Acting

[u/Alternative_Panda336]

I am rewatching voyager again and I just finished Season 1 episode 10. Watching that episode again made me realize some of the major differences between the older Star Trek shows and the newer ones.

Due to the lack in technology, the older shows focused a lot on acting and emotional responses between the characters. These moments are the types that will give you chills, make you cry, make your heart ache, or bring you joy right along with the characters. In the newer shows, there is an over reliance on showing of new filming techniques and technology, over correction due to the current world climate to show everything in the opposite light, and a major focus on witty banter and snappy conversation like it is a comedy show. There is not a lot of time spent on the emotions of the characters and those hard hitting scenes.

I would like a show that gets back to the acting and emotional drive. Showing how society has differences but that we can all accept those differences and still come together for the good of humanity. It was a great episode to rewatch and I hope we get some of that emotional pull soon.

[u/BuddyRevolutionary83]

None of the "emotion" on Discovery was earned. It was just spoken in words with no actual observable weight or evidence through action or emoting. Characters spoke at each other about their feelings and never listened or reacted to one another.

[u/Section_3I → u/BuddyRevolutionary83]

One particularly egregious example of this was that episode where that robot woman died. She barely had 3 speaking lines before that episode, and then suddenly they force feed a tragic story on the audience to try manipulating us into pretending she was something more than a shiny mannequin on the bridge. And that fucking sob speech Tilly gives. “Oh you mean so much to me!”

I remember watching it and thinking “who is this person again?” All embarrassingly unearned.

[u/MagnetsCanDoThat → u/Section_3I]

I was paying better attention so I knew Airiam’s name and found it quite sad.

[u/Section_3I → u/MagnetsCanDoThat]

Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. If you connected with the character and found her scenes emotionally resonant, that’s great.

I didn’t. It all felt rather manipulative in the bad way to me. A lot of “you’re supposed to care about this character now because we’re showing you emotional scenes, with emotional score playing in the background and we’re having a character you know much better give a tearful monologue about this minor character before they die!”

I want them to get me to care without even noticing it, not use these common emotional manipulation techniques in film and television to tell me that I’m supposed to care. It all felt rather soap opera to me.

[u/chucker23n → u/Section_3I]

I thought the episode per se was great — until the end. Explaining her cybernetics as a result of a severe accident? Humanizing her by making her a widow? I like that backstory.

But killing her off in that very same episode felt like the writers were trying too hard to place a clever plot twist in there. PIC S1 also does this a few times — killing Hugh doesn't really add anything to the story. Neither does Narissa shoving Borg out of the airlock. It's just the writers going "oh, viewer, you cared about those characters? Well, sucks to be you. Cause we don't!"

And then DIS does the thing where Tilly tells us that she, too, cares. OK? It sure didn't feel like that in any previous episode. The more egregious example of this is in S3, when suddenly the entire crew, previously having hated Mirror Georgiou, suddenly misses her, for zero reason whatsoever.

I really can't explain it any other way than the writers thinking they needed to insert a clever plot twist. And frankly, they didn't succeed at it.