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After months of delays and reports of behind-the-scenes difficulties, hot opinion pieces about how this show is going to be the worst based on the design of its hero ship and other drama, Star Trek Discovery has finally launched.
The first two episodes are up on Netflix right now (outside of the US, that is; Americans, in a unique move, are getting the worst imaginable distribution method for this show), and let me tell you: This is the good ****. Yes, the pilot episodes does have the seemingly unavoidable ten minutes of expospeak. But once we're past that (and once you get past the fact that this show avoids translation convention (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslationConvention)), this is probably the best Star Trek ever since the high days of TNG and DS9.
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I recorded the premiere episode that they actually deigned to air on TV, but I'd never so much as heard CBS's paid streaming service until they started advertising the garbage for this. Hey, remember when cable-cutting was supposed to save people money by cutting out content you weren't interested in? Now you get the privilege of paying for 7 or 8 disparate services per month at a similar combined cost! Progress!
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I am fairly certain that Discovery will see a renewed interest in VPNs and torrents.
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Wow. I strongly disagree.
Assume spoilers from here on out, I'm not going to use the tag.
It felt like it was made by people with no real understanding of why Star Trek works, and no respect for the setting or the universe. Had it been in the Abramsverse, that would have been one thing, but given they made such a big deal about how it was in the prime universe, I was deeply disappointed with the very little effort they made to ground it in a franchise with a half century of history. They made bizarre decisions like having a blue guy on the bridge who clearly wasn't Andorian, and then explicitly mentioning Andorians later. Why make up a new species? Take your throw away chances to ground yourself in the universe. The federation trial at the end and the portrayal of Klingons were particularly out of character - why didn't they have hair? Why make them klingons if they're not going to look like Klingons? Or at the very least, improve the look - the new klingons look more complicated, and the quality of the makeup is better, but they're so complex that you can't really see the actor under way all the makeup, so they not only can't emote to the audience, but it's hard to tell them apart because your brain can't see the faces properly.
Even aesthetically, nothing looked even vaguely like it was ten years before ToS. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a purist. I don't want it to look like it's straight out of the sixties. But some nods would have been nice - some physical controls instead of touchscreens, some indication in the klingon ship design, anything.
Even if you just try to forget about all the previous Trek iterations, it's a struggle to care about any of the characters. The only two that had any impact on me were Michelle Yeo and the Admiral who turned up in episode two, both of whom were dead by the end of the episode. And as far as the main character goes... if anyone thinks Sonequa Martin Green's character made any sense through the episode... I just don't get it.
The Klingon bad guys motivations were unclear, but what they did manage to get across was that the empire was in disarray, and that unifying would be difficult... Except it wasn't. It basically took zero effort besides turning on that light thing, and a 2 minute speech, and by the end of the episode 23 of the 24 were basically committed to the martyr guy. Sure, give me a complicated, internally divided antagonist faction, or give me a monolithic, unified faction. But don't pretend to be one, then just flip to the other and claim to have told a story.
Some reviews suggest it picks up after episode three. I'm hoping. I'll grudgingly accept the aesthetic stuff if they tell a good story. But I'm not hopeful off that start.
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It felt like it was made by people with no real understanding of why Star Trek works, and no respect for the setting or the universe. Had it been in the Abramsverse, that would have been one thing, but given they made such a big deal about how it was in the prime universe, I was deeply disappointed with the very little effort they made to ground it in a franchise with a half century of history. They made bizarre decisions like having a blue guy on the bridge who clearly wasn't Andorian, and then explicitly mentioning Andorians later.
I mean, that could've something to do with Andorians not being actual Aliens? In ENT, which is where they got most of their characterization, they were basically slightly more easily enraged humans. Saru fulfills the Data/Spock role here, observing humans from the outside, and that perspective would be invalidated by having him be of a species we know is fundamentally similar to us.
Why make up a new species? Take your throw away chances to ground yourself in the universe. The federation trial at the end and the portrayal of Klingons were particularly out of character - why didn't they have hair? Why make them klingons if they're not going to look like Klingons? Or at the very least, improve the look - the new klingons look more complicated, and the quality of the makeup is better, but they're so complex that you can't really see the actor under way all the makeup, so they not only can't emote to the audience, but it's hard to tell them apart because your brain can't see the faces properly.
Hmm. That is a good point. After all, we know that everyone on Earth looks like americans, right. It's totally inconceivable that an entire species has factions in its culture, or develops in some way. I wonder, do you have similar objections to the way the TNG and Movie Klingons looked? Because those certainly didn't look anything like the ones in TOS...
Even aesthetically, nothing looked even vaguely like it was ten years before ToS. Don't get me wrong, I'm it a purist. I don't want it to look like it's straight out of the sixties. But some nods would have been nice - some physical controls instead of touchscreens, some indication in the klingon ship design, anything.
It didn't look anything like ten years before TOS, no. It does look like something ten years after ENT, though.
Even if you just try to forget about all the previous Trek iterations, it's a struggle to care about any of the characters. The only two that had any impact on me were Michelle Yeo and the Admiral who turned up in episode two, both of whom were dead by the end of the episode. And as far as the main character goes... if anyone thinks Sonequa Martin Green's character made any sense through the episode... I just don't get it.
I do, AMA.
The Klingon bad guys motivations were unclear, but what they did manage to get across was that the empire was in disarray, and that unifying would be difficult... Except it wasn't. It basically took zero effort besides turning on that light thing, and a 2 minute speech, and by the end of the episode 23 of the 24 were basically committed to the martyr guy. Sure, give me a complicated, internally divided antagonist faction, or give me a monolithic, unified faction. But don't pretend to be one, then just flip to the other and claim to have told a story.
"Unclear motivation"?
Have you seen both released Episodes? Because the motivation is very clearly spelled out: T'Kuvma wants to unify the Empire against the Federation, which it sees as encroaching on klingon space. He believes that the Federations multicultural outlook, despite its successes, is something that will eventually kill the klingon identity if it isn't fought against. He is a nationalist/identitarian/religious fundamentalist who believes that racial and cultural unity must be preserved.
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Watching Orville right now. If I have time maybe I'll watch STD later.
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I mean, that could've something to do with Andorians not being actual Aliens? In ENT, which is where they got most of their characterization, they were basically slightly more easily enraged humans. Saru fulfills the Data/Spock role here, observing humans from the outside, and that perspective would be invalidated by having him be of a species we know is fundamentally similar to us.
I'm not talking about Saru. If they want to put him in as a member of new species, fine. My problem is that they have made a show that is aesthetically and technologically out of step with the established universe (that holographic communication tech, for example, is a big plot point as new technology in DS9, and the ability to project holograms in only specific parts of the ship was a recurring theme throughout TNG and especially Voyager). Having done that, you'd think that they would take their chances to say "Yes, we know we're changing things, but this is still the Trek you know and love". They seem to have done that with things like the door sounds and the flip communicators, but when they get these small opportunities to nod towards established continuity, like by making up an extra in blue as an Andorian instead of "generic blue alien" they aren't taking them, and they're doing their own new thing instead. If you wanted to do that, why make a Star Trek at all instead of a generic sci fi? It would have been popular - shows like The Expanse prove there's an appetite for well made science fiction outside of a massive established franchise.
Hmm. That is a good point. After all, we know that everyone on Earth looks like americans, right. It's totally inconceivable that an entire species has factions in its culture, or develops in some way. I wonder, do you have similar objections to the way the TNG and Movie Klingons looked? Because those certainly didn't look anything like the ones in TOS...
Yep. I read the same pre-release stuff you did. That's why I was paying attention when the holograms of all the other Klingons showed up. They all look the same, not a TNG or TOS style Klingon among them.
And I never cared about the TOS -> TNG change, mainly because TOS means almost nothing to me (I'd be lucky if I've seen half the episodes). That was essentially a budget and technological limitation. Fine. But the look of the species was essentially established over, what, thirty odd years where they had the budget and tech to make it look a certain way - why is this new way better? Does it help the actors portray their characters emotions? Does it give new storytelling opportunities? Or did someone just decide "It's cooler this way!"? That's the most likely scenario, and again, it's evidence that the creators don't really care about the universe they're working in, that they'd probably rather have created something completely new.
It didn't look anything like ten years before TOS, no. It does look like something ten years after ENT, though.
Does it though? Really? Or does it look like a modern day futurist is imagining what things are going to be like 100 years from now? Again, that's fine, and it works when you're playing in your own sandbox (I keep coming back to it, but I love the similar aesthetic in The Expanse). But these guys are supposed to be creating Star Trek. They're supposed to make something that works with the rest of the franchise. They didn't.
Even if you just try to forget about all the previous Trek iterations, it's a struggle to care about any of the characters. The only two that had any impact on me were Michelle Yeo and the Admiral who turned up in episode two, both of whom were dead by the end of the episode. And as far as the main character goes... if anyone thinks Sonequa Martin Green's character made any sense through the episode... I just don't get it.
I do, AMA.
Well, we disagree on that.
"Unclear motivation"?
Have you seen both released Episodes? Because the motivation is very clearly spelled out: T'Kuvma wants to unify the Empire against the Federation, which it sees as encroaching on klingon space. He believes that the Federations multicultural outlook, despite its successes, is something that will eventually kill the klingon identity if it isn't fought against. He is a nationalist/identitarian/religious fundamentalist who believes that racial and cultural unity must be preserved.
Sure, he more or less made sense, but the rest didn't, and yet again, they decided to kill off the one antagonist who the audience might actually have cared about or understood. What was all the cult stuff about? Why did all the rest of the Klingons just show up when that light went on, and so suddenly change their minds from thinking T'Kuvma was crazy (or at least not powerful enough to be worth listening to) to fighting alongside him in mere moments of speechifying? Why did they help him at all? And the albino guy looks like he's going to be a major character, but why was he there if he as apparently disliked by the main guy so much he had to burn his hand to prove his loyalty? Or, based on the way they were talking during the death scene, had they actually known each other since they were kids? If so, why did he have to prove himself?
I'm sure the writers know the answer to most of these (even if, in the case of the Klingons changing sides, it's because it's just easier that way, and makes the rest of the series work better). There's the kernel of a good story in there, but it's hidden under bad storytelling and the building up of too many characters who all just die and wont impact the storyline from here on out (except as memories, where I'm sure they'll all be significant).
It's just not well done, and it feels like part of the reason is that the creators didn't really want to make Star Trek. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe things will pick up. But based on the two episodes that we have to judge it on, it's not a well made Star Trek show yet.
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I'm not talking about Saru. If they want to put him in as a member of new species, fine. My problem is that they have made a show that is aesthetically and technologically out of step with the established universe (that holographic communication tech, for example, is a big plot point as new technology in DS9, and the ability to project holograms in only specific parts of the ship was a recurring theme throughout TNG and especially Voyager). Having done that, you'd think that they would take their chances to say "Yes, we know we're changing things, but this is still the Trek you know and love". They seem to have done that with things like the door sounds and the flip communicators, but when they get these small opportunities to nod towards established continuity, like by making up an extra in blue as an Andorian instead of "generic blue alien" they aren't taking them, and they're doing their own new thing instead. If you wanted to do that, why make a Star Trek at all instead of a generic sci fi? It would have been popular - shows like The Expanse prove there's an appetite for well made science fiction outside of a massive established franchise.
Except for the minor thing where the holograms here aren't comparable to the "holograms" we see in TNG and beyond. Yes, sure, this is a departure from what was shown in previous shows - but I would argue that a simple video phone call isn't futuristic anymore. Yes, this is "out of step" with the established universe. But it is a step I for one am willing to take if it means selling the idea that this is a future universe gets easier.
Yep. I read the same pre-release stuff you did. That's why I was paying attention when the holograms of all the other Klingons showed up. They all look the same, not a TNG or TOS style Klingon among them.
And I never cared about the TOS -> TNG change, mainly because TOS means almost nothing to me (I'd be lucky if I've seen half the episodes). That was essentially a budget and technological limitation. Fine. But the look of the species was essentially established over, what, thirty odd years where they had the budget and tech to make it look a certain way - why is this new way better? Does it help the actors portray their characters emotions? Does it give new storytelling opportunities? Or did someone just decide "It's cooler this way!"? That's the most likely scenario, and again, it's evidence that the creators don't really care about the universe they're working in, that they'd probably rather have created something completely new.
The changes between TOS and the movies and TNG was much, much larger than the changes we see here. The klingons in TOS and TNG act nothing alike, not only do they look differently, they act differently too. In Discovery, the klingons are recognizably klingons, their cultural touchstones are taken straight from the worldbuilding done in TNG and DS9.
Yes, there is a "it's cooler this way" factor at play. The klingons do look alien in ways that they haven't before; in a sense, the fact that the TNG klingons look more relateable is a plot point here. Those are klingons that we do know and understand, the Discovery ones are not. This is a storytelling opportunity, and definitely not just a choice taken for the sake of doing something different.
Does it though? Really?
Yes. ENT ended in 2005, and its set and costume design was informed by what we took as normal in that timeframe. The flatpanel screens, general utilitarian set design that looked very much like a reasonable interpretation of what a spaceship bridge might look like.... Discovery, with its touchscreens and holographic projections and heads-up displays takes the same approach, only using the tech we are currently accustomed to as base.
Or does it look like a modern day futurist is imagining what things are going to be like 100 years from now? Again, that's fine, and it works when you're playing in your own sandbox (I keep coming back to it, but I love the similar aesthetic in The Expanse). But these guys are supposed to be creating Star Trek. They're supposed to make something that works with the rest of the franchise. They didn't.
Like the ENT design team? Star Trek has always reinvented itself to some extent to accommodate updated aesthetic sensibilities. There is no clear way to go from the NX-01 with its battleship blue surfaces and flatscreens to the glowy crystals, primary colours and static displays of TOS. During Star Trek's most consistent era (TNG through DS9 and VOY), yes, designs stayed very close to each other (although they did seem to switch uniforms every couple of years), which I think is what most of us started out with, we got used to a specific style of what we think Star Trek looks like. ENT discarded it, as did the JJ Abrams films; to claim that Discovery shouldn't have done this is weird, IMHO.
Well, we disagree on that.
What are your hangups, then? I think her portrayal was pretty consistent.
Sure, he more or less made sense, but the rest didn't, and yet again, they decided to kill off the one antagonist who the audience might actually have cared about or understood. What was all the cult stuff about? Why did all the rest of the Klingons just show up when that light went on, and so suddenly change their minds from thinking T'Kuvma was crazy (or at least not powerful enough to be worth listening to) to fighting alongside him in mere moments of speechifying?
Because he actually did provide the klingons with an actual edge. His cloaking tech is explicitly described as new for the klingons.
Why did they help him at all? And the albino guy looks like he's going to be a major character, but why was he there if he as apparently disliked by the main guy so much he had to burn his hand to prove his loyalty?
Because he is not a noble scion of a klingon house. He had to prove his loyalty to T'Kuvma personally because he couldn't swear on the name of his house.
Or, based on the way they were talking during the death scene, had they actually known each other since they were kids? If so, why did he have to prove himself?
Because they didn't. Because the call-and-response routine they do reads a lot like a klingon prayer taught to children.
I'm sure the writers know the answer to most of these (even if, in the case of the Klingons changing sides, it's because it's just easier that way, and makes the rest of the series work better). There's the kernel of a good story in there, but it's hidden under bad storytelling and the building up of too many characters who all just die and wont impact the storyline from here on out (except as memories, where I'm sure they'll all be significant).
Four people died. One who had no dialogue (but a cool helmet), one who had to make a point to Burnham about how unaccustomed to warfare Starfleet actually is, and one who just succumbed to Mentor Occupational Hazard. These all needed to be built up (The latter two especially) to make an actual impact when they do die.
T'Kuvma, finally, had to die because, if he hadn't, the whole war would go much differently. Because Burnham intentionally set her phaser to kill and shot him.
It's just not well done, and it feels like part of the reason is that the creators didn't really want to make Star Trek. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe things will pick up. But based on the two episodes that we have to judge it on, it's not a well made Star Trek show yet.
It is, in its introductory sequence on that desert planet alone, much more worthy of the name Star Trek than any of the JJ Abrams movies. Its characters, Burnham included, are closer to the Roddenberry ideal than many; they are perhaps more flawed than Roddenberry would've wanted, but the humanist, pacifist, optimist core is certainly there.
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My two cents here is to say that the first season of TNG was abhorrent and both its and DS9's first few seasons were boring as ****. Voyager was worse than both until seven of nine boards the ship and Enterprise's only good season is the fourth one (sorry it's my opinion).
Therefore it's a bit unfair to be all guns blazing against Discovery just yet. I believe all the criticism it gets, not because I'm hyped to hate it (as it's apparently a thing right now), but because it fits the pattern of previous Star Trek shows.
We'll see if it is able to create its own identity and succeed with it.
Meanwhile Orville is not bad.
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E: Eh. I don't want to get into a long point/counterpoint argument over it. You clearly enjoyed it a lot more than I did; Ultimately, it's entertainment, it's going to be subjective.
Time will tell whether my issues with it go away or get worse, and as more people get to see it, more opinions will come in and we'll see whether your experience or mine was typical (i.e. whether the creators correctly read their audience or not). For now, I'm going to watch it, because I like scifi on TV, and I like Trek. But I'm a lot less enthused going into this than I was even going in to Enterprise.
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E: Eh. I don't want to get into a long point/counterpoint argument over it. You clearly enjoyed it a lot more than I did; Ultimately, it's entertainment, it's going to be subjective.
Time will tell whether my issues with it go away or get worse, and as more people get to see it, more opinions will come in and we'll see whether your experience or mine was typical (i.e. whether the creators correctly read their audience or not). For now, I'm going to watch it, because I like scifi on TV, and I like Trek. But I'm a lot less enthused going into this than I was even going in to Enterprise.
Fair enough. I am fairly hyped about this show; as far as I am concerned, the pilot episodes have laid a good groundwork for a good show; It remains to be seen what the rest of the series is like.
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Yeah.. I'm interested, but I'm not paying for CBS streaming service just to watch it. I'll either go by *ahem* less legal means or wait for it to finish airing and buy CBS All Access for a single month to watch it, then cancel.
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Yeah, I won't be watching until they get off their high horse with CBS exclusive streaming. I'm interested, but I've no intention of rewarding that kind of behavior.
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Yeah, I won't be watching until they get off their high horse with CBS exclusive streaming. I'm interested, but I've no intention of rewarding that kind of behavior.
I don't know that I would call it a "high horse". Netflix was/is praised for doing the same thing. The problem with CBS All Access is that it has no other good reason to pay for it. One show is not enough and there's no guarantee the service itself (app, streaming options, etc) is any good either.
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Remember how Voyager turned UPN into such a huge success?
Bodes well for CBS's streaming service, doesn't it?
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I heard the main character assaults her commanding officer and commits mutiny in order to fire unprovoked on a Klingon ship because they're Klingons and violence is all they know, and that she is also Spock's secret half-sister raised by Vulcans.
I hope you'll forgive me for not having a high opinion on the quality of the premise.
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I heard the main character assaults her commanding officer and commits mutiny in order to fire unprovoked on a Klingon ship because they're Klingons and violence is all they know, and that she is also Spock's secret half-sister raised by Vulcans.
I hope you'll forgive me for not having a high opinion on the quality of the premise.
yeah, that's right. And the weapons all go "pew pew pew".
The wife and I tried watching two episodes but she fell asleep before the first one was done. I kept watching to see the disaster unfold. Not worth the paywall to see what else happens.
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I heard the main character assaults her commanding officer and commits mutiny in order to fire unprovoked on a Klingon ship because they're Klingons and violence is all they know, and that she is also Spock's secret half-sister raised by Vulcans.
I hope you'll forgive me for not having a high opinion on the quality of the premise.
The thing makes sense, her decision is based on the fact that that's the way Vulcans established diplomatic relations with the Klingons for a while believe it or not.
Also she's not his half sister, she's a human orfaned by a klingon raid that Sarek has taken as his ward.
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Assaulting your commanding officer, mutinying, and then attacking a neutral vessel unprovoked does not make a whole lot of sense regardless of who you're attacking. That tends to go double (or triple) in the Federation, and double or triple on top of that early enough in the series that it's before the events of TOS.
It stinks of a network executive remembering Voyager, thinking "Janeway was a strong and effective female protagonist, let's double down on that", and greenlighting the series.
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Assaulting your commanding officer, mutinying, and then attacking a neutral vessel unprovoked does not make a whole lot of sense regardless of who you're attacking. That tends to go double (or triple) in the Federation, and double or triple on top of that early enough in the series that it's before the events of TOS.
It stinks of a network executive remembering Voyager, thinking "Janeway was a strong and effective female protagonist, let's double down on that", and greenlighting the series.
And then she gets a court martial and a life sentence for it.
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One of my biggest hangups was that I knew Michelle Yeoh's character was going to get offed quickly just from the credits (thanks for that btw) and thus they didn't do much with her those two episodes and yet they spent enough time on her to shaft Saru's introduction. While I'm fine with them doing things differently, it's a rare show that won't introduce its main cast in the pilot. I liked Michelle Yeoh mainly because she was the actor not because whatever her character's name was was well rounded (plus she didn't even get to have that great a fight to the death).
I'm curious to see where Michael goes but the whole setup feels weird for Star Trek and I'd like to have met the rest of the cast in the first two episodes rather than dumping Michelle Yeoh after two episodes.
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Assaulting your commanding officer, mutinying, and then attacking a neutral vessel unprovoked does not make a whole lot of sense regardless of who you're attacking. That tends to go double (or triple) in the Federation, and double or triple on top of that early enough in the series that it's before the events of TOS.
It stinks of a network executive remembering Voyager, thinking "Janeway was a strong and effective female protagonist, let's double down on that", and greenlighting the series.
She gets a life sentence for it though, and my sixth sense tells me there is something fishy about how she gets reinstated, section 31 perhaps?
I would not be surprised if she gets recruited because they think she's a sort of super-maverick ready to do any horrible crap to save the federation.
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I can get behind all of those plot decisions. I enjoyed both episodes, and I think they did a decent (not great) job at portraying the characters. Killing the captain was a good decision IMO, given how the protagonist is the first officer, not the captain. I approve of it because it gives the show the tension it needs to capture your attention, and they did it while being able to maintain the optimism and fortitude of the Federation overall.
I will have lots of words to say about this show, mostly positive, later on.
I'll just leave it here though: those swinging dutch angles could give us a rest, FOR ****S SAKE I'M DIZZYYY.
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Mhhh after 2 episodes I can't really tell if I like it or not.
It was all over the place, lots of action, some werid turns/cuts in the story/flow/action, overall not enough "meat" to really base a decision on yet. I'll keep watching and probably not decide until the end of season 1. ;-)
I watched a lot of Trek, but I wouldn't consider myself a "die hard" Trek fan. I'm also open to some of the weirder stuff they pulled and for example think that the Mirror episodes in Enterprise were some of the most hilarious/awesome things I've ever seen done in the genre. :P So I'll keep watching with an open mind, at least as long as the show doesn't ask me to open my mind so much that my brain falls out. :eek2:
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Having the read the discussion going to and fro in the thread, I realized that I quite liked how the show goes and my opinion has more to do with actual politics than any perceived "ideal" of how Star Trek "should be".
When ST originally aired, in many ways it was radical, to the point that hard-line jingoists would've called it leftist subversion. It was a liberal utopia where post-scarcity made the necessity of all the "hard choices" espoused by traditional hegemonists not only redundant but downright petty, a future where there were no menial limits to embracing Enlightenment principles to their fullest. It was probably TNG that cemented this "ideal" into an actual ethos by having Enterprise captained by an avowed humanist, a telling change from TOS where this role was reserved for on of the "support elements" (McCoy) of the triangle.
...however the world we acutally live in has taken a strange turn since then. Liberalism has seemingly conquered the world and became the bona fide "basis" of western civilization, civil liberties are pushed ever farther so even previously unthought fringes of society are being considered when the impact of policies is weighted. Did the ST utopia come to pass? Are we living in an era where Enlightenment has finally brought us into the light?
Not quite, and the creators of Discovery have a keen eye to see the dichotomies and falsehoods present in our facade of freedom. Just as in our life, some are suspicious of the multi-cultural, seemingly benevolent amalgam that is liberal democracy. Does it truly bring freedom to its members or only a semblance of it?
The hardest push comes from the traditionalists, the zealots. In either TOS or TNG their credo would've been a macabre, a crude "backwards" ideology to be morally overcome within a single episode and the outright reformation of said societies is postponed due token acceptance of the difficulty of creating political change without resorting to totalitarian methods.
Discovery grants these "old types" some much needed depth and poignant verity. Is the liberal Federation credo actually superior? While its ideals are charitably acknowledged and even portrayed and self-evident virtues, the society and state apparatus built up around them are anything but. The dethronement is twofold:
1. The Federation simply doesn't *get* the Klingons. It's so enamored with the self-evident universality of its Enlightened ideals that the notion of others operating on other modes of thought is simply inconceivable. This faith goes to lengths so even a Machiavellian *understanding* is beyond the reach of those "believing" the idea...
2. ...which on some levels turns out to be a hollow edifice. The very fact that the Federation falls back on authoritarian discipline even though the protagonist has been demonstrably *right*, highlights an institutional double-think. Should Burnham have got away scot-free? Of course not. Even though she was right in the intellectual sense, and *was* acting out of a deep loyalty, her *methods* were unacceptable.
However, try and imagine how a trial like this would've gone in either TOS or TNG! A crucial element missing is *compassion*, in ST judgements are handed down not merely to uphold the social order, but also out of an obligation to do what is *right* (>insert your flavor of Freudian Trio analysis here<). It could be argued that such a portrayal is missing as it would've undermined the entire character arc of our protagonists, so far reaching conclusions shouldn't be drawn from the short sequence... except it's kind of an emissary of things to come. *This* Federation compromises, even the short previews we've seen indicate that not all is well in this utopia... kind of like our own world. When attacked by religious fanatics, we've reverted to older, meaner ways instead the compassionate, *enlightened* response our nominal ideals would've dictated.
So is Discovery a good show? It's too early to tell, but I really like how it approaches traditional ST themes and explores them in a new way informed by how the liberal dream in the real world has turned out.
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I think the court was correct, perhaps too harshly but still.
The XO must abide by captain's orders, especially in tense situations and rare encounters with an aggressive species. They should support the chain of command. Instead she not only challenged the captain in front of everyone, she then knocked her out and proceeded to try to get the Schenzou to fire on the Klingons, against captain's orders.
This is exactly the incredibly wrong thing to *ever* have in these situations, a crazy XO with paranoid insights and the fortitude to forgo any protocol to get their way. No fleet can just have this sort of person aboard. She might have engineered a whole war with the Klingons all on her own, regardless of what Sarek told her, or what she believed. Of course, events unfolded in a way that more or less proved she wasn't entirely wrong, but they also didn't prove them correct either. They were outgunned, so even if you think about what would be the cleverer way to go about it, it would be sort of what actually ended up happening, wait for reinforcements, rather than just brainlessly fire upon them.
Reckless, brainless, an act of mutiny and endangering not only the entire crew, but an entire relationship between the federation and the Klingons. Yeah, damn right she has to be stripped out of rank and put to jail. For life though? Yeah, that seemed harsh as well.
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I heard the main character assaults her commanding officer and commits mutiny in order to fire unprovoked on a Klingon ship because they're Klingons and violence is all they know, and that she is also Spock's secret half-sister raised by Vulcans.
I hope you'll forgive me for not having a high opinion on the quality of the premise.
and Sarek, the Vulcan, the race of avowed pacifists, was the one who said she should fire unprovoked on a Klingon ship, because that's how Vulcans do things now, that is a "Vulcan hello". He also said that her killing a Klingon because a Klingon killed her parents was fair, so I guess revenge is logical now.
and interstellar telepathy is a Vulcan thing now too.
The only way they can redeem this is if Sarek was actually a Romulan agent in disguise and also the Klingons. Speeking of which if they wanted to criticize Trump so badly and wanted to do some sort of metaphor about him wouldn't the Cardasians have been a much better choice?
Orville is much more trek than this.
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Hold on, this isn't in Abrams-Trek universe? What's up with it looking exactly like that, and having all these klingon ships whose designs i don't recognize?
I figured that's what D-7s and Birds of Prey looked like after they lost their fleet to the Narada and improved based on the data from that fight.
I also figured that being in the alternate universe was going to help them dodge all the genetic modification continuity hurdles.
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Discovery was advertised as being a prime-universe series, but it's unclear that the production team was ever made aware of that.
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and Sarek, the Vulcan, the race of avowed pacifists, was the one who said she should fire unprovoked on a Klingon ship, because that's how Vulcans do things now, that is a "Vulcan hello". He also said that her killing a Klingon because a Klingon killed her parents was fair, so I guess revenge is logical now.
Within the context of Vulcan/Klingon relations, yes it is.
and interstellar telepathy is a Vulcan thing now too.
Has been since, I dunno, TOS' "Immunity Syndrome" episode. If Spock, noted human/vulcan hybrid, can telepathically sense 400 Vulcans that he had no close contact with (presumably) die....
The only way they can redeem this is if Sarek was actually a Romulan agent in disguise and also the Klingons. Speeking of which if they wanted to criticize Trump so badly and wanted to do some sort of metaphor about him wouldn't the Cardasians have been a much better choice?
If you want to do a story about multiculturalism vs nationalism/identitarianism, all of Star Trek's major villains (except the borg) would work. But the timeframe of the show says it's got to be klingons, so klingons it is.
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Discovery was advertised as being a prime-universe series, but it's unclear that the production team was ever made aware of that.
You do know you're not looking at a show set ten years before TOS but one set 100 years after ENT (and produced 10 years after ENT ended), right? Let's face it, the TOS look doesn't work as a credible outlook onto what future tech looks like anymore. Look at "Star Trek Continues". That show uses a faithful recreation of the TOS sets, and as a result, looks like a show from the 60s. It's full of zeerust.
In other words: What exactly did you expect? Pastel-coloured wood everywhere? Static displays? Glowy crystal switches?
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Discovery was advertised as being a prime-universe series, but it's unclear that the production team was ever made aware of that.
Yeah, really feels like they forgot to tell the 3d team about that.
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In other words: What exactly did you expect? Pastel-coloured wood everywhere? Static displays? Glowy crystal switches?
I think that what people didn't expect was holographic communication (that is really well executed in the show, btw) and dark bridges ala Star Wars, completely different suits ala Mass Effect (the story behind the suits is actually incredible, because they didn't actually have the rights to use the original costumes, if you can believe it!!). They *did* market this as prime universe. You can call it "a sequel to enterprise" all day, but you could still see Enterprise as being somewhat of a prequel to TOS, while this is just impossible to square.
Don't get me wrong, I also get the "See Star Trek Continues" stuff, but then please don't call it "prime"? Watch Axanar if you want to see a better recreation of the original feel with a more modern outlook. Not saying I love that, but it shows it's possible to have a "Rembrandt" feel without going full Abrams on the looks of Star Trek.
AND WOULD SOMEONE STOP THE CAMERA SPINNING JESUS ****ING CHRI
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In other words: What exactly did you expect? Pastel-coloured wood everywhere? Static displays? Glowy crystal switches?
Continuity in tone and substance with the previous prime-universe series. Yeah, the TOS visual aesthetic can't really be resurrected, but then again, a new Trek series didn't need to take place around or prior to TOS, did it? There's about two centuries of established timeline to work within, assuming you don't want to extend Trek further into the future. If you were interested in cashing in on the rebooted films, though, then you'd probably work in/around the TOS timeframe, with the Abramsverse aesthetic and a story that wants to jump straight into a big war in the first episode or two. Oh, hey! That sounds familiar!
If I were to write a prime-universe Trek series that explores some of the same ideas and themes that the writers of Discovery have said that they intend the series to explore, I'd set it in the years leading up to DS9, on the Federation-Cardassian border. Border security, immigration, cross-border criminal activity, nationalism/jingoism, uneasy foreign relations, all right there and without needing to dive into another cliché black-and-white war plot. Hell, you might even get an occasional Garak cameo in such a series.
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I think that what people didn't expect was holographic communication (that is really well executed in the show, btw) and dark bridges ala Star Wars, completely different suits ala Mass Effect (the story behind the suits is actually incredible, because they didn't actually have the rights to use the original costumes, if you can believe it!!). They *did* market this as prime universe. You can call it "a sequel to enterprise" all day, but you could still see Enterprise as being somewhat of a prequel to TOS, while this is just impossible to square.
You must have missed all the criticism against ENT in its early days (before the show actually aired). "What's with all the flatscreens", "Why are they wearing jumpsuits", "Why does the NX-01 bridge look so modern compared to the TOS one", those were all things said back then.
And yeah, I stand by my assertion that Discovery's sets and costumes and ships are an extrapolation of what ENT did. Does it also take design cues from the Abrams films? Sure.
Don't get me wrong, I also get the "See Star Trek Continues" stuff, but then please don't call it "prime"? Watch Axanar if you want to see a better recreation of the original feel with a more modern outlook. Not saying I love that, but it shows it's possible to have a "Rembrandt" feel without going full Abrams on the looks of Star Trek.
This ignores the quite dramatic visual shifts Star Trek has undergone with each era of production. Going from TOS to TMP was a drastic change in style. Going from TMP to TWOK was another big shift (at least uniform-wise; if you can find the throughline that connects the TOS uniforms to TMPs and TWOKs, congratulations. I certainly can't). TNG, DS9 and VOY were very consistent in their looks, but other than that, I think that saying that Star Trek has consistency in its visual style is overstating the case just a little bit.
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Nah, the more I think about it, the more I dislike it. Sarek pulling a Kenobi on Michael?
Michael being all around terrible as a "Vulcan protegé" who apparently can pull off some ass weird calculations down to seconds on how much a storm is away from you, only to be wronged by it just a scene later "Oh I guess I was wrong"? Doing everything by emotion and not one bit of logical thought throughout the entire decisions? (from choosing herself to go skywalking instead of a probe to engage in a brainless mutiny that was innefective and put her into a life sentence?)
I get the anti-hero stuff, but there's little there for me to sympathise with her. There's no injustice either, the sentence was correct (harsh, but correct). She's like some kind of Paris in Voyager but Voyager did it correctly (yeah...), but the pilot episodes should give you reasons why you should root for her, not just show why you shouldn't.
Regarding ENT, I get your point, but those things were largely unavoidable. To have spaceships in the future and no ipads would be hilariously terrible. But there's nothing on both our present lives and in any Star Trek reference to go from there to holo comms. Utterly unnecessary drivel, but hey, it looks nice, so they worked it backwards from there.
I miss the old days when ST worked its tech from the ground up and even explored it for its own sake, rather than just showed some stolen 3d cool **** from the cousin's sci fi portfolio so you can eat it up.
Dialogue was forced. Saru was great, but all the others were fighting against the scripted lines.
Here's the thing. My opinion on the episodes so far is that they are bad, but not as bad as I had expected. Here's another thing, the show may well improve. Star Trek pilots are notoriously cumbersome and convoluted pieces that are sometimes very very bad (hello Voyager). So there's hope!
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If I were to write a prime-universe Trek series that explores some of the same ideas and themes that the writers of Discovery have said that they intend the series to explore, I'd set it in the years leading up to DS9, on the Federation-Cardassian border. Border security, immigration, cross-border criminal activity, nationalism/jingoism, uneasy foreign relations, all right there and without needing to dive into another cliché black-and-white war plot. Hell, you might even get an occasional Garak cameo in such a series.
OMG! Right?! Cardassians are PERFECT for this.
I have a feeling the current writing staff of this show don't know what a Cardasian is.
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I disagree, that arc was done in DS9 already.
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No that was the fall of the Cardasian state, what I'm thinking of would be a story about how it came to be the monstrosity we saw in TNG era trek. The fall of a once free Cardasia with promise and potential, falling into the hyper-fascistic police state we all know and love.
That could have been great.
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I see that. It could have a quite assymmetrical arc with the federation concluding that the enlightenment and diversity and so on are the path to go, while Cardassia plummeted into its opposite. There could be a sweet / sour feel about the whole thing.
Alas, we have what we have. And I can only cringe at the thoughts that go through my head on where this will actually lead into, given all the short teaser clips.
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I see that. It could have a quite assymmetrical arc with the federation concluding that the enlightenment and diversity and so on are the path to go, while Cardassia plummeted into its opposite. There could be a sweet / sour feel about the whole thing.
Except that doesn't work, at all. The Federation started out as the enlightenment/diversity crowd; nothing in the war against Cardassia (which happened, ask O'Brien about it sometime) happened to change that stance. Similarly, the Cardassians weren't changed by their encounter with the Federation.
By contrast, DSC does have a story about the klingons to tell. In particular, it can show why the klingons we see in TOS are so different to the TNG and later klingons (and not just in terms of makeup). What we see in the pilot is a version of Kahless-worship that was only seen resurgent in TNG, a dedication to the principles of honor as laid down by the Unforgettable that the TOS klingons seem to lack completely. I think it likely that beating back T'Kuvma and his followers is pretty much the last gasp of klingon religiosity until it gets a bit of a resurgence during TNG.
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Nothing is set in stone, especially things like the enlightenment values. It could be portrayed as a really big test of these said values for the Federation, are they really worth dying for? How much are you going to corrupt yourself in order to win a war, and how much will the Cardassians let themselves be corrupted by material necessities during the war as well?
Enough about it though! It was merely a small thought experiment, and I don't think you persuaded me it "wouldn't work". It's not even an issue, I think that the Klingons are interesting by themselves.
And, apparently, everyone hates Discovery. From anti-sjws to full blown feminists, like Anita Sarkeesian. Although, to be fair, I think both of those things were a given no matter what.
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I suppose the question comes down to 'what do the normies think?'
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And, apparently, everyone hates Discovery. From anti-sjws to full blown feminists, like Anita Sarkeesian. Although, to be fair, I think both of those things were a given no matter what.
You really need to stop listening to the idiotic part of the internet.
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Oh look Red Letter Media basically agrees with almost everything I've said. They are therefore clearly intelligent.
You really need to stop listening to the idiotic part of the internet.
Says the guy who retweeted my retweet showing that.
And hey, I did listen to what Sarkeesian had to say about it for the whole 30 minutes.
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Says the guy who retweeted my retweet showing that.
I think we can all agree that you're both assholes for having Twitter accounts. :P
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Says the guy who retweeted my retweet showing that.
And hey, I did listen to what Sarkeesian had to say about it for the whole 30 minutes.
And as we all know, what Sarkeesian and McIntosh say is always taken directly as canon for what feminists think, for she is our dark mother and correct by definition....
Except, of course, no she isn't.
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Man, Orville on the other hand ****ing nailed it tonight. Very TOS
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Everyone praised its 3rd episode. I found it absolutely stupid, like a fan fiction episode of TNG, badly written overall. It has some great concepts in it, but the execution was so bad. Like wtf are people drinking here. I will watch the next ones though, their characters are at least more "likable" (argh what a word).
Pay attention though because it is ****ing rare for me to say this, but Sarkeesian and her ebony friend (her words not mine!!) had some good comments on it (albeit in her usual dismissive style):
I think we can all agree that you're both assholes for having Twitter accounts. :P
MOOOOOM HE CALLED ME A NAAAAME
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Sincerely I mostly stopped listening to her ramblings quite a lot of time ago, she raises always some good points then she says something silly like women having no natural aggression or taking stuff out of context.
There are much better people doing the same thing without twisting stuff around and usually better at come to terms with problematic stuff without coming off as dismissive.
She and McIntosh either don't seem to grasp sfumatures or tend to dumb down stuff a bit too much and a thing a tweet by Lindsay Ellis made me notice is that they use a very dry exposition style for their video essays which undermines the purpose of accessibility I think.
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Does anyone else find war stories rather boring? It seems like every great revelation in a tv show or movie these days is omg war is happening or omg this could lead to war etc. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy sources of conflict if they're written well and compelling, such as BSG, which I imagine a lot of HLPers would agree with (or the Expanse, which not all will agree with, but I much enjoy). Discovery's war story just doesn't strike me as all that compelling, at least from what we've seen so far.
When Burnham and Captain Georgio (sp?) had their first scene, then we see them on Shenzhou out near a weird-ass binary system with an unidentified alien ship....that **** was interesting. I thought we were in with a chance of seeing something new, something exotic and cool. Instead we got some bald Klingons. Fine. Maybe something interesting will happen next? T'Kuvma wants to unite the Klingon houses by warring on the Federation. Ok, that's better. They're fighting for something at least. What are Starfleet fighting for? Self-preservation? I understand that we'll probably see a lot more of the meat of this conflict as the series progresses. The first two episodes just didn't seem to spell out what Discovery is actually about or introduce any of the characters apart from Burnham and that science officer who ought to be XO.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, I highly recommend watching Prelude to Axanar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W1_8IV8uhA) if they haven't. It's a short fan film intended as a prologue of sorts to a longer film that sadly we'll probably never see due to CBS/Paramount squashing it in legal proceedings. I know this isn't the first time Axanar's been mentioned in this thread, but I think it's a much more compelling portrayal of war between the Federation and Klingons and much more dedicated to maintaining visual continuity with Prime Trek while seamlessly adding in some modern design cues.
In regards to visual style - as The E has said, Star Trek does undergo visual style transformations between series, sometimes drastically. The problem with Discovery's particular visual style, as I see it, is that it's just not as aesthetically pleasing imho. The bridge, transporter room, brig....they are all far too large. Shenzhou feels like a ship that's much larger than Picard's Enterprise D for instance. It looks like Mass Effect and not in a good way. The exterior shots are much better done, but everything inside the ship feels very much like generic sci-fi. It doesn't offer anything that's visually distinctive, like the coloured uniforms of TOS, the LCARS displays of TNG/VOY or the weird Cardassian architecture of DS9, which I think looks a bit ugly cos of all the brown, but it's still unmistakably DS9. Shenzhou and by extension Discovery, just looks bland.
And that there is my primary criticism - the show just feels rather bland. It's just another half-cocked, uninspiring war story that's somewhat poorly executed imho. Star Trek has done war stories before, but it's often done them well. DS9 was a bit drab and plodding at times, but it never skimped on the drama and characterisation. Enterprise had the two-parter "In a Mirror Darkly", set in the mirror 'verse, which was an absolute joy to watch. It was fun, it was evil, it had humour, it had sex....it was just bloody good.
Discovery's first two episodes were not completely trash, but they weren't all that good either. They were middling. They were mediocre, which to me is a far greater crime because there's nothing about it that stands out.
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Says the guy who retweeted my retweet showing that.
And hey, I did listen to what Sarkeesian had to say about it for the whole 30 minutes.
And as we all know, what Sarkeesian and McIntosh say is always taken directly as canon for what feminists think, for she is our dark mother and correct by definition....
Except, of course, no she isn't.
Of course not, different feminists hold a wide range of opinions, but when so many prominent feminists say similar things, its hard not to see the movement as a problem
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Yes, what this forum definitely needs is more ****ty discussions about feminism.
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Does anyone else find war stories rather boring? It seems like every great revelation in a tv show or movie these days is omg war is happening or omg this could lead to war etc. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy sources of conflict if they're written well and compelling, such as BSG, which I imagine a lot of HLPers would agree with (or the Expanse, which not all will agree with, but I much enjoy). Discovery's war story just doesn't strike me as all that compelling, at least from what we've seen so far.
It's like film and TV sci-fi writers have forgotten that there's more ways to build narrative tension than just super-high stakes. Lately it's always a war or a planet-killer or someone figured out how to burn down half the galaxy. These aren't necessarily bad stories, but interstellar wars are practically cliché in sci-fi at this point, and even the well-executed sci-fi war stories are starting to feel tiresome.
My hope for Discovery is that the war between the Klingons and the Federation becomes a backdrop to stories with more personal stakes. Develop the cast of characters that the audience becomes invested in and then put them in conflicts that affect them and their existence in a significant way. Farscape, up until near the end of the series managed this. The memorable conflicts and plotlines weren't the ones involving the Peacekeeper-Scarran War put the universe at risk, but the ones where Chriton was having his brain probed, or when Moya was giving birth while being hunted by Peacekeepers, and so on.
Writing good characters and character drama is hard, though. Putting [shooty-shooty-pew-pew] into the script lets you outsource half the episode to the effects team, which might be expensive, but for the writer, it's easy.
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It's like film and TV sci-fi writers have forgotten that there's more ways to build narrative tension than just super-high stakes. Lately it's always a war or a planet-killer or someone figured out how to burn down half the galaxy. These aren't necessarily bad stories, but interstellar wars are practically cliché in sci-fi at this point, and even the well-executed sci-fi war stories are starting to feel tiresome.
My hope for Discovery is that the war between the Klingons and the Federation becomes a backdrop to stories with more personal stakes. Develop the cast of characters that the audience becomes invested in and then put them in conflicts that affect them and their existence in a significant way. Farscape, up until near the end of the series managed this. The memorable conflicts and plotlines weren't the ones involving the Peacekeeper-Scarran War put the universe at risk, but the ones where Chriton was having his brain probed, or when Moya was giving birth while being hunted by Peacekeepers, and so on.
Writing good characters and character drama is hard, though. Putting [shooty-shooty-pew-pew] into the script lets you outsource half the episode to the effects team, which might be expensive, but for the writer, it's easy.
Interstellar war is certainly a standby and was done a fair amount even in TOS. But I'd argue that TOS's absolute lack of budget (hell even WoK's lack of budget) made those types of story lines work. One of my all time favorite Star Trek episodes is Balance of Terror and it's hilariously cheap looking compared to Discovery's pilot. But comparing a war story where neither side knew what the other looked like to "remember the Klingons guys" is really not fair. Also the Romulans' motivation is BoT while not being the most original thing ever at least makes sense given their xenophobia and cloaking technology and their captain's decision making and position aren't as cliched as the Klingon martyr dude's backstory and motivation was.
Even if the whole guy being racist towards Spock because Vulcans and Romulans look alike is still less forced than "Imma mutiny cuz Sarek said Michelle Yeoh is being a dumbass". At this point I don't really care about Michael's character arc because of how stupid the mutiny was and even if she gets the same arc as racist man from BoT I'm assuming it'll be dragged out beyond reason.
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Agreed. TOS' lack of budget forced the makers to draw in the audience in other ways by having compelling storylines, quality dialogue, interesting characters etc. It was the same for the old Dr. Who. The Doctor was never this almighty superhero they make him out to be in NuWho, he was just this bumbling intellectual that went around causing half the problems he wound up solving, but the stories were of a much higher calibre and quality than they are today.
I watched the Red Letter Media review from above and something they touched on was the need for tv shows to draw in audiences by having these long, series-spanning storyline arcs. If you want a TNG-style one-off episode that is its' own thing and not tied to any overarching story then you're better off watching Black Mirror or similar shows. Which makes me wonder why Discovery can't do TNG-style one-off episodes if other shows are doing it and prospering because of it. Clearly audiences haven't given up on that kind of storytelling.
Why does every tv show have to be Game of Thrones now?!
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One of my favorite bits of Star Trek stories comes not from the various series, not from the movies, and not even from the novels. It started way back in the days of the tabletop Star Trek: The Role Playing Game from FASA, and is called "The Four Years' War." In short, it's a major conflict between the Klingon Empire and the Federation that involved thousands of ships and battles along the entire border. It occured generally around the time of Discovery, and ended somewhere long before TOS, but the years are a difficult to nail down thanks to the idea that Stardates are somehow easy to translate.
To make a long story short, one of my favorite parts was that *not every ship* in Starfleet was dedicated to this war. There were still ships patrolling the borders, and there were still ships working on exploratory missions--though these were of course reduced due to the war effort. The point is we don't necessarily need to fear that The Klingon War is going to be a major focus of this series. Its very name "Discovery" implies that an interstellar conflict is in fact NOT its primary story to tell, though we're certainly going to get some bits and pieces all the time.
That would fit with Burnham's immediate character arc, a ship in need of experienced crew and an officer with a troubled past being sent somewhere ELSE than the front lines.
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id should totally sue these idiots for stealing their ip. Jesus F Christ this episode.
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Ok, now this episode was entirely terrible, it was hogwash from beggining to end, but it reached a peak of utter nonsense when Michael started reciting Alice in Wonderland while being pursued by Pinky itself. Jon Romero must be so proud.
The captain is a villain, apparently.
There's a new kind of super-mega-insta-teleporter that is based on some wacky idea about how everything is linked by everything else, life, energy, the universe, whatever. So mega-inspired I felt I was watching a Deepak Chopra non-fiction documentary.
Saru is still the brightest spot in the show (kinda like the only Star Trekkian thing within the episode that keeps reminding me what the show could have been).
An entire ship being blown to bits for no good reason whatsoever.
But hey, I at least give thanks to the director for stopping that dutch angle craze.
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I liked this episode a lot.
The theme of the show (which Deep Space Nine already explored to some extent) seems to be about moral compromises during wartime; Starfleet compromises its morals to deliver a win, Lorca is deeply, deeply compromised from the get-go as someone who apparently subscrides to an ends justifies the means philosophy, Burnham has compromised herself in the name of preventing a war. It's going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out (I am at this time accepting bets for Lorca's pet tribble ending up on a klingon world soon).
Sure, the instantaneous teleport by fungus is a problem, but I am interested to see what they find out about that tech that makes it unusable later on.
I am somewhat bemused by this assertion that the series is ruined because it introduced things that later shows don't use despite its obvious implications. I mean, Starfleet has access to time travel pretty much at will, and yet it is never really presented as a realistic solution for any problem they come across.
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I'm fine with that aspect as well, weird **** technologies have been presented in previous Trek episodes as well (IIRC there was a trek episode where a similar kind of teleporting tech was found...). It's just that the whole concept is entirely dumb from the get go and seems to be inspired more by the likes of Chopra than the likes of Hawking. The whole writing on that tech is just pure nonsensical woo drivel.
Lorca is a deeply flawed character. Out is the entire StarFleet's motto and ethical standards, in is Machiavelli and his ethos. Apparently, Context Is King and the rule of law no longer applies. Apparently, captains in Starfleet are given free reign to do whatever they need to win the war. Apparently, miss Michael hasn't learnt her lesson yet, and still believes that the ends justify the means.
And apparently, Trek cannot even be elevated to the likes of Alien. I mean, I couldn't laugh my ass off more when I saw Pinky gnawing its teeth at the crew. And what the **** is that thing, even? I mean, yeah I kinda assumed the "science team ****s it up and delivers a monster" trope, but that thing was never explained at all, which is weird in of itself, but this is Star Trek for ****s sake. They must explain this ****, because as it stands, I'm calling ip theft on this one and argue that this thing was teleported out of Hell straight towards our universe through that NuPolenTech.
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Actual lines of dialogue.
Paul Stamets:
"At the quantum level there's no difference between biology and physics, no difference at all.
And you talk about spores? What are they? They're the progenitors of panspermia. They're the building blocks of energy across the universe.
Physics and biology? No. Physics AS biology"
Spores are apparently energy quanta in our universe.
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I actually find the whole notion of "spore line" not that bad, it reminds me of Asimov's "Currents of Space", especially since it was just shown that a ship can use said spores to power itself. Is this a little "wacky"? Oh yes, but it's actually remarkably better thought out than a lot of technobabble Trek has used in the past.
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That would fit with Burnham's immediate character arc, a ship in need of experienced crew and an officer with a troubled past being sent somewhere ELSE than the front lines.
Which seemed to form a good chunk of the premise of Episode 3, nice prediction!
I liked this one better. The Alice in Wonderland scene was silly. Blowing up a brand new starship that by all rights could've been salvaged was silly. Not sure how I feel about the teleporter, if it leads to a Black Mesa style scenario that could be interesting I guess, perhaps that's what the monster was all about? The dialogue is still trash.
Despite its' flaws I much preferred this episode to the first 2, probably because Burnham came off as quite a bit more capable and less of an unprofessional malcontent, although that's probably down to the fact that her mutineering has humbled her somewhat and she doesn't really have any real responsibilities yet.
Saru is XO. ****ing YES. He should've been XO from the start.
That shot of Discovery tractor beaming Burnham's prison shuttle almost made the ship look good. Almost. The design is still rather unfortunate. It looks much better up close where its' ugliness isn't so obvious.
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The design is sick as hell, I have the utmost respect for the designers that stuck to it, even knowing they would be hated by the mainstream.
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Saru is XO. ****ing YES. He should've been XO from the start.
In David Mack's tie-in novel (which covers a period of time before the start of Discovery), it is made explicit that Georgiou promoted Burnham to XO over Saru (who has seniority in grade and has the necessary command training) simply because she thought Burnham was more ready for the position.
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I'm just going to say that this should have been a new IP. I see absolutely no reason so far why this had to be a Star Trek show. And I suspect it's going to end up hamstinging them unless they decide to completely ignore TOS.
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Why? I keep seeing this talking point pop up, but so far, nothing about Discovery (except superficial stuff like "the ship uses touchscreens" or "shuttles shouldn't have warp drives" or "these klingons don't look like tanned humans") makes the show incompatible with TOS.
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So you think in 10 years the universe of the show you've just seen could have changed into the one we see in TOS? Hell, this show is set 2 years after The Cage. We're supposed to accept that the attitudes of the Pike era Enterprise have mutated into the Discovery and back again in 12 years?
We know for a fact that Spock was already a serving senior officer at that point and I'm sure someone more versed in Trek can prove that Kirk, McCoy and pretty much every senior officer involved in TOS would have been serving at that point. Yet despite the fact that they all fought in the Klingon - Federation war they all barely if ever mention it. That it affects next to none of their decisions or actions. If space-psychology is that good, perhaps the current crew should be getting some of it.
I'm sorry but it just doesn't work for me. Setting the show so close to TOS is obviously designed for one reason alone, cameos. I'll probably watch it a bit longer but to be honest, I've already decided that in terms of head-canon this isn't happening in the prime universe. It just goes way beyond belief.
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We know for a fact that Spock was already a serving senior officer at that point and I'm sure someone more versed in Trek can prove that Kirk, McCoy and pretty much every senior officer involved in TOS would have been serving at that point. Yet despite the fact that they all fought in the Klingon - Federation war they all barely if ever mention it. That it affects next to none of their decisions or actions. If space-psychology is that good, perhaps the current crew should be getting some of it.
By the time of TOS, the Klingon/Federation war has simmered down to being pretty cold. No major offensives were happening, and the klingons and Federation had established a neutral zone that was supposed to be inviolate. Enterprise was on an explicit exploration mission; while they had klingon encounters, most of them didn't really change the status quo (except, obviously, for the organian peace treaty).
I would posit that ten years is enough time for the acute traumas to heal (and even then: Witness Kirk in Undiscovered Country and his resolve to never make peace with the klingons) or the officers most affected to be rotated out of frontline assignments.
Oh, and just incidentally: During the timeframe of Discovery, Kirk and McCoy are still in the Academy. We don't know what Spock was doing, but he was part of the Enterprise crew by then. We do not know what actions the Enterprise took part in, or how long it took from the hot war of Discovery to go into a stalemate, but it is entirely plausible to me that the war wouldn't come up as a random topic of conversation during TOS.
I'm sorry but it just doesn't work for me. Setting the show so close to TOS is obviously designed for one reason alone, cameos. I'll probably watch it a bit longer but to be honest, I've already decided that in terms of head-canon this isn't happening in the prime universe. It just goes way beyond belief.
Fair enough.
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Oh, and just incidentally: During the timeframe of Discovery, Kirk and McCoy are still in the Academy.
Nope. Starfleet academy doesn't seem to work like that.
Kirk was commissioned as an officer in the United Federation of Planets Starfleet with the serial number SC937-0176CEC. In the mid-2250s, some years after beginning his friendship with Lt. Finney, he was promoted to ensign. He served aboard the Republic with his friend Lt. Ben Finney. When Finney made a mistake nearly catastrophic to the ship, Kirk logged the incident, which resulted in his friend being reprimanded and put to the bottom of the promotion list. (TOS: "Court Martial")
In 2255, Kirk was promoted to lieutenant. As a young lieutenant, he visited Neural on his first planetary survey mission. Kirk met and befriended one of the planet's natives, the Hill man Tyree. Kirk's report described a primitive but promising culture, and Starfleet endorsed him recommending a policy of non-interference. (TOS: "The Corbomite Maneuver", "A Private Little War")
In 2257, upon graduating from Starfleet Academy, Kirk began his service under Captain Garrovick. Kirk's first deep-space assignment was as a lieutenant aboard Garrovick's USS Farragut. As a phaser gun crew member, he was assigned to a phaser station.
That year, the Farragut engaged the dikironium cloud creature at the planet Tycho IV. The creature killed Captain Garrovick and two hundred of the ship's crew. Farragut's record tapes of the event included Lieutenant Kirk insisting upon blaming himself for the disaster, citing his delay in firing the ship's phaser banks at the creature as he lost consciousness. The Farragut's executive officer disagreed, stating, "Lieutenant Kirk is a fine young officer who performed with uncommon bravery." (TOS: "Obsession")
So Kirk would have already been serving on starships at the time the war started. He'll definitely be a serving officer by the time Season 2 rolls round. So we're supposed to believe that at the same time the federation was peaceful enough for all the stuff Kirk did but at the same time was at war with the Klingons. Scotty supposedly started in 2241 so he definitely would be involved in a war that occurred some 15 years later. McCoy was also older than Kirk so it would be hard to believe he wasn't involved in patching people up at the front.
I would posit that ten years is enough time for the acute traumas to heal
Ten years from the start of Discovery is not necessarily ten years from the end of the war. This is what I mean about TOS hamstringing them. They're going to have to wrap up this whole Klingon War stuff pretty quickly as it will become less and less believable the longer things go on. It's bad enough that there was a short war ten years ago that no one mentioned but if the war is the backdrop to the show and is still going on by season 5 that would be like having a show based on the Korean War where no one ever mentions WWII.
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This all assumes things we don't know. We don't know how long the hot war is going to last. We don't know what timeframe Discovery is meant to cover.
Also, we know that there was a hot conflict with the klingons in this timeframe because Picard mentioned it once.
I think what I can't get my head around is this concept of "if it wasn't mentioned in TOS, it can't exist in Discovery", when TOS (and, to some extent, all of Star Trek) was made by people with a much looser concept of the requirements of sticking to a defined canon. Claiming that DSC is breaking rules that Star Trek was never good at keeping in the first place is weird, to me.
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It's not just events that are the problem. The entire tone of the federation has to switch in 10 year span for this to be believable.
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Because the tone on-board Discovery is typical for Starfleet? When Discovery is explicitly atypical?
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Watched it during the last couple of days.
I did not like it very much. By far the worst starting episodes of a Trek series i can remember. Only TOS and TAS were even worse... but that was 50 years ago.
Actually, this one did not feel neither a ENT sequel or TOS prequel for me. Even it does not work as an TOS prequel anyway because it seems to play in the Kelvin timeline, based on the references given, that was never Star Trek at all for me.
After the pilot episode it was the first time i have a feeling from a ST pilot like "If this would not be called Star Trek, it could be simply 'another starship series'".
Maybe i have again to wait for season 3, like in all other modern Trek series before this one gets really good. But at least the beginning of them where much better to keep you up during a horribly bad second season.
If we are lucky... this first season is already the second season from the others series :D
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I think what I can't get my head around is this concept of "if it wasn't mentioned in TOS, it can't exist in Discovery", when TOS (and, to some extent, all of Star Trek) was made by people with a much looser concept of the requirements of sticking to a defined canon. Claiming that DSC is breaking rules that Star Trek was never good at keeping in the first place is weird, to me.
Which is a fair enough point. TNG and by extension DS9/VOY were a lot more respectful of continuity however, particularly in regards to the tech. TOS ships were slower, they had no replicators, no holodecks, the transporters would doppelganger people....which I guess they never fixed? :)
This is the problem of doing a prequel. The ships have to be less capable. The ideals and the way things are have to be proportionally less developed, because you wouldn't expect 19th century Europe to have greater civil rights than 20th century Europe now would you? Yet in Discovery the ships seem more capable, the officers seem to instinctively know what to do with stuff that the poor old Enterprise crew had to ponder over.
TOS established a lot of plot and setting tropes that audiences are now too familiar with, so DSC by necessity has to gloss over things like Burnham using a thruster pack which would've taken a good 10-mins of explanatory dialogue in TOS before the scene actually happened.
Rogue One is a fine example of a prequel done right imho and arguably Star Wars has less of an incentive to maintain continuity because it has a wider appeal and can get away with playing fast and loose with canon.
Putting the tech aside, in terms of ideals the Federation is much more mature by TNG era than it was in TOS, if Kirk and Co. are anything to go by. The Prime Directive is adhered to more often, though probably less than even half of the time, but still more than Kirk did by any reasonable measure. There's far more diplomacy going on, I mean hell the Federation are allied to the Klingons by TNG. That's a story I'd much rather explore.
The Federation in TOS is well-meaning, but not pacifistic. The Enterprise Incident coming to mind, where Kirk is ordered to steal a cloaking device from the Romulans. In DSC they seem downright militaristic. Starfleet feels and operates more like a traditional Navy than Nasa with guns, which is basically what TOS Starfleet was.
DSC actually reminds me of the Movie era, where everyone wore the same red military uniforms and the stories revolved more around action. Even then we got the Shakespeare and Moby-Dick quotes (He tasks me!). That works for the films. In DSC everyone wears the same blue military uniforms, there's constant action, there's escalation instead of diplomacy or science solutions....
Idk, I really don't want to dislike Discovery. I do think Trek has to evolve and DSC is trying very hard to just that, which is itself commendable. But the Trek tropes just don't seem to be there - the exploration, the sciencing, the interesting and sometimes brilliant dialogue, the cringey humour, the technobabble (which DSC has actually kept to a minimum which is...good I guess?), the occasionally hamfisted moral lessons....
I agreed with Kara in that it doesn't feel like Trek to me, it feels more like generic sci-fi, which is an opinion that seems to be widely shared among Virgins Trekkies.
EDIT: Didn't spot your post there:-
Because the tone on-board Discovery is typical for Starfleet? When Discovery is explicitly atypical?
Yes, but they're not even a combat unit yet they seem to operate more like a warship.
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Which is a fair enough point. TNG and by extension DS9/VOY were a lot more respectful of continuity however, particularly in regards to the tech. TOS ships were slower, they had no replicators, no holodecks, the transporters would doppelganger people....which I guess they never fixed? :)
This is the problem of doing a prequel. The ships have to be less capable. The ideals and the way things are have to be proportionally less developed, because you wouldn't expect 19th century Europe to have greater civil rights than 20th century Europe now would you? Yet in Discovery the ships seem more capable, the officers seem to instinctively know what to do with stuff that the poor old Enterprise crew had to ponder over.
Let's talk about production artefacts a bit. TOS didn't have hologram projectors or touchscreens or heads-up displays on the main viewscreen because most of that was technology that was too costly to display properly. The ships have to be less capable, sure, but we don't know exactly what the capabilities of the TOS Enterprise are; TOS canon was never defined in a way that would lend itself to that sort of discussion.
The ships and crews seem more capable, but how much of that is because the ships can be shown in much more dynamic scenes these days? How much of it is due to the writers choosing not to make something into a problem for the characters to deal with?
These things, IMHO, are due to TOS being very obviously a product of its time and its inherent limitations. I can't accept the notion that a TOS prequel series must look less advanced than TOS when our own observable reality is, in many ways, more advanced than TOS was.
TOS established a lot of plot and setting tropes that audiences are now too familiar with, so DSC by necessity has to gloss over things like Burnham using a thruster pack which would've taken a good 10-mins of explanatory dialogue in TOS before the scene actually happened.
Rogue One is a fine example of a prequel done right imho and arguably Star Wars has less of an incentive to maintain continuity because it has a wider appeal and can get away with playing fast and loose with canon.
Putting the tech aside, in terms of ideals the Federation is much more mature by TNG era than it was in TOS, if Kirk and Co. are anything to go by. The Prime Directive is adhered to more often, though probably less than even half of the time, but still more than Kirk did by any reasonable measure. There's far more diplomacy going on, I mean hell the Federation are allied to the Klingons by TNG. That's a story I'd much rather explore.
I would agree that a story set within the timeframe in which the klingon/fed alliance happened would be cool to see (TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise says hello), but at the same time, that show would be met with much the same criticisms, wouldn't it, if its makers chose to update elements of the look.
The Federation in TOS is well-meaning, but not pacifistic. The Enterprise Incident coming to mind, where Kirk is ordered to steal a cloaking device from the Romulans. In DSC they seem downright militaristic. Starfleet feels and operates more like a traditional Navy than Nasa with guns, which is basically what TOS Starfleet was.
I gotta ask this, why are you assuming that Lorca in particular and Discovery and Glenn in general are indicative of what the rest of Starfleet is like? We know that Shenzhou was different, much closer to what we think a Starfleet ship should be like, and from those two examples you are saying that all of Starfleet must be like Discovery? This doesn't compute for me.
DSC actually reminds me of the Movie era, where everyone wore the same red military uniforms and the stories revolved more around action. Even then we got the Shakespeare and Moby-Dick quotes (He tasks me!). That works for the films. In DSC everyone wears the same blue military uniforms, there's constant action, there's escalation instead of diplomacy or science solutions....
Hmm, yes, constant action where in the pilot two fleets are staring at each other intently until Burnham screws up. Where Georgiou is trying to use tried-and-true Starfleet methods of non-aggression. Where in the third episode we get taken on an excursion to Alien-land, where Lorca is explicitly characterized as more warmonger-ish than any other Starfleet captain we've seen.
Idk, I really don't want to dislike Discovery. I do think Trek has to evolve and DSC is trying very hard to just that, which is itself commendable. But the Trek tropes just don't seem to be there - the exploration, the sciencing, the interesting and sometimes brilliant dialogue, the cringey humour, the technobabble (which DSC has actually kept to a minimum which is...good I guess?), the occasionally hamfisted moral lessons....
I agreed with Kara in that it doesn't feel like Trek to me, it feels more like generic sci-fi, which is an opinion that seems to be widely shared among Virgins Trekkies.
I don't know. I've talked to people who really liked the show and see it as a good Trek story.
Because the tone on-board Discovery is typical for Starfleet? When Discovery is explicitly atypical?
Yes, but they're not even a combat unit yet they seem to operate more like a warship.
Lorca is operating Discovery like a warship, yes.
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The Shenzhou also doesn't seem like a TOS era ship to me either, so stop claiming that it's cause of the Discovery.
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My take: The superduper teleportation shrooms will shortly take the whole ship to a) another part of the galaxy or b) another dimension entirely where the actual show will then commence to start. b) is more likely than a) imho simply because a) has been done in Voyager already.
I.e. Discovery will most likely go deep down the rabbit hole. The Alice in Wonderland quotes do nothing less but directly telegraph this plot "twist" as well.
With one ship destroyed in episode 3 and the other ship potentially disappearing from the known universe never to be seen again this would also explain Starfleet never further pursued the "shroomdrive" as viable technology.
Aside from that I am getting a kind of "Ship of the damned" / "Mutiny on the Bounty" vibe from the show since episode 3, which might not be the worst direction they could have taken it.
All in all I am quite a bit more interested in the show now after episode 3 than I was after 1+2. /shrugs. Gonna see how it develops.
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My take: The superduper teleportation shrooms will shortly take the whole ship to a) another part of the galaxy or b) another dimension entirely where the actual show will then commence to start.
You forgot option C: The protagonist is already on shrooms, and the show really starts when the bad trip concludes.
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I think there will be an arc regarding the shroooomtech which will probably span at least half the season, only for it to prove itself as something that cannot work. The sister ship which was already on the verge of getting it right did something very wrong and possibly found out by themselves why shroooomtech cannot work.
As I see it, it's basically a mcguffin to get Michael on board and working despite being a convict, nothing much more than that.
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My take: The superduper teleportation shrooms will shortly take the whole ship to a) another part of the galaxy or b) another dimension entirely where the actual show will then commence to start.
You forgot option C: The protagonist is already on shrooms, and the show really starts when the bad trip concludes.
Option D: They all died on the shuttle and the Discovery is how their brains interpret the afterlife ............... uh wait, this sounds familiar... argh nooooooooooooooo not again! :shaking: :eek: :banghead:
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This technology seems like something Picard and the crew would come help out with, only to discover that the technology is
A) uncontrollable and thus unusable
B) doesn't do what they say it does
or
C) a fraud by someone trying to scooby doo some colony
And at the end of the episode they just say "well that was a good try but we won't end up doing that"
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Wow. I strongly disagree.
Assume spoilers from here on out, I'm not going to use the tag.
It felt like it was made by people with no real understanding of why Star Trek works, and no respect for the setting or the universe. Had it been in the Abramsverse, that would have been one thing, but given they made such a big deal about how it was in the prime universe, I was deeply disappointed with the very little effort they made to ground it in a franchise with a half century of history. They made bizarre decisions like having a blue guy on the bridge who clearly wasn't Andorian, and then explicitly mentioning Andorians later. Why make up a new species? Take your throw away chances to ground yourself in the universe. The federation trial at the end and the portrayal of Klingons were particularly out of character - why didn't they have hair? Why make them klingons if they're not going to look like Klingons? Or at the very least, improve the look - the new klingons look more complicated, and the quality of the makeup is better, but they're so complex that you can't really see the actor under way all the makeup, so they not only can't emote to the audience, but it's hard to tell them apart because your brain can't see the faces properly.
Even aesthetically, nothing looked even vaguely like it was ten years before ToS. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a purist. I don't want it to look like it's straight out of the sixties. But some nods would have been nice - some physical controls instead of touchscreens, some indication in the klingon ship design, anything.
Even if you just try to forget about all the previous Trek iterations, it's a struggle to care about any of the characters. The only two that had any impact on me were Michelle Yeo and the Admiral who turned up in episode two, both of whom were dead by the end of the episode. And as far as the main character goes... if anyone thinks Sonequa Martin Green's character made any sense through the episode... I just don't get it.
The Klingon bad guys motivations were unclear, but what they did manage to get across was that the empire was in disarray, and that unifying would be difficult... Except it wasn't. It basically took zero effort besides turning on that light thing, and a 2 minute speech, and by the end of the episode 23 of the 24 were basically committed to the martyr guy. Sure, give me a complicated, internally divided antagonist faction, or give me a monolithic, unified faction. But don't pretend to be one, then just flip to the other and claim to have told a story.
Some reviews suggest it picks up after episode three. I'm hoping. I'll grudgingly accept the aesthetic stuff if they tell a good story. But I'm not hopeful off that start.
I strongly agree with Black Wolf, I saw the 3rd episode today and yeah it sucked for me, they have technology that not even Voyager had, if they did Voyager would had been a 3 episode miniseries traveling at 90 LY/1.3s, WTF? A lot of quantum BS, everything and anything is possible, really? I'll keep watching maybe what they're doing makes sense at some point, if not I'll stop
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The Cracked.com review (http://www.cracked.com/video_20617_star-trek-discovery-all-action-no-sci-fi.html) mentions some of the other problems I had with it. Including the dumb mutiny (how the hell did she imagine it would work?), that Burham screws up her own plan by actually acting on emotion MORE than a normal human would and the problem I had with the first three minutes of the show where the crew have managed to set themselves up as the gods who came from nowhere and saved the village.
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After watching the first three episodes back-to-back:
1. The placement of this show in ST canon looks pretty loose.
2. I don't care about #1.
3. A show with entirely a single-protagonist focus is new to the ST universe and so far I quite like the concept.
4. The Klingon makeup is utterly hideous, but it further distances the show from various other Trek.
I agree that Discovery doesn't really seem to fit well with existing Trek, but its an entirely unique take on the universe; it's much closer (not just in art) to the new Trek films, but I don't see that as a bad thing since I actually like the new films. And considering that not a single Star Trek series has really gotten good until at least season 2 and often well into 3, I'm inclined to give it a chance.
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And considering that not a single Star Trek series has really gotten good until at least season 2 and often well into 3, I'm inclined to give it a chance.
I assume you're ignoring the original show when you say that.
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And considering that not a single Star Trek series has really gotten good until at least season 2 and often well into 3, I'm inclined to give it a chance.
I assume you're ignoring the original show when you say that.
I don't consider much of any of the TOS-era to actually be "good," a few of the films aside (2, 4, 6). For the period it was made and originally re-aired, perhaps it was, but by more modern Trek standards it doesn't even begin to compare. I know that's blasphemy for a Trek fan; come at me :)
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TOS didn't have hologram projectors or touchscreens or heads-up displays on the main viewscreen.....TOS canon was never defined in a way that would lend itself to that sort of discussion.
These things, IMHO, are due to TOS being very obviously a product of its time and its inherent limitations. I can't accept the notion that a TOS prequel series must look less advanced than TOS when our own observable reality is, in many ways, more advanced than TOS was.
TOS' canon was loose, but not that loose. They did go through the galactic barrier at warp 10ish on occasion and the speeds were ill-defined as a result, but otherwise it was relatively consistent I'd say. At the very least we should see holograms and such in a sufficiently retro way if that makes sense. I'm thinking along the lines of USS Franklin from Beyond. I liked that wee ship, it looked sufficiently retro and dated to be a ship from ENT era.
I don't understand what's so hard about trying to remain faithful while adding some modern inspirations here and there like the pseudo-holodeck in Star Trek Continues or the modernised retro Starships of Axanar.
I'll agree that as far as aesthetics go, TOS is very much a 60s show, but the stories and plots are timeless. The only episode of TOS that really gives it away as being a product of its' time is that one with the stupid hippies (God I how wished they'd just vaporise the ****ers).
ENT at the very least had keyboards and that submarine look. It didn't always work, but at least the set creators tried and imho I think they did a good job of making NX-01 interiors look plausibly less advanced than Kirk's Enterprise. It was a compromise, but a good one.
I gotta ask this, why are you assuming that Lorca in particular and Discovery and Glenn in general are indicative of what the rest of Starfleet is like? We know that Shenzhou was different, much closer to what we think a Starfleet ship should be like, and from those two examples you are saying that all of Starfleet must be like Discovery? This doesn't compute for me.
Shenzhou definitely felt more like a Navy ship to me too, but that's a matter of opinion I'll admit.
Hmm, yes, constant action where in the pilot two fleets are staring at each other intently until Burnham screws up. Where Georgiou is trying to use tried-and-true Starfleet methods of non-aggression. Where in the third episode we get taken on an excursion to Alien-land, where Lorca is explicitly characterized as more warmonger-ish than any other Starfleet captain we've seen.
Perhaps not constant action yes, but certainly more stabby stabby pew pew than there ought to be. I agree about Georgiou. Apart from using an enemy corpse as a weapon, I much prefer her to Lorca.
Lorca is operating Discovery like a warship, yes.
It feels like a warship though, with or without Lorca, for the reasons I mentioned such as the uniforms and the somewhat formal and wooden way the crew behaves.
In DS9 we had the Defiant which was an actual warship, yet it still felt like a Starfleet vessel. I am perhaps projecting a bit here, but it seemed to me that if you were to compare Defiant and Discovery you'd find that Defiant still very much feels like a Starfleet ship with guns, whereas Discovery feels more like a warship. I feel like on Defiant you still have the benevolent Starfleet types and O'Brien and Bashir cracking wise, maybe some nihilistic Garak for a few chuckles.
And that's the other thing Discovery needs a bit more of, are the lighthearted moments, the odd joke here or there. In fact I'm pretty sure one of the reasons I enjoyed DSC episode 3 more was that there was a bit more humour here and there.
EDIT: I always though Voyager had the strongest 1st season of the Treks, even for its' flaws.
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Fair enough, but let me ask you this:
What is your opinion on Captain Jellico and Admirals Nechayev and Ross? Are they proper Starfleet officers?
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Jellico and Ross, yes, Nechayev no. But I take your point nonetheless.
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My heart sank pretty early when I realised they were doing the whole Vulcan first officer AGAIN.
Why does every single Trek show (apart from DS9) feel the need to do the whole Vulcan / human conflict? We had it in TOS, we had it in TNG but with Data as the emotionless character trying to fit in with humans. And then in Voyager and Enterprise. Why do we need it yet again?
And it's not like they even did anything interesting with it this time. A human trying to be Vulcan is going to play pretty much the same as Spock did it with only tiny variations.
Even if they are contractually obliged to have an emotionless character couldn't we have had something new? Maybe a Vulcan captain and human subordinates (although that would require an alien to smash the Transparent Aluminum Ceiling)? Or perhaps something really out there like a half-Vulcan / half-Betazed ship's councillor.
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There's probably Troi fanfic to that effect. ... :shaking:
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There's probably Troi fanfic to that effect. ... :shaking:
Lwaxana-Sarek fanfic.
...
You didn't say what generation of Troi would be involved.
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My heart sank pretty early when I realised they were doing the whole Vulcan first officer AGAIN.
Why does every single Trek show (apart from DS9) feel the need to do the whole Vulcan / human conflict? We had it in TOS, we had it in TNG but with Data as the emotionless character trying to fit in with humans. And then in Voyager and Enterprise. Why do we need it yet again?
And it's not like they even did anything interesting with it this time. A human trying to be Vulcan is going to play pretty much the same as Spock did it with only tiny variations.
Even if they are contractually obliged to have an emotionless character couldn't we have had something new? Maybe a Vulcan captain and human subordinates (although that would require an alien to smash the Transparent Aluminum Ceiling)? Or perhaps something really out there like a half-Vulcan / half-Betazed ship's councillor.
I am pretty sure we are not watching the same show. If you think Burnham is emotionless, or that her retreating into stoicism is a source of conflict for anyone except Burnham herself, you must have seen completely different episodes than what were aired.
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I am pretty sure we are not watching the same show. If you think Burnham is emotionless, or that her retreating into stoicism is a source of conflict for anyone except Burnham herself, you must have seen completely different episodes than what were aired.
She's trying to be emotionless. Which is not really that interesting.
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I like how episode 4 tied down no. 3 and what it did with pinky (ripper), especially how it denies violent processes any footing, slowly building up basic generosity and curiosity as primary important traits. I can already foresee the "So awesome but unusable tech" trope coming online, a very TNG-esque dillema between material / productivity necessity against basic humanity, compassion, empathy with an alien life. Even in here, how Michael manipulates Saru in a cold manner is well placed and also foretells the arc that Michael still needs to go through. It meshed well with the overall theme.
As this board has said from the very beggining, if they are going to make this show about how the values of what we aknowledge the Federation to be about are slowly coming online in a particularly stressed situation, then good. And this episode seems to point to that direction, so, ok. I bite. Lemme see what you have next, Star Trek.
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The only thing I really disliked (and I really, really dislike it) about episode 4 was the security officer committing suicide by tardigrade. Make her aggressive, sure, make her fully on-board with Lorca and make her antagonistic towards Burnham based on her dislike of vulcan ideals, that's all good, but don't make her stupid.
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The only thing I really disliked (and I really, really dislike it) about episode 4 was the security officer committing suicide by tardigrade. Make her aggressive, sure, make her fully on-board with Lorca and make her antagonistic towards Burnham based on her dislike of vulcan ideals, that's all good, but don't make her stupid.
Lorca seems to like people that obey orders blindly, I wouldn't be surprised if she was there precisely because she's that particular brand of stupid.
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So, got around to watching episode 4. It's bad guys. This show is a bad show. The makeup is bad - that albino Klingon didn't look starved, he looked like his makeup artist gave up about three quarters of the way through and just airbrushed some dark smudges on. The costumes are bad. The writing is either stupid or hacky. "Who saved us?" says the little girl, while she and the crowd looks up in awe surrounded by flaming wreckage falling from the sky. That is a cliched scene and ****ty writing. And why did Discovery fly away? Surely the people on the ground needed some help that Discovery could have provided. A medical bay maybe? Or protect from anything else that might show up for the next three days while they fixed the shield? They established the timeline at the start of the show - nearest ship is 84 hours away, and there's a six hour countdown, which ended when they showed up, so the nearest help is still 78+ hours away.
And what the hell was the security chief doing? That tardigrade just killed an entire ships worth of humans and Klingons, but you have a slightly bigger gun, so you'll be fine?
The continuity with the rest of the canon is bad. The presentation of the Federation and the Klingons is completely different to what has been established. Nobody's even asking if the tardigrade is sentient? It's clearly uncomfortable, but nobody cares at all. Sure, greater good, and yeah, Lorca is supposed to be this militarist, but nobody - even Burnham - really even raises these issues? In a Star Trek show? That's not how the Federation works. And the Klingons? A crew of established religious zealots devoted to Kahless are willing to give up their honour wholesale and betray their ideals because this guy brought hem food? Starvation makes people do crazy things, but these are Klingons. Honour is their whole cultural thing, especially, you would think, for these particular Klingons. Why? Why? If you don't want the Federation to act like the Federation, don't do a Star Trek show. If you don't want the Klingons to look or act like Klingons, use another race! Any other! The show could work at any point in the timeline, and use any species they want.
I could rant all night about this stupid episode. "You've got blood on your face" "And on your hands!". Really writers? Really? The whole scene where that guy threatens to quit is just ridiculous. And then Lorca decides to pipe the distress call through the entire ship. What, to motivate people? He thinks they're just chilling out, slacking off? All that can possibly do is unnecessarily raise stress levels on the ship. Why did red headed nerdy girl just stand behind Burnham when they let the Tardigrade out? At that point, you should have assumed it was a murder machine. She just went on her first away mission to see the hundreds of corpses this thing made while it tried to kill her, and just a few days later she's this chill about it maybe killing her? No. That's stupid. That's bad character development. Why did she say that the Glenn and Discovery only had spores in common when that is obviously not true at all? They were the same class of ship. They probably had almost everything in common. And why the **** do bits of Discovery need to spin around? Surely that's enormously inconvenient for everyone involved?
It's a shame. I like Star Trek. I like sci fi on TV. But this is bad Star Trek and a bad TV show and episode 4 is where it proves it.
Bad.
Show.
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Needless to say, I disagree on almost all points.
Nobody's even asking if the tardigrade is sentient? It's clearly uncomfortable, but nobody cares at all. Sure, greater good, and yeah, Lorca is supposed to be this militarist, but nobody - even Burnham - really even raises these issues? In a Star Trek show? That's not how the Federation works.
Except that Burnham does raise these issues. Over and over again, she says that the Tardigrade can't be something that it isn't, only what it actually is, and that treating it like a killing machine solely because of that first encounter is wrong. She then is shown caring about its discomfort, and while you're right that the question of sentience isn't brought up, to claim that she wasn't acting like a Starfleet officer is flat out wrong.
I'm not going to make you like this show; noone will. But you are making claims that are, at the very least, hyperbolic and really not supported by the episode.
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Imma gonna say though, he's 100% right about the Discovery spinning bull****, unless I missed something very important on how its mechanical structure had any bearing on the spores technobabble. I also thought that was really silly and unnecessary.
Regarding the cliché moment, it seemed too much of a "Bats vs Supes" moody thing that wasn't really that well followed up. I agree that it would have been a nice touch for the ship to have remained there, just to keep an eye on them and whatever, you could have even created a good tension in a following episode wherein they would have troubles gettin the ripper focused to jump, all the while a new wave of Klingons were approaching, or whatever (I may be off strategically here, they might have calculated already it was impossible for new Klingons to arrive there in the next days).
I also disagree with BW's take down of this episode. If anything, this is the one I've hated the least, which seems to be increasingly pointing towards a good, better star trekkian moral direction. Things are still pretty bleak though. Captain Evil is still a bastard and Saru is still the only good trekkie on board. But there's a possible arc in this story, and I'm willing to see more of it.
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This shows title really could have been "Star Trek: Black Ops."
My thought is that its best to approach this as a show set within the Star Trek universe but outside much of the traditional Trek canon. Approached that way, you can safely ignore the obvious tech discrepancies, minor canonical issues, and focus on the fact that this show is doing what no other ST series has done: exploring the darker elements of the Federation. Oh sure, we've had the odd episode featuring Section 31 before, and various glimpses like the Pegasus incident, but its been clear for a very long time that for all their utopian ideals there is a definite rotten Machiavellian sewer in the Federation and this show is absolutely an exploration of it. On that macro-level, this is a unique experiment in the ST universe and I'm very curious to see where it goes. Episode 4 makes it even clearer that we are going into an exploration of what makes the Federation the Federation on a definitively-progressing story arc, rather than the much more episodic standalones of TNG, DS9, and even Voyager.
At any rate, I'm quite enjoying it. Yes, I also marveled at the stupidity of the security officer, but I think it has become abundantly clear that Discovery's crew and operations are unlike any other ship we've seen in the Federation to date and - while it was handled clumsily - that type of person operating on this particular ship is not at all a surprise. What's more curious is how Saru ended up on Discovery.
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Episode 4 makes it even clearer that we are going into an exploration of what makes the Federation the Federation on a definitively-progressing story arc, rather than the much more episodic standalones of TNG, DS9, and even Voyager.
Which is a premise I'd enjoy more if they were actually exploring what makes the Federation what it is and not merely showing us "hey the good guys can be bad too!"
Something that confused the **** out of me about episode 4 - why were Voq and the other T'kuvmites left stranded for 6 whole months? If the other Klingons were worried about them spreading their ideology, ok fine I guess I can accept that excuse. I guess I'll just ignore the premise of T'Kuvma's marytrdom being central to the plot. But that guy Kol just shows up after 6 freaking months and he's like "yo guys how you doing? How's starvation treating ya? Listen, turns out that cloaking tech you have actually provides us with a massive tactical advantage. We can haz?"
It just doesn't make any sense. If the non-jihadi Klingons don't like the Jihadi Klingons then why leave them stranded to possibly recover (which is exactly what happened) instead of merely destroying them? If they do like the Jihadis then why leave them stranded at all, particularly when they have a game-changing tech?
Casually ignoring canon too I might add, but we're well past worrying about that I'd think.
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Finally got around to watching this. Is good stuff. Does the Netflix version not have the next episode previews (being in the US, I have to use CBS All Access)? Because it's clear that episode 5 is going to have Burnham arguing that they're pushing "Ripper" too far, exactly as Black Wolf was complaining wasn't happening.
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They've most definitely nabbed some art style from BSG (handheld camera and shoot through foreground elements) in an effort to modernise compared to previous star trek shooting. But so have many other shows.
I don't like it more than Voyager because voyager had borg boobs. But I like captain-takes-no-****. Do all captains have oriental facets?
I wonder what the big stealth king on ship was that died when the Europa blew it's code 1 2 3 4 kirk alpha. On that note, why the feds didn't come back in 6 months and blow up voq son of none when they picked up Asian captains telescope is ......."beyond" me.
I'll still watch it though because I'm not over analysing it and enjoying potential boobs in the future.
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So, got around to watching episode 4. It's bad guys. This show is a bad show.
So, so, so bad. I honestly can't understand why people are complaining at The Orville for being like Season 2 TNG when this show is well below Voyage levels at the moment.
"Who saved us?" says the little girl, while she and the crowd looks up in awe surrounded by flaming wreckage falling from the sky. That is a cliched scene and ****ty writing.
I almost did a Picard facepalm at that point. Really? You're running OUT of the bunker with your children to look at the debris of enemy spaceships fall on you? I've rarely seen anything that dumb in Trek but it wasn't the standout piece of hackneyed writing for me.
First, the Tardigrade being the supercomputer couldn't have been spelled out in bigger letters if they had tried. First we get a scene about how they are missing an important piece of the drive when we know that there was only one other thing taken off the other ship. Then we have to have a scene where we talk about the alien's cortex because we need to establish that it has a brain. I spent 20 minutes wondering when the hell Burnham would figure out what the rest of us already had.
But okay, that happening once is one thing, then we have them deciding to strand a klingon on the wreck of the Federation ship. The federation ship that the Federation have apparently gone back to, taken the telescope off of but just left floating there full of useful parts that the klingon ship they failed to notice (But which is visible out of the ****ing window!) can use. But okay, someone screwed up. Was there anyone who didn't expect his first officer to come back for him? So predictable again.
And then we had the reveal of Phillipa's last will and testament. Burnham is already obviously struggling with using the tardigrade, so let's have the Captain drop in a comment about "Taking good care of those in your care" because the audience can't be allowed to think that simply seeing the creature in obvious pain would be enough to move Burnham.
We know what she is being left the telescope, it's fairly obvious from the Captain's message. But okay, some people might not guess that (or remember that detail). So maybe the slow reveal of the contents of the case is warranted. Maybe it isn't bad writing even though I spent that whole time thinking "We know it's the ****ing telescope, just get on with it!"
And then comes the final insult.
(http://fs2downloads.com/Misc-Pics/YouAreAMoronSoWe'llTellYouWhatThisIs.jpg)
I love how the makers of this Science Fiction show have so little faith that their viewers know what a telescope looks like that they have to have it written down in big ****ing letters.
I really hope the show will get better. I'll give it a fair chance to improve, lots of Sci-fi shows are weak right out of the gate so it's not fair to judge it's future potential on what it's like now. But right now, it's ****.
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So, so, so bad. I honestly can't understand why people are complaining at The Orville for being like Season 2 TNG when this show is well below Voyage levels at the moment.
Because people are treating Orville like the greatest SF show ever despite it being just as hamfisted as TNG was in its worst moments. Because people are apparently willing to overlook Orville's multitude of flaws just because its sets are pastel-coloured, its uniforms brightly colour-coded, and its plots recycled. From my perspective, DSC is on many levels a better show - better set design, better direction, better casting, better writing - the only thing that Orville does better than DSC is tickling nostalgia for Star Trek. DSC is a departure from traditional Trek similar to DS9; except where DS9 altered the Star Trek formula by focussing on exploring relationships instead of new worlds, DSC focuses on the question of how Starfleet can accommodate its dual mandates of being a peaceful exploration service and the Federation's first line of defence. This is a topic that has popped up several times over TNGs and DS9s run, but it was only ever the topic of a few episodes, never a plot for the whole show.
Orville cannot tell this story, it hasn't earned it yet. Star Trek can. And I am happy that they do.
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Because people are treating Orville like the greatest SF show ever despite it being just as hamfisted as TNG was in its worst moments. Because people are apparently willing to overlook Orville's multitude of flaws just because its sets are pastel-coloured, its uniforms brightly colour-coded, and its plots recycled. From my perspective, DSC is on many levels a better show - better set design, better direction, better casting, better writing - the only thing that Orville does better than DSC is tickling nostalgia for Star Trek.
I literally pointed out multiple problems I had with the plot of the show and how they didn't foreshadow what was coming so much as hang a ****ing lampshade over it but the reason I'm not enjoying it must be because it's not Trek enough.
Bull****.
I said earlier that I didn't know why they didn't just make their own OP because this show doesn't fit into the Trek universe, true. But this episode would have failed even in its own original universe for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with Trek. It was badly written and predictable from start to finish. The Orville on the other hand, while not great is at least good. If it's at about the level of Season 2 of TNG, that's a pretty good start for a new show. I like the Orville not cause it's Trekish but cause it works as a sci-fi show. It has flaws, pretty big ones, but it's enjoyable.
So if someone is overlooking flaws, it's not me. It's the person who is saying that there is only one thing they dislike about an episode which had problems as big as the ones Black Wolf and I pointed out. Cause if you think that episode 4 was well written, you're definitely not watching the episode I just watched. I'm actually starting to wonder if CBS and Netflix are actually broadcasting the same show or whether this is some massive social experiment to judge the amount of online piracy going on.
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I literally pointed out multiple problems I had with the plot of the show and how they didn't foreshadow what was coming so much as hang a ****ing lampshade over it but the reason I'm not enjoying it must be because it's not Trek enough.
Bull****.
Isn't that pretty much what you said though? In your second post in this thread, you were saying that you can't see this show fitting into the prime universe on any level, which to me is pretty much the same as saying that this show isn't Trek enough.
I said earlier that I didn't know why they didn't just make their own OP because this show doesn't fit into the Trek universe, true. But this episode would have failed even in its own original universe for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with Trek. It was badly written and predictable from start to finish. The Orville on the other hand, while not great is at least good. If it's at about the level of Season 2 of TNG, that's a pretty good start for a new show. I like the Orville not cause it's Trekish but cause it works as a sci-fi show. It has flaws, pretty big ones, but it's enjoyable.
I'm sorry, I thought I was talking about people, not you. Orville gets a pass on most of its issues because it is designed to be a TNG nostalgia trip, not due to its own merits - And it fails at that, as evidenced by its own third episode.
So if someone is overlooking flaws, it's not me. It's the person who is saying that there is only one thing they dislike about an episode which had problems as big as the ones Black Wolf and I pointed out.
I might not have been clear about this, but let me point this out: I don't care about most of the issues you two have raised. I don't get hung up on things like "why are there spinny bits on the ship" or "how did they get the telescope off Shenzhou" or "why didn't Discovery stay around". These are questions that I either don't need to know the answer to (the first two) or expect the show to address later on (the third one). So yeah: there was only one thing I disliked about that episode, which I pointed out. DSC is good enough for me that I don't switch into hypercriticism mode, as you two are doing.
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I got hung up on the fact I could predict the entire episode from beginning to end, not just little details. Did I make a single comment in my first post on this episode where the complaint was that it wasn't Trek enough or are all my complaints ones that would be the same regardless of the universe it was in?
Or are Netflix / CBS changing your version of my posts too? :p
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I got hung up on the fact I could predict the entire episode from beginning to end, not just little details. Are Netflix / CBS changing your version of my posts too?
That's fair, so could I - but I didn't get hung up on it, because it was a classical Star Trek situation (with a lot of similarities to TOS' Devil in the Dark), and I wanted to see what would happen. For that matter, I can predict most of Orville's episodes too, I just get surprised by how badly they **** up their episode resolutions (Again. Episode 3. Whyyyyyyyy).
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But okay, that happening once is one thing, then we have them deciding to strand a klingon on the wreck of the Federation ship. The federation ship that the Federation have apparently gone back to, taken the telescope off of but just left floating there full of useful parts that the klingon ship they failed to notice (But which is visible out of the ****ing window!) can use. But okay, someone screwed up. Was there anyone who didn't expect his first officer to come back for him? So predictable again.
Which again strikes me as a massive plot hole.
It stretches belief that Voq and Co. could be left stranded for 6 months without being bothered by either the Federation or the Klingons. It doesn't make any sense at all.
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Especially as his first managed to steal a no doubt warp capable ship from somewhere. Are we really supposed to believe it was from the other Klingon ship?
But like I said earlier, my issue is not just that there are plot holes, they are just symptomatic of the bigger problem, the lazy writing that infests this show.
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I'm also raising my eyebrow to the charge that Discovery is "predictable", all the while praising Orville for... what? Not being predictable? You have to be kidding me. I pretty much guessed the whole beats and plot twists in every single Orville episode so far, despite its episodic nature (and thus telling way more stories so far than Discovery).
The episode where the XO is the divorced wife that will earn trust through the episode? Come on.
The episode where they kidnapped never-****-again sweet couple in a zoo? Come on.
The episode where deep mysoginy meets tradition in a courtroom? Come on.
The episode where Big Dumb Object is a Rama-like ship heading towards doom if not for Orville's unwanted help? From a ****ing mile away.
The episode where gorgeous Mary Sue isn't totally a con artist? COME ON.
All Orville episodes so far have been incredibly predictable from the first few minutes in. This cannot be your criteria for "goodness", Karajorma.
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I said The Orville had flaws. The fact that it is predictable is a big one. But Discovery has that flaw on top of it being full of plot holes, having no respect whatsoever for the rest of Trek and having characters (apart from Saru) who are hard to give a damn about. You've criticised it for pretty much all of those things, but when someone else says it suddenly it's a great show?
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As I said, I was bewildered that you would find Discovery's "predictability" the biggest concern you shared here in your entire criticism, all the while praising The Orville. The latter show is miles worse in this aspect than Discovery, which makes it really weird.
Yes, I agree with you, doesn't feel much like Trek, goes against cannnnon, it seems to be awkwardly written and has too many bad spots overall.
I'm not as negativistic as you are, because I can see potential in what they have written so far to build an arc that is quite trekkish and overall interesting. In The Orville all I can see is the same kind of emotional manipulation that makes me watch the dreadful dragonball super to this day, namely, I ****ing miss the old TNG show, and it still has failed to provide anything new that would at least justify the naughty manipulation they are pulling.
In Discovery, I can at least acknowledge that they are making a huge effort (in many ways) to try to create a new thing entirely.
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I concentrated on the predictability mainly because fans of the show like The E want to wave away any criticism by complaining that it's just cause we miss the old Trek. But if you noticed, my problem with the predictability wasn't that I knew what was going to happen but that it was obvious because they feel the need to lampshade everything and then expect there to be drama while you wait for things to unfold. I pointed out three occasions where that happened in a single episode.
If they were doing the same on The Orville you'd have had someone dropping lines about how growing a tree on the ship would be impossible because it would be too big
thereby destroying any surprise. The Orville has problems, lots of them. But on the whole it's still a reasonably good show. What I can't see is why people are complaining about what The Orville is, while ignoring what Discovery is in the hope of what it could be. For all we know The Orville could be planning all kinds of cool new stuff once it's established its bona fides.
I'm not as negativistic as you are, because I can see potential in what they have written so far to build an arc that is quite trekkish and overall interesting.
I'm not denying that. I really do hope they turn this into something good. But I am only going to review the show for what they have actually done, not where I hope the show will go. We could have done the same thing with Voyager four episodes in and it is quite clear that show didn't go where it had the potential to go.
In Discovery, I can at least acknowledge that they are making a huge effort (in many ways) to try to create a new thing entirely.
And you don't think it's emotionally manipulative to make something entirely new and then slap Star Trek branding all over it so that you get higher audience figures? It's not manipulative to stick in a character who is step sister to Spock or deliberately set a show in an era that will allow them to justify doing prequels to TOS episodes?
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I don't know, "people" haven't been complaining about Orville, I know I haven't. I gave it a 6/10, which is basically what I mostly give to Discovery so far as well. But these come from different places. I was expecting nothing from the Orville and it kinda surprised me positively, while I was expecting horrors from Discovery knowing its development hell and all the wrong turns it took in it.
But of course, for some weird reason, the Orville became The One, the show that would Save Us from Corporate Meddling in Our Beloved Star Trek. It's a charming good ol fashioned show that tries to mimic a 30 year old thing, with some slapstick humour on top of it, but that's about it. It's good enough, for what it's worth.
I agree with you those things were manipulative and I can't roll my eyes fast enough at them. I'm just saying, if I am to forgive all these sins on The Orville, I sure as hell am not going to care if they exist on Discovery.
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I'll forgive a lot when it comes to a sci-fi show. But I won't forgive failing to keep me interested. There are so many TV shows out there which people have told me I should watch, if I'm not enjoying a show why should I spend time on it when there are things I would enjoy more? Like I said, I'll give Discovery a chance to interest me for a few weeks more precisely because the list of Sci-fi shows which were good right out of the gate is really, really short but it's pretty close to becoming a show I'll wait until I'm told is good rather than following.
Personally I'd give The Orville a 7/10 while Discovery rates a 5/10 (mainly on the quality of the previous episodes, if they're all like the last one, I'll revise that down). Bear in mind that I watched the first three episodes of Trek before I watched any of The Orville, so it's not even like its influencing my opinion of the show.
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I don't see myself giving a 7 to Orville anytime soon though, it has yet to surprise me in a good way first.
I agree the tree thing was hitchhiker's level of fun, but still. They could build entire stories around hitchhiker's shenanigans I would totally be more interested in that kind of stuff. You know, throw in some really silly outrageous setup, instead of these bland TNG tired concepts.
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Like I said earlier they might be trying to build up some bona fides as a TNG style show before doing stuff that's more out there.
I really hope that is the case actually.
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Me too! Here's to that.
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So now apparently human space navigators are a thing. I guess the Discovery must flow.
Man this show is getting violent. And full of horrors. And distrust. Obvious spy is obvious. And it ends creepy as ****.
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I had no idea their bread was buttered that way up either but it wasn't creepy.
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I think he may be referring to their creepy mirror.
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Obvious spy is obvious.
I know, right? I can only assume Lorca brought him along because he wants to keep an eye on him, not because he actually trusts him.
(That, or Lorca is a lot dumber than I thought.)
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I think he may be referring to their creepy mirror.
And we have a bite.
;)
Who else thinks the klingon captain will be a recurring character? Also was it the first use of the F word in trek ever?
I still don't like the ginger cadet. Very wooden. Obviously she's going to have a new episode where she turns evil and OP.
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Obvious spy is obvious.
I know, right? I can only assume Lorca brought him along because he wants to keep an eye on him, not because he actually trusts him.
(That, or Lorca is a lot dumber than I thought.)
It's Voq
Who else thinks the klingon captain will be a recurring character?
She already is
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omg that would actually give his line "I've already lost one captain" a whole new level of levels. It also explains L'Rell's statement about sacrificing "everything". To me that is canon already. Didn't see it coming though, I feel dumb as ****.
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(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMUBfXEUIAAXn__.jpg)
The banter writing though, is almost Mass Effect Andromeda quality.
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Well, I wanted to watch but I dont have TV. And I went to the website, what is it, cbs? And I can only watch re runs if i am a paying customer. You guys know any alternative trusted websites I can watch the episodes from?
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The only other trusted source is Netflix (only available to non-US persons though).
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Also was it the first use of the F word in trek ever?
Yes. (I looked it up.)
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And now .... a ground hog day episode. How quaint. /sigh.
Dialoge is steadily deterioriating as well.
Mh well ... for a Trek show, it certainly does the "first season always sucks" thing right.
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I actually liked the last episode quite a bit. Trek does the time loop thing a lot, but this was a rather refreshing take on it and Rainn Wilson was pretty damned awesome in it.
Also, either the switch is going to be really bad, or new guy definitely isn't the particular Klingon spy we thought he was, because there is no way in hell that a Klingon fanatic plays a convincing warm human that well. Nope nope nope.
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Also, either the switch is going to be really bad, or new guy definitely isn't the particular Klingon spy we thought he was, because there is no way in hell that a Klingon fanatic plays a convincing warm human that well. Nope nope nope.
(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/351827646851579924/374653734690750465/unknown.png)
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there is no way in hell that a Klingon fanatic plays a convincing warm human that well.
I don't think those writers are thinking that far. I don't think they know what a Klingon is either. /shrugs.
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I was entertained by the episode, Mudd was really good, but the story doesn't hold up. It's by far the worst time loop plot I've seen in Star Trek, apart from Generations. They don't build up the mechanisms through which they can win the scenario in an organic fashion, instead relying too much on the very trope-ish nature of the episode so that we may "fill in the blanks", but there are just too many blanks to fill. The episode goes through the motions very fast though, so you may not ask any hard questions and expose any contradictions or peculiarities.
The episode also ends quite poorly. After killing the crew several times in horrible ways, Mudd's punishment is marrying a lovely rich lady and being told not to disturb the Federation anymore. What the hell. After having this guy on their hands, they treat him with kid's gloves as if he had just made a small speed infraction.
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The episode also ends quite poorly. After killing the crew several times in horrible ways, Mudd's punishment is marrying a lovely rich lady and being told not to disturb the Federation anymore. What the hell. After having this guy on their hands, they treat him with kid's gloves as if he had just made a small speed infraction.
What did he actually do though, in that last run? All he did was a bit of breaking and entering into Discovery (which, granted, should be enough to make Lorca shoot him outright). The only witness to Mudd killing people is Stamets who, shall we say, is not exactly someone whose testimony will stand up in court. We know he killed people. Stamets knows (and Lorca, Saru and Burnham believe him), but other than that?
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I'm not speaking in terms of Starfleet regulations, although he broke a lot of them (and I do think they could prove this in court beyond Stamets' testimony, given Mudd *did* have the temporal device on him, the theoretical possibility, etc.), I'm more speaking in terms of how you end an episode without any moral repercussions whatsoever. They treat him like TNG treated Q. But unlike Q with his horrible powers, this guy is actually just a guy. So why the hell are they treating him like a quasi-god, all too happy to see him go away? From the audience's point of view, there's not even the proper ironic twist that was foretold beforehand about how he wasn't really craving for his wedding, and letting him be married with someone he obviously didn't want to. If that was what was intended in writing, it wasn't well executed, it seems that he'll be fine. It would have been comedic for a horrible woman to show up and demand her wedding, Mudd visibly horrified but left with no options. At least in that sense, the lack of consequences would have been substituted by a joke on how marriages can be just as horrifying as any other punishment. But not even that.
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And his "time bracer" simply evaporates? How come it didn't evaporate when he "robbed the bajoran bank"?
Well now they have the everywhere drive, and an infinite retry device in that dead space fish.
Get ready for the next episode where the crew turn up from the future future Red Dwarf style all fat and power mad.......
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I'm more speaking in terms of how you end an episode without any moral repercussions whatsoever. They treat him like TNG treated Q. But unlike Q with his horrible powers, this guy is actually just a guy. So why the hell are they treating him like a quasi-god
Because he's that recurring character from TOS, so he can not simply die in the prequel or have anything else horrible happen to him that would break continuity AND, more importantly, because the writers can not write for sh**.
That's my theory anyways.
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And his "time bracer" simply evaporates? How come it didn't evaporate when he "robbed the bajoran bank"?
Well now they have the everywhere drive, and an infinite retry device in that dead space fish.
Get ready for the next episode where the crew turn up from the future future Red Dwarf style all fat and power mad.......
Future Lorca gets on swimmingly with the Hitlers....
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And his "time bracer" simply evaporates? How come it didn't evaporate when he "robbed the bajoran bank"?
Wasn't the phlebotinum connected to the bracelett single use?
Essentially as long as he kept going back in time before the half-hour expired it still worked, when he let the half-hour pass the phlebotinum was exhausted so no more time loop, they even chose to have the suicide close to the end of the loop to put more pressure on him to make the more impulsive decision.
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So there just needs to be an episode where they get more wonderflonium err ... phlebotinum and infinite retries is a go. I already dread the season finale now.
Although chances are ... that those writers will just forget about it and do some completely unrelated other stupid thing for the finale. :rolleyes:
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I'm sorry, are we pretending that time travel is suddenly something that is hard to do in Star Trek now
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So there just needs to be an episode where they get more wonderflonium err ... phlebotinum and infinite retries is a go. I already dread the season finale now.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AppliedPhlebotinum
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I'm sorry, are we pretending that time travel is suddenly something that is hard to do in Star Trek now
No and that does annoy me. In TOS they did the good old solar slingshot manoeuvre several times and it worked just fine.
TOS established a lot of crappy things though, like the galactic barrier. I remember watching through one of the seasons and the galactic barrier was used as a plot device so often I literally said "see you next episode!"
I can forgive Discovery messing with canon since canon is something that is accepted or rejected at the discretion of the viewer.
Example:- I enjoyed some of Enterprise, but there's a lot of it that I just willfully ignore and believe never happened, such as the Romulans having cloaking tech in 2152. Warp speeds are another element that writers interpret loosely.
Now all that being said, I don't mind the lack of concrete numbers on these sorts of things, but I'd like some sort of continuity. NX-01 is slower than Discovery is slower than Enteprise is slower than Enterprise-D etc.
Star Trek as a universe has become so large that it suffers from the Star Wars syndrome of writers feeling as if they have to pad out every bit of it and completely failing to create something coherent as a result. It wasn't so bad until Enterprise came along and Discovery is just compounding the problem.
I think the fans themselves are much better equipped to match the different bits of Star Trek timelines in a way that makes sense, Axanar being a good example.
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Regarding time travel, I have re-watched TNG's "Cause and Effect", and despite all its inherent 90s flaws, it's so goddamn superior to Discovery's rendition of it. It slowly builds up the case, and doesn't tell you these things are on repeat, it shows you. And it works like a crescendo, despite its inherent periodic structure. The solution is set up right at the beggining, not thrown at the end like a deus ex machina.
Also, I've been listening to some things, and I found out this nice character out there called Paul Stamets, specialist on fungus and hypothesizer of this stuff working like a network in the entirety of our planet. So that's our conceptual reference for Discovery, but I guess it's going nowhere? I don't seem to be able to trust the writers they'll be able to write anything interesting about this further on in the second part of the season (we're already at the "fall finale", whatever the **** that is and we barely know the crew, wow!)
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I think the fans themselves are much better equipped to match the different bits of Star Trek timelines in a way that makes sense, Axanar being a good example.
Too bad that Axanar seems to be in the process of slow unscheduled disassembly. A lot of the crew that made Prelude to Axanar has left, and none of the high-profile actors from that are actually signed to appear in front of a camera for it anytime soon. Yeah, Prelude to Axanar was awesome - but whether the final product will live up to it is questionable.
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I thought it was dead?
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I think the fans themselves are much better equipped to match the different bits of Star Trek timelines in a way that makes sense, Axanar being a good example.
Too bad that Axanar seems to be in the process of slow unscheduled disassembly. A lot of the crew that made Prelude to Axanar has left, and none of the high-profile actors from that are actually signed to appear in front of a camera for it anytime soon. Yeah, Prelude to Axanar was awesome - but whether the final product will live up to it is questionable.
To be fair though, going from a planned 90 minute film to two 15 minute ones must have had a negative impact on morale. The lawsuit certainly did its damage.
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It almost felt as if Discovery never really belonged to the non mirror universe. I'm having the sense that this crew fits superbly in this universe.
Nothing like ****ing your hot crush after killing the second of command and while your captain is suffering torture like crazy. Hell yeah Burnham, ride that sweet pleasure and hail the empire, it sure suits you and your series like 100%.
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Holy **** episode 11 actually delivered what 10 set up really really well. I'm almost doubting myself here. I actually enjoyed the hell out of this ****. And boy that last reveal actually got to me.
Kudos, Star Trek! You did well.
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Yeah, while I was definitely a fan of the show before, this Mirror Universe arc they're doing right now is just something else. There's still some stiltedness in there (As much as I like Soneqa Martin-Green, her performance while talking to Mirror Sarek and Mirror Voq was a bit too enthusiastic and idealistic, if that makes sense), but the way they're paying off a lot of things they've set up so far makes for really fun watching.
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Oooh is the 2nd mirror universe episode out?
Will have to watch how that agony booth thing turned out.
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[Shameless double post]
:pimp:
Long live the Terran Empire!
Death to zods etc.
I like this new story arc.
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So if this does actually turn into Star Trek: "Multiverse adventures ala Rick & Morty" I'd be quite delighted.
(That is until they mess it up again! :P)
Aside from that: Long live the Terran Empire!!!! (Frankly, if they stay in the Mirror Universe for the rest of the show that would be even more awesome LOL.)
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Yup, thoroughly enjoying this foray into the Mirror Universe. Past Trek's have treated MU episodes as somewhat farcical, but the fact that Discovery is playing this straight (and taking an arc approach to the series in general, rather than past Trek's heavy emphasis on standalones) has made it very, very interesting. I particularly enjoyed the little twist at the end of the last one; that was well-played.
Also, Saru continues to be more and more awesome, and Doug Jones deserves an even larger role than the one he has already.
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Everyone's suggesting captain Lorca is originally from the mirror universe. There's some problems with this line of thought because it's just too convenient plot-wise for this to be the case - the fact they got into the mirror universe cannot be blamed on Lorca without destroying the entire plot about the spores so far, and so the coincidence is just too much to bear - but I guess it makes sense tonally speaking.
I hope they don't make that move.
There are some very interesting questions going forward, like for instance, was MU Discovery also toying with the spores? What is dark Stamets' intentions? What did the emperor expect from Discovery?
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I'm rather wondering if the two Discovery's switched places.
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I'm rather wondering if the two Discovery's switched places.
I'm wondering if the Universe they started out in even is the universe we know from TOS/TNG or something entirely different. ;-)
Also that last scene ... I bet it's not just two of them in that place, if they go full multiverse ... this is gonna get interesting.
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This is the good ****. Yes, the pilot episodes does have the seemingly unavoidable ten minutes of expospeak. But once we're past that (and once you get past the fact that this show avoids translation convention (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslationConvention)), this is probably the best Star Trek ever since the high days of TNG and DS9.
Given that you and I have a completely opposite opinion on movies/series so far, and from what I've seen of discovery so far looks like s****.... yeah, I have no high hopes.
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This is the good ****. Yes, the pilot episodes does have the seemingly unavoidable ten minutes of expospeak. But once we're past that (and once you get past the fact that this show avoids translation convention (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslationConvention)), this is probably the best Star Trek ever since the high days of TNG and DS9.
Given that you and I have a completely opposite opinion on movies/series so far, and from what I've seen of discovery so far looks like s****.... yeah, I have no high hopes.
Did you just drop in to **** on the thread, or did you have something constructive to add? If the former, cut it out. If the latter, anytime now would be good.
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Everyone's suggesting captain Lorca is originally from the mirror universe. There's some problems with this line of thought because it's just too convenient plot-wise for this to be the case - the fact they got into the mirror universe cannot be blamed on Lorca without destroying the entire plot about the spores so far, and so the coincidence is just too much to bear - but I guess it makes sense tonally speaking.
Ok, so they went there. Now they have to explain how on earth he pulled it off, because it just seems incredibly ridiculous plot-wise. There are so many moments that do not fit into this arc, that I'm having trouble fitting it together. OTOH, there are others who do now, like for instance him keeping the blaster near himself while he made love to Georgiou.
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I'm not entirely sure that the Lorca confirmation (we can't really call it a reveal, can we) destroys the entire spore plot.
And yeah, I'm not sure why they felt the need to make light sensitivity a mirror universe trait. Feels like one bridge too far to me, honestly.
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I finally got to sit down and binge the whole series so far...I caught the first two episodes when they came out, got a very "meh" feel from it. After the RL stuff and the holiday season are over I finally got around to picking it up again and, I have to say I'm genuinely entertained. I kinda like the overall storyline (the ongoing war that they're not always hip-deep in), and I honestly liked T'kuvma--I was sorry to see him killed off so early. I thought the idea of a potential living Klingon messiah would've been interesting to explore...even if his ultimate fate was sealed. (It almost seemed like they were setting him up to explore a "Klingon Warrior Religion.")
I'm not going to spoil anything here from the most recent few episodes, but I did not see the plot twists coming (though one of them was almost obvious in hindsight).
Couple of thoughts and comments on the series in general:
1) The "overall look" of everything...it's certainly different than what should be there, and not all of it good or bad...I'm wondering why there are absolutely zero gold, red, and blue shirts so far...
2) Technology seems more updated than fifty years ago, that's fine. Technology evolves and our ideas of what it'll be like in two hundred years changes with that.
3) Series overall does seem more action-oriented than almost any Trek we've seen before, with the exception of later DS9 and some chunks of ENT. Possibly thats an effort to use exciting action to draw in a larger viewer base early? Maybe they'll be trying to work out some more....cerebral stuff once this whole first season is wrapped?
But I do have one serious gripe that I just can't let go of: Does EVERY damn piece of Starfleet's hardware TALK!?
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#CaptainSaru4life
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But I do have one serious gripe that I just can't let go of: Does EVERY damn piece of Starfleet's hardware TALK!?
Yes and that is because the audience got more stupid over the years. Quite obvious now, right? :lol:
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Captain Saru was awesome. For a moment, I saw Star Trek as I knew it, and it does give the whole first arc more tonal sense, this stuff with Lorca. They were all just in one really bad episode nightmare trip. At least I'm choosing to see it that way.
And I like how they set up stuff for the next episodes. I do wonder where is original Lorca though. Dead? I'm thinking no, he's too good an actor to be left out.
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Captain Saru was awesome. For a moment, I saw Star Trek as I knew it, and it does give the whole first arc more tonal sense, this stuff with Lorca. They were all just in one really bad episode nightmare trip. At least I'm choosing to see it that way.
And I like how they set up stuff for the next episodes. I do wonder where is original Lorca though. Dead? I'm thinking no, he's too good an actor to be left out.
I can see it already ......... Lorca dies tragically horribly senselessly and... tada other universe Lorca appears.
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Good Lorca, as in a benign and peaceful Lorca will not be a good Lorca to watch though.
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Good Lorca, as in a benign and peaceful Lorca will not be a good Lorca to watch though.
Maybe we'll get lucky and good Lorca will sacrifize himself for bad Lorca then or something? /shrugs
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I got the feeling that mirror-Lorca wasn't all that different from normal-Lorca, given the interactions between him and his crew, and Starfleet's admirals. Especially admiral whatshername. Aside from keeping his ulterior motives to himself, I mean.
Besides, clearly normal-universe Lorca was captured by the Klingons months ago and has been kept in prison all this time. Now, I'd swear I've seen that before somewhere...
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Did you just drop in to **** on the thread, or did you have something constructive to add? If the former, cut it out. If the latter, anytime now would be good.
No dissent allowed.
Forgive me for not sucking the throbbing shaft of this series.
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You can say you don't like it, but you have to say why. In case you haven't noticed all my comments have been pretty negative. It is possible that the show improved after I stopped watching it around episode five but I ****ing hated the show before that. What I didn't do was a drive-by posting where I simply said it was bad. I said why it was bad and the exact problems I had with it. You didn't do that. If you're not capable of doing it, stay out of the thread.
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Did you just drop in to **** on the thread, or did you have something constructive to add? If the former, cut it out. If the latter, anytime now would be good.
No dissent allowed.
Dissent is fine (and welcome). You didn't give dissent, you dropped a drive-by ****post that didn't contribute to the discussion. If you'd like to continue doing that, we can give you the opportunity to take a little break and think about how you might better go about contributing to a discussion, from whatever angle you so choose.
You might want to read this again: (https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=87037.0)
In summary: before hitting that post key, ask yourself "Is this post worth posting? Does it actually add anything significant to the discussion? Is it something the other people discussing this issue will want to read? Is it an attempt to explain your point of view or just an attempt to show why you're right? Will it antagonize somebody else simply because I'm annoyed?" If your answers aren't going to make this a more enjoyable place to visit for everyone, perhaps you should edit that post one more time.
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Back on the subject of the show:
-Making light sensitivity a mirror-universe trait was silly.
-Hooray, Captain Saru is awesome.
-Lorca had a bit of a personality change in the last episode, and it was a bit jarring at first. Mirror-Lorca obviously picked up some positive qualities from his time in Prime, but the transition back to evil self happened a little too quickly to be believable without undermining some of his genuinely good moments earlier in the series. I thought it could have been handled better.
-Sad to see Lorca go.
-WTF are they going to do with Emperor Georgiou.
I did enjoy the lines leading up to Mirror-Stamos' demise, though the fact that the same didn't happen immediately with the Emperor is a bit of a hole. I'm also very curious to see where they go from here.
All in all, I'm enjoying a Star Trek show with a defined, continuous arc. Other Sci-fi has done it really well in the past, and it adds to the ongoing sense of tension. Bit of a refreshing change from the flavour of the week style of previous Treks, even if the execution has been a little spotty in places.
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-Lorca had a bit of a personality change in the last episode, and it was a bit jarring at first. Mirror-Lorca obviously picked up some positive qualities from his time in Prime, but the transition back to evil self happened a little too quickly to be believable without undermining some of his genuinely good moments earlier in the series. I thought it could have been handled better.
-Sad to see Lorca go.
It would have been infinitely more interesting if Lorca's plan had been to actually reform the Empire to a more Federation-like entity. Making him into a standard backstabby terran feels like a step back from the genuinely interesting character the show presented previously.
That said, I am pretty damn certain that that wasn't the last we saw of Jason Isaacs on this show.
-WTF are they going to do with Emperor Georgiou.
The 1x14 preview seems to hint that she's going to play some role in helping Starfleet defeat the klingons.
Not entirely sure why Starfleet thinks giving a genocidal fascist any sort of authority or listening to their advice is a good idea, but we'll see how it actually shakes out
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Lorca was acting the whole time. Compared to planning an insurrection from beside the emperor playing nice guy in federation space must have been a piece of cake. He was a genuine asshole the whole time but just played nice. Evil Lorca is true Lorca.
Hail the terrain empire.
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Okay, I really, really tried to watch the show some more to see if it does get as good as you guys seem to believe. Lethe was boring and a bit predictable but I could stand it. I'm currently watching the Harry "The Terminator" Mudd episode where they ripped off the time loop from an earlier episode of TNG and I don't I can go on watching this drivel. I've actually had to stop and walk away twice cause I couldn't watch any more without taking a break. Did you guys actually think this episode was any good?
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If your answers aren't going to make this a more enjoyable place to visit for everyone, perhaps you should edit that post one more time.
[/quote]
Please everyone. Sounds easy. I'll get right on it.
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:rolleyes: :nono:
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Trashman's post has been reported so please leave it to the moderators from now on.
I'd like an answer for my question though. I've not been reading this thread very closely because it's full of spoilers for episodes I still haven't seen so if you have answered earlier I haven't read it. When does this show actually get good?
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I started out very apprehensive too, there's some nonsense about a planet being used to amplify a signal that affects kelp people, I don't remember when I started really liking it but it got under my skin and now I do....It might change once we see the next episode though.
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Not the latest episode, the show in general. I'm seven episodes in and I had to stop watching cause it was quite literally the worst sci-fi I've watched since the alien in War of the Worlds who shot lasers out of her hands by dabbing. I feel like I'm watching a show written by a pre-TNG Data who has never interacted with humans and has no idea how they relate to each other.
Stamets: We're all going to die. It starts with the space whale!
on the bridge
It's a space whale!
Captain: I don't give a **** about space whales
Burnham: Let me take charge, we'll go down to the shuttle deck and look at the space whale. Let's not tell the captain about the amazingly large space whale related coincidence that just happened to us nor speak to the guy who warned us about our imminent deaths being related to a space whale. There's no way he could have any more relevant information! We'll just be slightly more careful about beaming the space whale aboard our ship than normal.
Ash: I have a gun. I agree with your plan. We'll be fine!
Is this really the show when it's good? I'm asking seriously. If this is a good episode, I don't need to watch any more. But if it's bad, I can probably suffer through another few episodes if it does actually get good.
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The show gets progressively better. The mirror universe arc is fine, imho, the two episodes that Dekker alluded to just before it are fine, I guess.
If you're not into it, I don't think you'll miss much though. It's the same characters, so if you learned to just don't care about them, there's very little to get from the newer ones.
I'm way more hyped for the next season of Expanse, and I've yet to learn more about Future Man to see if it's anything good, and I've yet to get into Stranger Things, but somehow I never find myself psyched to do so.
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Well bearing in mind that time spent watching those two episodes was time I didn't spend starting The Expanse (I literally had to decide between the two), it looks like I definitely made the wrong decision.
EDIT: Since there was only about 15 minutes left I did watch the ending. Gotta love how crew decide that they can release a known conman and possible Klingon spy who has detailed knowledge of how their top secret drive works. Yeah, I'm done. If people who are saying the later episodes are really good think this one is worth watching, then I simply can't trust their judgement on the matter.
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I did not say that episode was good. I said the show gets better, and while I do share your facepalminess towards that particular episode and the way they just trust that guy, there's good reason for this. You see, he cannot be a klingon spy because there are starfleet records of this guy actually existing and being a starfleet officer.
Moreover, yes, you made a terrible mistake in not watching the Expanse. It's an amazing show, and the kind of which only gets better and better. Personally, I loved especially season 2. It's the best sci fi **** since BattleStar Galactica, as far as I'm concerned.
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I did not say that episode was good. I said the show gets better, and while I do share your facepalminess towards that particular episode and the way they just trust that guy, there's good reason for this. You see, he cannot be a klingon spy because there are starfleet records of this guy actually existing and being a starfleet officer.
Moreover, yes, you made a terrible mistake in not watching the Expanse. It's an amazing show, and the kind of which only gets better and better. Personally, I loved especially season 2. It's the best sci fi **** since BattleStar Galactica, as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, the timeloop episode was among the weakest, if not the weakest, of the series so far. It does improve dramatically.
And my question for you about The Expanse: have you read the books? I keep hearing amazing things about the show, but I don't know if I want to go through the effort of tracking it down if it mangles the books (which I love). Reading book 7 right now, in fact.
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No I haven't but I know The_E has done both things. IIRC, he said they *don't* mangle the books, but better ask him. Regardless, I would doubt it does.
e: Looked back and this was my take on the timeloop episode, so that Karajorma won't say I approved that episode ;)
I was entertained by the episode, Mudd was really good, but the story doesn't hold up. It's by far the worst time loop plot I've seen in Star Trek, apart from Generations. They don't build up the mechanisms through which they can win the scenario in an organic fashion, instead relying too much on the very trope-ish nature of the episode so that we may "fill in the blanks", but there are just too many blanks to fill. The episode goes through the motions very fast though, so you may not ask any hard questions and expose any contradictions or peculiarities.
The episode also ends quite poorly. After killing the crew several times in horrible ways, Mudd's punishment is marrying a lovely rich lady and being told not to disturb the Federation anymore. What the hell. After having this guy on their hands, they treat him with kid's gloves as if he had just made a small speed infraction.
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I didn't say you specifically Luis, but I vaguely remember other people thought it was good when skimming.
As for The Expanse, I had planned to watch it eventually but I had the choice between starting a show already two seasons in or finishing up Trek which everyone on here keeps insisting is good and would only require watching 6-7 episodes to be current. Yeah, wrong choice. So now I'm not going to bother with Trek until I've watched The Expanse. Blame yourselves for leading me to a poor decision. :p
You see, he cannot be a klingon spy because there are starfleet records of this guy actually existing and being a starfleet officer.
You can be a Klingon spy without being an actual Klingon. He was last seen in a Klingon prison and only gives the vaguest explanation how he got out (which of course could be a complete pack of lies). The possibility that he was released to spy for the Klingons surely should be something they would worry about even if he didn't possess top secret information! The fact he keeps going on about selling information to the Klingons should also be another worry! :rolleyes:
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I didn't say you specifically Luis, but I vaguely remember other people thought it was good when skimming.
As for The Expanse, I had planned to watch it eventually but I had the choice between starting a show already two seasons in or finishing up Trek which everyone on here keeps insisting is good and would only require watching 6-7 episodes to be current. Yeah, wrong choice. So now I'm not going to bother with Trek until I've watched The Expanse. Blame yourselves for leading me to a poor decision. :p
You see, he cannot be a klingon spy because there are starfleet records of this guy actually existing and being a starfleet officer.
You can be a Klingon spy without being an actual Klingon. He was last seen in a Klingon prison and only gives the vaguest explanation how he got out (which of course could be a complete pack of lies). The possibility that he was released to spy for the Klingons surely should be something they would worry about even if he didn't possess top secret information!
I think that's where the grafted personality comes in.
Add also that Lorca seems to think counseling is a hippie commie thing so probably didn't care about any traumas that might be treated with extensive psychiatric visits.
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I'm still enjoying the show quite a bit, but I'm still confused as to what the hell people were expecting out of it. It's Star Trek, a franchise that (mostly) collapsed under its own weight & self importance ages ago, what we had left were a few wonderful gems among a sea of either bland or dreadful sci-fi, with little respect for its own continuity most of the time.
I expected to find either the self-righteous smug moral certainty you could find in the likes of TNG, Voy or ENT, or just the general bland recycled science fiction plots that Trek had been serving for decades. Someone earlier said something to the effect of "were expectations really that low ?", my answer to that is yes.
What we got is far from perfect, and can get downright facepalming at times, and in places it tries to overcompensate for Trek's own history, but I don't find it particularly infuriating like many people do. And it's hell of a lot better than what I was expecting. Does that mean it's good ? No, but I don't think it's dreadful either. Right now, I'm classifying it as "average with shiny effects", which is enough to keep me watching for now.
As for The Expanse, I had planned to watch it eventually but I had the choice between starting a show already two seasons in or finishing up Trek
Well, I'm sure if you'd asked around which one was better worth your time we would have told you which one to go for ^^. This is the kind of thing that happens when people remember that yeah, science fiction books are still a thing, and are where most of the really good ideas came from, originally.
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Expanse has better plot but worse effects. It's like babylon 5 :yes:
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Expanse has better plot but worse effects. It's like babylon 5 :yes:
The Books are still much better, but plot loses steam later on after book 3 or 4 imho.
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Expanse has better plot but worse effects. It's like babylon 5 :yes:
The Books are still much better, but plot loses steam later on after book 3 or 4 imho.
You deserve to lose magnetic containment for that, how can you say that! I'll concede that book 4 was not the best of the series, but 3, 5, and 6 were all great. So far, 7 is off to a rollicking start too. 3 tied up the arc from 1 and 2 quite neatly and set the stage for the next trilogy. 4 was weaker as it removed the plot from much of what was going on in Sol, but 5 and 6 had genuine edge-of-the-seat moments when reading them. I should clarify, as I didn't start reading the series until a few years ago, I read books 1 through 5 back-to-back, book 6 released two months later, and then I've been stuck waiting for 7 with the rest of you.
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Trashman's post has been reported so please leave it to the moderators from now on.
For those wondering, none of the moderation staff who commented on the report thought the post was appropriate and Trashman is now banned from commenting for 12 days.
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Expanse has better plot but worse effects. It's like babylon 5 :yes:
The Books are still much better, but plot loses steam later on after book 3 or 4 imho.
You deserve to lose magnetic containment for that, how can you say that! I'll concede that book 4 was not the best of the series, but 3, 5, and 6 were all great. So far, 7 is off to a rollicking start too. 3 tied up the arc from 1 and 2 quite neatly and set the stage for the next trilogy. 4 was weaker as it removed the plot from much of what was going on in Sol, but 5 and 6 had genuine edge-of-the-seat moments when reading them. I should clarify, as I didn't start reading the series until a few years ago, I read books 1 through 5 back-to-back, book 6 released two months later, and then I've been stuck waiting for 7 with the rest of you.
Without going into spoiler territory too much ... while I found the later books quite enjoyable, I was a tad disappointed how the "big story arc" took so much of a backseat in favor of internal solar faction squabbling and family issues. Still enjoyable for sure, but compared to the furious start of book 1&2 also just a tad disapponting. Again ... it's not that they are bad, ... I just wish they had been a bit ... more? Haven't read book 7 yet, so can't say anything about that.
As far as other good sci fi ... anyone read the Three Body Problem / Rememberance of Earth's past trilogy yet? If not get right on it. Less space adventure, more mindblowing future history of humankind stuff with some truly mindbending twists. :-) (And I've seen it mentioned that it was being considered for the big screen as well ... but I doubt anything good will come of that considering just how complex the source material is.)
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quite literally the worst sci-fi I've watched since the alien in War of the Worlds who shot lasers out of her hands by dabbing.
Slightly off topic but just for those of you who were spared this televisual treat.....
(http://fs2downloads.com/Misc-Pics/WotW-Alien.gif)
The next season would supposedly have had all three remaining Synths. Y, C (pictured) and A. The second synth M was tragically destroyed the first time she attempted a test fire.
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I have to watch that film now, if nothing else I need to know why they gave guns to firefighters and why they're fighting dab-laser lady.
The 1x14 preview seems to hint that she's going to play some role in helping Starfleet defeat the klingons.
Not entirely sure why Starfleet thinks giving a genocidal fascist any sort of authority or listening to their advice is a good idea, but we'll see how it actually shakes out
It could be quite entertaining actually. As someone who had a strong initial dislike for Discovery, I have to say I really enjoyed the mirror verse romp. Making everyone behave as evil two-faced ****heads is the perfect mirror verse treatment and is something that DS9 got very wrong.
As for the Emperor herself - the idea of an evil alien-slaver human supremacist playing some sort of role in the Prime verse seems like it could be a lot of fun if nothing else. If the writers play their cards right we might even see some interesting moral dilemmas, particularly about just how far the Feds are willing to go in order to protect themselves and win the war.
Too often in Trek the crew are presented with a moral dilemma that has a clear 2 way choice - save this species or violate the prime directive, that sort of thing, only for them to pick a magic 3rd option that wraps everything up without rustling any feathers. Voyager was particularly bad for this.
There's an episode of ENT where they're stuck without warp drive and need to make an important rendezvous. Without warp drive, they won't make it and if they don't then mission failed, Earth gets Death Star treatment. After some friendly aliens pass by and refuse to trade them the parts they need they decide to resort to piracy and simply take the parts. They only do so after exhausting every other option, but it's the first time we're given a glimpse of the good guys doing some really shady **** for the greater good.
Maybe we'll see something similar? The impact will be far more profound with Captain Saru in charge as well.
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I have to watch that film now, if nothing else I need to know why they gave guns to firefighters and why they're fighting dab-laser lady.
It was the last episode of Season 1 of the show. The firefighters were all taken over by the martians from the 1953 film. The show is kind of a benchmark for bad sci-fi. Not just in production values but also in truly mystifying ideas such as the fact that everyone acts with complete incredulity at the idea that aliens might exist despite them invading and nearly destroying the Earth 35 years earlier.
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Maybe we'll see something similar? The impact will be far more profound with Captain Saru in charge as well.
Well ... after last episode, so much for Saru being in charge.
He'll have to watch not to become lunch now I guess :lol:
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This show managed to go from really bad to good to really good to *whaaaam* JUMP THE SHARK QUICK! Jesus Christ, what a rollercoaster. What a terrible last minute decision that was. I want that admiral ****ing fired from her office.
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There's a tradition within Star Trek to have the admiralty make decisions that anyone can see are stupid.
I was hoping we'd be beyond that, but alas....
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Well, at least whenever they did that, they'd do one of two things: either they'd give you the looks of "life's hard, this is hard on you, tough it out like good soldiers do", or they'd characterize the authority figure as an asshole from the get go, so you'd know that everyone knows theirs is a terrible idea.
(A good exception to that is, of course, Captain Jellico from TNG that substitutes Picard and despite his assholishness, he's pretty damn awesome)
Here, after many episodes establishing that Admiral Cornwell is a smart, empathetic and overall great strategist, she just blunders away and gives the Discovery's chair to a ****ing Terran emperor.
Has she thought this through? Has anyone? Am I being obtuse in thinking that this new character is completely going to mismanage a crew she doesn't understand, issue orders that will get the crew confused and conflicted, innefective and mutiny-ish? She has to have this giant trump card in her (and only her) hands to have this job secured like that. Will she even think she can secure her position with force like she's so used to (and how that will totally not work here)?
What. The. ****.
They could have brought this show to a good finale. Instead, they throw a curveball like this, and I just can't trust their ability to land it.
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Well, there is a theory going around that Cornwell will become this TOS character (http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Lethe). Nothing seen so far seems to dispute that.
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Okay, so now that the show's first season is done, here's my thoughts on it's overall arc.
1. Having a primary protagonist was not a wrong idea, but the execution was lackluster
As a first among ST shows, Discovery had, in Burnham, a clear viewpoint character and protagonist. Unfortunately, Burnham was the least interesting character in the ensemble; Her overall arc is short and not that interesting by itself, and Sonequa Martin-Green unfortunately does not have the charisma or acting chops required to be the lead actor in a show like this.
It also didn't help that her writing in particular had a very first-draft feel to it; her big dramatic speeches all seemed very unpolished.
Discovery was at its best when it showed the crew solving problems together, and that's an aspect that should be brought back in future installments.
2. The show is good at setting things up, but not at paying things off
The treatment of Lorca is emblematic of this. All through the first season, the mystery of who Lorca is and what he's going to do was engaging and interesting, but what they ended up doing with him was disappointing. Crucially, it wouldn't have taken much to keep him interesting; I would've bought him entirely as a mirror universe reformer who brings Discovery across to inject Federation morals into the mirror universe, who grabs Burnham because he sees in her an amalgamation of pragmatism and idealism that the mirror universe needs. But no, once he was in the mirror universe, all nuance disappeared and he became just another eeeeevvvviiiiiil terran.
Again, the fact that this could've been pulled off with minimal changes to the plot, just a few dialogue lines here or there, makes it especially grating.
Similar things can be said about the klingon war arc: It is resolved far too quickly, and while I applaud the fact that no time travel reset button was pressed, the resolution didn't feel good.
3. Saru is the best thing
No matter who they put in the chair next, Saru is Discovery's true Captain.
4. Tilly is also the best
I got a thing for characters who are, on a fundamental level, very stoked about being in space, leave me alone.
5. This is still, by far, the best opening season of an ST show since TOS
All the above quibbles and issues aside, on a per-episode level, this was the best start of an ST show. None of the episodes were as abysmal as things like "Farpoint Station" or "Naked Now" or "Heroes and Demons" or "Move along Home" or "Terra Nova", and while they also didn't reach the heights of something like "Duet", overall, it was very good.
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That last shot of the finale has the innings of the all too annoying "Star Wars" syndrome, as I'll call it henceforth: "Every goddamned prequel will end exactly where the original begins". Except it's not that, it's the "preview" of season 2, which prompts a lot of questions, namely "how the **** are they going to tie this up".
Burnham speech was atrociously delivered. Lacked heart. A shame. The entire finale was ridiculous to the extreme. The plot was so over the top, made no ****ing sense. TNG political plots were incredibly nuanced and believable compared to this, and that is saying something.
I'll give the season a 6/10, basically managing to have the same score I first gave it. The show may have avoided "Naked Nows", but because it runs in a serialized fashion, it suffered from systemic problems episode to episode, compounding them with each other and somewhat lazy writing here and there. There were rarely any impressive moments, from which all I can remember as an exception was the moment when Emperor Georgio showed up on screen. That was bonkers good. The rest? Forgettable.
I guess it's left for season 2 to learn why the hell no one has ever reproduced this Spore Drive. They never got to tell us. Perhaps Pike ****ed it up. Who knows. I guess we'll see.
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Spoilers ahead.
As 1st Seasons of Trek go, this was good. I have to agree with The E; there's some significant stumbling blocks throughout the whole season but it's a strong start. Character development seemed almost an afterthought for the most part, though there are a couple of exceptions. The season arc ("The War storyline") started off strong but like so many epic Trek stories before, it kinda petered out towards the end, and actually got sidetracked by a much more entertaining plotline. I will miss Jason Isaacs, he's a terrific actor and I loved seeing him do an American accent again. I expect we'll see Michelle Yeoh again sometime, say in a year or two. (What does a deposed Emperor do for a living?)
I thought the characters themselves were great, though several of them deserve to be fleshed out a more. (Like Detmer, for instance. We don't know anything about her, and she's been in every episode so far.) The special effects were mostly top notch, though that's almost to be expected in this day and age. I can offhand think of only one real blemish there, is when Saru was running through the forest.
Looking back, my only real issue with the whole season was the level of "Gimmicky" story ideas. Like the character of Mudd, or the Mirror Universe...these things are great in small doses and as long they're not overused it's not a bad thing. Rainn Wilson's Harry Mudd doesn't feel like the Harry Mudd I remember. I always thought of Mudd as a con man and swindler, someone just short of a straight up pirate--but not a potential serial murderer. The Mirror universe is a fine concept, but I think it suffers from DS9 using it as a serial dramedy.
Looking forward: Please please please don't spend more than the opening episode or two dealing with Pike and the Enterprise. I don't mind them interacting--that's all well and fine and good, but please don't let them overdo it. (On a side note, a certain half-Vulcan science officer should be onboard. I rather doubt they can resist doing it, but just how exactly will they go about it, I wonder.)
I also wonder if they'll expand out with Saru and Tilly and Stamets becoming more than "supporting characters." They've each had some focus time, and with Burnham now back in good graces, her character arc complete more or less, might they opt for a more traditional Trek multi-character viewpoint? On a related note, I wonder how much behind-the-scenes stuff influenced how the episodes eventually ended up, and how the fates of some characters were wrapped up.
Finally, I geek out a bit when I see the easter eggs and stuff, and I don't mind enjoying little wink/nod that goes along with them. Like the fried Ceti Eels in the finale, or names of places and people that show up from time to time. But I think my favorite one of all so far was Clint Howard as the smoking Orion.
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Speaking of the Enterprise though: Just how ****ing pretty was that ship there?
Like, the Constitution Refit was always top-tier for prettiness, but this amalgamation of TOS and movie elements (taking the pylons from the Refit, nacelles very close to TOS but with added lighting) is just soooo good.
(https://i.imgur.com/1A3J8Ji.jpg)
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Ooooooh that is so pretty. Now I need to figure out how to port those two ships into my copy of Starfleet Command...
I always thought the nacelle pylons in TOS were way too flimsy looking anyway.
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I smiled when the old girl showed up and the retcon manages to emulate the original while being pretty too.
ALERT - SPOILERS INCOMING
The finale was particularly disappointing I feel. Emperor Georgiou wound up being no more than a means to an end, an end that is quite possibly the most un-Starfleet and un-Federation thing I've seen so far.
Starfleet does not condone genocide, let alone attempt it. Ever. Starfleet does not put civilians in harm's way or even potentially in harm's way, to paraphrase Sisko. Starfleet would never hand over command of one of its best starships to a known slaver mass-murderer.
Burnham's speech at the end felt particularly contrived. The admiralty that attempted genocide are standing right there for ****s sake. And Sarek was in on it! Wtf?!
I mentioned in a previous post something about the Feds possibly having to do something morally ambiguous like Archer's piracy for the warp coil, but Jesus, Thor and Allah I didn't expect attempted genocide.
The top-level of Starfleet Command should all be in prison, Sarek too. Burnham was imprisoned for much less.
On a more nitpicky note - a lot of the cast deliver their lines too fast, Sonequa Martin-Green in particular.
The scene where Georgiou is confronted by Burnham had so much build-up and tension, only for it to completely deflate like a wet fart. It felt like a metaphor for the show in general.
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That Enterprise is indeed quite beautiful, a kind of a mesh between the original one and the TMP one, which is my favorite of them all - I remember drawing it as a kid endless times.
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Starfleet does not condone genocide, let alone attempt it. Ever.
Well, not officially, anyway... but they were quite happy to stand back and let Section 31 attempt to use a bioweapon against the Founders, weren't they?
Starfleet does not put civilians in harm's way or even potentially in harm's way, to paraphrase Sisko.
Speaking of Sisko, remember that time he intentionally put civilians in harm's way (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGcAbI-4_io)?
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Starfleet does not condone genocide, let alone attempt it. Ever.
Well, not officially, anyway... but they were quite happy to stand back and let Section 31 attempt to use a bioweapon against the Founders, weren't they?
Starfleet does not put civilians in harm's way or even potentially in harm's way, to paraphrase Sisko.
Speaking of Sisko, remember that time he intentionally put civilians in harm's way (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGcAbI-4_io)?
Both good points, but there's a huge difference between the top brass explicitly ordering genocide and those two examples. You could argue that Starfleet had no idea what Section 31 was up to, although it's broadly hinted that they did. And Sisko could've been bluffing, maybe, perhaps?
The attempt in Discovery just doesn't have any wiggle room, they gave a doomsday device to a slaver-murderer and told her to go genocide some Klingons. Bringing Sarek in on it further served to butcher his character.
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Both good points, but there's a huge difference between the top brass explicitly ordering genocide and those two examples. You could argue that Starfleet had no idea what Section 31 was up to, although it's broadly hinted that they did. And Sisko could've been bluffing, maybe, perhaps?
You're wrong. Here's TNG Descent Part 1 character Admiral Nechayev:
NECHAYEV: As I understand, it you found a single Borg at a crash site ...and eventually found a way to send it back to the Borg with a programme that would have destroyed the entire collective once and for all... Now I want to make it clear that if you have a similar opportunity in the future, an opportunity to destroy the Borg, you are under orders to take advantage of it.
This is the top brass of federation literally ordering Picard to commit a full sweeping genocide that doesn't just kill the Borg's "home", but their entire existence. Desperation is a hell of a drug.
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I'll admit hypocrisy on my part and concede your point. I suppose I'm less willing to forgive Discovery's portrayal of it because I don't like the show in general, which is perhaps unfair.
OTOH, that episode of TNG is a bit ****e and I think I dislike it more now.
Now that I think about it, Picard and crew seriously considered destroying the Borg while Burnham and crew were against the attempt at genocide almost as soon as they found out. Which is probably why the admiralty recruited ex-Emperor Georgiou to do the dirty work in the first place.
I just wish they had kept Sarek out of it, I feel like it was uncharacteristic and he should've known better.
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I totally get what you mean. In defense of TNG and that episode in particular, the Borg were portrayed so far as this almost lovecraftian terror that would most certainly wipe everything that they chose not to assimilate, the kind of characterisation that would place everyone's minds on "off the box" thinking quite quickly. Very few would even entertain the thought that this species should even deserve any respect or consideration not to be genocided out of existence, and I remember the show to be incredibly idealistic at the time, for having the balls to say that even such nasty beings like the Borg have a place in the universe and no one should try to eradicate them, even if only in self defense.
In Discovery, it's mostly about an all out war between two comparable species, which brings the point closer to home and to our own history with total destruction of cities and so on in the name of an all out war.
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I remember the show to be incredibly idealistic at the time, for having the balls to say that even such nasty beings like the Borg have a place in the universe and no one should try to eradicate them, even if only in self defense.
Ah yeah good old Star Trek idealism .....
Nowadays we have Liu Cixin's "Dark Forest"
How times have changed.
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Dark Forest is amazing.
And Alex Kurtzman took over STD.
https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/star-trek-discovery-showrunners-alex-kurtzman-1202847342/
Well, that clenches the show for me. Bye!
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:bump:
New episode appeared!!!
I have yet to watch it though :/
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The Orville is still better though. :p
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I'm still waiting to watch season 2 of that as well :p
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Saw the first episode of the new season.
It seems they pivoted the show hard, towards something more closely resembling traditional Star Trek. in terms of tone, this is a much more light-hearted show now; Captain Pike is snarky and approachable where Lorca was dark and mysterious. Everyone seems to be on board Tilly's "Being in space is ****ing awesome, y'all" attitude, and the show is much better for it.
It is not, however, perfect. Sonequa Martin-Green still has to carry the show, and while she's better at it now than she was in S1, the script isn't doing her any favours by kinda hammering us over the head with how smart she is. I think the writers could stand to be a tad more subtle in that regard, you know?
Still though, good Trek.
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Genius woman who knows everything is almost a star trek staple since Voyager debuted...
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I think we've been watching very different shows, again.
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I wouldn't worry. I'm three episodes in and it's getting the same old feel. Not a bad thing but you can see the loose threads tie themselves off in advance. A r3dshirt moment I expected didn't happen but then kinda did anyway so that was semi-true.
No spoilers but you'll get your sinister feels back later the E :yes:
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No spoilers but you'll get your sinister feels back later the E :yes:
To be clear, I am not actually missing those. I don't think they're a necessary component of a good Trek show, and I'm perfectly fine with Discovery pivoting towards being more lighthearted.
My main complaint so far, that the script presents Burnham as too competent, is a bit more subtle. In all previous Trek shows, we had characters presented as being supremely competent in their respective fields; the premise being that if you weren't, you wouldn't be part of the main cast. However, because those were ensemble shows, competency was spread around more. In this first episode, we see Burnham confidently taking charge of a difficult portion of an away mission, quietly and confidently rebuking a new Captain when he inadvertently calls Discovery's commitment to doing the right thing into question, all stuff any other Starfleet officer we've seen over the years would've done.
The problem is that those traits, especially confidence, is wholly given to Burnham. The rest of the Bridge crew gets the scenes of doubting themselves, of not being sure whether they can pull something off that Burnham skips; this, to me, makes the whole dynamic of the crew feel unbalanced. I know that this is by design, but given that this season begins with including the rest of the cast to a much greater degree, it feels a bit weird.
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I think we've been watching very different shows, again.
I was being facetious and mostly mocking Caretaker and how much those episodes annoyed me. I agree with you on Burnham and can already spider-sense all the hatedom picking that up as well. Oh well. I expect this season to fail a lot more than the last, purely from whom is at the writing helm. I also agree with the your take on the lighter tone, and I wished it was more like that. I enjoyed Pike so far, and especially his tactful manner in which he wins the Discovery crew over to his side, but given some rumours, I'm already eye-rolling to what is going to happen next.
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My main complaint so far, that the script presents Burnham as too competent,
So, I just finished the first two episodes.... and I am from the first one I am picking up the same thing as you do, but I can't help but see it as a from of set-up for the later -- the whole "make a character stand on a chair so they can fall off something"-trick...
This is further reinforced in the second epsiode when the speculation about the "red bursts" truely begins and stuff happens - the writers seems to be laying groundwork so that to Burham & Co the mystery can meaningfully defy their understanding - for that, we needed a baseline what the limits of their understanding are; and in doing so they might have gone over-the-top.
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Did you notice that the main engineer is looking to leave?
Well guess what folks........
I wouldn't be surprised if a new engineer turns up where you least / most expect them to.
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Despite having been a Star Trek nerd my whole life, I...didn't really care very much about Discovery after about the halfway mark of the first season. I finally canceled my subscription last week because I realized I wasn't going to actually watch the show anytime soon. It's not that I hate it--there's clearly a lot of effort and money being put into this, and it shows, but it just...doesn't grab me. It was nice for the first couple of episodes to have new Star Trek on TV, but part of the problem is that I don't have a whole lot of time or mental bandwidth to devote to a bunch of TV shows--I have enough time and focus for one show, basically, and for me, it's The Expanse. For Discovery to replace it, it'd have to be better than that, and I think The Expanse is superb. Discovery is...only okay.
They've got a big budget and a very talented cast, but the writing is middling, many of the characters (especially the antagonists) are not very three-dimensional, and while I don't give a wet **** about whether Discovery looks too different from a 52-year-old TV show, the spore drive concept is unbelievably silly and fundamental to the first season. I can handle a certain amount of silliness--not everything needs to be diamond-hard sci-fi, but when it's a fundamental part of the story arc, I think there needs to be a certain acknowledgement of "yeah, this doesn't make one damn bit of sense." That was something I liked about some of the worldbuilding for Star Trek Online, of all things--while that game's storyline has many problems, the way it handled the 2387 supernova that wiped out Romulus was basically "yeah, stars should not be doing that, something screwy happened." For me, The Expanse has not only the budget (for polish) and the talent, but also much tighter writing, depth to spare for all its characters (even the literal sociopaths), and when it decides to throw something bonkers at the audience, it leans into the "wait, what the ****," reaction, rather than trying to ignore it. Again, it's not that I think Discovery's bad, but the constraints of real life force me to be extremely selective, and Discovery, at the moment, is unfortunately just not good enough.
Maybe if there's a big blu-ray box set or amazon release or something way down the line I'll pick it up when I have the bandwitdth to spare. I hope that the show does well this season, and that the cast and crew learn from their mistakes. What I saw of season 1 was certainly a damn sight better than TNG, Voyager, or Enterprise's first seasons, and that suggests potential. I didn't see flashes of brilliance like what DS9's first season had, nor the consistent high quality (given the era) of TOS's first season (arguably its best), but it seemed a decent start.
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Saw episode 2.
This is the most "classic Trek" episode Disco has done so far, and it felt really good. It's nice to see how Burnham's strengths turned out to be weaknesses in this episode (her utter dedication to facts and the provable leading her to be very r/atheism when confronted with people who, for very good reasons, have turned to religion). If there's something to complain about, it's that the basic A/B plots are things we've already seen done in Trek several times over. However, I feel like that's not the point of the story: The interesting thing isn't the situation, it's how this crew decides to react to it (just as, for example, the plot of a generic sports movie isn't important, it's how the characters in that story act).
Also, Dad Saru best Saru.
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I like pike. He could work with me in EOD. I don't say that about many people.
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I agree with you. Best crew in Disco so far, and I do appreciate that they are building on top of what is now the new structure of star trek: an overarching mystery to unfold while having episodic stories. What used to be an "A/B" story mechanic is now a "Meta / Episode" structure, where the former feeds into the latter and vice-versa. It's very simple and effective, I can already see how next episodes can just be "where are new signals, there are new adventures", completing the whole puzzle with each piece. I hope they don't wreck this new "angel" character though (I'm still sure they will - it's incredible how often the antagonists are so poorly written in Trek).
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Inb4 Gul Dukat
Agree on episode 2, I'd say it was my favourite so far. It was a little derivative in that it leaned on some well established Trek formulas, but otherwise was actually quite enjoyable. Notably I think it had the least action/pew pew moments that I can recall.
What I hope is that they can build on the characters some more, give them more **** to do and stick to the episodic structure.
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The crystal planet beacon episode was pretty un-pew-pew from what I recall but this one was less pew pew. Only one phaser went off, but it was negligently.
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Meanwhile, the last episode of The Orville was ****ing adorable. I also thought there was a great moment in the one before. When I realised we were going to get a first contact episode I was pretty happy. And then it cut to the bridge crew, who were just as happy at the idea. Cause of course they should be over the moon at the idea.
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I went "Ahhhhhhhhhh" when i realised that they were locking up the galactic equivalent of Scorpios ;)
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Also, Dad Saru best Saru.
... cause that's what the character was orignally designed for but never really used for because someone wanted to be cleverer and smarter
... which brings me to my thoughts on Episode 3; It's nice to see that at least someone got the persmission to go ahead after saying "hey, you know all that really subjectivist storytelling we did in Season 1 but never properly resoved because the end of season got really cluttered? Let's put in one or two lines which cap that off really quick."; And then someone had to clutter the rest of episode with at least 3 ticking clocks for the rest of season (one was inevitible with hyperelastic topography afforded by the continued use of the Spore Drive; but more than that is just overkill).
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The corporate backstory to ALL Star Trek shenanigans is as great of a drama show as Star Trek itself, believe me! Just watch this:
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So far, Season 2 is MUCH, MUCH better than Season 1. Just finished watching ep 4 yesterday. While I was kinda "meh" about 3 - mostly because the Klingons just remind me of everything I hated in Season 1 - 4 actually had me somewhat excited for where they go next.
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The corporate backstory to ALL Star Trek shenanigans is as great of a drama show as Star Trek itself, believe me! Just watch this:
It is, but I do have to question the validity of the claim that Discovery is made under Paramount's license rather than CBS' own licence to Star Trek. This is the line that the guys at Midnight's Edge have been parroting for a while now and it's never been conclusively proven afaik.
I'm no journalist, but a lot of what those guys claim about Discovery and Star Trek as a whole strikes me as tinfoil hat stuff. They have a bad habit of mixing known facts with conjecture and rumour.
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It hasn't been proven afaict (I agree), but there's corporate smoke in here, surely. The fact that Discovery has so many design decisions that align with that "tin foil hat theory", and so many writing decisions that seem to try to connect all these disparate "worlds" together (the insistence on the parallel worlds storylines) seem to point at least with corporate attempts to muddy all these waters and "fuse" the look and feel of star trek between old and new.
Meanwhile, the presence of the old enterprise number 1 and Pike's dismissal of the holographic communications in the Enterprise due to some technobabble difficulties were such dysmal writing that I can only blame more corporate buffoonery with some silly community feedback that wanted it away (there hasn't been any such type of communication in this season so far AFAIR).
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I'm confused as to how Saru's home planet is off limits, and if so, how he managed to claim asylum....I thought kelpians were just one of those races we never saw. :/
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I think there is a short episode between seasons that depicted Saru's backstory better, but I haven't seen it yet. AFAIK, the whole species is pre-warp, and basically conditioned as a slave-species to another kind, Saru himself was able to flee the planet (somehow), and then requested for asylum. Then, later, he joined starfleet.
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Yeah that's what I need clarification on. I'll have a Google but thought it would've been on Netflix with he rest of the show :|
Also.......that fungus should consume tilly. ..she is a bad character.
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It's on Netflix under trailers and more I believe (outside of US).
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It hasn't been proven afaict (I agree), but there's corporate smoke in here, surely. The fact that Discovery has so many design decisions that align with that "tin foil hat theory", and so many writing decisions that seem to try to connect all these disparate "worlds" together (the insistence on the parallel worlds storylines) seem to point at least with corporate attempts to muddy all these waters and "fuse" the look and feel of star trek between old and new.
Nah, I think the theory that the original Discovery production staff wanted to make a show that looks like something produced in 2017 is much more credible.
Meanwhile, the presence of the old enterprise number 1 and Pike's dismissal of the holographic communications in the Enterprise due to some technobabble difficulties were such dysmal writing that I can only blame more corporate buffoonery with some silly community feedback that wanted it away (there hasn't been any such type of communication in this season so far AFAIR).
Number 1 is cool, hopefully we get to see more of her. As for the communicators, well, I'm just going to blame all the people who were complaining about how "Discovery looks more advanced than TOS, therefore Discovery bad" for that one....
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It hasn't been proven afaict (I agree), but there's corporate smoke in here, surely. The fact that Discovery has so many design decisions that align with that "tin foil hat theory", and so many writing decisions that seem to try to connect all these disparate "worlds" together (the insistence on the parallel worlds storylines) seem to point at least with corporate attempts to muddy all these waters and "fuse" the look and feel of star trek between old and new.
Nah, I think the theory that the original Discovery production staff wanted to make a show that looks like something produced in 2017 is much more credible.
If you just add the notion that "something produced in 2017" has to take into account the three new star trek movies made, then you're merely aggressively agreeing with me. Think about it.
Number 1 is cool, hopefully we get to see more of her. As for the communicators, well, I'm just going to blame all the people who were complaining about how "Discovery looks more advanced than TOS, therefore Discovery bad" for that one....
Number 1 is.... what kind of shot was that, from the bottom up? I'm pretty sure feminists hated that shot! And she's so out of place. Like someone was beamed from the 50s to now. I like her character, her personality. But it was weird fanservice "do you remember this" kind of shtick. And yeah, I can also blame the hatedom for the hologram shenanigans, but they were the ones to cave. And did so in the laziest of ways.
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If you just add the notion that "something produced in 2017" has to take into account the three new star trek movies made, then you're merely aggressively agreeing with me. Think about it.
What I'm disagreeing with is the notion that this is, somehow, a result of some complicated IP rights shenanigans. The situation isn't that complicated, really; one production company has the right to make movies and one can make TV shows, given that they're all drawn from the same base material, it would be weird if there wasn't some cross-pollination going on between the various incarnations of Star Trek.
Number 1 is.... what kind of shot was that, from the bottom up? I'm pretty sure feminists hated that shot! And she's so out of place. Like someone was beamed from the 50s to now.
Well, given that that was Rebecca Romijn's intent with the character....
I like her character, her personality. But it was weird fanservice "do you remember this" kind of shtick. And yeah, I can also blame the hatedom for the hologram shenanigans, but they were the ones to cave. And did so in the laziest of ways.
What was your opinion of the reveal of the origins of the D7/K'T'inga-class Battlecruiser?
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If you just add the notion that "something produced in 2017" has to take into account the three new star trek movies made, then you're merely aggressively agreeing with me. Think about it.
What I'm disagreeing with is the notion that this is, somehow, a result of some complicated IP rights shenanigans. The situation isn't that complicated, really; one production company has the right to make movies and one can make TV shows, given that they're all drawn from the same base material, it would be weird if there wasn't some cross-pollination going on between the various incarnations of Star Trek.
I can't just simply ignore the enterprise's designer statements like that, nor all the tiny bits of information scattered throughout. Regardless, I see all of that as a kind of stupid black box that can contain ip shenanigans but also corporate meddling and design by comittee, you figure out the percentages, I'm not particularly interested in those kinds of mathematics.
What I found most interesting from that video was actually the revelation that the new movies *didn't* have any version of actual canon star trek embedded in its own storyline, that it was either the new timeline or their own particular version of canon dubbed "Prime line", which was also required to be at least 25% different from the original.
If there's an argument against intellectual property in artistic licenses, these kinds of stupid shenanigans might just add to the list of case studies. The kinds of loops that real artists and writers have to deal with when they only want to tell interesting stories is ridiculous.
What was your opinion of the reveal of the origins of the D7/K'T'inga-class Battlecruiser?
tbf, I don't recall that moment.
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Luis, this whole IP thing fails one simple test: Namely, that "Paramount" is nowhere in the credits to Discovery. Who benefits from such a deal? Who benefits from it being kept secret and clandestine?
Personally, I don't give a singular **** about dealings between Paramount and CBS in regards to Discovery. We got a new, proper Trek show on Television, that's all that matters to me; All this nonsense about how the "Prime" timeline isn't actually the ENT/TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY timeline is just a bunch of nerd wankery. I'm a fully signed on Star Trek fan. With the exception of TAS and the last Season of Enterprise, I've seen every piece of television or film produced in that franchise. I didn't feel betrayed by the Bad Robot films (disappointed, sure) and their attempt to reboot the franchise, I don't feel particularly betrayed by Discovery and whatever Kurtzman and CBS are doing now.
Honestly, what this sounds like to me is that these people are so fixated on one particular vision of Star Trek (The Roddenberry/Berman one) that they have something of a kneejerk reaction to anyone else's version of that material.
What I found most interesting from that video was actually the revelation that the new movies *didn't* have any version of actual canon star trek embedded in its own storyline, that it was either the new timeline or their own particular version of canon dubbed "Prime line", which was also required to be at least 25% different from the original.
But they did. Leonard Nimoy as Spock. What, did they just forget that that happened?
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Regarding Nimoy, that ... wasn't the point. I get what you say, but the funny part is that the whole "Real Spock" stuff isn't actually canon (it cannot be so, it has to be at least 25% different), although it's pretty much headcanon by everyone who watched it. It's a "it's not really canon but it's totally canon wink wink" scenario that is just funny to me. It even opens up philosophical questions if you would be so inclined!
Regarding everything else, hey, as a consumer I also care very little, and a lot less than all of these people who are furiously trying to dig up all of this stuff. My whole angle is more about how capitalism is ruining art at the same time it's producing it in the first place.
And you should definitely watch the last season of Enterprise. I've barely watched the second one of it (and none of the third), it was a drag, but the fourth is just great Trek. If Enterprise only comprised of its last season, Enterprise would be heralded as one of the best incarnations of the whole shebang. For real.
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And you should definitely watch the last season of Enterprise. I've barely watched the second one of it (and none of the third), it was a drag, but the fourth is just great Trek. If Enterprise only comprised of its last season, Enterprise would be heralded as one of the best incarnations of the whole shebang. For real.
I took that advice from you a while ago and... was quite disappointed.
I've actually been watching all - and I do mean all - of Star Trek since it hit Netflix. With the exception of The Animated Series, because just no. TOS was last on my list, and I'm almost through it.
Season 4 of Enterprise was better than the rest of it - marginally - but still quite a way behind the last 3 years of DS9, and the last 2 seasons of Next Generation, and the last 3 seasons of Voyager. I know I'm going to get hate for saying Voyager was decent, but it was one of the most uneven Trek shows to air. Voyager had some abysmal episodes, and some fantastic episodes - it was very hit or miss (not unlike Discovery has been). DS9 was competently executed with a few stinkers, but the excellent far outweighed the bad. ENT generally managed mediocre at best. Season 4 improved it, but it was still nowhere near as well-executed as the best of Voyager, or most of DS9 in particular. Unless you're bored and just throwing it on while making dinner or something, as I was, my recommendation is to give it a pass.
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The "short trek" episodes from discovery aren't appearing on the phone app or the tv app so I'm going to have to boot the laptop to check that :sigh:
Hate tilly.
Like Saru.
OBSESSED Number One.
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Enterprise season 4 is definitely worth a watch. Don't watch the finale though, you'll rip out your eyes and throw them at the screen.
Regarding the "must be 25% different" thing - that was a quote from the guy that redesigned the original Enterprise for Discovery. And that's all it is. There's nowhere else that says the Abrams movies or Discovery must look 25% different. Midnight's Edge simply jumped on that one quote from that one guy to help them push this narrative that Discovery is somehow legally obliged to look different when in fact there's very little evidence backing that up.
I'm not a big fan of Discovery's look, I'd prefer it if they went with something that's a bit more consistent with canon. This is partly why for a time I bought into ME's narrative that these supposed legal shenanigans are to blame for Discovery looking more like the Abrams movies. It's a compelling theory if it helps you confirm your bias, which it did for me. But as soon as you look at it with a critical eye, it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. There just isn't enough evidence and it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense for CBS to be making a tv show under someone else's licence when they are themselves the principal rights holders.
Discovery has made a few missteps, a lot of them the same missteps that Enterprise took and which can probably be attributed to the limits of a prequel series. But it does seem to be improving at least. That being said, I don't get why they can't make a Star Trek set in the post-Voyager timeline, it would lift the constraints of working with pre-established events and canon, which the Discovery creators don't seem interested in preserving. Maybe that's down to the higher ups wanting IP recognition or something, idk.
So yes there are corporate politics going on, but I don't think ME are a reliable source.
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why they can't make a Star Trek set in the post-Voyager timeline
****ing time travel.
No, I'm serious. I really want a ST series post-Voyager, but ST writers simply cannot quit with the tired old trope of invoking time travel and doing it badly. It's a recurring theme that ST writers try to reproduce the success with with NextGen actually did interesting things with time travel and **** it up, and they have doubled-down on it further and further in every series post-NextGen that writing a post-Voyager series that manages to invoke interesting, consistent antagonists in a story arc without a bunch of bull**** time travel would be very difficult. And that's part of the struggle with newer Trek in general - TV has moved to expansive story arcs instead of the flavour-of-the-week episodes that Trek was built on, which is part of the reason that Discovery season 1 was so painful in places. Trek excels when it explores concepts in new and interesting ways, and it is hard to do that in a season-spanning story.
That said, Discovery season 2 is so far fairly promising and we are getting a new Trek series all about Picard which is post-NextGen and presumably even post-Voyager, so I hope to hell I'm proven wrong.
Seriously though, if I was putting out guidance as an executive producer for series writers, points 1-5 would be "No ****ing time travel, ever." repeated over and over.
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I took that advice from you a while ago and... was quite disappointed.
I am bummed to learn that, but then I remember, aren't you also quite down on things like Star Trek II?
LOL I'm just teasing you. I am bummed, and I have to rethink it, it may well be that I had such low expectations of Enterprise in general that when I got to watch ENT season 4, I was just overwhelmed by what could just possibly be average Trek. OTOH, it seems to me that what you get out from Star Trek is usually the episodic "sci fi story of the week", so homaged (or cringely copy-pasted?) by things like The Orville and so on. So yeah, if you go from that expectation, I see where your disappointment was born. ENT 4 drives itself through developing what it should always been about, a preequel exercise in exploring the begginings of a united federation of planets.
I do agree with some of what you say about VOY, I do have it as a kind of guilty pleasure of my own. There are a bunch of VOY episodes which are pretty good, but most of them are just generic episodic trek that were kind of already aging under TNG (and let's do a lobotomy of the parts of our brains that keep telling us half of the themes and plots in VOY just don't make any sense whatsoever in its own premised setting in the first place, before we watch any of it).
I mean, it's kind of a tell that one of the best episodes of VOY that would otherwise brilliantly express its premise and setting is actually happening in an alternate timeline so that by the end of the two parter "Year of Hell" they can just pretend it was all just a bad dream and so they can continue having black coffee while shooting infinite quantum torpedoes from their eternally shiny bridge.
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Regarding Nimoy, that ... wasn't the point. I get what you say, but the funny part is that the whole "Real Spock" stuff isn't actually canon (it cannot be so, it has to be at least 25% different), although it's pretty much headcanon by everyone who watched it. It's a "it's not really canon but it's totally canon wink wink" scenario that is just funny to me. It even opens up philosophical questions if you would be so inclined!
So because I'm a bit curious about this, I tried to dig around where this "25% different" thing came from.
From what I can tell, it started as something John Eaves (the designer responsible for the Enterprise's look in Discovery) said. According to him, one of the guidelines he was given was that the Disco Enterprise should be "25% different" from the original Matt Jeffries design; he speculated that this was for legal reasons. This piece of trivia made the rounds for a bit, until CBS heard of it and issued a statement denying that there were legal reasons for the redesign (source (https://comicbook.com/startrek/2018/04/15/star-trek-discovery-enterprise-design-legal/)).
Now, it could very well be that CBS is lying about this. But, again, why would they? It's unambiguously clear that CBS owns the IP for all Star Trek TV shows; whatever the reasoning behind the guidelines Eaves got, they are not explainable through IP law constraints.
(And that's before we get into the discussion of just what the **** "25% different" even means in this context. What's a "25% different" version of Spock?)
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That seems a good critique.
Meanwhile, I finally found out the source of all of these changes. Check it out! For real now!
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That guy................. :nono:
Edit-
Some of the lines on the latest episode sound like the writers weren't even listening to what they were writing.
This is an approximation of what I remember-
"There is no word for the unique pain of uncertainty. "
It's pretty dumb, because the word is- *uncertainty.*
I mean, was I the only one who noticed that?
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The writing in the show is regularly lackluster, imho. The style and effects do look top notch, however.
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The writing in the show is regularly lackluster, imho.
There have been a number of elements which could have been handled better, I agree, most of that however seem to be premature commitment to characters and plot points (looking at most of the Section 31-stuff prior to today's episode) - meaning they are kinda there hovering around without connection until the rest of the show catches up. But it is an improvement over Season 1, as they got rid of the red herrings, and expanded the scope of character development to more members of the crew (which in a way absolves the fact that stuff takes a while to catch up).
But as always the quality of the wirting generally only reveals itself once we have the full sweep of the seaons in front of us.
ps. A character resurrection doesn't fix what was wrong about that character's death BTW. Even if you make a really good character arc for at least two characters out of said resurrection (not to mention if you use it to paralell the development of two other characters).
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4. Tilly is also the best
I got a thing for characters who are, on a fundamental level, very stoked about being in space, leave me alone.
I love Tilly too, but I don't think she's very stoked about being in space...
She's just very stoked about absolutely EVERYTHING
I have skipped the rest of the thread as I've only watched the first two episodes of season 2.
I like the show, it was really funny to read some accidental predictions, some non-accidental predictions, and some predictions where it turned out that the opposite happened.
My favorite part of the thread was someone (Luis I think, but I'm not gonna scroll back through 12 pages of thread) saying Tilly was obviously going to turn evil. And a while later we meet CAPTAIN KILLY. The prediction kinda came true, but not quite, right.
Captain Saru is the best, I hope the "joint custody" ends soon to leave him in command.
Burnham is interesting, I think her weird moments where she's too driven by emotion (and inevitably causes problems) are simply the inherent imbalance of being human while raised vulcan. It's not quite the same as being half-and-half such as Spock. I have to admit, though (and hope that you guys don't burn me at the stake for that), that I haven't watched any of the shows where he appears, so I barely know what Spock is really like, only what external media shows about him.
Stamets is one of my favorite characters, I think he's a bit underrated mostly by how little people mention him. His outlook towards science is so refreshing, he sees it as more than means to an end, some clinical rationalistic-only domain, instead he sees the beauty in the universe, and he wants to get up close and personal with that beauty to learn more and more about it. He is also sick of this ship/t by now and deserves a long vacation. In fact he was sick of it when the show started, but I digress.
I want to know more about the robot lady who seems really advanced for that era.
I also want Spock to show up.
I like the secondary characters in the bridge crew too. I really enjoyed the scene in S02E01 where Burnham needs them to say they got the captain's back during that high-speed EVA and they're frantically/wordlessly trying to figure out what to say since it's impossible for them to promise anything at that point.
Given that this show seems to be divisive, I'll put a "disclaimer" that I rarely say bad things about shows I don't drop because I'm easy to please and I like just about everything. If I drop/don't like something, it's usually because it bored me, not because it annoyed/irked me.
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This weeks episode made clear why they needed to bring Captain Pike into the show.
And yes, Sisko has to move over - Pike is my Captain now. :D
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I agree about Pikey.
But I hate tilly. ......... I hate her so damn much.
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If they don't make Pike a permanent character on this show, they are making a huge mistake. He's freaking awesome.
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When he threw himself on the overloading phaser, I knew he was the one. #nohomo
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Doublepost warning
Man that last episode........ A lot of buildup but no payoff :/
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That's what two-parter episodes are like.
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There was too much filler and cliché in this one.
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Doubley-bubbly post again....
Wellp, looks like it's all over.....I expected more :C also I wanted Po siege weapons to show. Blast doors can handle a HUGE torpedo blast. (The blast from a huge torpedo). Everything is now retconned and I don't know own if stamitz was dreaming the while doc-wife thing on his deathbed or not.
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The finale was a mess.
During the production of the show, the season order was expanded by one episode, and I think this is what it led to.
Now, the story overall was fine; everything is tied up neatly with canon-friendly explanations for why Discovery or Burnham have never been mentioned before, and Discovery herself has been unshackled from the constraints of being a prequel show and can explore new things.
The execution, however, was not.
With few exceptions, Star Trek has never been good at big battles (Those exceptions all happening exclusively in DS9), and this continues that trend. In this case, the big space battle is ... devoid of impact, really. Things explode left and right, and none of it seems to have an impact; Enterprise and Discovery suddenly turn into fleet carriers with hundreds if not thousands of parasite craft which seem to be exclusively used to provide an excuse to put an explosion on the screen, there's a bunch of capital ships that do not seem to do anything, Enterprise and Discovery spend a lot of time sitting idle in space tanking hits.... Resurrection Ship or Severed Dreams this is not.
I'm looking forward to seeing what they're going to do with the series in Season 3. They really got the crew dynamics down this season; and that's always the most important bit for a show like this.
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Season 3?
I'd happily let it die now. I agree completely with the feel of the battle, but I interpet the crew dynamic as wooden and stereotypical. Obviously your milage will vary and you're entitled to like what you like about the show. I like pike but only because he's got good jawline and is old school nostalgia captain. Not much depth to any of the crew really.
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So Red Letter Media finally got around to re:viewing the second season. They were not kind.
Actually, maybe they were.
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Ouch.
I stopped watching by episode 5 of season 2 when Burnham gave that "words describe who we are" speech. It was like it was written by a high schooler that was struggling with what words to use so they decided to write about what words to use. I really wanted to give it a chance, but it just got too frustrating to watch, in fact I probably wouldn't have gotten as far as I did if it didn't have Star Trek in the title.
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So Red Letter Media finally got around to re:viewing the second season. They were not kind.
*snip*
Actually, maybe they were.
Well, just to reveal my biases against RLM, it is hardly suprising - considering the man/men who does their video reviews has never met a sentiment he can't perfomatively man-rage against.
That's not to say Season 2 of Discovery as whole is some kind of landmark - Individual scenes can qualify for "best in fanchise", but as a season it too reliant of moment to moment effect, even with you use Sentimentalism as primary measure.
when Burnham gave that "words describe who we are" speech. It was like it was written by a high schooler that was struggling with what words to use so they decided to write about what words to use. I really wanted to give it a chance, but it just got too frustrating to watch,
"Scene designed to be awkward was awkward. Worst scene EVA!!!"
As discussed earlier, Burnham's whole conflict in this seaons is her expertise and technical proficency running against the fact that she has some emotional growing up to do (hence Spock, hence Saruu-Dad, hence inspringing uncle Christopher)
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Designed to be awkward and executed poorly aren't the same :yes:
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Honestly I can't even remember what scene it was, all I can remember from watching that episode was just that feeling of frustration and asking myself why I'm still watching. Point being that bad dialogue is bad dialogue. It doesn't have to be amazing, but when it gets to levels of Science, **** yeahhh it just takes me out of the thing and very roughly molests my suspension of disbelief.
I can get through bad tv, I still watch the Walking Dead for instance (and Lexx), but Discovery is just too annoying.
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I still maintain that Discovery fails because it uses science fiction as a bag of clichés to draw from rather than doing really interesting stuff. They have potentially great characters and do nothing really interesting with them, you have a human adopted by a Vulcan family yet we only get some rather trite family drama. They could have explored better the culture shock with the wider Vulcan society, but they didn't because for all the blabbing by internet ****wits about this being "SJW" the authors are either superficial, cowards of both because real Star Trek IS "SJW" and this ain't it. They couldn't make something like Balance of Terror or The Conscience of The King if someone paid their weight in uncut diamonds or kicked their arse to the Moon and back, there are a few glimpses here and there but other than that nothing.
The problem in the end it's not that is soft sci-fi, Doctor Who treats science like magic siince forever but they usually manage to do something interesting with it, it's that they just re-use sci-fi tropes without really doing anything interesting apart filling some dialogues with science lingo (and no, you don't get to lampshade it especially using a bit that wasn't especially technobabble-y).
In general there is little thought into anything that has to do with the bigger picture since the first season, the first seasonstarted promising but then threw it all away and he secondo season gave us basically Skynet.
Remember, the bad AI in the first Trek movie that was a child looking for answers? Here is just a bad AI, nothing more, nobody even thinks that perhaps giving it sentience might possibly be a good thing because Trek Sarah Connor is here telling us about not-skynet creating the terminators or something.
EDIT
And now I'm just ranting. I trust you get my point.
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I tend to agree with the sentiment in that video that the only reason it wasn't cancelled was because of the chilling effect that would have on Picard and Lower Decks, etc.
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I just finished watching one of the new Star Trek Shorts, and they finally give Enterprise's 1st officer, until now known only as "Number One"... a name. Both mentioned briefly during the discord, and listed on the text of a pad she's dictating to, her name is Una... which of course is the feminine form of One in Spanish. :lol:
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So having mined as much fanservice as possible from Star Trek, it appears the plot for Season 3 is to start ripping off Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda instead.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/09/star-trek-discovery-s3-goes-back-to-the-future-in-first-trailer/
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Man what does this show even want to be
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It's a vehicle for the writers to do whatever they want as long as they slap a tenuous Trek connection onto it somehow.
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yeah, if only they had good ideas to run the star trek template with.
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Yeah, I'm going to give S3 ep 2 a half hearted watch and then probably not watch any more.
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I stopped watching Discovery as Star Trek and just enjoy it as a sci-fi adventure. I rather liked Season 2. So I'll probably give all of Season 3 a watch.
Picard, however, is horrible horrible trash. They missed literally everything about Picard that made him Picard except TEA, EARL GREY. HOT which was in every episode multiple times in focus because do you remember Picard? TEA. EARL GREY. HOT. Picard!
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I stopped watching Discovery as Star Trek and just enjoy it as a sci-fi adventure. I rather liked Season 2. So I'll probably give all of Season 3 a watch.
Picard, however, is horrible horrible trash. They missed literally everything about Picard that made him Picard except TEA, EARL GREY. HOT which was in every episode multiple times in focus because do you remember Picard? TEA. EARL GREY. HOT. Picard!
Agreed, Picklard had too much discovery flavour to it.
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The only characters I like in this show are Saru and Reno. Episode 2 is like, "let's make a western!" The bad dude even has spurs in his boots ffs.
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It be great if Discovery even put half the effort of its slick visuals into its writing.
I mean, I like quite a few of the characters. Pike in season 2 was great. Saru is excellent. Tilley is fun. Bernam is.... meh.
I've been wanting a Star Trek that actually goes FORWARD in time for quite some time, so while I like the direction of getting out of prequels, the rip-off of Andromeda is glaringly obvious. That said, Andromeda was a pretty 'meh' show so maybe, just maybe, Discovery S3 can execute the concept a little better. That's probably giving the writing team too much credit.
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It still feels like discovery is riding on its predecessors. The end of S3E1 was meant to give me warm fuzzies about the federation, but nothing I've seen in DIS actually makes me feel like the federation is anywhere close to the ideal that DIS wants me to think it is?
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Yeah, kinda agree. Doing a "rebuild the federation" arc is a cool idea, but starting off the season with another completely Burnham-centric episode was the wrong step. Martin-Green has improved in the role, but the character itself isn't interesting enough to anchor an entire episode, especially not one that sets up the entire status quo for the show.
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This weird experiment Discovery has been doing of inserting the audience via a surrogate character - and making that character Michael Burnham - has been a complete failure. It doesn't work for Trek, and it screws up the whole feel. It's telling that they intentionally got rid of that style with Picard (thank god) and they should ditch it here too. Having character-centric episodes is fine, but the surrogacy writing is genuinely terrible.
The other really tonally odd issue - as qazwsx pointed out to an extent - is this notion that Burnham is complete crushed by the demolition of the Federation and all the greatness it brought as some long-standing institution. While the audience may feel this, having Next Gen, DS9, and Voyager under our belts, Burnham and Discovery are set in about the year 2256 - less than a century after the Federation was first formed in 2161 and prior to the existence of the Prime Directive and major expansions and exploration underway by the time of the TOS. It was a far-cry from the major, wide-spread, and aspirational organization present by the time NextGen kicks in. Her reaction is rather over the top in that context.
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Tilley is not fun.
That is my view and I respect others views but I can't stand her.
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It still feels like discovery is riding on its predecessors. The end of S3E1 was meant to give me warm fuzzies about the federation, but nothing I've seen in DIS actually makes me feel like the federation is anywhere close to the ideal that DIS wants me to think it is?
They were so worried to have their NCIS-style post 9/11 terrorist fantasy (ye know, when terrorists for some reason are everywhere and have super advanced gear and so good guys need to do bad things that are forgivable because they are the good guys and need to win) that the Federation ended up looking rather poor as a result.
Like, how in the hell a fragmented feudal society like the Klingon have the tech and the industrial base to pull off a megafleet of warships but a post-scarcity economy with highly educated people and access to technologies from diverse and advanced worlds couldn't just crank up enough Constitution class vessels to at the very least lead to a stalemate rather than being run over like shown there.
It almost seems like decades of mindless military propaganda in the US have brought the same writers to think that a pacifistic society must necessarily be made of pushovers while a warrior society is authomatically better even if they fight with sticks and stones against tanks.
It's already bad when the US army is magically capable of briging down a giant robot that fought wars for millions of years with AR-15 rifles in a Michael Bay movie but in Star Trek?
Really?
The Klingon are not meant to be the Borg or the Dominion, they were never the kind of enemy that is so powerful as to induce the Federation to act like asshats in desperation.
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Star Trek always had this issue, I detected it some 30 years ago, so it's kind of a weird thing to come at DISCO for.
(https://i1.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/yesterdays8.jpg)
I mean, according to ST canon, the klingon empire was due to be completely collapsed within 50 years after Praxis blew up if they wouldn't change their imperial ways, but some 80 years later they would totally dominate the Federation militarily if they had chosen so. The Klingons have always been what the writers wanted them to be, either very weak and pathetic at their silly feudal ways, or extremely dangerous and overwhelming.
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Star Trek always had this issue, I detected it some 30 years ago, so it's kind of a weird thing to come at DISCO for.
(https://i1.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/yesterdays8.jpg)
I mean, according to ST canon, the klingon empire was due to be completely collapsed within 50 years after Praxis blew up if they wouldn't change their imperial ways, but some 80 years later they would totally dominate the Federation militarily if they had chosen so. The Klingons have always been what the writers wanted them to be, either very weak and pathetic at their silly feudal ways, or extremely dangerous and overwhelming.
The thing is that at the start of Disco they basically state there isn't really a real Klingon government like during TOS or TNG so the thing is even more far fetched.
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Hmm, I'd suggest that it is mostly the feudal nature of the Klingon Empire that keeps everyone else somewhat safe, and that the real dangers appear when some big lord comes up and unites the entire fiefdoms into a single unit. In this way, it is reminiscent of all the "barbarians" of all kinds that threatened Rome and then Europe throughout the centuries and thus have become a trope in story-telling. It's a mess, but I'd argue it's *always* been a mess.
I could never believe such a barbarian species could even *be* technological enough to have space-ships in the first place, so I always read the Klingons as some insert of barbarian tropes into a sci-fi property, to create some difference and contrast to the federation, as it has been common to all barbarian species' story-telling throughout the centuries...
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I've always wanted to understand how an engineering caste or position fits into the Klingon warrior hierarchy.
Technology requires consideration, thought, careful exploration, etc. How do these qualities fit into the Klingon societies portrayed in any ST series?
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I've always wanted to understand how an engineering caste or position fits into the Klingon warrior hierarchy.
Technology requires consideration, thought, careful exploration, etc. How do these qualities fit into the Klingon societies portrayed in any ST series?
Klingons are not portrayed as unintelligent. Give everyone super powers and no one has super powers. Not every Klingon is going to be cut out to be a warrior. When Riker served on a Klingon ship, he praises the single mindedness of the Klingons. He says more, but I can't remember and can't find a clip. But it's qualities that can be turned to more than warring, these Klingons were at peace, but were switched on and focused on their duties aboard ship. Not being in battle does not bore them, and they have a strong sense of duty to the Empire. Also, same episode, start of this video, This average Klingon warrior is very curious as he's never seen a human before. Klingons clearly have enquiring minds.
This Klingon adjutant looks every bit suitable for his job:
I don't ever recall seeing Klingons look down on scientific pursuits or educated people. Klingons are perfectly capable of putting careful thought and consideration into their actions.
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I've always liked the Klingons, but then I always suspend my disbelief when it comes to asking just how exactly they're able to maintain a technologically advanced society.
I like to think they're just competent without comprehension - they can design and develop warp drive and all the other fancy tech without really understanding how it works. It's like how a cat can land on its feet, but it doesn't really understand how it does it.
It's a dumb explanation, but it works for me.
Edit - just to expand on this horrible idea further, maybe they have some kind of super intelligent subconscious that allows them to use complex mathematics and such with no real conscious idea of what they're actually doing.
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Aliens looking in on us might wonder how we've accomplished what we have. The fact is, all the high end stuff is accomplished by geniuses. Maybe Klingons produce such geniuses too. They're born, not made. When a kid blazes through the entire school curriculum and gets top grades on everything in half the time the rest do, it has comparatively little to do with their teachers. We can give them a leg up by teaching them what we already know, then they leave us behind and do things no human mind out of the billions and billions before them has conceived of before. They do what they were born to do. They do things the rest of us couldn't do if we lived to a million years old and devoted all that time to trying.
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It's not so much about the tech (I mean, if Klingon are an older species than humans it's possible they might have reached a fairly similar tech base and while they culturally celebrate dumbness they are not dumb per se) but the logistics required to actually build stuff on that scale, the way they are presented in the Discovery pilot they are simply too fragmented to be able to curb stomp the Federation in space warfare that badly. I might get it if it was like in DS9 in which it was clear they had the advantage in land warfare because that's their thing and they were actually organized under a real government that wasn't there just for show, but here I find simply not believable that the feds couldn't msuter enough resources to crank up a bunch of ships to keep themselves from being overwhelmed.
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The canon answer is that while the warrior caste dominates klingon culture, it is not the only caste. There have been a few non-Warrior klingons on screen in a few episodes, and they've been portraited as being fed up with the warrior bull****, or as having adopted the warrior mindset for their actual job; There was a scientist in one DS9 ep that mentioned "honorable combat against ignorance" as his calling. In Voyager, B'Elanna is told that, although she isn't a warrior by herself, her accomplishments as an engineer and her ability to keep Voyager battle-ready make any of Voyager's victories hers.
So, this whole "no klingon scientists" thing? It's very much an instance of the various viewpoint characters in the shows not actually knowing all that much about klingon life.
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The canon answer is that while the warrior caste dominates klingon culture, it is not the only caste. There have been a few non-Warrior klingons on screen in a few episodes, and they've been portraited as being fed up with the warrior bull****, or as having adopted the warrior mindset for their actual job; There was a scientist in one DS9 ep that mentioned "honorable combat against ignorance" as his calling. In Voyager, B'Elanna is told that, although she isn't a warrior by herself, her accomplishments as an engineer and her ability to keep Voyager battle-ready make any of Voyager's victories hers.
So, this whole "no klingon scientists" thing? It's very much an instance of the various viewpoint characters in the shows not actually knowing all that much about klingon life.
You forget the whole "let's explain why TOS Klingons look more like Johne Wanye in The Conqueror than Micheal Dorn as Worf"-arc in the final season of Enterprise has all that canon contrivance in one spot
But of course we can't trust the audience to just accept external limiting factors to media production. /sarcasm
I mean, according to ST canon, the klingon empire was due to be completely collapsed within 50 years after Praxis blew up if they wouldn't change their imperial ways, but some 80 years later they would totally dominate the Federation militarily if they had chosen so.
In the 1800s people looked at rising population in Europe and though humanity would come to an end because of a Malthusian catastrophe - spawning a 150+ year oppession with eugentics that managed to "revitalize" (strict word sense) the ideological backing of so ... many ... problems ... we ... still ... live ... with ... today
In the 1970 people thought we would run out of oil by the 2000s - funny who that projection turned out...
Not to mention all the optimistic projections that didn't come true ...
... since the 1700s people have conjoured up a post-labour mechanized utopia that would achieveable in a few decades, because combustion engines existed ...
... since the 1880s "the wireless" has inspired people to think of a world where/when out ability to communicate across distance with little or no delay would make us all more connected and empathetic people, once it became widely availible ...
Not to the failure of these to come to pass didn't invalidates the intermediate progress they have enabled, e.g. the current reality shock about just how far the undesirable (euthemism) present we are living in is from tolerable one we imagined ourselves to live in might just be the catalyst to explore the causality that lead to our present condition to its fully richness (considering our generation might actually be the first capable of that in many places around the world; of course for that to happen you have to acknowledge that problems have causes that do not relate directly to the currently most visible symptoms)
... oh - I went off topic there, sorry...
As to why I am here:
Now I might be a week behind, but I don't see Disco Season 3 to be substantial different from the previous flawed seasons:
- The failure of authorities, or the percieved failure of authorities, as the cause for conflict - CHECK
- That it is sentiment rather than rationale that make characters aspire their better selves - CHECK
Still more attractive to me than The Expanse or The Mandalorian, neither of which is bad just lacking the same qualities.
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So Episode 2 was much better -- Mostly because it focussed on the Discovery crew, who as a whole are just a very good ensemble. It also used the tried-and-true space western thing that Star Trek can't help to get back to occasionally; the main plot of the episode being about Saru and Tilly (and Giorgeou) ridding a mining settlement of a nasty bandit. It was fun, it had good character moments, and heaps of idealism, all things good ST episodes have. Guess I'll keep watching then.
Now I might be a week behind, but I don't see Disco Season 3 to be substantial different from the previous flawed seasons:
- The failure of authorities, or the percieved failure of authorities, as the cause for conflict - CHECK
- That it is sentiment rather than rationale that make characters aspire their better selves - CHECK
I sometimes wonder what Star Trek other people have been watching all this time for criticisms like this to emerge. Literally every Star Trek show has had episodes or arcs dealing with a failure of authority due to a failure of said authority to hold up the sentimental ideals of the Federation and Starfleet. In Star Trek, idealism and sentiment will always triumph, sometimes (as in S3E1) this comes across ham-handed and clunky, sometimes (as in S3E2), it works out better. The conflict between strict rationality and expediency and idealism has been a core part of ST's DNA since the beginning; this is, in fact, part of the reason why I keep watching it.
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I found lower decks more enjoyable than disco in every single way. Longer episodes would be a boon.
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I agree about Lower Decks being a lot more enjoyable than Disco.
Regarding the Klingons, it is what it is, there's a cognitive dissonance happening in there, whether we like it or not. Frankly I think that the Mass Effect franchise's solution to the Klingon "problem" was so much better solved that I even think they went out to actually specifically solve this Klingon thing, when they used the storyline of how Salarians "uplifted" the Krogans. So much more sense. Oh well.
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You're allowed to enjoy disco more than I do buddy. 👍