That’s a very modern attitude to TV that stems from series only having ten odd hours to tell a full serialised story. When you’re telling twenty plus episodic stories in the year, you have time to kick back and show stuff that isn’t crucial to the story.
Yeah, having watched in release order (ish) and just recently finished Discovery & Picard, I feel this sentiment in my bones! For sure, I don’t want the actors and writers to have to be worked to the bone churning out 26-episode seasons each year.
But it’s also really frustrating how they insist that every 10 episode season, their characters must save the entire galaxy. There’s no actual space to get to know the characters who aren’t the main ones.
The Dominion war brewed for 3 seasons and then played out over 2 more. I think. That’s a time scale that allows for amazing character development.
That’s why I love Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks at the moment. They’ve brought back the episodic take that made Trek work for five series.
Lower Decks is the most impressive. The fact that they manage to tell a full TNG era type story, with no characters feeling left out including the support cast, in half an hour a time is masterful.
I just started SNW (like I said, release order ish, I was trying to save best for last). It’s such a breath of fresh air! It’s quite funny that they kept the “previously on” narration, but at least so far, it’s mainly just doing character intros and not explaining the entirety of the season leading up to that point 😂
Man can you imagine Nog and/or Rom getting half the character development that they got in DS9 in a contemporary show format?
Not saying it's all bad or all good one way or another, but your comment made me think back and totally appreciate those two fleshed out minor characters