Disco would be nicer if it didn't have Burnham doing her agitated whispering thing in every scene. Normal people don't talk like that.
Primarily a TNG problem, I feel. Highest highs and lowest lows, all rolled into one. Things got more consistent after that, but yeah, shows like VOY also have their share of utter shite.
To me, I just didn't find anything DIS did interesting or engaging, or even particularly entertaining. None of the characters interest me, the plot lines seemed mostly boring or contrived, and the aesthetic is, to me, simply off-putting. It doesn't FEEL like Star Trek to me, it feels like some other vaguely similar SF show, and I was never interested in stuff like the new Battlestar Galactica either. Maybe that's just personal, could well simply come down to taste.
We are talking character development, not "which series had which bad episodes"
All right, gentleperchildren, let's review. The year is 2024 - that's two-zero-two-four, as in the 21st Century's perfect vision - and I am sorry to say the world has become a pussy-whipped, Brady Bunch version of itself, run by a bunch of still-masked clots ridden infertile senile sissies who want the Last Ukrainian to die so they can get on with the War on China, with some middle-eastern genocide on the side
When you have 25 episodes in a season and 3 are great, 12 are good/watchable, 7 are bad/filler/forgettable and 3 are 'what were they thinking' tier on the whole you have a better season where 3 episodes were good, 2 were inoffensive and 8 were bad. Although obviously at the cost of more of your time.
Discovery's main structural issue (all other terrible problems aside) has always been episode count. Half the appeal of Trek is knowing the characters and being interested in how that character responds to the situation (e.g how Genocide responds to the ship being compromised compared to Picard). When you only have 13 episodes you're trying to cram character building in with the plot and ultimately both suffer.
I know it's a meme but the bridge crew is a perfect example, in every other show they were the show, in discovery they unironically didn't have names (said in the show) till season three and I bet most people still don't know their names.
Tonight for me is a special day. I want to go outside of the house of the girl I like with a gasoline barrel and write her name on the road and set it on fire and tell her to get out too see it (is this illegal)?
Why you no like ENT?!?!?!
I should point out something about TOS that people continually forget. It had only two Main Cast actors: Shatner and Nimoy. Kelley was elevated to Main Cast in the second season. Most episodes will revolve around these three characters.
Everyone else is a recurring character to one degree or another. Scotty is probably the most developed. The rest had talking parts but how much were they really given to do? Not as much as they should've. Uhura, Sulu, Chekov and Chapel all did less than any main cast TNG crew. Pulaski got more development than all of them and she was only around for 1 season.
The overwhelming majority of all these characters had at least one or multiple episodes center around them and lived for the duration of their respective series.
Which frankly cannot be said about disco's cast, a fair number of them have either been killed off or written out of the show. Or, like Owo/Detmer etc get a line every now and then and that's it.
btw, you forgot Rhys, Bryce & Linus. Thought you knew the names?
Recurring characters are going to have less development than main cast characters. Even more so in shorter seasons. I really don't see why this is controversial.
Ensign Gates was TNG Helmsmen, has 47 appearances and never spoke a line that I can think of. The DSC recurring bridge members generally have had it better than poor Mayweather ever did.
Again. Character development! Not how many characters there were, how main they were, and whose names we can remember.
All right, gentleperchildren, let's review. The year is 2024 - that's two-zero-two-four, as in the 21st Century's perfect vision - and I am sorry to say the world has become a pussy-whipped, Brady Bunch version of itself, run by a bunch of still-masked clots ridden infertile senile sissies who want the Last Ukrainian to die so they can get on with the War on China, with some middle-eastern genocide on the side
I didn't watch TOS, so I don't know. Better to look at more successful series than TOS, anyway.
You are describing events that happened to characters, not character development. A lot has happened to Tilly - Tilly didn't develop, Culber came back from the dead - still the same Culber, still the same relationship with Stamets, Adira, and Gray - are new characters that had no development yet. Saru's species development was cool, but he is still the same Saru. Hell, even the She-Michael had no development, still the same person. Book? What about him? A new character, no development yet. Learning a character's history is not character development.
I didn't claim there's no character development. I said there's very little of it.
All right, gentleperchildren, let's review. The year is 2024 - that's two-zero-two-four, as in the 21st Century's perfect vision - and I am sorry to say the world has become a pussy-whipped, Brady Bunch version of itself, run by a bunch of still-masked clots ridden infertile senile sissies who want the Last Ukrainian to die so they can get on with the War on China, with some middle-eastern genocide on the side
I'm done. No point arguing with you.
Stop using TOS as an argument. You're comparing a show made 50 years ago with comparatively less than a quarter of the budget to the one made today. Audience expectations are different.
Gates wasn't part of the main cast and was simply a background character, a substitute for when one of the mains wasn't on the bridge for whatever reason.
Detmer & Owo are given screen time despite basically serving the same purpose. Detmer suddenly being an elite pilot capable of flying an alien ship a millennia more advanced (nevermind dealing with an unresolved case of PTSD) then Discovery and taking on Osyrah's flagship, like.. where did that come from?
And yet she still had a lot of screen time. How do we know she deserves to be there? Taking the helm of the Federation's most important ships! She wasn't taking the place of a main cast character. None of TNG's main cast was a Helmsmen. Sulu, Paris, Mayweather and Detmer all have the specific duty of Helmsman. No equivalent cast member did the same on TNG.
So fucking what? They're still bit characters played by fresh actors. Hell DSC taking a bit of time to flesh out the no-name crew we always see in the background is actually a plus.
You don't pay attention do you? It was all stated before hand. How the controls work, the inside information they had, the direction of someone else and last but certainly not least, Starfleet Fucking Academy.
Very often the people who wield the "Character Development Cudgel" aren't interested in character development, they just want something to bash things they don't like. Picard really didn't have that much development but he was still a great character.
Unfortunately that is the problem with DSC. It started off as an action-adventure in space show and is still sometimes exactly that. I still expect certain things like exploring the shit out of stuff and diplomating the shit out of stuff and general weirdness. The occasional poisoned crossbow shooting or doublehand hammer fisting is fine.
What? What you said can make sense only under these conditions:
1. I watched TOS
2. There are only TOS and DSC
So lets for the sake of argument assume that TOS is as bad as DSC when it comes to character development (I don't know since I haven't watched it). Does it help your case in support of DSC? Nope.
So either up your game or get out of it.
Should it have? Is it either no character development or every episode should develop characters? I don't play a false dichotomy game.
What?
Worf (over two series even), LaForge, "Broccoli", Picard, Wesly (Yes, that, Wesly), O'Brien, Q, Quark, Rom, even Morn, I can go on.
And that's excluding Enterprise.
Demonstrate.
I said it's not character development - not that it doesn't help.
Picard's past was not the development in that episode, it was just a background. His past caused him a problem in the present. His acceptance of the past to resolve the problem - that's development. It's actually one of the episodes in which Picard developed his character, for reals. Q gave him a chance to RELIVE his past and do things differently and so he did and didn't like it - he realizes a very important lesson.
That's the beauty of real character development IT DOESN'T FUCKING NEED TO BE REFERENCED. Like "remember how I did that?" That's not character development. History in and of itself is not character development. Remembering history and referencing it - is a quality EVERY person has, from day 0.
I felt Picard's dilemma and I saw how he resolved it - he CHANGED right in that episode - that affects his character in ALL consecutive episodes - with NO referencing requirements. "Hey remember how I got broken artificial heart and that surgery and had this vision or maybe it WAS Q?" <- that's not character development.
All right, gentleperchildren, let's review. The year is 2024 - that's two-zero-two-four, as in the 21st Century's perfect vision - and I am sorry to say the world has become a pussy-whipped, Brady Bunch version of itself, run by a bunch of still-masked clots ridden infertile senile sissies who want the Last Ukrainian to die so they can get on with the War on China, with some middle-eastern genocide on the side
What kind of audience are you talking about? Star Trek is supposed to be about how to solve difficult moral dilemmas without compromising on your ethics. In a show that can have real interracial diversity, the writers instead choose to focus on 1000000 shades of human.
Characters like Adira, Burnham, Tilly and Stamets belong in a teenage drama like Skins, not a show about adults. When was the last time we've had a Ferengi, a Cardassian, an Orion or a Bajoran as a main character? Lower Decks not included, which is an excellent show and not at all like Discovery.
I've only seen good episodes of TOS and beginning of TNG but the TOS feeling of friendship really shined for me. In the beginning it was all Kirk. Then Spock started growing and Kirk began listening to him more and they became better friends. As time went Bones started getting closer to them and arguing with Spock more. Kirks role changed from sole hero to listening and handling them. He was still leader but wasn't alone. They looked like good friends by end. It was the dynamics from real life going into the show.
In TNG that girl died and Data missed her during the court case but still didn't feel like anything changed. Relationships were same as before, Picard felt like he was alone at the top.
No idea about Discovery so kind of off topic.