Discovery and Star Trek

CapnZapp · Oct 23, 2017

Great quotes from a review:

- "The show is explicitly drawing on Trek lore to achieve its goals, and yet every nod to the original series [] just underlines how un-Star Trek this show really is."

- "I can’t appreciate what it does right because I’m routinely distracted by the weird, pointless, or outright bad choices the writers have made. We’re six episodes in, and I’m still getting annoyed at how advanced the technology is for a series that’s ostensibly set ten years before the original Trek."

- "The ship is just a series of rooms, not a place"
- "adding to the impression that there are maybe a dozen people aboard the Discovery, if that. (Everyone else is a hologram. [])"

https://www.avclub.com/another-episode-with-too-much-star-trek-not-enough-dis-1819758431
(review of episode 6 - SPOILERS obvs)

Add to this how the writers feel obliged to use action at every possible time, the movie-shiny surface with no depth, and (worst of all) the insane amount of mumbo-jumbo.

They have actually went ahead and f*cked with every technical limitation there is. Discovery not only has transporters, holodecks, and replicators, they can travel instantly anywhere, and Burnham has the magical ability to connect with Sarek galaxy-wide.

There is no sense of place or time, since there are no limitations. It is limitations that separate "sci fi" from "sci fa", and these writers are hacks that simply don't care.

No, this is written by someone who just maybe has looked at the recent shallow action spectacles of the movies to learn everything they know of the property.

The end is very pretty but ultimately deeply unsatisfying trek, and way more science fantasy than science fiction.

Morrus · Oct 23, 2017

I love it. It's the best Trek has been in a long, long time. It has the atmosphere and some of the aesthetic of Wrath of Khan - by far the best Trek movie or episode of all, and doesn't bore me silly like Enterprise and Voyager did.

I also like that it's a journey. The Starfleet we know and love doesn't really exist yet - it's still a few years away, and we're going to see how we get to that point thorough the eyes of the Discovery. They've already namechecked the Enterprise, too!

It's got its haters, and they're kinda boorishly omnipresent, but I don't care. It's the one show I'm currently waiting for each week right now.

Deset Gled · Oct 23, 2017

As a new sci-fi series, Discovery is decent and worth watching. A little on the slow side, too much exposition, and I could skip every scene that shows the Klingons and not miss a single important thing. But it's got a fun space war plot going on with multiple levels of conflict, flashy special effects, some interesting characters and long term plots that could turn out to be very interesting if handled well.

But when I want to watch a show about a group of scientist-diplomats traveling on the outskirts of the galaxy, exploring strange worlds, meeting aliens, and overcoming exciting and unexpected problems while bantering with a diverse crew that I can relate to and enjoy spending time with, I watch The Orville.

MarkB · Oct 23, 2017

I'm still loving the show. Everything about Burnham trying to track down Sarek through their connection, and learning important things about their relationship in the process, feels absolutely like classic Trek to me. And while Lorca's storyline continues to run along a darker path, the slow unfolding of his backstory is an interesting exploration of how Starfleet's ideals bend under the pressures of war.

Water Bob · Oct 27, 2017

I think I will love the show, too, if I ever get to see it.

But...

Here's something of canon, changed by Discovery. In the time of Kirk, Starfleet did not allow for female Captains (according to the last episode of Season Three, Turnabout Intruder.

Guang · Oct 27, 2017

Cannibalistic Klingons that don't care about honor, a Federation in which people can work together for years and still not cohere into a decent team, and now terrorist Vulcan xenophobes (Whatever happened to IDIC?).

Some of the fan theories might redeem it for me (like the section 31 one, in particular), but I'm no longer willing to watch to see what they want to undermine next. I'll browse reviews to see if section 31, or mirror universe people, or Romulan interference, or what not show up. If they do, I'll give it another try. If not, I'm done with this show. (although the giant worm invader is tempting.

Morrus · Oct 27, 2017

Water Bob said:
I think I will love the show, too, if I ever get to see it.

But...

Here's something of canon, changed by Discovery. In the time of Kirk, Starfleet did not allow for female Captains (according to the last episode of Season Three, Turnabout Intruder.

Ugh. How ugly. Well, if they had such a misogynistic rule, I think we can all be grateful they did the right thing and retconned it away.

Water Bob · Oct 27, 2017

Morrus said:
Ugh. How ugly. Well, if they had such a misogynistic rule, I think we can all be grateful they did the right thing and retconned it away.

Yeah, that was the whole point of that last episode, Turnabout Intruder. One of Kirk's old flames, Janice Lester, is psychotically burned up with jealousy and hatred against Kirk because he can command a starship and she can't. Lester is an archaeologist, and on an alien world, she finds an alien device that allows personality transfers between bodies. She creates an emergency by killing her own staff, which lures the Enterprise to the planet. Lester gets Kirk alone and changes bodies with him using the alien device.

From an RPG perspective the body transfer plot can be GM fodder for an interesting Star Trek game session, if done correctly. Take a player aside and secretly tell him that his character's body has been possessed. Make sure that none of the other players know of this secret agreement between GM and the player of the possessed character. Then, watch to see which side the other players take. Do they believe that the PC has been possessed?

You could even turn this scenario on its ear by setting up the situation, but not having the possession take place--just the claim that it did by a very deranged and psychopathic NPC like Janice Lester.

Flexor the Mighty! · Oct 27, 2017

I'm not sure they disallowed as much as there was a glass ceiling as they say. Of coruse there were women commanders during the Enterprise era and some say it was just a bitter line from a bitter woman that wasn't any kind of truth.

Water Bob · Oct 27, 2017

Flexor the Mighty! said:
I'm not sure they disallowed as much as there was a glass ceiling as they say. Of coruse there were women commanders during the Enterprise era and some say it was just a bitter line from a bitter woman that wasn't any kind of truth.

The line in Turnabout Intruder is, "Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women."

On the surface, that looks pretty plain to me. The other argument is that the line is uttered from deranged psychotic. We have some retconned female captains from Discovery and Enterprise, and Number One is a first officer about Chris Pike's Enterprise. Maybe there's no hard rule but there is a bit of a glass ceiling. Even in later eras, it doesn't seem that the split between male and female Captains is 50%. Even in TNG's time period, the male captains seem to outnumber the female captains.

I guess the comment could be construed from that point of view.