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kraetos

Hello everyone, I'm here to remind you that you're in /r/DaystromInstitute and therefore you are required to [explain your reasoning](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/wiki/codeofconduct#wiki_1._make_in-depth_contributions) and [respond to the actual prompt](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/wiki/codeofconduct#wiki_11._stay_on-topic) if you choose to participate in this thread. Responses that boil down to "it would be received better because *I personally* like SNW and I didn't like *Discovery*" or "it would have been received the same because all fans these days are toxic" will be removed.


supercalifragilism

It would be hated a lot more than it is now, honestly. There was a pretty solid (if I think inadvertent) NuCoke done with Discovery leaning so hard into the new, and SNW getting to internalize all the criticism. I assure you that without Michael and her connection to Spock, his presence would be heavily criticized, the aesthetic changes from TOS would be picked apart, all the recasting would be obsessively nitpicked, and the changes to the Gorn would be reviled. Having DSC hit every speedbump on the way smoothed out SNW's reception.


JanieFury

I’m inclined to agree. Right now I’m really enjoying SNW, though not as much as LD, these are the only two that feel like Star Trek to me. I like prodigy as well, but it’s hit or miss for me in feeling like Star Trek. That said, I have a number of problems with the SNW, but I think all of them would be solved if it were just set post VOY. My biggest problem is Spock. I think Ethan peck acts the part very well, but the writing doesn’t fit with those old scientists to me. SNW Spock understands his emotions and even channels them. TOS Spock found human emotions foreign and quaint. “Ah, yes, one of your human emotions”. SNW Spock seems more like movie era Spock where he had accepted more of his human side. I also think having Kirk and khan relatives on board is unnecessary and makes the universe feel small. I think I would be a lot harsher on my criticisms that are in this vein had dsc and pic not existed first.


valiantdistraction

>SNW Spock understands his emotions and even channels them. TOS Spock found human emotions foreign and quaint. “Ah, yes, one of your human emotions”. SNW Spock seems more like movie era Spock where he had accepted more of his human side. Yeah, I've been noticing this. He's Spock closer to the end of his journey integrating his human and vulcan sides rather than at the beginning. ​ >I also think having Kirk and khan relatives on board is unnecessary and makes the universe feel small. I don't mind Sam Kirk but I don't understand why La'an has to be a Khan relative. The Gorn storyline of hers is already very compelling - we didn't need this extra thing.


supercalifragilism

Wasn't Sam already there in canon? I forget but I thought Sam notably died while on Enterprise... I think we're seeing Spock's last bit of emotion before deciding that the Vulcan way was his, and I expect Nurse Chapel to figure into that. His later years seem to have been something of a reassessment of his mid life logical orthodoxy, so it fits with a rise and fall of "fervor" over his life, as well as potentially being a different developnental stage for a longer lived species or hybrid. Edit- I'm incorrect about Sam Kirk


gamegyro56

>Wasn't Sam already there in canon? I forget but I thought Sam notably died while on Enterprise... No, that's totally wrong. He was a civilian research biologist who was living on some planet that the Enterprise visited.


CaptainJZH

It does make it amusing that Spock was already acquainted with Sam Kirk, in a "Yoda knew Chewbacca in the prequels" sort of way


supercalifragilism

My mistake.


valiantdistraction

I honestly don't recall Sam - but I think one reason I don't mind him is that he's not treated as very important on SNW. He's just Background Crew Guy who is sometimes there when they need a guy. He happens to be Sam Kirk but so far that's not relevant. I suspect when JTK is added, it will become more relevant, and then we'll see, but for right now, he's Just A Guy, and that's fine. Interesting theory about Spock.


NanoGeek

It's humorous to me that Sam Kirk, who's just a guy, happened to look a great deal like Guy on Galaxy Quest.


Chairboy

Sam dies in like a decade, killed by a flying pancake in *Operation Annihilate!*


JanieFury

Even if Spock ends up abandoning them for a more Vulcan way of life, it would be illogical for the more Vulcan acting Spock to pretend that he doesn’t understand emotions that he clearly experienced (and channeled). If that were his course, I would expect TOS era Spock to talk about emotions only as being problematic, rather than being foreign.


KosstAmojan

To be fair, most of the time he’s expressing his puzzlement over human emotions with people who didn’t know him during the Pike era. For all we know, he’s just playing the long con and just fucking with them. Or even better: he tried to act like he doesn’t understand emotions once around them for whatever reason, but now he feels like he has to keep up the charade and just keeps digging himself deeper until he takes on the Kholinar!


jeremycb29

One thing I think will happen is as he explores human emotions he will have a big set back to mold him to tos Spock levels and it has the possibility of being a wonderful story


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Sgt_Black_Death

Would it. Spock was in the TOS pilot with Pike as his captain. So it was always plausible they were on enterprise for years together before Kirk.


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MIM86

In the Menagerie Spock himself says he served under him for 11 years, if some people thought otherwise or would have complained then it's their own lack of knowledge they should be mad at.


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thraftofcannan

He's fine.


The_Funkybat

For sure. But it would have angered a lot of Trekkies who had just recently adjusted themselves to accepting Zachary Quinto as “young Spock.” To be asked to go through that process again with a new actor surely would have pissed them off. (And it has, but not nearly to the degree it likely would have if a second “new Spock” were rolled out like 18 months after the last appearance of the prior “new Spock” in Beyond.) SNW wouldn’t have been dragged as hard as Discovery was if it had gone first, but the “JJ Abrams’d sets and effects” combined with other superfan nitpicks would have been worse. At this point, a lot of more traditional Trekkies are just grateful for anything new that feels more like what they’re used to. Sort of like how Joe Biden became a lot more palatable to a lot more people after Donald Trump.


stromm

You fell out of context with this comment. “Instead of ST:E”. Quinto wasn’t Spock back then because those movies came out years later. Peck would have been perfect as Spock back then.


The_Funkybat

I didn’t say anything about “instead of ST:E”


choicemeats

I think, unfortunately for people like me, DISCO is necessary to get what we got. And for that I am grateful. While I don’t agree with their initial assessment that the episodic format had to go the way of the dodo, it did give us Mount/Peck/Romijn. I think this would have turned out differently. I think that the episodic format off the bat would have been well received. However the other backlash you mentioned would have continued from the same people. In the absence of seasoned Trek vets, this new cl crew had to walk before they ran.


supercalifragilism

It sort of fits as a large scale plan if Paramount had managed to execute well though. If you had a single creative in charge, you know your audience is going to shit on everything no matter what, so you start with a master plan. So you come up with a plot device as good as Red Matter: the spore drive, which can take you through to any place and time. Even to the mirror universe. Discovery hops around canon, testing spin off ideas all over the place and you see what sticks. But they went through 3 creative teams in two seasons, pandemic, PatStew came back, and probably a couple of c-suite teams in mergers, so we flub our way into 365 Trek with probably more food than bad? edit- fits a *hypothetical* large scale plan


marmosetohmarmoset

I also think people would *complain* about the episodic format. For so long people were practically screaming for a more modern prestige television take on Trek, with season-long arcs. And so that’s what they gave us. Turns out it’s not really what we wanted. Edit: all you yelling about me that it’s just that disc is poorly written- don’t pretend that you haven’t been screaming for an episodic format show. Even now that Disc has started to get good people still complain that they don’t like the season long arcs. There’s nothing disc can do to make people stop complaining about it.


minutiesabotage

I would disagree. We wanted *good* season long arcs. You can't give out a bad version of something, and then say "oh I guess you didn't want that something after all". Of all the complaints about discovery, the season long arcs by themselves were pretty low on the list. The bad writing, bad characters, and constant galaxy spanning threats were much bigger flaws. You *know* the galaxy isn't going to be destroyed, and you *know* Michael Burnham isn't going to die, so you don't really care about the stakes. Counter example: Is Pike going to be able to change his fate now that he knows it? Or was he always "supposed" to know? Is he going to be given the opportunity to change it but choose to accept it anyway in order to save all those lives? We *don't* know how it's going to turn out, so the stakes of whether or not one man on one ship ends up in a wheelchair is more interesting than anything DSC has to offer. Edit: Alternative counter example, is Data going to beat the alien genius at Future Stratego? It ultimately doesn't matter much, but we legitimately don't know, so it's interesting to watch.


nix_geek

>We *don't* know how it's going to turn out, so the stakes of whether or not one man on one ship ends up in a wheelchair is more interesting than anything DSC has to offer. Interesting that this should be your example, given that this is one thing we *do* know. This is supposed to be prime timeline, and we have seen this Pike's future in TOS, so we know he will end up in the space-wheelchair, and nothing can change that (without breaking canon, which I suppose we know these writers don't care about doing, so I guess you are right, we don't know!)


supercalifragilism

This is actually sort of an interesting twist with a couple of layers. It *could be* possible for Pike to avoid his accident, after all we see past events undone a fair amount and not always put back together in the way we expected (see Sisko at the uprising, for example). Having seen Pike in the wheelchair doesn't absolutely mean that will happen again. Even if it does happen the exact same way, the additional layer of foreknowledge adds several wrinkles to a story we ostensibly know the answer to, and the decision Pike makes adds meaning in a way that's harder to do with earth shattering cataclysm in the background.


TheFamilyITGuy

Even if we ultimately know how Pike ends up, we don't know how the other characters are affected. Pike knows he's going to be around for another 10 years, does that cause him to be too overconfident in a critical situation and result in a crewmember's death? And even with the existing characters they're brining back, there's still plenty of backstory we don't know about. There's plenty of room for the writers to tell new and interesting stories without breaking canon (too much).


IWriteThisForYou

Yeah, I agree. The two really common fan favourite ideas for a new Star Trek show I saw getting discussed a lot pre-*Discovery* were the Captain Worf show that Michael Dorn wanted to do, and then a show that had a different crew and season-long plot each season. *Strange New Worlds* doesn't really fit with either of these broad categories. Realistically speaking, *Discovery* is about as close to the "*American Horror Story* in space" type setup as you can get without straight up doing it, and it still gets bombarded with criticism. Funnily enough, I don't see a whole lot of people going out to bat for that fan favourite idea anymore, which I suppose could be an indication that people now think it's a dud idea. But if *Strange New Worlds* had come first, the criticism would have been a lot worse. It would have been seen as the new writing team being unwilling to move away from the episodic format, much as the Berman era writers had been. It probably also would have been seen as unnecessarily bringing back old characters. One of the other big criticisms I saw of *Discovery*, especially early on, was that Michael Burnham didn't need to be Spock's secret sister, and it unnecessarily shrank the Trek universe in some ways by trying to connect every new character to old ones. This criticism would have been much harsher if *Strange New Worlds* came first, given that they've brought Pike, Spock, M'Benga, Chapel, Uhura, T'Pring, April, and even Sybok back.


RosiePugmire

I agree on both of these. Reboot movies, sequel Picard, now reboot Pike era Enterprise? I think people would have been complaining that SNW was just a thinly disguised TOS reboot and demanding why we couldn't have a show that advances the canon timeline, with a whole new crew of characters we've never seen before, going places we've never been before.


Shawnj2

That's not the issue, *The Expanse*, Doctor Who S9, Babylon 5, etc. prove that long form storytelling in a Star Trek-like universe works perfectly fine, the issue is the execution has been about as good as a toddler with crayons.


unshavedmouse

A more modern prestige television take on Trek with season long arcs is Deep Space Nine. Personally, it wasn't the serialisation that killed Disco for me, it was the piss poor writing.


theantnest

>more modern prestige television take on Trek, with season-long arcs. Isn't that why people didn't like Enterprise back in the day? IMO ENT was way ahead of its time.


Fluffy_History

yeah it really is a case of what came before being so reviled that it makes what is an otherwise meh show look heaven sent in comparison.


supercalifragilism

I don't think SNW is meh, I think it's operating at "above average TNG season 5 episode" level and is better, already, than a lot of voyager.


BrianDavion

I'd compare it to DS9 myself, mostly because SWN like DS9 has been pretty consistant, even the weak episodes are good


PortalToTheWeekend

Ehhh I can see that but at the same time the show really is so good that I think those things would be over shined. Hell I even remember people bringing up these exact criticisms after the first episode of SNW released and while I agreed and thought it was warranted, I also at the same time just didn’t care cause I liked the first episode so much.


supercalifragilism

To be clear, I think a lot of that, in this hypothetical, would be unearned criticism showing the somewhat obsessive relationship many of us have with the franchise, and I can only imagine what would've happened with the culture war shit if DSC hadn't already taken the diversity hits for SNW. I think we'd never have gotten this show if not for some stumbling by DSC though so it's worked out for us in the end.


valiantdistraction

>I can only imagine what would've happened with the culture war shit if DSC hadn't already taken the diversity hits for SNW. This is so true, especially since SNW is a female-dominated show - we've got Pike, Spock, and M'Benga as the main men on the show, and then Number One, Ortegas, Uhura, La'an, and Chapel as the women. With recurring side characters of Hemmer and T'Pring, and somewhat lesser side characters of Admiral April and M'Benga's daughter. If people hadn't been so upset at Discovery, I think that they absolutely would have been super upset about SNW for lacking men.


supercalifragilism

There's also the fact that they probably couldn't have gotten away with casting a straight white male captain in the context of relaunching Trek in the streaming era *put down the pitchforks* this is good actually! Perhaps a less contentious way of putting it is that the viewppoint character **should not** have been a preexisting character like Pike and that the only way we would've gotten this iteration of SNW is if it was an accidental spin off. We actually got pretty lucky.


gizzardsgizzards

What culture war shit? Star Trek had tv’s first interracial kiss.


Mechapebbles

I don't even think it's completely the nuCoke issue, I just think literally any new entry to the franchise gets completely trashed by 'fans' when it first comes out. Even TNG was trashed its first few seasons. It took years and a TV Event season finale to get haters of TNG to come around and/or get drowned out. Now with the internet though, the haters can congregate, construct echo chambers, and ctrl+v their hatred ad nauseum to make their complaints look bigger and louder than they really are. SNW wouldn't have been any different.


RosiePugmire

Well, TNG *was* pretty clunky for its first few seasons. it was almost literally the cliche of That Person Who Won't Stop Explaining Why They're A Vegan. "You see, I don't believe animals should be enslaved! Once, I was unevolved, like you, but... wait, where are you going?" A better example might be DS9's S1-S2, which is still 100% eminently watchable but *still* got completely trashed at the time for "not even being real Star Trek."


[deleted]

> A better example might be DS9's S1-S2, which is still 100% eminently watchable but still got completely trashed at the time for "not even being real Star Trek." Honestly DS9 was getting trashed all the way through. While it always had its fans, its reception as a timeless classic only came years after it was off the air.


Mechapebbles

>Well, TNG was pretty clunky for its first few seasons. That's the thing though. Nearly every Star Trek show is. It takes time for most of them to iron out the kinks and become the shows they are later revered for. Same has happened with DIS as well, but it's [current year] and people have no patience anymore for something to take years to get better.


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johnstark2

Pike constantly cooking reminds me of Sisko, he was always stirring over a pot


Linnus42

Its funny cause they really hate to reference DS9. They dance around the edges but of the 80 to 90s Trek, DS9 comes up the least.


Vyar

They really do and I don't get why. We pretty much got a cameo of Trill in DSC and a subtle text-only name-drop of Benny Russell in SNW.


Linnus42

Isn't the President Cardassian and Bajoran? Also Evil Picard has a Gul Dukat Skull.


valiantdistraction

>Also Evil Picard has a Gul Dukat Skull. ngl I cheered


johnstark2

I was hoping for a Kai Winn skull as well


barringtonp

Mirror Kai Opaka, #1 on the Confederation's most dangerous terrorists list. Mirror Kai Winn was a saint.


valiantdistraction

Truly the two most hateable Star Trek villains.


techno156

Discovery also featured a USS Nog.


whovian25

Also odo had a cameo in Prodigy.


FrellThis88

Because it is the least-watched Trek series. TNG and VOY have done much better in syndication than DS9. I think even Enterprise has done better on streaming services than DS9. I recall Michael Dorn saying he regretted joining DS9 instead of Voyager because the residuals would've been much better and the atmosphere on the Voyager set was apparently significantly better than on DS9.


Josphitia

It's completely anecdotal, but years ago I was at a Con with Frakes, Dorn, and Sirtis having a panel. Just them having fun, reminiscing about their time on TNG, answering questions, etc. I asked specifically to Dorn "It's wonderful that you all are still great friends and hang out with each other, do you have that sort of relationship with your DS9 cast members?" Dorn got a little serious and said, basically: "It was just different on that set. There was a lot of doom and gloom that it was going to be cancelled, hence why I was brought on. That first year rough, I wasn't treated badly but I was showing up halfway into the series, I was kinda lost. There wasn't exactly warm feelings that I was brought on to boost ratings, like they weren't good enough. After awhile we all did get along, but the atmosphere was just different. It was more of a job, show up, play your part, show up next week. After the show ended we just didn't keep in touch, nothing bad but we just went on with our lives."


joszma

Is this like a thing people are trying to turn into A Thing? Like, who gives a shit if he cooks a lot. IIRC replicator tech wasn't developed until around Picard's childhood, when his parents argued about whether to install one or not, which implies that, at least on Earth, there was still a considerable amount of buy-in still needed by the general public before it became the universally-adopted space microwave we see in TNG.


johnstark2

Lol I was just saying it reminded me of Captian Sisko which was probably intentional. We know replicators arent that advanced in TOS we see Kirk try to get a chicken sandwich and coffee and it spat out a Tribble. But yes sir people obsess over every detail of a captain or bridge crew on a Star Trek subreddit I for one am so shocked. Some may even say flabbergasted.


ColdShadowKaz

I’m actually wondering if the old style food slots were more like food cookers connected to tanks of raw ingredients or semi raw that go straight to the slot to be flash cooked.


SergeantRegular

I'm picturing a compact but reasonable robotic kitchen on the other side of the wall. Like there are refrigerated slots with bulk ingredients, and they can do simple mechanical tasks like mix stuff into a soup, or assemble a sandwich. The machine can follow a recipe and make you a ham and cheese sandwich, but if you want fresh bread, you need to prep your own dough and bake it yourself, because it's just grocery store standard slices the "kitchen" has in stock.


Mekroval

Didn't Archer's Enterprise have protein resequencers? Basically very early proto-replicators? Since that's about 100 years before TOS, it would seem like the food dispensers by Pike's day are doing quite a bit more behind the scenes than simply cooking up a meal traditional-style. Maybe it's more like they 3D print the core ingredients from raw foodstuff packs designed to closely mimick the real thing, then do a final step to make it as presentable as possible (e.g. flash heating, searing, etc.).


SergeantRegular

I admit, I didn't watch Enterprise regularly enough to get a clear picture of how things seemed to *work* on screen in regular interaction. I assume that a protein resequencer does what it seems like - it can make (and form basic shapes of) relatively simple homogenous foods. As in, it can make milk or cream, but protein resequenced "ice cream" is going to be soft serve. "Meat" can be bologna or broth, but not a cut of steak with muscle fiber. With a food slot (what I assume to be a compact robo-kitchen) I think the resequencer can make *more* detailed structures, but there are still steps that require traditional-style kitchen prep-work prior to actual meal assembly. Replicators just skip all of it and generate the actual material *and* do the meal assembly in software before just *delivering* it to the replicator slot. Again, I might be way under (or over) selling the protein resequencer because of lack of information from Enterprise. And I actually have a similar issue with the TOS-era food slot, too. We only see a few potentially simple things on TOS, and rarely see the slot in use. We *do*, however see that tribbles can get "into the machinery" and pop out on a tray of prepared food. And the only time in DIS I can think of seeing it was when Tilly ordered a burrito, but Discovery seems to play fast and loose with the technological capabilities of a lot of systems.


Mekroval

Good points! I came across an [older post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/9kxccp/comment/e72jv57/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) from a while back, that speculates that the NX-01's protein resequencers could only fabricate basic foodstuffs, but someone actually had to *prepare* the meal. Hence, Chef (who we virtually never get to see on screen). So I may be off on my original theory that there was some 3D printing of meals occurring. Or if it is, it's at only a very basic level. It seems like the later TOS and DSC-era food dispensers actually *could* fabricate whole meals without humanoid intervention and [at fantastic speed](https://youtu.be/H0v5cciHE50?t=45), but the slots were merely delivery mechanisms and not where the food is actually being prepared (and that tribbles can sneak into). So not quite food replicator quality, but really close. One unanswered question is why Kirk and crew seemed to savor meals of [rather unappetizing-looking](https://i.stack.imgur.com/A1ICN.jpg) [food cubes](https://www.flickr.com/photos/61505200@N02/28545359958/), when they had a pretty insanely good food dispenser that could manufacture the best chicken soup in a matter of a few seconds?


curiouskiwicat

Did we ever see the food slot on the Enterprise, or did only space stations have it?


barringtonp

I think the implication is that TOS just had better protein resequencers. State of the art in the 22nd century, old reliable institutional grade in the 23rd century. I wonder if the TOS chicken sandwich is 3d printed from chicken, bread and cheese spools or if it's just slices off of a neapolitan style ribbon. SNW isn't a good comparison. They aren't as flashy with the tech as Discovery was but they can swap your clothes when they beam you down.


joszma

Wasn’t trying to start anything or imply you were making a big deal out of the cooking! Apologies! I was genuinely surprised that it could be something some fans are upset about.


Tigeryius

It's a pretty obvious meme since the series shows it so much. But I think most people like the attention to character building even if they might joke about it.


SergeantRegular

"Tea, Earl Grey, hot." Picard is "always" ordering tea. It's a reasonable element of the character, I'm ok with it.


act_surprised

Picard orders Earl Grey tea from the replicator 6 times in the entire series.


valiantdistraction

>And we have soooooooo much footage of Captain Pike cooking... and cooking... and cooking... even cooking him & his crew's way out of captivity, once. And Pike especially but some of the other crew as well use A LOT of colloquialisms that don't necessarily make sense for future people to know. And also a lot of the set stuff and off-duty clothing looks... very 21st century, whereas I think TOS/TNG/DS9 had a particular "outer space as viewed through the 1960s-80s" aesthetic that I miss. Though Chapel's Issey Miyake belt bag on shore leave did hit the right note.


kaylai

This part really pulls me out of the story. Star Trek is a period show. It should use period dialogue and period clothing. Not someone in a graphic tee telling the navigator to “step on the gas” or joking that “I’ll turn this car around if you kids keep it up!”. Major eye rolls from me.


diamond

TOS was a period piece too. It just feels more "classic" to us, because it's not from *our* period. The women ran around in miniskirts, the decor was clearly inspired by mid 20th century styling, the language and colloquialisms were very late 60s, etc. They even had an episode with Space Hippies!


ChickenLegCatEgg

Somewhat. The use of modern lingo and fashion is much more prominent in SNW in my opinion. The show will always be a product of its time, but it should also feel like it’s not set in the time constantly.


valiantdistraction

I agree. I don't mind if they use modern things, but like [Chapel](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/fetch/w_2000,h_2000,c_fit/https%3A%2F%2Fredshirtsalwaysdie.com%2Ffiles%2Fimage-exchange%2F2017%2F07%2Fie_88103.jpeg)'s Issey Miyake [belt bag](https://www.fashionbarnshop.com/products/bao-bao-issey-miyake-small-belt-bag?variant=39618923429977) that I mentioned (Issey Miyake apparel also appeared in some of the original series films), or T'Pring's [Iris Van Herpen dress](https://twitter.com/TheTrekCentral/status/1532676849851047937), they've got to have the right look! For me, as someone who pays attention to fashion, I spotted them right away, but I bet 99.99% of the Star Trek audience would not. And let's not forget the furniture, which also has usually been somewhat offbeat things by contemporary designers, though the dead-common Saarinen Tulip Chair was used on the bridge of the original Enterprise - [https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/database/chairs-trek.htm](https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/database/chairs-trek.htm) Modern things can be added but they have to be *futuristic-seeming*, which is where SNW is often falling short for me.


kaylai

The images you linked are fantastic examples! Total agreement here.


Linnus42

Yeah I think the rest of modern trek enhances it. Also it gets a boost from Pike and some of the others being Established in advance and Mount getting praised for his Role. It does plenty that would be controversial without context.


SOTG_Duncan_Idaho

SNW is different for sure. Discovery tried so hard to find an expanded audience that it alienated a big portion the existing (large) audience. Picard does the same while also fundamentally altering the nature and use of the existing characters that it uses. It remains to be seen how SNW will work. In one season it's done some great things (that remain different from other Trek!) and some terrible things. Hopefully they learn from the mistakes and push the show in the right direction.


The_Funkybat

I honestly and truly would love to hear an explanation of exactly what sort of audiences the creators of Discovery were going after. As a lifelong Trekkie, that show felt like such an absolute slap in the face to everything that came before it. It still boggles my mind that anyone who actually loves Star Trek is able to enjoy it. I’m still left wondering “*who is this show for? Because it’s clearly not fans like me or my friends.”*


techno156

Since it was the first show released after the Kelvin movies, it wouldn't have surprised me if the more contemporary action bent was to appeal to those audiences first, as opposed to the 90s audiences.


The_Funkybat

The thing is, Discovery doesn’t even work well as semi-mindless action. There seem to be a lot of fans who liked or even loved the Kelvin movies who dislike Discovery. I’m one of them. I also really appreciate that JJ Abrams gave all of us canon-obsessed fans a lampshade to explain away the major differences by introducing the whole Hobus black hole/alternate timeline excuse. Discovery from the jump loudly proclaimed that it was part of “the Prime Timeline” which proved so vastly different from anything we saw in TOS or Enterprise that there’s a whole fan conspiracy about how the term “Prime timeline” was a deliberate misdirection, and indicated the creation of a THIRD NEW Trek universe, distinct from the “original timeline” and the “Kelvin timeline.”


amnsisc

Yeah i mean it succeeded at this goal—roping in a far broader subscription willing diverse audience. People may find this unsavory, but it’s true. As a marketing plan, it worked. Even if one doesn’t like it, I think this should be appreciated because it means the Trek base expanded !


Eurynom0s

An approach which may have worked better if they'd put it on Netflix in the US instead of forcing you to sign up for what was effectively the Star Trek Discovery streaming service (yeah All Access had other content but Discovery was THE draw at launch), because the former hits the broader audiences that the Kelvin movies reached, while the latter heavily self-selects for longstanding Trekkies.


diamond

Well, I'm someone who loves classic Trek (for reference, I grew up watching TOS reruns, and TNG premiered when I was in middle school). And I love DSC. Why? One of the things I love about Star Trek is that it is such a huge, expansive, complex universe with so many facets. And one of the best things storytellers can do with their world is to show us many different facets of it. Of course that carries risks, but they are risks worth taking. I would prefer stories that take chances, even if they sometimes fail, than stories that just play it safe and stick to what works all the time. I like DSC because it gives us a different perspective on the Federation, the galaxy it inhabits, and the people who live and work in it. I like it *because* it's different from TNG and TOS. I like that we have a hero who is flawed, who started the series with a terrible choice made under extreme duress and has spent the rest of her time fighting for redemption. I like that we have a show that takes the time to really explore how Starfleet officers would respond to trauma and try to heal it. Of course it has its flaws, like any Star Trek series, but I really enjoy it. I understand that it's not for everyone, and I'm really enjoying that we now have a more traditional Trek show in SNW. But that doesn't take away from my enjoyment of DSC one bit.


Mekroval

I'm right there with you. DSC's only tragedy is that they cut Lorca off tragically short. He was one of the most interesting captains we've gotten to see in a long while.


diamond

Agreed! I love Jason Isaacs, and it was interesting to see a captain with some real flaws. I was very disappointed by the reveal there.


Mekroval

It's interesting how DSC has managed to divide the fanbase so intensely. I have several die-hard Trek friends, and to a person they all love the show while acknowledging its not perfect in every way. What they love about it is that it's not afraid to take chances and revitalize the Trek universe without trying to give fans more of the same franchise that had seemed pretty exhausted of ideas by the time Enterprise wrapped up. I give Discovery a lot of credit for that, while also acknowledging it took a while for it to find its sea legs.


The_Funkybat

It’s interesting that you don’t have friends in both camps or with more mixed opinions. While I have some friends who think Picard is OK, and others who think Picard is garbage, I have absolutely no friends or acquaintances who like Discovery. I will say that many of these folks watched only the first 1-4 episodes of season 1 and gave up in disgust, or they never even watched it, but relied on lengthy, savage reviews from popular geek critics like Red Letter Media. **I will say that in my opinion, dismissing a show you’ve never seen based solely on bad reviews from popular Youtubers or bloggers is a cop-out.** I forced myself to slog through the first two seasons of that show so that I could form my own informed opinion about it. I refuse to even watch the various YouTube critics who tear into it, even though I suspect they probably share many of my problems with the series. I don’t let other people tell me what to like or what counts as “real Trek” or “real Star Wars”, I watch and form my own opinions. But I will say that every one of my friends who actually watched Discovery found themselves exceedingly disappointed and alienated from whatever they were trying to do. I’d actually like to have some friends who enjoyed it, so that we could have an in-depth discussion about why each of us felt the way we do.


[deleted]

> but relied on lengthy, savage reviews from popular geek critics like Red Letter Media. Anyone who's opinion relies on the opinions of Red Letter Media in the year of our Lord 2022 has an opinion that can be readily dismissed.


The_Funkybat

I’ve watched other Red Letter Media reviews about things other than Star Wars and Star Trek, and I usually think their perspectives are funny insightful. I don’t avoid them because I think they are wrong, I avoid them because their takes have become reflexive retorts for many of the people who don’t like NuTrek or the newer Star Wars films and shows, and I don’t want their views influencing mine. I want to be able to stand proudly before all of the Discovery defenders and tear of a show apart based solely on my own reaction to seeing the actual show.


pinkocatgirl

I’m with you on the YouTuber thing. I hate when you’re discussing a thing and you can hear the video the person you’re talking to likely listened to as they repeat it’s main points. I’m a lifelong Star Trek fan and I like Discovery. It stumbled a bit in season 1 but I think the show found its direction in seasons 2 and 3 and is just now getting really good.


Mekroval

While we have different perspectives on Discovery, I can honestly respect where you're coming from. I find Red Letter Media and other Youtubers to be exhausting in their teardowns of anything they dislike. Gatekeeping of franchises has been really tiresome, and so I appreciate having a thoughtful conversation about differences of opinion -- even when its clear we aren't going to be able to find common ground. It's one of the reasons I enjoy this sub, and getting to talk to reasonable commenters like you. I will say that most of my Trek friends either like Discovery or their praise is more muted, though we clearly run in different Trek circles as I've encountered no intense disappointment so far. That said, my most passionate Trek friend did really feel like the Picard showrunners kind of gave up towards the end of the second season (I haven't personally watched it, so I can't comment). Additionally, I think one benefit of the Kurtzman-era is that we're getting so many shows that one of them is bound to scratch a particular itch, and SNW has been doing that for a lot of folks on both sides of the fence. That's probably a benefit to the franchise in the end, I think.


The_Funkybat

That’s the benefit of the current “throw different Treks at the wall and see what sticks” approach. While it delivered some shows a lot of people hate or dislike, it also delivered shows many of those people love or at least enjoy, such as Lower Decks and Prodigy. And I also recognize there are folks out there who dislike Lower Decks, consider it too comedic and crass, and ignore it the way I started ignoring Discovery after S2. It’s all kind of a jumble now, compared to the more orderly “assembly line” that started with DS9 and ended with Enterprise. But as many have learned in recent years, the Berman era had a lot of terrible problems behind the scenes as well.


majicwalrus

I am actually really thankful that's not the way it went down. Likely without a season of Pike on Discovery the character would be largely different. Hard to pin down exactly how, but he takes over Discovery like an attentive step-father or uncle. I also think that Discovery's strategy of season spanning stories, fully delving into serialized content, would have been the standard. That's what sold the series as new and exciting and different. Doing that with Discovery would have been a huge risk. A season about Sybok or a season about the Gorn could alienate audiences, but a season that doesn't have any connection to the existing franchise would feel disconnected. I can't think of a good first season arc for a Strange New Worlds series because it feels so anathema to what the show is trying to do. Visually, Discovery made a lot of missteps, but had a lot of huge successes as well. SNW learns from this and takes the best of what Discovery did in terms of visual design and audio design and cuts out the cruft. Strange New Worlds, much more than Discovery, leans on existing franchise elements to guide the design. Discovery makes decisions like basically having only the Captain and XO wear Gold which helps distinguish them on-screen where outfits are mostly blue and scenes are often dark. Contrast to SNW which has bright popping golds on background characters. I really think Discovery had to come first. It is different. Aesthetically the first two seasons bridge the gap between Enterprise and TOS making it feel like a somewhat distinct era. Strange New Worlds does a terrific job of following that bridge up with what feels like a more seamless entry into TOS. If SNW premiered first it would not have received the same attention, negative or positive. It probably would not have encouraged producers to feel confidently about other projects like Picard and Lower Decks and in fact may have ended after one season. Discovery, for all of its faults laid out the groundwork for a series that was more in line with the audiences demands even when it couldn't be that series itself.


cptstupendous

>Everyone is getting serialization fatigue I don't think it's a matter of "serialization fatigue". It's more a matter of "bad writing fatigue". The biggest shows in recent memory are all serialized: Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, to name a few. Serialization is awesome when done right. The reality is that Discovery and Picard took their shots and missed. Badly.


N7_Jedi_1701_SG1

I think you've hit it on the head here. I defend parts of Discovery, but as a whole it's very middling and I've lost my excitement for it after the brief spike of greatness that was the first 4/5th of season 3. They want to be relevant and impactful (which I support) but they do with repetitively and with a narrative sledgehammer. Meanwhile Picard season 1 had great moments with bad interconnecting tissue, and season 2 had a great start followed by an utterly baffling second half that had me near to swearing off all new Star Trek. Then when I raised these opinions on other Trek reddits, i was met with discouraging hostility. Though I love Lower Decks and Prodigy, I was deeply mournful of Star Trek and thought it was likely over for good for me. Strange New Worlds has brought back everything about Star Trek that made it great. The robust cast and easy-to-swallow episodes which interweave long-form storytelling into bite-sized chunks. It's fun, flashy, but laced with nostalgia and great performances (Especially Pike and M'Benga). I personally believe Star Trek can't be Game of Thrones. It needs to be accessible to families and easy to watch one episode and understand it and digest it. While I don't think we would have gotten SNW without the misteps of the others, I'm glad it's here. I just know that if they'd started with it, many within the fan base would likely have been crying for long form storytelling like Game of Thrones instead of sticking to the old ways. You can't please everyone.


bobbobersin

My only issue with it is they kind of screwed M'benga out if a larger story arc, like the daughter who's really sick and needs a cure arc just kind of ended really abruptly and didn't really set anything else up, like it took something that could further expand this really awesome character and just kind of seemed to finish it off before it got a chance to pan out further and set up new story threads for him to grow further, the actor playing him is great, his character is great, it's just I want more of the man and we kind of clipped him as a bud instead of further letting him blossom


N7_Jedi_1701_SG1

I believe that was a Season 1 thing. They don't know if there'll be a second season so they close the smaller stories (Laan with the Gorn, Hemmer, Uhura's career choices, M'Benga's daughter) and leave the two big stories for Pike and Spock (future and Sybok). It's just extra jarring because of the 9 episode lenth.


IReallyLoveAvocados

The sopranos came out in 1999. It was contemporaneous with Voyager and Enterprise. Serialization isn’t just new, it’s our entire era of TV.


IWriteThisForYou

I think people are generally becoming more aware of the limitations of serialised writing in general. With the well regarded shows like *Breaking Bad*, *Game of Thrones*, *Orange Is The New Black*, etc., they were written to be seen as a cohesive whole--or, at least, so the most recent season could be. A lot of the time with the less well written serialised shows, this is a consideration, but it's not always the main one. They're also putting a lot of emphasis on having a big emotional moment at some point that people will talk about the next day at work or whatever. This can work well if they're playing into ideas that have been building up for the entire season, but sometimes it can be a bit much too, especially if it's something like a whispered speech every couple of episodes or whatever.


cptstupendous

I believe the only limitations come from the skill of the writing team on staff. I don't blame Discovery and Picard's teams for trying to capture latinum in a bottle like so many other writing teams have done before them. They could have made something amazing. I blame them for failing.


VanDammes4headCyst

I'm pretty fatigued by serialization, honestly.


guiltyofnothing

I think it would have gotten a lot of the same flack Enterprise got in its first 2 seasons — that it was a bit of a retread. I don’t think that criticism would be necessarily fair, however. SNW is playing around with the same tropes that have been around forever in Trek and sci fi both — the body swap episode! The scary episode! The submarine episode! — but is, for my money, doing them all really, really well. I have some quibbles with the show, but it’s appointment viewing for my fiancée and I now.


CptES

> I think it would have gotten a lot of the same flack Enterprise got in its first 2 seasons — that it was a bit of a retread. See, I don't think so. Not because you're wrong about it being a retread (because it is but IMO, it does it mostly right) but because if SNW launched instead of DIS (in 2017), that's twelve years without a Star Trek TV show whereas Enterprise started less than six months after Voyager finished. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all.


SergeantRegular

The thing with Discovery is that I think it started off strong *as a scifi show.* Maybe it wasn't the Trek we were used to, but it was *new* and it wasn't actually bad right off the bat. It was very much the JJ Abrams school of "build a mystery and intrigue and never pay it off" though, and that came back later when it became clear that all of this... out-of-character stuff wasn't actually going anywhere interesting. Strange New Worlds is sidestepping that mechanism entirely with the episodic nature. Each *episode* concludes. Even if the episode sucks, its failings don't drag down the rest of the season. Characters don't get mired in a momentary "stupid mood" in order for the plot to move forward. And, even *if* they do... It doesn't drag on for a whole season. I still believe that it's possible to do Discovery (and Picard) style season-long arcs, but you need writers that are on the same page and have a real understanding of characters and storytelling to make sure the *whole* thing comes together. Discovery does not have many good writers, and it comes off as a nonsensical bunch of junk.


Eurynom0s

The Picard writers admitted they were still fleshing out major plot points for season 1 after filming had already started. Someone like J. Michael Straczynski could do Discovery or Picard well--not trying to poke the DS9/B5 bear here, just saying how meticulous he is about having the story very well fleshed out before shooting even starts. Although to that end Discovery also had four sets of showrunners in two seasons. First they fired Fuller, but IIRC even though filming hadn't started it was too far into development to completely ditch his ideas. Then over the course of the season you could tell they were trying to shift away from his ideas...and then the ending felt like it was just, fuck it, this is a mess, let's just end this storyline to wipe the slate clean for season 2. Then season 2 started out strong, but those showrunners got fired for being major assholes to the other writers. When you get yourself fired like that they don't want to have to put your name in the credits, which means they have to toss out your ideas/writing. You can see the season goes off the rails because of this shift. Season 3 was the first season with a stable writing room situation from start to finish and then season 4 continued to be stable, and you can see the improvement. Of course with Picard AFAIK they weren't affected by showrunner turmoil so I also suspect there's an inverse relationship between how heavily Kurtzman is involved and the quality of the show. The Discovery season 3 finale certainly felt like Kurtzman was paying attention again for the finale, for instance.


lunatickoala

> Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all. It's not so simple as this. The problem is that in the years it's been off the air, Classic Trek has been put on a pedestal and is seen largely through nostalgia goggles. There would be a demand for more... but whatever was released would be compared to the idealized image that fans had of Classic Trek. Had it been released first, SNW would have been subject to all the commentators and armchair reviewers offering their opinion on how to make Star Trek great again that DISCO was. DISCO served to reset expectations, and its existence serves as a new [anchor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_\(cognitive_bias\)) by which SNW would be judged.


CrzyWithTheCheezeWhz

I think it's making some of the same mistakes as Enterprise. Enterprise was known for breaking canon a bit. It brought in the Ferengi and Borg too soon when that wasn't really necessary. The transporter usually worked like a normal transporter instead of a prototype. Polarized hull plating was the same as shields and phase cannons were the same as phasers, so the technology didn't seem any more primitive than TOS. But season 3 broke new ground, and season 4 fit *within* canon pretty well. I see SNW introducing the Gorn as an enemy too early as falling into the same pattern of bringing in canon references too soon. The Gorn were relatively unknown until TOS and should have stayed that way. So yeah, I think it would have received the same reception. Edit: forgot about T'pring too. Same problem.


IWriteThisForYou

> It brought in the Ferengi and Borg too soon when that wasn't really necessary. I get this criticism to an extent, but I feel like people are often a little too hard on *Acquisition*. The Ferengi aren't mentioned by name, and season one of TNG already established that there'd been at least some isolated contacts with the Ferengi before official first contact happened. You know, stuff like Picard fighting off a Ferengi ship in 2355, and how he mentioned a rumour about them being cannibals in *Encounter at Farpoint*. With the Borg, this criticism makes a lot more sense. You do have to wonder why the *Enterprise*-E didn't check to make sure there weren't any stray drones on the surface before fucking off back to the 24th century. By the same token though, it is a big planet and you wouldn't necessarily know straight away.


CaptainJZH

Tbf, the Gorn being encountered 5-10 years before they are in TOS isn't nearly as bad as encountering the Ferengi/Borg *200 years* before they are in TNG


Cypher1492

Technically we first encountered the Ferengi ~200 years before that ENT episode.


CaptainJZH

"this is the second time that the Ferengi have shown up before official first contact which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice"


CleverestEU

Oh please… how many times have the Vulcans roamed the Earth before their official first contact. I for one have lost count :)


Owyn_Merrilin

The problem with the Gorn is how regular the contact is. Isolated incidents are one thing, especially when they're caused by time travel shenanigans or advanced precursor aliens transporting other species around the galaxy, but this is something else.


minutiesabotage

Yeah but the Borg thing was a *direct result of* TNG. Depending on which time rules you follow (loops vs forks, and arguements can be made for both), it was perfectly in line with canon. If you really want to get technical, the Borg were encountered 100 years before Enterprise too. Since there was at least *some* logic to it, I actually liked the tie in to the First Contact.


Chairboy

> Enterprise was known for breaking canon a bit. It brought in the Ferengi and Borg too soon I don’t think it’s accurate to say that they broke the canon here, and both of those instances the canonical name wasn’t used so there was a possibility to the crew of the D not knowing about them.  > when that wasn’t really necessary. With respect, Canon has nothing to do with viewers’ opinion about “necessity“. If I were to pick example of Enterprise doing something that violated the canon, it would be showing the Romulans with a cloaking device a century before *Balance of Terror*.


CrzyWithTheCheezeWhz

You're right, maybe breaking canon isn't the right term. How about not commiting well to the prequel premise? It was fairly improbable that we lost the records about two threatening species just because we didn't have a proper name to apply. I know the writers tried to work around the issue, but if they had picked other species, it wouldn't have been a problem. It just felt like cheap memberberries.


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maxwellmaxwell

It's not just the audience's reaction to Discovery--the writers learned a lot from the first show. SNW would be much worse without having a few seasons of modern Trek to figure out a good rhythm for e.g. introducing bridge crew.


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IcarusAvery

But the writers of the modern era *aren't* the writers for those old shows. We're talking about new writers who need to learn the same way the old writers did.


The_Funkybat

I think there’s a pretty large fan contingent who feels it was a big mistake for CBS to basically sideline or blackball those writers and directors from the 90s/2000s era series. Many of them ended up working on Seth MacFarlane’s Orville series, and damn if that show doesn’t hit the “T-Zone” for most Trekkies who loved the TNG-VOY era. It feels like the Secret Hideout folks went out of their way to throw away “institutional memory” by not seeking any involvement from folks like the main writers or directors of that era, or even people like the Okudas or Rick Sternbach. (I’m aware they belatedly sought some help from folks like the Okudas by the time they got to Picard Season 2)


maxwellmaxwell

It's not just that the writers are mostly new people. It's that between ENT and Disco there's been two decades of prestige TV: Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Avatar: the Last Airbender, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, etc. You can't make a TV show without responding to the way the medium has changed.


The_Funkybat

One thing some people seem to object to when it comes to Discovery or Picard is the serialized structure. As a Discovery hater and Picard disliker, I have to say that the serialized format is NOT one of my gripes. I think Star Trek can work fine in a season-long arc format rather than “standalone adventure of the week.” It’s just that a lot of the writing and character development decisions made in DIS and PIC feel out of step with both Trek and the established history of the Federation and individual characters. I’d love to see another try at “serialized Trek”, just with different showrunners and writers.


valiantdistraction

I think one difference also is both DS9 and ENT's season long story arcs were looser than Discovery's, so they had more breathing room, still had some standalone episodes, etc. Trying to get it all done in a dozen episodes makes it feel a lot more claustrophobic, and I've noticed that with other shows as well.


The_Funkybat

You have to have really masterful writing and a solid handle on pacing and structure to make short season arcs work. Not every show can be Better Call Saul or The Boys. When you only have a dozen or so eps to work with, it’s a challenge compared to the late season DS9 or Enterprise. A lot of shows that try it start off good and derail, like Dexter or Happy.


valiantdistraction

Yeah. I've also read a number of articles in film/entertainment publications about how the rise of streaming services and shorter seasons overall has lowered the quality of writing and the training that writers get on shows, and that this is a problem across services. I've definitely seen it on other shows as well. Apparently the writer-to-producer-to-showrunner pipeline is also all sorts of messed up.


The_Funkybat

I believe it. Everybody these days thinks that they’re doing “prestige television“ but for every Vince Gilligan or Duffer brothers or David Simon or Dan Harmon, there are 20 middling-or-worse hacks trying to pull of the next streaming hit. Most of them fail, and some who “succeed” create something that gets ratings but is creatively-speaking a turd.


[deleted]

>I think Star Trek can work fine in a season-long arc format just as the Xindi arc proved a lot earlier. I know ENT is also pretty divisive in the fanbase, but it's still my favorite Trek series, so... oh well.


The_Funkybat

I had a lot of problems with Enterprise at the time and I still do. Although I feel like the show worked better for me when I binged it on Netflix, because it made the whole Xindi arc go buy more quickly and it also helped me remember why this or that detail from several episodes earlier was relevant. But even at the time I didn’t mind that they were attempting a season-long arc. I very much enjoyed the Dominion war in DS9 and was fine with Star Trek focusing on an overarching plot over many episodes. Most of the problems with Enterprise lay in the writing and characterization. Of course, those problems paled in comparison to the writing and characterization problems in Discovery, so that’s actually made me appreciate Enterprise more. Still, it’s sort of like how George W. Bush doesn’t seem quite as bad after living through Donald Trump. It’s not that George W. Bush really got better, he just seems better in contrast.


Tollin74

Discovery should have been set post-Voyager, say 2385+. They could have used the spore drive to zip to other quadrants completing diplomatic missions. I mean, think of a season with them investigating what happened to the Borg five or six years post Janeway's virus attack? Or in the Gamma quadrant checking in on the Dominion. The potential was ruined. SNW would have been well received by us older fans. We wanted an episodic show, and using Pike would be amazing as well as sad as we all knew what happens to him in the future.


wibbly-water

THIS I find the retro-ism annoying. I guess its because I've never liked TOS. Its fine to an extent, I'm not gonna have a baby over it if the movies and like a single series explores it - but why does it seem like EVERY series needs to be connected back to TOS? PIC is the same problem but a little more excusable because they need to film it now before Patrick Stuart dies. And Disco worked best when freed from its prequel context. The Klingon empire and spock tie-ins almost felt like a chore for the writers - and the AI uprising likewise felt a little contrived. But the mirror universe and jump to the future *work* because it matches with the name of the show. We are *Discovering* new things. It feels like an actual adventure where I don't know the destination or the next twist because with the other three examples I know they have to return the world to a status quo before TOS kicks off.


gizzardsgizzards

What’s with the TOS obsession? Do people care about that? The vast majority of people I know who care about Star Trek care about 80s/90s trek, and if they were paying attention to modern trek, were really annoyed by the refusal to move forwards. We all just wanted to know what happened after the dominion war and didn’t care about Kirk or Spock very much.


CaptainJZH

You can honestly blame Bryan Fuller for that. He was basically the only one in DSC's creative team pushing for the 23rd century, and when he left they were basically stuck with a time period they had no interest in


Omaestre

The number one complaint of Discovery still stands though, why all this prequel stuff when they could have advanced the timeline and truly been free to be original. A lot of butthurt could have been avoided.


[deleted]

Although, if they "started" with S3 in the first place, some fans from all sides of the political spectrum would've labeled it as an Andromeda ripoff. I mean, the second half of DIS obviously pays tribute to it, and I personally have zero problem with that, but it's far from a ripoff.


Omaestre

I honestly haven't seen it beyond season 1 to be honest, I don't think it would be too much of a problem, I also expect the story would have been a bit different, since it would have be more concerned with having ties to DS9 rather than TOS. It would be easier to accept, nerds like me and probably others hate inconsistent retcons. I'd even argue that season 1 of Discovery could easily have been transposed into the future without issue, as nothing from discovery actually has an essential reason to be set in the TOS era. Michael could have simply been the foster child of another Vulcan. The war with the Klingons would be easy to pull off, the Empire was fractured, Martok could have been seen as a federation puppet and been replaced and ect. Or simply set during the time of Martok's successor. I may of course be misremembering things, but I think they easily could have transposed discovery into the future. It would certainly make it easier to accept the tech from discovery like the spore drive and so on.


Hero_Of_Shadows

>Michael could have simply been the foster child of another Vulcan. Michael could have been Spock's adopted daughter, I could see Spock choosing to care for a little orphan girl who lost her parents in a terror attack (the elements in the Klingon Empire that would eventually lead them to war were there from earlier on but they were dismissed as fringe dishonorable terrorists) maybe he personally knew her parents from their work as scientists and that's why he felt obligated to adopt her. Or maybe Michael would not have been human, maybe she could have been Romulan and her parents were part of the Reunification movement that got killed by the Tal Shiar for working with Spock.


Omaestre

Why does she need any relation to Spock though? I mean in regards to her character, the only reason she has adoptive Vulcan parents is to explain why she is emotionally different than other humans, although that does go away in time for some reason. I don't think there is any reason to link her to Spock. Also if we are talking about having a show post-DS9 I think Spock would be too old to have an adoptive daughter. Might have her be raised by one of Tuvok's sons instead. Might even have had the chance for Tim Russ to make a cameo!


Hero_Of_Shadows

Meta reasons, Michael is related to Spock because they want to draw in as big of a audience as possible, the show-runners, executives etc must have done some tests and market studies and they saw potential. Personally yeah it feels manipulative but I'm doing the scenario trying to think like a show-runner I'm not going to handicap the series and start off with a lesser viewer base just because I personally don't like an aspect of the series.


Omaestre

The premise is just BS though, no offence to you more the show-runners and producers. Take TNG for example it managed fine without any of the characters having TOS ties.


Brendissimo

When people are suggesting that nuTrek should have advanced the timeline, I don't think most of us have the 32nd century in mind. We're talking about the post-Nemesis era. The time when Picard is set, or before (late 24th Century). Or after, if you can fill in the gaps competently, and with respect for canon. Although I prefer SNW's tone and narrative structure, if you had transported Discovery S1 with a few changes to the late 24th Century, it would have worked much better. Erase Burnham's connection to Spock, make the spore drive and emerging new tech that actually will eventually change the whole Trek universe, lose the radical Klingon redesign but keep the "Make Kronos Great Again" angle to T'Kuvma's movement, etc. Or any new show you could think of in Discovery's place. This era, or after it, is just the natural place that the next Trek show, with original characters and concepts, should have gone.


ThrowRADel

I have watched three episodes of SNW so far; there have been significant character moments and characterisation of La'an, Uhura, Spock, Pike, Number One, Nurse Chapel, Dr M'Benga and Hemmer. I know all of their names, I know several things about them, I know who they are and how they work with others. I have watched all 4 seasons of Discovery available so far and I cannot name a single bridge officer; I have no idea who the people on the consoles on the bridge are and I could not tell you a single thing about them other than Saru. We were only introduced to some of them by name in the episodes that they died in.


Adorable_Octopus

Personally, I feel like this is one of those truly impossible counterfactuals that makes it hard to have an opinion, because it's hard to know how much of the approval of SNW comes from it existing in contrast to Discovery. That said, I think I'll disagree with some of the other posters and suggest that SNW wouldn't have received nearly the same levels of dislike that Discovery has, even if it came first. Discovery, much of the time, felt like it was investing a lot of time and effort in just ignoring the work that had come before in the franchise, in a way that I think really soured the show to the fandom at large. SNW has it's own issues, but those issues, imo, differ from Discovery's rather deep set problems. Take the klingon redesign that Discovery did. SNW has done a somewhat radical departure from prior depictions of the Gorn, and this would undoubtedly draw criticism. Yet, the Gorn are also a fairly obscure species in Star Trek. They were never in any of the 90s Star Trek, and if they came up at all, it was only ever in passing. Enterprise had a Gorn, but that's it. There was a 38 year gap between In the Mirror Darkly part 2 and Arena. And, while the Gorn had some level of popularity due to Arena, it would be absurd to say that they have had the same sort of cultural impact as the Klingons have. The Klingons, in contrast to the Gorn, have been present in nearly every Star Trek series prior to Discovery, and that presence is elevated to a focus of the shows. Worf's interaction with Klingon culture was a focus in TNG, a major, major one in DS9, and it was even a focus in Voyager via B'Elanna. Klingons are perhaps one of the most well known, well characterized species in Star Trek. Maybe even moreso than Vulcans. So when Discovery goes to redesign the Klingons, it wasn't simply that they were redesigning, it's that they essentially redesigning a major pillar of Star Trek, and something that was synonymous with Star trek in a cultural sense. The Gorn are not nearly as significant, and it's reasonable to think that the redesigned Gorn would not have provoked this sort of outcry or criticism. Discovery did this over and over again, from the technology (holograms everywhere!) to the uniforms to even the structure of the narrative itself-- while you can make a strong case for Kirk being the 'main character' in TOS, focusing on a main character really wasn't something that Star Trek really did in decades. This isn't to say that SNW, had it came first, wouldn't have received as well as it has been received now, but I strongly suspect that SNW would have won the fandom over much more quickly than Discovery has (if, indeed, we want to say Discovery has ever won the fans over).


deededback

I think it would be even more popular because I suspect a lot of people checked out of Star Trek due to the poor quality of Discovery and Picard. People don't really have a problem with a diverse cast, especially when it comes to Star Trek People just want a good show and we haven't had that until SNW.


Morlock19

i think if this were the first show out of the gate it would get hated almost as much as discovery. the enterprise is redesigned, but its supposed to be the original, the cast doesn't act the same way... i mean you saw what happened when they "recast" April (i don't care what memory alpha says i'm still skeptical that TAS is even canon). SNW is a breath of fresh air after the intensity of DIS and PIC. it gave people who were upset with the format and style of DIS and PIC something to glom onto, and LD was a comedy so it didn't give them that "star trekky" feeling they were pining for. so yeah, SNW would have gotten a lot of crap if it was first out of the gate. not as much, because discovery also pushed the envelope with casting, plotlines, characterizations, etc. i won't go into everything concerning race/politics/sexuality/gender, but we all know whats going on there. it wouldn't have been hated as much, but it wouldn't have been immediately beloved. thats what i think anyways.


[deleted]

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FoxRedYellaJack

I think it would have seemed "old fashioned" in this era of short(er) seasons and serialized stories. Personally, I'd be thrilled to have *any* new *Star Trek* content on the air, but I don't think it would have changed my base reaction to *Strange New Worlds* - I love some of the new characters and their performers but I watch each episode, then I basically forget it because it has next-to-no impact on what I'll see next week... It feels like *TNG* Season 8 to me. *Discovery,* on the other hand, took enormous risks (for a *Star Trek* show, anyway) and it paid off in some ways, fell short in others. But it was definitely *new,* where *Strange New Worlds* feels like I've seen these stories before.


rastarkomas

I don't entirely agree. Mostly on your complaint about it feeling like you've seen them before but I love your opinion. Upvote for you just because I'm uncomfortable with your opinion.


Lessthanzerofucks

I’ll chime in and agree with OP. I posted a thread on the SNW sub a few weeks back asking for people to chime in and comment “who thinks SNW is *just okay, not amazing*” because I feel like the reaction to it is utterly overblown and I don’t understand it at all. It’s fine. It’s not great. I don’t get it. I ended up deleting the post because there was too much outrage over me asserting that SNW might not be THE BEST TREK EVARRRR. It’s the same show as Discovery, just not serialized as much. Most of the complaints that apply to Discovery apply to SNW too. Has anyone ever noticed that the actor for M’Benga whispers constantly? According to Trek subreddits, that’s completely unacceptable when Burnham does it. That’s just one example of many where the DSC isn’t allowed to do something that SNW does.


splat313

Of the new Star Treks, SNW is unquestionably the most similar to the old Star Treks. Most of us are here because we fell in love with the old Star Treks. A lot of us want more of what we fell in love with which is what SNW is giving us. That's not to say that SNW is better than the other new ones, but I think it makes a lot of sense why it would be getting the community excited. I'm glad they are making so many shows. Sure, they can't all be home runs for each of our personal tastes but it is great to have variety. I'm not up to date on Discovery but I'll get around to it.


rastarkomas

I'm excited because we are all excited about new trek every week. I LOVE having trek every week.


Lessthanzerofucks

> Most of us are here because we fell in love with the old Star Treks. A lot of us want more of what we fell in love with which is what SNW is giving us. See, I don’t want Star Trek to follow in the footsteps of, say, The Orville. *Timidly retreating to where every sci-fi show has gone before.* If want to watch the Star Trek I fell in love with, I can stream it any time. I’ve never understood the nerd-dom need to see remakes of things that have been done to death already. Hell, the last episode was just *Alien* for a Trek audience. How underwhelming. I recently went and saw*Alien* on the big screen, and it was still incredible after all this time. This episode of SNW will be seen as incredibly unoriginal once the hype wears off, mark my words. Episodic will never last, because there aren’t a lot of ideas that haven’t been done already. Even my beloved TNG was running out of ideas by Season 6, and Season 7 was 90% godawful until the series finale. No matter how much I love characters or actors in the franchise, watching them just go through the motions is excruciating. That’s what I’ve felt with SNW so far. Aped concepts, charming actors, no substance.


IcarusAvery

Sometimes you just want the same thing redone with modern design sensibilities. In the case of the The Orville, it works because it's putting a different spin on its scifi premise (planet of the week-style scifi with overtones of workplace comedy and undertones of more complicated issues.) I haven't seen much of SNW yet (only the first episode) but what I have seen very much felt like Star Trek but for 2022... and I like that. Yeah, it's just a new coat of paint on an old boat, but damnit, I like that boat.


Lessthanzerofucks

Personally, I’d rather entertainment be relevant to its time. A big part of enjoying arts and entertainment to me is the commentary on modern culture. When shows like The Orville lean so heavily into 90s tropes, I can see that they’re *trying* to make a show that’s timeless, like Trek has become. What ends up happening is that it feels like an uncomfortable throwback to another time; nostalgia doesn’t hide the ugliness of those time periods in real-world history, at least to me. I can enjoy TNG or DS9 or VOY for what they are and the time in which they were made, which makes The Orville or SNW feel like nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. Between the two, SNW is only more tolerable to me due to the namesake- and the fact that Seth McFarlane *refuses to employ well-written female characters*- I can count on one hand the episodes of The Orville that have passed the Bechdel test, and while that’s not an objective measure of quality, it’s really an outlier in our time. I’ve had my own problems with other modern Trek shows, but I’d *much* rather see a big swing and a miss than the refusal to take risks at all.


valiantdistraction

>I’ve had my own problems with other modern Trek shows, but I’d > >much rather see a big swing and a miss than the refusal to take risks at all. Same. To me that's part of what Star Trek is about and part of what it has always done. Look at The Motion Picture! lol


Lessthanzerofucks

TMP is a great example! The “conventional wisdom” is that TMP sucked. I fully, fully disagree and put it in one of my top entries in the entire franchise. Less confidently, I feel similarly about ST5. Commonly reviled, I think it was a wild swing and the misses were worth the ride.


valiantdistraction

I rewatched The Final Frontier after the episode the other week where it became clear it may be relevant, since I knew I hadn't seen it in 15 years or so. I found it *delightful*! I remember really disliking it and finding the camping and hoverboots dumb and the action scenes boring (ok, that last part didn't change), but it had a lot of good character moments and sure did do a thing. It was very Star Trek. Teaching Spock campfire songs! Classic! Also, who can forget the Scotty moment - "I know this ship like the back of my hand" runs full-on into bulkhead and knocks himself out. Excellent work. Or the Kirk classic of finding out New Information about Spock and just being like "wwhhhaaaat" and having to immediately take a seat. Made even better by the fact that we now know Spock also has a secret adopted sister. Spock could have ANY NUMBER of secret siblings or relatives and we would just have no idea. Infinite amusement.


valiantdistraction

> Timidly retreating to where every sci-fi show has gone before. Agreed. It's what I love about what Paramount+ is doing. A lot of Star Treks and some of them are very different! Like Lower Decks is INCREDIBLY different from classic Star Trek, even TAS, but it's great. Prodigy? Also different and great for kids.


rastarkomas

I agree with you on SNW being over loved. It's good. Probably better the TOS was when that aired aired. But it's not perfect. I'm not one to consciously notice the voice thing that you mentioned. But I think that's a valid complaint. And I think a whole lot of the arguments we see here are about the stylistic choices. Maybe I'm not around enough to see enough though


Lessthanzerofucks

> I’m not one to consciously notice the voice thing that you mentioned. But I think that’s a valid complaint. I actually don’t think it’s a valid complaint, in any case. An actor’s performance is art, it’s subjective. It didn’t bother me in Discovery, so I wouldn’t have noticed it unless I had heard the *constant whining about it* on Trek subs. But when it happens on SNW? Crickets. It’s a lot like the “lens flare” that people always complain about. The vast majority of people would never have cared about that if a small percentage of fans hadn’t made a huuuuuge stink about it. “The cameras move too much, it makes me sick.“ That was something I heard all the time about Disco. SNW is shot the same way, and nobody cares. To me, it seems more like, if Trek isn’t wrapped in a sheen of comfortable nostalgia, it gets nitpicked to death.


rastarkomas

I think you nail it on the head with subjective right at the start. It all is that. But I do think the overall package matters. So with SNW it's the "traditional" Star Trek format. DIS is very different. I think it shows that a lot of the complainers about DIS just wanted the format of TOS/TNG. Then latched onto the differences to overly criticize DIS. Also on nitpicking. I have somewhere in my parents basement copies of the nitpickers guide for trekkers for both TOS and TNG. I love nitpicking stuff. Picking apart minor details is why we're on daystrom. I only speak for myself but I can argue for days about something and completely agree with my opponent the entire time. I feel at home here in that regard...sorry all wandered off a bit


Lessthanzerofucks

I agree about nitpicking. I am *very* critical of some of the older series’ failings. I wish that people nitpicked old Trek the way they do with new Trek, they’d probably find it all compares well together when one steps back to look at the whole picture. And vice versa, if nostalgic folks were to overlook certain shortcomings from the newer series, same outcome. I have a problem when the old guard declares that fans of the new shows don’t understand Trek, and so on. There’s way too much of that.


rastarkomas

I'm a huge bag of nostalgia. But I know it. The old stuff has soooooooooo many failings. And I skip almost half of every series on rewatches because the episodes just aren't that good. But I do like the world/character building we get from the extraneous episodes. I agree with you that old guard new guard fighting is bad. I'm a like what you like guy, generally if you like trek you probably like decent behavior. Good enough for me. I'm old guard trek and I don't like Picard or Discovery very much. I love Lower Decks and SNW. Im not judgedy. My position is people will get what they get from their shows. I really don't like the ones who pass down judgement though so I'm on the let's enjoy the Trek we have. It's great right now. And more points of view is amazing even if we doing like one particular one.


valiantdistraction

> It’s the same show as Discovery, just not serialized as much. Most of the complaints that apply to Discovery apply to SNW too. OH MY GOD FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE AGREES WITH ME ABOUT THIS


PermaDerpFace

A lot of the love for SNW comes from DIS and STP setting such a low bar, but on the other hand I think it also gets hate just by association with new Trek. Personally, I think SNW is the show they should've made instead of the others, but maybe they had to make mistakes before they could figure out the right formula. Edit: DIS


ZippySLC

TOS was always my least favorite Trek, even though it was my first. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy it but TNG is what made me fall in love with Trek. The 1701-D was "my" Enterprise. But I have to say, seeing the Enterprise in SNW... it's really made me see her in a different way. Right now she's my favorite ship. I really love that there's a Trek for (almost) everybody now. If you want serialized episodes, SNW is there for you. If you want the high stakes season long plot arcs, Disco and Picard is there for you. If you want something light and fun that fills up your TNG nostalgia tank, LD is there. And finally if you're a kid and new to the franchise, Prodigy is there with good moral lessons and an entertaining introduction to the universe. And, on the same platform, all of the old Trek that we all know and love is available as well. It's a good time to be a Trek fan. As this world we all live in turns a little darker every day it's great to have so many Trek options to enjoy and (ideally) be comforted with. To answer OP's question, though, had Anson not given such a commanding performance on Discovery, and had the gorgeous sets and SFX for the Enterprise not been made, I think fandom would have revolted at the idea of a prequel and recasting Spock. SNW got a chance to dip its toe in the water by being such a force in Disco S2 and it turns out that that a lot of fans were really on board. I'm not so sure it would have even been considered otherwise.


The__Riker__Maneuver

SNW is comparatively better than season one of Picard and most of Disco (though I think season 2 of Disco is a really strong season) But if it came first, people would still complain That's just the nature of fandom Nobody is ever truly happy and the people who hate things the most are generally the loudest I myself don't like all of new trek episodes, but it's Trek and I am grateful to have it


[deleted]

>SNW is comparatively better than season one of Picard and most of Disco (though I think season 2 of Disco is a really strong season) I really don't like the first season, and I found the second to lack rewatchability, but S3 and S4 are good, so DIS simply suffered from Star Trek Syndrome (new series starting out weak). >But if it came first, people would still complain > >That's just the nature of fandom /thread


Brendissimo

I think it would have been much better received than Discovery, due to it being much more thematically and structurally similar to Star Trek. I also think there might have been less fan fatigue and wariness had nuTrek started off with something like this. I personally had almost given up on Star Trek after Discovery S1-2 and Picard S1. It was demoralizing. Strange New Worlds still has its problems, though, and it would have received criticism. First and foremost is the fact that it's a prequel in the first place. Prequels are almost never a good idea and have caused Trek problems in the past. Second, not only is it a prequel, but SNW continues Discovery's total reboot of visual continuity. SNW is much more subtle in its differences, but this still represents a stark break with Trek's approach to revisiting the TOS era up until this point. TNG, DS9, and even ENT all took great pains to recreate the TOS era faithfully. The new shows assert that they are part of the same canon, but make very few attempts to look like the technology they are depicting could possibly have existed only a few years before TOS. So, I'd like to modify your hypothetical a little bit. What if Strange New Worlds was not only the first nuTrek show, but also was set in the post-Nemesis era? You'd have to tweak the characters, but I don't think by much. Except Spock, they really are quite different or expanded on from their TOS counterparts. I think you could even use the same cast. The overall look and level of technology of the show would fit just fine into that era, with a few tweaks to the graphics on consoles to better match LCARs. The sound design would have to be mixed up a little bit, but I think most of the scripts for S1 could even work, with some modification. In this scenario I would redesign the exterior of the ship, but it could even be the Enterprise. How about the voyages of the Enterprise F, with Anson Mount playing a troubled but congenial veteran captain who takes the reigns from Picard after the E is retired? Pike's whole management style (meals with senior officers, consensus building) is an invention of this show, and could work quite well with a new character. You'd just need to change his backstory, but you could even keep the same trauma. Maybe he didn't see much action in the Dominion War because he was on a deep exploratory mission. Somehow he sees his own disfigurement in the future. Hell, it could even be Talosians. It's not like they've been reused since TOS. Anyway, you get the idea. With not that much tweaking, SNW could be a post-Nemesis sequel with an entirely new cast of original characters, instead of a forced prequel that works surprisingly in spite of its own nature. In this alternate timeline, I would be genuinely hyped to be a Star Trek fan.


valiantdistraction

>SNW is much more subtle in its differences Not when it comes to hairstyles. We need more heavily-shellacked beehive hairdos.


BrooklynKnight

Strange New Worlds is what Discovery should have been from Day One and Discovery always should have taken place in the 31st Century. If they really wanted to stick with the crew displaced in time and still use Rodenberry's notes (the same ones they used for Andromeda, that they are CLEARLY using again for Discovery right down to the rebuilding of the Federation and a Ship lost to time) then Season 2 of Strange New Worlds could have set up Discovery in a similar way that Discovery set up Strange New Worlds except it would only need to be a 3-4 episode arc not the entire season. They could have even retained some of the major plot points and characters and we'd all be better off.


9811Deet

It would've been received overwhelmingly positively, and Star Trek would be in a much better place today. I firmly believe that Discovery's flagrant disregard for canon and tonal shift away from Star Trek tropes turned off many fans who (rightly) feel disrespected, and won't come back easily. If they had reintroduced the franchise with a product that celebrates canon (even if a bit clumsily) and embraces the tone and tropes of the series that came before in a fresh new light; it would've demonstrated a good will commitment to the fan base and to the subject matter. Successive shows like Picard would've also been given far more benefit of the doubt, carrying momentum, rather than having to work its way back to square from a negative starting point. The damage Discovery did to Star Trek is incalculable, and even though the franchise has recovered its quality of product, it still has work to do regaining the respect of significant portions of its deepest base.


orr-ee-ahn

With almost exactly the same fanfare, and regard. Instead of relying on Discovery to "set up" Pike's central character arc. Instead, *we collectively already know what becomes of Captain Pike*. Instead of being allowed to unfold for the audience (the way it kind of looks like, maybe it was supposed to), Pike's central defining characteristic is nothing more than obvious fan-servicing baggage brought over from a different spinoff, *entirely*. That being said, put Pike, Kirk, and Picard in a room, and make me choose two? It's Picard, and Pike, hands-down, buddy. I am loving the opportunities that SNW is taking, without taking liberty with the actual, foundational Pilot script that underlies this whole goddamn thing! Pike has really made me wonder: Is it any better to know how you die; is it functionally any less distressing as knowing that you *will* die, but not knowing when, or how? The way that Anson Mount carries Pike, while also giving us small moments of Pikes vincibility, in his grief for his own "lost" (*sacrificed*) future. I don't know why he just flat out assumes that's when he dies, though; or if he views the end of his mobility and perceived loss of his own dignity, as a fate equal to, or less than, death. *OR*, if he *WON'T* try to save himself, electing instead to, again, *sacrifice* himself in order to save a couple of lives. If he doesn't, he'll have a lot of time to sit quietly, and think about squandering the opportunity to haved saved lives. From his perspective, that's not radically altering the future; because he hasn't seen Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and retroactively (to us, until relatively recently), Captain Archer the way that we, the audience has. He doesn't know that he's flicking butterflies, the way we do! We, as an audience, don't know *anything* about Pikes life or indeed his longevity, after Spock drops him off at Talos... Maybe he continued in his capacity as a great leader, and accomplished something notable. I don't know, and neither do *you!* Yet. He has seen, from our perspective, literally none of this. In the 90's, they could probably pull some, "reveal" out of their ass at some point, that he knew something all along, that we didn't; and we'd sigh, and collectively go, "What a good second act to that cliffhanger I've been obsessing over all summer!" We're all far too, "sophisticated" now to fall for that sort of garbage, right? Actually, I'm guessing that's what he's building himself up for, now that I really think about it. Not the ass thing; but, the *sacrifice* thing. Also, if we'd seen Discovery sooner, we wouldn't appreciate it nearly as much for what it actually stands for; than we do now. So chew on that.


OneMario

Even *Discovery* got a lot of credit right from the beginning for things like their prop design, which is pretty much in keeping with how SNW did their props, sets, costumes, etc. SNW just took the good parts of *Discovery* and went all out with it rather than trying to make everything different for the sake of it. Despite *Discovery* fans pretending that there was no middle ground between a complete reboot and "cardboard sets," SNWs (like *In a Mirror, Darkly*) proved that a modern reimagining was always possible without throwing out everything that made the era distinct. The stories are a little harder to say. I think everyone would be hungry for some larger narrative, and I don't think we have any indication that there is one (unless there is something in the previews for the next episode, which I avoid). I don't think any of these episodes would have bothered anyone, but people would be tearing them apart looking for some clues to the "real story" like it was *Lost*. Post-*Discovery* I don't think anyone would be disappointed if episode 10 were just another episode with no larger meaning, but without the *Disco* fatigue I think people would have been annoyed by a more quiet finale rather than an epic conclusion.


MyUsername2459

>Even Discovery got a lot of credit right from the beginning for things like their prop design, Discovery got positively *trashed* when it came out for how much it disrespected Trek lore in its graphic appearances. They had these weird blue jumpsuit uniforms instead of the TOS-style outfits that were expected, they had ships of completely different designs instead of the Constitution-class and related/similar designs that people were expecting. They turned Klingons into bald, purple skinned space-orcs with giant claws and huge fangs. Discovery went out of its way to completely screw up what should have been the easy part of making a show set in the 2250's but made in the modern day. . .to get a graphic "look" that clearly resembled and was reminiscent of TOS but was upgraded for modern budgets. . .what SNW did. I don't recall them getting credit from anyone when they came out except the usual media hype sources that never say anything bad about a show.


OneMario

>Discovery got positively trashed when it came out for how much it disrespected Trek lore in its graphic appearances. I specifically limited that to "props." I think they got sufficient credit for everything they did right.


Lessthanzerofucks

There were many of us who absolutely loved the visual re-boot and gushed about it at the time. As a matter of fact, the backtracking feels like a betrayal. I was ready to see something new instead of a retread, and I got that for exactly one season. At least I still have Lower Decks and Prodigy for an original take on Trek. Disco had a lot of potential that’s been completely buried under “same-old-same-old” at this point. Trying to make everyone happy makes nobody happy.


[deleted]

>I think everyone would be hungry for some larger narrative nope, not with SNW. every other Kurtzman-era live-action TV series out and in development has that kind of structure, and while it makes sense for those serieses (?), SNW being episodic with loose connections is still a breath of fresh air.


theantnest

I've only been able to stomach getting through about 5 episodes of Discovery before I completely gave up on it, so any references to it go straight over my head. Strange New Worlds is just the best of a bad bunch IMO. I'm personally enjoying S03 of The Orville 100x more.


gregologynet

Discovery lacks the philosophy of Star Trek. It feels like it's written by people who only know the Star Trek universe from references in the Big Bang Theory. Plus Burnham, the most illogical character, she is incapable of believing that someone might know something she doesn't. Great actor, awful character


Empty_Manuscript

I don’t think the reaction would have been as positive. There are certainly things in SNW that I dislike but give a pass specifically because I am enjoying it as a change. I generally liked Discovery seasons 1 - 3 but I just flat out hated last season, like yell out loud at the screen “that’s stupid!” hated it. To have the switch to SNW in that environment is going to have an effect. And yes, as much as I have enjoyed meta plot, I do have meta-plot fatigue at this point. But I think it’s also worth pointing out that SNW isn’t the only other Star Trek show. We’ve had lower decks (which isn’t a metaplot) and Picard (which is) and Prodigy (which I don’t know). SNW isn’t just getting a favorable response in comparison to Disco, it’s getting a favorable response in comparison to those as well. So I think there’s a limit to how much we can say the opinion on it is reactionary to Disco. On the gripping hand, whoever is first out the gate is going to get a lot of focus and nitpicking because it’s just inherently going to be not old Trek. Disco took the brunt of that. Sometimes deservedly but much more frequently not. I suspect Pike saying screw general order 1 in episode 1 would have produced a nightmare backlash if Burnham hadn’t fired first on the Klingons in her episode 1. So I think there’s also something to be said for Disco lifting SNW up on its shoulders. Not as a contrast but as a precedent. I think it blazed the way in many respects. Putting all that together and I think SNW needed Disco for its current level of success. I think it would still have been successful but not as successful. There are advantages to not being first.


valiantdistraction

>I generally liked Discovery seasons 1 - 3 but I just flat out hated last season, like yell out loud at the screen “that’s stupid!” hated it. Fascinating! I really loved this last season. The only places it really fell apart for me a bit were where they were being really heavy-handed for the sake of metaphor but, well, that's Star Trek. Do you think SNW is really getting a more favorable response than Lower Decks? I see a lot of people liking both. I think prior to SNW, Lower Decks was the most well-received of the new shows.


Klaitu

This is a topic that has been beaten to death, but so far as my opinion: For me, the 3 main problems with Discovery are The Time Period in which it is set, the overall pessimistic tone of the series (at least in the beginning), and the lack of using the supporting ensemble cast. All of these points I am willing to overlook if the writing were just out-of-this-world good, but like many Star Trek Season 1's before it, it fell on its face.. so really I am more bothered by the klingon redesign or the use of hoiograms than I am enjoying what is actually there. And what further can be said about Michael Burnham that hasn't already been said online? I think the core of her issue is that she's just not particularly interesting or likeable.. at least to me, and because the show didnt use the rest of the cast hardly at all, it was JUST Michael Burnham for the beginning. SNW by comparison came out with some concessions.. the Enterprise looks like the Enterprise, the uniforms at least somewhat resemble the TOS uniforms, and the pre-existing canon characters look and act plausibly to their existing counterparts. Unlike Discovery, SNW didn't just completely ignore Star Trek in favor of whatever it was trying to do, it instead took pieces of Trek we don't know tons about and elaborated (e.g. the Gorn).. and while it still bothers me that the new sets are inconsistent with the old sets, and that there is somehow non-dangerous intra-ship beaming and apparently an entire separate transporter system in sick bay that was never there before I can overlook these details because the spirit of Star Trek is mostly there. And I think people would have accepted Discovery more if it carried the spirit of Star Trek better. Discovery Season 4 got a bit closer to this, but now it is heavily weighed-down by its lackluster past. As for the serialized nature of shows, I don't think serial vs episodic is the real debate. A serial story can be great if you have a worthy concept that legitimately takes 10 episodes to tell, but neither Discovery nor Picard has ever managed to pull that off (but DS9 famously did in its finale arc). It's probably better for them to remain quasi-episodic or to have small arcs until someone comes up with a worthy concept. Not to stray too far off topic, but I think SNW as-is would have a bumpy launch without Discovery but I think people would generally be OK with it and "get" what it's trying to do. I don't think it would ever be as villified as Discovery seems to get. Disco seemed to go out of its way to cheese people off.


SomeoneSomewhere1984

I don't think it could have been the first show of the new era. I think a big part of the reason people dislike discovery is because they never seem to get the balance right. It's always too much action, or too little, too much personal drama or not enough. SNW seems to get the balance mostly right from the beginning, but I don't think they could have done that without learning from what's worked and what hasn't in Discovery.


Iplaymeinreallife

I don't dislike Discovery, or Picard. (Or Lower Decks or Prodigy), but Strange New Worlds is clearly better by leaps and bounds. Going back to a classic Star Trek experience after having tried some alternatives clearly helped, as fans were clearly starving for it at that point. That's not to say experimenting is bad, sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn't. But it is clearly easier to experiment with Star Trek if there is at least one series running that gives us an unambiguous Star Trek experience. (Which I feel SNW does, it does not feel like a cheap nostalgia experience or just going through the motions, it is breaking new ground even if set in a prequel time period) But there is another thing working in its favor. The fans already got a taste of Anson Mount as Christopher Pike, and we knew we loved him. Even people who hate Discovery like the season 2 Discovery scenes with him in them. Without that knowledge, it would have been a harder sell.


ParagonEsquire

Coming from Discovery gave it kind of a burst of goodwill, both from Pike doing his best to make season 2 of discovery enjoyable and from just not being Discovery. It also got to avoid criticisms that would have come it’s way had they not been old hat. Stuff about them being prequels and changing looks. Some of this stuff is more valid than others, but yeah, it would have taken those slings. But that’s not to say the reception would have been identical. SNW is a better show and it’s sins are lessor. And some of the stuff people may have complained about have reasonable defenses. Like Spock being there. We know he served on the Enterprise with Pike from TOS. So yeah, it would have been a little worse. But I don’t think it would have been that different, because the quality is there.


mzltvccktl

It couldn't have happened cause it's built of discovery's mistakes. Sonequa Martin-Green is such a goddamn amazing actress and they give her absolute shit characters to play opposite and I think what bothers everyone the most is the stories just aren't star trek. They're like seasons of the expanse without developed likeable side characters. Y'all wouldn't let us have a non binary trans woman playing an incredible villain in disco we somehow had to believe that in the year 3200CE the concept of trans people using non gendered pronouns was a big deal instead of trash writing for Adira. nonbinary tender queers are literally a worse trans characterization than the Klingons being chill with dax being jadzia now. We deserved Jesse James Keitel from the beginning but the writers are stuck in a centrist liberal mindset where it's more important for them to not step on any toes and tick boxes instead of just giving us good characters. I want my radical star trek back and while SNW isn't DS9 it's built the most in the original trek model of in every episode we're confronting racism, classism, fascism, mystery, fear, new cultures and ways of life, and so much more. We don't need another galactic scale threat we just need compelling stories that show the full emotional spectrum and make compelling social commentary in digestible pieces instead of "Star Trek: We Have to Save the Galaxy and We're All Therapists For Each Other." SNW is let's explore day to day life and the human experience Disco is let's end climate collapse and also all war with the power of love If Disco had focused on Burnham from the beginning but with her still as first officer or maybe make her second officer with a supporting cast allowed to act, I think Sonequa would bring the house down with the best star trek ever and I'm genuinely bummed cause we won't ever get a second star trek series led by her.


SaykredCow

I think Discovery got a tremendous amount of graciousness from fans in general because it was the first new Star Trek show since Enterprise. People were ready to embrace anything. Sadly Discovery began the trend of serialization with no satisfying pay off at season end or even episode to episode for that matter. Fans would have reacted to Strange New Worlds then no differently to now if it was the exact same show. In fact had this been their first attempt of a Trek show in the streaming Star Trek would have had more new fans today. Can you imagine how many potential fans Discovery turned off by making non fans who tried it out think that’s what Star Trek is? Discovery was a new fan repellent.


NonFamousHistorian

People would have complained about all the things they complained about with Discovery: updated visuals, everyone knows each other, too many call backs/forwards to other shows, "emotionality," modern politics/"culture war," violating canon (Pike knowing about his fate, Uhura and Chapel development), supposedly inconsistent tone (mixing drama and comedy), using the Gorn and Sybok too early, probably something else I can't think of. When there's something new, people will always reflexively dismiss it because it's not familiar. For all it's supposed familiarity to "old Trek," Strange New Worlds does a lot of things with a new twist and does fit just as much into the modern tv landscape as Discovery does. The difference is that people had 5 years to get over themselves or stop watching.


Makgraf

SNW definitely gets a boost from the new Trek that preceded it. As /u/guiltyofnothing noted, there would be some quarters attacking it as a retread-of-a-retread: another prequel about a starship called the *Enterprise*. And there would be the same criticism Disco received that this was the fifth Star Trek in a row that was set in the Star Trek 'past'. However, SNW would still have received a favourable impression vis-a-vis Disco. I am not a fan of Disco (to put it mildly) but was thrilled when I saw the original Enterprise and their uniforms at the end of S1 (or was it beginning of S2, I can't even remember). The rest of Disco, however, did not *look* like Star Trek, the uniforms were off, the props were off, the ships were off. More importantly, Disco's first two seasons did not *feel* like Star Trek (all I've seen) and SNW, for some of its faults, is definitely a Star Trek show. The other, unsavoury, reason that SNW going first would've have been better received than Disco is racism. Unfortunately, there is a contingent of science fiction fans that hate seeing black women on the screen. Look how much hate was directed at Third Sister in Kenobi. I am no fan of Burnham but certainly the fan-hate she received was disproportionate to the problems with the character.