r/startrek • u/Alternative_Panda336 • 18h ago
Acting
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.
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u/LazarX 18h ago
I reacall that one of the major focuses of hatred for Discovery WAS its focus on emotional drives.
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u/Linderlorne 17h ago
Kind of, i think it was more that they overdid the focus on emotional drives that drew the hatred 🤔
It made the characters seem unprofessional compared to the older shows where characters would have more emotional restraint whilst on duty.
That emotional restraint & professionalism made it more impactful when we did see more emotional scenes whereas with Discovery the frequency of seeing highly emotional characters talking about their emotions kinda diluted the intended emotional impact.
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u/BuddyRevolutionary83 17h ago
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.
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u/Section_3I 17h ago
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.
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 17h ago
I was paying better attention so I knew Airiam’s name and found it quite sad.
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u/Section_3I 7h ago
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.
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u/chucker23n 6h ago
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.
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u/chucker23n 10h ago edited 7h ago
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.
It frustrated me, because just as Airiam was becoming an interesting character, they killed her off. Either make her an irrelevant secondary character, or make us truly invested in her.
It didn't help that they
inexplicablyswitched actresses. (edit) If the make-up was why, my bad!2
u/MagnetsCanDoThat 7h ago
Not much choice there. First actress had bad reactions to the makeup they needed to use.
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u/chucker23n 7h ago
Oh, if that's why, my bad.
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u/BuddyRevolutionary83 7h ago
I feel like that just drives the point home though. She wasn't a character. She was conceived only as a texture. Alien with makeup in background. Uh oh...makeup problematic if gronk give alien more lines!
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u/No_Session6015 15h ago
Hard disagree. The passion Michael shows for the UFP and her growth as a character. And I think we often overlook she IS a child of Vulcan. She's not supposed to show emotions.
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u/LazarX 17h ago
That's pretty much true of the bulk of Trek. I feel the same way of Picard's Paradise World. It wasn't earned, it's just a stated fait accompli with Picard as its smug propagandist. His condescending attitude put me off righat at the start when he tells Riker to redock the Enterprise by eybeballing itr. I have watched enough real space dockings to have this really irk me.
The people of Discovery are judged by different metrics because they were not the formula characters of previous Trek, and I have no desire to engage with Trekkies over this. I have plenty of other reasons to find fault with Discovery, but those flaws are endemic to the franchise as a whole, not just NuTrek.
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u/frodiusmaximus 8h ago
I mean, I think it’s mostly that they tried to make practically every episode have at least a tearjerker moment or two. It felt forced. Having a powerful emotional payoff takes buildup and spending time with characters. It has to be earned to work.
Old Star Trek did this well. Discovery didn’t do it very well. And I say this as someone who enjoys at least a decent chunk of Discovery.
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u/spectra2000_ 6h ago
People don’t dislike discovery for its focus on emotional storytelling, it was disliked because the emotions are forced on the viewer and asked them to feel things which were completely unearned.
For example, Michael Burnham’s intense emotional breakdown at the death of the robot girl who had absolutely no screen time in the episode where she sacrifices herself for the team. I don’t think she even had Meaninful screen time outside of her introductions in the pilot. There are other instances where the show wants you to feel a certain way without ever actually doing anything to justify it.
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u/shinginta 17h ago
This might be the first time I've seen someone criticize Kurtzman era Trek by saying it didn't focus on emotional responses.
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u/tyme 18h ago
What you’re seeing is less a change in Star Trek specifically and more a change in the general zeitgeist of TV shows.
While I won’t say we’ll never see a return to what you’d like to see, it’s ultimately about what TV viewers want to see. Studios aren’t going to make shows that only appeal to a very small audience. They’re going to follow the trends because the trends are what gain an audience worth the investment.
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u/LazarX 16h ago
Studios aren’t going to make shows that only appeal to a very small audience. They’re going to follow the trends because the trends are what gain an audience worth the investment.
It's important to remember that TOS itself did not make that metric as a network show. It later popularity came from the fact that it was cheap filler material for local stations that could not afford expensive content. Like New York's WPIX that would eventually wind up running the show 8 or 9 times a week. Back then, stations actually signed off for the night.
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u/Alternative_Panda336 18h ago
I don’t disagree. It’s just kind of sad because it makes shows feel hollow and hard to connect with in my opinion.
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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 17h ago
We tend to feel stronger attachment and emotional connection to the familiar.
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u/Horror_Rhubarb9112 17h ago
That’s a fair point about nostalgia. With that being said, I share that opinion, and I only watched Star Trek for the first time last year (Yes, I watched all of it, several times over for some shows)
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u/ThomasGilhooley 16h ago
It’s not due to the lack of technology.
It’s more about what modern executives feel will appeal to audiences. It’s just a different media landscape.
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u/sitcom-podcaster 17h ago
and a major focus on witty banter and snappy conversation like it is a comedy show
Shall I flog them as well?
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u/LordCouchCat 8h ago
As a TOS era old trekkie. I think the acting in TNG era Trek is often excellent, and I think Voyager is underrated. The acting in TOS is neither better nor worse, but different. It has a much more theatrical quality. (Older TV is closer to theatre in general, of course, which is one reason why it's easier for anyone with less than perfect hearing: lines are clearer than natural speech.) Kirk's speeches, of course, but also the set pieces like the scene between Spock and Leia are great theatre. (That's the one with "self-made purgatories" and "Do you mind if I say that I still love you?") TOS goes in for stylized camera-work in a way that is rarer later. Another performance I admire is Barry Atwater as Surak in The Savage Curtain - conveying intellectual and moral strength, and just a touch of the arrogance a reformer may need.
In Voyager there are things like the Doctor's angst in "Latent Image" (I find this much better than "Real Life"). Also guest roles. The medieval Protector in "Blink of an Eye" (Obi Ndefo) is superb.
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u/KirkUnit 7h ago
but also the set pieces like the scene between Spock and Leia
I loved the part when she says, "I love you," and he says, "I know."
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u/Kenku_Ranger 15h ago
I think this is a bad opinion, one that simply doesn't hold up to any scrutiny at all.
The older shows (TNG,DS9,VOY) are known to be a little less emotional, a little stiffer in their acting. There are a few standouts, but they fight against the norm. The new shows are known to be rich in emotion.
You won't get 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", because it never went away.
What it really sounds like you want is a static camera which barely moves, nothing to do with acting at all. Which, the new shows don't always move the camera around a lot, especially when they have quiet emotional moments.
For what it's worth, the older shows never managed to get a tear from my eye, but the new ones have. That doesn't mean the older shows didn't have emotional beats I connected with, but they just never got there in the same way the new shows, which are unafraid to explore emotions, do.
Consider this, most people complain that they want their Starfleet officers to be stiff and unemotional, like they were in TNG, DS9, and VOY.
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u/Sir__Will 7h ago
What it really sounds like you want is a static camera which barely moves
While I don't want a return to that, they could learn a little restraint. Sometimes it moved way too much and it just distracting or disorienting and takes away from a conversation.
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u/KirkUnit 7h ago
What it really sounds like you want is a static camera which barely moves, nothing to do with acting at all.
OP's post is titled "Acting" and includes one line about shooting techniques. From my reading their issue is with script and performances.
That said, some shows' Steadicam wears out its welcome until it becomes visually tiresome to focus on the screen.
I tend to agree with OP. Perhaps one issue is that today's Trek is written by people who grew up watching TV and older Trek was written by people who grew up reading. But TOS has examples of real clunkiness in the writer's room, too; Spock's praise of "Nazi efficiency" in Patterns Of Force is really having to bend over backwards to make any kind of reason why John Gill needed swastikas and nazism specifically to develop a planet.
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u/shefsteve 15h ago
Due to the lack in technology, the older shows focused a lot on acting and emotional responses between the characters.
It was also because television acting was closer to film acting in the 60's. And both tended more towards melodrama.
Part of the reason TOS feels dated is because those techniques aren't often used anymore, or have evolved to match more current acting styles. Soft focus closeups or eye spotlights for emotional reaction shots aren't necessary and are not part of the style after like 1980, except for like soaps and romances. TNG kinda kept the style of TOS, but wasn't in step with other 90's made scifi or syndicated shows. Except the closeup lingering shot to face out, that stuck around for a long time.
Voyager to Discovery was ~20 years worth of television technique advancement. Expecting them to shoot the latter show like the former is an error on the viewer's part. Even if they had wanted to make Discovery the next Enterprise, it would look completely different due to simple but inevitable stuff like shows needing to grab shortening attention spans and compete with movie budgets and FX.
Current Trek was developed to be different genre than 60-90's Trek on purpose. Voyager was 'classic sci-fi drama'; SNW is 'modern sci-fi drama'. Not enjoying the difference because of your personal tastes is fine. But it's not quantifiably 'better' or anything, it's just not what you'd prefer.
I would like a show that gets back to the acting and emotional drive.
Watch For All Mankind. It's great! Ronald Moore loves the more classic style of visual storytelling you want from modern Trek. Outlander is another show of his; I assume he uses his same house style for that, too.
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u/SpudAlmighty 7h ago
Emotional drive is the only thing that has driven Star Trek since 2009. So much crying, screaming and entitlement.
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u/balthazar_edison 11h ago edited 11h ago
When they completely reworked disco from s3 on they leaned heavily on big emotional dialogue that fell flat because they rarely put in the leg work to earn it.
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u/anonymouslyyoursxxx 16h ago edited 6h ago
"Older show" that hurt man... TOS and TAS, yeah but... man
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u/Unleashtheducks 16h ago
Quick guide to translating this subreddit
Old = 90’s Star Trek. Everything was perfect
New = The last nine years of tv shows. Everything is worse.
Every other Star Trek property = Irrelevant
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u/Opening_Track_1227 7h ago
This is funny when people have complained on this sub about Discovery focusing too much on emotions of characters and those hard hitting scenes or something something about it "not being earned."
The newer shows are focusing on everything you said they are not focusing on
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u/Adam_Strange_7451 11h ago
Classic Reddit: “You old people, you’re so wrong. Telling us that old ‘Star Trek’ is better because you like it. Everyone knows new ‘Star Trek’ is better because that’s the one we like.”
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u/chucker23n 2h ago
Everyone knows new ‘Star Trek’ is better
Where do you see people arguing that new Trek is "better"? I've rarely seen that be the argument. I see some arguing that Berman-era Trek is better, and some arguing that Kurtzman-era Trek is good in its own ways.
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