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Comment on A "test" to judge Star Trek shows

I like it, and I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that you’re talking about Discovery. I’ve said in the past that the show should be called “Star Trek: Michael Burnham” as it would at least be more honest.

To be fair, I think every series has a lot of episodes that would fail this test, some of which were excellent, like DS9’s “In the Pale Moonlight”, and “Far Beyond the Stars” or TNG’s “The Inner Light”, but if used to assess a series, I think this could be a good metric.

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skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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- Indy@startrek.website ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I agree with and second many of your statements in here. Well said! A couple specific points I want to highlight:
  
  Paul and Hugh
  
  I really enjoyed those plots, especially about loss.
  
  There was also no single overarching plot, so Picard could play a flute and live the life of an alien for a whole episode without derailing any story plans. The “monster of the week” approach also helped inspire some real good moral and philosophical debate that would otherwise never would’ve been written into a single story, but also some of the most cringeworthy TV I’ve seen.
  
  I think this is the core of the issue for what I enjoy and don’t enjoy with many Star Trek shows. Surprisingly to me, Expanse does this fine whereas Trek/Who/SG-1 would trip over it and have.
  
  In general, great reply with excellent points. Thank you!
  
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Indy@startrek.website ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

To be fair, I think every series has a lot of episodes that would fail this test, some of which were excellent, like DS9’s “In the Pale Moonlight”, and “Far Beyond the Stars” or TNG’s “The Inner Light”, but if used to assess a series, I think this could be a good metric.

Indeed, “In the Pale Moonlight” is one I thought of which fails as well. I still think it makes a good measure to see how many episodes of a show pass/fail overall. Only to see if it’s really about the whole crew or mostly one character. (Arguably, early TNG comes really close to being Star Trek: Wesley while mid/late TNG comes close to Star Trek: Data.)

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