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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9013000" data-attributes="member: 18">I don't agree at all - so no, that's not other words for what I'm saying.There was nothing simple about the issues Discovery had. It was the opposite of "simply bad". It had complex issues that that sort of caused a resonant cascade failure or something (to use a bit of Treknobabble), where individually, most of the elements involved were fine or even good, but they didn't fit together well or work for audiences.This is distinct from ENT, which was much closer to "simply bad". Like S1 ENT, you have:A) A bunch of actors giving poor performances. I don't critique the actors for this - I've lived too long and watched too much TV and too many movies to believe that, when a whole bunch of actors give a bad performance, it's on the actors. It's on the showrunners in the case of something like this. Really the only actor who seemed to be able to rise above it was Billingsley. I'm not sure he could give a bad performance if he tried though (in his very specific character-actor range).It didn't help that some of the actors they cast were basically cast for not-great reasons which related more to delusional perceptions by the showrunners about how they'd "drawn in audiences" rather than because they were right for the role (indeed some of the already-shallow roles were changed because they got the actors). Certainly Trineer, Park and Montgomery - all of whom have since shown they can act well - fit into this category. I still remember an article where the showrunners were gloating about getting Trineer and how he'd pull in some soap opera audience. They thought Park and Montgomery would bring in "the kids".Bakula too, actually - the showrunners didn't even consider anyone else, despite Bakula not being that enthusiastic (having already had his career kind of screwed by being the lead in a successful genre show). They didn't write a compelling captain character and then look at who was the best person to play it. They realized they could maybe get Bakula, so Archer was basically just written for him, which lead to Archer being very generic. Because they had no vision.B) Cardboard cut-out characters with clunky motivations.None of the characters had particularly interesting or well-considered personalities/backstories even on paper. And their motivations and relationships? Dire stuff. Obvious stuff. Nothing clever or interesting or that made you go "Oh!". No other Trek show has ever had this issue (despite it being sadly common in genre shows). And this contributed to A, I'm sure, because these were just not fully thought-through characters. (There was almost an epidemic of this in genre shows in the early '00s - just a lot of writers/showrunners barely sketching out characters and assuming they'd be somehow grown into - and in most cases it didn't happen.)C) No idea what show it wanted to be, apart from "Another Star Trek show".This was a huge problem for ENT. It was Trek for the sake of Trek. TNG, DS9, even VOY, all had specific stories and ideas behind them. But ENT didn't. It had the disease prequels often have in any media, the disease which leads to people still groaning when they hear about a prequel. Which is that most prequels don't have a compelling story to tell of their own, they're just trying to emulate the show(s) that already exist and using the earlier time period as an excuse to do so.Disco for all its flaws definitely did not have that problem. If anything the opposite.D) Really uncompelling aesthetics.Every aspect of ENT's aesthetics was mediocre or sucked. As I've said before, I was basically able to predict every element of how ENT would look, two years before they said they were even doing the show. The colour and style of the uniforms, the visual design of the ship interiors, and so on. That's not a good thing that I was able to do that. I was able to do that because it was extremely obvious and lacked creativity. And just everything about the aesthetics did - and I mean aesthetics in the broadest sense - the music (not just the cliched and awful intro, but even the in-episode music), the style of dialogue (or lack thereof), the special effects, and so on. Even a lot of the forehead alien make-up designs was just profoundly uninspired (Shran being a rare exception).I could go on or talk about specifics like literally re-using un-filmed VOY episodes, but those were symptoms not causes. If ENT had really had any kind of vision at all, they wouldn't have been re-using VOY scripts/concepts - but it had none - it was Trek filler - it existed because they didn't have a better idea and needed a Trek show. But anyway that's what a "simply bad" Star Trek show looks like. It looks like ENT. I don't care if people liked ENT, or have nostalgia for it (it's been nearly 20 years). It was bad. Real bad.Eventually it improved, which people frankly unreasonably defend it for. Eventually the performances improved a bit - but not much - the characters got a bit better - but again not much, and almost all of them remained cardboard. It did, in like, late S3 and particularly S4, finally decide what it wanted to be, but that was way too late. People talk about Trek shows taking 2 seasons to find their feet - but even in S1 of TNG or DS9 or even VOY, the basic intent, the basic mission statement is there. It wasn't really in ENT.Trek for the sake of Trek.Disco's problems were much more complicated and bizarre, and I've discussed them before, but they were not a matter of being "simply bad" - they were interlocking and the result of a rather strong initial vision being desperately backpedalled on after the audience was, if not quite booing, then at least not responding in the way that had been hoped. And it was a drastic overcompensation, too turning a very dark take on Trek into basically a slightly weepy "fun adventure" series.TLDR - ENT was closer to "simply bad" - it was the result of a total lack of vision, and making a Trek show for the sake of making a Trek show, which impacted every level of the show.</blockquote>

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