While I understand your hesitation, I definitely believe there could have been at least five more relevant episodes in Season 2. This season was overall character driven instead of a "planet of the week" format we've seen before. So, there could have been some extra episodes that extrapolated on the seasonal Gorn arc, or an Ortegas episode, or a Pelia episode. There's a lot of potential to provide spanning character and seasonal arcs while delivering episodes from different planets over a 15 episode season.
I definitely believe 20 episodes is pushing it, but a 12-15 episode season could work if the stories are laid out well.
I would enjoy having more episodes, and I (hopefully) don’t think that enough people would approve anything that would compromise the quality, given how they clearly know what they’re doing
It’s likely the impact of the sudden and unexpected death of Melissa Navia’s husband led to a lightning of her role in the second season.
She’s written about how hard it was for her to go into production just a couple of months after that. She was a musical theatre performer as a child, so it’s likely that a larger singing role was planned for her in 2 x 09. We can be thankful that she has apparently decided to stick with her career after some profound doubts in 2022.
I hope Melissa continues to find the fandom to be a source of surrogate family. It was nice to see the fandom’s outpouring of empathy and support after her tragic loss. It’s not the same, but since it seems to have given her some comfort, I hope that dynamic can be something special for her for a long time.
I’ve been rewatching TNG and it has become very, very apparent to me how much of the charm of the show was due to two things:
The sheer chemistry of the cast. Since really learning how much they all loved each other, it really just feels like a ship of joy.
The filler episodes let you spend time with the cast. I mean, you rarely get something like a whole scene about Data painting, or stroking a fake beard, or Geordi striking out with multiple women, or Troi extolling the virtues of chocolate sundaes.
I’ve been really impressed by how much SNW has been able to do with the ensemble, it really feels like the cast have relationships, so if we can get more of that, yes please!
I almost want to believe that they’re cancelling Discovery to give more resources to SNW’s production schedule. ;)
How did it feel rushed? We had a new adventure every week that was largely unrelated to the previous one, and character development was distributed all throughout the season. The only thing I felt was rushed were some of the episodes like the one with the tower (Among the Lotus Eaters) where the resolution to the conflict came very surprisingly and abruptly, but longer seasons wouldn’t have changed that.
The big one is Chapel and Spock. She goes straight from pursuing him to leaving him without much of any actual relationship in between. Pelia doesn’t get to do much as the chief engineer, and Ortegas barely gets any screen time at all.
I’m down for more episodes per season, granted they have a good crew. It means more work for screenwriters and a potential for some amazing episodes. Let’s give it a shot!
The traditional American 20+ episode format is superior and I have no problems dying on this hill. It is the format that got almost everyone into Star Trek, and as such we are limiting ourselves with binge-junky 10 episode format.
This way I think we should sit at 12 to 15 and the norm. I love have 20+ season but for the well being of cast and crew the 12+ makes more since and while at time it would only be 2 more then the streaming 10 episode the extra wiggle room would allow for more stand alone episode.
Epic poems, such as the Iliad, were the preferred storytelling methods at one time, yet society had little issue with building upon that as they left it behind. It’s one thing to prefer something, and another to say that because something was once one way, that’s how it always should be. Things change and hopefully improve. Kind of the main theme of Trek.
However, the message of Trek also is that not all change is good, already evident in the M5 episode of TOS. There’s no shame in taking a step back if the prior state was superior, which some think it is (with regard to the 20 episode scheme)
Longer seasons would allow them to throw in a few SciFi oriented episodes that don’t necessarily advance character arcs. Where would SNW be if TOS didn’t have the “Arena” (Gorn) episode that was based on a completely unrelated SciFi short story?
Mirror, Mirror was a SciFi episode that not only gave us the foundation for Discovery, but cemented the evil-twin-goatee trope into pupular culture.
Space Seed (Botany Bay/Khan) was also a one-off SciFi episode. Where would the entire franchise be without it?
I really hope SNW makes room for exploring the sort of SciFi ideas that Star Trek was originally based on.
Part of the reason why TNG was good beyond the first couple seasons was because of the open script submission policy that’s no longer in existence. According to ex-Trek producer Ronald D. Moore, they were reading something like 3000 scripts a year. It allowed them to be choosy (though there were still some stinkers). Now that the characters are established, if the seasons were longer, it might be cool to see the open script submissions come back (though, as I’m typing this, maybe implementing this during or shortly after a writers strike would be a poor choice, even though there were limits to how many scripts one could submit before going through “official” channels). Anyway, one could argue that a huge amount of ideas need to be generated for a show as great as TNG to exist, more than a small group of writers could produce. If outside script admissions were allowed, I’m sure we’d see some great sci-fi episodes from writers who weren’t even thinking “Star Trek” as they wrote them.
I’m not against filler, and my post may have come off as being that way. Not every story has to advance character or advance some storyline. I’m just against bad filler.
Just a fun note: Ron Moore got his start through that open submissions policy when submitted a script for what became “The Bonding.” He had no writing credits before that.
Several of the Relaunch novelverse TrekLit authors tried out with spec scripts before being picked up to write tie-in fiction.
David Mack, a film school grad, got script credits for 2 DS9 episodes, Starship Down and Only a Paper Moon before being contracted for some Starfleet Core of Engineers stories.
Kirsten Beyer, a theatre grad, never got into one of the shows with a spec script, but was picked up to write Voyager books, then came full circle to be in the writers rooms on all the new live-action shows.
Wow thanks, that really explains well why the modern shows respect (at least some of) “beta canon” more than what I would expect. A natural consequence when some of the authors sit in the writer’s room :)
David Mack was more recently a consultant for the development and first seasons of both Lower Decks and Prodigy as well. I believe we can thank him for bringing Peter David’s Brikar aliens (from the YA Starfleet Academy and the New Frontier books) into onscreen canon with the character of Rok Tahk in Prodigy.
SNW has been pretty good with the standalone episodes though, no? Maybe leaning a little more on the comedy and hijinks than the sci-fi this season but they don’t seem too afraid of treating an episode as a mini movie in its own right.
I wouldn’t mind a few more episodes anyway, but 20 does feel like too much. And honestly I’m not unhappy with 10 either, particularly considering the quality of them and that it’s not the only Trek in town. 10 episodes of this show, but there’s like three or four other shows too. We’re not at a loss for Trek.
I know it's an incredibly unpopular opinion but my least favorite SNW show to date has been the musical, it was kitchy and waaaay too annoying to follow along with the story when they just kept singing all the time, it pleased the theater kids to no end, but I couldn't even make it through the episode, having said that, SNW is far and away the best Trek in the entire P+ batch yet, and I'm glad it's getting shown the love it deserves for being my sort of Trek. Looks like we got a runner, boys, long may she run.
I’ve talked to some folk who work in TV about just this.
The upshot is that knowing the length of run with enough time creates better episodes whether the run is short or long.
The problem is something getting big and an emergency demand for more episodes after a season has already been planned out. (or that episodes need to be cut for a reduced run).
As for the BBC, we are still very much waiting for the clock to run out on Casualty, Holby City, EastEnders, silent witness…
I’d also argue that even despite a shorter episode length, Sherlock still managed to overstay its welcome.
I would be very happy to see 15 episodes a year, I think their current cast is great. They’ve expanded the story of some of the characters in season 2, but I feel they could easily add a few more spotlight episodes a year.
My feeling watching SNW is that it isn’t getting enough space to breath more and chew on its subject matter more. I’d bet the writers and show runners are voicing the same thing … if they had more episodes they’d totally be able to fill them out with good stuff. In a way, organically growing from short episode counts into greater seasons might be a good way to go. Lots of comparisons to TNG etc here, and in those cases, maybe a shorter first season might have actually worked well.
The reason SNW is better than DISCO and ENT is that the characters are real and complete. We know exactly what type of person Ortegas is, and seeing her do stuff is exciting because I’m invested in seeing her grow and change.
Compare that to Detmer from DISCO, I’m not sure what her job is, didn’t know her name for serval seasons and couldn’t tell you a thing about her personality. I don’t care if Detmer lives, dies or grows. She’s a person who exists in the background.
The hard work of establishing the characters is done. I will be happy to see them go stuff.
I’m not sold that any of the cast is super nuanced, but they have personalities that are distinct. You can see a situation and think “that’s how La’an would react.” I’m still unsure what Nahn does.
To be fair with Ortegas they lean heavily into the thrill seeking flyboy archetype.
They do, but man an Erica Ortegas centered episode would be awesome. I would love to have an episode where we aren't reminded that "Hi, my name is Erica Ortegas; I fly the ship." Because at this point it feels like it's trolling the audience.
And considering the way the season ended, there's no guarantee that Ortegas makes it through alive. She's one of the few characters that doesn't have plot armor if TOS canon is to stand relatively unaltered.
One of the reasons you don’t know Detmer was they made a conscious decision to make a “one main character” show instead of an ensemble show. They were consciously not trying to develop anyone but Burnham, and to a lesser extent Saru, then Stamets.
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