this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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To me, there's a very striking difference between say The Next Generation and Discovery, namely, how they handle exposition.
The senior staff of the Enterprise-D gathers in the conference room off the bridge, one character presents new information, then the department heads give their take on what they just learned. Maybe Crusher will point out the humanitarian angle, Worf will provide savage pragmatism, Troi will ask if the space dust is sentient, and Picard will synthesize all that into his decision. But the other purpose of these scenes is to bake exposition into natural character dialog.
On the Discovery, three characters stand in front of a console taking turns giving a single thread raw exposition, then comment on how cool science is.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I think Discovery is unwatchable trash.
This is very well put. I don’t hate discovery but it isn’t trek to me (although neither is tos).
I just want an hour of philosophical debates.
Also Picard must the be the best boss ever. When there is a difficult decision he lets every commanding officer state their opinion, listeners intently, then he makes the decision and rally’s everyone to get behind it.
The original series does this too, it just ends up being less formal. But this is the basis of the famous Kirk-Spock-McCoy dynamic: Spock presents a cold, rational take on things; McCoy presents a brash, sympathetic take (and makes racist comments about Spock); then Kirk chooses what he's gonna do. But as others have said, this is the core of Trek: professional adults making difficult choices.
Probably the biggest issue with the original series is just how many monsters of the week it had. The Next Generation isn't immune, though it toned it down: a lot of episodes unnecessarily have anomalies of the week, to create pointless tension.
Nope. Most TOS episodes were primarily about the clash of philosophies. Everybody got to explain their reasons, even Klingons and Nazis.