I don’t…think…Star Trek lends itself well to 15 episode seasons as seen in Discovery and certainly not 10 episode seasons like Picard will feature. There’s no time to adapt. To respond to feedback. You’re locked in to an arc and story with very little room for episodic work. You’re basically telling ONE story. And if that story sucks, well tough titty. Maybe you’ll like next year better.
Even DS9’s multi-episode arcs still, IMHO, placed the value of the episode over the value of the arc.
Can you imagine if TNG’s first season began with Encounter at Farpoint and ended with Hide and Q? The ep where Riker is given Q powers? Yuck.
It’s one of the waves of the future. Some studios have gotten away from having a whole bunch of writers who can each write a few episodes per season and instead they have show-runners who write the entire season at once, or are at least responsible for writing the entire season. The advantage of the former is that if you get terrible writers, they don’t sink the entire season, kind of like herd immunity. The downside is the odds of getting a whole pile of great writers. You only need to get two or three great writers to make a compact season work.
Some research shows that Discovery’s third season is 13 episodes.
I hope i’m getting across what I’m trying to say…I just don’t feel that sort of commitment serves anyone well. TNG was a full-time job for everyone and it shows. Music, direction, character growth.
And after resetting the series for season 3 of Discovery??? Which already has been going at a breakneck pace.
How much ACTUAL TIME has passed for our characters?? And don’t count the six months between S1E2 and S1E3. It’s off screen time and it may as well have been six days. One or two months at most? When you don’t give your series room to breath and grow at a natural pace you fall prey to gimmicks.
(sigh). I guess at the end of the day, I’m saying DISCO has not and still isn’t setting itself up for success.
IDK, I’m starting to come around to the “less is more” attitude.
I just recently finished binging the entire Haven series. I remember thinking the show would have been better if they had just ended it several episodes ago.
With 22 or 24 episodes, you’re eventually going to get fluff. And I don’t think fluff would bode well for a show like Discovery.
And as far as Picard goes. Cut the guy a break, he’s old. You really don’t expect him to work full time do you?
I like the idea behind PICARD…as far as I can tell. I just wish there were a full-time Trek ‘anchor show’ if that makes sense.
Hey ‘fluff’ gives a show room to expand and to breath. The aforementioned Riker-Q episode was dire. But it was a continuation of the use of Q. Its part of his arc. There’s no room for something like that anymore it feels like.
