The civil war story makes zero sense with a dsc protag because they would just not be ok with it all. But if you play as a kdf then it's serviceable if rushed.
It's not great on the Romulan side, she gets a nice dialog of planning to crush the Republic under the Klingon Empire's heel to at least a Fed-aligned Rom in one of the pre Khitomer Discord missions.
Sort of was hoping the last cutscene would end with beaming out, with a bomb left behind in the Great Hall removing EVERY major militaristic figure left in the Empire, but eh, that's life.
the Klingon leaders present (apart from J'Ula and L'Rell) would have heirs and those heirs might not be present at the First City during that time, so all you'd accomplish with that is made many new Klingon leaders who are very pissed off with you, oh and united because of it.
A single bomb cannot remove every militaristic figure with in the Klingon Empire due to its very nature. Sure J'Ula talked about crushing the Romulans and the Federation before she got a massive reality check and she's not stupid enough to not realize that her current position is potentially earned thru a help of major Romulan or UFP hero who would obviously be more loyal to their nations then to her, in fact FED characters (and IIRC Fed-allied ROM/JH) made it clear she's to them just the lesser of 2 evils not a friend.
the Klingon leaders present (apart from J'Ula and L'Rell) would have heirs and those heirs might not be present at the First City during that time, so all you'd accomplish with that is made many new Klingon leaders who are very pissed off with you, oh and united because of it.
A single bomb cannot remove every militaristic figure with in the Klingon Empire due to its very nature. Sure J'Ula talked about crushing the Romulans and the Federation before she got a massive reality check and she's not stupid enough to not realize that her current position is potentially earned thru a help of major Romulan or UFP hero who would obviously be more loyal to their nations then to her, in fact FED characters (and IIRC Fed-allied ROM/JH) made it clear she's to them just the lesser of 2 evils not a friend.
This has me wondering about the viability of the Alliance moving forward. How much stability is there within the Klingon Empire and the greater alliance as a consequence of this chaos? This thread specifically addressed J'ula in terms of body count and it avoid the real issue, as well as sanitizing her behaviour. She doesn't belong here. Where was Daniels, The Pastak, the Alliance predicated on playing temporal police? If anyone was killed by someone native to our timeline maybe they were supposed to die. When the crew of a space station and figures from an era suddenly die (and J'mpok in his position as head of state) doesn't that seem like an incursion? I've only played the last couple seasons from a Klingon perspective and the exposition has been terrible. Mission briefs were partially delivered as holo simulations through the Discovery arc with the latter debriefs feeling like all bets were off and J'mpok was having a laugh at the state of the story as he broke the fourth wall. Did the Federation story bookending these missions do a better job of clarifying what was happening? J'mpok was an effective if not likeable Chancellor. From the onset he was depicted as having some skeletons in his closet but he had a pretty good run. Even Martok respected him for his martial and political prowess (And he defeated him man on man, even if he magically recovered from his mortal wounds). The heel turn was so over the top it would have made Vince Rousseau blush.
> @horridperson said: > She doesn't belong here. Where was Daniels, The Pastak, the Alliance predicated on playing temporal police? If anyone was killed by someone native to our timeline maybe they were supposed to die. When the crew of a space station and figures from an era suddenly die (and J'mpok in his position as head of state) doesn't that seem like an incursion?
Unless she does belong there in one of those 'meant to happen' sort of ways
Unless she does belong there in one of those 'meant to happen' sort of ways
If that were the case there would be no lack of exposition. Walker and Daniels wouldn't have shut up.
Only if there was reason to tell anyone, the FED AoD is treated as "meant to happen" by Daniels so there no reason to assume J'Ula is different, it's not like she's changing the past by being here (she's assumed KIA like our AoD toon). Only reason Daniels or Walker would get involved if J'Ula was suppose to do something in 2250s but couldn't because they got catapulted into the 2400s.
the Klingon leaders present (apart from J'Ula and L'Rell) would have heirs and those heirs might not be present at the First City during that time, so all you'd accomplish with that is made many new Klingon leaders who are very pissed off with you, oh and united because of it.
A single bomb cannot remove every militaristic figure with in the Klingon Empire due to its very nature. Sure J'Ula talked about crushing the Romulans and the Federation before she got a massive reality check and she's not stupid enough to not realize that her current position is potentially earned thru a help of major Romulan or UFP hero who would obviously be more loyal to their nations then to her, in fact FED characters (and IIRC Fed-allied ROM/JH) made it clear she's to them just the lesser of 2 evils not a friend.
This has me wondering about the viability of the Alliance moving forward. How much stability is there within the Klingon Empire and the greater alliance as a consequence of this chaos? This thread specifically addressed J'ula in terms of body count and it avoid the real issue, as well as sanitizing her behaviour. She doesn't belong here. Where was Daniels, The Pastak, the Alliance predicated on playing temporal police? If anyone was killed by someone native to our timeline maybe they were supposed to die. When the crew of a space station and figures from an era suddenly die (and J'mpok in his position as head of state) doesn't that seem like an incursion? I've only played the last couple seasons from a Klingon perspective and the exposition has been terrible. Mission briefs were partially delivered as holo simulations through the Discovery arc with the latter debriefs feeling like all bets were off and J'mpok was having a laugh at the state of the story as he broke the fourth wall. Did the Federation story bookending these missions do a better job of clarifying what was happening? J'mpok was an effective if not likeable Chancellor. From the onset he was depicted as having some skeletons in his closet but he had a pretty good run. Even Martok respected him for his martial and political prowess (And he defeated him man on man, even if he magically recovered from his mortal wounds). The heel turn was so over the top it would have made Vince Rousseau blush.
I also thought it was pretty weird that we're just heavily involving ourselves with bringing down the Klingon chancellor - as Federation officers. And then, near the very end, Quinn finally pops up - without saying a word. Federation characters aren't even briefed by him and can't talk to him.
It's almost like D'Tan and Okeg (who would be the right Federation representative here anyway) / Quinn don't care at all for the stability of the entire Klingon Empire and us helping to kill its head of state.
Unless she does belong there in one of those 'meant to happen' sort of ways
If that were the case there would be no lack of exposition. Walker and Daniels wouldn't have shut up.
Only if there was reason to tell anyone, the FED AoD is treated as "meant to happen" by Daniels so there no reason to assume J'Ula is different, it's not like she's changing the past by being here (she's assumed KIA like our AoD toon). Only reason Daniels or Walker would get involved if J'Ula was suppose to do something in 2250s but couldn't because they got catapulted into the 2400s.
Yeah, and this is typical for the temporal agents.
They're supposed to be neutral, but clearly they have their own personal preferences regarding what changes are allowed to happen and which ones aren't. Not to mention them being generally incompetent (just look at the VOY episode Future's End for the best example).
It is exactly this partiality and bias that make it hard to take the self-proclaimed (but ever lacking) guardians of the timeline serious - as it makes it difficult to treat their messages as anything else than propaganda, their deeds as nothing but the furthering of their own selfish agenda.
(Or they're just another example of inconsistent writing, existing only when they're needed for plot reasons. Whichever it is, it's one of the main reasons why I hate anything temporal agent-related and episodes involving them and why, in my personal head canon, my Starfleet characters have never supported them or their agency.)
J'Ula is definitely in the same boat as TOS and DSC Captains, there's nothing stopping our captains from returning to our respective time periods, and claiming that our deaths were greatly exaggerated, first rule if there aren't any bodies to be found than chances are they're probably still alive.
> @paradox#7391 said: > J'Ula is definitely in the same boat as TOS and DSC Captains, there's nothing stopping our captains from returning to our respective time periods, and claiming that our deaths were greatly exaggerated, first rule if there aren't any bodies to be found than chances are they're probably still alive.
Less so for the TOS character though seeing as how their ship exploded in the battle of Caleb IV going down with more or less all other hands.
This side of the time-line, most likely near zero, as she was only indirectly responsible for Aakar's actions, which was his betrayal, therefore a mutiny. Aakar was the true villian, next to J'mpok.
But that's cherry picking...she killed plenty of people in the 23rd century
But hey...this is NuTrek I guess...where killers and thugs are viewed as heroes!
Can't have a honest conversation because of a white knight with power
But hey...this is NuTrek I guess...where killers and thugs are viewed as heroes!
You mean like Kira from DS9, the Bajoran terrorist who proudly admitted to killing many Cardassians during the occupation?
Didn't know DS9 was NuTrek now.
"NuTrek" wishes it was DS9. You start with moral ambiguity or a challenge and how the character reacts determines where you stand. It's like the distinction between Sisko and J'ula but you glossed over that because it didn't fit the story you wanted to tell. There is no "NuTrek". There is grey morality that is depicted by talented writers or dumbed down enough it doesn't even belong in a comic book. There are terrible episodes from every incarnation of Trek. It isn't unique to the latest installment of the franchise. You were paraphrasing "NuTrek" from someone else's comments so that's not on you but it's a good example of more polarized pronouncements. I could write about Kira's growth through the series and how she came to terms with her past and prejudices but like the bit on Sisko you wouldn't read it anyway.
But hey...this is NuTrek I guess...where killers and thugs are viewed as heroes!
You mean like Kira from DS9, the Bajoran terrorist who proudly admitted to killing many Cardassians during the occupation?
Didn't know DS9 was NuTrek now.
"NuTrek" wishes it was DS9. You start with moral ambiguity or a challenge and how the character reacts determines where you stand. It's like the distinction between Sisko and J'ula but you glossed over that because it didn't fit the story you wanted to tell. There is no "NuTrek". There is grey morality that is depicted by talented writers or dumbed down enough it doesn't even belong in a comic book. There are terrible episodes from every incarnation of Trek. It isn't unique to the latest installment of the franchise. You were paraphrasing "NuTrek" from someone else's comments so that's not on you but it's a good example of more polarized pronouncements. I could write about Kira's growth through the series and how she came to terms with her past and prejudices but like the bit on Sisko you wouldn't read it anyway.
While a lot of people use the term "NuTrek" in a derogatory way not everyone does. It was originally coined as a quick way to differentiate the the Treks of different genres (traditional Trek is soft sci-fi but "NuTrek" (which started with the 2009 movie) is full out space opera), the same way the old Battlestar Galactica and the new one are abbreviated "BSG" and "NuBSG" without (much) stigma.
> @phoenixc#0738 said: > While a lot of people use the term "NuTrek" in a derogatory way not everyone does. It was originally coined as a quick way to differentiate the the Treks of different genres (traditional Trek is soft sci-fi but "NuTrek" (which started with the 2009 movie) is full out space opera), the same way the old Battlestar Galactica and the new one are abbreviated "BSG" and "NuBSG" without (much) stigma.
In this context I think the meaning was clear. Thanks for the etymological lesson just the same.
Writing on mobile doesn't make code easier. What's your excuse for your opinions? Not exclusive to this thread.
I like morality at the individual level. It defines who, and what we are. It makes us worth believing in, or following. All bets are off when you deal with the the idea of a collective morality that transcends the hearts of pan galactic societies. Maintaining the status quo becomes good, and evil becomes chaos. It isn't that simple. When we tell our story we are the hero. If there is a collective morality in Trek that justifies the Federation's position it's the Vulcan, "Needs of the many". A delusional, out of time relic who wants to knock down the world to entertain her own fantasies of nostalgia and revenge shouldn't have a seat at the big table.
J'mpok's past sounds like standard fare in in the realm of politics and criticism of political leaders. You laud J'ula for chasing Klingon power fantasies while J'mpok's wars served the same purpose; Without killing so many Klingons. The "loss" of Klingon identity was the result of a requirement to put aside those ambitions to meet greater threats. Survival trumps culture. You can write opera when the shooting stops. As awful as I thought it was that a Hall of Honour became a Chamber of Caring that initiative demonstrates a commitment to strengthening an alliance. I felt there was a small death of culture but power at that level is about concessions.
J'mpok wasn't crazy (until they needed to make J'ula look better than she was). He was pragmatic. If J'mpok was "crazy" since inception how many episodes were there they could have conveyed that in? I agree with you that in the last couple seasons there were rumblings of, "Ohhhh J'mpok crazy" but when you are dealing with a primarily visual medium you don't talk about it. You show it. Before you get to the 11th hour worldsmashing.
Running on tropes there could have been a "Mad Emperor" arc built around his decline. Think asian movies wushia or historical . If a Klingon story built around that premise wasn't "good" enough (too much Klingon) for mass consumption they could have reflected some of this "spiral" in his interactions during intros and debriefs.....for years. Nope.
Do you really think every "detractor" in the Klingon Empire is dead? Even less likely than every member of a single house being dead. We can banter about semantics but quality actors don't fix murky writing. If Martok wasn't Hetzler, Martok would still be dead, and J'ula, in the case of Cheiffo, would be a footnote from an IDW story if you went dredging a fan wiki.
Quality voice actors are frosting, but it doesn't make a cake. It did feel very much like a season of Discovery though; Great work at showcasing interesting characters with a spit and bale wire central plot.
I haven't made it my life's mission to nail all the vo credits to the actors. Attributing the wrong voice actor to a role doesn't mean I missed the plot of the story. I did wonder why Koren got laryngitis. J'ula must have stolen her voice. That's an oversight like missing the person who produced a prop or was the gaffer when talking about story. Semantics. Still, I don't think it's fair. L'rell had quite the makeover between S1 and S2 and J'ula looks more like L'rell than L'rell. It must have been the big hair, lack of scars, and cranial reconstruction. It's an impressive disguise. If I were an aspiring politician, but a rapist I'd pretend to find God and obscure my identity too. I'm glad you found a happy place you could pounce on and squeak wrong though.
I have no expectation that Discovery should roll like TOS or TNG. Storytelling conventions due to formatting and audience preferences have evolved considerably over the course of almost 40 years in the case of the latter. The bar is higher. Star Trek today doesn't have to compete with old Trek; It has to compete with it's contemporaries. That's other pay to view IPs on the screen today. It didn't do that well. Even with the Trek label. That doesn't make a poor story better. Prominent actors won't fix it either. Other shows employ them too so that is a standard in the PPV dynamic.
I haven't made it my life's mission to nail all the vo credits to the actors. Attributing the wrong voice actor to a role doesn't mean I missed the plot of the story. I did wonder why Koren got laryngitis. J'ula must have stolen her voice. That's an oversight like missing the person who produced a prop or was the gaffer when talking about story. Semantics. Still, I don't think it's fair. L'rell had quite the makeover between S1 and S2 and J'ula looks more like L'rell than L'rell. It must have been the big hair, lack of scars, and cranial reconstruction. It's an impressive disguise. If I were an aspiring politician, but a rapist I'd pretend to find God and obscure my identity too. I'm glad you found a happy place you could pounce on and squeak wrong though.
I have no expectation that Discovery should roll like TOS or TNG. Storytelling conventions due to formatting and audience preferences have evolved considerably over the course of almost 40 years in the case of the latter. The bar is higher. Star Trek today doesn't have to compete with old Trek; It has to compete with it's contemporaries. That's other pay to view IPs on the screen today. It didn't do that well. Even with the Trek label. That doesn't make a poor story better. Prominent actors won't fix it either. Other shows employ them too so that is a standard in the PPV dynamic.
Storytelling conventions have not "evolved", the mix has just shifted towards more shallow and generic, action and eyecandy oriented fare recently. It is not moving in a linear fashion and can shift just as easily in other directions once people get bored with the current formula.
As for the Klingon civil war, the main problem is that it was rushed, YotK actually needed at least one more set of scenarios (mostly during the "player outlaw" phase) to do the J'Ula twist properly since it is apparently confusing to a lot of people. Complications like J'Ula's true motives and Aakar's role take more groundwork than the simpler plots.
> @phoenixc#0738 said: > Storytelling conventions have not "evolved", the mix has just shifted towards more shallow and generic, action and eyecandy oriented fare recently. It is not moving in a linear fashion and can shift just as easily in other directions once people get bored with the current formula. > > As for the Klingon civil war, the main problem is that it was rushed, YotK actually needed at least one more set of scenarios (mostly during the "player outlaw" phase) to do the J'Ula twist properly since it is apparently confusing to a lot of people. Complications like J'Ula's true motives and Aakar's role take more groundwork than the simpler plots.
@somtaawkhar has it right.Not much I can add to that other than a bit of Enterprise trivia. I thought it was a great show that ended up hamstringed because it ended up sitting in an awkward place. They wanted to do further development and introduced longer arc to stories but they poorly received because it was tied to old school TV. If you missed an episode you were done unless you still had your nasty old VHS recorder or waited for summer reruns. Now you can watch when you want and soak it all in (Mostly 😀) rather than work, life, or a deployment dragging you out of the loop.
It allowed for more substantial writing. Shows like Deadwood, Boardwalk Empire, early TWD, The Expanse took advantage of that format change to give an audience more. If someone writes formulaic filler that's on them and not a failing of the medium.
I agree on the rush through YoK. Pacing and a lack of time to fit everything in left me disappointed. I was consistently disappointed by Discovery on screen but the Disc opener season on STO was great. I had to pretend I was a Fed to appreciate it. But the character details and an attempt to make you feel something more than pew pew pew was nice. Was it perfection? No, but an MMO isn't a PPV so it occupied the space it had to work with admirably.
YoKs resolution bothered me because I feel the MMO tied itself to a sinking ship. Not from anything we have within canon but because of what we don't. L'rell wasn't mentioned in canon; She couldn't have been. Same with House Mokai. Both were invented for Discovery. The only resolution that binds "canon" easily is dissolution and discommendation of the house and a disgraceful ending for the Chancellor. There are always reality bending shenanigans but they are way too deus ex and heavy handed. A disgraced house and a disgraced chancellor from another time would have been hunted and destroyed like the anathema they are; Not restored and certainly not elevated to positions of authority in the Empire they disgraced.
I thought the two part opener was awesome. First Flight was one of my favorite episodes. Enterprise did make a lot of allusions to TOS but they also were a homage to the zeitgeist that made it. Even the coveralls were a love letter to the early years of the space program and that desire to explore.
I'll agree, and disagree with you on TOS references. They got worse during the tail end of the series. I'll give you the Elan of Troyius knock off that was earlier on and shameless imitation but the homages during the curtain call were a bit much. The Mirror story was fun but it was TOS pure and simple. I think at that point they knew it was over and just having fun so it didn't really matter. Whether you think much of the stories the characters blew me away They changed. Archer by series end was a sadder, wiser, man. T'Pol and Trip had a meaningful relationship that hadn't been established. More noteworthy was the progression of Gary Graham's Soval. He came to respect upstart humans from a postion of distrust. Voyager having run 7 years didn't even think to promote Ensign Kim. The crew barely changed from Caretaker to home. It was like character Groundhog day.
On Voyager, I wondered if you had something concrete. I would have been sad if the lost Klingons were legitimately Mokai. A holodeck program invented by Hirogen is an in canon fabrication. Mokai is as "real" as the Ello Ello bit with TRIBBLE Karr and Mme DeNeuf.
Storytelling conventions have not "evolved", the mix has just shifted towards more shallow and generic, action and eyecandy oriented fare recently.
Except the exact opposite is true.
Storytelling conventions back in the 60s-90s were mostly shallow, and generic. They had to be because people didn't have time, or availability, to watch a continuing narrative that could have depth, or character development. People either didn't have access to TVs, or, if they did, didn't have the ability to watch it regularly. And recording methods were not optimal to say the least.
This is why shows like TOS, and TNG, were episode of the week shows, where nothing really happened to the characters to make them change, or, if it did change them, the change was reset by next episode. Its also why the things they encountered in that episode were gone, and never mentioned again in later episodes. Which also meant nothing could ever really get substantive development beyond being a really dumbed down caricature/planet of the hat trope. And its why the moral/ethical messaging of these shows had all the subtly of a brick through a window. You literally didn't have time to put real development into anything to make it have depth/be complex, since you couldn't guarantee people would be around to see it all.
The rise of easy access television, television recording methods, and especially internet streaming, has allowed TV producers to put a lot more depth into shows nowadays, since people can actually watch them easily, and on their own schedule, without missing anything.
This is why we see a lot of newer shows, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe shows such as Wandavision, Loki, Falcon and Winter Solder, be very short(like 6-8 episode) seasons that are very plot/character dense. They tell a story and are done, and do more real narrative/character development in those 6-8 episode then something like TOS, or TNG, did in multiple seasons, if not their entire run.
In very similar to how Japanese anime has run for some time. There are the super long shows akin to TOS/TNG, like One Piece, Dragon Ball Z, or Naruto, where its just them faffing about episode after episode, with nothing actually happening. Whereas most anime tend to only last 13-26 episodes(shows like Trigun, Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop), and then are done, because they tell a story, and finish it. More similar to how current Trek shows run. Though that comparison is somewhat flawed because even those long running anime like the ones mentioned have had a more consistent ongoing plot, and character development, then most old Trek did.
You are mixing up seasonal shows and miniseries again. A miniseries is the TV analog to a novel, a single self-contained story told in six to eight parts (or as many as ten). A seasonal serial does not usually have an ending each season, that some of the modern ones do that is the miniseries style showing through even though they call it a serial nowadays. A true serial has many plot threads of various lengths spun together like spinning wool into yarn that goes unbroken for the entire run of the series and do not all stop together at the end of every season the way DSC and many of the current shows do.
Binge-watch streaming has made the miniseries format popular where before it was always rather niche because missing a segment can cause people enough frustration to lose interest in the story.
You also seem to think that serials are something new and are somehow superior to episodic format, but neither of those things are true. For instance General Hospital, a serial melodrama, has been on the air since 1963, and very many TV shows (like for instance Flash Gordon) used the serial format in the 1940s and'50s.
The format fell out of favor in the 1960s because of the stigma that soaps and b-grade kids serials gave it though it was not limited to those, and because in order for the studios to recoup their expenses they had to depend on syndication after their network runs. A few iconic '60s shows like Batman and Lost in Space tried for a best of both worlds approach (and failed), originally done in a modified serial format that could be edited into separate episodes later for syndication.
Those and all the other formats are just tools and what makes a show good isn't a simple matter of which tools they use, but rather how well they use whichever one(s) they choose to tell the stories with.
Also, you are looking at the wrong level if you think that episodes always "reset to zero" between them, you have to back out to the season level (and occasionally to multi-season) and look for trends and other clues that tell you that an arc is happening. The best example of arc episode writing is still Babylon5, and no the show did not start out episodic and switch to serial as some people like to think, it stayed solidly in arc-episodic format for the entire series. The trick with arc-episodic season plotting is to use a dynamic mix of standalone, foreshadowing, and full out arc episodes, which is an art all its own that too few in Hollywood seem to grasp.
Also, arc stories are not always up-front and in-your-face so a lot of people miss them when they just look at the episodes. The first season (and maybe others, I only saw the first one and a few episodes of the second before my cable box went down) of the Australian show Sea Patrol had a definite seasonal arc that started in the first episode and had foreshadowing and clues in other episodes that were often quite different, then came together and wrapped up that arc in the final episode of the season.
Code Lyoko is an even better example of a multi-layered arc-episodic structure where the arcs are not in the foreground of the stories. Most people seem to only see the fairly typical self-contained cartoon part, and will usually recognize the way the plots & props change over the course of the series if it is pointed out to them, but surprisingly few seem to catch on to more subtle season-long and multi-season aspects like XANA and the Lyoko Warriors systematically trying to understand each other to try and gain advantage over the other, even after seeing an interview were the main writer talks about layering it like that so there was something for every age group in the show.
For instance XANA (the arch-villain AI) could grasp the horror genre and saw it worked against the adults but was baffled when the hero kids responded with the superhero genre instead (which the AI had no concept of), so it tried going down the list and trying every horror subgenre trying to find one that the kids would respond to in the expected manner, which would allow it to win.
As for depth of story, hour-long shows in the 1960s averaged about ten more minutes of runtime per hour compared to today's shows which generally run between thirty five and forty five minutes per hour (DSC is sort of '80s length averaging 45 minutes which would be good if the writers could get their pacing right). Writers who know what they are doing can pack a lot of plot into those ten or so extra minutes. That made it necessary to shift to more two-part episodes in the seventies and eighties, and eventually to a more active version of the arc-episode format.
It isn't all about commercials cutting runtime down though, it is also about the kinds of stories being told and the organization of them along the timeline. Serials are good for long single incidents or a string of stories that all happen one after the other in a short period of time (the series 24 is kind of the ultimate development of that, with everything happening in realtime if the shows are binge watched in one long sitting) for instance.
Serial and the similar-but-narrower miniseries are the "novel length" style for TV. Their strength is that they can be used to tell very complex stories (Westworld is a good example of that, DSC isn't since it is action movie format which is intrinsically shallow and frenetic and was a splice of several smaller arcs).
Pure episodic format is best for "short story" length tales and usually (but not always) present a single situation (aka "thread") per episode for the main story and may or may not have a self contained "b" thread and/or a cross-episode "c" thread. Usually there is a loose relative order to the episodes and might have many, few, or no references to past events depending on the series. A staple for episodic format shows that run multiple seasons is the "coma episode" that is made up of clips from earlier episodes.
Occasionally an episodic series comes along where there is no order at all to the series, often those are "memoir" style series like the old Danger Man where the stories actually do reset to zero because the idea is that they are random stories pulled from a long and varied past, but they have always been fairly rare, even back in the 1960s.
Episodic series excel at "highlight" style stories where the characters are assumed to be doing routine stuff between episodes that are the wheat among the off-camera chaff. A good example in TOS the episode Shore Leave where at least six months passed between the events of Balance of Terror and Shore Leave during which the Enterprise was doing tedious stellar mapping.
The arc-episode format is the best of both worlds with the complexity and length potential of a serial but the flexibility of episodes. Voyager would not have worked as a serial because there was too much off-camera downtime, but it would have been ideal for a tight arc-episodic treatment, though as you pointed out the writers either couldn't or wouldn't do it.
@somtaawkhar My least favorite Trek too. Some of that is my resentment because it had the potential to be everything it wasn't. You still had a common ground that was a hotbed for character development and interactions and exploration of completely uncharted territory. I felt that they gave up on the original ideas that they had and worked to produce something that was simply palatable. Kes was interesting. The Vidians were ghoulish and redeemable at the same time. They had some good character moments contained in episodes with some of the cast but forgot about others completely. Garrett Wang deserved better and Robert Beltran was wasted on a role that had potential but was just pissed away.
@phoenixc You're splitting hairs on definitions of story. Episodic story format versus longer story formats that have become more prevalent should suffice.
A story format isn't a tool. Let's use art. A brush is a tool analogous to storytelling. A time slot is a canvas. It has finite space to tell a story that must conform to those parameters. Whether that is stand alone serials that happen between commercial breaks where the cliffhangers must keep an audience wondering what will happen after the break, or in 50 minute installments where the writer had more room for exposition and development You can use it well or leave the audience wondering if they feel dumber having subjected themselves to it.
Just because you have big blocks doesn't mean you must be fixiated on the big picture all of the time. You could still have an episode styled story within a larger plot. It would be better if it built or supported the central theme or revealed something more about a character or the big picture but that's part of being a better writer. There are patterns suited to different mediums but appealing to the audience and keeping them engaged over the whole run could be changing the tempo/focus and giving them something unexpected so your whole approach doesn't come across as formulaic. A failure to work with what you have is still a failure of the presenter.
@somtaawkhar My least favorite Trek too. Some of that is my resentment because it had the potential to be everything it wasn't. You still had a common ground that was a hotbed for character development and interactions and exploration of completely uncharted territory. I felt that they gave up on the original ideas that they had and worked to produce something that was simply palatable. Kes was interesting. The Vidians were ghoulish and redeemable at the same time. They had some good character moments contained in episodes with some of the cast but forgot about others completely. Garrett Wang deserved better and Robert Beltran was wasted on a role that had potential but was just pissed away.
@phoenixc You're splitting hairs on definitions of story. Episodic story format versus longer story formats that have become more prevalent should suffice.
A story format isn't a tool. Let's use art. A brush is a tool analogous to storytelling. A time slot is a canvas. It has finite space to tell a story that must conform to those parameters. Whether that is stand alone serials that happen between commercial breaks where the cliffhangers must keep an audience wondering what will happen after the break, or in 50 minute installments where the writer had more room for exposition and development You can use it well or leave the audience wondering if they feel dumber having subjected themselves to it.
Just because you have big blocks doesn't mean you must be fixiated on the big picture all of the time. You could still have an episode styled story within a larger plot. It would be better if it built or supported the central theme or revealed something more about a character or the big picture but that's part of being a better writer. There are patterns suited to different mediums but appealing to the audience and keeping them engaged over the whole run could be changing the tempo/focus and giving them something unexpected so your whole approach doesn't come across as formulaic. A failure to work with what you have is still a failure of the presenter.
The subject is TV where the time slots are largely set in stone. How they do the story is not.
How loosely or tightly bound an overarching plot is to the show varies greatly, even in oldTrek. DS9 was building up to the Dominion war from very early on. Voyager, meanwhile was only going to get home when the series was cancelled, so they didn't need strongly linked episodes or foreshadowing that DS9 had.
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the Klingon leaders present (apart from J'Ula and L'Rell) would have heirs and those heirs might not be present at the First City during that time, so all you'd accomplish with that is made many new Klingon leaders who are very pissed off with you, oh and united because of it.
A single bomb cannot remove every militaristic figure with in the Klingon Empire due to its very nature. Sure J'Ula talked about crushing the Romulans and the Federation before she got a massive reality check and she's not stupid enough to not realize that her current position is potentially earned thru a help of major Romulan or UFP hero who would obviously be more loyal to their nations then to her, in fact FED characters (and IIRC Fed-allied ROM/JH) made it clear she's to them just the lesser of 2 evils not a friend.
This has me wondering about the viability of the Alliance moving forward. How much stability is there within the Klingon Empire and the greater alliance as a consequence of this chaos? This thread specifically addressed J'ula in terms of body count and it avoid the real issue, as well as sanitizing her behaviour. She doesn't belong here. Where was Daniels, The Pastak, the Alliance predicated on playing temporal police? If anyone was killed by someone native to our timeline maybe they were supposed to die. When the crew of a space station and figures from an era suddenly die (and J'mpok in his position as head of state) doesn't that seem like an incursion? I've only played the last couple seasons from a Klingon perspective and the exposition has been terrible. Mission briefs were partially delivered as holo simulations through the Discovery arc with the latter debriefs feeling like all bets were off and J'mpok was having a laugh at the state of the story as he broke the fourth wall. Did the Federation story bookending these missions do a better job of clarifying what was happening? J'mpok was an effective if not likeable Chancellor. From the onset he was depicted as having some skeletons in his closet but he had a pretty good run. Even Martok respected him for his martial and political prowess (And he defeated him man on man, even if he magically recovered from his mortal wounds). The heel turn was so over the top it would have made Vince Rousseau blush.
> She doesn't belong here. Where was Daniels, The Pastak, the Alliance predicated on playing temporal police? If anyone was killed by someone native to our timeline maybe they were supposed to die. When the crew of a space station and figures from an era suddenly die (and J'mpok in his position as head of state) doesn't that seem like an incursion?
Unless she does belong there in one of those 'meant to happen' sort of ways
If that were the case there would be no lack of exposition. Walker and Daniels wouldn't have shut up.
Only if there was reason to tell anyone, the FED AoD is treated as "meant to happen" by Daniels so there no reason to assume J'Ula is different, it's not like she's changing the past by being here (she's assumed KIA like our AoD toon). Only reason Daniels or Walker would get involved if J'Ula was suppose to do something in 2250s but couldn't because they got catapulted into the 2400s.
I also thought it was pretty weird that we're just heavily involving ourselves with bringing down the Klingon chancellor - as Federation officers. And then, near the very end, Quinn finally pops up - without saying a word. Federation characters aren't even briefed by him and can't talk to him.
It's almost like D'Tan and Okeg (who would be the right Federation representative here anyway) / Quinn don't care at all for the stability of the entire Klingon Empire and us helping to kill its head of state.
Yeah, and this is typical for the temporal agents.
They're supposed to be neutral, but clearly they have their own personal preferences regarding what changes are allowed to happen and which ones aren't. Not to mention them being generally incompetent (just look at the VOY episode Future's End for the best example).
It is exactly this partiality and bias that make it hard to take the self-proclaimed (but ever lacking) guardians of the timeline serious - as it makes it difficult to treat their messages as anything else than propaganda, their deeds as nothing but the furthering of their own selfish agenda.
(Or they're just another example of inconsistent writing, existing only when they're needed for plot reasons. Whichever it is, it's one of the main reasons why I hate anything temporal agent-related and episodes involving them and why, in my personal head canon, my Starfleet characters have never supported them or their agency.)
> J'Ula is definitely in the same boat as TOS and DSC Captains, there's nothing stopping our captains from returning to our respective time periods, and claiming that our deaths were greatly exaggerated, first rule if there aren't any bodies to be found than chances are they're probably still alive.
Less so for the TOS character though seeing as how their ship exploded in the battle of Caleb IV going down with more or less all other hands.
But that's cherry picking...she killed plenty of people in the 23rd century
But hey...this is NuTrek I guess...where killers and thugs are viewed as heroes!
"NuTrek" wishes it was DS9. You start with moral ambiguity or a challenge and how the character reacts determines where you stand. It's like the distinction between Sisko and J'ula but you glossed over that because it didn't fit the story you wanted to tell. There is no "NuTrek". There is grey morality that is depicted by talented writers or dumbed down enough it doesn't even belong in a comic book. There are terrible episodes from every incarnation of Trek. It isn't unique to the latest installment of the franchise. You were paraphrasing "NuTrek" from someone else's comments so that's not on you but it's a good example of more polarized pronouncements. I could write about Kira's growth through the series and how she came to terms with her past and prejudices but like the bit on Sisko you wouldn't read it anyway.
While a lot of people use the term "NuTrek" in a derogatory way not everyone does. It was originally coined as a quick way to differentiate the the Treks of different genres (traditional Trek is soft sci-fi but "NuTrek" (which started with the 2009 movie) is full out space opera), the same way the old Battlestar Galactica and the new one are abbreviated "BSG" and "NuBSG" without (much) stigma.
> While a lot of people use the term "NuTrek" in a derogatory way not everyone does. It was originally coined as a quick way to differentiate the the Treks of different genres (traditional Trek is soft sci-fi but "NuTrek" (which started with the 2009 movie) is full out space opera), the same way the old Battlestar Galactica and the new one are abbreviated "BSG" and "NuBSG" without (much) stigma.
In this context I think the meaning was clear. Thanks for the etymological lesson just the same.
I like morality at the individual level. It defines who, and what we are. It makes us worth believing in, or following. All bets are off when you deal with the the idea of a collective morality that transcends the hearts of pan galactic societies. Maintaining the status quo becomes good, and evil becomes chaos. It isn't that simple. When we tell our story we are the hero. If there is a collective morality in Trek that justifies the Federation's position it's the Vulcan, "Needs of the many". A delusional, out of time relic who wants to knock down the world to entertain her own fantasies of nostalgia and revenge shouldn't have a seat at the big table.
J'mpok's past sounds like standard fare in in the realm of politics and criticism of political leaders. You laud J'ula for chasing Klingon power fantasies while J'mpok's wars served the same purpose; Without killing so many Klingons. The "loss" of Klingon identity was the result of a requirement to put aside those ambitions to meet greater threats. Survival trumps culture. You can write opera when the shooting stops. As awful as I thought it was that a Hall of Honour became a Chamber of Caring that initiative demonstrates a commitment to strengthening an alliance. I felt there was a small death of culture but power at that level is about concessions.
J'mpok wasn't crazy (until they needed to make J'ula look better than she was). He was pragmatic. If J'mpok was "crazy" since inception how many episodes were there they could have conveyed that in? I agree with you that in the last couple seasons there were rumblings of, "Ohhhh J'mpok crazy" but when you are dealing with a primarily visual medium you don't talk about it. You show it. Before you get to the 11th hour worldsmashing.
Running on tropes there could have been a "Mad Emperor" arc built around his decline. Think asian movies wushia or historical . If a Klingon story built around that premise wasn't "good" enough (too much Klingon) for mass consumption they could have reflected some of this "spiral" in his interactions during intros and debriefs.....for years. Nope.
Do you really think every "detractor" in the Klingon Empire is dead? Even less likely than every member of a single house being dead. We can banter about semantics but quality actors don't fix murky writing. If Martok wasn't Hetzler, Martok would still be dead, and J'ula, in the case of Cheiffo, would be a footnote from an IDW story if you went dredging a fan wiki.
Quality voice actors are frosting, but it doesn't make a cake. It did feel very much like a season of Discovery though; Great work at showcasing interesting characters with a spit and bale wire central plot.
I have no expectation that Discovery should roll like TOS or TNG. Storytelling conventions due to formatting and audience preferences have evolved considerably over the course of almost 40 years in the case of the latter. The bar is higher. Star Trek today doesn't have to compete with old Trek; It has to compete with it's contemporaries. That's other pay to view IPs on the screen today. It didn't do that well. Even with the Trek label. That doesn't make a poor story better. Prominent actors won't fix it either. Other shows employ them too so that is a standard in the PPV dynamic.
Storytelling conventions have not "evolved", the mix has just shifted towards more shallow and generic, action and eyecandy oriented fare recently. It is not moving in a linear fashion and can shift just as easily in other directions once people get bored with the current formula.
As for the Klingon civil war, the main problem is that it was rushed, YotK actually needed at least one more set of scenarios (mostly during the "player outlaw" phase) to do the J'Ula twist properly since it is apparently confusing to a lot of people. Complications like J'Ula's true motives and Aakar's role take more groundwork than the simpler plots.
> Storytelling conventions have not "evolved", the mix has just shifted towards more shallow and generic, action and eyecandy oriented fare recently. It is not moving in a linear fashion and can shift just as easily in other directions once people get bored with the current formula.
>
> As for the Klingon civil war, the main problem is that it was rushed, YotK actually needed at least one more set of scenarios (mostly during the "player outlaw" phase) to do the J'Ula twist properly since it is apparently confusing to a lot of people. Complications like J'Ula's true motives and Aakar's role take more groundwork than the simpler plots.
@somtaawkhar has it right.Not much I can add to that other than a bit of Enterprise trivia. I thought it was a great show that ended up hamstringed because it ended up sitting in an awkward place. They wanted to do further development and introduced longer arc to stories but they poorly received because it was tied to old school TV. If you missed an episode you were done unless you still had your nasty old VHS recorder or waited for summer reruns. Now you can watch when you want and soak it all in (Mostly 😀) rather than work, life, or a deployment dragging you out of the loop.
It allowed for more substantial writing. Shows like Deadwood, Boardwalk Empire, early TWD, The Expanse took advantage of that format change to give an audience more. If someone writes formulaic filler that's on them and not a failing of the medium.
I agree on the rush through YoK. Pacing and a lack of time to fit everything in left me disappointed. I was consistently disappointed by Discovery on screen but the Disc opener season on STO was great. I had to pretend I was a Fed to appreciate it. But the character details and an attempt to make you feel something more than pew pew pew was nice. Was it perfection? No, but an MMO isn't a PPV so it occupied the space it had to work with admirably.
YoKs resolution bothered me because I feel the MMO tied itself to a sinking ship. Not from anything we have within canon but because of what we don't. L'rell wasn't mentioned in canon; She couldn't have been. Same with House Mokai. Both were invented for Discovery. The only resolution that binds "canon" easily is dissolution and discommendation of the house and a disgraceful ending for the Chancellor. There are always reality bending shenanigans but they are way too deus ex and heavy handed. A disgraced house and a disgraced chancellor from another time would have been hunted and destroyed like the anathema they are; Not restored and certainly not elevated to positions of authority in the Empire they disgraced.
I'll agree, and disagree with you on TOS references. They got worse during the tail end of the series. I'll give you the Elan of Troyius knock off that was earlier on and shameless imitation but the homages during the curtain call were a bit much. The Mirror story was fun but it was TOS pure and simple. I think at that point they knew it was over and just having fun so it didn't really matter. Whether you think much of the stories the characters blew me away They changed. Archer by series end was a sadder, wiser, man. T'Pol and Trip had a meaningful relationship that hadn't been established. More noteworthy was the progression of Gary Graham's Soval. He came to respect upstart humans from a postion of distrust. Voyager having run 7 years didn't even think to promote Ensign Kim. The crew barely changed from Caretaker to home. It was like character Groundhog day.
On Voyager, I wondered if you had something concrete. I would have been sad if the lost Klingons were legitimately Mokai. A holodeck program invented by Hirogen is an in canon fabrication. Mokai is as "real" as the Ello Ello bit with TRIBBLE Karr and Mme DeNeuf.
You are mixing up seasonal shows and miniseries again. A miniseries is the TV analog to a novel, a single self-contained story told in six to eight parts (or as many as ten). A seasonal serial does not usually have an ending each season, that some of the modern ones do that is the miniseries style showing through even though they call it a serial nowadays. A true serial has many plot threads of various lengths spun together like spinning wool into yarn that goes unbroken for the entire run of the series and do not all stop together at the end of every season the way DSC and many of the current shows do.
Binge-watch streaming has made the miniseries format popular where before it was always rather niche because missing a segment can cause people enough frustration to lose interest in the story.
You also seem to think that serials are something new and are somehow superior to episodic format, but neither of those things are true. For instance General Hospital, a serial melodrama, has been on the air since 1963, and very many TV shows (like for instance Flash Gordon) used the serial format in the 1940s and'50s.
The format fell out of favor in the 1960s because of the stigma that soaps and b-grade kids serials gave it though it was not limited to those, and because in order for the studios to recoup their expenses they had to depend on syndication after their network runs. A few iconic '60s shows like Batman and Lost in Space tried for a best of both worlds approach (and failed), originally done in a modified serial format that could be edited into separate episodes later for syndication.
Those and all the other formats are just tools and what makes a show good isn't a simple matter of which tools they use, but rather how well they use whichever one(s) they choose to tell the stories with.
Also, you are looking at the wrong level if you think that episodes always "reset to zero" between them, you have to back out to the season level (and occasionally to multi-season) and look for trends and other clues that tell you that an arc is happening. The best example of arc episode writing is still Babylon5, and no the show did not start out episodic and switch to serial as some people like to think, it stayed solidly in arc-episodic format for the entire series. The trick with arc-episodic season plotting is to use a dynamic mix of standalone, foreshadowing, and full out arc episodes, which is an art all its own that too few in Hollywood seem to grasp.
Also, arc stories are not always up-front and in-your-face so a lot of people miss them when they just look at the episodes. The first season (and maybe others, I only saw the first one and a few episodes of the second before my cable box went down) of the Australian show Sea Patrol had a definite seasonal arc that started in the first episode and had foreshadowing and clues in other episodes that were often quite different, then came together and wrapped up that arc in the final episode of the season.
Code Lyoko is an even better example of a multi-layered arc-episodic structure where the arcs are not in the foreground of the stories. Most people seem to only see the fairly typical self-contained cartoon part, and will usually recognize the way the plots & props change over the course of the series if it is pointed out to them, but surprisingly few seem to catch on to more subtle season-long and multi-season aspects like XANA and the Lyoko Warriors systematically trying to understand each other to try and gain advantage over the other, even after seeing an interview were the main writer talks about layering it like that so there was something for every age group in the show.
For instance XANA (the arch-villain AI) could grasp the horror genre and saw it worked against the adults but was baffled when the hero kids responded with the superhero genre instead (which the AI had no concept of), so it tried going down the list and trying every horror subgenre trying to find one that the kids would respond to in the expected manner, which would allow it to win.
As for depth of story, hour-long shows in the 1960s averaged about ten more minutes of runtime per hour compared to today's shows which generally run between thirty five and forty five minutes per hour (DSC is sort of '80s length averaging 45 minutes which would be good if the writers could get their pacing right). Writers who know what they are doing can pack a lot of plot into those ten or so extra minutes. That made it necessary to shift to more two-part episodes in the seventies and eighties, and eventually to a more active version of the arc-episode format.
It isn't all about commercials cutting runtime down though, it is also about the kinds of stories being told and the organization of them along the timeline. Serials are good for long single incidents or a string of stories that all happen one after the other in a short period of time (the series 24 is kind of the ultimate development of that, with everything happening in realtime if the shows are binge watched in one long sitting) for instance.
Serial and the similar-but-narrower miniseries are the "novel length" style for TV. Their strength is that they can be used to tell very complex stories (Westworld is a good example of that, DSC isn't since it is action movie format which is intrinsically shallow and frenetic and was a splice of several smaller arcs).
Pure episodic format is best for "short story" length tales and usually (but not always) present a single situation (aka "thread") per episode for the main story and may or may not have a self contained "b" thread and/or a cross-episode "c" thread. Usually there is a loose relative order to the episodes and might have many, few, or no references to past events depending on the series. A staple for episodic format shows that run multiple seasons is the "coma episode" that is made up of clips from earlier episodes.
Occasionally an episodic series comes along where there is no order at all to the series, often those are "memoir" style series like the old Danger Man where the stories actually do reset to zero because the idea is that they are random stories pulled from a long and varied past, but they have always been fairly rare, even back in the 1960s.
Episodic series excel at "highlight" style stories where the characters are assumed to be doing routine stuff between episodes that are the wheat among the off-camera chaff. A good example in TOS the episode Shore Leave where at least six months passed between the events of Balance of Terror and Shore Leave during which the Enterprise was doing tedious stellar mapping.
The arc-episode format is the best of both worlds with the complexity and length potential of a serial but the flexibility of episodes. Voyager would not have worked as a serial because there was too much off-camera downtime, but it would have been ideal for a tight arc-episodic treatment, though as you pointed out the writers either couldn't or wouldn't do it.
@phoenixc You're splitting hairs on definitions of story. Episodic story format versus longer story formats that have become more prevalent should suffice.
A story format isn't a tool. Let's use art. A brush is a tool analogous to storytelling. A time slot is a canvas. It has finite space to tell a story that must conform to those parameters. Whether that is stand alone serials that happen between commercial breaks where the cliffhangers must keep an audience wondering what will happen after the break, or in 50 minute installments where the writer had more room for exposition and development You can use it well or leave the audience wondering if they feel dumber having subjected themselves to it.
Just because you have big blocks doesn't mean you must be fixiated on the big picture all of the time. You could still have an episode styled story within a larger plot. It would be better if it built or supported the central theme or revealed something more about a character or the big picture but that's part of being a better writer. There are patterns suited to different mediums but appealing to the audience and keeping them engaged over the whole run could be changing the tempo/focus and giving them something unexpected so your whole approach doesn't come across as formulaic. A failure to work with what you have is still a failure of the presenter.
The subject is TV where the time slots are largely set in stone. How they do the story is not.
How loosely or tightly bound an overarching plot is to the show varies greatly, even in oldTrek. DS9 was building up to the Dominion war from very early on. Voyager, meanwhile was only going to get home when the series was cancelled, so they didn't need strongly linked episodes or foreshadowing that DS9 had.