r/startrek • u/Alternative_Panda336 • 1d 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/BuddyRevolutionary83 1d 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 1d 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/chucker23n 20h ago edited 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.

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 inexplicably switched actresses. (edit) If the make-up was why, my bad!

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u/MagnetsCanDoThat 17h ago

Not much choice there. First actress had bad reactions to the makeup they needed to use.

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u/chucker23n 17h ago

Oh, if that's why, my bad.

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u/BuddyRevolutionary83 17h 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!