Finding Joy in Reconstruction
Sep. 11th, 2023 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAfter a month where I had to do other things, I went on with my Discovery rewatch, and four episodes into s3 I'm filled with even more love for the show. I think one of many reasons why I adore the later two seasons so much is that for me, they solved a narrative problem even my beloved Babylon 5 struggled with in its fifth season and which the Star Wars sequel trilogy avoided altogether by skipping entirely over the New Republic era and creating another scenario where it's Evil Fascist Bad Guys vs Plucky Resistance Heroes. It is this: making a period of reconstruction, of rebuilding a society after some cataclysmic event narratively compelling and exciting.
War, as Sheridan says in one of JMS's self conscious meta moments in s5, is exciting. Teaming up in war against a mutual (usually evil and overwhelming, in fiction) enemy is a feell good narrative, as is defeating said enemy after some temporary set backs. But rebuilding, making alliances for the long term, making compromises where no one gets exactly what they want, and without a Big Bad to boo and hiss at? I'm a staunch s5 defender, and not just because the network screwed JMS over, but while the Fall of Centauri Prime storyline is perfect, everything else would have needed some retooling, and I don't think he ever solved the problem of how to make Sheridan convincingly a good president (i.e. the dialogue keep insisting he is, and the story keeps showing us he's not) the way he was a good war time leader. As for SW and the sequel trilogy, I do think it was a simple calculation on the part of Disney and J.J. Abrams, especially based on the reception the prequels originally got (with their reputation thankfully now somewhat better, says this prequel fan): what people wanted from SW was Plucky Underdog Rebels vs The Evil Empire, and nothing else. Not the plucky rebels transitioning to being the people in power and trying to rebuild a society. So they recreated that scenario, never mind that it meant Our Heroes lived to see their efforts smashed to pieces. (For all that the Disney tv shows can be very different in qualitiy, I give credit where due to Filon, Favreu & Co. of actually tackling the challenge of showing us the New Republic and trying to create a believeable scenario where we see why it fails. Of course, they live in an era where we see democracies all over the world full of people fannish about strongmen again, so I think the theme resonates. However, given that the sequels already established that the New Republic is basically Weimar, the ending is perordained, so that's not really comparable to the challenge I mean: making rebuliding, and specifically rebuilding a democratic society, narratively compelling WITHOUT resorting to the next war against Evil McEvil on the horizon.
Which is what Star Trek: Discovery does show in its third and fourth season. Not that the series is suddenly without villains, or threats and menaces, but they're of a different type, not Evil Empires. S3 very specifically shows us a society that emerged from the breakdown of a civilisatiion - and one that already showed fractures before the Burn -, and the rebuilding of the Federation, the reforging of connections, the need to establish trust that was lost, or in the case the 10c to understand what at first seems utterly incomprehensible, those are the tasks set to our heroes. And it's captivating and emotionally stirring and compelling to watch. That's what I mean when I say Disco has solved that particular narrative challenge.
Also: I'm not sure whether I recced this before or not, but it bears repeating: this is a beautiful vid capturing what's best about the show so well:
War, as Sheridan says in one of JMS's self conscious meta moments in s5, is exciting. Teaming up in war against a mutual (usually evil and overwhelming, in fiction) enemy is a feell good narrative, as is defeating said enemy after some temporary set backs. But rebuilding, making alliances for the long term, making compromises where no one gets exactly what they want, and without a Big Bad to boo and hiss at? I'm a staunch s5 defender, and not just because the network screwed JMS over, but while the Fall of Centauri Prime storyline is perfect, everything else would have needed some retooling, and I don't think he ever solved the problem of how to make Sheridan convincingly a good president (i.e. the dialogue keep insisting he is, and the story keeps showing us he's not) the way he was a good war time leader. As for SW and the sequel trilogy, I do think it was a simple calculation on the part of Disney and J.J. Abrams, especially based on the reception the prequels originally got (with their reputation thankfully now somewhat better, says this prequel fan): what people wanted from SW was Plucky Underdog Rebels vs The Evil Empire, and nothing else. Not the plucky rebels transitioning to being the people in power and trying to rebuild a society. So they recreated that scenario, never mind that it meant Our Heroes lived to see their efforts smashed to pieces. (For all that the Disney tv shows can be very different in qualitiy, I give credit where due to Filon, Favreu & Co. of actually tackling the challenge of showing us the New Republic and trying to create a believeable scenario where we see why it fails. Of course, they live in an era where we see democracies all over the world full of people fannish about strongmen again, so I think the theme resonates. However, given that the sequels already established that the New Republic is basically Weimar, the ending is perordained, so that's not really comparable to the challenge I mean: making rebuliding, and specifically rebuilding a democratic society, narratively compelling WITHOUT resorting to the next war against Evil McEvil on the horizon.
Which is what Star Trek: Discovery does show in its third and fourth season. Not that the series is suddenly without villains, or threats and menaces, but they're of a different type, not Evil Empires. S3 very specifically shows us a society that emerged from the breakdown of a civilisatiion - and one that already showed fractures before the Burn -, and the rebuilding of the Federation, the reforging of connections, the need to establish trust that was lost, or in the case the 10c to understand what at first seems utterly incomprehensible, those are the tasks set to our heroes. And it's captivating and emotionally stirring and compelling to watch. That's what I mean when I say Disco has solved that particular narrative challenge.
Also: I'm not sure whether I recced this before or not, but it bears repeating: this is a beautiful vid capturing what's best about the show so well:
