So what have I been doing instead? Well, lately, I've been watching a lot of Star Trek. As in I rewatched the entirety of Voyager and am pretty far through my rewatch of Deep Space Nine. The current Trek kick started with the third season if Picard, which brought back the Next Generation crew for one last grand adventure, and also introduced a new character who (spoiler alert) turns out to be Jean-Luc Picard's son.
After action and twists galore, show builds up to a big final father-son scene where Picard has to convince his son to come back to the light side... basically, the ending of Return of the Jedi, except with the generational roles reversed. Despite the two actors emoting their hearts out and all the dramatic background nonsense a prestige show can give, the scene... didn't really hit for me. And after watching the finale, all I wanted was to go back and nostalgia-watch the Next Generation and the other shows from that era (I spot-watched a few old Next Generation faves before moving onto my Voyager and Deep Space Nine rewatches). Despite connections to the classic characters, none of the new characters from Picard really got me to care for them the way I'd cared about the casts of those older shows.
And I realized the reason was because Picard, like most shows in the streaming era, is designed for breakneck pacing and "mind-blowing" twists, to generate shock and buzz and, therefore, attention, views, and whatever metrics the execs want to present to investors. There are much, much fewer episodes, and each one is in service to a larger story arc. There are certainly shows that benefit from this "leaner" style of TV (Severance comes to mind), and the older shows definitely put out some stinkers while trying to fill a 26-episode season.
Yet while watching the Next Generation-era shows, especially when I was picking and choosing old favorites (before I realized that resistance was futile and just did a straight-up rewatch), I found myself gravitating toward the "filler" episodes... the self-contained, sometimes low-stakes tales that aren't "necessary" for any larger story arcs. And I noticed that even episodes that were part of a larger story arc (particularly on Deep Space Nine) often contained a character-centric B story that was light on plot but added to the characters' personal lives.
The result of all these "filler" episodes and scenes was that we got a chance to get to know these characters as people, not just players in a twisty-turny-attention-grabby plot. And that's what makes them linger, like old friends, in one's memory, and makes you invested in seeing what happens to them next. It gives a chance for their personalities to shine through, and make them seem more human.
Because none of us have a single, straightforward plot to our lives. I doubt even the most focused person in the world follows just one mission every waking moment. Yet we've been trained that characters in a "tightly" written story should do just that, and any "filler" in between ought to be cut. Something is definitely lost when that happens, though, something that makes it hard to feel invested in a fictional character.
Elsewhere in the Trek world, Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks have returned to the episodic format of yore, complete with filler galore. And they have been very well received by fans (personally, Lower Decks is my favorite of the New Treks.) I think as time goes by, these are the shows that will remain with fans... at conventions this year, I've seen plenty of Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks cosplay, but none for Picard (though, of course, Next Generation cosplayers will always be populous).
I know I've been guilty of trying to make my stories "lean," perhaps at the expense of some characters and world building. Maybe it's time to try pulling back a bit, and every so often, letting characters just be.
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