Discovery Trailer

[Jester David]

But, again, is the drama "cheap and forced"? Doesn't seem so to me. These are pretty believable characters so far. Granted, we haven't had much time to really dig into the characters, but, nothing seems "cheap and forced" yet.

I have no idea. I've only seen the first two episodes.

The first had a good example as both Michael and her captain were correct: the Klingons would respond best to a show of strength but Starfleet doesn't fire first. Both sides have merit and neither side is obviously wrong, and it comes down to a judgement call.
There's some good conflict and that's a solid way of driving tension throughout an episode.
What followed was pretty silly and that conflict was resolved fairly quickly.

Having not seen episodes 3-5, I'm not sure if there's similar conflict where both sides have equal merit, and one isn't a strawman designed to create tension or one side is dependant on deception or a lack of trust.

 

[Morrus]

Wow. Best episode yet! Plus Mudd!

So they don’t have a tardigrade any more but they do have its DNA. And a human can take its place.

I did notice they called the Klingon ship a D7 and first, and then a Bird of Prey later. Those are two different types of ship. We didn’t really get a good look at it.

Felt very Trekky with the moral quandary. Lorca is still very pragmatic though. Klingon prison is brutal!

This show is getting better and better. It has its flaws, for sure, but overall it’s a must-see for me.

 

[Hussar]

Yup, agree with Morrus on this. Very solid episode. Nice introduction of Mudd, and IIRC, we'll be seeing more of him. "I loved a woman too much " indeed. Holy crap, I just futzed about on the Memory Alpha wiki to read up a bit more about Mudd. His page is already updated with this episode's information. Damn, someone was on the ball.

Yeah, solid episode. The characters continue to grow into themselves.

Morrus, wasn't the D7 what captured Lorca, but, the Prison ship is a different one? That was my understanding. Granted, they had Klingon Raiders when escaping, and that's the first I've seen those. Cool.

 

[Jester David]

Okay, @Hussar asked about forced drama.
I watched the first 20 minutes of episode 3 and saw little but.

Everyone blames Michael for starting the war. Which is BS because she was in the brig when the Klingons attacked. And they had a pretty damn good idea of the motive: that the enemy captain viewed himself as the "new Klingon messiah". As they used those exact words.
It strains credulity.

Plus, calling the first mutineer in Starfleet seems like a stretch.
It's amusing as the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise committed mutiny a half-dozen times. The captain just forgave them, while captain Yeoh forgot to give the pardon before beaming over like in every other Trek show.

Then we have the fellow prisoners, who seem very much like modern criminals in a world without want or need or hunger. So why is one so gleeful at killing Andorians?
And the Federation sending them to work hard labor instead of rehabilitating sounds pretty 19th Century and not very Utopian 23rd Century.
And immediately on the Discovery the head of security calls them "garbage" and "animals" in the span of a couple minutes. Very enlightened there.

The prisoners start a fight with Michael, trying to kill her in a room full of military officers. Why? Because reasons.
And the startfleet officer seeing the fight about to start is motioned to sit down and potentially let someone be hurt or killed.

The final scene I saw involves Saru telling Michael he thinks she's dangerous. Why? Again, no reason. Drama! And then blames her for letting their captain be killed in an even 2-on-2 fight with Klingons. Could he *really* have done better? If he was so damn concerned, why didn't he join them on the away mission?

 

[Morrus]

I think people see what they want to see. If you're hatewatching a show, you're going to see everything negatively.

 

[Jester David]

Thinking on the first two episodes (now that I've started the third) I'm vaguely reminded of the first season of the rebooted Doctor Who. That season seemed to take pains to answer previously unanswered questions and look at the assumed tropes of the show in new ways.
Why does the Doctor travel with companions? How come they never questioned the craziness of running off with someone they just met? What happens when they return home, probably to the wrong time? What happens when you deliberately change the past? What does everyone speak English? What happens if the Doctor took a bad companion? What happens if a companion tried to take advantage of what they saw? Why does no one call the Doctor on the lives left in his wake? What happens if the Doctor has to actually talk to the villain he's defeated and condemned to death? What happens if, after the Doctor swans off, things aren't restored and made right?

This is taking a much less dense approach to "what if-ing" Star Trek.
Discovery is taking the common episode theme where the crew mutinies for the right reason, saves the day, and is redeemed and all charges dropped and then mashing it with one of those episodes where there's the threat of a war, and the crew enact some bold yet dangerous plan that will conveniently end the war.
And then it's having things not work out well. It's the darkest timeline. The save-the-day plan fails and the officer isn't forgiven of their crime, and the war starts despite everyone's efforts.
(In many ways it's what would happen in a RPG Trek game where the PCs have a great plan, and go to enact it and then roll balls the entire climax, causing the entire campaign to change gears.)

It'd be interesting if the rest of the series dealt with such tropes, twisting expectations on Trek and flipping the result of expected stories.

 

[Mallus]

Everyone blames Michael for starting the war. Which is BS because she was in the brig when the Klingons attacked.

We -- the audience -- know she was in the brig. What does that have to do with the public version of the story? We can see from everyone else's reaction the official story is highly unfavorable to Burnham.

It strains credulity.

That the popular, publicly-known version of events differ from the actual truth? Since you won't be watching more of Discovery, might I recommend Ken Burn's recent Vietnam documentary?

Plus, calling the first mutineer in Starfleet seems like a stretch.

That's her *reputation*. It may not, in fact, be strictly, literally true (I mean, truly fictionally true).

Then we have the fellow prisoners, who seem very much like modern criminals in a world without want or need or hunger.

Modern criminals like Cyrano Jones and Harcourt Fenton Mudd III? Also, the TOS-era Federation is a bit less uniformly utopic than TNG-era and beyond. Note the importance of the new space-grain the tribbles used as Tribble Chow.

And the Federation sending them to work hard labor instead of rehabilitating sounds pretty 19th Century and not very Utopian 23rd Century.

That was put in the specific context of needing dilithium miners as part of the war effort, wasn't it? Besides, Federation rehabilitation wasn't all it was cracked up to be; cf. "The Dagger of the Mind", "Whom Gods Destroy".

And immediately on the Discovery the head of security calls them "garbage" and "animals" in the span of a couple minutes. Very enlightened there.

Angry Tory Foster was not a nice person. But really, completely in-line with TOS-era characters. Or real people, for that matter.

The prisoners start a fight with Michael, trying to kill her in a room full of military officers. Why? Because reasons.

Well the proximate reason was they blamed Burhman for the war. And, no one was stopping them...

And the startfleet officer seeing the fight about to start is motioned to sit down and potentially let someone be hurt or killed.

Lorca was testing Burnham. That's made explicit by the end of the episode.

The final scene I saw involves Saru telling Michael he thinks she's dangerous. Why? Again, no reason.

Saru feels betrayed by a friend, or at least a colleague he once had a friendly rivalry & good working relationship with (note the ease of their interaction in the pilot). He's trying to be hurtful. Also, it is fair to say Burnham's trouble -- but so was JTK in his day...

 

[Jester David]

I think people see what they want to see. If you're hatewatching a show, you're going to see everything negatively.

I wasn't impressed by the first two but I didn't hate. (My wife did. Which is why I can't watch at home.)

I was just unimpressed by the sheer amount of constant negativity in the first half (or third?) of the episode. Especially after *just* posting about the Roddenberry rule.
The timing was entirely coincidental. I literally just found out this morning that the Canadian sci-if channel has an iOS app that does streaming, so I could watch at the gym on the treadmill.

So far, this episode has had four things: people being being a dick to Michael for little reason; Lost style mysteries (black badges. OooOOOooo. Black alert. Crazy gravity. Saru being hesitant to confirm the ship is a science vessel.); Michael being all moody, depressed, and generally unsympathetic; and tribble noises.
And darkly lit shots. As I'm watching on an iPad (in a brightly lit room) and trying not to kill my battery for the day I'm conservative with my power. And when it hits those darkly moody scenes I can't see squat.

The glory shot of the Discovery when the shuttle gets moved inside was cool. The music is nice. While I wish the uniforms had more of a nod to the original series, the metallic highlights are cool and look eye catching. (Ranks remain impossible to see in the screen.)

Maybe the second half is pure awesome. I dunno. I'll find out Wednesday I guess...

 

[Jester David]

That the popular, publicly-known version of events differ from the actual truth? Since you won't be watching more of Discovery, might I recommend Ken Burn's recent Vietnam documentary?

Only halfway through the episode and I dislike leaving things unfinished. Haven't decided if I'll be watching more. I'll see how it wraps up and *maybe* give it one more. Sometimes shows do take some time.
(I was hard on the Battestar Galactica reboot TV movie but the series really changed my mind.)

Sure, it makes sense that there would be rumours and misinformation regarding the "first mutineer on Starfleet" being tried and imprisoned immediately after the war with the Klingons broke out.
But that's not how it was presented on the screen. It's justifying events on the show. The audience shouldn't be required to invent a backstory for a TV show to make sense or characters motives to seem reasonable.

And you'd think Starfleet would be pretty quick to jump in and point out that not only did the Klingons fire first but also attacked the admiralty during a ceasefire. They really wouldn't one of their officers - even a disgraced one - being thought of as starting the war. That makes them look bad.

Modern criminals like Cyrano Jones and Harcourt Fenton Mudd III? Also, the TOS-era Federation is a bit less utopic than TNG-era and beyond. Witness the importance of the new space-grain the tribbles used as Tribble Chow.

Opportunist con men are a far cry from a boasting murderer gleefully recounting violence on Andorians. And not remote with a phaser. He know their temperature: hands-on violence was implied.

And it doesn't get a pass because it's a prequel. Enterprise was a prequel as well, and while it still had some growing human ugliness (anti-alien racism) it presented Earth as being free of hunger and poverty and war. This is a full century after that.

That was put in the specific context of needing dilithium miners as part of the war effort, wasn't it. Besides, Federation rehabilitation wasn't all it was cracked up to be; cf. "The Dagger of the Mind", "Whom Gods Destroy".

Six months into the war and they're already resorting to slave labour?

The quoted episodes prove my point. In both, they emphasise the Federation's focus on rehabilitation and associate mental illness with remaining criminal behaviour. In Dagger of the Mind a new treatment fails causing a story. The whole point of that story is that the Federation and humanity wanted to help criminals and get them back in society. Meanwhile, Whom Gods Destroy posits the singular asylum for the largely incurable, whose occupants are a dozen or so residents.

Well the proximate reason was they blamed Burhman for the war.

Which only one of them cared about.
But, seriously, it was trying to commit first degree murder in a room effectively full of police officers. It's probably the stupidest thing one could do if one ever hopes to get out of jail.
"Grrr… because of you I'm going to mine rocks on an asteroid! So Imma gonna kill you in front of two dozen armed witnesses so I can spend three times as long in the mines!"

Lorca was testing Burnham. That's made explicit by the end of the episode.

Great test.
One, how did he know the prisoners would start anything? Two, how did he know they wouldn't just shiv her in the back? Or grab a phaser? Vulcan martial arts don't do much to an energy beam.

"Whoops, the amoral criminals didn't announce their attack and now she's dead. I guess she failed the test."

Angry Tory Foster was not a nice person. But really, completely in-line with TOS-era characters. Or real people, for that matter.

Saru feels betrayed by a friend, or at least a colleague he once had a friendly rivalry & good working relationship with (note the ease of their interaction in the pilot). He's trying to be hurtful.

Which is kinda the damn point!
Roddenberry envisioned a better future. Where people were good and did the right thing, even when it was hard. When people had moved beyond the pettiness and hate that rules so much of our lives. Star Trek was about a better future. A hopeful future. One where humanity not only managed to survive the horrors of the Cold War but moved to the stars.

So far this isn't that. It's literally the opposite, with people being mean and spiteful with no redeeming qualities.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I really would keep watch on that Tribble in Lorca's office now, that escape was too easy. (Unfortunately, easy escapes like that are a staple in Star Trek, so it's difficult to say if it wasn't just Starfleet's finest at work here.)

Sure, it makes sense that there would be rumours and misinformation regarding the "first mutineer on Starfleet" being tried and imprisoned immediately after the war with the Klingons broke out.
But that's not how it was presented on the screen. It's justifying events on the show. The audience shouldn't be required to invent a backstory for a TV show to make sense or characters motives to seem reasonable.

If you heard "American Officer convicted for mutiny aboard the USS General Ford in the Pacific Sea. Incidents between the General Ford and the Chinese navy, we're now officially at war with China", would you assume, "Oh, I guess this officer was just trying to stop a war"?

No, you would think there is probably not just a random correlalation, but assume a cause & effect. And the truth is that in the Battle of the Binary Stars, we could definitely say there wasn't. As viewers, we have access to the Klingon point of view, and we can figure: "Nah, probably nothing could stop the war." But even that isn't actually true. Just because T'Kuvma wanted to start a war doesn't mean the other houses would automatically follow him into it - they might decide that he's overestimating the Federation threat or their policies, and if they had simply opened fire, maybe they would have really stopped. Or maybe it would just another way to confirm their danger. Who knows. We also don't know what would have happened if Burnham would have stayed on the Starfleet doctrine and not incapacitate her Captain for a minute, and instead discussed constructively what to do.

What Starfleet however can actually be certain about is that Micheal Burnham violated Starfleet rules, attacked a superior officer, and commited munity. That's definitly something she can be convicted on, and there is no sign of extenuating circumstances like illegal orders given to her, or she saved someone's life.

And what everyone in Starfleet and in the Federation knows is that a Starfleet officer mutineered, during a delicate diplomatic situation, and the situation escalated into a full scale war. It just doesn't look good, and if something like this happened in the real world, you can bet people would put a blame on Micheal Burnham. But don't forget, it's not just Burnham that gets the blame. We see with civilians like Harry Mudd, that Starfleet also gets a blame. But of course within Starfleet, Starfleet doesn't blame itself, because they didn't want a war either. Everyone involved gets some of the blame, but the mutineer is the one most suspicious.