Seto Kaiba

I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen a VF-31A Arad Molders type from the flashback episode... easiest variant ever, just one tampo printed section is different.

Probably laying the groundwork for 2021. Mind you, as much of a coup as it is, the actual impact of obtaining the trademark over Harmony Gold's objections is fairly minimal given that most of the distributors producing English translations of anime and manga are based in the United States and distribute in Europe and Australia through partners and affiliates.

Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory adapted volumes 7, 8, and 9 of the light novel... which are some of its darkest moments thanks to It actually gets a bit darker in volumes 10, 11, and 12 before the story ends on a high note and a terrible Knight Rider joke.

This is a big win for Big West and Macross... and further proof that the end is in sight for Harmony Gold and Robotech.

There's the dress code thing, yeah... but fictional militaries are famously loose on that sort of thing anyway. The writers cheated a little on the age thing by setting the age of majority under the New UN Gov't at 17, so almost every Macross character who joined the military was an adult when they did. The PMC thing is just a thing lazy writers do to justify the main characters doing everything. It's novel once, but then it just gets dumb. Like in Frontier it was justified by SMS's parent company being a megacorp so flush with cash that it paid for the fleet the show is set in and has tons of pull with the government. In Delta, they dont have that... they're supposed to be the heroes but for pretty much the entire series they suck at their jobs. We're supposed to root for Xaos over the NUNS because the NUNS is "The Man", but it gets a little silly when Xaos is doing stuff like slowing down a NUNS-led evacuation and almost getting Chuck's own family killed in the process. It's damn near impossible to take Walkure seriously as "heroes" for the same reason. They spent 24 episodes f*cking up at every turn, getting captured repeatedly, with every move they make playing into Windermere's hands, and generally failing at the one job they actually have... and the threat they save the galaxy from at the very end would literally not have been possible if not for their intervention. Mikumo was created for Walkure. Walkure's dicking around with the ruins tuned them to make them more suitable for Roid's purpose. Walkure kept going undercover behind enemy lines and got Mikumo captured. Walkure's leader supported a plan by Lady M to delay evacuation of the blast zone of a thermonuclear demolition charge. Walkure's refusal to work with the NUNS led to the entire Brisingr cluster being occupied by a hostile power using mind control. Literally the only useful thing they achieve in the series prior to the finale is discovering that Windermere was using a combination of apples and bottled water as a vector to increase susceptibility to Var syndrome. When "f*ck the police" almost leads to the extinction of sentient life in the galaxy, is defying authority for the sake of it really still "heroic"?

Some of it is, as @Marzan indicated, just that people really don't want to type out Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari or The Rising of the Shield Hero every time they talk about the series. There's also a two-sided sort of situation where some of the audience empathize or sympathize with the raw deal Naofumi got thanks to the false rape accusations leveled at him by Myne/Malty, and the slightly sardonic use of the nickname by audience members who (wrongly) perceived the story as having an unsubtle anti-feminist/anti-#metoo agenda with its protagonist having his life destroyed because a false rape accusation was believed without question.

Does a sigh of exasperated frustration count as a thought? Macross Delta had a painfully threadbare plot that all too often felt less like a story than a series of badly contrived excuses for Walkure to perform. The story felt weirdly segregated, as if the story about the idol group Walkure and the story about the Brisingr Alliance's war with the Kingdom of the Wind were being developed by different teams who weren't allowed to speak to each other. Until the last three episodes or so, there wasn't really any feeling that Walkure were actually doing anything to advance the plot... they were just bystanders. Being compressed into a two hour movie did that threadbare plot a few favors, but it was still so scattered that at times it felt more like a collection of quasi-related vignettes than a coherent narrative. It changed gears with the kind of audible clunk that would send most folks scurrying to the mechanic. Now we've got an announcement for Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!!. A title like that makes me think we're headed into another excuse plot to justify a two hour long animated "live" concert by Walkure. Macross Delta's TV series and first movie already had a threat that was essentially a potential galaxy-wise mass extinction event among sentient life forms. It's not exactly easy to do sequel escalation when you started with a threat that could wipe out most sentient life. I'm sick to death of this PMC hero kick that fiction's been on for a while now, so I'm still kind of hoping that the plot will be Xaos going on the run as the New UN Government comes after them and Lady M on charges of corruption, bribery, illegal cloning, harboring terrorists, and so on. I doubt we'd actually get that kind of Reality Ensues plot, so I'm expecting we get something else tying into the ancient Protoculture like some nutter digging up another Birdhuman or Fold Evil. Either that or maybe the Delta Wave System's activation did some unpleasant things to Windermereans by forcibly activating their runes and now Walkure's off to Windermere IV to prevent the extinction of the Windermereans with a massive live at Darwent Castle to de-age them with fold songs. (I kinda suspect that last one is actually it.) He's already done that one... it was called Macross VF-X2. Learning that the (New) UN Forces were the real baddies in the story was what separated the game's two endings. In the Bad Ending, the VF-X Ravens don't learn about Latence and dutifully carry out their orders to destroy the anti-government groups Black Rainbow and Vindirance. In the Good Ending, the VF-X Ravens learn that they've been manipulated by a fascist Earth supremacist faction in the New UN Government and New UN Forces called Latence that's been using the VF-X special forces to suppress armed opposition to its plan to give Earth absolute governmental authority over the emigrant planets and increase the military's already-considerable authority in the name of presenting a unified front against any internal and external threats. The Ravens side with Vindirance, the "anti-government" group that supports democracy and more autonomy for emigrant planets, and Latence's coup attempt is foiled by the destruction of Battle-13 in Earth orbit. Later stories call this conflict between pro-Earth and pro-autonomy forces the Second Unification War. (As is typical of Macross, the bad guys are largely presented more as well-meaning but misguided rather than actually evil. Except Manfred Brando, who's just an amoral arse.) They crop up in a few other stories like Macross the Ride and the Macross Delta novelization.

Yeah, the lineart for the destroids in Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Macross: Do You Remember Love? has Army markings in the style of the US Army's World War II-vintage AR-850-5 system. They have markings that go Δ#Δ_# scattered around the unit's body and a Army-style bumper number on the ankles opposite the UN Spacy marking. Normally there would be another number in front of the first Δ to denote which Armored Division it belonged to, but that touch appears to be absent from the Macross's destroids. The ADR-04-Mk.X Defender is Δ5ΔG3/D-108231, indicating its unique bumper code is D-108231 and that it's from the 5th Armored, 3rd vehicle of G Company, in an unspecified number Armored Division. The SDR-04-Mk.XII Phalanx is Δ10ΔS7/D-229194, indicating its unique bumper code is D-229194 and that it's the 10th Armored's 7th vehicle of S Company, in an unspecified number Armored Division. The MBR-04-Mk.VI Tomahawk is Δ3ΔD7/D-210194, indicating its unique bumper code is D-210194 and that it's the 3rd Armored's 7th vehicle of D Company, in an unspecified number Armored Division. The MBR-07-Mk.XII Spartan is Δ7ΔO2/D-330517, indicating its unique bumper code is D-330517 and that it's the 7th Armored's 2nd vehicle of O Company, in an unspecified number Armored Division. The HWR-00-Mk.II Monster is the only one without a visible formation marking, bearing only the number 02. How they'd be organized below company level is uncertain... since those formation markings only go down to the individual vehicle number within the company. Assuming they're copying the US organization with a moderate level of fidelity, there ought to be (on average) 14 destroids to a Company, an average of 3 companies + 2 command units in a Battalion (44 destroids total), any anywhere from 6-24 Battalions in a Division, though 12 for light and 18 for heavy is typical. With 587 Destroids, the Macross had enough for at least three Divisions.

The UN Navy, and presumably New UN Navy, seem to use the US Navy's aircraft squadron designation system pretty much as it is today. The UN Spacy and New UN Spacy literally just stick an S in front of the Navy designation for a Spacy squadron of the same type. It's one of the overt Navy touches in the Spacy's organization. The UN Marine Corps, and presumably New UN Marine Corps, use the US Marine Corps's aircraft squadron designation system as-is, while the Spacy Marine Corps just sticks an S in front of it. So, essentially, Navy squadron designations are V[Mission], Marine Corps are VM[Mission], Spacy squadrons are SV[Mission], and Spacy Marine Corps squadrons are SVM[Mission]. The mission letters in use include (and squadrons can have more than one as follows): A: Attacker AQ: Electronic Attacker AW: Airborne Early Warning C: Composite F: Fighter FA: Strike Fighter FC: Fighter Composite P: Patrol PU: Patrol (Special Unit) R: Logistical Support (Personnel) RC: Logistical Support (Cargo) RM: Logistical Support (Multimission) T: Training UP: Unmanned Patrol Q: Fleet Reconnaissance X: Air Test and Evaluation SVC would be a Spacy composite squadron, while SVFC would be a Spacy fighter composite squadron. SVMF would a Spacy Marine Corps fighter squadron. That's the hull classification symbol for an Aircraft Carrier. Contrary to popular belief, the CV doesn't stand for "Carrier Vessel" but for "Cruiser (Voler)" with "voler" being the French for "to fly". Early aircraft carriers were converted cruisers, and the designation stuck because if it ain't broke don't fix it. That'd be a Navy airborne early warning squadron. Variable Fighter Master File: VF-25 Messiah had that one Macross Frontier fleet NUNS composite squadron that the VF-25VJ was built for... how official those are, I can't say. "Composite squadron" has had a couple different meanings over the last century, but for most intents and purposes a composite squadron is an administrative catch-all for any unit that's operating a mixture of different types of aircraft for whatever role. Originally, composite squadrons were squadrons assigned to the smaller escort carriers and helped balance the ship's capabilities by operating a mixture of fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers. Later on, it became "miscellaneous" in everything but literal name when the usage was changed to be an administrative designation for groups of detachments from various specialist units like photoreconnaissence aircraft, early warning planes, adversary training units, and so on. Fighter Composite squadrons (VFC/SVFC) are specialist units that assist in simulated air combat training exercises by standing in for hostiles. They're not designated as composite squadrons, but the protagonist unit from Macross Digital Mission VF-X and the Ravens from the sequel Macross VF-X2 are a lot like your classic (WW2-era) composite squadrons in that they operate a mix of fighters, fighter-bombers, and even a bomber from small aircraft carriers like the Valhalla III or Saratoga II. Exactly what interpretation of "composite squadron" Macross is using for the units designated SVC (if they officially exist at all) is unclear since the ones mentioned are First Space War-era units where there aren't a multitude of different models to fly. Fighter squadrons are responsible for conducting air-to-air combat. Attack squadrons are responsible for air-to-ground or air-to-surface combat, like close air support of ground troops, anti-submarine warfare, bombing runs on enemy ships, suppression of enemy air defenses, etc. Strike Fighter squadrons do both.

Yeah, that definitely feels like a missed opportunity. If they'd ended it on Naofumi's exoneration and the queen punishing the king and first princess for their various conspiracies, they would've been able to end the first season with the conclusion of the story arc that dominated the first four volumes of the light novel. As much as neatly dividing the anime's 25 episodes up so it adapts a volume of the light novel every five episodes appeals to my inner neat freak, ending the series with a breather arc feels like a bad idea. Especially since the next arc after that is the f***ing Spirit Tortoise mess that drags on for what feels like forever. I'm just going to hope that Isekai Quartet means we'll be seeing Overlord IV soon... if I'm going to watch isekai I'd like something that feels more like a story than the Microsoft Excel workshop for aspiring CPAs that The Rising of the Shield Hero devolves into and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime was from the start.

Or, if you've read the light novels, "It's all downhill from here."

Finally finished Lupin III Part V... the ending felt a bit out of the blue, and is kind of a downer in hindsight with the recent passing of Monkey Punch. Started watching the TV series cut of Gundam: the Origin today. I'd forgotten quite how unbalanced Zeon Zum Deikun is in this version of the story... raving like a madman, threatening his wife, literally referring to himself as a messiah, and ranting about burning the Earth's population. Kind of a shock to realize that, for all his villainy, Casval Rem Deikun is actually still way less crazy than his old man...

To be entirely fair, they never actually confirm that the crews perished. They just jump to that conclusion based on neither of them responding over the radio. Mind you, even if they only lost 10% of their crews that's still almost 1,000 people accidentally killed by their improvised plan... which may also account for their radio silence. It's an interesting conundrum with a couple possible outcomes... If the bridge crews of the Daedalus and Prometheus survived the fold jump, I could see Bruno Global going in for treating the ship as a joint command environment where the UN Navy guys kept their affiliation and ranks while serving alongside the UN Spacy. That'd give him more support in the administrative side of things with a few more senior officers kicking around who could be relied upon to keep their troops in line. If the bridge crews perished, which might explain the radio silence, then I could see Bruno Global saying that since their command structure was essentially gone they'd be temporarily considered transferred to the Spacy pending a return to Earth. Either way, the UN Forces seem to have a less rigid separation of branches of service so it probably wasn't much of an issue. That they're all supposed to be speaking English in-universe could make things a bit hairy in the joint command environment though. It raises another interesting question as to how they'd handle it if members of one branch of service were stationed aboard another's ship, like a Spacy fighter squadron based aboard a Navy carrier. But then what will I do with the huge novelty syringe?

You'd expect that, as a formalized branch of service since 2003, the Spacy would have an established rank system of its own that would apply to all of its personnel. But that demonstrably didn't happen, as the Navy and Air Force are established to still be around in the 2040s. (Isamu Dyson, the human equivalent of the re-gifted fruitcake, got transferred between branches of service several times including a stint aboard the [New] UN Navy's carrier Enterprise and in the [New] UN Air Force.) They're using it in the Japanese sense, where it's essentially an officer candidate rank for a NCO who's up for a commission. The unusual usage (i.e. not depicting Alto or Hayate as an NCO beforehand) may be down to the fact that neither of them are serving with a real military... they're with PMCs. IIRC once he joined the Spacy he got a commission right away. Blame the Romans and the French, it's mostly their fault. Most of the words used for military ranks in English are actually Latin that's been strained through Italian and then middle French before being butchered further by the British. In their original forms, and even some of their derivative forms, they did refer to the particular formation the person belonged to or commanded. Some of the later additions made by the French and English were in the self-explanatory category, indicating the role or status the person held. "Lieutenant" was essentially a synonym for deputy or substitute, used to refer to people who were the direct subordinates of a captain. "Brigadier" was just a title for a colonel who'd been granted command of an entire brigade. A "Colonel" commanded a column, as the word was derived from the Latin for such. "Private" was the weirdest one, a relatively late addition that was a shortening of "private soldiers", meaning the conscripts or volunteers who were private citizens outside of wartime. The Spacy were the only ones who brought a working ship, so they were the ones calling the shots. Macross spells it "Spacy". Gundam spells it "Spacey" with an "e". More importantly, neither ship lost its entire crew or even most of it. Both the CVS-101 Prometheus and SLV-111 Daedalus were designed to be operated as semi-submersible warships able to run with almost the entire ship underwater for stealth purposes. As such they were pretty thoroughly airtight. They were still on alert when the Macross accidentally transported them to space, so the airtight hatches were sealed for combat. There was some loss of life, but it was limited to personnel who were outside the airtight sections of the ships. Macross Chronicle confirms that most of their crews were safe and continued to serve aboard those ships after they were docked permanently to the Macross and modified for space use. Officially, "not my problem" according to the UN Forces... who listed both as sunk in the same fictitious Anti-Unification Alliance attack that destroyed South Ataria Island in the UN Forces' cover story for the island's disappearance. If they'd tried to remove them they'd probably have just racked up parking tickets despite not officially existing anymore. I suppose the question became academic after the First Space War's conclusion left all three ships in rough shape and in no real position to be returned to service in any capacity. Since neither ship was capable of independent operation in space, they were likely treated as "on loan" to the Macross and under the command of its captain until such time as they could be returned to Earth... by which point there was nobody to return them to anymore for a Ferris Bueller's Day Off-esque nightmare scenario. Yes, albeit not in memory of the still-very-much-alive crews who were operating them in every capacity except as independent ships. For maximum confusion, the UN Spacy had its own CV sequence that was separate from the UN Navy's... which is probably why the Spacy preferred to use ARMD instead of SCV when referring to the ARMD-class carriers. SCV vs. CVS would've gotten confusing in fairly short order. (The Spacy's is more consistent with the origin of the term, being a cruiser that supported aircraft in the form of the original ARMD-class.) There wasn't really anything left of the Daedalus to rebuilt, and the Prometheus was in better shape to be an artificial reef than a functioning warship when all was said and done but there's no mention of what became of it after it was removed. If they hadn't already, I imagine they'd probably have wanted to scrap the Prometheus so they could safely remove and dispose of the nuclear material in its fission reactors. (The scattered fissile material from the Daedalus's reactors probably made for one impressively nasty cleanup job.)

I'm not sure if this is represented on the DX Chogokin toy or the model kits, but the Sv-262's legs do have internal bays. That's where the DAS-03k "Draken Fang" assault sword is stored, the longsword we see them using in the series finale when Keith squares off against another Sv-262Hs remotely controlled by Roid. The Draken III's problem is that its double delta blended wing body makes for a very compact aircraft with excellent frame rigidity and excellent atmospheric performance, but making the aircraft so compact increases the complexity of the transformation. The more conventional VF designs keep their fuel tanks in their engine nacelles and their wings. There's very little wing surface to use for fuel tank space on a Draken III, and the aerodynamics of the blended wing body have them keeping most of the weaponry flush to the surface of the wing or semi-internally, further cutting down on available space that was already at a premium thanks to that complex transformation. The engine nacelles are the logical place to keep fuel because it's also used as coolant in space, but the engine nacelle doesn't have a ton of room thanks to the armament bay for the sword and the attachment points for missike packs. They've got more than enough fuel to run probably hundreds of hours in atmosphere, but in space where the fuel consumption is exponentially greater due to using plasma from the reactor as a propellant they come up pretty short compared to other VFs that have a much broader profile like the VF-25 or VF-31. That was more a general problem with trying to run a VF using conventional turbofan jet engines... because the body has to be able to split apart and rearrange itself during transformation the amount of space to hold fuel is much less than a conventional fighter's, meaning they ended up with lower endurance right off the bat that was exacerbated by greater demands on those engines from the transformation.

Patrick Stewart looks like he's barely aged since the TNG movies, a little makeup to hide the signs of aging should do the trick. (Hell, he looks younger than his Ambassador Picard future self from "All Good Things".) EDIT: Pretty much every Starfleet captain's actor ends up looking better than their far-future elderly self, 'cept maybe Kate Mulgrew (though honestly her current appearance would be a lot more realistic for the kind of stressful life Janeway had). Poor Captain Braxton... as bad as he snaps because of Janeway, I've always secretly suspected he was one of Chakotay's descendants.

As amusing as I would find that, I doubt CBS and Kurtzman would write off the Kelvin timeline like that. It's Kurtzman's baby, after all. If any one Starfleet captain was going to refuse to break the Temporal Prime Directive, it'd be Picard. Archer existed before the Temporal Prime Directive and spent a fair amount of time dicking around with time, Sisko had several time travel incidents, Janeway had so many she drove a poor Starfleet Temporal Integrity Commission captain to homicidal insanity, and Kirk is the entire reason the Department of Temporal Investigations exists at all (and is their worst repeat offender). ... I could almost get behind that. My bet is that it's more cleaning up the interstellar aftermath of the fall of the Romulan Star Empire. Picard supposedly led "the greatest rescue mission" and some part of that was what caused him to lose faith in Starfleet and resign. My guess is he feels guilty Starfleet couldn't save Romulus itself, doubly so since his own clone essentially toppled the Romulan government just a handful of years earlier. Losing the Romulan Star Empire probably meant a lot of trouble for the quadrant. Five'll get you twenty the Klingons decided to annex a large portion of it, and the rest probably started warring with each other over who was the new true Romulus and against the subject races that they enslaved to form their empire in the first place. You use the "present day" as a framing device... the present day cast are sitting around discussing past events, narrating their memoirs, or what have you. Loads of shows, movies, etc. have started with a "how we got here" sort of framing device. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's episode "In the Pale Moonlight" is an episode long flashback sequence framed as Sisko laying out the events of his plot to get Romulus to join the Dominion War on the Federation side in his log. Star Trek: Enterprise's much-maligned "These are the voyages..." series finale did something similar, with Riker indulging in a holodeck recreation of events hundreds of years in the past to help him make a difficult decision about the whole illegal Federation cloaking device schtick. The entire Star Trek: Enterprise relaunch is kicked off with that same kind of framing device, Jake Sisko and Nog poring over recently declassified reports about Starfleet activities in the Federation's formative years, stopping to take potshots at the events of "These are the voyages..." as a terribly unrealistic cover for Trip going undercover to Romulus.

It was severe enough that Picard's brother and nephew both died in the fire, though it appears I may have been thinking of the relaunch novel-verse's version of events where the fire apparently destroyed the house and spread into at least part of the vineyard. (It's implied that this is partly because the rest of the Picard family are rather old-fashioned and resisted incorporating advanced technology into the family home.) Given what Patrick Stewart and Kurtzman have said, it seems unlikely. They've indicated Star Trek: Picard will be set 20 years after Star Trek: Nemesis (2399~2400) with Picard having left Starfleet some 15 years previously (~2384). Kurtzman has stated the destruction of Romulus in 2387 that precipitated the godawful alternate universe reboot by Jar-Jar Abrams will play a role in the story. True... though it'd likely to be worse when the writers treat the pre-existing material with thinly veiled contempt as the creative team under Kurtzman have.

New plot idea: Jean-Luc Picard is haunted by a thousand generations of French wine snob family members for drinking holographic wine. The bottles all say Chateau Picard... As broken up as he seemed to be over the death of his brother and nephew, I can't quite see him rebuilding the family vineyard like that... especially given all the bad blood between him and his brother over his having left to go into Starfleet.

That's what was leaked... that he was going to be in Section 31. I'm more curious how he retired to a vineyard said to have burned down many a year ago?

First, neither of those was espionage. Second, neither of those cases is even remotely close to Section 31's activities. Section 31 operates without any kind of oversight and its operations range from actual espionage to sabotage, assassination, mass murder, and all manner of other illegal and immoral sh*t. The Celtris III op in "Chain of Command" was an authorized Starfleet Intelligence operation approved and carried out under the supervision of Starfleet Command, a commando raid to destroy a suspected metagenic weapon of mass destruction. The latter was essentially just an undercover police operation to bring to justice a group that had been looting archaeological sites in Federation space. Dangerous, yes... but not spying (espionage), carried out under proper oversight, and not illegal or immoral. He wasn't the only one... the only one to object was Dr. Crusher, initially. Their lack of disquiet with a plan to destroy the Borg - something the Federation would almost certainly have approved of at the time - likely stemmed from the then-current picture Starfleet had of the Borg as having no individual will, consciousness, or conscience. They were believed to essentially be meat puppets controlled and programmed with malevolent intent by the collective mind. What changed everyone's mind, Picard included, was talking to their captured Borg drone and the ensuing realization that it was a person whose individuality was being suppressed by the Borg collective. Once it was clear they'd been planning to kill thinking, feeling people rather than just a malevolent cloud-based AI controlling a bunch of meat puppets, they scuttled the plan immediately. Yeah, it doesn't really start ramping off the wreckage of Star Trek over seas full of burning sharks and garbage until Part II of the pilot. That is, allegedly, the plan for Season 3. Even though they successfully killed the evil AI that wants to seize an alien data library full of information on AIs so that it can become an AI (if you just said "wait, what?" you're in good company) in the show's "present day" and thus essentially removed the entire reason for wasting half a season trying to find ways to get rid of the data library (just removing the affected computer core elements and vaporizing them with a phaser never seems to occur to them) by sending it into the future, the USS Discovery still heads off to get itself stranded 1,000 years in the future to keep the data out of the hands of the AI they literally just killed in 2257 who no longer exists in that future anyway. If the sh*t-awful Short Trek "Calypso" is any indication, Kurtzman is likely setting up the Federation to be the bad guys in the far future despite Star Trek: Enterprise establishing the 31st+ century Federation was still very much the Big Good and a utopian civilization. Kurtzman's determined effort to turn Star Trek from a utopian series to a dystopian one with heavy overtones of militant nationalism are probably going to heavily color the work being done on Star Trek: Picard. I don't recall if they've ever commented on it directly, but most fans suspect that Star Trek: Discovery's producers were hoping that making Michael Burnham into a never-before mentioned foster sister of Spock's was an attempt to give her instant appeal with the Trekkies. It backfired horribly, due to her being a terrible person, so they tried to salvage it using Spock himself, Captain Pike, Number One, and the USS Enterprise in season two and it still didn't work because fans were incensed over Spock apparently being mentally ill, Pike constantly taking crap from Burnham despite her being under his command, and the Enterprise only showing up as a disabled ship needing a tow back home until the very end.

Well, if nothing else I'm interested to see how Weekend at Luke's will either finish flying the franchise into the ground like Vader's flagship in Return of the Jedi or if they'll just narrowly miss complete disaster like the Millennium Falcon in The Force Awakens...

... ... ... what gave you that idea? No, Star Trek: Discovery is so much in the mold of the thankfully-cancelled Star Trek reboot by J.J. Abrams that a lot of fans refuse to believe it's a prime continuity series. There's very little of classic Star Trek in it, between the hideous Orc-like Klingon designs, the overly busy enemy ship designs, the Starfleet bridges with a great big fragile smart window instead of proper bloody viewscreens, phasers that fire blaster bolts that just burn holes in people, lots of exposed piping everywhere in Starfleet ships, a protagonist who's an utter berk who's been mysteriously promoted WAY above their level of competence (Burnham having apparently skipped Starfleet Academy entirely and was set to become a captain after just seven years of service on one ship), etc. Actual connections to real Star Trek are few and thin on the ground. Season one is practically stand-alone except for brief mention of Kahless by some Kling-Orcs in the first episode and two terribly out-of-character appearances by a Harry Mudd who is downright malevolent. The Short Trek miniseries between the two seasons started out pretty awful with a bad comedy bit followed by a dystopian far future schtick, but then had two proper bloody Star Trek episodes (including an absolutely wonderful Mudd episode) and season two almost managed to feel like real Star Trek for a few episodes there with Christopher Pike in the center seat before the rot set back in and it once again became the Michael Burnham Mary Sue Hour via a completely nonsensical main story arc involving an antagonist shamelessly thieved from the Star Trek relaunch novel verse (Section 31's master AI "Control"). There are a few aesthetic touches that are a bit hard to make out but are distinctly classic Star Trek-ish, like the Discovery's engine room having a classic Constitution-class horizontal warp core arrangement visible in the background, the phaser looking like a straight aesthetic update of the TOS phaser pistol (and an actually good looking one at that), and a VERY lovely but moderately unfaithful classic Constitution-class USS Enterprise briefly showing up complete with TOS-era sound effects. That press was mostly bought-and-paid-for by CBS in the most stringently literal sense... they own the few websites that were actively praising the series, like ComicBook.com. The Orville is much closer to the spirit of classic Star Trek... it's not so much a straight comedy as an affectionate parody that is gradually playing itself straighter and straighter in the gap made by Discovery's failure to be a proper bloody Trek show. That's about the shape of it, yes... by the schmucks who brought you Star Trek: Into Darkness.

Most Star Trek fans, myself included, would agree with you that season two was a step up for Star Trek: Discovery... they'd just gently remind you that it wasn't that big of a step up, that it was a step up from essentially rock bottom, and that it promptly took a step back down around halfway in when the nonsense plot involving Control was introduced. Let's just say it's not accidental that both seasons essentially ended with "and let us never speak of this again". I strongly suspect that CBS wrote the season two finale in anticipation of it being the last episode, given that they added "and also let us never speak of these people or this ship ever again on pain of death" as well. Considering that CBS has renewed it but Netflix hasn't, it'll be interesting to see if there even is a season three. That Netflix told CBS and Kurtzman to go bag it when Star Trek: Picard was pitched doesn't augur well for its longevity. Going forward is good, you'll get no argument there... the big concern for Star Trek: Picard is Kurtzman shitting all over Picard's well-established character.

It's very apt... and that probably has a lot to do with CBS insisting it should be abbreviated DSC instead. On various occasions, CBS has claimed or denied the claim that the aesthetic changes were motivated by a legal requirement of the way rights are split between the current CBS and Paramount. Most fans generally attribute the show's thinly-veiled contempt for the Star Trek franchise and its continuity to Kurtzman sharing J.J. Abrams's dislike of Star Trek and its iconic high-concept sci-fi narrative style. They didn't think twice about totally breaking Star Trek's continuity because they literally do not care about Star Trek itself. That the same team is working on Star Trek: Picard is why everyone's cringing so hard anticipating how they're going to f*ck it up. Just some empty talk from Bryan Fuller about wanting to return to the style of 60's sci-fi when they were first trying to pitch the idea of a new Star Trek series... nothing of that ever actually made it into the production. They didn't care enough to actually have an original design done... they just lifted the rejected Ralph McQuarrie Enterprise design for the cancelled Star Trek: Planet of the Titans film project from the 70's. You'll probably hate how disrespected Captain Pike is in the series... he's constantly taking crap from Burnham and the other female characters. Kurtzman worked with Abrams on Into Darkness, which should tell you where his bad ideas come from.