I don't have a problem with replicators. I think the idea is nifty. I'm willing to suspend disbelief about faster than light travel because it's a familiar sci-fi trope and it allows writers to easily tell stories about space exploration. I don't even mind the whole teleporters because it's just another piece of technology and I know it was in the original series because it was easier and cheaper than having scale models of ships landing and taking off. I am lost at the whole organization chart because it does strike me as unrealistic and counter to logical structures and human behavior. I didn't miss the fact that O'Brien's wife and kid are on the space station and that makes a bit more sense because it's a space station on a planet that's trying to rebuild its government after occupation. To me, that's a lot more realistic than flying into the unknown where literally anything can happen, because at least on the space station, the majority of the risks are known. As for the space station next to a worm hole, they have loopy sci-fi ways of explaining how that works if anyone asks the question. But I think I am. We have spaceships and aliens and a government that's trying to rebuild itself and there are gonna be political and personal conflicts about it. I just don't think that unrealistic behavior can be explained by story world rules. I do think it can be chalked up to bad writing. I think I'm fair in that assessment because if I said the same thing about Arrow or Iron Fist, the majority of the comic book loving community would do the internet equivelant of murmuring in agreement. Can I go back and say I enjoyed the episode with the Aphasia Virus? I thought it was a good medical mystery. I enjoyed how the solution to the conflict was the result of a doctor knowing about the origins of the original virus working with Dr. Bashir's research to come up with a solution. I'm willing to ignore the fact that no one actually died even though that's unrealistic. It had pacing issues. It had dialog issues. It didn't have nearly as much forced drama issues. It was an okay episode. Can I go back and say I enjoyed the episode with the "former" terrorist and the bomb? I thought it was a good way to illustrate how some people have a hard time accepting the outcomes of political events. I thought they did an okay job in showing how new situations and new relationships can put a strain on and even break old friendships, creating frustration and doubt. I thought the tailor as a spy was weird. I wish they focused more on the relationship with Kira and the "former" terrorist. I think it ended too cleanly. But it was an okay episode. What both those episodes had in common though, despite their flaws, was that unlike the episodes with Tosk the guy being hunted and Vash the archaeologist who is totally a villain is that everybody acted on the more rational and realistic end of the scale. Back to the Vash episode, I totally didn't like that O'Brien used a battery to help Vash and Dax escape from being trapped in the shuttle. That goes back to the whole using technology as a crutch that takes away the satisfaction from dramatic resolution problem I have. Also, I knew who Q was through cultural osmosis. Seeing him in a show though, I don't think I like his character.You're not accepting the storyworld rules.
In other words, you're willing to accept conventions you already know, but deeply uncomfortable with new concepts you are unfamiliar with. It's entirely possible that the concept of duty, and what it requires of us, is a through-line explored via O'Brien through the course of not just many seasons of DS9, but several seasons of TNG. It's almost as if this were a narrative thread revisited throughout the course of the series. But you didn't know that Vash is Picard's erstwhile girlfriend. You can have it one way or the other: you can be mad that the shows are all self-contained or you can be mad that they don't have any continuity from episode to episode. You can't have it both ways.I'm willing to suspend disbelief about faster than light travel because it's a familiar sci-fi trope and it allows writers to easily tell stories about space exploration. I don't even mind the whole teleporters because it's just another piece of technology and I know it was in the original series because it was easier and cheaper than having scale models of ships landing and taking off.
I am lost at the whole organization chart because it does strike me as unrealistic and counter to logical structures and human behavior.
thought the tailor as a spy was weird. I wish they focused more on the relationship with Kira and the "former" terrorist. I think it ended too cleanly. But it was an okay episode.
Also, I knew who Q was through cultural osmosis.
I mean, I can go either way. Part of the reason I'm watching DS9 from the beginning is because I'm told that the continuity matters down the road. The Vash episode was frustrating to me for a different reason. I think it could have been stretched out to three episodes and as a result not only tell a better story, but also take the time to explore some of the moral quandries brought about by the story and resolve some of them. Some of the resolutions I'd agree with, others I wouldn't, and others I could go either way about, but all of them would have left me satisfied.You can have it one way or the other: you can be mad that the shows are all self-contained or you can be mad that they don't have any continuity from episode to episode. You can't have it both ways.
KB probably has better insight on how this happens but I find that there are often a lot of terrible writing in the in-between episodes. Usually the first episode in a season is great, there is a great mid-season one and then the final 1-2 episodes are great. It seems to me that often the episodes in between are filler. Depending on the show the in between episodes either feel like they are written by people not familiar with the show, or have other inconsistencies that require too much buy in.
Schedules and budgets. Berman-era Star Trek was written as "we start the season here, we end the season there." Some actors had prior engagements and were unavailable for all the episodes; some actors had conditions in their contract that said "at least one episode in this season is gonna be about me." The main throughline had certain set-pieces built in; this was where most of the money for the season was gonna go. So you take all that, you put it in a Gannt chart and you recognize that you've got seventeen of the twenty-six episodes you're contractually bound to make, and you've got four million dollars left over (TNG was infamous when it came out for being the first syndicated series that cost more than a million dollars an episode). So now you've got nine episodes and half your average budget and Patrick Stewart is playing Scrooge on TNT and Gates McFadden is outtie because she's sick of Maurice Hurley rubbing his dick on her in the dressing room which means when you go to the pile of spec scripts you have from writers on and off the show, you can cross out everything with Picard or Crusher. And what you're left with might be great, might be terrible, but can certainly be executed in a way that doesn't fuck up your through line. Not all shows are done like this. I got to talk to David Kring right as Heroes Season 1 wrapped. I asked him how much they knew about the end of the series when they started, because S1 is fuckin' intricate. He blew me away - they knew nothing. They fully intended to kill the cheerleader three episodes in. HRG was a bit-player. They thought it was going to be a show about the Patrelli brothers. But as they wrote, they came up with this thing and they rolled with it. But they ran out of money - in the finale, Patrelli was supposed to throw a bus at Sylar but they didn't have any money for that level of SFX so it ended up being a bus stop sign.
I was talking to my cyberpunk loving, DS9 suggesting friend again last night and he told me Voyager can be a hard watch if you care about consistent characters. He said the Captain seems to have a new personality every week. Sometimes she's all about the rules, sometimes she says damn the rules. Sometimes she's very encouraging, sometimes she's cold and harsh. From what he described, and from what you're describing, it sounds like either writers are being rotated in and out and don't understand the characters or the producers solicit scripts and then try to mold them to fit the show. I hate to compare and contrast westerns again (but hey, I'll stick with what I know I guess), I have a theory that the people in charge of the shows would often just buy scripts and then re-write them a bit to fit the characters and scenery of a show. A lot of the times plots would be so simplistic and stereotypical that anyone could easily take place in The Rifleman or Gunsmoke or Laramie without much adjusting.
Voyager is fucking terrible. Tupac the jive-ass Vulcan and Chipotle the Space Navajo. Rick Berman is the fucking worst. In many cases, it's the personality of the showrunner. Gene Roddenberry was a serial sexual harasser and his wife was always on set (Nurse Chapel, the Computer, Troi's mom). he was bad enough that when he offered Michelle Forbes her own show (DS9) she quit rather than work with him again. But as bad as Roddenberry was around women, apparently men did better. Berman, on the other hand, drove away anybody of any real talent and ran the franchise into the ground. Roddenberry had a great group of writers around him but there was a hell of a diaspora when he died. Rene Echevarria left. Naren Shankar left. Ron Moore left. They were pretty much left with Brannon Braga and DC Fontana.