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Star Trek: Lower Decks to Conclude with Fifth and Final Season
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this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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Star Trek
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/c/StarTrek: Your safe harbored Spacedock in these Stellar Seas!
Fire up the inertial dampeners, retract all moorings and clear space dock. It's time to boldy go where no one has gone before!
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I'm trying to politely explain that I understand what you're saying, but that I think that it is a false dilemma.
I don't know if you watch Doctor Who, but it is notorious for not being consistent with it's own established canon. One could say the established canon is that there is no established canon. This isn't too unrelated, because Trek does a bit of it too. Some implications in certain episodes are left just ignored even though they'd actually have massive implications. Transporter incidents, holodeck mishaps, instant across the universe speeds, all that jazz. They need them for an episode, but weirdly the whole Trek world isn't changed by the implications of something. Also unimaginably weird and universe upsetting things are pretty normal in Trek.
So why would it be that weird for the Lower Deckers to just be themselves for X seasons? Progress as needed, or don't. You seem to think your opinions mean that somehow it would be so weird none would watch it. Not true. In the slightest.
So, cannon and serialization aren't the same thing. Cannon is the general mythos of the show, while serialization is the method of storytelling. Specifically, it's having a story unfold over many episodes, a season, or even several seasons. Dr. Who treats its cannon very lightly, but the show is fairly serialized, with small hints being dropped throughout the season on larger plot lines, even in stand-alone episodes (the Pandorica, the Silence, Bad Wolf, etc.). It also has large changes that last from season to season, regeneration being the most obvious.
Compare that to TOS, where everything is a stand-alone story and all the characters return to their status quo positions at the start of the next episode. Pretty much nothing carries over from week to week (except Harry Mudd, I guess). You could watch every single episode of TOS out of order and it would make perfect sense (aside from the two-parters, obviously). If you watched every episode of Doctor Who out of order, you'd wonder why the companions keep swapping, why David Tennant keeps getting replaced with Peter Capaldi, and God help you if you're trying to follow any of Moffat's later episodes.
Lower Decks is pretty serialized, with things like the Texas class ships and the Pakleds developing over the course of or in between seasons (the Locarno storyline is probably most involved of these). But, aside from story, there is a lot of character development that goes on over the series. Mariner has a completely different relationship with her mother, Ransom, and the Federation now than in season 1. Boimler is more self-assured and less obsessed with rules and rank. D'Vana is more open about her Orion upbringing and even changed career tracks. There's a lot of growth and change compared to the characters in TOS.
So, I'm saying that if they keep going for too long, they'll either have to promote these characters out of the lower decks or it will be weird that they're still stuck at menial ranks. You seem to be saying they should just place the characters in a state of arrested development and only have them, "go be themselves," in wacky adventure-of-the-week stories. I think that would be a very weird direction for the show to take after giving them 4 years of character growth, and I'm willing to bet most fans would feel the same. If you don't, fine, then we just have to agree to disagree.
I'm sorry but I have a hard time respecting anyone trying to correct me about what canon is when they can't spell the word.
Yes, I know what you're saying, and I'm telling you why I disagree with it. I'm also amazed that you don't understand that saying "I'm willing to bet most fans would" is also completely subjective. It's literally the same thing racists use to base their incredibly narrow views; the idea that because they think something, other people do as well. Now let me be clear, I am most certainly not implying you've said or done anything racist, ever. I'm just talking about a general cognitive lack of empathy.
You're just spewing your personal opinions, without any reasoning for them. I don't see a point in continuing the conversation.
Yeah, my phone autocorrected from canon to cannon. That doesn't change the fact that it is not the same as serialization.
If you want evidence that fundamentally changing Lower Decks from a serialized to adventure-of-the-week show would piss people off, I obviously can't prove that, but funny enough, a show you brought up did try something like this: South Park. They tried serialization for a few seasons, which ended with the disastrously bad, "member berries," storyline. The final episode of that season is actually called The End of Serialization as We Know it.
Anyway, maybe you're right; maybe people want to watch Boimler whine about the captain not noticing him for 10 seasons. I doubt it though. We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Either way, your comments are becoming increasingly weird and pedantic and I'm losing my patience for it, so I'm just gonna stop here before I say something I regret. Have a good one.