My partner and I have just binged TOS-Enterprise last year and we are starting Discovery today. I was just wondering if we can also start LD or will there still be jokes from Discovery (and the later shows) that we might miss out on? I have really bad FOMO anxiety and am worried there will be references in LD that we will miss because we havent watched any of the new shows yet.
There are relatively few direct references to Discovery in Lower Decks. More importantly, you’ll enjoy Lower Decks even if you don’t notice or “get” a handful of references.
Lower Decks isn’t good because it references older shows, it’s good because it’s funny and you care about the characters. There are people out there watching it and loving it with minimal or no prior Trek knowledge.
SNW has a Lower Decks crossover episode, which is hilarious. Imo, SNW is essentially the only good characters taken from Discovery (which is fucking awful) and put in a far superior Trek. It’s got the same “doesn’t take itself too seriously while still addressing serious things” as some of the light-hearted Voyager/DS9 episodes.
That’s because SNW is traditional episodic Star Trek whereas Discovery and Picard are serialized series. Serialized series need to constantly escalate the tension and threats so you tend to get super serious action drama. Meanwhile, episodic series can get away with doing stuff like “how would the crew react to the entire ship turning pink?”
They both have their place in television, but Star Trek better lends itself to episodic format where you can have breaks to reset the tension.
Hey just so you know, the word you’re after is “series”, it’s plural. “Series’s” means either something belonging to the series, or “series is”. :)
Thank you. I’ve made the necessary corrections.
“Compensating.” “What if it doesn’t work?” “Reverse the polarity.”
This is a really good take. I have enjoyed the serialized shows -but they are a juggernaut of emotion and intensity to watch. You tend to watch them once, and it’s a fairly wild ride, but then it’s done. I suspect that I will be re-watching episodes of SNW and lower decks for years to come, as I have for TOS and TNG. That’s how Trek wormed it’s way into my brain in the first place.
From what I can remember, LD idea mostly referencing TNG and TOS. Can’t remember any references to Discovery.
I enjoy Discovery, although it takes a little bit to find it’s feet. Due to the nature of the show (you’ll understand as you watch) there can’t really be any references to it in Lower Decks. Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks haven’t co-existed for long so there aren’t many references there to start with.
That being said, Lower Decks mostly references older Trek. You’re more than prepared.
There is a crossover of lower decks characters in strange new worlds, but you’ll get more out of that from seeing lower decks first
Umm, it could be mentioned, could it not?
From their point of view, deleted because I fail at spoiler tags
The ships existence wasn’t broadcasted or well known. Only two of her class were built and both had an extremely classified propulsion system that wasn’t talked about outside of Admiralty, Section 31, and specific Enterprise crew.
spoiler
Also Discovery wasn’t marked down as missing. She was marked down as destroyed. There’s no real reason for Lower Decks to ever mention Discovery in any fashion without it being a super reach. It’d have to be something like just adding ‘Discovery’ to a list of ships destroyed during a specific period.
That’s what I intended to get at. They could mention it, but wouldn’t know any special reason they should. And since Boims loves talking about the special ones, but wouldn’t know anything about Discovery. The way the other comment was worded I thought they were just secret in general, which I definitely don’t remember anything like that. I just got confused. I should watch them all close together at some point. Watching in real time week to week with other stuff going on (around season 4 time ahem) make me forget details.
I don’t remember anything about the propulsion being classified. It didn’t come with that, did it? I thought they got that one thing later, after the show was in progress. Was there something special about it when it was built?
Ah okay, fair enough. My mistake if I added to the confusion.
As for the classified stuff, i’ma stick this behind spoiler tags for OPs sake.
spoiler
The propulsion was classified during the Klingon War. USS Discovery was a secret weapon against the Klingons. Information about the ship was not made publicly available, at least on it’s propulsion. Security on the ship was heightened to the point that Section 31 served on-board as seen in the 3rd episode of the first season. Burnham also wasn’t told anything about the drive until Lorca finally clued her in, using Captains authority. Tilly slammed up the second she realized that Burnham wasn’t read in as well. It’s discussed throughout the season by the Admirals that Discovery is their ‘secret weapon’ and if the Klingons found out about the ship it would be devastating to the war effort. The whole bit with L’rell, Ash Tyler and Lorca was all just to discover information about Discovery.
spoiler
After the war, the ships spore drive was shelved until a non-human interface was found. However the red signals immediately popped up and Pike took command of the Discovery/Spore Drive to find out more about the signals. At this point, information about the ship wasn’t disseminated throughout Starfleet. The ship wasn’t classified but the propulsion was and Starfleet, presumably, didn’t see the need to spread this information further. When the ship was destroyed, Pike and Spock said that Control/Section 31 destroyed Discovery in an attempt to gain access to the spore drive and the sphere data. To ensure that this event couldn’t recur (due to time travel), everyone must never speak of Discovery, the crew, or the spore drive again. When Discovery arrived at 32nd Century Starfleet HQ, Admiral Vance said that Discovery was destroyed nearly a thousand years ago and that there was no mention of the Spore Drive, showing that the secrecy of the ships drive was so tight that not even Starfleet themselves knew about it hundreds of years later.
Damn that does sound familiar. It’s been so long since season 1.
Skip Discovery. You would be far better off to watch Next Generation, and Voyager.
Probably get down voted for this but I’m new to Star Trek online discussion so be kind :) - people didn’t like Discovery?
Sure it took a bit to find its feet but I thought the last series was excellent!
But then I loved Picard by the end of series 3 too so many I’m alone here.
Either way, loving all the Star Trek shows coming out these days, was nothing for so long and now…
I think having multiple galaxy spanning events all spun around one particular character is the trouble for me. Didn’t mind Burnham but…spoilers ahead.
Turns out she is related to spock. Oh and started the Klingon war. Oh and finished it. Oh and also she was the only one who stopped the apocalypse cos it was actually her mum who was a time traveller. Oh and she disobeyed all the orders but got to be captain. Oh and then something about another galaxy spanning event. I stopped watching not long after. Also part of the beauty of Trek for me has been the ensemble cast full of interesting characters. I honestly can’t remember any of the bridge crew apart from Burnham, Saru and Tilly.
LD and SNW and Picard S3 are outstanding in my opinion.
Keeping in mind that I’m just giving personal opinions, I found Discovery to be too… over acted? Maybe that was just how it was written but the end result, for me, was that I was constantly rolling my eyes while watching.
Picard seemed okay but in the end I didn’t like the obvious appeals to nostalgia, for me it felt like it leaned too heavily on it instead of trying to stand on its own as a good show.
I have no idea if my experiences align with the broader community or not, but I found myself forcing myself to watch each respective show so I didn’t bother watching when a new season came out.
Please don’t take my comment as anything but me sharing my experiences with someone else who is a fan of the franchise.
SNW I’m totally on board for, though. And I was hesitant about Lower Decks at first but it’s really a good show, imo. It’s so good that it has me questioning my decision to ignore The Orville for being too silly.
I really think PIC would’ve been better if season 3 came first, get all the fan service done early, and then do stuff on its own to distinguish it.
I mean there was no way that these guys wouldn’t want to reprise their characters together, and of course everyone liked that part.
I feel like everyone was hearing rumors of them getting mostly all back together and no one knew when it was gonna happen, so the first 2 seasons got overshadowed by the anticipation and then finally got paid off at the end of the show, but the show never had its own chance to shine.
I am glad they finally did show the group back together, and if you enjoyed TNG and didn’t shed a few tears when the D came out of Geordi’s secret garage, then are you even human? But I still feel like the anticipation of that one part made waiting over 2 and a half seasons unbearable. If it did that first, and then told its own story, I think it would have had more of an impact.
All that said, seeing Voyager at the museum and Seven’s reaction to its presence was nice for me, as that was my first show. Seeing Seven finally become her own person was really nice as well.
I still demand a scene on some show somewhere where Captain Seven (or is it Captain Of Nine?) meets back up to have Janeway see her in her new role. I will lose my mind. Janeway would be so proud of her. 🥲
@wheeldawg @joe DIS had really bad scripts which appear to have been forced after a certain pattern. For DIS its clear that certain topics had to be extremely present. It never felt smooth or pleasant to watch the episodes (at least for me). I always felt being forced to notice these certain topics at any cost. For PIC its more subtle. The first two seasons could have been condensed to max 4 episodes. It appeared like the authors had no ideas & tried to stretch the story as much as possible.
Yeah, that pretty much tracks. Still think if they got the anticipation out early we could enjoy the rest of it easier instead of constantly looking for the comeback.
It did seem a little uneven pushing at times. Some episodes had slow parts, then they’d throw a lot in the next. Definitely messy. Still, I enjoyed seeing him in action again.
PIC season 3 def should have been the first season.
Star Trek discussion /usually/ tends toward anything new being bad, and always has. SNW and lower decks are exceptions because they do so much fan service and return to a more classic Trek format. Discovery was groundbreaking in a way that I’m sure Roddenberry would have enjoyed, but groundbreaking also implies jarring change and throwing away things that work for experiments that sometimes don’t.
@KirbyProton @PlasmaDistortion I love them both.
There are a few episodes of TOS and Enterprise that I don’t much care for, but overall I believe that Gene Rodenberry, Gene Coons, and Dorothy Fontana have done more to define our role in the universe and our responsibilities to each other than Karl Marx.For me Discovery is enjoyable, but not as “Trek”. It is like a completely different show that lacks the charm of the other series. From a Lower Decks perspective, there are not too many references to it so it puts it at the bottom for someone wanting to understand LD better.
If Discovery were as unpopular as some people really think it is, then none of the current shows would be in production.
TNG, DS9, Voyager.
If you’re saying that the 90s shows have more direct references in Lower Decks than Discovery, I can agree.
I’d add The Animated Series too though. There are many Easter eggs from TAS included.
However, the OP should be aware that Lower Decks is written to be enjoyed by those completely new to the franchise. The deep cuts are added value not a necessity. There are numerous new fans that watched Lower Decks and only later got to the other shows they reference and enjoy discovering in reverse.
Discovery in-universe becomes a secret at a level that it’s not the kind of thing the Cerritos crew would know about from reading historic resources.
Discovery doesn’t have a single good episode I’ve went back to revisit, while even the “weaker” series like ENT have episodes I revisit.
This. There are always specific episodes i like to rewatch but Discovery had none that stood out for me.
A lot of things related to Discovery are supposed to be secret, so if they stick to canon, there shouldn’t be much mention of Discovery at all I think. As of now there hasn’t been much if anything related to Discovery discussed as far as I remember.
@saegiru @AirbrushThreepwood I enjoy Discovery - the story of Michael Burnham is fascinating and engaging, to me.
Once the strike is settled I’ll upgrade my Paramount Plus subscription.
And I’ll ask for an official “As Astra Per Aspera” poster featuring Una, too.
Lower Decks mostly references TOS-ENT, so it won’t matter much.
Discovery is not necessary, but there’s quite a bit of stuff from TNG, Voyager and DS9 in Lower Decks.
I love LD and I mostly like SNW. Discovery lost me near the end of season 2 (and almost lost me several times before). As others have said, the good characters went to SNW (except for Saru).
If you want an actually good show that has similar energy to what Disco was going for, while being majorly disloyal to it’s source material (also like Disco) watch Foundation.
I guess I should try Foundation finally
I think discovery seasons 1 and 2 were fine and help as a precursor to snw which is great, but for sure skip discovery seasons 3 and 4
