Jump to content
Status Updates

Seto Kaiba

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    13155

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Seto Kaiba

  1. Seto Kaiba
    ... well, maybe Georgiou and Tilly, but that'd just steal the remaining 40-something votes Burnham got. ... oh god, you're right. This series DOES resemble one of the Star Trek novels penned by Shatner. Did he have a writing credit on this turd, or is this just an unfortunate coincidence? (Specifically, The Return... where Shatner un-kills Kirk after the events of Star Trek: Generations and has him not only defeat every major member of the TNG crew including Worf and Data, but also briefly captains a Defiant-class USS Enterprise, defeats a secret Borg-Romulan alliance, and dies destroying the entire Borg collective after sucker-punching Picard.)
  2. Seto Kaiba
    So, I was perusing a Facebook Star Trek group I frequent and saw that they were running a poll about who was the best Captain of the USS Discovery. At time of writing, 865 users had voted and the votes fell as follows: Can we just appreciate this is a major Star Trek group with over 135,000 members and Burnham came in dead last by a huge margin in a Captains popularity poll specific to the series she's the main character of? She barely managed eleven times the number of people who entered an invalid response!
  3. Seto Kaiba
    There are some good moments in there... though a fair amount of it is inconsequential extras. "Spiritia Dreaming" actually shows the Protodeviln being released by the investigation team and Gepernich and Gigile possessing their hosts. "TOP GAMRIN" (sic) shows Gamlin's entry into the (New) UN Spacy and his training under Milia.
  4. Seto Kaiba
    Like common sense, common knowledge is often surprisingly uncommon. Normal, ridge-headed Klingons were back to being the norm from 2271 onwards... so by the time of "Trials and Tribble-ations", the TOS Klingons hadn't been around for a good 102 years and counting. It's not entirely surprising that they might not know since one is a physician and the other is an engineer. Neither of them are historians, and by the time things started to get properly historical (the Khitomer conference) the ridge-headed Klingons were the ones on display again. Kang, Kor, and Koloth may have been insulated somewhat from the consequences of their condition by the fact that their families were extremely influential Klingon nobility, back in a period when the Empire wasn't quite so meritocratic as it was in the 2360s and beyond. In the case of others, the IKDF troops along the Federation border may have simply gone to promote from within if commanders who weren't augment virus sufferers were unwilling to command a ship of dishonored troops. (That the Klingons on the frontier weren't so Proud Warrior Race Guy as the ridge-headed ones we're familiar with from before and after would make sense... someone who hasn't got the opportunity to earn great honor wouldn't be as obsessed with honor in general.) (If the civil war from the relaunch novels happened in canon, the influential augment Klingon families may also have been doing a bit of wearing fake forehead ridges in public in the more urbane parts of the Empire.) It does explain a lot of the show's problems... especially if we assume the in-universe author was not actually Starfleet and didn't know how a lot of the tech works. It's a neater explanation of the contraction between Burnham's mutiny conviction and Spock's later line about there being no record of a mutiny on a Starfleet ship. It explains why we see so much anachronistic tech, why the non-anachronistic tech doesn't work the way it does in other shows, why Discovery has a propulsion system that's clearly ridiculous and setting-breaking, why these Starfleet officers behave so unprofessionally, and why Burnham seems to never actually face lasting consequences for anything she does and has every major galactic event revolve around her and only her on a level even Q doesn't stoop to. That kind of heroic fantasy only works on the holodeck or in badly-written popular fiction. The level of edgy ham is certainly reminiscent of the Doctor's holonovel "Photons Be Free" in Voyager.
  5. Seto Kaiba
    Peter Grill is basically just that one episode, twelve times.
  6. Seto Kaiba
    Ah, yeah, this is the part where Hajime Isayama's manga jumped every shark on Earth in every possible reality and decided to change genres from dystopian young adult fiction to being the author's love letter to both far-right militant nationalism and violent antisemitism. I've tried watching the final season but my tolerance for misery porn is limited and that's all this story arc is.
  7. Seto Kaiba
    Eh... to be fair, all "Trials and Tribble-ations" did was acknowledge an issue that was already a subject of substantial speculation and debate in the Star Trek fanbase. For what it's worth, "Affliction" and "Divergence" did a pretty good job of explaining it in a way that tied up almost all of the loose ends and meshes well with what'd been established about Klingon culture and its warrior ethos. Dr. Antaak, General K'Vagh, and the other Klingons in the ENT two-parter mention several times that Klingons afflicted by the accidentally created augment virus would be regarded as physically deformed, mentally compromised, and "contaminated" by human genes. They believed they would be outcasts in the Empire, and it's not hard to see why they would think that. We heard from Martok in "You Are Cordially Invited" that Klingons even in the late 24th century still have a strong bias against other races and cultures. His wife Sirella believed that inviting aliens into their families meant risking losing their identity as Klingons. Now imagine how Klingons of an earlier, less open-minded era might regard fellow Klingons who are "contaminated" with human DNA. They would have been outcasts as a threat to Klingon cultural and racial purity. Then, of course, there's the Klingon culture's attitudes on subjects like physical deformity and disability. The Klingons considered deviations as minor as albinism to be culturally taboo, to the extent that having a child with a deformity is considered dishonorable and the child is either disowned or killed as in DSC's first season and DS9 "Blood Oath". The Augment Klingons were much more deformed (by Klingon standards) than Voq or Qagh/"The Albino", meaning they would essentially automatically lose honor in the eyes of their fellow Klingons for living with a deformity. We've also seen how the Klingons handle physical and mental disability. In TNG "Ethics", we saw that the standard Klingon approach to nontrivial physical disability is for the disabled person to commit suicide. Their attitude towards people with mental disabilities like the elderly Kor's senility in DS9 "Once More Unto the Breach" was dismissive at best, abusive at worst. Then, of course, there's Starfleet's role in the augment virus since the whole reason the augment virus came to exist was Starfleet's sloppy job dealing with the augments that Arik Soong stole from Cold Station 12 and their hostile actions against the Klingons in a bid to cover their tracks. That got Antaak working on Klingon augments, leading to the virus which caused the deformity, mass-sterilization of Klingon colony planets, and an inheritable disability afflicting generations of Klingons. Five'll get you twenty Earth Starfleet just buried the everloving hell out of the records pertaining to that little disaster. When you think about it in those terms, it's not surprising that Worf's attitude would be "we don't discuss it". The TOS Klingons are Klingons living with an inherited genetic illness and thus living in a permanent state of dishonor that their families couldn't escape from, living as outcasts among their own people on the Empire's borders, and all because of one of Earth's - and Starfleet's - greatest heroes. It's understandable Worf wouldn't want to explain that to his Starfleet colleagues. Dusting that one off would be disrespectful to all of the Klingons visiting K-7, would be sure to upset his Starfleet colleagues, and might draw attention because that's not something outsiders are supposed to know. Of course, there is also the possibility that Worf, having been raised on Earth by humans, is just as in the dark as his crewmates are and is making a joke about it in his trademark deadpan manner (or bluffing his way through the conversation since he's Proud Warrior Race guy and doesn't want to admit he's not familiar with this chapter in Klingon history). Given how Discovery massively exaggerates the physical traits of the Klingons to render them bestial and monstrous-looking, flanderizes their entire culture into a single-minded lust for violent conquest, gets the Klingon religion completely wrong, outright dismisses the entire concept of Klingon honor to depict Klingons as opportunists with very flexible loyalty who will sell their own leaders out for a decent meal or just to get ahead, includes a wannabe messiah who blasphemously proclaims himself their second coming, and has the "token good" Klingon be the one who abandons everything Klingon about himself... I have a rather different theory. My headcanon is that Star Trek: Discovery is the 23rd century equivalent of the Turner Diaries or some other insane tract fantasizing about race war and intent on dehumanizing an entire group of people by exaggerating racist stereotypes. Probably a low-budget holodrama penned by the real Michael Burnham, casting herself in the role of the protagonist who overthrows the Klingon Empire and saves humanity from an adversary depicted as bestial, subhuman, and so intent on malice as to be immune to reason. That the reason nobody and nothing from Discovery are ever referenced anywhere else being that 1. it's wholly fictional and 2. the Federation is so deeply embarrassed by its very existence that it wasn't circulated widely when it was published.
  8. Seto Kaiba
    It definitely has that feel. The interior of Discovery was straight-up Death Star/Starkiller Base nonsense for scale. Contrast "Charlie and the Great Glass Turbolift" to Star Trek V, TNG: "Disaster", or VOY: "The Haunting of Deck Twelve"... all of which show that Starfleet turbolifts travel in close shafts with emergency bulkheads and even come equipped with ladders for emergencies. Though my favorite Starfleet safety faux pas is that there's a fair amount of evidence that Starfleet ships have actually had seatbelts since at least 2269 if you don't count J.J. Abrams movies, and the Starfleet crews just don't use them. The original Constitution-class USS Enterprise had seatbelts in TAS (see TAS: "One Upon a Planet"), and at least some shuttlecraft in TNG like the Type-15 shuttlepod were shown to be equipped with what looks like a full five-point safety harnesses for all occupants (TNG: "Power Play"). Yeah, there have been some weird takes on that over the years. Prior to Star Trek: Enterprise, it was generally assumed that first contact with the Klingons occurred after the formation of the Federation at some point in the early 23rd century. The comics and novels produced back then ran with the idea that there was a series of border wars in the early 23rd century that devolved into a cold war before Kirk became Captain of the Enterprise and that the Organians prevented the cold war from going hot in "Errand of Mercy" in 2267. Post-Enterprise, the conflicts were pushed into the late 22nd century in the relaunch novel 'verse when the fallout of a lot of Archer's decisions in episodes like ENT: "Dead Stop", "Affliction", and "Divergence" destabilizes the Klingon Empire badly enough for there to be a brief but furious civil war between the regular Klingons and TOS Klingons over TOS Klingons afflicted by the augment virus revolting over being consigned to second-class citizen status in the Empire and de facto exiled to its borders. Starfleet ended up having (more) egg on its face with the Klingons because the TOS Klingons acquired drone warships from a civilization that was dominated by the tech from the repair station in "Dead Stop", which Starfleet had been attempting to free from their dependency on it and Starfleet got the blame.
  9. Seto Kaiba
    The potential was strictly illusory. They just traded one narrative dead-end for another. They were very limited in what they could do with Star Trek: Discovery in seasons one and two because the 2250s were a fairly well-documented era, and they were flat-out prohibited from doing anything that would have far-reaching consequences because they were hemmed in by TOS in the 2260s. Then they moved to the 3180s, and discovered that they had to basically break the Star Trek setting beyond all repair in order to have any potential for the kind of drama they wanted to write because Enterprise had established the Federation was a huge utopian society in the 31st century, that warp drive and matter/antimatter reactors were long-obsolete, and the scientific use of time travel would have allowed the events of the season to retroactively un-happen by fixing the Burn before it occurred. Yeah, on the outside Discovery is about the same size as the original Enterprise minus the warp nacelles being longer. On the inside, it seems to be about as big as V'Ger. Mind you, there is precedent for starships of the 31st century to be literally bigger on the inside... but this vast emptiness in Discovery serves no useful purpose and there wasn't any acknowledgement that Discovery possessed that kind of displacement technology. (Indeed, most of the technology in that ship seems to no longer exist in Discovery's setting, since that would've rendered "the burn" moot.) The weirdest part is that Osyraa was clearly willing to make some SUBSTANTIAL concessions in the name of forging an alliance with the Federation and Starfleet... but the minute she was asked to sacrifice something personally she lost her sh*t and started shooting. Even more glaringly... why is there a massive column of inert programmable matter anyone could just fall into and suffocate? Even by Starfleet's lax standards, the 32nd century Discovery is an OSHA nightmare. Even more of a headscratcher is why the Sphere Data was still there in the first place. Discovery's original computer was duotronic. That technology was obsolete by the early 24th century, never mind the 32nd century. If Discovery's systems were modernized as Saru says, they would have replaced the entire computer core (or cores) with the latest technology not tried to run a new OS on a 930 year old system. The Burn being caused by a radioactive mutant who developed magical subspace psychic powers that affect dilithium AND NOTHING ELSE is just some cr*p-tier writing. It's like the writers got to the part of the season where they were going to unveil the cause of the burn and realized they'd never actually come up with one. The showrunners excuse seems to be that Su'Kal's ability ONLY works because he was physically present on the dilithium planet and the massive dilithium reserves there. If he goes anywhere else, his powers are useless/inert. The writers at least tried to backhand an explanation for why Starfleet never properly investigated the Burn out in a few episodes. Admiral Vance is pretty blunt about Starfleet in the 32nd century being spread VERY thin due to the massive losses it sustained in the Burn and the Federation having shrunk to a tenth of its original size with key members like Vulcan and Trill bailing. They were so busy trying to keep what little was left of the Federation together and fend off the Emerald Chain that they didn't have the time to conduct major investigations of the burn... though analyzing the black boxes should've been SOP, and there's no excuse for them having not done that. It was a teaspoon shallow obvious setup for Burnham's second karma houdini and end-of-season promotion. I'm more amazed that they let Tilly live, since her character is now redundant with the addition of Tal. The worst part is the writers acknowledged what a pointless stunt the whole thing was right in the episode. Booker had been missing for three weeks. Another twelve hours wasn't likely to change anything in his status. Section 31 is in development hell, and unlikely to ever be produced given the franchise's money troubles and the general audience dissatisfaction with the grimdarkness of it all. Smart money says this was just Michelle Yeoh's exit from the series and franchise ala Denise Crosby. It's even more glaring when you watch it in close company with either season two or later season three episodes and you realize that it's all completely insincere. This crew HATES EACH OTHER. Passionately. There is real loathing here. Put them in a room together outside of a professional context and the loathing spills out into everything they say and do. That's been a problem since Nemesis, with the miniature transporter that Data used to rescue Picard. Mind you, if the 32nd century transporters works more like a spatial trajector (from Voyager) or the subspace inverter (from the Next Generation) then they may have an easy out. Those were folded-space teleportation rather than "disassemble you at the subatomic level" teleportation.
  10. Seto Kaiba
    That seems to be the general consensus of the season finale on the Star Trek Facebook groups and subreddits I've been on. There are a few folks gamely attempting to defend it, but most fans seem to be either disappointed, upset, or downright disgusted with Star Trek: Discovery now. Even the official Star Trek subreddit has abandoned its usual role as an echo chamber for pro-Discovery fans and started taking shots across the franchise's bow. The main bones of contention seem to be, in descending order of vitriolitic-ness: Interior shots of Discovery during the turbolift fight sequence. In previous Star Trek works, turbolifts traveled in narrow elevator shaft-like spaces that ran both vertically and horizontally through the ship's tightly packed interior. Discovery's season finale features a bizarre, and shockingly long, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator-esque sequence where Burnham and Booker are fighting on turbolift cars which zoom hither and yon through a MASSIVE empty interior space far larger than anything that could be contained within the Discovery's internal spaces with the turbolift shaft being just airborne rectangular frames springing into existence as the car travels and disappearing once it's past. Normally turbolifts can travel anywhere in a ship in a matter of seconds, but this is a fifteen minute long elevator ride to nowhere through the unspecified bowels of the ship that now seems to be slightly smaller than V'Ger. The warp core ejection. Normally, a ship's warp core is depicted as being a substantially large device - normally a good half dozen or more decks high - and in or directly adjoining main engineering and connected to various plasma conduits which carry the reaction plasma off to the EPS grid that powers the ship and to the warp nacelles to charge the warp coils. On the USS Discovery, the warp core is seemingly located in the middle of nowhere, isn't connected to anything, looks like an oil drum with blue LEDs, and when ejected spends a not-inconsiderable amount of time sliding down a shaft (seemingly under gravity) and bouncing off the sides of said shaft on the way out. Designing a warp core that can't even be ejected cleanly when it's full of highly volatile antimatter seems like a REALLY bad idea. Osyraa's death being a non-event. Despite being the main antagonist for this entire series of Discovery either directly or by proxy via her organization the Emerald Chain, Osyraa's death is treated almost as an afterthought. Her fight with Burnham in Discovery's computer core ends with her walking away assuming Burnham is now suffocating to death inside a column made up of programmable matter and Burnham shoots her dead seemingly by accident. She just gets hit once and goes down like a sack of potatoes. Burnham doesn't even check to see if she's actually dead or not. Granted, the lack of drama is certainly realistic... but it lacks closure when the villain gets hit seemingly entirely by dumb luck and dies with the protagonist not even bothering to check the body. We only find out she's dead and not just stunned or wounded in the closing narration! Burnham's Designated Hero status allowing her to pull yet another Karma Houdini and become Captain. Since this particular problem only crops up at the very end, it's kind of overshadowed by the writing problems elsewhere. Burnham, who had mere days earlier in-series been the recipient of a demotion and a severe dressing-down from the Starfleet commander in chief and her captain with the explicit indication that the only reason she wasn't up for her second dishonorable discharge from Starfleet was because she'd saved lives with her stunt on Hunhau, is promoted to Captain and given command of USS Discovery once Saru decides to take a leave of absence to help Su'Kal adjust to life on 32nd century Kaminar. Burnham crying all the damn time. It's been made fun of a lot. Burnham cries at least one in like eight out of thirteen episodes this season and as often as three times per episode in some cases. It's somewhat exacerbated by Sonequa Martin-Green's unconvincing acting, but it compares unfavorably to Kathryn Janeway's ability to handle even greater stresses with a calm, collected demeanor and considerable grace. The way it was handled felt more like an attempt to telegraph to the audience that the scene was supposed to be dramatic, which lacking direction and acting tended to render comical or dull. In the wake of the Discovery being disabled by detaching its warp nacelle at warp, I've noticed a lot more people taking shots at the ugly Starfleet ship designs that hang around in Starfleet Headquarters as well. Especially comparing a lot of them to ships from Stargate SG-1.
  11. Seto Kaiba
    That Hope is You, Part 2 (DSC 3x13) OR "The Culmination of Your Poor Choices" So, we have come to the end of this particular atrocity against the honorable name and legacy of Star Trek. On one level, I am relieved that this mess has finally reached its screeching, juddering halt like the saucer section of the Enterprise-D crashing on Viridian III. On others, I am depressed beyond measure that this is the standard of writing that now passes for a flagship Star Trek series and that these horrid characters are going to be held up, in their own story, as heroes of Starfleet and quite possibly the saviors of the entire United Federation of Planets. It's one thing to be hailed as a hero of the UFP when you have saved it from an exterior threat, saved peace negotiations with a major hostile power, or defeated an existential threat to every species. The Discovery crew are going to be hailed as heroes for cleaning up a series of problems they created through their own idiocy, shortsightedness, and unwillingness to abide by Federation law and Starfleet regulations. It's cold comfort that Star Trek: Discovery will probably never get a movie, so this lot will be forgotten once their series ends. Curiously, the credits music they chose for this episode is the Original Series theme. Please CBS. Let this turd end here. Don't go any further. Make it easy for whoever replaces Kurtzman and Secret Hideout to strike this dumpster fire from the record so we can have real Star Trek again some day.
  12. Seto Kaiba
    There is a Tide (DSC 3x12): AKA "Space Karen demands to speak to Starfleet's Manager."
  13. Seto Kaiba
    Su'Kal (DSC 3x11)
  14. Seto Kaiba
    The way it's presented both here and in TAS "Yesteryear", the Guardian of Forever seems to have a singular consciousness and memory spread across all the universes where there is a Guardian of Forever. Either that or it's a singular entity who physically exists in multiple realities at once. Its memory is immune to changes in the timeline or the creation of alternate timelines... like when a Federation research team accidentally failed to close a stable time loop that created an alternate reality where Spock died as a child, it still have knowledge of both the alteration and of Spock's interactions with it in a different timeline.
  15. Seto Kaiba
    Terra Firma, Part 2 (DSC 3x10)
  16. Seto Kaiba
    Same deal as the above, really... it's a function of how much mass you're trying to move and how much fuel you have and are willing to use doing it. On its own, a VF-1 with the standard combat load tips the scales at 18,500kg and with the Super Pack added it's up to 45,000kg. The Super Pack's verniers are intended to offset that difference in mass to preserve maneuverability in space, but moving the far greater mass also entails greater fuel consumption doing it... but a part of that weight is also the greater amount of fuel necessary to get away with doing it. Whether the Super Pack-equipped Valkyrie is more or less agile than the unaugmented Valkyrie is mostly down to how conservative the pilot is being with his fuel supply.
  17. Seto Kaiba
    So... to be frank, this is a question with no easy answer. Because the VF-1 Valkyrie's design was constrained to approximately the expected size of the crew of Alien StarShip One, its onboard fuel supplies are very limited. It's not really an obstacle in atmosphere since the thermonuclear reaction turbine engines used are extremely fuel efficient due to the use of OTM gravity and inertia control tech to control the reactors and contain the plasma stream, but because the engines use plasma from their reactors as propellant for space flight the fuel consumption increases by an enormous amount (4,200x) in space operations. The Super Pack compensates for this somewhat by adding external tanks with more fuel for the main engines and a pair of high-powered rocket boosters, but even then the actual window in which those rockets and the reaction engines can exert their maximum thrust is also very limited. Once the rocket boosters are depleted, the Super Valkyrie's maneuverability and speed decrease sharply. Consequently, a VF's top speed in space is more a question of "how much of your fuel are you willing to burn?". The Super Pack's hybrid rocket engines can only sustain their maximum thrust for 2 1/2 minutes (150 seconds) before their fuel is spent, and the main engines can only run for about 45 minutes at maximum power until they drain both their main tanks and the conformal fuel tanks. If all you cared about was red, raw speed from a standing start then the VF-1 Super Valkyrie's maximum achievable acceleration in a vacuum is going to be 6.35555 g (62.32761m/s^2) for the first 150 seconds until the boosters quit then acceleration will fall off towards 1.02 g due to the excessive weight of the Super Pack and much more limited maximum output of the thermonuclear reaction turbine engines. Burning out the rockets on that two and a half minutes of sustained acceleration would get you up to about 9.349 kilometers per second. At that point, the Super Pack is deadweight and it's going to take a fair amount of time and fuel to slow down. If you burned every drop of fuel aboard the fighter you'd theoretically get to a maximum of 35.274km/s but then you'd be a missile sailing into the abyss with no power, no ability to steer or decelerate, etc. (Bear in mind it's unlikely you could actually DO this, since the fuel is also used as a coolant for the engine in space and running at overboost for 45 minutes straight would probably overheat the engines.) Understandably, burning up the rockets like that is a Bad Idea and they're mostly used well below their maximum output in order to extend their operating time as much as possible. Agility invokes a similar concern, since the verniers are thermal rockets that are also drawing from onboard fuel tanks and the electrical supply from the compact thermonuclear reactor.
  18. Seto Kaiba
    Terra Firma, Part 1 (DSC 3x09)
  19. Seto Kaiba
    The Sanctuary (DSC 3x08)
  20. Seto Kaiba
    If there's anything left of the Star Trek franchise once Alex Kurtzman's contract expires for a new creative team to take over, that's definitely one possibility. As unpopular as Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard are - with almost no third party merchandising behind them - it'll be interesting to see what happens to Kurtzman's Trek once he's not in charge. There are basically three options from the way that previous franchise brain farts were handled: Alternate Universe AKA the Abrams Maneuver... for when an idea (like rebooting Star Trek) is so poorly received that the only way anyone is willing to give it the time of day is if it's officially branded as an alternate reality with no bearing on the rest of Star Trek, so that nobody has to acknowledge it in any way. Damnatio Memoriae AKA the "Big-Lipped Alligator Moment"... the preferred solution for Gene Roddenberry and other showrunners to deal with stories and concepts that didn't turn out the way they'd hoped for various reasons like TAS, Star Trek V, and various old shame episodes and aborted arcs like "Code of Honor", "Move Along Home", various Kazon-centric story arcs, and anything to do with deuterium scarcity once the science advisors reminded them how common that stuff is. "That was a thing that happened, but we will never speak of it again." Discontinuity AKA the "Threshold Solution"... for those rare occasions that something turned out so poorly, or was so obviously stupid in hindsight that even the showrunners can't bear to have it in continuity. TAS as a whole used to be on this level, but now this is occupied by just a few episodes that were such glaring messes that new material was written to establish that That Never Happened. Given how much ViacomCBS has invested in Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and Star Trek: Lower Decks, it's probably headed for alternate universe territory if the franchise survives just so they can try to recoup some of that money on home video/digital library sales while they pray that absence makes the heart grow fonder. The worst part is that there's an actual real world name for ships like that which, though old, is somewhat less corny: a ram or ramship. Of course, the reason that fell out of favor in the real world is that ramming was only really an effective strategy in the pre-Common Era days of wooden rowing ships and that steam-powered ironclad naval rams were so hilariously ineffective that it became evident there was no real point in building them. Especially once torpedoes came into service and it became obvious you could do the same job better from further away with a torpedo. Yeah, that was just undignified. Tilly talks sh*t to the leader of the Emerald Chain about how she'll never take the ship, and then she immediately takes the ship without firing a shot. The whole idea making Tilly, the lowest-ranking and least-experienced member of the crew, into the ship's new executive officer was such an obviously terrible idea that it's flat amazing that anyone on the crew went with it. The only thing I can conceive of as their reason for supporting her is that she's a bit dim and desperate for approval, and therefore would've been easy to the more experienced crew to manipulate. She's not only not command material, she's not Starfleet material. Even Reg Barclay had more of his sh*t together than Tilly, and he was more a pile of neuroses in the shape of a man than anything. (I've noticed that the writers seem to really like doing this plot where they put a complete idiot in charge over dozens if not hundreds of more qualified candidates and calamity immediately ensues. Lower Decks played it for comedy.) It'll take some serious bullsh*t from the writers for Burnham to ever be given command. She's already been dishonorably discharged for assaulting a superior officer and mutiny, censured several times for AWOL, and removed from her post as Discovery's executive officer over such a grievous instance of AWOL during an alert situation that she only narrowly avoided being cashiered out of the service again and the Starfleet Commander in Chief (correctly) thinks she's an irresponsible pillock. Nah, Michael has already proved she's not command material to the point that Admiral Vance wanted to discharge her and Saru removed her from any possibility of the center seat. They definitely need a proper, experienced captain though. At the rate they've been shedding crew, I expect at least one or two more people to either quit or come down with permadeath at the end of the season. Nhan has already left the crew to assist in running a Federation seed vault, and Mirror!Georgiou was sent into the past for a spinoff that's in development hell and will probably never happen. They've also killed Ryn in the last episode. Booker's probably save since he's Burnham's love interest, but I suspect they're either going to have Saru leave Starfleet to take care of Su'Kal full time or Tilly will be killed off trying to reclaim the ship. My money's on the writers killing off Tilly, since her character is redundant with the introduction of Adira Tal who's also socially awkward but more competent and better-liked (esp. by Stamets). and is also Star Trek's first nonbinary recurring character. That, my friend, is a sucker bet. The writers telegraphed the sh*t out of that when he had that conversation with Stamets and Stamets explained what an evil person she is... leading to him refusing to leave the bridge before she executed Ryn. Eh... I am less enthusiastic about that because that's headed into a Star Trek version of R2-D2... which is basically what those damned robots already are.
  21. Seto Kaiba
    I wouldn't even say it's visually stunning, TBH. There is some impressive CG occasionally, but the obsession with using high-end digital VFX at every opportunity is increasingly turning the series into accidental greenscreen comedy when the poor CG design choices aren't just repulsive like the riced-out Discovery, Osyrra's Great Value Star Destroyer, or Booker's I Can't Believe It's Not the Millennium Falcon. The one decent bit of design work done for the show was the TOS-inspired uniforms and Discovery version of the classic Enterprise... which is probably why they're keen to reuse those for Strange New Worlds now that Discovery has moved out of the 23rd century to avoid the near-constant criticism for f*cking it up. (Personally, I will never get past the phrase "Klingon cleave ship". My hands feel dirty just from typing it.)
  22. Seto Kaiba
    My headcanon is still that, since Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard take stylistic and narrative pointers from the unproduced Star Trek: Final Frontier series pitch and J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies, those shows are in a "bad future" timeline created by the actions of one or more hostile powers during the Temporal Cold War. The Star Trek relaunch novel 'verse Department of Temporal Investigations miniseries used that exact explanation to dismiss and indirectly poke fun at Final Frontier and a number of other needlessly grimdark rejected Star Trek series pitches. All of them got dismissed as "bad future" alternate realities created by Future Guy's tampering with history and then retroactively prevented from ever existing by corrective actions taken by the 29th century's Starfleet's Temporal Integrity Commission and the 31st century's civilian Federation Temporal Agency. Well, it is kind of a career-ending admission to make... copping to having effectively dismantled and destroyed one of the most beloved sci-fi properties of all time. I think he's hoping he can fake it 'til he makes it or hits retirement age.
  23. Seto Kaiba
    It'd be real convenient if it were just a fever dream by an incredibly self-centered person. It's one thing for, say, Q to choose Starfleet's finest captain as a representative sample of humanity to put on trial. It's quite another for a character whose only noteworthy trait is her entirely accidental relation-by-foster to two famous Vulcan ambassadors to keep being given such massive leeway despite constant insubordination that puts her life and the lives of her crewmates at risk. It's like Starfleet's been taking administrative pointers from Professor Dumbledore. It probably already has one, we just haven't found it. Yes, to our amazement this dumpster fire continues to burn fat stacks of cash to no useful end. At least Titan Comics apparently knew when to pack it in. Reports from entertainment news outlets talking to ViacomCBS, Netflix, and Amazon suggest the main thing keeping Kurtzman's odious take on Star Trek going is the sunk cost fallacy. ViacomCBS is so deep in the red after investing something to the tune of a quarter of a billion dollars developing Star Trek: Discovery in expectation of a highly merchandised seven season run similar to previous Star Trek shows that they continue to spend lavishly on the series in the hopes that it will finally take off, attract merchandising, and start paying down the gargantuan debt incurred by its development. There were reports from some news outlets that Netflix's ongoing involvement for season three (and beyond?) as the show's principal source of production funding was secured by CBS threatening to sue Netflix for breach of contract if they withdrew from the project. So Netflix just slashes the budget based on the show's ever-diminishing returns and each new season ends up being shorter than the last as a result. The merchandise situation's almost as sad as Robotech's... being mainly CafePress-style t-shirts, mugs, etc. with some other odds and ends like replica Starfleet badges and cheap wine.
  24. Seto Kaiba
    Hopefully our new website will continue to scratch that particular itch when it launches later this year. It's on our to-do list, which we're unfortunately a bit behind on due to "day job" matters.
  25. Seto Kaiba
    I was working on my summaries of the last few Star Trek: Discovery season three episodes and @BlackRose's summary of the season's penultimate episode tops anything I could ever or will ever write about it. She summed up "There is a tide..." in eight words: Space Karen demands to speak to Starfleet's manager. I lost it.
×
×
  • Create New...