981 replies to this topic

[s8film40]

We know what the outcome of the war is, Starfleet doesnt lose.

But this ship and crew are an unknown. We have no idea what their fate is, or how this story will unfold. Its a completely new story, and well see how it ultimately fits into Treks canon when its over.

Yeah its kind of like seasons 2 and 3 of Enterprise. We know the overall outcome just not the specifics of the crew were following. We know that what theyre doing is important, but we know how it all works out in the end. Enterprise had a few good episodes hidden away in that time period, but it definitely wasnt their best. Same is true of this Im sure theres potential for a few good stories in the middle of what Discovery is doing. Im just not really interested in that. If Enterprise hadnt already pulled me in with season one or had stretched the Xindi thing out further they wouldve lost me as well.

[Daysleeper]

Yeah, ship and crew are unknown. But the ship is ugly and the crew consists of unlikeable characters. And I agree, the conflict/war between Federation and "Klingons" is the laziest approach to tell a compelling story within the Star Trek universe.

[1701D]

I think its really the formula of Discovery that doesnt really work for what Star Trek IS.

What is Star Trek though? Is it a show about a specific thing? Is it a show about war? Or is it a show that is defined by the driving principles of a single crew that seeks out strange new worlds...

To me Star Trek is the very best of humanity going out there and exploring and figuring things out. Its through the aliens we find the moral dilemmas and issues we face on our planet today. Humanity though, has made it through our petty differences - in a way it is humanity that is more alien in Star Trek than the aliens; thats actually quite a cool concept.

Thats not to say that Discovery doesnt have very Star Trek elements to it; it does and to say that it isnt Star Trek is a bit short sighted - its not like the Star Treks weve come to love, its a wacky and weird version of Star Trek but theres some big ideas, big themes and big concepts being posed in this show. I think though theyve forgone or discarded some of the defining ideas Gene Roddenberry had and thats to the shows detriment and when season 2 does come, I really hope they address the importance and idealism of Roddenberrys vision wholesale, its a vision that really needs to be reintroduced to a new generation rather than this idea of making Star Trek appealing by it being driven by war or saving earth, because I think if Discovery continues on this war/dark/conflict driven path then it looses what Star Trek was always about and becomes something else entirely.

There needs to be a way in which this crew start working together to defeat Lorca, to bring the Klingons to the table rather than the battlefield, to truly evolve from this rather dystopian Starship with this funky drive system, into the starfleet we know in TOS and TNG and even the later spin off series. It has to show the evolution into Gene Roddenberrys philosophy and vision of humanity in the future.

[VulcanFanatic]

Yeah, ship and crew are unknown. But the ship is ugly and the crew consists of unlikeable characters. And I agree, the conflict/war between Federation and "Klingons" is the laziest approach to tell a compelling story within the Star Trek universe.

Exactly!
And to an earlier point, I have no problem with conflict within a story, but conflict shouldn't be the focus all the time. The crew shouldn't be in conflict with each other,and we shouldn't be focusing on war. They are telling a 23rd century story but using ,21st century ideals. Crew conflict in Star Trek was usually the result of an alien influence of some kind and not the norm.

[Gothneo]

How is this any different then 3 seasons of war with the dominion visa vi DS9? Or the basic idea of the the Borg war VOY was in its last Few seasons ?

There are certainly compelling war time stories to be told and I thought DS9 put a great spin on several

[MisterPL]

(With the utter lack of imagination demonstrated here, I'm glad certain people aren't in charge of "real Star Trek.")

 

It's entirely possible to have different kinds of conflict within the same story. 

[s8film40]

How is this any different then 3 seasons of war with the dominion visa vi DS9? Or the basic idea of the the Borg war VOY was in its last Few seasons ?

There are certainly compelling war time stories to be told and I thought DS9 put a great spin on several

Add in season 2-3 of Enterprise and you've listed all my least favorite periods of Star Trek.

[1701D]

How is this any different then 3 seasons of war with the dominion visa vi DS9? Or the basic idea of the the Borg war VOY was in its last Few seasons ?

There are certainly compelling war time stories to be told and I thought DS9 put a great spin on several

Discovery is interesting but features a lot of storytelling as convenient narrative writing. Theres no room for idiocy on Star Trek but Discovery has had its idiotic moments. Landry is an example; it was such a dumb way for her to die, she knew this thing had killed many Klingons, BatLeths didnt harm it... its kind of rushed, perhaps lazy writing.

I guess its different because those shows dont revolve around war, there was always a certain joy to watching Star Trek and even DS9 had episodes that were funny, joyous. Even through its darkest times, it was fun! Garak making a joke, or Nog or Quark or OBrian and Bashir, Worf and Martok... Star Trek was fun! it took a subject that had nothing to do with war, and focus on a baseball grudge! Or it went about a topical moral or ethical issue, like Far Beyond the Stars. DS9 also had the benefit of it being a sequel to TNG. lets face it though, fans didnt exactly warm to the idea of DS9 until recently and even now, its still not as popular as TOS and TNG.

No the model to have followed with Discovery is the same model Roddenberry followed when he did TNG... the same but different and relevant to the 80s. The tech has to be based on plausible useage and not used to push the plot forward. Like Khan beaming from his ship to Kronos, it makes the transporter magical not plausible.

Discovery perhaps to some, should of been the same but relevant to 2017 and todays world. Tight, complex, intelligent but fun, sometimes light hearted and a show about a crew, a captain and the unknown frontiers of space. I think too much has gone into trying to reinvent, reimagine, reboot, revive this franchise and really Star Trek: Discovery just needed to be a series set beyond all of those Star Trek series that have come before it and to do something in the same vein as TNG as TNG was in the same vein as TOS.

What really appeals to me about Star Trek is that it presented the very best of humanity and whilst its cool to have conflict about ethics and morality, its a whole new thing when Stamets is clearly insubordinate towards Lorca. Its cool that characters reel from events that effect them in previous episodes and that theres not just a giant reset button like so many Star Trek shows (Kirk not being effected by Edith Keelers death in City on the Edge If Forever or Voyager being pristine each week without starbases or whatever to keep that ship running) so its great to see that there are consequences to actions in each of the episodes that ripple throughout the series, but I still think that the best way to tell a Star Trek series is by having one crew - a new crew - on board an Enterprise and just going out there, suffering from consequences of their actions but allowing the writers to have the freedom to tell different kinds of morality plays each week, so that each week our best of the best starfleet heroes are in different situations. Thats a cool, a fun and an enjoyable, aspirational way of doing Star Trek and perhaps you could have an underlying arc throughout the whole series that would keep you engaged with the show on a weekly basis.

I dont want to keep going on, this is a cool series, Im interested to see what happens. I wouldnt be surprised if we saw the mirror universe feature heavily in this show. Is Lorca the mirror Lorca? Is Lorca a Klingon? Is he fighting for the Klingons?

I can see the hope in this series. Georgio, Burnham, Saru, Stamets and Tilly all represent great Star Trek characters and I expect that those characters will prevail - even Lorell and Voq I think are great Trek characters.

[VulcanFanatic]

(With the utter lack of imagination demonstrated here, I'm glad certain people aren't in charge of "real Star Trek.")
 
It's entirely possible to have different kinds of conflict within the same story. 

If the folks running Discovery HAD any imagination they would have come up with a compelling Star Trek story that doesn't depend on a war theme. It's certainly easier to use a war back drop to frame the story than to come up with an imaginative story of beings exploring the Galaxy in an exploration vessel that might run into a conflict here and there but for the most part exploring and observing new life and new civilizations. Sounds familiar? There used to be a show that followed that premise.

[Gothneo]

Add in season 2-3 of Enterprise and you've listed all my least favorite periods of Star Trek.

At least that would be consistent ... so it's a good thing CBS put this behind the paywall so you don't have to watch it !!!

[MisterPL]

 I wouldnt be surprised if we saw the mirror universe feature heavily in this show. 

 

 

Define "heavily." More than one episode?

 

http://sciencefictio...irror-universe/

[Alteran195]

I'm really hoping for more of a In a Mirror Darkly, or Mirror Mirror type of episode instead of what they did in DS9. 

 

DS9 used the Mirror Universe way to much. I hated those episodes more than some of the Ferengi ones. Even more than Profit and Lace. 

 

Give me an excellent, one time episode (or two if its more two parter style) in the Mirror Universe and never go back again. 

[1701D]

 
 
Define "heavily." More than one episode?
 
http://sciencefictio...irror-universe/

More than one episode and I believe that there are perhaps mirror universe characters (Lorca) on the prime universe Discovery. Maybe theywere recruited by section 31 knowing that prime timeline starfleet were too peaceful, in an effort to beat the Klingons in the war?

[MisterPL]

I suppose that's possible:

 

http://sciencefictio...trek-discovery/

[Gothneo]

What episodes like Mirror Mirror or Enemy Within tell me is not that humans of the federation are more evolved... but perhaps more civil. The federation and star fleet are supposed to be better because they choose to make it so... but these episodes and many others highlight that it's a constant struggle. Right now the crew seems to be engaging in that struggle and I have hopes that they will have a positive outcome.

[Alex]

How is this any different then 3 seasons of war with the dominion visa vi DS9? Or the basic idea of the the Borg war VOY was in its last Few seasons ?

There are certainly compelling war time stories to be told and I thought DS9 put a great spin on several

It was different with VGR, DS9, and even ENT. VGR didn't make war/conflict with the Borg its central storyline. Sure, the conflict existed, but it was interspersed among other stories. ENT S3 was less about fighting a war than it was about preventing one from breaking loose. DS9 told a war story, but it didn't lead off with it, and it was decidedly different from every other Trek up to that point; it also was airing in parallel to TNG and VGR, so it wasn't as if it was the only Trek available, and more importantly, the only Trek available on the small screen for the first time in over a decade. DS9 also was cynnical more than it was pessimistic like DSC seems to be. DS9 knew when to be optimistic, even during a gruesome war, DSC hasn't shown that it can do that, at least not yet.
 
 

Yeah, ship and crew are unknown. But the ship is ugly and the crew consists of unlikeable characters. And I agree, the conflict/war between Federation and "Klingons" is the laziest approach to tell a compelling story within the Star Trek universe.

This sort of sums up my gripe with this show. I'm paying for it, I'm really trying to like it, but I'm starting to feel like the dog that doesn't like the dog food, and slapping a new label on it isn't going to fix the problem. The ship is ugly, in part because it flies in the face of the expected aesthetic for the era its set in, and in part because it has that excessive aztek patterning that screams "evil Federation startship" in the cheapest way possible.

 

The war between the Federation and "Klingons" (good choice with the air quotes by the way,) is a lazy plot device that's been poorly written. What's worse, it's not just poor writing, but sloppy writing since it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense that the Klingons were so divided just ten years before TOS, and by the time Kirk's around they're a serious threat. I could see this working if it were 20 years before Kirk, and maybe 80 years since Archer had last encountered one on the NX-01, but a fractured Klingon Empire that's decimated by a war shouldn't rebuild in just ten years.

 

Then there's the crew of the Discovery and for the most part, the Shenzhou. Commander Saru is one of the few characters I actually like. Georgiou trusted Michael even after multiple lapses in her judgement, and only started to question her judgement after a nerve pinch. Michael seemed so unhinged that I can't figure out how she made the rank of Commander in the premiere unless Sarek pulled the same kind of political strings that got us Captain John Harriman of the Enterprise–B. Over on the U.S.S. Discovery we had Landry who should have been handed a red shirt, and also seemed too stupid for the position she held. (The writers really made her seem like an idiot with how she died too.) We have a doctor who has no excuse for a bedside manner worse than a poorly programmed EMH, and a scientist/engineer who seems like a giant asshole, although he's moderately tolerable when you realize that his concern is his work being weaponized. I don't have strong feelings about Lorca yet, but it feels like the writers haven't figured out what to do with him just yet either. The rest of the crew is largely forgettable though. I find the characters that stand out to be obnoxious, which makes it hard for me to route for them or sympathize with them. It's one thing to ignore the "Roddenberry Rule," it's another to make your characters a collective of jackasses. I want to like this show, I'm trying to give it a chance, but the Federation characters are so irritating that I almost want to route for the "Klingons."

[Gothneo]

sure could have fooled me about ENT and DS9. The xindi war and temporal Cold War were introduced right away and sure seemed like a long running theme to me. Like wise the the war with the dominion was pretty much front and center for 4 seasons. I'm pretty sure we can find more than 15 episodes in each case that focuses pretty much on just the war.

We're only 4 episodes in... we have no idea what the final outcome will be and it sure could have a flan optimistic ending.

I'm not saying any of this because I think this is some of the best trek we've ever gotten .... I remain quite skeptaical.. but I'm just trying to put it all into some perspective, enjoy the show for. What it is and then judge it properly with the benefit of full hindsight.

[Alteran195]

I've read that the end of the season should leave us feeling positive and optimistic, so I'm hopeful that will be the case. 

 

But for whatever reason fans watch a couple episodes and decide something is bad because it feels different at first.  

 

I just hope it doesn't result in a cancellation again.

[VulcanFanatic]

Enterprise tried the war theme too to try and get it's ratings up but it bombed too. The veteran fanbase didn't like Enterprise either for many of the same reasons they don't like Discovery. I think it it's harder to write good stories that don't revolve around war and they feel like war stories full of action appeal to people with little attention span so it's a win win for them. But for Star Trek fans that want more from a Star Trek series than just more war and action, it's not going to do.

[VulcanFanatic]

DS9's ratings we're dropping and the 4th season Klingon war was another attempt to shore up ratings. Borg conflict in Voyager in later seasons was for the same reasons. It's lazy Star Trek. Star Trek movies have always been the occasional action fest while Star Trek on the small screen was better at the exploration and thought provoking stories.