Jump to content


Photo

Star Trek: Discovery. Series talk and discussion


  • Please log in to reply
981 replies to this topic

#941 Alteran195

Alteran195

    Their ACTION FIGURES, not dolls!!

  • Members
  • 3,461 posts
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Minnesota

Posted 11 January 2021 - 11:03 PM

They wont make sense of the huge turbo lift cavern, its been there since the start and weve seen it multiple times before this. Its probably my biggest issue with the show. No one working on the show seems to understand the interior size of the ships.

#942 MisterPL

MisterPL

    Yes the Troi figures hair worries me.

  • Members
  • 940 posts
  • Gender:Male

Posted 12 January 2021 - 01:08 PM

Well, it is a show about

 

S P A C E . . .

 

:D 



#943 MisterPL

MisterPL

    Yes the Troi figures hair worries me.

  • Members
  • 940 posts
  • Gender:Male

Posted 13 January 2021 - 09:38 AM

Now that I think about it, Discovery probably got the same kind of upgrade that Enterprise got. Remember when it went from 23 decks to 78 in The Final Frontier?

 

I'm not sure about the new uniforms. They've got a TMP/Space:1999 vibe.



#944 Whirlygig

Whirlygig

    Dances with Toys

  • Members
  • 1,431 posts

Posted 13 January 2021 - 02:59 PM

 

TNG had Q. TOS had Trelane. Heck, the franchise started with Gary Mitchell. Dumb magic is nothing new to Star Trek. Welcome to the franchise.  B) 
 

I'm wondering how the holo recognizes Gray. The implications there are pretty significant. "Hey, there's tech that can essentially revive the dead! How fun!"  :unsure: (And it appears to be a lot easier than using a Genesis wave and a transplanted katra.)

 

Every previous Trek series knew how to tell good stories without magic in them, even if at times they resorted to it within standalone "sci-fi concept of the week" episodes that acted largely in isolation from each other.

 

This Trek series has thus far hinged everything on magic, from "spore drives" to "control" to "Su'kal", on a show where each entire season is meant to be one cohesive story.  Each season just adds one more magical thing to the mix so now we had all 3 of those at once.  Discovery never feels in jeopardy at all, because it has deus ex machinas out the wazoo.  It's as if they first outline each episode by spinning a wheel and whether it lands on spore drive, the sphere data, or magic Kelpien sets up the resolution to each act and then they reverse engineer a situation for that.  There's a wild card spot on the wheel as well which they usually go with "connection to Spock" on.  (I just loved how they make huge dramatic moments out of Stamets being critical to spore drive operation, even within the same story, ejecting him off the ship, only to later just nonchalantly throw out there "oh by the way, uh, Book can do it too...yeah...with surprising precision after never having done it before in his life under a high pressure situation".)

 

We are not going to see any "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS" moments (or a host of other memorable, completely non-magic-based ones from Trek history) on Discovery, ever.  It does not slow down from magic and whatever else it seems to think plotting is long enough for such pursuits.

 

 

As far as the whole "we can manifest an entire actual person from one symbiont's memories of its time connected to the nervous system of that person", sorry, have I not thrown up in my mouth enough times yet for them?  They want more?



#945 MisterPL

MisterPL

    Yes the Troi figures hair worries me.

  • Members
  • 940 posts
  • Gender:Male

Posted 13 January 2021 - 03:45 PM

I disagree about the "magic" but I know how you feel. I got pretty tired of "stray tachyons" being 1701-D's arch enemy. (Or Q showing up on every TNG-era series at least once.)

 

Just keep in mind that it took 135 episodes before TNG got to "Chain of Command" and "THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!" Discovery is still in what would be every other Trek's second season, not its sixth.  ;)

As for the "connection to Spock," given that the show's main character is his sister, you may want to manage your expectations. 

 

:spock2:



#946 Alteran195

Alteran195

    Their ACTION FIGURES, not dolls!!

  • Members
  • 3,461 posts
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Minnesota

Posted 13 January 2021 - 06:53 PM

How is the spore drive or control magic? The spore drive is just another subspace layer used for FTL travel.

Dilithium is just a magic rock that makes FTL travel possible, must hate that too I guess?

Control was just an ai trying to gain sentience. Is every other movie or tv show with that same premise also magic?

Youre acting like Discoverys story choices are so different than past Trek series, when they arent.

#947 Whirlygig

Whirlygig

    Dances with Toys

  • Members
  • 1,431 posts

Posted 14 January 2021 - 01:38 PM

MisterPL, your last statement is reflective of the entire problem.  They started off the gate in lazy autopilot mode by choosing to do that with the main character.  So it's not surprising they'll never get out of that mode.  They knew/know no other way.  You go ahead and keep waiting for that moment of Discovery -- it ain't coming, mark my words.

 

Alteran...

 

Subspace is magic.  Not based at all on actual science.  Surprisingly, warp drive at least is.  Spore drive is like subspace.  Magic.  And completely bonkers that something like that exists and no other show ever mentioned it or anything remotely similar to it.  And that it somehow involves gigantic tardigrades with vicious teeth and claws.  And crazy realms where somehow whatever happened to Culber happened (I honestly couldn't tell you what happened to him, it was so unclear to me)...

 

I apologize.  I am conflating "sphere" with "control".  As a side effect of their breakneck pacing of everything ever on DIS, I often end up blurring concepts together like that later on.  It would seem the entire purpose of season 2 was to get Discovery into the distant future.  Why?  Plot-wise, to get the sphere data away from control, I guess?  Do I have that right?  Either way, now the "sphere" is their magic answer for anything.  It knows all and sees all and you simply can't argue that it doesn't, can you?  Magic!

 

Interestingly this made me remember that I was very confused about Detmer's "arc" this season....The way she was acting so weird at the beginning of the season, I figured, oh...some part of control somehow made it into her implant or something and now she's a sleeper agent for control and this storyline is going to continue on...  Apparently I was wrong...for now.

 

Yeah, great, you can tell me that Trek made similar story choices here and there in the past.  What the problem is here is that Discovery is a relative FIREHOSE of those weak devices.  You may say TNG was a firehose itself, but when I say relative firehose, what I mean is, if TNG is a firehose of normal proportion, DIS is like if you took 100 TNG firehoses and sprayed them all at once, continually, the entire time.



#948 MisterPL

MisterPL

    Yes the Troi figures hair worries me.

  • Members
  • 940 posts
  • Gender:Male

Posted 16 January 2021 - 07:07 PM

This is interesting...

https://www.startrek...discoverys-burn

 

:D



#949 Whirlygig

Whirlygig

    Dances with Toys

  • Members
  • 1,431 posts

Posted 18 January 2021 - 09:49 AM

Technobabble is still technobabble even if a PhD is writing it.  Going to need to get that peer reviewed...   :P



#950 MisterPL

MisterPL

    Yes the Troi figures hair worries me.

  • Members
  • 940 posts
  • Gender:Male

Posted 18 January 2021 - 08:34 PM

Two PhD's. One in Astrophysics and the other in Ecology & Evolution. 

I'm giving them a pass given my background's in Commercial Art and Filmmaking. 

Someone really needs to explain all that S P A C E outside of the turbolifts, though. 

 

And Gray's getting a personal holo transmitter, right? Wait... how could he leave the holo to look outside? Was he within a certain threshold? Did the holo project him beyond itself for some reason?

 

I need a PhD.



#951 Alteran195

Alteran195

    Their ACTION FIGURES, not dolls!!

  • Members
  • 3,461 posts
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Minnesota

Posted 18 January 2021 - 11:18 PM

There were holo projectors outside of the actual holo deck, plus Grey was still standing inside all those holographic cubes, so there were emitters where they were standing.

Plus its a 31st century ship, it isnt a stretch to assume there are holo emitters everywhere.

As for bigger on the inside, it doesnt explain the pre season 3, but can work for season 3.
https://youtu.be/isR5_LQYar4

I dont like it regardless.

#952 MisterPL

MisterPL

    Yes the Troi figures hair worries me.

  • Members
  • 940 posts
  • Gender:Male

Posted 19 January 2021 - 09:04 AM

Cool. I'll accept it, if only because it proves things like this have existed in the franchise well before Discovery.

 

Like it or not, these showrunners seem to be doing their homework. Still, I'd love to see a scene where someone from the 23rd century crew says, "Sorry. I still can't get used to things being bigger on the inside. It's so Doctor Who."



#953 Alteran195

Alteran195

    Their ACTION FIGURES, not dolls!!

  • Members
  • 3,461 posts
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Minnesota

Posted 19 January 2021 - 04:44 PM

Good god no direct Doctor Who reference please. Saying bigger on the inside is good enough. 

 

This show since the beginning has been crammed full of references and easter eggs to the greater Star Trek universe, it's disingenuous to say the people making it don't know anything about Star Trek history. 



#954 Whirlygig

Whirlygig

    Dances with Toys

  • Members
  • 1,431 posts

Posted 20 January 2021 - 12:06 PM

Two PhD's. One in Astrophysics and the other in Ecology & Evolution. 

I'm giving them a pass given my background's in Commercial Art and Filmmaking. 

 

...As long as you realize, they are hired to make up BS that sounds scientific based on what they know.  You do, right?  They talked a lot about subspace in there, with one key sentence being that Star Trek subspace works entirely differently from any current scientific concept that could be considered similar to it...you saw that, right?  Everything after that point, based upon it, is imagination, i.e. magic, which they honestly didn't need to pay two PhDs to pull out their butts.

 

It also remains to be seen why this was the particular reason for the burn that the actual writers came up with and then forced them to write a pseudo-science basis for...I don't see why there couldn't have been a less hokey reason that still served all their story goals.

 

Anyway, I don't have a PhD, but I did study engineering, which improves one's pseudo-science detector significantly.

 

 

It's disingenuous to say the people making it don't know anything about Star Trek history. 

 

Also disingenuous is making that statement as if anyone in the room has said as much when they have not...or are you complaining about things you've been reading elsewhere?  Since you brought it up, I think they know or have access to plenty of Star Trek history, it's not hard anymore what with memory-alpha and all...  but perhaps knowing it and applying it skillfully are also two different things.



#955 MisterPL

MisterPL

    Yes the Troi figures hair worries me.

  • Members
  • 940 posts
  • Gender:Male

Posted 20 January 2021 - 01:59 PM

 

...As long as you realize, they are hired to make up BS that sounds scientific based on what they know. 

 

As long as you realize this is science-fiction. You do know what science-fiction is, right?  :P

 

 

I don't see why there couldn't have been a less hokey reason that still served all their story goals.

 

What were "all their story goals" and how would you suggest they be made "less hokey"? As a creative, I'm genuinely interested to get an engineer's input.



#956 Whirlygig

Whirlygig

    Dances with Toys

  • Members
  • 1,431 posts

Posted 28 January 2021 - 12:23 PM

As long as you realize this is science-fiction. You do know what science-fiction is, right?  :P

 

 

What were "all their story goals" and how would you suggest they be made "less hokey"? As a creative, I'm genuinely interested to get an engineer's input.

 

Are you sure it's science fiction?  Is it, or isn't it?  Because if I start trying to tell you it is, I suspect you'll start telling me no, it's not, it never has been, and if I start trying to tell you it isn't, you'll start telling me that PhDs said it was.  So make your case before you get out your paintbrush to try and paint me into another corner in this circular room.

 

Is there a difference between a creative and an engineer?  Maybe between a good creative and a bad engineer.  But I'm a good one and good engineers are creative.  In fact I have amateur experience in writing, directing, producing and wanted to pursue that as a career myself, but I had to pick one or the other and that's how fates are made.

 

Their story goals toward the end appear to have been:

- Further develop Saru's character (apparently to get him off the show or out of the way for Burnham to take over)

- Finish the tale of how Discovery's strappy crew could come to the future and magically solve the problem that decimated the Federation for a century all within a few episodes

- Promote Burnham to captain

I could go on but those are the major ones.

 

You don't need to blame the entire decimation of the Federation on Saru's species to develop his character.  You could maybe develop *all* of their characters.  What if they all were responsible for the burn?  What if their travel to the future caused it?  What if they seem destined for failure no matter what problem they try to solve but the point is that they don't give up?  What if they had to grapple with that, all of them, instead of just Saru?  What if this problem were big enough that it took multiple seasons to resolve?  What if Burnham *didn't* somehow get promoted for the exact same kind of reckless/arrogant decisions that have long kept her from it?  What if there were actual consequences to actions?  There are infinite ways it could have been less hokey.  They don't care.  They want to pump out another season.  These aren't creatives, they are cogs in a CBS machine at this point.  Gene had a vision, that makes a creative.  It seems even Berman, Moore, etc., had a degree of a vision.  At this point the only vision is "MOAR TREKKISH STUFF".



#957 MisterPL

MisterPL

    Yes the Troi figures hair worries me.

  • Members
  • 940 posts
  • Gender:Male

Posted 31 January 2021 - 08:04 PM

Star Trek is largely considered to be science-fiction and the fact that I've already asserted as such should tell you I agree. If the showrunners on Discovery felt otherwise they wouldn't be consulting scientists. Even so, that category hasn't precluded writers from doing some truly outrageous stuff throughout the entire history of the franchise, stuff that some might argue to be magical.

 

Gene would absolutely love Discovery. He'd love that it's not being neutered by standards and practices of broadcast television, the lowest common denominator in the medium. His vision was filtered by NBC immediately after he shot "The Cage." He proved to be creatively bankrupt with TMP and was sidelined, leading to TWOK, the gold standard of Trek films. Even when he launched TNG, it only got better the less involved he was. The most critically acclaimed series was the most anti-Trek; DS9.

 

My point being that Gene's vision was limited and undermined a very long time ago, almost at Trek's inception. What fans gush over is the work of many others. They credit it to Gene but even the episodes that Gene oversaw had the crew magically solve problems in a single episode. (Not that the devastation left by The Burn has been solved on Discovery. The final episode made it clear there's quite a bit of rebuilding to be done.)

 

I don't see Saru as the only character who was developed. Adira and Gray certainly got some screen time for a pair of newcomers. The rest of the crew, particularly Detmer, were shown to struggle through the emotional trauma of their one-way trip to the distant, uncertain future. And then there's Georgiou's arc coming to a close so she can be sent to her spinoff.

 

While making their time travel the cause of The Burn might seem like an obvious direction, Star Trek gets enough grief for playing with time. The solution might then be as simple as going back to fix it. Every problem could be solved that way. That's not as creative as what they came up with, in my opinion. I guess we'll see how creative they can get when the Section 31 series debuts.

 

I do understand your frustration with the amount of time it took to discover the source of The Burn. I had similar issues with Voyager. First, I felt VOY was unnecessary and that it simply should have been a continuation of TNG. Let Star Trek be about the voyages fo the starship Enterprise. Shake up the crew as needed when the cast gets too expensive or wants out. Sure, do a season-long "Lost in Space" arc that writes out characters, promotes returning veterans, and introduces new crew members. There's no reason to set it aboard any other vessel. Keep moving forward.

 

But they did what they did (because movies) and I watched because it still managed to be entertaining. However, the series finale was disappointing. I had hoped they'd get Voyager and its crew home midway through the season in time to explore how the characters handled being reintegrated back into the Federation. After all, not all were originally Starfleet. After spending all that time exploring unknown space with no contact from home, it would have been interesting to explore the characters after their respective return to see how or even if they fit in.

 

I'd love to see Moore come back. I enjoyed his work on DS9 as well as his take on Battlestar Galactica. I'm not sure if he'd be interested in Discovery so much as a new series of his own design but I wouldn't mind if he stepped in for a story arc to "DS9/BSG" Disco. I just don't think it's necessary given the obvious success of the show.



#958 Whirlygig

Whirlygig

    Dances with Toys

  • Members
  • 1,431 posts

Posted 28 December 2021 - 10:05 AM

So I just stopped back in almost a year after the last post to say what hot garbage this new season is, even worse than any before... and... I am a bit surprised to find nothing but crickets for A YEAR lol... If Disco is successful then I wonder with whom as it doesn't seem to be with patrons of this forum...

Remember how a good episode of TNG could be like a masterpiece you could just watch over and over and take new appreciation for each time and told a timeless tale with a clear beginning, middle, and end all while seeming to be part of a much larger universe and story, with characters you felt you knew and would actually want as your family and friends?

Well that's gone now, in exchange for disposa-trek.

Good lord I really hope Strange New Worlds can fix it.

I REALLY hate the way Disco thinks it can strongly develop on top of things it so badly mishandled in the first place. This season is trying to turn Stamets and Culber into experts on "loss" and "difficult times" because of a dumb, nonsensical, complete cop out thing the writers did to them in the first season. They think if they repeat this stuff enough to us we will start remembering it like something other than a complete dramatic failure. I seriously am very tired of that being the only thing those two characters can ever talk or think about. It isn't just with those two, either, same thing going on with Saru, Burnham (and now of course Book, who I still have no idea why this character exists and is now permanent)... The one person who maybe had some believable development (still debatable) they just wrote off the show... Give these people some damn room to be more than what was in your two sentence character break down from the pilot pitch ffs. They can't though...because the idiotic season long "epic" arcs they keep coming up with won't allow a more intimate focus on literally anything.

#959 Alteran195

Alteran195

    Their ACTION FIGURES, not dolls!!

  • Members
  • 3,461 posts
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Minnesota

Posted 30 December 2021 - 08:56 PM

Surprising to hear someone say this has been the worst season, so far Ive felt this has been the best and most Trek season theyve done.

#960 Whirlygig

Whirlygig

    Dances with Toys

  • Members
  • 1,431 posts

Posted 03 January 2022 - 08:21 PM

Clearly they are trying. Clearly I was supposed to think "oh boy, that episode was just like Galileo 7, Trek is back baby!" ... or "oh wow this story about a repentant prisoner and justice and shiz, wow, moral dilemma, brings back memories, love em Trek!"

Except these episodes were like bargain basement versions of the actual thing they are trying to emulate and wholly redundant.




1 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users