Despite Star Trek: Discovery’s critical success, it was far from a fan-favorite. Though all four seasons boast an average 85 percent critical score, the audience score is at a dismal 37 percent. Since audience scores are more strongly correlated to overall viewership, Discovery simply wasn’t pulling the numbers to make it a financially viable intellectual property.
The show sucked on many levels. Will not be missed.
This.
The disconnect between the critical rating and the audience rating just reinforces for me that critics are out of touch and can’t be trusted.
I don’t think the ‘audience’ ratings can be fully trusted though. Any new film or TV show these days with prominent women, minority or LGBTQ characters (Discovery has all) gets routinely review-bombed by alt-right participants who likely haven’t even watched it - that’s just a fact of these ratings. My anecdotal discussions with irl Trek fans didn’t find the same antagonism to Discovery that you find online.
Discovery wasn’t the best of Star Trek, and I ended up switching off early Season 4, but much of the early hostility towards it was either that sort of bad faith, or focused on trivia (which leads me to wonder if it was just cover for the same - I cannot get my head around people who refused to watch because they didn’t like the Klingon prosthetics).
Season 1 was solid, Season 2 was arguably even better (although owed a lot off that to Captain Pike). Season 3 had great promise in its premise but failed to realise it’s potential, and then Season 4 just felt lost.
It wasn’t just the prosthetics that were awful, Klingon culture was completely different too. Why even call them Klingons?
The shame is that the ending of Season 4 might be one of the most ’ Star Trek’ moments in the franchise. But the lead up to was so generic that many didn’t make it that far.
It also reinforces that studios are trying to please the wrong people.
Peid. They are paid. Big ol’ circle jerk.
Show was straight garbage
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It’s funny, your exact review is why some people dislike “new” Trek.
I’ve found Discovery to be solidly OK over the seasons, and find it’s best when you can binge it so the bad episodes are immediately replaced by a new and hopefully better episode.
Think back to TNG. Yes the early season saucer separation was neat, and we’ll all remember Locutus of Borg and the Battle of Wolf 359. But do you know what I’ll really remember? How Picard becoming Borg affected him for years. When Picard argues in court “What it means to be man?” and if Data deserves personhood. Torture, ideals and the four lights. Learning to communicate with Darmok. The FLUTE episode!
These are the stories that made Star Trek, Star Trek. DS9, Voyager, & Enterprise would continue this trend.
Discovery? A little bit, but not really. Picard (the show)? Kinda but mostly no.
Strange New Worlds? Absolutely! Lower Decks? Again, yes! PRODIGY??? Amazingly, yes. It’s for children so it’s toned down but absolutely.
I don’t think Discovery is terrible, but it’s just solidly OK. They touch on some interesting topics, but ultimately they waste a lot of time.
Yeah, because it wasn’t Star Trek.
Each episode of Star Trek: Discovery is rumored to cost up to $10 million per episode.
What the hell were they spending this money on???
Artificial tears
Certainly not on the plot.
I like the visuals, but the plot is almost at the level of Voyager during the screenwriters strike.
Lens flare
Bribing critics?
As a Trekkie: Oh no! Anyway …
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The Expanse was fantastic. I’d love to see the rest of the books adapted some day…
As for other sci-fi, my god there’s so much good shit in literature that will never be seen on a screen.
The Three Body Problem is getting several adaptations, one of which might or might not fix my issues with that series, but it does have conceptual potential.
Time to reboot Lexx!
A proper treatment of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy could be amazing.
The 30th century thing of rebuilding a fallen Federation was a somewhat interesting prospect, but I think they chose the wrong angle of going at it. But I don’t know what I would have done differently, because I’m not a good enough writer to have a decent opinion on it.
I loved the idea of the dilithium shortage, and the mystery of why was a nice touch. Until they solved the mystery with such an unsatisfying answer.
One problem is that there’s like a dozen different ways to go FTL that don’t require dilithium at this point. All the refined dilithium going boom at once would be a major disaster, of course, but it should be a temporary setback.
I enjoyed the federation reborn as well. I have an opinion.
The writers were so busy patting each other on their backs with how “deep” they were being with symbolism about the importance of communication, that they went and made the whole cause of the burn a child being lonely on some planet somewhere so they could twist the burn into a big symbolic point about how “if only we had been a little better” something like it would never have happened.
It was so fucking telegraphed that I saw it coming episodes away and was rolling eyes every time the show referenced this symbolic circle jerk.
No. Shit happens. The universe doesn’t care, and it WILL fuck your shit up, I would have been far more impressed with the crew rebuilding the federation after an inevitable natural disaster, making a point of life finding a way despite the random crap reality throws at us, and how communication and understanding is one of the things that help us do that.
Star Trek is supposed to be optimistic, not delusional, and as such the core message of that season rings hollow. It’s too hopeful. Instead of “we might not be perfect, and we might not know what’s coming, we know we are enough” it was “we’re nearly there, we just need one more step to be perfect, and nothing bad will ever happen because of this ever again”.
Wait, is Hollywood starting to realize that critics don’t pay their bills, the viewing audience pays their bills?
I don’t get the hate. It’s no Andor, but it’s not painful to watch. Certainly better than S1 of TNG. And I say that as someone that grew up on TNG.
They tried something different, focusing on someone besides the captain. But it’s still Trek. It’s the gayest Trek I’ve ever seen, but that certainly doesn’t make it not Trek. They invented a new technology and hand-waved every Deus ex machina that ever existed and if that’s not Trek then you don’t know a tachyon emitter from an inverted warp field.
Enlighten me, angry nerds. I am a Zen geek, and i don’t understand your hate
I get where you’re going but my favorite part or Trek is the exploration of different cultures and ways of thinking. Strange New Worlds is the return of to form I want while Discovery felt more like Enterprise.
But fuck them klingons in Disco though, that was the wrong culture and way of thinking to explore. They can’t change klingons like that, klingons are static unchanging aliens in trek, they never changed once before disco and it didn’t make sense.
/s if it wasn’t painfully obvious.
Lol word. Yeah they didn’t change Worf. They played with a concept. Also the Kelpians (or however it’s spelled) was a pretty great story. Felt a lot like classic Trek, that arc did.
I get that, and thank you for giving an actual reason for the dislike. Enterprise never clicked for me, but at the time i was watching it on broadcast television and other things were competing for my attention. I’m gonna give it another shot soon.
Strange New Worlds is freakin amazing. Still haven’t seen S2
I don’t need my trek protagonist to cry every episode.
See? At least this is a reason. Thank you!
So many responses here are saying it sucks without saying why. (I re-read the comments and I’m just not good at paying attention)You get a silver star. I don’t completely agree, but hey! I get it
but it’s not painful to watch.
That’s where we disagree.
Discovery is quite painful to watch.
Folks on the internet love to blame its unpopularity on gayness, or on a black main character, or plenty of other red herrings. You always see those brought up by people defending Discovery (“everyone who hates it is just racist/sexist/homophobic/whatever”). I’m sure those people did hate Discovery if they even watched it.
But plenty of woke progressives also hate it, for plenty of other, legitimate reasons. And its very annoying that most of the time any discussion about the show’s problems get derailed by people who accuse any haters of just being prejudiced. Whether it was the bad storytelling, butchering of beloved races like the Klingons, an egregiously Mary Sue main character, the constant stream of manufactured melodrama, constant bickering and in-fighting among the crew, and the less-easy-to-pinpoint general way the show doesn’t “feel” like Trek.
Discovery feels like an attempt to drop the “baggage” of past Treks and invent something new and bring in a new audience. Which might make economic sense, but feels like a slap in the face to many lifelong Trek fans who love the old series.
Butchering the Klingons I understand (although from what I understand, they’re into that kinda thing). I also understand not liking the interpersonal dynamics as written. Out of curiosity, can you quantify bad storytelling? I’m guessing it’s more than just the technological Deus Ex Machina that Trek is famous for?
Hard disagree on the MC being Mary Sue. But to each his own, I asked and that’s one of your problems with the show.
One thing I don’t understand is your last statement. And I mean that as the general principal behind the statement. When an IP does something new, it’s hated. When it does what it’s always done, it’s stale. Somehow Strange New Worlds walks that tightrope. But I don’t see a problem with innovation and experimentation within a franchise. Especially with a new series that isn’t ruining existing character arcs (cough Rise of Skywalker cough). How, exactly, is a new series that goes a different direction a slap in the face of existing fans? Was DS9 a slap in the face? The Mandalorian? Without experimentation you don’t get innovative things.
Anyway, define bad storytelling. I’m not being antagonistic, I genuinely want to know. I like film theory and the art of storytelling, even if I don’t fully understand it at times and can’t do it myself
Sure. To be fair though, it’s been several years since I’ve watched DISC and it’s nowhere near fresh in my mind now… I watched up until they went to the future, and then like one episode of that was all I could take. So I’m just going off of what I remember hating back when I watched it.
The bad storytelling goes hand-in-hand with what I see as Michael being a Mary Sue. Since you don’t see her that way, you’ll probably disagree. But she got away with everything to an unrealistic degree in season one. She was insubordinate and rebellious. I think I remember things like her talking back/questioning the captain on the bridge. Other Treks showed things like that, and showed how it was not tolerated by anyone, even superior officers. Michael got away with it at every turn. She was technically a traitor to Star Fleet and she basically started the Klingon war, and she suffered zero repercussions for that. This is bad storytelling on several fronts. First off, it makes it feel like Starfleet has convenient blindness to whatever the main character does (aka plot armor), so it makes Starfleet seem comically unbelievable. Second, it starves the viewer of what should be major plot and character points. Other Trek shows occasionally had bad characters like Michael, but we got to see them feel the consequences of their actions. Ro Laren did some traitorous things, and that developed into a fascinating plot. There are plenty of other examples… Barclay, Geordi, Worf to name a few… But Michael never seemed to suffer any consequences as a character, and it felt unsatisfying as a viewer to watch that.
Then, plot stuff. The Lorca bait-and-switch was really lame. The Empress Giorgio/mommy issues subplot was really annoying. The superweapon that was the spore drive was a bad idea. The intelligent nano machines sucked. But the biggest issue with all of these is that they were underdeveloped and just got written off lazily. Each of these had a bad start, but they could have been turned into something interesting with good writing. But they never got the story development they deserved. Maybe this is because DISC’s seasons were shorter than old Trek, and they just didn’t have enough time to develop all these subplots. But they just sucked and felt half-assed.
(I’m sorry I can’t get more specific than that… it’s a memory issue. I honestly have put most of those problems out of my mind now, and I can’t remember specifically why I hated them after so long…)
Also, Michael in general… besides being a Mary Sue character. Sonequa Martin-Green is just not a good actor. It might be that I hate the character of Michael, or it might be that she was just not capable of carrying the show on her back, but DISC was at its best when Michael was in the background. Saru was an awesome character and the highlights of DISC were when he took charge of the ship. But just about any time the show got good, Michael came in and spoiled it somehow, either by poor acting or by Mary Sue-ish plot garbage.
The best thing to come out of DISC was the spinoff Strange New Worlds, which really captured the feeling of the old Trek series. DISC feels like the JJ Abrams movies, which are also trash and feel like a slap in the face for long-term fans. I’m all for experimentation, and I am certainly not saying that doing something new is necessarily bad. The shows you mentioned (DS9, The Mandalorian) tried new things and nailed it. And I love SNW, so that nullifies that theory. DISC isn’t bad because it tried new things. It’s bad because it failed at executing those things well, and it did so on so many levels.
I get it, thank you, appreciate it. I can see the reasoning and it makes sense. And I understand your Mary Sue perspective a bit more.
I can see an argument could be made for her having repercussions at the beginning of the series. But I can also see that being a traitor didn’t have long lasting effects (because of Plot) and that she never learned from her mistakes. That tracks.
I don’t really have an issue with the Lorca or Giorgio plots, and I’ve watched/read/played enough Star Wars to not be phased by stupid superweapons lol. Still I can see your reasoning on the sloppy writing and development.
As far as the Abrams movies, I’m with Plinkett. Star Trek the Star Trek was… a pretty decent action movie actually. It’s not high art, but it’s fun and high energy. It’s not Real Trek™, but it doesn’t have to be. We have Real Trek™ movies, and they’re great. Let the kids have some junk food. I’ll be over here eating Wrath of Khan again, and liking it.
I think you make really valid points, and as I said, I appreciate the time you took to do the write-up. I think my standards are lower for Entertainment. If I want to escape for an hour or two I don’t really mind if it’s fuzzy along the edges. By having the goal of being distracted from my life’s cares for a bit I wind up very pleasantly surprised when a show like Andor or Asteroid City comes along and knocks my socks off with actual Art. Or when a quality piece of Entertainment like Strange New Worlds land at my feet. “Ooh, neat!” I think, “I wanted a hot dog and was delivered Filet Mignon.” Which means, if I get a hot dog, I’m not terribly disappointed.
I think Discovery was a Coney Dog, with some average meat sauce and a really sharp cheddar. But the beef dog at the core was pretty okay and it didn’t make me sick. The bun was stale though
She was technically a traitor to Star Fleet and she basically started the Klingon war, and she suffered zero repercussions for that.
Zero negative ones. As far as I could tell she was rewarded for every mistake even if there was a tiny slap on the wrist first.
Not angry, just isn’t star trek to me. In my mind star trek, for each episode has: an external threat or issue the crew has to overcome and an internal conflict or issue to overcome. Neither will have any obvious solution at the start and are often very difficult topics or philosophical in nature. The crew then solves these creatively and reflect on their situation a little. Very seldom are there multi-episode story archs, but even those fairly closely follow that formula.
I was excited at first because the Klingon wars with modern CG sounded like fun. But star trek isn’t about that in the end. Even when war is at the forefront of a story in there, it is still often more about resolving it rather than indulging in it.
Not to mention (but this is an issue of a lot of modern SciFi) why in the world is everything so darn dark in that show? Why is everything inside the ships so black and shiny? Don’t like that design at all. Difficult to watch and just far too depressing. Star Trek is hopeful, not doom and gloom to me. It is about the best of humanity, even when they struggle.
The dark thing was a major turn off for me too. It just didn’t FEEL like Star Trek (even before getting more into the story lines themselves). I started watching The Orville around the same time and actually continued watching that despite a pretty rocky start because they nailed the Star Trek feel.
@AlteredStateBlob you don’t get any feel for the ship because you don’t see it.
Respect. I do like that they tried new things, and didn’t “ruin” existing characters in the process. And sometimes a show doesn’t click and your time is better spent elsewhere. That’s The Office for me. Nothing wrong with it, just not my cuppa
It’s not the gayness that people don’t like about it. I wasn’t even aware that there was all that much gayness in it, and most of what I know about the show is what people say when complaining about it since I don’t watch it.
While Trek is often like a stage show with some over the top performances, Discovery went the extra mile and made the primary lead into space Les Mis. I blame the writers though, since the problem was the plot not justifying the performance.
The trek boards on reddit were seething when disco came out because ‘how dare a black woman be in a leading role in trek’ and ‘I can’t relate to the show any more now’ and ‘why are there so many females on the bridge’.
There was a lot of very bitter ‘it’s just not trek’ from folk with poor reasonings as to why too.
Badly written characters, featuring one of the most textbook versions of a Mary Sue main character I’ve ever seen.
Illogical character development, or simply no character development at all. Since STD is not an episodic type series this is important.
Badly written overall stories focused more on VFX, action, and covering a few checkboxes rather than actually having anything interesting to say.
STD will not be missed. But unfortunately Star Trek is still in the hands of the same showrunner.
More seasons than TOS, TAS, Enterprise, or Picard.
I didn’t watch the whole show; it didn’t really seam to know what it wanted to be, or how to get there. But I watched waaaay more of Discovery than Picard. Picard was awful, but it doesn’t seem to get as much flak as Discovery.
Picard had the retrospect to notice that fans didn’t want new experiments with old figures and then they did their latest season and it was brilliant. The rest of Picard was very decidedly Trek but so awfully slow paced that I can’t blame anyone for giving up on it.
Picard season 1 was a mystery box that never went anywhere.
Picard season 2 was a wild sci-fi adventure that just doesn’t quite fit.
Picard season 3 was a season-long reunion.
Each is basically a completely different show. I liked all three, but it isn’t 3 seasons of the same show.
Wasn’t it filmed during COVID restrictions? I wonder if that had an impact on the 2nd and 3rd season plot.
Do you not have the belief that you should watch every bit of canon Star Trek that’s available, no matter what? I do. It doesn’t take much time. Now that Picard 3 is out, I’m going to do a fast rewatch of all three seasons and see if I can understand it better, because I sure as hell didn’t the first time through S1 & 2.
I don’t think that there really can be cannon for media projects with this many different leaders at the helm, made so far apart, and without a strong source material. There’s so much media to watch out there that if I don’t like a show, I am not going to watch it just because I liked other shows with a similar naming scheme.
There is also a lot of time travel and “mirror universing” in Trek, so whatever could be considered cannon might not have happened in the same timeline as other events that are also considered cannon.
That’s the power of math, people!!!
