I almost stopped.I'm trying to limit my contributions to this thread to things that don't tear "Discovery" a new one, as I don't like it and am no longer watching it
Given the budget given to the show it wouldn't have been impossible. It wouldn't look as good (i.e. movie quality like the current series, but it would have been decent.I would have loved to see his version of the show. But I can see how that structure would have raised the show's cost from "a big gamble" to "inarguably prohibitive". Each season being a commentary and expansion of a different era of Trek, complete with its one theme/set of themes could have been fantastic.
Nostalgia.Another persistent problem with the Discovery we actually got is it has no answer to the question: why is it a prequel to TOS? Absent the original plan for the series, there really isn't one.
It's surprising, but they're very rarely good surprises. Most often they're surprises in a “WTF are they thinking?” vein. Like saving the emperor.That's what keeps me interested. Despite the missteps and bad plotting/writing, I am legitimately surprised by something pretty much every episode. I didn't expect from a Trek show. Case in point, I was somewhat disappointed by the final episode in the Mirror Universe, but I didn't see Burnham saving/kidnapping Empress Georgiou coming - prolly should have, but didn't.
Yeah, the anthology format would have made casting much harder. Plus, there would have been pressure to keep any fan-favorite/breakout characters for more than one season.But having to continually recast and lose the character momentum would be tricky.
I'd say in 2018, more people are nostalgic for TNG-era Trek (cf. The Orville). I say this as someone who grew up w/TOS. I still believe the driving factor was Fuller's desire to tell a story about a battle for the Federation's soul prior to the Age of Kirk. Which helped lay the foundation for not only TOS-era Trek, but for the more-utopic and unitard-forward TNG period.Nostalgia.
I think they assumption was that the Kirk era was the most well known and most popular era of Trek. It allowed them to namedrop familiar characters, like Sarek and Spock. And, presumably, required the least audience familiarity.
(Although, honestly, I think TNG and that era is arguably just as popular and well known.)
I don't think they're stepping on established lore too badly, but honestly I'd be fine with it if they were. I'm not looking for the creative team to "honor Star Trek". I want them to use whatever bits of the canon they find interesting and make something new. And hopefully good. But if making good art were easy everyone would do it.Instead of Klingons it could have featured the gorn or tholians and still had a classic enemy feel without stepping on established lore.
I loved that. It was so stupid. And human. If you're going to indulge in the more operatic aspects of space opera, you could do worse than have a protagonist kidnap-save their evil doppleganger mother figure from a parallel universe.Most often they're surprises in a “WTF are they thinking?” vein. Like saving the emperor.
Well, I think Discovery is better written than something spit out by a neural network or a Markov Chain generator or some such. I'll stand by an earlier assessment; unevenness aside, it's the strongest first season of a Star Trek series since the 1966-67 television season.There's predictive text TNG scripts out there, and I never have any idea where they're going either.
This is one of the ways -- intentionally or not, though I'm pretty sure it is, mostly -- Star Trek (including but not limited to Discovery) winds up being realistic.
There is a large gap between the stated Klingon identity and their actions. In other words, like every other group, their cultural/historical narrative is at least partially a lie they tell themselves (and others). Frequently disproven by the actual historical record.
TNG makes this pretty clear. A lot of what we hear about Klingons comes from Worf, the guy raised by human parents in the Federation. An idealized, at best second-hand version of who they are. Contrast that with the machinations surrounding the Klingon succession, the Duras sisters, the Khitomer cover-up, etc. The audience sees the Klingon relationship to honor is... complicated.
That just means they should avoid heavy use of canon.I'd argue that because of that, adherence to canon that very, very few of the audience is even aware of (how many Japanese viewers do you think watched TOS?), they can get away with being a lot more fast and loose with earlier canon. The newer viewers don't really have any connection to that old canon. So, for them, THIS is what Klingons look like (and trying to present Klingons in blackface is pretty much going to insult the hell out of a lot of potential audience).
Star Trek Beyond was also funded by the Chinese megacorp Alibaba, via their film division Alibada Pictures. They likely advertised more locally to get a better return on their investment.People tend to forget that Star Trek Beyond did the best of any Star Trek movie in China. It actually did very, very well. For those viewers, Kirk is Chris Pine and Star Trek has lots of action and explosions. To then turn around and in the premier season of the new Trek show go back to "endless meetings in board rooms" style TNG Trek would be the fastest way to lose that potential audience.