alt Hacker NewsSome TV shows are now being designed to be watched as background while the viewers are pecking away on their phones. Plots are simplified and repeated. Viewers are often shown and then told important points multiple times, just to make sure they don't miss them.
Discovery did this some of the time. There were episodes where they would show, then tell, then tell again all within a few minutes. Not every episode was done this way. I suspect they were experimenting and it did not go well. Anybody who was actually giving the show their full attention was bound to be irritated. Discovery was a low point in modern Trek for multiple reasons. They initially decided to forgo an ensemble cast and bet it all on a protagonist driven narrative. This severely limited the diversity of viewpoints in the first couple seasons. The writing was bad for entirely avoidable reasons. People who watch trek pay attention to the universe's rules. You can't beam through shields, you need to have a reason for why the away team can't be trivially beamed out of dangerous situations, etc.. The people writing Discovery did not bother to do this on a repeating and continual basis. Again, it was insulting to anyone who wasn't pecking away on their phone. I wouldn't say the writers for Discovery merely lacked life experience. They clearly hadn't bothered to watch previous Trek shows.
Strange New Worlds is better written, but a little too reliant on high concept for their most recent season. Every episode seems to have a gimmick. Still the cast is good and I look forward to them wrapping up Pike's story and, presumably, setting up a reboot of TOS.
Lower Decks is the best Trek show in recent memory. Thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. I can't recommend that one enough, just in case anyone skipped it because it was animated. Intelligent. Inventive. Hilarious. The people who made Lower Decks really put a lot of love into it.
Edit: I forgot to mention Picard, which is unforgivable. Some of the seasons were a little uneven, but some were fantastic and it was truly a treat to see Patrick Stewart as Picard one last time.
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To your point, the Lower Decks writers were clearly TNG fans.
> Plots are simplified and repeated. Viewers are often shown and then told important points multiple times, just to make sure they don't miss them.
This kind of TV writing really frustrates me. I’m currently rewatching The Wire (just finished Season 3) and the producers, writers and directors take the complete opposite approach. Each season has a large number of characters with many subtly inter-relating plots. To get the most out of the show, you need to be paying attention and to have a good memory for recalling details from previous episodes and previous seasons. The first two times I watched the show (more than 15 years ago), I watched in on DVD (lower resolution, 4:3 aspect ratio). This time I’m watching it in 16:9 HD on Bluray and I’ve picked up so many plot points and characterisations that I hadn’t picked up (or don’t remember) before, e.g., one very brief shot in Season 1 explains how Bubs gets his nickname. It’s such a breath of fresh air for the writers to pay so much attention to detail and for the viewer to be treated like a reasonably intelligent adult.
I agree with your take on Picard. However, I didn’t enjoy Discovery so haven’t bothered with any of the other recent Star Trek series. Thanks for the summaries of the other two shows. I’ll add Lower Decks to my to-watch list.