Star Trek Discovery not getting any better I fear.

[Ryujin]

Of course they shouldn’t use fifty years old sets!!!

But that doesn’t mean the design aesthetic shouldn’t be similar. Which later episodes of Discovery seem to do quite well, updating the classic bridge better than the movies did. The revamped bridge was AMAZING.

Had they should similar care updating the Klingons or designing the Discovery’s bridge to not being generic A.F. a lot more people would walked into the show with more open eyes.

They showed up the potential of a prequel series set in the 2250s with characters we LIKE. But that’s not the show we’re getting. We get more Discovery with it’s cast on antagonistic unlikable s set in the far future where the writers don’t have to include any Star Trek in their Star Trek Show. And then the planned Section 31 spin-off starring Space Hitler

50 year old sets. Jeez...
That’s such a disingenuous argument. Rather than actually countering arguments on the terrible writing or Borg Cube sized plot holes so you have to pull out that old BS gem to knock down and then claim victory in the debate.

Enterprise, for all of its missteps, managed to have ship sets that were at once more advanced and less advanced than TOS. It can be done, with a little thought about the design.

 

[Zardnaar]

It’s probably telling that following the big explosive season finale and huge status quo change... what most people are calling for is a Pikerprise series.

Well if you are a fan of the actor who played Pike check out Hell on Wheels. 1 its good, 2 it also stars Colm Meany in it.

Pike and Phillipa have kinda stolen the show though.

 

[Hussar]

I’d point out that there’s a reason no one is calling for the next season of Discovery.

We already have it. Season three is already green lit.

People are calling for Pikerprise because we don’t have that.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Speaking of Spock and TOS relative to what we saw on Discovery.

It looks like this season explains why the Feds don't have AI handling everything.

However, knowing what Spock knows from the end of Disco, when Dr. Daystrom shows up with the M5 computer to do everything on the Enterprise, wouldn't he have more objection or concern? Heck, he should be paranoid if some fragment or record of Control's code was obtained by the Daystrom institute, it's Terminator: Genisys Planet all over again.

The project is somewhat different. M5 was not a project for operational planning. This could have been a major factor in Control - he knew too much and had too great responsibilities and power.
M5 was an attempt to merely automate a single ship. Since Control already could do this with the Section 31 ships, it is possible that the technological background was quite different to limit M5 more, so that Spock saw a possibility of it to work.
However, the Enterprise might have been chosen as a test specifically because Spock (and other crew members left from the Pike era) was familiar with the dangers of AI.

 

[Hussar]

The project is somewhat different. M5 was not a project for operational planning. This could have been a major factor in Control - he knew too much and had too great responsibilities and power.
M5 was an attempt to merely automate a single ship. Since Control already could do this with the Section 31 ships, it is possible that the technological background was quite different to limit M5 more, so that Spock saw a possibility of it to work.
However, the Enterprise might have been chosen as a test specifically because Spock (and other crew members left from the Pike era) was familiar with the dangers of AI.

Shame on you sir. That's not how this game is played. You must react with righteous indignation to any perceived inconsistencies in the canon by posting lengthy screeds about how the writers have no respect for the past, couldn't write their way out of a paper bag and smell badly as well.

Being reasonable and coming up with plausible explanations? You are not allowed to do that.

 

[Richards]

Being reasonable and coming up with plausible explanations? You are not allowed to do that.

But that's how Marvel's "No-Prizes" work.

Johnathan

 

[Jester David]

Watched the finale. Because I need to "finish" things.

I was amused by Philippa Georgiou's defeat of Control. Because I've been repeatedly referring to her as "Space Hitler" this whole season. Cause she is. Being the former leader of a fascist state responsible for innumerable deaths and the genocide of several people.
And then she beats Control by locking him in a "gas chamber".

Also, watching the show awkwardly try and explain why no one ever mentions Discovery, the Spore Drive, and Michael Burnham again was super awkward. Especially as we don't really NEED a reason why Spock wouldn't mention his sister. Because he also never talked about his brother. (Which just becomes more weird, as you'd think Sybok would have appeared at least once in the childhood scenes. Or been mentioned once. They could have done some interesting stuff, where it's Michael's influence that makes him emotional.)


I'm a little surprised by the praise the final battle got. It was basically SFX porn. Shot after shot of myriad lasers filling the screen but nothing really happening. Innumerable explosions outside the hull of Discovery and Enterprise, but no real sign of it having an impact on the hulls of the ship. Because there were ridiculous numbers of tiny fighters, it was impossible to track anything, and there was never really any sense of scale, or how badly the opponents were doing. If they were suffering fighter losses or not.
That whole battle could have been much more effective had they not turned it into Battlestar Galactica with needless fighter wings piloted by faceless mooks (literally, as we never see any) and just had three or four Section 31 ships against Discovery and Enterprise, so you could get a sense of the scope and damage. While we get a continual rundown of the damage and shield status on the hero ships, we never get told anything of their opponents. And there's so much going on, you can't tell if any of them are exploding or not.


So the season is over. Oh man... soooooo many plot holes.

There were several episodes of "We can't delete the sphere data! The data won't let itself be destroyed!" But that's problematic as there are so many ways to blow up a starship.
The data is in the computer core: go there with a hand phaser and blow it up. Fill the interiour of the ship with photons and remote detonate. Overload the warp core. Fly the ship into a sun.
That's the show in a nutshell. The plot says X but the the writers can't be bothered to really justify it, so they try two simple things and give up. Everyone becomes really stupid. Like a campaign on the rails, where nothing the PCs do will have any impact.

Then there was the time limit, as Leyland was getting nearer and nearer. Which, again, is terrible plotting. Because the Discovery can spore jump 51,000 light years (oh, to say, New Eden) and leisurely charge the time device during the 150 years it would take Control to arrive. Or, y'know, just spore jump the Sphere Data into deep space beyond the galactic barrier where Control can't reach it.

Plus... how was Control defeated exactly? It operated multiple people before, puppeting Leland and the other officer. And it was in the computer of the Section 31 ship before it animated Leland. Why would it transfer all of itself into Leland and let itself die with him?
Why wouldn't it have made full copies in all the Section 31 ships as well as a few remote back-up locations?


The final episode also provided the perfect example of how the show fails to capture the tone of Star Trek.
Everyone is running around engineering building the new time suit. They're replicating away and being absolute jackasses to each other. They're sniping at each other, insulting each other, and generally being super mean.
Seriously?!
These aren't high schoolers preparing a parade float. These are trained military officers and members of an elite organization. They should be demonstrating some degree of professionalism rather than taking pet shots. Every single person in that scene needed to be written up for disciplinary action.

 

[Jester David]

I doubt I'll watch season 3 of Discovery.
I gave it two chances. And while it improved in a lot of ways on season 2, the writers just don't seem to know their Star Trek and the plotting and characterization is just terrible. It's a terribly, terribly planned show. It was excusable in the first season, with all the chaos behind the scenes and the showrunner being fired. But this season was a muddled mess of ideas. Just endless concepts thrown wholesale at a wall to see what sticks.

Plus, the series is jumping 800 years farther ahead than Nemesis and far beyond anything we've seen. Which feels like an excuse to pay even less attention to the canon. It's dropping any pretenses of trying to be a Trek series.

Having Discovery be the far future Trek show in name might be fine. It gets to keep its fans and still do what it's doing, while the Picard series can appeal to fans of the shared universe era of the '90s. But after the mess that was this season, my expectations aren't high.
Plus, it's not like Discovery will stay in the future. Georgiou needs to come back for the upcoming Section 31 series, likely staring Ash Tyler.

--edit--

Since I need to get it out, I'll explain what iI mean by "terribly, terribly planned show".

Let's stop and actually LOOK at the story and plot of Discovery and evaluating it as a series.



The first season is about a man from a Mirror Universe who is pretending to be his Good aligned doppelganger. And going completely undetected for months despite a radical shift in behaviour, likely not being able to guess any of his doubles passwords, and an absence of all Starfleet procedure and protocol despite being a captain.
He's trying to get back home and has decided the best way is to partner with the doppelganger of a scientist he has a passing relationship with, who is creating a new drive system. Despite the drive not working, only being theoretical, and having no known connection to the mirror universe, the evil mirror captain believes the spore drive can get him home.

He gets the drive working and instead of immediately seizing control and going home he pauses to half win a war. Despite this, he really wants to get back to the universe where he's Public Enemy number one, because if he can get himself arrested and sent to a pain chamber for torture (rather than being immediately executed by a fickle, unpredictable empress) there's a chance he can escape and rally an army. Assuming his co-conspirators haven't been executed in the intervening months.


Meanwhile, this is all told from the perspective of a starfleet officer who committed mutiny and was locked away before the Klingons started a war on the Federation. A war that said officer is blamed for, despite being in the brig when the firing started.
Because, despite all the Mirror Universe stuff going on, the real story is about the war with the Klingons, which Starfleet is badly losing.


Season two is all about an evil AI (because is there any other kind?) taking control of Starfleet's black ops division because it plans on wiping out all intelligent life in the galaxy. To do so it needs data from a giant alien sphere.... for reasons. Because despite being able to impersonate Starfleet officers, replicate itself, and turn entire crews into nanite powered zombies it needs the sphere data to win.

But this story doesn't really start until nine episodes into the season.


Prior to that, the first two thirds of the season is about a series of signals that Starfleet declares a major emergency for no real reason.
(Yeah, Spock received a vision of the signals and the end of all life, but that was prior to anyone seeing the signals and no one really believed him.)

Meanwhile, the signals are tied to the appearance of a Red Angel that everyone immediately believes is from the future given the advanced technology at display. But really it's twenty year old technology that Discovery could build in about five hours. And no one from Section 31 mentions that the Red Angel is their design for several weeks.
But even following the revelation of Control, everyone pauses to capture the Red Angel at great risk because the fate of Starfleet is at risk, instead of actually doing anything about Control. Because the Red Angel might be a threat… for no real reason.



In both cases, there's a lot going on that is largely unrelated and actually gets in the way of the story of the season.

The big Mirror Universe arc in season one just puts the brakes on the Klingon War arc for a quarter of the season. And negated the story arc of the PTSD captain by making him comically evil instead of traumatized and tortured.

This season has even more going on. Tilly's imaginary friend. Saru learning everything he knows is a lie. A dying giant all-knowing planet-being. Then added to that is the giant red herring of the signals and red angel with time travel. Stamets and his dead/undead husband. But all that is really irrelevant to the story of Control and Section 31 going rogue. It feels like they had two unrelated story ideas for both seasons and rather than trying to find a way to make them mirror each other and run in parallel they just kinda smashed them together.


The season could have been a lot tighter had they dropped the time travel angle. (And angel.)
They could have focused on Discovery working with Section 31 for side missions while the fleet was being rebuilt, unknowingly gathering elements Control needed to become sentient.
And given the last third of the season is about resurrected corpses animated by nanites, couldn't Hugh Culber have been an early test, having him be a villain instead of magical spore clone? With the impetus to find a way to "cure" him and thus save him.


I'm not trying to say people can't like the series. It's big and grandiose and pretty. There's a lot of fancy explosions and big special effects. There's a lot of spectacle.

It's okay to like bad shows. I love Legends of Tomorrow, which is a super dumb show. And I continue to have a fondness for trash like Xena: Warrior Princess. Or the shallow violence-porn (and actual porn porn) of Game of Thrones.
But be honest and don't kid yourself that the show is "good".


Discovery is poorly written trash with a budget. They threw all their money into big special effect scenes and then likely had fumble a way to connect the random plot.


There's so much murkiness in the plot.

Why did the captured Red Angel have to be Burnham's mother? Wouldn't it have been easier to just have it be future Burnham, giving them knowledge that they fail and thus breaking the loop?
Why did the Red Angel appear to adult Spock, driving him mad?
How did Starfleet know about the seven signals? They all appeared slowly over the season and for a purpose. How did they know about all 7 at the start? Why could they not locate them ahead of time?
What were the Red Signals? How did the suit make them?
Why did the Enterprise stop working at the beginning of the season while investing the signal?
Why did Gabriel Burnham save people from WW3 to move them to Terra Nova? How? (Ostensibly to have a safe habour in the future... but how does that help her?)
If Gabriel Burnham could travel back to the 2050s to save people, why not erase Control when it was first programed? Insert a virus or backdoor in its early days.
How did Control know about the Sphere data? What did it hope to gain from the Sphere that it didn't already possess?

 

[Aeson]

I didn't think it warrants it's own thread. The new Picard series will be distributed globally by Amazon not Netflix.

 

[Zardnaar]

Apparently Netflix paid a lot for season one, less for season 2 and now doesn't want it.

Started watching Voyager, finding it hard but loved DS9. STD was hard to watch as well so mixed bag for me as I don't consider myself a Trekkie. Voyager's idiot alien cook annoys me