Bad stories reliably end in TNG. Usually, they’re done after a single runtime. In Discovery, the awful plots smear across multiple episodes, if not entire seasons.
Big arcs can work in Star Trek, but they have to be good. Discovery is like if the writers decided to make Pen Pals into a 12-episode saga. If something doesn’t hit, it takes forever to rectify. Then, since they decided to start as a prequel, they did the star wars thing of irreparably tarnishing the stories that came before.
Arguably they were still figuring out the tone, and how to revive a 20 year old franchise while not retreading the past. Not claiming there aren’t some duds, but later 90s Trek benefited from TNG cracking the “formula” and sticking to it.
Compare a modern spiritual successor to TNG like The Orville, which, despite a rocky premiere, just crushed it within 5-6 episodes, and kept crushing it, because they didn’t have to put so much legwork into defining the tone of the show.
The Orville… Still the best Trek of the modern era.
Go watch TNG season 1.
Bad stories reliably end in TNG. Usually, they’re done after a single runtime. In Discovery, the awful plots smear across multiple episodes, if not entire seasons.
Big arcs can work in Star Trek, but they have to be good. Discovery is like if the writers decided to make Pen Pals into a 12-episode saga. If something doesn’t hit, it takes forever to rectify. Then, since they decided to start as a prequel, they did the star wars thing of irreparably tarnishing the stories that came before.
Are you a fan of Wesley Crusher? How about Alexander?
Those are characters, not stories.
Arguably they were still figuring out the tone, and how to revive a 20 year old franchise while not retreading the past. Not claiming there aren’t some duds, but later 90s Trek benefited from TNG cracking the “formula” and sticking to it.
Compare a modern spiritual successor to TNG like The Orville, which, despite a rocky premiere, just crushed it within 5-6 episodes, and kept crushing it, because they didn’t have to put so much legwork into defining the tone of the show.
The Orville… Still the best Trek of the modern era.