Star Trek Social Club

It's not awful. In fact it has a lot of great high points. On balance, I would say that if you compared it objectively to the first 65 episodes of TNG, it would compare rather favorably.

I very much enjoyed the start but steadily lost interest.

There's some good stuff in Discovery all the way through, don't get me wrong. But they kind of flipped the script in a way I did not appreciate.

Most of classic Trek showed us a future with a largely functional society, mostly full of good people who were ready and willing to deal with occasional corruption.

Lots of newer Trek, and especially Discovery, showed us a future where society is largely dysfunctional and corruption is the norm. Almost everyone in the series who isn't a main character (plus a couple who are) is a piece of shit. Even the "good guys" frequently encourage or at least tolerate clearly evil behavior as long as it serves their ends. But it's okay because...friendship I guess?!?

Their heart is in the right place but the writing is generally bad. I think this generation of writers is incapable of imagining a better world, which, sure, is understandable, given how thoroughly corrupt our current society is. But it's deeply depressing. It lacks soul.

SNW is better in this regard. But you'll probably want to watch season 1 of Discovery first since there's some crossover.

It's fine.

And those that disagree should be forced to watch Star Trek: Section 31 until they can have a reasonable conversation like an adult.

It wasn't my cup of tea.

My favorite new Trek remains Lower Decks.

I've been doing a complete rewatch of Deep Space 9, and it really underscored why I didn't enjoy Discovery and Picard. My favourite parts of DS9 are the character driven moments, whether they're big and dramatic, or lightweight and silly. I like that the show has enough space for that. The show has more Plot than previous Star Trek, but that Plot still serves the characters. Discovery is not nearly as bad as Picard on this front, but I still found myself wishing for more opportunity to get to know the characters.

There is an entire season about warp drive not working anywhere in the universe. It turns out that it stopped working because an alien got really sad. Not because he did anything because he was sad, just because he got sad. Ohh, and somehow the Vulcans, with all their logic, never thought of tracking down the cause by triangulation.

That was the end of the series for me.

I watched all of Discovery. It is, by far, the worst of all Star Treks. (Disclosure: I have not seen TAS.)

The reason is simple: Discovery is really the Michael Burnham show. She is the Mariest Sue who ever Mary Sued. Discovery could have been a really great show if it had been an ensemble show because it has a lot of very interesting characters whom we never explore.

Instead, everything centres around Burnham. She is the reason for the war at the start of the show. She is the magical, fated solution. She is Spock's (adopted) sister and had immeasurable impact on his life. Even through timey-wimey things, her (biological) mother comes to save her and the universe.

And on top of all that is the crying. Oh, gosh, everything is so emotional on this show. There is a time and place for emotions, but Discovery was too much of it, including inappropriate times. Burnham and her maybe-broken-up-boyfriend stop in the middle of an infiltration in a hostile station to talk about their relationship.

Even the really great characters, Saru and (Emperor Georgiou) centre around Burnham. She is like a sister to Saru, she saved his life, he gives up being a Captain to continue serving under her captaincy. Burnham is Georgiou's daughter (not actually), and Georgiou's love for her (as much as she can love) changes her.

No one has a story unless its actually about Burnham. Or they get a story and then get killed off.

The best thing about Discovery is it brought Trek back on TV and it gave us the rest of this era of shows.

I have an intense distaste for Discovery, and wouldn't recommend it.

I could rant about it a la Angela Collier for 4 hours but here's my main issues boiled down to a bulleted list:

Some things I like about Star Trek:

• Optimistic future, humans can create greatness and beauty if they continue to check and overcome their faults
• No black and white villains. All antagonists are given nuance and development and many become favored allies
• Themes of teamwork, a functional ensemble, core crew are all valid and valued, no one star of the show.
• No such thing as magic or gods, everything is in the realm of human understanding if we have sufficient knowledge

Guess what Disovery has?

• Nihilistic, apocalyptic future
• Bad guys that are just bad, they're evil, don't ask questions
• One principal star of the show that is the focus of nearly every episode
• No attempt to explain things with any veneer of science

Then add on some blatant examples of total ignorance for the universe it's set in, attempts at ham handed fan service by shoe horning in clumsy references to characters from other series, you have a show that is farther from Star Trek than a 14 year old's submission on IO9. When it actually let the supporting cast do things, they were charming and likable, but Stamets, Saru and Tilly weren't enough to keep me from getting mad at just about every episode.

If you don't really care about or know anything about Star Trek it can be entertaining I guess, but why watch it when there's Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks and The Orville?

Discovery was so bad I had to stop after season 2 and have written off everything that they've set in the 31st century

The main problem with discovery is they set it basically in the tos timeline which created all these weird plot things that had to be resolved with weirder plot things. I firmly believe if they had set it a decent amount post voyager that it would have made it much better. I don't want to spoil but I felt season 2 fit better but having such weird start really messed it up for me.

The central character of the show is the least interesting person on it somehow despite having what could have been a good back story.

Everyone else seems to be some sort of real person to me. She is just so boring and flat and everything revolves around her for no real reason. Her purpose seems to be to be the fence post that stands there and eventually cries.

The best thing about the show was it gave us Anson Mount as Pike and he is outstanding. He was so good as Pike we got SNW as a spinoff.

I'll be honest, I can't remember all my particular criticisms, but here's my impressions that I have left:

It'd be more accurately titled Star Trek: Burnham, because 95% of the time, every problem or mystery is somehow related to Burnham, everyone else is just supporting cast.

Like Picard, each season felt very disconnected from the others, there's some continuity, but you could almost name the season based on the feel of an episode.

Plots more often than not felt underwhelming, as they were solved by essentially deus ex machina, mcguffins, surprise reveals or abrupt character changes.

It was largely visually ok, actors all did at least a decent job.

I have 0 desire to ever rewatch a single episode.

Naw it’s a journey. I accepted discovery like I did voyager. Once I saw what it was in it own, much better. Second watch got better, just like voyager.

Discovery is fine. It takes some weird turns, sort of a necessity since they chose to make it a prequel with a unique propulsion system. And it is not like the 90s shows. And there's a vocal group of fans that hate it just because it's different, it was the first show coming back from the long show hiatus, and many are simply incapable of admitting that.

Picard's seasons are all weird in their own way and with their own flaws, totally separate from Disco.

Watch the first season and make your own decision. Star Trek fans are some of the worst for having outsized online hatred of shit that doesn't matter.

I couldn't make it through the first season and tried picking up season 2 to see if it improved any. Didn't watch anything past that.

It was written by people who didn't have a good grasp on what star trek was, or thought they could remake it better for a new generation. But they ended up making something that just leaves a sour taste in your mouth if you know what that setting is capable of being.

To me, STD and the first season or so of Picard feel exactly like when a video game you thoroughly enjoy gets adapted into movie. There's recognizable elements there, but nobody is acting the way they should and everything has that uncanny valley affect where you know what it's supposed to be but it's clearly failing to do it convincingly. It's hard to point to what is actually wrong but you know several elements are off.

Discovery's characters are somehow simultaneously boring yet also obnoxious jackasses. The writers of the show apparently thought Star Trek would be more interesting if everyone in the future had, instead of professionalism and humanism, histrionic personality disorder and chronic hemorrhoids.

@cuchi it is bad...

My honest opinion is that Discovery is nowhere near as bad as its detractors say.

That said, I also wouldn’t call it good Star Trek and didn’t finish the final season.

It’s boring, not bad.

Don't listen to the critics on the internet. If you're not dying soon, watch it all. It's Trek. It's roughly 60% great, 30% mediocre to aged poorly, and 10% let's never talk about it again.

I would go in rough order of release because they do like harkening back to stuff. Actually rewatching TOS will be good for SNW. And Disco S2 is its backdoor pilot.

It's always worth remembering that the people who dislike something tend to be the loudest.

There's no doubt reactions to Discovery have been mixed. Personally, I enjoyed it. It was uneven and flawed and sometimes frustrating. But there were enough good moments to keep me going. I don't think anyone can tell you if you'll enjoy it... You just have to try it and see.