Analysis of Star Trek Discovery Series as a whole

I will echo many of your thoughts. Ive not watched Series 5 yet. Actually, I dont think I finished 4 yet.

Rewatching ENT recently the first season was very ropey, it kind of found itself around season 4 though.

The first interaction Michael has with Tilly, she says her name is Michael,

Tilly: "Oh the only woman Ive heard of called Michael is the mutineer, you're not her are you heeheehee!.

Michael:<Signature Penetrating Stare>

Tilly: Oh **** you are.

Here in the 21st century, females called Michael is not unheard of. I know at least one. So, in the 25th century you are trying to tell me that it is soo unusual that the only female called Michael would be famous for disobeying an order in Starfleet. Give me a break!

Trying to be edgy was DISCs downfall.

One episode I do enjoy rewatching is the time-loop episode with Mr Mudd. It's a one off episode, not really part of the general story Arc.

Redesigning how Klingons look was a mistake in my opinion.

Retconning Michael as Spocks never-before-heard-of sister was all manner of strange.

I really liked Tilly. I liked her as a character, and could see her go on to do good stuff. But then..

Then they move the show to 1000 years in the future.

I was a big fan of the first season of SeaQuest DSV. It did what they did with DISC, make it more woke, back before woke was a word, and when they couldn't think of doing anything else, popped it into a future environment where the norms no longer apply.

Roy Scheider is quoted as saying "You're turning it into SciFi trash".

Thats what happened with DISC.

I think if you include LD as a Trek series then it comes out bottom for me, but there's an argument to say that it's aiming for a different audience so maybe it's harsh to judge it that way.

DIS is definitely bottom of the pile for the real series' though. So much wrong, most of which has been gone over a million times. As above poster, I'm definitely pretending it never happened, even though it kind of 'gave birth' to SNW which would be on it's way towards the top-ish of the table.

Is Discovery the worst Star Trek Series?

Yes. And I think you're right too that it got worse each year. 1 > 2> 3 > 4 > 5.

What was the best season of Discovery?

First one. (Faint praise).

What Went Wrong?

Well, everything really.

Maybe most of all, the constant lack of confidence in their own decisions. Every season just felt like another attempt to address the feedback from the fans. Klingons back to normal and out of the picture. The captain should be the star of the show (or the star of the show should be the captain). Switching from a prequel to the far future. It's not that I particularly liked those things the way they were, but I didn't like an old bald captain or a Star Trek show on a space station either.

But Disco never gave itself a chance. From about mid-way through the first season, it started to feel like they were designing a product to the whims of the audience, still poorly mind you, rather than having any sense of vision or (dare I even say it) artistic integrity.

The writing was bad but I suspect the real blame lies with the show-runners or higher up the production chain. The 10 - 13 part blockbuster-movie style of Television doesn't suit Star Trek, and I think evidently it doesn't suit the types of stories Star Trek writers want to tell. What little glimmers of interest there were in the series had to fight against this unnecessary momentum of everything needing to so immediately important and immensely exciting. It's a bad fit, and I think did more damage than the focus on a single character, or anything else really. You can excuse a lot of silly Star Trek stories when they're not amped up into a universe shattering most exciting ever event.

Is it really over?

Hope so. That ending in season 5, showing a future Burnham, was a strange choice if they ever plan to show her again in a contemporary (or whatever) setting. But I guess for these writers "a strange choice" doesn't rule anything out.

Looks like we're going to be getting that Academy show anyway, so despite my hopes I doubt it will be the last we see of 32nd Century Trek.

I performed a detailed series review, summary is below.

I thought Season Two and Three were an improvement on the first. I really expected big things from the show once they were no longer constrained by 60 years of cannon. But alas no.

I think my biggest issue with the show is MB. She is just a Mary Sue, in a way she is like Spock. But where as Spock was a joint lead on TOS and in the movies. Whos legacy sort of perminates all the following Trek. Burnham is like the main charecter in the universe. No problem she cannot solve. No ship at warp she cannot hold on to. The only thing that can stop or slow her down is feelings.

Making her Spocks sibling was an awful idea. Up there with the Klingons being over designed. I still maintain the worst thing in the entire show was Spock explaining that the Federation could just never talk about Discovery. That any one who did would be executed.

I appreciate how shows are written and acting styles change over time. But I never felt that the crew of Disco were serious professional.

I never liked Tilly, I found her a bit to frivilous. I find Mary Wiseman pretty obnoxious. But she didn't deserve the fat shaming. Tilly setting ship half marathon records did not help.

I did like the Stamets Culver extended family. It didn't feel forced and should have been explored a little more in the show. But with better actors for the kids.

The spore drive. That was just a dumb idea. Same with Section 31. Everyone seems to know who they are.

It is very frustrating to look at the show and think about what could have been done and how much better it could have been.

I agree totally with all the criticisms above, every single one. It's unwatchable. I tried very hard to get into it multiple times. I wish I hadn't wasted so much time trying.

Loads of tremedious agruments and insights, which I don’t think I can improve in any way.

Is Discovery the worst Trek show? Yes. But for me, it was never due to any kind of silly «woke» agenda argument, nor even the writing actually. Don’t get me wrong, it was also the worst written Trek show, but Discovery comitted one sin from it’s inseption that pretty much insured that it would never compare well to other Trek shows made before or since.

All other Trek projects have one simple thing going for them, that Discovery didn’t have. A settled show concept.

-TOS & TNG are essentially the same show. Exploration / adventure space opera on a starship.

• DS9 is a space western on a far-flung near-lawless outpost.
• Voyager is pretty much Gilligans Island with a Neelix
• Enterprise attempted to redo TOS / TNG with a prequel twist.

But Discovery? They didn’t seem to know their core concept. The entire early development was in flux and went from antology series to a war biopic to a cobbled clone of TOS (with TOS Characters) to yet another cobbled clone of Voyager to whatever the hell Seasons 4 & 5 were supposed to be. Add that to a design language where they clearly couldn’t decide if the show was in the Kelvin universe or not.

Instead of sticking to a concept they flapped about in the wind and reacted to fan feedback. They ultimatly settled on on single unifying concept; that their main character would be the be-all and end-all to everything they did. It was a maddening move and even if Martin-Green had the acting chops to carry such a role (she doesn’t) the writers hadn’t the skill to make it work.

But what is the legacy? This show is Trek’s marmite, it will have lovers & haters. Will age help improve our outlook of it, like with Voyager & Enterprise? Maybe…but I very much doubt it, especially if better Trek is made after this.
Some people might credit this show for bringing Trek back to TV. I might counter, that if they hadn’t spun off to make Lower Decks, Picard or SNW, then Discovery could have permanently killed off Trek on TV. The other shows are what kept good will in the franchise going. They are what may keep Trek on TV, while Discovery deserves criticism for not wrapping up on Season 3 when they had clearly run out of ideas.

Will there be a Trek show that could rival Discovery for the title of “worst”? I honestly hope not. I hope at very least that Discovery can be used as an example of what not to do when making Trek.

I could list a large number of problems, both within the show itself and outside the show in some of the discussions surrounding it. Though it gave us SNW which really did convince me that there could still be decent Trek, and then LD and the final season of Picard were pretty good. I honestly thought it could kill the franchise, or perhaps more likely my interest in the franchise, stone dead.

• The spore drive. Yeah, it was kind of interesting briefly to see a new experimental drive, got some good episodes of TNG and Voyager with that concept. But I think it has the same problem I have with the new instant transportation, everything is immediate and you miss the slower down time and reflection of characters walking corridors, or the tension of the ship taking hours to get somewhere.
• Michael Burnham. I think the show thinks that we should look back at all the troubles Michael has gone through and she has reached great success through redemption. But I don't recall it that way at all. She was redeemed far too quickly, promoted from prisoner to Captain despite being surrounded by far better officers and far more experienced officers who for some reason defer to her, and most of her troubles all come from,as far back as the pilot, her own incredibly poor decisions.
• The design and look of the ship. Only topped by the design and look of all the 32nd century ships, which are simply shocking. Awful things and that is unforgiveable for a Star Trek show. The design in general, but I hate that stupid com badge tricorder thing. Don't like those holographic displays, which also look far more difficult to work with than a handhold device. And those bloody pips were impossible to see at times.
• The pretty poor development of the bridge crew and secondary cast.
• The lack of universe building. It felt small, too small, and I think that may in part relate to the spore drive. Despite hopping all over the galaxy, it just always felt that it was taking place in a very small space, DS9 felt more expansive, despite being mostly confined to a space station.
• The writing. It was unbelievably cack handed in places. Show, don't tell. It also seemed like the writers had a pretty poor awareness of the general Trek universe, or storylines.
• I was not aware of SMG before this show, and I'm sure she's a pleasant woman and decent actor. But I could not stand her in this, especially towards the end. The whispering, good god. A lot of this goes to the writing in general, and the character, but since this show was solely focused on Burnham that's an awful lot for one actor to carry. I probably wouldn't have noticed as much if some of the other cast had more of their own screen time, but they didn't, and even when they did it somehow revolved around Burnham.
• Even at the worst of Picard I did watch the shows as soon as I could, and paid attention. I was completely zoned out of this and not massively bothered. While it had been poor beforehand, by the time we got to the burn ending I stopped giving a s**t about what was going on. The main plotlines were obviously stupid, and there was bugger all B storylines that were anyways interesting.

Very poor and don't see myself going back to it. I rewatched season 1 just before the start of season 2 to catch myself up, it was not fantastic, but grand. Don't think I've given any episode a second watch since then.

Sorry. But tbf it is probably the last time you will see them. Their work on Disco was not a great showcase.

Season one was a bit of a mess with creatives. Bryan Singer is on boards, develops it then quits. Show goes into turnaround. Some of his ideas are kept some are jettisoned. Singer has a history of creative differences with people. So I suppose it is not that suprising.

I just found Tilly profundly annoying. Maybe it might have been endearing with a younger actress.

I tried finding the answer online, but what do the fans of the series enjoy about it?

I would suggest maybe that a good chunk of Discovery fans had not seen previous Trek before and perhaps even enjoy the producion style used in that show as a rule.

Many of the rest of us are sullied with the knowledge of how much better a Trek show can be, and if you are of a certain age (aka, like myself and likely others here) then you experienced that better Trek in real time during the 80’s & 90’s. We know what it’s like to experience the best of TNG & DS9 as new episodes and we have a way to compare that experience with the experience of watching new Discovery episodes.

New Trekkies watching Discovery from scratch won’t have that comparison and might be inclined to think that what they are watching is good.

Personally me and my friends and workmates don't spend every day crying and pouring out emotions.

You don't? But how do you function as a team if you don't know every detail about their lives and have that positive reinforcement? I hope you at least look at each other in awe and smile when someone does say something.

Twilight / Hunger Games generation for sure. But that brings to mind an interesting contrast.

Twilight was a crass surface-level attempt at a vampire romance adventure built on spectacle and announcements of high emotion (without the character development to support it). The writing is retched, but it still had fans, which is also where I guess we find Discovery. Discovery and Twilight do seem to have plenty in common.

However, the othet example The Hunger Games, also made for the same demographic and roughly in the same era, is considerably better done. World building is excellent, as is the cast and much of the writing. There is also plenty wrong with it, and pulling a 2-parter finale deserves scorn (it delights me how the Divergent series crashed out trying that same trick), but as a piece of entertainment, it was pretty good.

Here we have 2 properties marketed to the same group. One is devoid of quality, while in the other they clearly gave it their best shot. In my head this means that the likes of Discovery is not the best we can hope for in new Trek. Regardless of generation targeted , quality is possible if there is a desire to reach for it.

(PS. The Hunger Games prequel is unfortunately absolute tripe. Avoid)

There's the thing. The Hunger Games didn't nessisarily need a love-triange, but one was written in to drive the actions of 3 of the main characters. I felt that they did it well, since it was used as a trigger to drive the characters various actions thoughout the series, to the point of President Snow weaponising it against Katniss in the last films. This is a very good example of character-driven writing.

It's part of why some of the best Trek episodes handle extraordinary situations, but are driven by character beats.

• The Best of Both Worlds is mostly about Riker trying to find his way in life. His behaviour is very much driven by his inner struggle to move forward in life.
• Yesterday's Enterprise is mostly about Tasha Yar coming to terms with what happened to her in the prime reality and her new romance with the Ent C fella.
• The Visitor is driven by Jake Sisko being stuck in the denial phase of grief for his entire life while trying to rescue his dad.
• Year of Hell is about how Janeway & Anorax respectivly deal with loss.

There are other examples, but this is what I feel is a hallmark of good writing. This is also what is missing from Discovery. Micheal becomes captain material, not due to any amount of personal growth, but because that is what was written to happen with her. None of it is character driven, and smacks of poorly fleshed out wish fulfillment. Little else.

I'm grateful to Discovery for kick starting another era of Trek series on tv but I doubt it's a show I'll ever go back for a rewatch. That's mainly down to its heavily serialised format which means there's usually no point in watching an episode or two - it's a full season or nothing. That serialised format also gave rise to one of its biggest flaws which was that the seasons were usually badly paced. The escalating threats of each season got very predictable and sapped my interest over time.

I think the writers boxed themselves into a corner by making it a prequel series. I wonder if it had stayed as its original concept of an anthology series that Burnham's story would only have been a single season. I would have much preferred the anthology format so that we could have seen a variety of stories from throughout Trek's history.

Leaving aside TOS as it was so utterly before my time, it's the only Star Trek show to date that I gave up on.

I missed chunks of both Voyager and DS9 as they were aired while I was in my college years and wasn't home much but I watched loads of episodes of each as I caught them on repeats on Sky etc and went back to complete both when on-demand viewing became a thing. The same will never be true of Discovery. I cheered when I heard it was canned.

There were inklings of interesting concepts/ideas in the 3 seasons of the show I watched: the Klingon war could have been great until they didn't bother showing us much of it, Saru was a fantastic character concept who was woefully underused and under-explored, same with Airiam - we finally got an episode on her and they killed her off, Lorca was a great captain until they mirror unversed him for the sake of a "big twist" for the season, Tilly could have had an interesting arc as the over-weight cadet struggling against the fitness requirements of her job and a lack of self-confidence until they decided she had to become a make-a-wish fulfilment character insert for the die hard fans on Twitter who couldn't acknowledge that the show's writers were useless.

Burnham was the main problem though: an unlikeable Mary Sue who was continuously rewarded for being "the chosen one" in a universe where the Federation is supposed to represent the virtues of meritocracy 🙄

Sadly the had to kill Ariam because the actor was seriously allergic to the prosthetics.

They gave her a new part with Nillson who was the tall blonde lt. commander on the bridge.

I think there are different contractual agreements about the Movies (Which I think CBS owns) and the Series.

I watched a video on this issue before, let me see if I can find it.