The Star Trek Thread

[Halie Satanus]

Discovery - Season 2.

Ep 1. 'Brother' : Okay. Introducing Pike as a character, foreshadowing the main plot for the series, taking the focus off Burnham.

Ep 2. New Eden: The best Star Trek episode I've seen since 'Jean Luc' was captain.

[HannibalExMachina]

directed by jonathan frakes no less. burnham even got his lines about WW3 from first contact.

[Sar1n]

First episode was absolutely terrible, the only two good points being the foul mouthed (at least for ST) science officer and that frigate's chief engineer. A minor bonus point for playing the redshirt trope as red herring. But plot was terrible and the pseudoscientific technobabble even worse.

Second was okay, but I find their push for "girl power" really annoying. Saru is just delivering his pseudomotivational speeches, chief engineer just gets plugged in now and then and Pike isn't as much deciding things as being pushed along until some "big guy" thing needs doing, like jumping on an overloading phaser. Everything is either Burnham or Tilly with their occassional female sidekicks.

[Halie Satanus]

directed by jonathan frakes no less. burnham even got his lines about WW3 from first contact.

I also liked Pike's little nod (foreshadow) to Kirk with the Shakespeare quote...

@Sar1n, all standard fare for Star Trek...

[Sar1n]

@Sar1n, all standard fare for Star Trek...

Correction, all standard fare for Discovery. But no other ST treated science, distance and time that bad.

[HannibalExMachina]

you havent seen voyager or enterprise, eh? dont worry, youll get over the notion that girls in your treehouse are yucky.

[Sar1n]

you havent seen voyager or enterprise, eh? dont worry, youll get over the notion that girls in your treehouse are yucky.

I have, and though the worst cases were close...it wasn't standard to be that bad. I can't recall any case where they casually switched between metric and imeprial units, for example.

[HannibalExMachina]

voyager had very few good episode. enterprise was shite except the last season. first ses TNG was crap. and you complain about technobabble and metric. thats not a criticism, thats a nitpick.

[Sar1n]

voyager had very few good episode. enterprise was shite except the last season. first ses TNG was crap. and you complain about technobabble and metric. thats not a criticism, thats a nitpick.

It's been pretty much traditional that first two seasons of any ST series are subpar compared to the rest. But Discovery is crap even compared to those. Plot is absolutely awful so far. Nothing original, and they keep shoehorning in the old characters...Spock, Pike,...even Burnham wasn't really original character to begin with.

[HannibalExMachina]

"i dont like thing, so i have to tell you" posts are really something ill never understand

look buddy, you can dislike a thing, no need to defend yourself. but if you want to critique, "thing bad" really doesnt cut it.

but burnham being unoriginal is a new one, care to elaborate?

[Sar1n]

"i dont like thing, so i have to tell you" posts are really something ill never understand

look buddy, you can dislike a thing, no need to defend yourself. but if you want to critique, "thing bad" really doesnt cut it.

but burnham being unoriginal is a new one, care to elaborate?

Want the details? Let me see...the plot is riddled with plotholes like Passchendaele in 1917. They never say why are those signals important and why is Federation chasing them this way. I can't recall if those pods appeared in S1 or if they're another one of on the spot invented things...the spore drive, IMO one of worst plot devices ever, is suddenly, arbitrarily, cleared to use again, and works without a problem. Everything revolves either around Burnham or Tilly, everyone else is just background. They're reusing old characters and bending them out of shape-Sarek, Spock,...Pike seems alright so far, but FFS couldn't they invent a new, original character?

Burnham...vulcan-ish character exploring humanity, including his own...oh yeah, where did we see it before? Oh right...and it's bad enough that she seems to have absorbed Wesley Crusher somewhere late in S1....

[PikeStance]

Moving to China meant the my Netflix subscription came to an end. Good news bad news. Season 1 was horrific to sit through and based on the reviews season 3 sounds worse. Enterprise was disappointing but at least it felt like Star Trek. I actually liked the characters and felt like if the show went in a better direction (away from the temporal war) it had a real chance. Voyager wasn’t bad either. Like Enterprise it had some good episodes and generally better story arcs.
Discovery lacks everything. I really do not care about any of the characters at all and the show did little to make me care. This something writers miss these days. The plot could be poor but if the characters are developed and appealing people tend to ignore it. With Discovery, we noticed everything behind the curtain.
Sonetimes I feel like those producing were not fans for “x” reasons and felt like if they makes certain changes, in their mind, the show would be more appealing to other people. The result was alienation of the fan base. It reminds me when MLS first started and they internet implemented rules to appeal to “American” fans. It too alienated the core “soccer” fans. In the end MLS relented and the league is better for it. I hope producers learn faster than MLS did.

[Sar1n]

Discovery lacks everything. I really do not care about any of the characters at all and the show did little to make me care. This something writers miss these days. The plot could be poor but if the characters are developed and appealing people tend to ignore it. With Discovery, we noticed everything behind the curtain.
Sonetimes I feel like those producing were not fans for “x” reasons and felt like if they makes certain changes, in their mind, the show would be more appealing to other people. The result was alienation of the fan base. It reminds me when MLS first started and they internet implemented rules to appeal to “American” fans. It too alienated the core “soccer” fans. In the end MLS relented and the league is better for it. I hope producers learn faster than MLS did.

Yeah. 4 was another awful episode....to the point where the two...well, aggressively American characters that flashed through the episode felt actually refreshing and better than the entire main cast.

Edit: I think this episode had some best conversation pieces in the Discovery so far:

"I could fix that analogy with duct tape, too."

"What, you're talking about trepanation?"
"Drilling a hole in her skull? Yeah."
"Are you gonna fix her up with duct tape after?"
"Maybe."

At this point, the best episode that Discovery could whip up would be just a 40 minute dialogue between Reno and Number One.

[Condottiere 40K]

[Vladyvid]

After Discovery is cancelled, do you guys think Alex Kurtzman will up Picard show aswell?

Also, how do you feel about the Section 31 show? Are we already living in an alternate reality where the Roddenberry vision of the future is no longer valid , so much so that a new Star Trek show (section 31) will feature a Hitler type figure in its ranks? Talking about the Emperor(ess) from the alternate universe.

Gene Roddenberry must be turning in his grave.

[Condottiere 40K]

I hear a third season is planned; whether this or the Michele Yeoh spin off will happen, who knows?

As has been pointed out, the timeline has splintered due to the requirement of a twenty five percent difference between the current crop of shows, and what has happened previously; the Prime Timeline may not actually be prime, but actually another parallel dimension.

[SturmChurro]

Finally finished my full run of all the major series and movies that I started way back in 2016 with Enterprise this morning. Highly enjoyed Enterprise, was sad to see it go the way it did. The series finale was awful.

Started Star Trek: Discovery because I was wanting more Trek, and the first episode was AWFUL as well. To me, if it wasn't for the production value, I would have thought it was a bad fanfiction. The camera angles, and over lens flare was jarring. The bridge on the Shenzhou was way too clean and empty for my taste, and the main character Michael was terrible - I think it's the actress more than anything else. Maybe the cast gets better as the series gets more grounded. I have heard season 2 was decent. I couldn't stand what they did to Klingons, it was bad. Like really, really bad. I don't even understand how these Klingons are canon.

If it's supposed to be SJW or whatever, I don't see why it's needed. There have been many strong female leads in past Treks. So far however, I haven't seen too much of that. I'll keep watching.

[EDIT] Looks like they have a bunch of token characters/extras.

I hear a third season is planned; whether this or the Michele Yeoh spin off will happen, who knows?

As has been pointed out, the timeline has splintered due to the requirement of a twenty five percent difference between the current crop of shows, and what has happened previously; the Prime Timeline may not actually be prime, but actually another parallel dimension.

I think Star Trek: Enterprise changed the prime timeline quite a bit with all their time travel episodes, and more.. but they handled that with a good amount of care, in my opinion.

[Muizer]

I thought Discovery season one was surprisingly good. Admittedly, by Star Trek standards which as sci-fi goes are pretty low. The long story arc was ok and characters at time even threatened to develop some depth. In season 2 we seem to be comfortably back in the land of suspense free, morally unambiguous children's TV.

[Vladyvid]

I don't even understand how these Klingons are canon.

It is not cannon in the sense of the TOS - TNG/DS9/Voyager. All of the rebooted Star Trek movies and Star Trek Discovery (aswell as the upcoming Picard series), they are all part of a different licensing agreement (CBS) that requires if i recall, something like min. 25% difference from designs used in TOS/TNG license trek (Paramount).

So, in short, its not the same cannon cause it has to be at least 25% different from what a star trek fan considers cannon.

[SturmChurro]

I thought Discovery season one was surprisingly good. Admittedly, by Star Trek standards which as sci-fi goes are pretty low. The long story arc was ok and characters at time even threatened to develop some depth. In season 2 we seem to be comfortably back in the land of suspense free, morally unambiguous children's TV.

I've watched most of season 2. I quite like Anson Mount's take on Pike, and I find myself more interested in seeing a series based off his enterprise (Number 1, Spock) than the actual Discovery crew. Most of the Discovery crew sucks. Tilly is extremely annoying, and agreed, she definitely makes it feel like children's TV anytime she is on screen.