As I am not American I grew up with socialism being a positive connotation in day to day culture, so much so it’s wild to me that this needed to be veiled in Trek’s past. Star Trek should be as explicit as possible with this. “Hey, you want Utopia? This is how you earn it!”
Where are you if I may ask? And I think it may have been a dictate of Gene Roddenberry to not name which economic system won out, which is kind of a copout. But yeah it's refreshing to see it called what it is finally
I admit I'm having trouble finding any transcript of the primary source. It's supposedly an answer she gave during a local convention and it's been repeated by enough websites citing each other that I don't know which one was the original.
the last few seasons of Discovery have been a bit bogged down by the stuff that has always made it a tough sell as a Trek series: overly ambitious, serialized storylines that aren’t compelling; new characters and environments that don’t impress; plot twists which can be maddening in their lack of logic; big storytelling swings which can be confusing and predictable at once.
Yeah, it's not "underappreciated". It's just not very good for what many of us are expecting. I still haven't gotten through season 3.
I just watched a scene where Michael and Mol were working together, then suddenly Michael decides to attack Mol, then they have a kung fu fight and finally Michael asks Mol stop and says she needs to trust her, as if Michael hadn't just violently assaulted her. The writing is nonsensical.
Unfortunately that is symptomatic of the show as a whole and just one of many problems.
Also the constant deus ex machina, with the characters having a conversations where everyone finishes each others sentences. Its tiresome to watch. I really wanted to like the show but never could.
I know the writers just think of them as elevators, but why are we generating artificial gravity in a turnolift shaft just so we can overcome it with another generated force?
Kinda related, I’ve been saying for years we need more “the gravity plating is out” episodes where everything is floating around, bumping into shit, causing problems. We got one scene in enterprise and that’s it. :/
oh man, when the entire fleat gets stopped in place and it’s a massive problem because everyone went flying and now zero g is making their blood pool badly even with minor injuries… they turned what most shows would’ve shown as a minor inconvenience and showed how awful it would really be.
It's an interesting show, but make sure you've got good sound: I found the accents difficult to parse without it. The series was abruptly terminated, so don't expect a neat ending.
The ending was decent. It ended right where the book series it’s based off of has a 30-year time skip, so it worked out pretty well for them. They have plenty of time to come back to it and still keep continuity with actors too FWIW.
It's an interesting show, but make sure you've got good sound: I found the accents difficult to parse without it. The series was abruptly terminated, so don't expect a neat ending.
Realizing that the Discovery is longer than any of these ships really puts shit into perspective
All it puts into perspective is how much the nu-trek folks (both Disco and JJ-Trek) lost the plot on ship size. It makes no sense that either the Discovery or the Kelvin-timeline Enterprise would be significantly different in size from the TOS Enterprise.
(This doubly pisses me off because I play Star Trek Online, where the devs implemented canon ship sizes and the Kelvin Enterprise stands out as being stupidly out of scale with the rest of the game.)
All it puts into perspective is how much the nu-trek folks (both Disco and JJ-Trek) lost the plot on ship size. It makes no sense that either the Discovery or the Kelvin-timeline Enterprise would be significantly different in size from the TOS Enterprise.
sigh
The Discovery is specifically larger due to the unique propulsion method that they employ. The normal Crossfield-Class was seen otherwise in Strange New Worlds and has significantly shorter nacelles, backing up the theory that the Discovery/Glenn were only as long as they were due to the spore drive.
The Kelvin Enterprise was also specifically designed in response to a random incursion that destroyed one of their vessels. The Narada had been loaded with Romulan/Borg tech by the Tal Shiar as established in a canonical comic prequel that explains what happened to Nero before they ended up going back in time. That Enterprise was also built on Earth as opposed to in space. The technology from the Narada, which was only gleaned through scanning data and debris from the attack, was then used to create the Enterprise.
Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make sense. They’ve given plenty of explanations and I get not liking them. That’s fine. But it does make sense when you actually look at the reasons given.
Also, as a fellow player of Star Trek Online, if you want to complain about ‘stupidly out of scale’ then the Kelvin Enterprise is the LEAST of your concerns. There are so many massively and wildly stupidly sized ships that it makes no damn sense to begin with.
Doesn’t matter. People are still going to get angry because it goes against the trend of “NUTREK BAD AND MAKE NO SENSE”. The fact that the scores have been this close for the entire time proves my point. People would rather blindly hate something than conceded any ground at all and simply just say they don’t like it. There’s a reason I sighed at the start of it. I’m just so tired of hearing this take that isn’t rooted in logic but rooted in opinion. Like I said. If you want to dislike it, that’s fine. If you think the show sucks, that’s fine. I disagree but that’s whatever. It’s opinion and people are allowed to disagree and feel differently. But to attempt to say that a show objectively does not make sense or breaks canon simply because you dislike it or are unaware of the connections? It’s just disingenuous and tiring behavior.
I wasn’t a fan of discovery at first, but by the time Pike and Spock came in it was obvious they had gotten some people involved who cared about the universe. I feel like it has recontextualized TOS, and added a lot of depth to the characters we’ve known for the longest time. And they’ve done a fantastic job of making the shows intelligible to new people, while adding heaps of depth, backstory and context for the rest of us with the simplest things, like Picard holding his flute at the beginning of season 3.
People can completely ignore the new stuff if they like, but I like that they’re taking some risks. The alternative is what we got with the last star wars trilogy. Perfect casting, fantastic acting, excellent world building, and a story that meandered, found the safest route, and ended up not leaving much of its own mark. Or anyway, that was my opinion.
I agree. The first season was rough but I dare anyone to name any show other than Lower Decks or Strange New Worlds (which are insane aberrations that I’m so happy we have) that had a good first couple seasons. It takes most shows some time to find their footing. Discovery was no exception. I’m really enjoying the ride we’ve gotten to take. Has it been bumpy? Yeah. But it’s been a really fun ride showing a side of the Trek universe don’t normally get to see. It always bothers me that people say “Oh this doesn’t get Trek” or “it doesn’t understand Trek” because that seems to be painting Trek itself in a very shallow manner. There’s a lot of depth and complexity to the universe. Sure, most of the shows are explorative and less emotional but that doesn’t mean everyones like that. Lower Decks proved that point as well.
Like I said. People can not like it all they want. I get it. But personally I think it’s a really fun and interesting show with interesting and entertaining takes on the universe we know and love. Also I think the ship is just fucking GORGEOUS.
@Stamets I thought naming the lead engineer after the foremost authority on mushrooms showed a remarkable amount of commitment to the utterly bonkers tech. There’s a ‘anything can happen day” quality to the show that really helped the 60 year old franchise.
Exactly! They knew what they were going for and they committed for the entire run it’s been on. Crazy, crazy tech? Absolutely. But I like it. I’ve always thought mushrooms were kinda cool. This just makes it cooler and Stamets enthusiasm for spores and mycelium is infectious to me.
Also this is totally a minor quibble, but we actually have no fucking clue who the lead Engineer is on the Discovery. Seriously. There was an onscreen error in Season 1 that listed Stamets as the Chief Engineer but he wears a science officers badge. Jett Reno has a line in Season 2 about ‘The Chief’ sending her in to upgrade or shield something in Stamets lab. We’ve also never seen the warp core or even main engineering. Which is frankly fucking insane to me.
@Stamets Huh. I didn’t catch that, probably because I spent most of the first season gobsmacked by what they were doing. Had to pause for a second to confirm if you were actually Paul as I kinda used to know him when I worked at his publisher.
Nah. No relation to the character or the real life mycologist. Just a fan of both but especially of the first real gay representation we’ve gotten in Star Trek. It meant an enormous amount to me. Still does. Another reason I love the show.
Yes. And the characters. They have depth, and it feels like you know them, which makes putting lgbtq and neurodivergent characters on the screen that much better. I understand their motivations, and i’m autistic so that’s a real accomplishment.
I’m not caught up on all the shows, because i don’t always have the energy for the active watching that something like Picard warrants, but they’ve managed to make even something as silly as lower decks have character development, depth, and add a completely different view of starfleet. Like, the whole chest alien conspiracy from TNG isn’t so wild when you see that there’s a wide range of people in starfleet that’s not so obvious from following around their absolute best and brightest.
I mean, I do like so-called “Nu-Trek”, but at the end of the day this is kind of a tail-wagging-the-dog response. You can explain just about anything in lore after the fact, but when the rubber hits the road the real explanation is that someone in a Hollywood design team said “We want it to be BIGGER,” and then left it to the people who cared enough to find a reason why it would be justified.
Far easier to just suspend your disbelief a bit further, I think. Yeah, Discovery is weirdly big. It also flies through space by a man infused with a giant tardigrade’s DNA sending the whole ship from place to place through willpower and a mushroom trip. If you can accept the second one, it kind of feels like the fact that the ship is a larj boye isn’t that much of a stretch.
Your first point is true but that’s true of all Star Trek. Something new comes in that shakes things up and requires some backsplanation to smooth things out. Or they just outright ignore things and move along (see that temp Warp 5 speed restriction in TNG as an example). Considering we’ve gotten some already ridiculous shit throughout Star Trek, I’m with your second point just as strongly. Who cares. We already have ships that have whales on them to have with three-dimensional course plotting. Is ‘the ship being bigger and having classified tech’ that much more of a stretch?
I guess I just fundamentally don’t agree with the need for a “backsplanation”. I am of the camp that I’m totally OK with the Klingons looking different in TMP than in TOS because it wasn’t a 1960s TV show anymore and they wanted the aliens to look more alien, and that’s all the explanation that I need. The Enterprise is different between SNW and its appearance in Discovery because it’s a different show and they wanted to tweak its appearance some to make it more of a “hero” set. Spock and Sarek never mentioned his having an adoptive daughter/sister in spite of being in two series and a half dozen movies because Michael didn’t exist until Discovery and the writers thought it would make for an interesting tie-in.
I have enjoyed the series since TNG in the 80s, and I’d love for it to come true some time in the future. But it’s a TV show, it’s not a history book. It’s fine if there are inconsistencies, none of it is real anyway.
God the Klingon thing was silly. Do we need an explanation as to why the TOS ship had plastic, 1960s themed furniture? Do we need an explanation for improved camera resolution over the years? Why did we need a silly explanation for the improvement in makeup artistry so many decades later? And the explanation doesn’t even work. Genetics don’t work like that. It’s taking themselves too seriously. Either ignore it, or hang a lantern on it with an inside joke once, and be done with it.
The ENT mini-arc “explaining” the difference between Klingons “then” and “now” was absolutely unnecessary, but I do have to admit to finding it cute that the reason why Klingons became smooth-foreheaded instead of bumpy-foreheaded turned out to be a combination of all three of Bashir’s guesses in that scene.
It also flies through space by a man infused with a giant tardigrade’s DNA sending the whole ship from place to place through willpower and a mushroom trip
Is this… is this Dune?
I have not yet watched Star Trek Discovery, so this description just reads like Dune and the good old spice.
I always forget just how large the defiant is. I feel like there is rarely anything close enough in the camera shots to get a good idea of scale. Other than DS9 I mean.
Although when they created DS9 in Star Trek Online, they had to massively scale it up because otherwise it would have gotten lost among all the players’ ships, both by sheer volume and because so many ships in the game are absurdly large.
Same thing happened to Bookers ship from Discovery Season 3 and 4. It can fit in the cargo bay (barely) of the Discovery and yet in the game it’s like a third the size of said Discovery.
I remain slightly miffed about how Dr Pulaski, one of the few characters that received any development in TNG S2, was so hated by some fans that it caused to Diane Muldur to swear off of Trek altogether.
She might not have entirely understood Data to begin with, but she did become better at that later on, a stark contrast to much of the rest of the Federation, which would still be arguing whether he, or his children had personhood, and is the only Starfleet Doctor in RetroTrek to actively take an interest in and engage with her patient’s cultures.
I can’t envision early Dr Crusher taking part in Worf’s Klingon tea ceremony, for example.
Frakes has directed two Orville episodes (so far), and arguably brought his experience over to SNW, as Boims and Mariner were fan[boy|girl]ing about, it had serious “Orville” vibes to it. I don’t think they could have picked a better director.
The bit where Ortegas and Uhura were gushing about the NX-01 crew and suddenly realizing that’s why their guests were gushing was priceless.
“What would come after the dash?”
And both Jack and Tawny crushed it as the live action versions of their characters. (Both were over-the-top, and that was the point).
I wonder if that “Riker!” Gag was improvised and if so, how long it had Frakes (and/or the crew) laughing.
The LD-style intro was chefs kiss perfect. The coda was, likewise, a perfect capstone.
I didn’t realize Frakes directed two of the Orville episodes, but makes a lot of sense. He did an amazing job bringing the charm of The Orville into this episode. RE: the intro…YES!!! I was about to skip it, but so happy I watched it. I loved the space-monster sucking on the ship! It is my favorite part of the LD intro, so happy to see it here.
For me the joke is that there were any Star Trek fans who’d consider anything but torrenting (though I’ll admit ed2k is still not finally dead, and Fopnu is a usable filesharing tool, albeit proprietary).
The funny part is that I have legitimate accounts with Prime, Netflix, Paramount+, Apple and two others, but I still d/l and watch everything on Plex. (though I should probably admit that all the big names I get “free” via other services, like Prime, Tmo, etc).
The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates
It's so true though. I have been learning piano and the price for sheet music is outrageous. I was going to do the right thing and pay for it but everything is a subscription or a book. I'm not buying 10 other songs just for one I really want.
In seconds I had thousands of PDF's at my disposal. I have so much sheet music now I don't have enough ink to print it all out.
There’s a structural problem - it may be beneficial for companies as some coherent entities to provide such a service, but for individuals inside them, like various kinds of sales, management and so on, it’s not.
In every case where such an elusive thing as potential popularity of something conflicts with a less elusive thing like control they have in streaming services, the latter wins. Because what makes its makers rewarded on their job wins.
I liked the “He looks like Tom Paris” back and forth, I’m glad they didn’t do something hokey like he’s Tom Paris’ cousin or something. I liked the flashback showing Mariner as the tag along first year, worked better than just telling us in the previous episode, that flashback probably should have been attached to episode 9.
I kept expecting William Boimler to show up before the end of the season, guess they’re holding onto that thread for next year
I kept expecting William Boimler to show up before the end of the season, guess they’re holding onto that thread for next year
I think it would be pretty funny if they just never picked up that thread again. William Boimler, already presumed dead, joins S31, does ???? because ?????, is never heard from again.
Then again, this show could do a great job riffing off of how counterproductive and ultimately stupid S31 is, in addition to their absurdly twisted and seemingly inconsistent history. So I’d be perfectly happy to see that too.
I adore this episode, especially later on when the SNW crew go fan crazy over the NX-01 crew with those Boimler and Mariner grinning in the background. That and Boim’s Section 31 fast walk
Holy smokes, I can’t believe how awesome that thing was that I just watched. I’m awestruck at the talent it must have taken to pull it off so perfectly.
Finally Una got to do something instead of being completely on the sidelines. The whole ensemble got something to do, except Ortegas who slowly turns into SNW’s Travis Mayweather: that one cast member that is just there physically but doesn’t get anything to do.
My personal highlight was the scene were Spock and Chapel play chess, and he passive-aggressively pushes her to play faster. Very Vulcan.
What irked me: everyone and their mother immediately started calling the First Officer of another Starfleet ship by his first name. That was weird.
Another weird thing was Pike’s promotion to Fleet Captain. We’ve never seen this in Star Trek, particularly not when it’s just two ships on a mission. So I checked the transcript of The Menagerie were Kirk speaks about the one time he met Captain Pike. And there it is:
MENDEZ: You ever met Chris Pike?
KIRK: When he was promoted to Fleet Captain.
SNW’s producers were sneaky with that one. I’m both annoyed and impressed.
My personal highlight was the scene were Spock and Chapel play chess, and he passive-aggressively pushes her to play faster. Very Vulcan.
My favourite scene too. I am glad they only got one scene together this episode to avoid it veering too hard into the soapy relationshipy aspects after last week. But damn those are two well-written, well-acted characters with insane chemistry - they gave them one scene together, playing chess no less, and it stole the whole episode.
The whole ensemble got something to do, except Ortegas who slowly turns into SNW’s Travis Mayweather: that one cast member that is just there physically but doesn’t get anything to do.
I get the feeling the writers don’t really know what to do with Ortegas beyond that she “flies the ship”.
So I checked the transcript of The Menagerie were Kirk speaks about the one time he met Captain Pike.
Well caught!
PIKE: Lieutenant Kirk.
KIRK: That’s right! It’s an honour to meet you, sir. Congratulations on your promotion to Fleet Captain.
I was so focused on Pike’s face since he has met Kirk before. But this is the first time Kirk has met Pike and this is the first thing he says to him. So of course that stands out in his memory in The Menagerie.
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