) and the destruction of the colonies along the Romulan border (in The Neutral Zone), along with Q and Lore as recurring threats, were all supposed to lead to further stories, which they kind of did apart from the alien parasites (which I think were supplanted by the Changelings in DS9 instead).

Certainly not the same thing, but TNG did lay a little pipe for future seasons.

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52 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Star Trek: Discovery Switches an Actor's Role Mid-Production

That's just weird. Also sill no release date. 

Was reading an interview that was reported this week with what seemed to the director of CBS, who says they are happy with the progress but are not ready/willing to announce when it will be out. When pressed, he also would not even confirm the broad term "fall 2017" leading some to think we may not even see this in 2017.

I doubt that personally, but no one knows.

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15 minutes ago, Arch-MaesterPhilip said:

I'm starting to lose interest in this and also doubting that it's ever going to be released.  

They've been filming it for four months and have spent tens of millions of dollars on it. That'd be quite a spectacular fail.

 

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I hate monster of the week with a reset button at the end of each episode.

I agree, but "season-spanning story which is a bit rubbish so the entire season ends up sucking rather than just one episode" is starting to get a bit old as well. A happier medium, I think, needs to be found, perhaps that mix of elements seen previously on BuffyBabylon 5 and DS9.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

They've been filming it for four months and have spent tens of millions of dollars on it. That'd be quite a spectacular fail.

 

I agree, but "season-spanning story which is a bit rubbish so the entire season ends up sucking rather than just one episode" is starting to get a bit old as well. A happier medium, I think, needs to be found, perhaps that mix of elements seen previously on BuffyBabylon 5 and DS9.

It's the delays I don't find encouraging. Now it might be this year but probably not.  

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3 hours ago, Werthead said:

They've been filming it for four months and have spent tens of millions of dollars on it. That'd be quite a spectacular fail.

 

I agree, but "season-spanning story which is a bit rubbish so the entire season ends up sucking rather than just one episode" is starting to get a bit old as well. A happier medium, I think, needs to be found, perhaps that mix of elements seen previously on BuffyBabylon 5 and DS9.

Fringe did that pretty well, I think also. I mean, elements of the monster of the week in the first season actually ended up being part of a bigger picture later on. At least that's how I remember it.

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4 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Fringe did that pretty well, I think also. I mean, elements of the monster of the week in the first season actually ended up being part of a bigger picture later on. At least that's how I remember it.

the CW shows based on DC properties and Supernatural all do a decent version of the "buffy" format. At least when i was watching them last year. Guess it highlights how shows need to be good first and foremost but i do think star trek would benefit from good 1-2 parters with a narrative arc. Especially with a name like "discovery". If it had been in a space-station or planet I'd be more accepting of a 10 hour movie season.

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