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After we made the decision to abandon “live” weekly Discovery coverage, we promised you a season 1 wrap-up, and we are delivering!
Trekabout Special 7: Star Trek: Discovery Season 1 Wrap-Up
After we made the decision to abandon “live” weekly Discovery coverage, we promised you a season 1 wrap-up, and we are delivering!
Christopher Rollins
-Happy Valentine’s Day, guys. I hope there wasn’t as much rain over there as it was here. I’ve been listening to Trekabout and Mission Log Podcast (website: missionlogpodcast.com) to try and cope.
Linda
-Guys,
Thanks so much for your honest and truthful comments about Discovery. When it was first announced that there would be a new Star Trek show on TV, I was so filled with anticipation. And then — well, and then it finally debuted. Even though we knew that it was intended to be another prequel, I still had hope that it would be good. But what seems to be inevitably happening with yet another prequel is that the writers are writing themselves into a corner. Now that they’ve revealed the Enterprise, where do they go from there? Where can they go from there?
After seeing the first episode, I was left feeling hurt, disappointed, and even insulted, and it actually kind of made me feel depressed and uninterested in watching even my favorite Star Trek shows, Voyager and DS9. In fact, it took a couple of weeks for me to get back into the mind set of watching them again. DS9, IMO, is the absolute best Star Trek show, and Voyager is my second favorite. But of the two, Voyager is the Star Trek show that I find myself more readily going back to when I want to relax and enjoy an episode of Star Trek.
As much as I dislike Discovery, the one thing I’ve promised myself is that I will make a point to watch each episode, with the hope that at some point in the not-too-distant future, that the stories will finally start to make sense and that I’ll be able to enjoy it. I’ve made that promise to myself because when Enterprise debuted 2001, I didn’t make it through the first season; it just wasn’t the Star Trek I was expecting or hoping for after having enjoyed Voyager. But a couple of years ago I began watching Enterprise again, and as I continued to watch each season, it really did get better. So that’s why I’m holding out some hope for Discovery.
Fortunately, I didn’t subscribe to CBS All Access only for Discovery. I’ve been subscribed to it for more than two years now, only because I absolutely must be able to watch Star Trek any time I want to! So since I already have CBSAA, I plan to watch the second season of Discovery when it comes back. I can’t say that I am looking forward to it, but I will watch it.
John W
-I was hoping for a “post mortem” of sorts on this season…and my choice of words pretty much shows my overall opinion of Discovery.
This show made myself feel insane. I bounced from “Eh” to starting to praise it shortly after the mid season break, only to see further potential squandered. I honestly had a conversation that went along these lines:
“How’s Discovery?”
“Not so great”
“But you said it got good.”
“Yeah, but that was two episodes ago.”
I get wanting to root for Star Trek, but I hit my point of diminished returns this year. If I hear the right things about future seasons, I’ll jump back in, as I did with previous series.
Anon
-The biggest problem with the new show is tone. I fell in love with Star Trek because it is about hope and exploration and positivity. The new show is Game of Thrones in space. All the characters are dark and flawed and gross (except for Saru, who is awesome.) This is the Star Trek show I would expect if someone explained Star Trek to a bunch of frat boys for 5 minutes and then told them to write a Star Trek story. The writers fundamentally don’t understand what made Star Trek great.
Additionally, the show is clearly suffering from a lack of a clear leader in the writers’ room (as you said.) It was as if the writers each came up with an idea of where to go next and instead of choosing one idea, they did all of them. The most blatant example of this is when Burnham goes down to meet Voq in the mirror universe and forms an alliance with them. I thought, “Oh, that’s a cool direction to take the show. I can get used to this.” Literally the very next scene is the rebel base being destroyed. Why did they do that? Either follow that story line, or don’t. They introduced it, then immediately rendered it irrelevant. It’s just bad storytelling.