If you’ve watched any Star Trek this week, feel free to drop the episodes/movies and any thoughts you might have on them in the comments!
I've watched DS9 so many times, but I still enjoy slipping right back into it again.
I've been slogging through the latest season of Discovery, mostly just so I get the references. I'm just finished 5x05 and I'm not really enjoying it.
It suffers from a lot of the problems with the prestige-ification of TV. Everything feels too serialized and too cinematic. The episodes don't seem to have a unique identity, and the serialization means that you have to enjoy the commitment to that one serialized plotline (which I admit is not grabbing me). I prefer Star Trek when it's episodic or has shorter story arcs within a larger season. The story itself is also very fast-paced, in that it's a race against time/the enemy, which sucks because everything then has to happen inside of this very tight window of time. That's fine for a movie, but I don't know why it's a good idea for a full season of a TV show (unless it's something like 24 where that's the whole gimmick). Star Trek is famous for using ticking clocks to keep the action moving, but they resolve at the end of the episode, and the next episode might not have a ticking clock, or the clock is caused by a fundamentally different thing with different stakes. In this season it's like they're doing laps around a racetrack. "Okay, we're ahead now, let's keep up our lead while we do basically the same thing next episode." And we have to keep up the idea that it is a race despite having a ship that travels anywhere instantly. Incredibly boring.
Mostly I just hate Alex Kurtzman. I hope his next Trek show flops hard enough that they decide not to renew his deal and they go find someone who doesn't have obvious contempt for the audience.
Apologies for the ranting. Short answer: DSC season 5, not great
Nearly all the things you mention are issues I have with both Discovery and Picard! The storylines of the seasons I watched didn't really grab me to begin with, and then dragged on way longer than needed. I'm not that big a fan of the 10 or 15 hour movie idea, but it's even worse when there isn't enough story.
Picard suffered from the same thing for sure. Too much time telling too little story. Somehow it felt both rushed and drawn out. I still enjoyed Picard for all the fan service and old characters, but it was definitely in spite of the overall structure of the show.
I've been watching a decent amount of Classic Doctor Who recently, so not a lot of Star Trek!
- SNW 2x07 Those Old Scientists
- SNW 2x08 Under the Cloak of War