Star Trek: Discovery

[Lexomatic]

Re: Seto Kaiba's synopsis of 2x12 "Through the Valley of Shadows" ... interesting. I'll reply at length when I screen the ep myself; I had insufficient bandwidth during a vacation in Miami (sea breezes, lizards, banyan trees and poor signage at public transit nodes).

It seems that evidence continues to mount that the dramatic flaws stem mostly from the foundational decision to use a "main character" paradigm, rather than the "ensemble" paradigm of the prior six TV series (*). Per the "you can please some of the people some of the time, but ..." principle, an ensemble makes it more likely that the writers will stumble upon characters or combinations that appeal to viewers. The fact that supporting characters Saru and Pike are better received than Burnham is a problem. (Charitably assuming it's not just a preference for male characters. Tilly is a love-or-hate proposition, M-Georgiou is still a scenery-chewing duplicitous villain, and with only three eps Reno doesn't have sufficient sample to judge.)

(*) Those character-relationship graphs that appear in anime "film roman albums"? I keep meaning to draw one for DSC, to see if it really does all revolve around her. A more rigorous analysis would weight the edges by the number of scenes shared by two characters, if such information was easy to extract.

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, Lexomatic said:

It seems that evidence continues to mount that the dramatic flaws stem mostly from the foundational decision to use a "main character" paradigm, rather than the "ensemble" paradigm of the prior six TV series (*). [...]

(*) Those character-relationship graphs that appear in anime "film roman albums"? I keep meaning to draw one for DSC, to see if it really does all revolve around her. A more rigorous analysis would weight the edges by the number of scenes shared by two characters, if such information was easy to extract.

I'm not sure there's any reasonable doubt that it doesn't all revolve around Burnham anymore, as Season Two has seen both Spock hang an enormous lampshade on it by chewing her out for her wanting to make everything all about her followed by future Control revealing she's the only one that can supposedly stop it, then the reveal that the Red Angel was her supposedly-dead mother who's been altering history left, right, and center to un-kill her literally hundreds of times (she's apparently more death-prone than Hank and Dean Venure) and then present-day Control revealing that she's the only one its predictive model thinks can actually prevent it from achieving its goal.

It's hard to argue that it's not all about her when mulitple characters with future knowledge have clearly stated it really is all about her.

 

9 hours ago, Lexomatic said:

The fact that supporting characters Saru and Pike are better received than Burnham is a problem. (Charitably assuming it's not just a preference for male characters. Tilly is a love-or-hate proposition, M-Georgiou is still a scenery-chewing duplicitous villain, and with only three eps Reno doesn't have sufficient sample to judge.)

Really, from what I've seen, heard, and read in the Star Trek fan community it doesn't appear to be a matter of race or sex that made Anson Mount's Captain Pike and Doug Jones's Commander Saru much more popular.  They're more appealing to the audience than Burnham because they're not a-holes.  Michael Burnham is kind of an a-hole.  She's arrogant, she's rude, she's condescending in the extreme, she's a poster child for disruptive workplace behavior and she's frequently openly disrespectful of both fellow officers and superiors, and she's got that martyr complex causing her to annoy everyone else.  She's basically an even more annoying and overdramatic version of Wesley Crusher and you know how fans hated HIM.

Tilly seems to get more of a pass because some people believe she's a representation character for fans on the autism spectrum while others think she's essentially a homage to Star Trek fans themselves.  Personally I find her annoying.  Mirror Georgeau tests unusually well with the audience, which is weird since she's a one-dimensional asian femme fatale character in the Bond villain's sidekick category... she's horribly amoral, she knows kung fu, she wears exclusively tight black leather outfits, her dialog is mostly catty remarks and sexual solicitation, and she's promiscuous to the point sleeping with anything that moves and tells everyone about it at the first opportunity.  It doesn't help that the writers keep trying to build an unrepentant mass-murdering despot with the blood of billions of innocents on her hands as "a very fine person" because of their obsession with Section 31.  (An obsession that prompted them to propose two different Section 31 TV shows, one featuring Michelle Yeoh and the other allegedly featuring Sir Patrick Stewart.)

[Lexomatic]

18 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'm not sure there's any reasonable doubt that it doesn't all revolve around Burnham anymore, [...] Spock [...] chewing her out for her wanting to make everything all about her [then] future Control [then] her supposedly-dead mother who's been altering history [and then] present-day Control revealing that she's the only one its predictive model thinks can actually prevent it from achieving its goal.

Agreed, although that's not the thrust of my comment. Also, I'm not going to take anything a character says, or what the crew alleges in an interview, at face value. Rather, my method is to step back and assess the holistic pattern to see what the show is actually delivering despite any reflective statements about its intent.

To rephrase my thesis:

Picard: "Is Michael Burnham a lousy main character who's distorting the entire Trekkian dramatic paradigm?"

Inquisitor Q: "That's three questions. Is Michael Burnham the main character? Is she lousy in that position? Does a main character distort the paradigm?"

However gratifying a validation of our stance ("this isn't just bad Trek, it's bad 2010s drama. your scriptwriting is bad and you should feel bad") might be, we're not going to get a mea culpa from the cast and crew, Rainier Wolfcastle-style ("there vere problems vit the script from day vun"), certainly not for years.

(I'm picturing the debate in multidimensional terms. At one corner are audience members who really like the show, at another are the ones who object because it doesn't fit their notions of what a show in this era should be, and Seto Kaiba and I are taking the "agnostic about the setting materials, but critical of the dramatic choices" position. There may be other corners.)

Edited April 11, 2019 by Lexomatic

[Dangard Ace]

One more episode to go and we can dump Burnham in the

future

.   Too bad Pike's gone next season but he's got to go get his face melted. 

[Seto Kaiba]

On 4/11/2019 at 6:16 PM, Lexomatic said:

Agreed, although that's not the thrust of my comment. Also, I'm not going to take anything a character says, or what the crew alleges in an interview, at face value. Rather, my method is to step back and assess the holistic pattern to see what the show is actually delivering despite any reflective statements about its intent.

Then I can hardly wait to see what you think of the latest episode, where any pretense that Michael Burnham is not a Mary Sue is flushed out the nearest airlock and subjected to a sustained photon torpedo barrage.

I remember watching the episode, mildly horrified, thinking "dear lord, someone was paid to write this".

 

On 4/11/2019 at 6:16 PM, Lexomatic said:

To rephrase my thesis:

Picard: "Is Michael Burnham a lousy main character who's distorting the entire Trekkian dramatic paradigm?"

Inquisitor Q: "That's three questions. Is Michael Burnham the main character? Is she lousy in that position? Does a main character distort the paradigm?"

"Yes", "Yes", and "Yes", respectively.  She's a Black Hole Sue whose personal gravity is so intense plot cannot escape her surface.

Spoiler

As of "Such Sweet Sorrow Part 1", she's taking this up to freaking THIRTEEN by altering the supposedly immutable bad future you lock yourself into by using a *dry heaves* time crystal despite the immutability of said bad future having been a core plot point from the previous episode. 

Watching Control!Leland massacre the useless crew of the USS Discovery singlehandedly was oddly theraputic and definitely a high point in the episode, so the idea that the show will break the rules it spent last episode establishing just so she can go save the day comes off as an ass-pull at best.

 

On 4/11/2019 at 6:16 PM, Lexomatic said:

However gratifying a validation of our stance ("this isn't just bad Trek, it's bad 2010s drama. your scriptwriting is bad and you should feel bad") might be, we're not going to get a mea culpa from the cast and crew, Rainier Wolfcastle-style ("there vere problems vit the script from day vun"), certainly not for years.

We may not have to wait very long for that.

Rumors continue to circulate that CBS is now facing serious pressure from their distribution partners (e.g. Netflix) as well as their merchandising partners over Kurtzman's handling of Star Trek: Discovery and the greater Star Trek franchise.  CBS and Discovery's showrunners still have a bit of a black eye over the network having overreported the CBS All Access new subscriber counts by 2x thanks to having counted free subscriptions given away to certain cable subscribers on top of actual paid subscribers.  Star Trek: Discovery's sponsor, Netflix, is reportedly once again unhappy with the show's performance on their service and its near-constant budget overruns in production.  The show's merchandising partners have been vocally unhappy with it for a while now since that promised demand for Discovery merch largely never materialized.  Most of what the official store offers is CafePress apparel and Starfleet badges.

Word on the street is that Netflix and the licensees want Kurtzman gone, and are blaming the aesthetic and creative choices that took Discovery away from the prime universe aesthetic for the brand's underperforming.  Reportedly they're also unsatisfied with the plans for the Picard series, which leaks suggest is to feature an aged Jean-Luc Picard as the new head of Section 31 and are threatening to withdraw support for that and other proposed Star Trek titles on the grounds that this bleak and dark Star Trek isn't actually selling all that well among non-casual viewers.

 

 

7 hours ago, Dangard Ace said:

One more episode to go and we can dump Burnham in the

  Reveal hidden contents

future

.   Too bad Pike's gone next season but he's got to go get his face melted. 

Man, what did the 32nd century do to deserve that?

[Mommar]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Word on the street is that Netflix and the licensees want Kurtzman gone, and are blaming the aesthetic and creative choices that took Discovery away from the prime universe aesthetic for the brand's underperforming.  Reportedly they're also unsatisfied with the plans for the Picard series, which leaks suggest is to feature an aged Jean-Luc Picard as the new head of Section 31 and are threatening to withdraw support for that and other proposed Star Trek titles on the grounds that this bleak and dark Star Trek isn't actually selling all that well among non-casual viewers.

So Netflix understands what Star Trek is.

[Mog]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Reportedly they're also unsatisfied with the plans for the Picard series, which leaks suggest is to feature an aged Jean-Luc Picard as the new head of Section 31 and are threatening to withdraw support for that and other proposed Star Trek titles on the grounds that this bleak and dark Star Trek isn't actually selling all that well among non-casual viewers.

Picard with Section 31?

Nope.

He'd be the first to shut it down.

[Seto Kaiba]

7 hours ago, Mommar said:

So Netflix understands what Star Trek is.

At the very least, it suggests that Netflix is paying sufficient attention to its substantial investment in Star Trek: Discovery and CBS's other Star Trek projects under development to feel that they're not getting value for money.

Netflix being dissatisfied with Star Trek: Discovery's showrunners for their casual attitude towards overspending on production is a piece of news that goes all the way back to season one.  Their reluctance to finance season two was allegedly the genesis of a lot of the changes intended to take Discovery back towards traditional Star Trek territory.  The series still runs over budget with frankly monotonous regularity, so it's not all that surprising Netflix is reportedly upset again given that CBS has had to stretch the truth in their status reports on CBS All Access to make it sound like it's a hit... and got in trouble for doing so.

Star Trek's merchandising partners seem to have hit the same brick wall with Star Trek: Discovery that they did years ago with Star Trek's reboot films.  Reboot Trek and Discovery seem to test well with casual viewers but were not well-received by the fans... and fans are the ones who buy the merchandise.  So most of what's getting made is inexpensive apparel, rather than more profitable collectibles.

Either or both may have noticed that most of the actual praise for Star Trek: Discovery seems to be coming from "news" sites like ComicBook.com that are owned by CBS or one of its partners or subsidiaries.  Fan reviewers responses to the series seem to be overwhelmingly negative, varying from reasonable-sounding disappointment to hyperbolic outrage.  I don't normally make much use of YouTube, but when I went looking for Star Trek: Discovery reviews there I was floored to find that practically every channel reviewing the series on a regular basis was flaying the series alive.  I'd figured Doomcock was a hyperbolic outlier, but his views seem to be pretty widely shared along with the various ways the show is mocked.  Several of them have reported CBS launching copyright takedowns on their channels in recent months too, at least two of which ended in actual suspensions.

 

7 hours ago, Mog said:

Picard with Section 31?

Nope.

He'd be the first to shut it down.

Yeah, I gotta admit that definitely would be out of character for Jean-Luc Picard.

Picard was hands down the most consistently moral, highly principled, honorable captain on Star Trek.  He would've been disgusted to the depths of his soul to learn an organization like Section 31 existed at all, never mind taking the reins.

Even in the Star Trek: the Next Generation relaunch novels, Picard was absolutely disguisted to learn that Section 31 existed at all and was beyond horrified to learn that...

Spoiler

... when he helped Admirals Ross, Paris, Jellico, Nechayev, and Nakamura strongarm Federation President Min Zife into his resignation from the presidency over a number of war crimes the Enterprise discovered his administration had committed during the Dominion War, he'd been an unwitting pawn in Section 31's plans to cover up Zife's war crimes by destroying the evidence and assassinating him and his staff to prevent the Klingons from learning what he'd done and declaring war over Zife's violation of the Khitomer Accords by arming a neutral planet on the Klingon border.

When Julian Bashir, Data, and others brought down Section 31 for the final time and the whole ugly mess came out, Picard was absolutely stunned rigid when he was informed that Admiral Ross was a Section 31 operative and that the whole Zife resignation was stage-managed by Section 31 (who even wrote Zife's final speech) and culminated not in Zife retiring to a private life as a civilian but in Zife and his staff being murdered right there in the Monet room in the Palais de la Concorde mere minutes later.  He didn't so much as raise a voice in his own defense and felt he'd got off too easy being told that his career was over and he'd never rise past Captain.

 

[Dynaman]

11 hours ago, Mommar said:

So Netflix understands what Star Trek is.

To do a more succinct sumation on Seto's.  No they do not but they do understand return on investment (or lake thereof).  If STD was making them money they wouldn't care one whit if it were not following "cannon".  It isn't - so they care.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Dynaman said:

To do a more succinct sumation on Seto's.  No they do not but they do understand return on investment (or lake thereof).  If STD was making them money they wouldn't care one whit if it were not following "cannon".  It isn't - so they care.

They may, at least, be dimly aware of what fans consider "real Star Trek" to be based on what the fans are crucifying Star Trek: Discovery for.

[Mazinger]

Here's one of my bigger grips. It is admittedly very superficial:

Ethan Peck, Spock on the show, doesn't come of as very-Leonard Nimoy-ish in his depiction of the Vulcan.  It's not just that he doesn't resemble Nimoy much, but his delivery is flat where it should come across as inquisitive or contemplative.

At this point I much prefer Zachary Quinto's portrayal and I'm not much of a fan of the Kelvin timeline movies.

Strangely, I think Sonequa Martin-Green would have made a great Vulcan.  I'll admit, when the script calls on her to emote, she definitely gives it her all, but she also pulls off stoic quite well.

I just think her face screams Vulcan to me.

[JB0]

10 minutes ago, Mazinger said:

It's not just that he doesn't resemble Nimoy much, but his delivery is flat where it should come across as inquisitive or contemplative.

He must buy the "vulcans don't have emotions" bs they're always spouting.

Quinto did his research, and understood that vulcans in general, and Spock in specific, have powerful motions beneath the surface that they keep in check with will. Still waters run deep, as they say.

Edited April 15, 2019 by JB0

[Dobber]

1 hour ago, JB0 said:

He must buy the "vulcans don't have emotions" bs they're always spouting.

Quinto did his research, and understood that vulcans in general, and Spock in specific, have powerful motions beneath the surface that they keep in check with will. Still waters run deep, as they say.

Thank You! So many people seem to not get that. Vulcans DO have emotion, they just suppress and control them. They don’t allow themselves to be governed by them.

That said, I personally like Ethan’s portrayal of Spock thus far. I hope we get to see him in full Spock regalia (shaven and in his blue uniform) before the season ends.

I personally hope that CBS see’s the popularity and seemingly universal praise for Mount’s Pike that they will make a Pike Enterprise show. Including Peck’s Spock and Romijin’s Number 1.

Chris

Edited April 15, 2019 by Dobber

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Mazinger said:

Here's one of my bigger grips. It is admittedly very superficial:

Ethan Peck, Spock on the show, doesn't come of as very-Leonard Nimoy-ish in his depiction of the Vulcan.  It's not just that he doesn't resemble Nimoy much, but his delivery is flat where it should come across as inquisitive or contemplative.

Well, remember this Spock is basically at the height of his Vulcan "all of the other reindeer" phase, when he was actively rejected (and overcompensating for) being half-human.  That was part of his character well before Star Trek: Discovery.

He's especially bad about it because he's around Burnham, which would be enough to make anyone wish to be a different species even if she weren't a major factor in his abandonment of his human side.

[Lexomatic]

On 4/13/2019 at 1:39 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

The show's merchandising partners have been vocally unhappy with it for a while now since that promised demand for Discovery merch largely never materialized.

Hmm. What merchandising is there, exactly? I've seen a few products reviewed on TrekMovie.com, but I haven't gone looking for anything myself (and most of the categories are too obscure to appear at mass-market retailers anyway, so I'm not going to encounter them in passing). Lessee. Amazon and StarTrek.com list...

• Home video
• Expansions to Star Trek Online
• Books etc.
  • Novels - Desperate Hours (Sep 2017), Drastic Measures (Feb 2018), Fear Itself (Jun 2018), The Way to the Stars (Jan 2019)
  • Comics (by IDW) - Mirror Universe limited series
  • Other printed matter - The Official Companion (Sep 2018), Designing Starships Vol 4 (Sep 2019), wall calendar 2020
  • Stickers (by Popfunk)
• Models (Official Starships Collection by Eaglemoss) - Starfleet (Buran, Clarke, Discovery, Europa, Kerala, Shran), Vulcan cruiser, Klingon houses
• Roleplay apparel
  • Badges (by QMx aka Quantum Mechanix) - Starfleet departments, S31, Mirror universe
  • DSC tracksuit-type Starfleet uniforms (by Rubies)
• Other apparel
  • T-shirts (by Popfunk) - DISCO, S31 black badge
  • Polo shirts
  • Hoodies - NCC-1031, Enterprise with DSC-style delta, S31
• Burnham standee (the only character to get one ... as if we needed additional evidence of who the main character is)
• Coffee mugs - Saru, Stamets, Spock salute, Burnham salute, DSC logo, #Silly4Tilly, S31
• Thermal bottle

But nothing in the way of:

• Plastic model kits
• Action figures
• Roleplay accessories (aside from badges) - phaser, tricorder (the BBC has not missed a trick in making the Doctor's sonic screwdriver toyetic)
• Christmas ornaments
• Funko Pop vinyl figures
• Plush aliens (umm... space-tardigrade and space-whale?)
• Soundtrack album (does the show even have music outside the theme song? I honestly can't recall)

Edited April 16, 2019 by Lexomatic
Add: Funko Pop, plushes, soundtrack

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Lexomatic said:

Hmm. What merchandising is there, exactly? I've seen a few products reviewed on TrekMovie.com, but I haven't gone looking for anything myself (and most of the categories are too obscure to appear at mass-market retailers anyway, so I'm not going to encounter them in passing). Lessee. Amazon and StarTrek.com list...

As you can see from StarTrek.com, the overwhelming majority of Star Trek: Discovery's merchandising is dirt-cheap apparel and drinkware rather than collectibles.  

Seriously, of the 150 items currently offered by the StarTrek.com store for Star Trek: Discovery 121 are apparel and drinkware.  That's 69 different t-shirts, 23 sweatshirts and hoodies, 6 hats, 4 jackets, 16 mugs, 2 wine glasses, and 1 thermal flask.  Of the 29 remaining items, 11 are posters or prints, 7 are badges, 4 are standees, 2 are books, 2 are home video releases, and there's the soundtrack, a dogtag, and a sticker sheet.

There's been no sign of the more traditional Star Trek merchandise like prop replicas (phasers, communicators, tricorders, etc.), the large "electronic" model starships, action figures, and model kits.  For a Star Trek series that is allegedly wildly popular, the absence of this kind of merchandise is rather surprising.  Even Star Trek: Enterprise got that much... and Star Trek: Enterprise was the target of the same kind of "ruined forever" hyperbolic criticism that Discovery currently is.

 

(I guess that's one benefit to Star Trek: Discovery... people are suddenly looking back at Star Trek: Enterprise much more favorably.)

We're a few days out from the Star Trek: Discovery season two finale - which might shape up to be the series finale if the issues with Netflix and the merchandising partners aren't sorted out - and I'm still left to wonder one thing:

Star Trek: Discovery's entire season two plot revolves around Section 31 creating an unlawful time travel device and has been using it in a highly irresponsible manner.  The Federation's Department of Temporal Investigations doesn't exist yet in 2257, but one of its uptime successor organizations that was tasked with taking more proactive measures against accidental or intentional alteration of the timeline like the 29th century Temporal Integrity Commission or 31st century Federation Temporal Agency should have intervened to put a stop to all of this ridiculous Red Angel nonsense and formally charge the Burnhams.  If Janeway's handful of incidents was enough to drive a Starfleet captain attached to the TIC to murder, Michael and Gabrielle Burnham's nonsense with the Red Angel suit should have had legions of agents descending on them to arrest them and retroactively remove the Red Angel suit from the timeline.

 

EDIT: Yikes... the dispute between CBS and the licensees has reportedly resulted in CBS having to call a halt to production of the Picard series, which was set to begin shooting yesterday.

Edited April 16, 2019 by Seto Kaiba

[derex3592]

Good.  As much as I want with every fiber of my being to see Patrick Stewart in the role of Jean-Luc Picard once again, I lie awake at night cringing about what the writers/producers are going to do to his character...

[Lexomatic]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

As you can see from StarTrek.com, the overwhelming majority of Star Trek: Discovery's merchandising is dirt-cheap apparel and drinkware rather than collectibles.  [...] For a Star Trek series that is allegedly wildly popular, the absence of [collectible-type] merchandise is rather surprising.

The pattern of offerings implies that the bulk of existing fans remain more interested in merch associated with older shows, and the new show hasn't drawn a mass of new fans who are principally interested in new stuff. (When redesigning everything, it seems "new fans won't like the old-fangled style" is an excuse for "we want to exert our own creative vision".) Contrast with Macross (which continues to produce updated plamo of VF-1 alongside redecos of VF-31s) or Hasbro, which produces the same Transformers character in six different forms and price-points for different customers.

It's not just that the merch selection (casualwear, drinkware) is generally low-priced, but also a low time investment (models take time to build, novels take time to read).

Star Trek is certainly not a modern anime (whose priority is to be a late-night infomercial for tie-in soundtrack, light novel, character goods, papercraft, plamo, etc.), but where it could promote, it has done so poorly. Potential products are either impossible to see (murk-toned space battles), rarely seen (few beauty shots of ships not numbered NCC-1031), or ugly (Klingon ships). If you're accustomed to picking a uniform that's yellow or red or mostly-black to suit your skin tone, sorry, you're limited to blue with metallic accents (or, I guess, white-for-Medical). Characters rarely carry props, and when they do, it's a weapon (too bad if you want to accessorize with a nonviolent tricorder or medical kit).

(The uniforms of ENT were also mostly-blue, but (a) jumpsuits are more flattering to different physiques, (b) they look like a reasonable extrapolation of submarine and NASA wear, and (c) they have plenty of pockets.)

We're 19 months into the series (premiered September 2017) and we've had only four novels. True, we're not in the 1990s heyday of Pocket publishing a TNG and DS9 title every other month, but still disappointing. And what happened to the kid-oriented heyday of role play items from Playmates sold at Toys "R" Us? What kid is going to be inspired to re-enact these adventures? Any parent who wants to recapture the magic is going to stick to TNG or DS9. (To be fair, Hasbro also has no idea what to do with that segment -- it's always "arm-gun" or "Optimus Prime mask".)

There are no constructible toys, but that's probably a mercy after Bayverse KRE-O and Game of Thrones in brick form. (I'm skeptical of the mindset that seems to be "my favorite property hasn't arrived until it gets a big-budget movie and LEGO sets", but MEGA Brands-now-Mattel has been successful for years with its  Halo theme.)

[JB0]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

If Janeway's handful of incidents was enough to drive a Starfleet captain attached to the TIC to murder, Michael and Gabrielle Burnham's nonsense with the Red Angel suit should have had legions of agents descending on them to arrest them and retroactively remove the Red Angel suit from the timeline.

To say nothing of Kirk's escapades. 

 

One assumes Janeway had someone who was aggressively unfond of her role in history, to get the kind of hands-on attention she recieved.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Lexomatic said:

The pattern of offerings implies that the bulk of existing fans remain more interested in merch associated with older shows, and the new show hasn't drawn a mass of new fans who are principally interested in new stuff.

Yeah... as I mentioned a few days back, CBS seems to have hit the same brick wall with Star Trek: Discovery that Paramount did with their Star Trek reboot movies.

They're visually impressive special effects tours de force, but by being all flash and no substance they exhaust their bag of tricks very quickly and have nothing to hold an audience's interest long-term.  Star Trek can barely break even on the lukewarm support of the casual audience, and in some cases (e.g. Beyond) allegedly actually lost money in the long run.

 

Quote

(When redesigning everything, it seems "new fans won't like the old-fangled style" is an excuse for "we want to exert our own creative vision".)

The designers working on Star Trek: Discovery initially leaked reports that they'd been told that everything had to be "25% different" from classic Star Trek aesthetics for legal reasons stemming from the divided rights to the Star Trek franchise.  They later deleted those posts and stated it was purely a creative choice.

Either way, the sticky fingerprints of Jar-Jar Abrams's hideous movie designs are all over Discovery, which was a pretty surefire way for CBS to shoot itself in the foot given that Star Trek fans roundly mocked the omnipresent lens flares and "we outsourced our interior design to Apple" aesthetic.

 

Quote

It's not just that the merch selection (casualwear, drinkware) is generally low-priced, but also a low time investment (models take time to build, novels take time to read).

Not to mention it's all types of merchandise that the most casual tiers of viewer would be more likely to actually buy.  There's nothing for the die-hard Star Trek fan because Star Trek: Discovery is about as welcome in the die-hard Trekkie's home as dry rot.

 

Quote

 (The uniforms of ENT were also mostly-blue, but (a) jumpsuits are more flattering to different physiques, (b) they look like a reasonable extrapolation of submarine and NASA wear, and (c) they have plenty of pockets.)

What does the future have against pockets anyway?

 

Quote

We're 19 months into the series (premiered September 2017) and we've had only four novels. True, we're not in the 1990s heyday of Pocket publishing a TNG and DS9 title every other month, but still disappointing. And what happened to the kid-oriented heyday of role play items from Playmates sold at Toys "R" Us? What kid is going to be inspired to re-enact these adventures? Any parent who wants to recapture the magic is going to stick to TNG or DS9.

There was something said in a review back in season one about how Star Trek: Discovery wasn't fun... the characters were plainly not having any fun, so it was hard for the audience to.  Without that sort of "high adventure" science fiction setting I can't imagine Star Trek: Discovery would do much to appeal to kids.  It feels more like a Star Trek series catering to this guy.

 

 

 

1 minute ago, JB0 said:

To say nothing of Kirk's escapades.

Honestly, one of the best parts of the Department of Temporal Investigations novel series was how the name "James T. Kirk" seems to still be giving the DTI grey hair and migraine headaches a century after the man's (official) death.  Lucsly practically has a stroke every time the man's name comes up... never mind when he actually meets him and descends into borderline angrish for several minutes before winding up in insane troll logic territory.

 

1 minute ago, JB0 said:

One assumes Janeway had someone who was aggressively unfond of her role in history, to get the kind of hands-on attention she recieved.

Even the chaps in the Temporal Integrity Commission who seemed to like her (e.g. Lt. Ducane from "Relativity") chastised her for her ship showing up on the Temporal Integrity Commission's sensors way too often... 

[JB0]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Honestly, one of the best parts of the Department of Temporal Investigations novel series was how the name "James T. Kirk" seems to still be giving the DTI grey hair and migraine headaches a century after the man's (official) death.  

Eh, they lifted the idea from Trials and Tribble-ations anyways. 

...

Actually, one wonders what they DO about things like the slingshot maneuver and the Guardian of Forever. Kirk found a lot of ways to make time travel EASY.

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, JB0 said:

Eh, they lifted the idea from Trials and Tribble-ations anyways. 

Does it really count as having lifted the idea if the entire book series is spinning off from that one and only canonical appearance of the DTI in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?

 

10 hours ago, JB0 said:

...

Actually, one wonders what they DO about things like the slingshot maneuver and the Guardian of Forever. Kirk found a lot of ways to make time travel EASY.

Get properly angry, then do the paperwork.

[JB0]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Does it really count as having lifted the idea if the entire book series is spinning off from that one and only canonical appearance of the DTI in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine?

Fair enough.

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Get properly angry, then do the paperwork.

Well, I meant in terms of damage control.

 

"Hey, this is Kirk. Did you guys know you can reverse time just by flying near a star?"

"Stop breaking causality! If you tell anyone at all about this we're ending your great-grandfather!"

[Mazinger]

I know that the Enterprise crew did use the Guardian of Forever at least one other time after the City on the Edge of Forever, in the animated series, but I can't help but wonder why it never showed up again in any other series.

Or why no writer ever tried to work in a back story to the Guardian and whatever ancient alien species built it.

Then again, who knows, maybe it was built in the future and traveled back to where it was when they found it.

Edited April 17, 2019 by Mazinger

[slide]

1 minute ago, JB0 said:

Fair enough.

Well, I meant in terms of damage control.

 

"Hey, this is Kirk. Did you guys know you can reverse time just by flying near a star?"

"Stop breaking causality! If you tell anyone at all about this we're ending your great-grandfather!"

Well, the DTI is a Federation Law Enforcement agency... so I wouldn't put that past them  lol!

[Lexomatic]

4 hours ago, Mazinger said:

Or why no writer ever tried to work in a back story to the Guardian and whatever ancient alien species built it.

Be careful what you wish for -- visual SF is replete with entities that are more interesting the less you know, until later showrunners or tie-in novelists plunge their grubby mitts into the sandbox and spoil the soup by evaporating the veneer of mystery.

According to its Memory Beta entry, the Guardian of Forever has appeared in many stories, including:

In Imzadi (Peter David, 1992), future-Riker uses the Guardian of Forever to save Troi, thereby also explicating whatever mystery we'd had about their early relationship. (Also features a female Orion scientist going by the name "Mary Mac" who has to dress down to get other species to take her brain seriously.)

In The Devil's Heart (Carmen Carter, 1993), the titular artifact, coveted by one ruler after another, is implied to be a seed that will eventually grow into another Guardian, elsewhere.

(Ob the topic of this thread, we should count ourselves lucky that DSC has trotted out only a limited number of TOS icons. We did encounter the Sarek family, redesigned Klingons, Andorians and Tellarites, Harry Mudd and android copies thereof, the Pike-era Enterprise, and Talosians; but thankfully haven't seen Romulans, Tholians, Garth of Izar, Organians, Gary 7, the Guardian, or Antares-class freighters.)

[Mazinger]

16 minutes ago, Lexomatic said:

Be careful what you wish for -- visual SF is replete with entities that are more interesting the less you know, until later showrunners or tie-in novelists plunge their grubby mitts into the sandbox and spoil the soup by evaporating the veneer of mystery.

According to its Memory Beta entry, the Guardian of Forever has appeared in many stories, including:

Wow, after reading all the different ways the Guardian was been used/abused I'm a little appalled!

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, JB0 said:

Fair enough.

Well, I meant in terms of damage control.

The DTI in the novels didn't have any means of time travel themselves, they were all about monitoring and regulating research into temporal mechanics and any related technology, confiscating any time travel technology they find (whether ancient, new, or anachronistic), investigating, and if necessary prosecuting, individuals who try to alter history.  

They get assistance from uptime agencies like the TIC and FTA when the offenders are from the future.

Spoiler

The Department of Temporal Investigations was also responsible for liaising with comparable organizations in other governments and masterminded the Temporal Defense Grid that prevents unauthorized time travel in the territory controlled by those powers in the future.

 

 

28 minutes ago, Mazinger said:

Wow, after reading all the different ways the Guardian was been used/abused I'm a little appalled!

There is a very good reason most of the novels are non-canon to the Star Trek novel verse.

[Chronocidal]

Ahhh, the Cheerio of Time.  It's been a long time, but I think I do remember reading Imzadi.  I think I shuffled through the Riker/Troi material, but the temporal murder mystery angle was pretty interesting.  That, and I remember getting a few good laughs over Barclay having a series of aneurisms over seeing multiple copies of Data running around, while carrying the head of one of them and conversing with it about temporal mechanics.  Or something.  Like I said, it was a long time ago.

One thing that still bothers me to this day however.. When they ripped Gillian Taylor, the whale specialist, out of the 80s, did anyone consider that they were wiping out any future descendants she would have had?  Granted, small price to pay for saving the planet in the grand scheme of things, but would have been interesting to return to the future and discover that a whole bunch of people they used to know suddenly never existed.

[TehPW]

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Ahhh, the Cheerio of Time.  It's been a long time, but I think I do remember reading Imzadi.  I think I shuffled through the Riker/Troi material, but the temporal murder mystery angle was pretty interesting.  That, and I remember getting a few good laughs over Barclay having a series of aneurisms over seeing multiple copies of Data running around, while carrying the head of one of them and conversing with it about temporal mechanics.  Or something.  Like I said, it was a long time ago.

One thing that still bothers me to this day however.. When they ripped Gillian Taylor, the whale specialist, out of the 80s, did anyone consider that they were wiping out any future descendants she would have had?  Granted, small price to pay for saving the planet in the grand scheme of things, but would have been interesting to return to the future and discover that a whole bunch of people they used to know suddenly never existed.

There's always this 

or this 

 

[Graham]

I've just started watching Enterprise recently on Netfix. I never saw it when it originally aired.  I'm now up to season 2 and really enjoying far more than Discovery.

Actually, I did catch bits of a couple of episodes of Enterprise when it first aired but couldn't get into it, but now I'm really enjoying it,

Anyway, sign me up for a Captain Pike TV series!

 

 

 

[Sildani]

14 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Ahhh, the Cheerio of Time.  It's been a long time, but I think I do remember reading Imzadi.  I think I shuffled through the Riker/Troi material, but the temporal murder mystery angle was pretty interesting.  That, and I remember getting a few good laughs over Barclay having a series of aneurisms over seeing multiple copies of Data running around, while carrying the head of one of them and conversing with it about temporal mechanics.  Or something.  Like I said, it was a long time ago.

One thing that still bothers me to this day however.. When they ripped Gillian Taylor, the whale specialist, out of the 80s, did anyone consider that they were wiping out any future descendants she would have had?  Granted, small price to pay for saving the planet in the grand scheme of things, but would have been interesting to return to the future and discover that a whole bunch of people they used to know suddenly never existed.

She volunteered to go to the future - she literally jumped at the chance - and said she had “no one for (her) here,” so there’s a reasonable chance she had no children in the normal timeline. 

[Chronocidal]

1 hour ago, Sildani said:

She volunteered to go to the future - she literally jumped at the chance - and said she had “no one for (her) here,” so there’s a reasonable chance she had no children in the normal timeline. 

Oh, I know, I'm just saying it's entirely possible her personal life would pull a 180 in the weeks after the whales were released in the unaltered timeline.  It's entirely possible she met the man of her dreams in the next few days, and built a massive family that would have all poofed due to her going into the future.

It's also equally as likely that she could have been distracted by the whales being released early, and walked in front of a bus on the way home, had she not gone to find Kirk instead.  We really just don't know, and they never addressed it.

Didn't have time to watch both, but that second youtube vid was a whole nother level of "what", though.  Like.. what even?  I had to peel my eyebrows off the ceiling.

Edited April 18, 2019 by Chronocidal

[Dobber]

7 hours ago, Graham said:

I've just started watching Enterprise recently on Netfix. I never saw it when it originally aired.  I'm now up to season 2 and really enjoying far more than Discovery.

Actually, I did catch bits of a couple of episodes of Enterprise when it first aired but couldn't get into it, but now I'm really enjoying it,

Anyway, sign me up for a Captain Pike TV series!

 

 

 

Did the same this past Fall. Posted about it somewhere here I thought. Felt the same about Enterprise. I really liked it and think it was a victim of its time coming just after Voyager, DS9, and Next Gen. after nearly 20 years of grim gritty sci-fi, watching The hopeful Enterprise was a breath of fresh air. I just think it needed to settle for a while. I even really enjoyed the Ferengi and Borg episodes. The finale on the other hand, is a travesty and a disservice to the series. 

Chris

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Sildani said:

She volunteered to go to the future - she literally jumped at the chance - and said she had “no one for (her) here,” so there’s a reasonable chance she had no children in the normal timeline. 

3 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Oh, I know, I'm just saying it's entirely possible her personal life would pull a 180 in the weeks after the whales were released in the unaltered timeline.  It's entirely possible she met the man of her dreams in the next few days, and built a massive family that would have all poofed due to her going into the future.

It's also equally as likely that she could have been distracted by the whales being released early, and walked in front of a bus on the way home, had she not gone to find Kirk instead.  We really just don't know, and they never addressed it.

Really, the whole of Star Trek IV is one huge problem... 

• Kirk creates a bootstrap paradox by selling glasses he brought with him from the future to an antiques dealer in 1987.
• Kirk almost creates an international incident by sending Pavel Chekhov, a Russian, to infiltrate the Enterprise and he nearly gets killed and is captured and interrogated as a foreign spy.
• Chekhov leaves behind his Starfleet identification and a working late 23rd century Klingon-issue subspace communicator and Starfleet phaser pistol.
• They abduct Chekhov - a suspected foreign spy - from the hospital where he was sent for treatment.
• McCoy casually dispenses 23rd century medication from his kit while in said hospital and gets in several altercations with doctors along the way.
• Scotty gives away future technology (the chemical formula for transparent aluminum.
• Kirk abducts two humpback whales and a marine biologist, possibly indirectly causing the extinction of that very species in his own present day.
• Kirk essentially attacks a whaling ship in international waters.

The DTI must've had a fit when he got back and crashed that Bird of Prey in San Francisco Bay.  I can only assume the fact that he saved Earth, brought home the first-ever captured Klingon Bird of Prey, and potentially unmasked a whale species as sentient alien inhabitants of Earth got him off the hook.

 

7 minutes ago, Dobber said:

The finale on the other hand, is a travesty and a disservice to the series. 

You'd probably enjoy the Enterprise relaunch novels... their jumping-off point and the first novel's framing device is Jake Sisko and Nog going over declassified documents from the Federation's formative years and brutally taking the piss out of Enterprise's last couple episodes.  (Trip's death, for instance, is written off as a frankly terrible effort on Archer's part to allow Tucker to go off the radar in the name of undercover operations on Romulus.)