Yup, and it was some of the worst drivel ever to hit the small screen. People remember the hay days of TNG, but, tend to forget that all the really memorable episodes happened AFTER Roddenberry no longer was involved.
Funny thing, Roddenberry was replaced as chief story editor halfway through season one. Remember how the show magically got better then? Oh wait, no, it continued to suck for another season and a half.
Oh, and Roddenberry was also replaced for season 3 of the Original Series. Y'know, the
worst season.
Weird... it's almost like he wasn't the sole reason TNG was bad...
Still, Roddenberry had a vision, which worked. He knew the setting and could write the series bible. Once good writers came on board they were able to build quality off his groundwork.
So far the creative minds behind
Discovery have not shown to me they have the best grasp of Star Trek lore, while also heavily relying on callbacks and references to TOS.
Meh, I liked Discovery. Excellent stories, cool characters, well laid out. Sure, there were some duds there, I get that. First season wobbles and all that. But, I'll stack season 1 of Discovery against Season 1 of TNG any day of the week.
"First season wobbles" is a B.S. excuse.
It's a free pass just handed to
Discovery to wave away and deflect any criticism, which I've never seen applied to any other TV show. It
only comes up because TNG was bad at first and got better, and DS9 got better, and that's apparently enough to make a rock solid pattern. Despite
Voyager never getting better,
The Animated Series never getting better, TOS getting worse, and
Enterprise getting much worse before finally getting better in its fourth season.
(Watching DS9 right now with my son. The pilot was excellent and the following two episodes were damned good. A very fine set-up for the series.)
Discovery was terrible.
The wholly unlikable main character's character arc pretty much took her in a giant circle so she ended the season pretty much where she started. It took her thirteen episodes to learn something she should have learned in the pilot, just so the audience could be showing something about Starfleet and the Federation that has pretty much been a given for every other series. It was like spending an entire season to explore "the Prime Directive" or questioning the desire to explore.
We spent the entire season being told Burnham had spent too much time with Vulcans and was too cold and logical, but she spent the entire season doing horribly irrational and emotional things which inevitably made things worse, and regularly imperilling other members of the crew.
The second most important character was set-up as an interesting, flawed captain that was traumatised by war and potentially given a redemption arc that mirrored that of Starfleet. But all that was jettisoned because instead he turned out to be cartoonishly Evil.
We get to see a Starfleet that happily torturing an innocent living creature to the bring of death to gain a temporary strategic benefit. And then partnering with a war criminal who is pretty much mega-Hitler in order to commit genocide. Crossing lines that wouldn't be acceptable in the current day, let alone in a utopian future.
Meanwhile, the entire series spends its time telling us what's happening rather than showing us. There's a conflict between Starfleet's mission to explore and the need to win the war! But we never see them forced to pass up an opportunity for science.
And Starfleet is losing the war! But we never really see that or get a sense of the losses. Then it's winning the war, but we only see a single victory. Then it's losing again the next episode. Oh, then they've lost for good... except suddenly the Klingons have agreed to stop fighting and somehow decide to just give back all their seized territory. For reasons.
And the whole thing is wrapped up in the worst pseudoscience imaginable that felt like the show's scientific advisor was a crystal healing guru.
"It's a spore drive. It's powered by literal fairy dust that despite being macroscopic and visible to the naked eye is really the basis of energy and the source of all life in the entire multiverse. Thankfully we have the giant space targigrade to help navigate the magical mushroom network that crosses space/time." Which I only wish was hyperbole.
Plus, the show was entirely reliant on shock and cheap plot twists to move it forward. No less than four sudden "shock" deaths. Two of which said shock deaths leading to the victim being eaten. And two heel turns as crew members reveal themselves to be evil all along. Paired with horror movie level gore in one episode, a couple
s in another, and Klingon nip in a third. Because, apparently, Star Trek has less censorship than this site.
All the while being shallow and empty, not even pretending to glance in the direction of allegory or examination of the modern world. There was no lessons on racism or the Vietnam war. No examination of the War on Terror or how paranoia can corrupt. Hell, even
Star Trek VI with its questioning of "what happens if the Berlin Wall falls... in space" and worries of peace had more depth.
There's plot thread introduced and forgotten regularly. Black badges! Then gone. What badges. And Vulcan terrorists. Then bye-bye.
But none of that matter because the moment the season ended the show tripped over itself hitting the big red "reset" button that ensured that nothing that happened in the series mattered at all. And then it ran headlong towards cheap, blatant nostalgia by forcing the Enterprise into the series.
And despite all that, the craziest thing in the show was Sarek suddenly having inexplicable ninja moves so he could kung-fu battle Burnham in his mind.
The best thing they ever did with Star Trek was eject the Roddenberryism that there could never be any conflict between the main characters.
Yes, because the lack of conflict between main characters was terrible in Next Generation...
It wasn't that there wasn't to be any conflict at all. It was that the characters would resolve their problems by talking to each other like adults. That they would not descend into childish bickering and cheap grudges for the sake of lazy drama.
And
Discovery showed exactly why that was a good idea with cheap conflict and forced tension as characters sniped at each other for no real reason. It was like watching character interactions written by student screenwriters in a remedial film school class. It felt like the standard secret based forced drama I expect from bad CW teen dramas.
Another fun rule Roddenberry had was avoiding too many references to TOS. There was Bones in the pilot and the plague in the second episode (
The Naked Now) but after that he tried hard to not reference the original series and Enterprise. Because he wanted to move forward and not just look backward. He even pushed to avoid having too many familiar aliens show up, leading to Bolians being used in place of Andorians.
Meanwhile
Discovery had Harry Mudd, the Mirror Universe, a Klingon disguised as a human, a tribble on Lorca's desk, a Gorn skeleton in Lorca's weapon room, Sarek, references to Spock, the
Enterprise , "the needs of the many...", etc. It was a freakin' "greatest hits" of
Star Trek elements. But, given that it was created by the guy who wrote
Into Darkness and basically retold
Wrath of Khan, this wholesale lack of original thought shouldn't be a surprise...
