I really don’t understand the hate this show got. I really enjoyed it! A unique concept, story driven - season long plot arcs, great acting, incredible visuals, and fantastic characters. Sure there was some goofy stuff in there too, but star trek always has goofy shit.
I really felt like this was going to be a turning point of bringing star trek out of the ‘everything-contained-in-an-episode’ nonsense, and into the golden age of storytelling.
What did you think about it?
I was very disappointed with discovery. I was okay with season one, but I don’t even like the single long-story arc format to begin with. For me Star Trek is supposed to be episodic, science, philosophy, and ethics heavy content. Screen glare, constant massive explosions, over-the-top action sequences, and thin characters and plot just made it boring and indistinct from any other sci-fi I could watch. Stand alone, if it was not called star trek or in the star trek universe it would still be okay overall, but I showed up looking for Star Trek and got something that didn’t fit in at all with the Star Trek I knew and wanted more of.
Strange New Worlds has taken a big step in blending decent action into episodic content that feels like a back to the roots revival of the what the series was and should continue to be.
On a moderately related note, I fucking hated Picard after season 1 too, and season 1 was ruined (from what I’ve heard because I just didn’t watch anything after halfway through season 2) by taking away what was the final moments of a fan-favourite character.
For some reason I have a hard time understanding, new series and content in Star Trek seems to be following some… I guess I’ll call it “modernization of storytelling” where the structure and soul of previous content is being entirely overwritten with long drawn out epics that don’t challenge the viewer at all and rely on CG and SFX to fill in for the meat of the show. The meat of the show should be good writing, good character development, and yeah, to be a bit preachy about ethics. The story of the show should be the story of Starfleet, not the story of one shitty captain being special.