Star Trek: Discovery

[Seto Kaiba]

1 minute ago, JB0 said:

Well, except for the ISS following Apollo, but we take the world we have, not the world we want. (Shouldn't the outbreak of the Eugenics Wars have prevented the construction of the ISS, though?)

The Eugenics Wars was a weird one for sure, but it's not the first Trek to reference the ISS... IINM Sisko had a model of it in his office in Deep Space Nine.

 

1 minute ago, JB0 said:

The NX-01 is presented as the next step in that proud history, both in the opening and the early premise for the show itself. It is, sadly, a premise the show never followed through on.

"Our first warp-5 vessel! We can go so much farther now than ever before! We can explore strange new worlds! Boldly go where no man has gone before... or we can use you as a diplomatic courier vessel. My bad."

That's not entirely fair... I mean, they had some more traditional Trek-style exploration episodes in Season 1, 2, and 4, and they were on course for a more traditional Star Trek formula before the show got canned while Season 5 was still on the drawing board.  The show would presumably have gotten to the Romulan War and the actual founding of the Federation eventually... something which the relaunch novels picked up and actually did a better job with.

Unfortunately the relaunch fell off the wagon soon after, with the whole "Trip Tucker: Secret Agent" schtick, this weird complexity addiction, and one of the most cringeworthy attempts at forced diversity Star Trek has ever had via a transgender recurring character that read like the author stole it from Tumblr.

[azrael]

Regardless, Enterprise's theme sequence made a hell of a lot more sense than Discovery's. Hell, every Star Trek opening theme sequence has made much more sense until Discovery came along.

[JB0]

Hey, stop trying to put this thread back on-topic!

[wm cheng]

7 hours ago, azrael said:

Regardless, Enterprise's theme sequence made a hell of a lot more sense than Discovery's. Hell, every Star Trek opening theme sequence has made much more sense until Discovery came along.

Yes, especially when you see all the Trek openings together in context...

http://nerdist.com/star-trek-discoverys-opening-credits/

 

[Mommar]

Discovery's opening is very creative/pretty.  I'll give it that.  But it's not Star Trek.  Enterprises opening was at least genuinely inspiring.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I watched this and the whole Klingon change is ridiculous and the amount of time focused on the Klingons mindless prattle made me fast forward through it.  The ships all look terrible and does not fit in with the TOS era ships even though NCC-1701 is already an active vessel in the timeline 2245–2285.  So this show is even messing with the Original timeline and why ruin it. 

Edited September 28, 2017 by Hikaru Ichijo SL

[BlackRose]

On 9/28/2017 at 10:45 AM, Mommar said:

Discovery's opening is very creative/pretty.  I'll give it that.  But it's not Star Trek.  Enterprises opening was at least genuinely inspiring.

That sums up my feelings on the entire pilot.  It's real impressive looking with all the CG but it just doesn't feel like Star Trek.

Super annoyed by how CBS is emphasizing Sonequa Martin-Green's race and gender in everything they put out there about it.  It feels a lot like when someone slips up and says something racist or sexist in public and tries to cover it up by saying "I have lots of friends who are _________".  It's really off-message for them to go on and on about her race and gender like that when Star Trek's supposed to be a world where humans are past stuff like racial and gender biases.  

It's giving me this weird vibe like they're trying to make the critical dialogue into "if you don't like this show you're a racist, sexist, or both".  The news outlets they're peddling to keep putting it in weird terms too, like they forgot Star Trek already had a black captain and a woman captain.

[seti88]

yes....I.................enjoyed it on its own merits! I try not to compare series'es to each other as i think each series adds its own personality to the overall.

This ain't no damm borg hive! Opps dont compare...lol 

[Marzan]

Disclaimer: I'm a casual Star Trek fan. Watched the original series and Next Generation and all the films. But I'm no way steeped in Star Trek lore and aware of the liberties taken with its canon.

I enjoyed the first 2 episodes as is. The new Klingon appearances surprised me a bit as did the polished high tech look of the ships and their technology. I don't know why I expected a more austere, less glossy look.

[TangledThorns]

Watched the first episode and agree it's too SJW. The Klingons were the only characters producing testosterone. 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

Watched the first episode and agree it's too SJW. The Klingons were the only characters producing testosterone. 

But they weren't producing sense... just a lot of bluster and loud noises.

[Dynaman]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

But they weren't producing sense... just a lot of bluster and loud noises.

At least that is in character, that pretty much matches how ST has been depicting Klingons since the Start of Next Generation - Star Trek 6 excepted.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Dynaman said:

At least that is in character, that pretty much matches how ST has been depicting Klingons since the Start of Next Generation - Star Trek 6 excepted.

Nah, the Klingons in previous Star Trek shows might've been channeling Brian Blessed circa Blackadder season one with all of their grandiose speeches about honor and battle, but there was always an internal logic to their bluster once their more reserved Soviet Russia allegory ran its course in Star Trek VI: the Undiscovered Country.

Star Trek: Discovery's Klingons don't seem to have any real consistency to their bluster.  It's a lot of impressive-sounding crap, but none of it seems to actually mean anything... especially given that they don't seem to be following any of the established Klingon cultural norms.

[azrael]

After sitting through episode 3...

 

-I'll agree with the critics, I like Saru.
-Nice to see Engineering still has the length-running warp core...I guess.
-Interesting spin on quantum mechanics, but I'm guessing we all know how this will go.
-At least they explain Burnham's reason for being on Discovery. And Discovery's experiment will go "south" and now have the perfect scapegoat.
-I'm still not liking the advancement in tech for a pre-"The Cage" setting.
-Fer-crying out loud, they didn't want to spend a little more money and make a different bridge between the Shenzhou and Discovery???

[Sandman]

The bridges are actually different. They use the same looking materials and styling so they look similar at first glance but they if you compare them side to side, they are quite different.

After watching episode 3 i have to throw up the vague criticism that this just doesn't FEEL like Star Trek. It's hard to vocalize but it's just very off. It feels like someone wrote fanfiction on what they thought was cool and inserted it into ST. Like those people who clamoured for a Section 31 or Black ops series back at the end of voy/ent.

[ZorClone]

The reason it feels so off is because in TOS/TNG/VOY/DS9 Starfleet still resembled a mostly exploratory and scientific endeavor.  But people love explosions so towards the end of TNG/VOY/DS9 Starfleet began to devolve into a more of a military force than anything else with the major season arc steered towards  fighting the Borg, the.. Borg, and then the Dominion in that order.

If you look at all the movies post Wrath they're pretty much action all action dramas with characters that have little to do with their TV counterparts since that's what sells movie tickets.

I'm what you would call a hardcore Trekkie, although I have zero love for TOS.  The JJ era movies piss me off in a lot of ways, but I can still enjoy them for their excellent casting.

Discovery so far is... not as irritating as the JJ-verse, techwise (engineering isn't filmed in a f-ing brewery and they don't contain an entire air force of shuttles), but the writing and characters are really really annoying me.  Except for Cadet Tilly, she's pretty great.

[Scyla]

Summary of the third episode: 

Star Trek Doom:

I'm not sure I like the tone of this series. Much too dark and pessimistic. I thought maybe this wasn't the case after the Captain of the Discovery explained what good can be achieved with this new kind of starship drive but the last scene of the episode has me in doubt.

Also this reveal is one of the main reasons I dislike prequels. We all know that this kind of engine won't be in service for the next generations of starships so we must assume that the mission of the Discovery will fail.

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, Sandman said:

After watching episode 3 i have to throw up the vague criticism that this just doesn't FEEL like Star Trek. It's hard to vocalize but it's just very off. It feels like someone wrote fanfiction on what they thought was cool and inserted it into ST. Like those people who clamoured for a Section 31 or Black ops series back at the end of voy/ent.

Seeing the summaries of the third episode, it's pretty bloody apparent what it feels like... this is Star Trek viewed through the lens of Warhammer 40,000.  Not only are the Klingons taking wardrobe tips from the Dark Eldar, apparently experimental stardrives in Discovery are verging on an unshielded warp jump for mutation value.

Having read the Section 31 novels in the Relaunch novel continuity, I would once have felt sure that no new Star Trek series could ever be as bad or as corny as those... and I am rapidly revising that opinion in the face of Discovery.  

 

 

34 minutes ago, ZorClone said:

The reason it feels so off is because in TOS/TNG/VOY/DS9 Starfleet still resembled a mostly exploratory and scientific endeavor.  But people love explosions so towards the end of TNG/VOY/DS9 Starfleet began to devolve into a more of a military force than anything else with the major season arc steered towards  fighting the Borg, the.. Borg, and then the Dominion in that order.

Even then, Deep Space Nine kept a very anti-war message the entire time they were doing the Dominion War arc and broke it up heavily with more traditional Trek content so the series wouldn't get bogged down in it.  Voyager did the same thing when the audience started to tire of the hostile alien of the week formula and they went for the Borg as a new recurring antagonist.  They kept it light, avoiding confrontation whenever possible, and breaking it up with lots of lighter stories.  They realized their mistake in Enterprise, and the Xindi War arc's poor reception led to them shifting the focus back to more traditional Trek exploration and science-y stuff for the 4th and planned 5th seasons.

Discovery so far seems to be putting on the grimdark as much as possible in the hopes that CG action sequences will cover the pathetically weak writing.

 

 

 

33 minutes ago, Scyla said:

Summary of the third episode: 

 

  Hide contents

 

Star Trek Doom:

I'm not sure I like the tone of this series. Much too dark and pessimistic. I thought maybe this wasn't the case after the Captain of the Discovery explained what good can be achieved with this new kind of starship drive but the last scene of the episode has me in doubt.

Also this reveal is one of the main reasons I dislike prequels. We all know that this kind of engine won't be in service for the next generations of starships so we must assume that the mission of the Discovery will fail.

 

 

's a frakking Dark Eldar warp beast!

[Sandman]

Damn spoiler tags not working...

 

How do you make text hidden?
 

Edited October 2, 2017 by Sandman

[azrael]

1 hour ago, Sandman said:

Damn spoiler tags not working...

How do you make text hidden?
 

Same as before.

[spoiler]
Insert spoiler...
[/spoiler]

[tekering]

15 hours ago, Sandman said:

this just doesn't FEEL like Star Trek.

2 hours ago, Scyla said:

Much too dark and pessimistic.

16 hours ago, azrael said:

I'm still not liking the advancement in tech

On 9/29/2017 at 6:31 AM, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

the whole Klingon change is ridiculous

On 9/26/2017 at 5:44 AM, wm cheng said:

Why attach yourself to Star Trek when you are not going to use any of the Star Trek lore or designs?

You know, all these comments sound mighty familiar...

...except Discovery is WAY better than The Motion Picture.

[Sandman]

5 minutes ago, tekering said:

You know, all these comments sound mighty familiar...

...except Discovery is WAY better than The Motion Picture.

I'd say the opposite actually. I was around when it first came out. I liked it. I liked the changes. I thought the story was interesting. It had a 2001 Space Odessey feeling to it that mostly works. I never heard anyone bitching about it - other than the story being boring. Mind you the internet wasn't a thing back then.

[Dynaman]

Star Trek TMP also takes place years AFTER the original show, not years BEFORE.  So advancements in tech make sense - matching the advancements in tech the actual world went through in that time.  Interestingly I just recently saw some pictures of what the TV show would have looked like- the uniforms were VERY similar to the old TV series Star Trek.

There were two complaints I remember about TMP.  First was that the uniforms looked like Pajamas (the fact that the same uniforms were re-used for extras in Star Trek II was mind boggling when I first read it).  Second was the pacing was way way off with far too many staring at the main viewscreen shots (like that video showing all of those shots run together with porn sound effects thrown in).  All of this is forgiven by the finest model starship EVER to be given the name Enterprise. 

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, tekering said:

You know, all these comments sound mighty familiar......except Discovery is WAY better than The Motion Picture.

Really?  I've never heard anyone say Star Trek: the Motion Picture didn't feel like Star Trek.  I've heard lots of legitimate complaints about the writing, but most of those are because the movie felt like exactly what it was... the script for a Star Trek Phase II pilot stretched so thin to fit the movie's runtime that you could practically see daylight through the plot.  It was a problem exacerbated by the way the movie was edited, and addressed later on with the director's cut.

Considering the complaints you identified, you might be thinking of Star Trek: Enterprise... which was generally lambasted for its crappy writing, disregard for continuity, excessively dark tone and action emphasis, and its technological inconsistencies not only by its viewers but also by the show's creative staff and cast.

Discovery is just proving that the franchise isn't learning from the mistakes that sank Enterprise.

 

1 hour ago, Dynaman said:

There were two complaints I remember about TMP.  First was that the uniforms looked like Pajamas (the fact that the same uniforms were re-used for extras in Star Trek II was mind boggling when I first read it).

IIRC, it wasn't just fan dislike of them that sank the TMP uniforms... the cast apparently found them hideously uncomfortable to wear, particularly while sitting.  The "belt buckle" bit tended to cut into the stomach and groin...

 

1 hour ago, Dynaman said:

Second was the pacing was way way off with far too many staring at the main viewscreen shots (like that video showing all of those shots run together with porn sound effects thrown in).  All of this is forgiven by the finest model starship EVER to be given the name Enterprise. 

Yeah, that was the way they stretched the plot, which had originally been a Phase II concept story written for a ~50 minute runtime.

[Graham]

Watched episode 3 of Discovery on Netflix last night.

I'm actually enjoying it, it's something different to what we've had before.

Although if given the choice, I'd still rather see a series set post TNG/DS9/Voy than one set in the pre-TOS.

[seti88]

Lol there were parts when i tot i was watching Macross...

Spoiler

When captain lorca  explained the spores that bring you anywhere in the universe, i was hearing kawamori-san explain fold bacteria...
Now if folks go var am gonna be mindblown!

 

[wm cheng]

16 hours ago, tekering said:

You know, all these comments sound mighty familiar...

...except Discovery is WAY better than The Motion Picture.

Is this a troll?... I couldn't disagree more. 

 

In fact TMP is one of the most Star Trek like stories/themes than all the other movies.  I must admit that I am one of the few that does enjoy TMP especially the slow drydock starship porn scenes that so many have criticized TMP for. 

 

There's nothing dark, pessimistic or distopian or disfunctional about TMP - sure the Enterprise is lit darker than the 60s TV show, but doesn't dissappear into the shadows like Discovery.

 

Advancement is perfectly fine when it is the "Refit" of the Enterprise and takes place AFTER TOS not a prequel like Discovery.

 

I just don't your opinion   There is just not comparison.

 

OK, the last episode 3 wasn't so bad, it held my interest - the first 2 episodes were a complete mess!  By why is the Discovery interiors so damn dark?!?!  It's like they're working in a nightclub all the time. 

Edited October 3, 2017 by wm cheng

[Seto Kaiba]

40 minutes ago, seti88 said:

Lol there were parts when i tot i was watching Macross...

  Hide contents

When captain lorca  explained the spores that bring you anywhere in the universe, i was hearing kawamori-san explain fold bacteria...
Now if folks go var am gonna be mindblown!

 

Nah, fold bacteria don't do anything like that... they just give you space AIDS and maybe turn you into a subspace ansible.

 

Spoiler

... this "mycelial network" they're banging on about in Discovery's third episode seems to be a poor man's Iconian gateway.  Might even be the same infrastructure used by Iconian gateway systems, just the Iconians don't suck at using it.

 

Very VERY unhappy with this series so far.  This is shaping up to be exactly the same kind of lame, wannabe-grimdark bullcrap as Star Trek: Into Darkness.  They're trying SO GODDAMN HARD to be edgy and cool that it's just cringeworthy... it's like the Section 31 novels featuring Julian Bashir, but without the crucial self-awareness about precisely how stupid and cliche delivering Bond one-liners and ends-justify-the-means speeches are.

One thing is pretty clear at this point... Starfleet, and particularly the crew of the Discovery, are the villains of the piece.  It's not even an ignorant malice like Janeway's destabilization of half the Delta Quadrant in her unhinged rampage back to Earth or some World's Unluckiest Crew bullshit like both Riker's USS Titan and Vaughn's USS Defiant got in the relaunch novels.  Hell, the main character's a paranoid xenophobe who saw no problem at all with assaulting her commanding officer and staging a one-man mutiny because her CO refused to commit a war crime by ordering her ship to launch an unprovoked attack on a foreign power's ships in nominally neutral space.  She also seems to be little troubled by the notion that she started an interstellar war with the Klingon Empire that had claimed over eight thousand lives to date.  If anything, her new boss Captain Malfoy seems to be out to get her looking like the good guy by being an even more obvious villain.  At least Burnham's moral compass is only defective... Lorca's doesn't seem to have been installed at all.  It's like David 8 by way of Garth of Izar, he's a self-proclaimed King who openly believes to be above the law and has earmarked Burnham for great things in his service precisely because she's shown she'll compromise her morals and throw the ethics handbook out the nearest airlock the minute it's convenient for her. 

It's definitely a Star Trek for a new age... an age of hate and fear... and it turns my stomach.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, wm cheng said:

OK, the last episode 3 wasn't so bad, it held my interest - the first 2 episodes were a complete mess!  By why is the Discovery interiors so damn dark?!?!  It's like they're working in a nightclub all the time. 

Maybe they misunderstood when Starfleet Command called them a pack of "raving bloody loonies"... so they decided the ship should be lit like a rave.

 

Spoiler

Yeah, the darker lighting is used to make the sets appear more ominous and dramatic.  Like how the lighting was taken down several levels between the Enterprise-D and the Enterprise-E to show that the new ship was serious business and more dramatic than the literally family-friendly predecessor, or the more ominous changes in lighting in bad alternate timelines like "Yesterday's Enterprise" when Starfleet ships are warships instead of explorers.

The in-universe excuse is probably something to do with Captain Lorca's eye problem, the same thing that required him to do a Bond villain intro for himself.

 

Edited October 3, 2017 by Seto Kaiba

[Mommar]

2 hours ago, wm cheng said:

  I must admit that I am one of the few that does enjoy TMP especially the slow drydock starship porn scenes that so many have criticized TMP for. 

The people who criticize those scenes lack wonder.

[TangledThorns]

TMP is a great film, blew my mind on so many levels when I saw it in the theater as a young boy.

For Star Trek to be great again the producers should make revisit the discovery aspect of the series, pun intended.  I'm tired of the revenge storylines, that got tired after First Contact, which is still a great film btw.

Give me something I've never seen before in a Star Trek film!

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Watched episode 3 and it did redeem the show a bit. I still do not think this is actually takes place in the prime universe. But using spores a propulsion and the speed to the beta quadrant and back seems counter to anything else in Star Trek lore. 

[Sandman]

It's too bad because Discovery is a great name for a ship and a show. But not this show. Having a ship named Discovery on a war show just seems wrong.

Edited October 3, 2017 by Sandman

[Seto Kaiba]

16 hours ago, Hikaru Ichijo SL said:

Watched episode 3 and it did redeem the show a bit. I still do not think this is actually takes place in the prime universe. But using spores a propulsion and the speed to the beta quadrant and back seems counter to anything else in Star Trek lore. 

The proximity of the Beta Quadrant is one of the few things in that episode that doesn't fly in the face of established Star Trek lore.  Kind of a rare "shown the work" moment.

Everybody always forgets the United Federation of Planets straddles the border of the Alpha and Beta quadrants, as do a few of the other major powers like the Klingons and the Romulans... the writers included.  Sulu's Excelsior was on its way back from a three year stint mapping anomalies there when they observed the detonation of Praxis at the start of Star Trek VI, and the informed observer who's quick with the freeze-frame button will note a bunch of major worlds are actually Beta quadrant planets... including Qo'nos. 

 

(The old Star Trek Encyclopedia and some Expanded Universe lore put Vulcan, Andoria, Orion, Rigel, Axanar, Efro Delta, Nausicaa, Ba'ku, Acamar, Yridia, and Zakdorn in the Beta quadrant.  The show's tendency to forget the Beta quadrant gets lampshaded in Star Trek: Titan when someone attempts to give a rousing speech and it ends rather lamely with "But let's remember, people, it was our pure exploration that found the Caeliar and saved the whole damn Alpha Quadrant. And...and Beta. You guys from Beta know what I mean".)

[ZorClone]

I just really hate how unthoughtful and careless the writing is so far.  It's insulting to the thoughtful audience that has faithfully followed Star Trek all these decades.