As we reported in July, Star Trek: Discovery was nominated for five Saturn Awards for season 2, just like season 1 before it. This season, Discovery can proudly say they won in three of the categories in which they were nominated. The 45th annual Saturn Awards took place on Friday, September 13, 2019, at the Avalon Theater in Hollywood, California. It was live-streamed, and you can watch a replay online here.
Discovery’s awards
Best Streaming Science Fiction, Action, & Fantasy Series: Star Trek: Discovery
Best Actress in Streaming Presentation: Sonequa Martin-Green
Best Supporting Actor in Streaming Presentation: Doug Jones
In attendance for Discovery were Doug Jones, co-showrunner Michelle Paradise, and writer/producers Bo Yeon Kim and Erika Lippoldt. Sonequa Martin-Green appeared in a pre-taped video.
Pictures from social media
Michelle Paradise and Bo Yeon Kim took to social media to share the wins.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2YASLiJgaN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2YFmbmpTsr/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR IN STREAMING PRESENTATION AND ALSO BEST HUMAN @actordougjones pic.twitter.com/PXZNlkfteM
— Bo Yeon Kim (@extspace) September 14, 2019
— Bo Yeon Kim (@extspace) September 14, 2019
TrekMovie congratulates the Discovery cast and crew, and Sonequa Martin-Green and Doug Jones for their wins.
Star Trek: Discovery is available exclusively in the USA on CBS All Access. It airs in Canada on Space and streams on CraveTV. It is available on Netflix everywhere else.
Keep up with all the Star Trek: Discovery news at TrekMovie.
Congrats to Star Trek for the Saturn Awards wins. Discovery has made Star Trek cool again.
Because its more important to be cool than to make a series that is actually decent?
if it’s not relevant to the viewing audience, it’s not bringing in money, and then Trek isn’t made. Also, the show is damn decent, great even, it’s got flaws sure, what Trek series didn’t?
USS has it right. Better something good and gone way too soon (FIREFLY) than seasons of crap.
but it’s not crap, unless the only thing you want from Trek is for it to constantly whack your nostalgia boner and not try anything new. they tried something new, they are finding their footing it feels like. If the haters had been heard during TNG, if we had social media and the internet as it is now back then, Trek would never have gotten this far.
I’d’ve been happy to see TNG fail if it meant we got something closer to DS9 in its direct wake. Different and new is great if the material supports that. TOS did ‘thrilling & fun’ along with (for TV) occasionally ‘deep and moving,’ and those adjectives rarely apply IMO for what followed, which is why I gave up on VOYAGER and ENTERPRISE after forcing myself to watch about 90% of TNG. I guess some folks got a ‘thrilling & fun’ vibe from Abrams, but I find those two films (especially the 09) mind dead and insulting. BEYOND is the only one that pushed the emotional buttons, but it plays like it is a half-hour too long, probably because of the endless ending.
The DSC series, based on what I’ve seen, doesn’t so much offer new as they do revisionism, trampling what has gone before without offering improvements other than cosmetic. I almost get the feeling from DSC that it is from an alternate timeline of Trek filmmaking, perhaps that one where GR had gotten to do his sequel to TMP, the one where Klingons rape Amanda and Kirk goes back in time to meet with JFK, which still ranks as one of the dumbest and most unsettling notions for mass entertainment I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading about in summary form.
Kmart I’m not sure if you are ever going to truly enjoy Star Trek again lol. But I’m curious, do you think Picard or Lower Decks will give you hope in the franchise that you will truly enjoy or do you think you will just be as disappointed in those as you been in most of Trek?
“Discovery has made Star Trek cool again.”
It has?
Doug Jones and Michelle Paradise were adorably sincere in accepting the awards.
Sonequa Martin-Green was solid in her parts of the clip featuring several winners of acting awards.
The show was long and not very well paced, but this was one niche of award recipients that, for the most part, one wanted to let have enough time to express their joy in all their geeky awkwardness.
And also a big win for WATERWORLD, Best Limited Edition Blu-ray Release.
Though nothing for our beloved parody show, The Orville. :-(
Possibly because season two was no longer parody.
Any contest where WATERWORLD wins anything is suspect. ROAD WARRIOR on the water — more like TRW underwater.
kmart,
Any? I would imagine WATERWORLD wins the wet T-shirts contest, fins down!
Not a fan of the Tripplehorn, but the fins down ref earns you mucho cred!
kmart,
I was actually commenting on Hollywood productions’ penchants for finding gratuitous excuses to drench their beautiful people’s clothing which a water world would exceed over that of a desert, i.e. there actually are more wet T-shirts in WATERWORLD.
I always thought Waterworld was underrated though. Costner bit off more than he can chew, but we should admire the guy for his ambitions with the film.
alphantrion,
I’ve only seen it cut for broadcast television and I didn’t find that version too hard to watch. I can’t imagine whether I could sit through a 3-hour cut with no pauses? My father was into aquariums and fish..maybe?
They used to show the film all the time here in Turkish TV back in the day so I remember watching it very often and like you said, it was an easy watch on TV. I don’t know about the longer cut though.
WATERWORLD??? Renegades floating around on an ocean-filled world, and all the characters have DIRTY GRIMY FACES!! F*cking hilarious!!
Harry Ballz,
Dirt? I thought it was oil, sludge, ocean scum, etc.? The things hi-def reveals!
Nice! Congratulations.
2nd That!
Yay, congratulations all!
Put that in your pipe and smoke it Midnight’s Edge, Nerdrotic, Overlord DVD and all you other Alt_R!ghter$!
overlord dvd thanks i will have to have a LOOK, dose this mean disco is better than the oringanl trek as that ,as far as i am aware,never won any awards ?
No. Not even close.
TOS won the Hugo for best dramatic presentation in each of its first two seasons (not that winning awards is any lock for greatness, otherwise THE WIRE and CARNIVALE would have won something about a billion more times than they did.
The Saturn Awards started in the late 70s, long after TOS wrapped.
From a number of the presenters’ statements. it’s clear that the Saturn’s were established in response to being marginalized by other major awards in the industry.
It’s notable that the Saturn’s lean to the best film/series or best actor categories : the ones where Sci-fi, Fantasy and Horror productions are most likely to be passed over (although TOS and TNG actors garnered the occasional Emmy nomination).
It was clear that the Saturn’s have largely been a marginal niche genre community for most of their existence. It’s the mainstreaming of geekdom that has upped their importance in the industry.
The Saturns started around the time that the Nebula stopped having a dramatic category, right? I remember a sci-fi awards show on TV from the late 70s, maybe that is when they started. It’s the one where STAR WARS won everything, but they actually had TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING in the ‘best’ category (it’s probably my favorite movie of all time, along with 2001, APOCALYPSE NOW and ALL THAT JAZZ, but it had no business being nominated.) Also the one where Melinda Dillon wore a pretty much transparent dress, although those two highlights were overshadowed for some by Shat doing ROCKET MAN, unless I’m mixing two different events together.
Oh, Twilight’s Last Gleaming looks cool. I don’t understand… how I’m learning about it only now? I thought I already know all good movies and shows from the 70s.
I saw the trailer for that movie at least 40 times during the months leading up to its release, which really primed me for it. My best friend called me the night it opened, and it turned out we both had seen it at the same theater, but I saw the 5:30 and he saw the 6:45 (it was on two screens at the Oakridge 6.) We went back together and saw it at Pruneyard Cinema the next day … and again, and again. Most people find the big reveal hokey, but I knew nothing about history (I didn’t even realize we’d lost Vietnam, I was so engrossed in sports pages and then in filmmaking), and Durning’s performance, along with Gerald S. O’Loughlin’s, is fantabulous.
It got a very bad homevid release, and was massively redubbed for TV airing. There wasn’t a true widescreen version until the last decade on blu-ray. Quintessential 70s movie, political paranoia galore.
Kmart,
Speaking of APOCALYPSE, have you checked out the “Final (yes, we really mean it this time!) Cut” yet?
Michael,
I haven’t even seen the previous cut all the way through in a single viewing. My wife has problems watching the movie, so I have only watched the cut from the turn of the century in pieces, though I’ve seen those pieces at least a couple times.
My understanding is the new cut is something that rests halfway between the other two. That strikes me as a dubious achievement, but then again, if it is just basically tightening the second version, maybe that is artistic growth. I’ve seen the theatrical version maybe 50 times, so even though I knew about the plantation sequence and the girls from the copter, I didn’t ever feel like anything was missing from the story.
I feel that the two previous cuts exist as different experiences, and will be interested to look at the new one whenever I can afford to get a 4K TV and have the current TV moved into the bedroom, so my wife can watch something else. Will probably need a headset that connects to TV as well, because I want to ‘make it loud’ as Kilgore says.
I didn’t get to see FINAL CUT in the theater — and, by God, it was playing at the Cinerama Dome in L.A., so I wish I’d tried harder — but I did pick up the video release. I do have a 4K TV and a very nice surround setup, but it won’t play the Ultra Hi-Def version, so I have to settle for viewing the standard Blu-Ray disc which fortunately was also included. The picture and sound were remastered from the original negative, and are just astounding. (One of the complaints about REDUX was its messing with the original’s aspect ratio, which FINAL CUT restores.) I suspect, though, that in the end I’ll still prefer the original theatrical version, not being enamored of the French Plantation scene, most of the additional Kilgore stuff, and especially disliking the relocation of the “Satisfaction” water-skiing sequence to a point in the film’s narrative where it has a lot less impact. I totally get Coppola’s need to endlessly tinker with his masterpiece, as it was the defining work of his career and the hellish experience of making it a milestone in his life. But on general principle I think it’s a mistake for a sixty or eighty year-old artist to second-guess the choices they made when they were thirty-six.
Man, I am so there with you about ‘Satisfaction.’ I think having that up near the front instead of where it is ‘supposed’ to be (post-Kilgore) in the narrative really helped the theatrical a ton. Yesterday I was rereading the CONVERSATIONS book about editor Walter Murch and for all the amazingly intelligent and insightful comments he makes about all manner of films, I kind of get the impression that the twiddling on APOC for the reworking was more about making it a linear experience instead of an episodic one, and I don’t think that choice benefits the film.
I think THE CONVERSATION is an amazing film, and I’ve long considered it to be co-directed by Murch, given how much control he had over post on it while FFC shot GFII. But I wonder why FFC doesn’t mess with that one, given that, like APOC, is a personal passion project. Murch indicated they dropped whole storylines out of CONVERSATION, turning a narrative progression element into a dream scene and changing characters and their motivations (the woman at the eavesdropper’s party wasn’t a company operative there to steal the audio until well into editing.)
The image of a sailor casually water-skiing in a war zone to the Rolling Stones was a great way of establishing the film’s absurdist take on the American experience in Vietnam. But the scene does some thematic lifting beyond that as well: the soldiers are just having a little fun and blowing-off some steam, yet the Vietnamese whose sampans they capsize surely don’t appreciate having their lives and commerce disrupted by a bunch of foreign jerks with guns. (Hearts and minds, as we said at the time.) It’s a fairly subtle commentary on the effects of imperialism that I think Conrad would have appreciated. Placed after Kilgore’s Wagnerian helicopter assault on a village to secure its beachhead for napalm, surfing, and democracy, it just feels like an unnecessary afterthought. Twenty years on, I’m still astonished that Coppola and Murch didn’t see that.
No. Because SciFi was not mainstream in those days and Star Trek wasn’t the powerhouse it is now.
No, there are plenty of shitty movies, TV shows and performances that win awards because they’re liked by the “right” people.
Shakespeare in Love winning over Saving Private Ryan for the Best Picture Oscar in 1998 comes to mind.
KRAMER VS KRAMER winning over APOCALYPSE NOW and ALL THAT JAZZ has always been my go-to for ‘wrong!’ when it comes to best pictures, though to be honest, most of my ‘best pictures’ were not even nominated for Oscars in that category. 2001, RAGTIME, TRUE CONFESSIONS, GLORY, and if I get started thinking about it, some infuriating other omissions from bestpic category will bubble up and start an ulcer brewing.
Yeah, I’ve pretty much boycotted the Oscars since ‘79. Maybe the loss of APOCALYPSE NOW or ALL THAT JAZZ to K vs. K was no more egregious than 2001 losing to OLIVER! in 1968, or CITIZEN KANE falling to HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY decades earlier. But it sure felt that way at the time, and since I don’t follow red carpet fashion and am not big on self-congratulatory wankfests I don’t suppose I’ve missed much.
For me, Ordinary People beating out The Elephant Man irritated me. But we all have our own pet peeves about such things.
Well, I’d agree with your irritation on that one myself.
I guess I’m a bit of a weird bloke, in that I enjoy Discovery but also enjoy Overlord DVD’s epic rants about it. Some of the writing and plot-holes in Discovery is indeed appalling and Overlord is right to call the writers out on it.
Admiral Cornwall: “I’m going to sacrifice myself by flipping the blast door lever from the inside of the chamber where the massive bomb is, it’s the only way….”
Captain Pike: “Wait Admiral, the same result can be achieved by tying a brick to the lever and throwing the brick into the chamber from outside the blast door….!!”
Admiral Cornwall: “Wait, what?”
Enterprise: “Kerrrr-thwump”
Captain Pike: “Well that’s a bit of a wake up call, we need to make the whole ship out of the same material that the blast door is made of. And some of that blast door window glass would make an awesome addition to my Toyota Camry, I will never need to use the sun-visors ever again! But I am a little puzzled, how did I survive just 6 inches away from an explosion of that magnitude???”
Tilly: “That’s the power of Math, Captain!”
Alf in pog form, that’s exactly how I feel towards DIS. Sometimes I feel it’s Saturn Award worthy, other times Uranus Award worthy.
Blast-door plot holes are the worst.
Midnight’s Edge is an idiot. It’s that simple. He has never had any credibility whatsoever. Pay him no mind.
“Midnight’s Edge” isn’t one person…
Ok, FrostUK…pay them no mind.
My thought to ‘Alf in Pog Form’ is that however amusing one might find Overlord or Midnight Edge’s comments in some cases (even just to get a laugh at how wildly incorrect their so-called inside information is),
…it’s just not worth it to give them views.
These types live for the view and subscriber counts. There are many much better Trek discussions and fan writing to validate.
The worse of it is that too many fans get confused by totally fabricated ‘alternative facts’ peddled by these guys. I don’t want to think how many times the mods here at TrekMovie have needed to intervene to big foot a few of the persistent falsehoods that those YouTube guys have fabricated.
Laughable. If something as badly written as Discovery can win best Scifi series, that award cannot be taken seriously. And don’t get me started on that non-actress SMG.
Congrats to Doug Jones, though. Well deserved.
“I don’t agree with it, therefore it is not credible and should not be taken seriously.” this is, sadly, the way that people think these days thanks to a certain president.
That has nothing to do with it. I’m neither a US citizen, nor do I condone most of what Trump has done. This has nothing to do with whether I “agree with it” or not, this has to do with lazy and subpar writing (which can be proven), and subpar acting (which is my personal opinion, of course).
your not being American is immaterial to my comment. trump has helped popularize the notion that something isn’t credible if you don’t agree with it, and trump has largely been responsible for such a stance gaining credibility itself.
quality is objective. you call it sub-par, that is an opinion. again, because you don’t like it doesn’t mean the award itself is somehow not to be taken seriously. in fact, all it proves is that a lot of the people who decide the award did like it.
so essentially what you’re saying it, if you like this show, your opinion has no value. but go up and down the comments section on this website and you will see many people enjoy this show, to varying degrees. but now you have taken it upon yourself to be the arbitrary decider of what is good and what is to be taken seriously.
strikes me as very similar to a certain president, whether you reside in his country or not.
” trump has helped popularize the notion that something isn’t credible if you don’t agree with it,”
I’m sure Trump would love you for that. Giving him credit for something that existed LONG before he was ever born.
ML31,
You need to reread that. “…helped popularize…” is NOT the same as giving him credit for originating it.
OK. I read it. My comment still applies with 100% accuracy.
ML31,
OK, then help me to see it because I don’t. With what, exactly, is it that you think Michael Hall is crediting Trump?
Disinvited…
It’s in the quote I cited. He credited Trump for helping popularizing something that was already extremely popular. Being the narcissist that he is, Trump loves taking credit for pretty much all things whether he had a hand in it or not. So Hall just enabled him. I would have thought this was pretty obvious.
Um. . . I know this terrible comments system makes it difficult to parse, but both of you have the wrong guy. I was only responding to a comment previously made, not asserting anything about Trump on my own.
That is my bad. The quote came from another poster. Not sure why I thought it came from you. Maybe I had just read a bunch of yours or something.
No worries. As I said, the comments system here needs work. Just wanted to clarify things.
ML31,
First, I believe Hall is correct about that quote actually originating with Urban Turf.
Second, Turf did not “enable” that aspect of Trump. Trump often takes credit for things he had little or nothing with which to do regardless of what others say, and certainly for your rhetoric to be valid in any way as you assert in regards to Turf’s “enabling” him, you would have us falsely believe Trump reads Urban Turf’s posts here or worse, that you actually believe that he has.
Third, enabling or no, Turf’s observation is correct, regardless of how popular that invalid rhetorical stance was in prior times, Donald Trump assisted in maintaining its past popularity by employing and selling that rhetoric every chance he got and gets, just as he did with the already popularized by Hanna Barbara line, “YOUR FIRED!”, which was well on the verge of languishing as a cliche as past popular sayings often do.
Wow, Dis. All I got to say is that you are readying WAAAAY too much into the comment.
Put it this way: while Trump didn’t invent the notion that any fact he doesn’t like is “fake news,” his shamelessness in promoting such a notion — and the eagerness of his dimwitted followers to embrace it — is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed in American politics in my lifetime, which (as of today) is 61 years, a not-inconsiderable amount of time. :-)
@ Michael Hall: Fishing for birthday wishes? ;-)
Gots to fight the depression somehow, dude. :-P
Dear Olaf. This is so mean to the new Star Trek crew. Thanks to Brian Fuller, Alex Kurtzman, and Discovery, we have 5 new shows!!! The script (also quality control) could improve, yes, like the first season of every previous Star Trek Show. Sonequa, Mary, Doug, Anson, Michelle, Jason, Wilson, Anthony, Shazad, and all the others are great. The visual effects are superb. Kudos for Discovery. Congratulations! Well deserved!
Five new shows? There’s Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, and the Nick one. What’s the other one?
Section 31 and Short Treks.
You’re mixing things. While I think Brian Fuller is overrated, and Alex Kurtzman gets more bashing than he deserves (as was Rick Berman), I do acknowledge their work in making Trek a force to be reckoned with again. And I’m looking forward to Picard, liked most of the Short Treks, and will definitely look into the other shows as well.
But that doesn’t make Discovery’s writing any better. It’s just so full of plot holes, contrivances, etc. that you can only enjoy it, if you shut part of your brain off. Which is the exact opposite of what most good Trek was about.
And yes, there is good acting in the show, as well. Particulary from Doug Jones and Anthony Rapp. Even Mary Wiseman, though I don’t really like the character, but she acts very well. And not to forget the great Anson Mount.
And yes, the VFX are cinema level, which is to be expected considering the budget, though I’m not particularly fond of most of the space shots, but that’s subject to opinion.
And yes, almost every first season of the various Trek shows wasn’t particulary great, but we’ve had two seasons of DSC now, and the second was almost more lazy in writing than the first…
Become a writer then and show us what a great written show should be.
Or become an actor and show us what makes Sonequa a ‘non-actress’ whatever the hell that means.
Until then keep the trolling to yourself.
I don’t need to become a writer to point out existing deficencies. And I never stated that I could do any better, though probably the stories I would write would be way less interesting, but way more coherent/logical ;-)
And what’s the problem with someone having a gripe with Sonequa’s acting? In my humble personal opinion, she’s just not (that) good. She only seems to have two expressions, and both get on my nerves big time. Could be down to her character, but I haven’t seen any glimpses that she could do better, if the script called for it. But maybe she’ll surpise me in season 3, we shall see…
And my post was not trolling. I was asking serious (partially rhethorical) questions about the Saturn awards and their criteria…
Olaf, your comments are well taken and thoughtful, and I happen to agree with them 100%. That said, congrats to all who won. Despite how I may feel about the show, I know these folks work hard and it seems like they love what they’re doing. I just wish I loved what they are doing.
his comments are only his opinion and are as low as one can possibly get on a scale of thoughtfulness.
Turf, the comments were the exact opposite of trolling. They were opinions that were coherently presented. Which is what many here do on both sides of the love/hate Discovery line. Just because someone doesn’t like something you do does not make them trolls.
i did not call him a troll. he was claiming the awards have no credibility because he did not agree with them. he did not say ‘I don’t agree with these awards’ or ‘in my opinion, you can’t trust these awards’. he made concrete statements.
he walked them back later, and made a much more fair intepretation of his original comments which I appreciate.
as for trump, I know he didn’t invent the notion, but he’s certainly given rise to the widespread use of it, and the fact that people now give such statements weight. you yourself are even defending it.
Thanks, Danpaine! Yeah ok, I’d definitely second that they’re all hard working, and thus deserve some kind of acknowledgement for their hard work. I just don’t know if “best SciFi series” is the right one for that show ;-) But if someone thinks, it is, that’s perfectly fine with me…
see olaf, that’s a much more fair comment. why not start with that, instead of ‘this show bad, award wrong, ceremony is not credible!’.
of this I will agree. just because you are not a writer or actor does not disqualify you from forming an opinion. but that’s all it is: your opinion.
yousadssadposter,
I honestly think your ‘you show us’ kind of post should be grounds for at least a 3-day suspension, because it is the sort of kneejerk ‘i don’t like what you said’ that is only designed to infuriate instead of inform. A good dissenting post touches on why the poster has those views, and this Olaf has done that, while also stressing that some of his views are subjective. Personally I think except for the monster 1st season, ALL of the vfx on DSC have utterly sucked, and I dislike the production design intensely. Those are minority opinions, but I have explained at length in the past WHY I have them, along with my bona fides (having written a few hundred articles on cinematography, art direction and visual effects.) And I completely agree with Olaf’s assessment of the storytelling on this show, though I’ve only seen s1 and the start of s2.
FWIW, I share your opinion about the physical production design, VFX and cinematography, which boil down to “is style being elevated to a degree that impedes comprehensibility?” or more simply, “I can’t see what just happened.”
There’s a lot of free-floating disquiet with DSC’s aesthetic choices. I’d be curious to see a poll whose questions address specific aspects of the production, each with a “how much do you like it?” scale of “a lot/I really didn’t notice/it actively interfered with my enjoyment”.
post of the week!
Exactly. Those space battles for example: sometimes the ships are so small and so much is going on, that it’s more showing off than making the audience see what’s going on…
Well, the ships being small (on screen, not in actual size) makes more sense than what we’ve generally seen previously. Given the speed at which these ships move and the range and speed of their weapons it just doesn’t make sense that they would ever come so close to each other that you can almost see the other ship’s captain looking out of a window. Star Trek (and a lot of other sci-fi on TV/film, I guess) has traditionally replaced a realistic depiction of scale in favor of something that “looks good”.
On the other hand, filling the screen with lots of ships doesn’t really make a lot of sense (same reason: you don’t want to get within viewing distance given the velocities these ships move at). I guess it’s a case of wanting to fill the screen.
With action-oriented motion-picture space opera, “makes sense” is unavoidably flexible. We get prolonged battles, visible beams, pretty fireballs, nobody wearing suits in case of hull breach, and no consideration for cluttering the battlefield with high-velocity debris. All that, I can deal with.
My beefs are when the dialogue and visuals don’t match (“they’re holding at 6,000 kilometers” but the two ships are depicted nose-to-nose) or when the VFX team forgets the Jurassic Park admonition, “you never stopped to ask if you should.”
Regarding your last point, I’m not sure whether it’s the VFX team that is to blame, or rather the producers always asking for more.
DIGINON,
It’s been my long experience that, for Trek, It’s not the producers, who are often trying desperately to economize, but the network making extravagant nonsensical demands like more and bigger.
But, I often do wonder if FOX had any say in THE ORVILLE’S epic FX sequences? As in, is FOX in any way responsible for some of the elements I don’t find appealing or sensible, or vice versa?
On the other hand, Irwin Allen, the producer/director, was notorious for excessively asking for more and bigger from his actors and crew.
Disinvited,
FOX bought the company doing Orville’s FX and renamed it,”Fox VFX Lab.” So, I suppose that makes FOX responsible for all of it, the good and the bad?
@Disinvited: Let me rephrase my comment: I’m not sure whether it’s the VFX team that is to blame, or rather the people who order the effects.
I don’t claim to understand exactly how the relationship works between networks, studios and production companies but I would guess that the VFX teams probably get their instructions from the show’s producers, not directly from the network. In any case, it’s probably not the VFX team pushing to make shots more busy/complicated but rather a request from the top.
Well put, Phillip. Most of the ‘action’ ship/space scenes on DSC are incomprehensible, to me. I hope Picard uses a different aesthetic, but I’m not terribly optimistic about that.
Non-fans who post in discussions baffle me.
Discovery is great. Olaf is not.
Where did I say I’m a non-fan? I watched every DSC and Short Trek episode (though I do not feel the need to re-watch any of it, unlike other Trek incarnations). And there’s good there, as well, just not that much (in my opinion, of course)…
I just cannot take the Saturn awards seriously, if DSC is considered the best Scifi there is, with the kind of lazy writing they tend to have (look up some videos on YouTube, if you need proof of that, or re-watch it with an open eye). What kind of light does that shed on all of the other Scifi series out there? That’s what I was asking myself first, and then here.
If you like DSC, that’s perfectly fine with me. It’s not up to me to tell you what to like or not, and with no word did I.
I think the problem might be with science fiction in general. Are there really any real “thought provoking” or “goosebump inducing” science fiction shows out there? I think sometimes our expectations for Star Trek might just be too much and we should understand that Star Trek could never really encompass all that we ever expect from science-fiction.
Well, but it did ;-) Unless you mean that it’s either thought-provoking or action, and cannot be both, at least not great in both. To which I would agree.
Other than that, yeah, probably it *is* the best out there, and if it were, the award would be deserved. I cannot really tell, because I haven’t watched anything else SciFi besides DSC and The Orville, but people have been raving about shows like The Expanse, so I don’t know if there isn’t anything better (written) than DSC out there…
Hi Olaf,
I really appreciate your sincere efforts to help us understand where your reaction/assessment is coming from.
A few thoughts on my side, picking up here and there on points you’ve made above:
1st – let’s take this award for best streaming series against the shows Discovery was actually competing against. Streaming shows are in many cases released as a season at one time. Depending on the cut off dates, it means that an ongoing show may miss eligibility for an entire year of awards, or have 2 seasons released in one year. Also, relevant is that series like the Expanse that were shown both on cable and streaming are considered in the television series categories.
2nd – I’d say Discovery S2 compares favourably against TNG S2. Rewatching TNG with our kids, I was surprised how few episodes out of 26 in S2 were really good, and how many were truly regrettable. More to the point, going into S2, TNG already 26 episodes under it’s belt, which is essentially where Discovery is after two seasons. Lastly, as we’ve covered a few times on this board, the serial format is very unforgiving when writers drop the ball on plot and continuity. Discovery had its share of great moments in S2, which if we consider aside from the serial approach, stand up to the level of the other series.
3rd – SMG’s acting. I have to disagree that the issue is with her. My spouse and I have found her really credible. The problem is in the inconsistency and incoherence of the writing. SMG showed us a wide range in S2 : from fighter-pilot crazy in Brother to emotional fracturing in her attempts to resolve her relationship with Spock. But the writing and directing was asking her to take the character in too many directions, and in the latter part of the season lurched into lurid melodrama. We were emotionally engaged with Burnham until Project Daedulus, but the over the top scenes in Red Angel and Perpetual Infinity, just left us exasperated with the character.
This may be part of TPTB’s efforts to reach a new audience, but for the long time Trek fans in our household, watching drawn out paralyzingly emotional scenes when the characters had urgent things that duty was calling on them to get done, just caused us to disengage.
TG47 – totally agree with your 3rd point, as to SMG (although my spouse refuses to watch DSC because of her). Watching SMG in The Walking Dead, we agreed she did a meritable job with that material. What’s she’s been given to work with on DSC thus far has done nothing to endear the character of Burnham to my household, however. I find her to be a decent actress though, given good material.
Nicely put, and very much reflects my own feelings about this show two years in. Despite some reservations I quite liked the pilot and the first regular episode, and had high hopes for the rest of the season. Unfortunately, like DS9, Discovery wound up stumbling a lot during that first year, but whereas DS9 capped its first season with two standout shows that laid the groundwork for what would follow, DSC ended up taking a disastrous side trip to the Mirror Universe that was not only unsatisfying on its own but fatally undermined whatever narrative tension the show had managed. Season 2 almost had to be better by comparison, and thankfully was in spite of its own problems. But the plot holes, godawful science, and inconsistent writing — the Original Sins Alex Kurtzman brought with him from the Kelvin films — remain its biggest deficits, just as the cast and production values are its greatest assets. (For my money, SMG is a terrific and charismatic actor.) Set in a new era and shed of much of its continuity baggage maybe 2020 will finally be the year for DSC to shine, in spite of the dispiriting loss of Walter Moseley’s talents in the writer’s room. I sure hope so.
We shall see. But TG47, sorry, emotionally invested in Michael Burnham? Yeah, I hate her, deeply, is that emotionally invested? ;-) That’s one of the problems with DSC, I don’t really care for any of the characters, except for Saru and Stamets perhaps, and the writers don’t make it easy to do so.
I’m really anxious to see what they do with S3, but they need to realize that jumping 900 years ahead does *not* free them of everything that’s been criticized, but that they still have a 23rd century ship that’s not supposed to have all that crazy tech that would better fit in the 32rd century, for example. But as I said, we shall see ;-)
Olaf,
I agree with a lot there. Burnham had really good potential but the writing team did precious little with her. I’m really surprised at that. And I concur that moving 900 years ahead doesn’t really “free” them from canon or criticism. The problems with the show will still pretty much be there. Including boring and/or underused characters, mediocre (and I’m being generous here) writing and a 23rd century star ship that looks like it belongs in the 25th century. Unless there are wholesale changes in the writing and producing staff I honestly do not see a decent chance there will be any great improvement.
ML31, couldn’t agree more! And that said, I really do not want them to fail, but I cannot see how they’re gonna get out of this one ;-)
And just to be clear, the show still could improve. It did after episode 15. Episode 29 onward could improve yet again a step or two. But I think the limitations of the sandbox they built will likely get in the way. I hope I’m wrong but that is the path they are on.
Well, good for the Discovery people, who probably could use a little ego reinforcement at this time. I found Season 2 to be mostly entertaining, with a few standout moments and lacking the cosmic missteps in its endgame that absolutely ruined Season 1 for me. Still, the papering-over of plot holes continues to be tissue-thin or nonexistent, this series’ worst legacy from the Kelvin films. If they want to add Emmy to the awards shelf they’re going to have to do better.
They just got one!
I don’t think he’s talking tech awards, Salvador.
Kmart. They just got their first Emmy!
Yeah, and it’s a tech award, not for the storytelling aspect.
TNG never got an award for writing in the Emmy’s either. It got Outstanding Dramatic Series,more than halfway into it’s run. Maybe just give Discovery time.
TNG got that Outstanding Dramatic Series nomination in its final season. It didn’t win.
I think the award for makeup is well-earned.
But I do find it odd that Kurtzman is now responsible for creating new Trek in two different mediums and makeup’s the height of both dramatic arts achievements awards from their peers?
why is that odd. nimoy’s emmy is the only time trek has ever won a non-technical category. ever.
can you even name the last time a futuristic/space-based sci-fi show won an emmy?
I can. leonard nimoy.
not battlestar galactica, not dark matter, not the extant, or the expanse, not firefly, doctor who, farscape, babylon 5, the Orville, none of them. despite many of those shows having oscar winning actors, writers, and directors.
but somehow it’s ‘odd’ that kurtzman’s trek hasn’t won a best actor or best drama award? It’s neither odd nor a black mark on his work. it’s history of awards not giving attention to futuristic/space-based sci-fi, the very reason the saturn awards exist.
ps: I say space based because I really don’t consider westworld, x-files, stranger things, or lost to be the same category because they all have more contemporary and relatable settings, and that makes them much easier to digest and take seriously for award voters.
@Disinvited: Make up just seems like a natural fit given that Trek shows a lot of aliens.
I have just scanned over the list of Emmy nominations and wins that Trek has collected over its 50+ year existence. Unless I missed something all of its wins and most of its nominations were in the technical categories (incl. stuff like costumes, music and art direction). No Trek has ever won an Oscar or Emmy for writing, acting, directing or best movie/TV show. I don’t know whether that’s a sign of bias against sci-fi in general/Trek specifically or whether our favorite franchise just isn’t good enough.
DIGINON,
You missed that the Filmation series won a Daytime Emmy for Best Series.
“Outstanding Entertainment – Children’s Series”. At least we have confirmation that TAS was good for kids ;-)
I liked it…and so did our kids when they were in primary school.
Through the boxed set of DVDs, TAS was their first Star Trek.
We weren’t sure whether they would go for the old 2D animation, but they didn’t care. They loved the stories and wanted more.
Best Streaming Science Fiction, Action, & Fantasy Series? Surely this should have been The Expanse? All seems rather suspect/was part of some kind of an agenda.
Doug Jones though, deserves all the wins!
As noted earlier in this thread GreenBreen, The Expanse S3 was on Syfy cable first in 2018 in the US so it wasn’t considered for the streaming award.
Actually, The Expanse was nominated in the streaming category but lost out to Discovery. Unless Wikipedia got it wrong. It seems strange because The Expanse will only move to streaming for the next season.
Yes DIGINON, I see that now in Wikipedia too.
But I don’t recall seeing it when I looked at the list when I was watching the award show…
It’s really strange for it to have been nominated for a streaming series category, but perhaps Amazon promoted the Expanse and Syfy didn’t.
The first half of S3 of the Expanse was phenomenally good, but the second half was rougher, likely because they were trying to get the show through another book in case of cancellation. Also, I found the new female antagonist was not portrayed as credibly of the rest of the show’s female leads.
By the way, I adored Good Omens and would have been happy if it cleaned up in all the categories where it was nominated. However, biting British humour doesn’t always work well with an American audience. So, I wasn’t expecting it.
I very much appreciated “The Expanse” in its first two seasons, and look forward to catching up with the third eventually. It’s a quality effort, and way more consistent than DSC has been thus far.
Why the handwringing over verifying Wikipedia’s sources when you can search Emmy nominees on the official Emmy web site?
https://www.emmys.com/awards/nominations/award-search
There are no nominees that contain the word “expanse”.
Thanks Disinvited…
We were actually talking about the Saturns rather than Emmys, and I couldn’t pull up the equivalent official page for Saturn nominations…perhaps the link has moved after the award show…
But your point about no Emmy nominations is directly relevant : I hadn’t thought the Expanse was eligible for either this year due to the timing of Sony’s broadcast of S3.
TG47,
You are welcome. And thanks for answering my question. Now, I know.
TG47,
You can plug Expanse into the search here:
https://www.saturnawards.org/The-Saturn-Awards-Past-Winners.php
But I think it’s only Expanse wins.
Wow know I’m little late, but congrats to Discovery on the win! As someone who thought season one was one of Star Trek’s WORST seasons to season two being a vast improvement (even if it still had tons of flaws) did show that the filmmakers at least took the fan complaints seriously and gave us a better show that is paying off.
HOPEFULLY the third time will be the charm when the show find its footing like most Trek shows did starting with TNG. And with a completely new setting and an entire new century to mine its the most excited I been about this show since it was announced. We finally have a show that will move Trek forward that no other Trek show has done since TNG. So I’m looking forward to it!
2020 sounds like its going to be a great year for Trek!
Season 2 is a huge improvement over Season 1. Now they need to bring the writing up to the same level as the special effects. Writing episodes with Swiss cheese holes in them is just not professional. I just watched S2-E6 The Sounds of Thunder, which deals with genocide — a subject that Star Trek has explored on previous occasions. The dominant species is only seen for a short piece as a not very subtle “monster”. Rather than seriously exploring a story, once the dominance of one species over another is broken, we never get to see the dominant species again, either in fear of or in initial contact with the formerly subservient species. Genocide here was dealt with superficially, almost as a kind of plot device to tell the “real” story of mending the relationship between Saru and his sister.