Star Trek: Discovery

[Thom]

13 hours ago, Dobber said:

BWAHAHA!
“Oh I am my daddy”

”wait...what?”

Chris

 

"...what are you talking about?!"

 

Great commercial. I now need a vehicle starring Hamill and Stewart!

[Seto Kaiba]

Well... Star Trek: Discovery's third season has started coming out and morbid curiosity led me to give its first episode a look.

"That Hope is You, Part 1" unfortunately continues the Star Trek: Discovery tradition of "this show would be better off without the Star Trek name on it"... because the premise would be pretty interesting if the writers hadn't completely f*cked it up or failed to think it out properly.

 

Spoiler

Specifically, "the Burn".

Contrary to fan speculation that they'd be reviving the Star Trek: Final Frontier animated series pitch by having the galaxy rent asunder by omega particle detonations destroying subspace, "the Burn" was a mysterious and unexplained event in the mid-to-late 31st century in which the overwhelming majority of the galaxy's dilithium just spontaneously exploded.  This event apparently destroyed most of the starships in the galaxy, crippling interstellar commerce and leaving most of the galaxy in total isolation without any way to achieve faster-than-light travel.

Apart from the fact that the Burn is kind of a completely ridiculous plot device on its own - one transparently intended to make the USS Discovery the most important Starfleet ship EVER despite it being nearly a thousand years out of date in 3188 - the whole premise comes freighted with a truly staggering number of plot holes and a terrifying amount of insane troll logic:

Probably the single largest plot hole involving "the Burn" is that you don't actually NEED dilithium to power a warp drive.  Dilithium crystals are only necessary if your warp drive is powered by a pair-annihilation reactor, because it's used to control and moderate the reaction between matter and antimatter.  It isn't a power source in and of itself.  The Romulans had perfected a dilithium-free warp drive powered by an artificial quantum singularity seven hundred years before "the Burn".  Nobody remembers those are a thing?  That seems unlikely, given that Daniels was from approximately that time period and had an encyclopedia of All The Things that included the specs on hostile ships from the past millennium.

The writers apparently remembered that, in Star Trek: Enterprise, the 31st century Federation had portal tech that allowed them to instantly travel interstellar distances and through time.  Their solution to the massive, galaxy-sized hole this shot in their story premise was that all temporal technology everywhere was arbitrarily outlawed and destroyed after the Temporal Cold War.  While this might serve to explain why Burnham didn't immediately end up in Time Prison after blowing past a Federation time cop like Daniels on her way to 3188 from 2257, it makes no sense whatsoever in context.  The whole Temporal Cold War was about the signatories to the Temporal Accords preventing unscrupulous parties from messing with the timeline for their own personal gain.  Even if you want to pretend abolishing the various temporal enforcement agencies involved was in any way a sane idea, what was stopping them from converting the time portals they used to instantly cross time and space to just travel instantly across space?  It makes absolutely no sense at all.  Moreover, what happened to the earlier version of that same technology... transwarp beaming?  Prime!Spock gave the existing formula for it from his own timeline to the Scotty of the Kelvin timeline, which means it already existed in the prime timeline c.2387.  Hell, the Dominion had transporters with interstellar range as early as 2375.  They never tried to reproduce the spatial trajector technology Voyager acquired in the 2370s or work on the modified trajector system used on Borg cubes for the Queen in the subsequent seven centuries?  That sucker had a 40,000 light year range.  What was stopping the Federation or other galactic powers from recommissioning ships which used temporal displacement drives for power and travel?

Booker's ship has a quantum slipstream drive, but he has no benamite crystals for it.  USS Voyager, using only onboard equipment and the ingenuity of its chief engineer, was able to synthesize benamite crystals while lost in the Delta Quadrant back in the 2370s.  Was there no advancement in synthesizing benamite in the 685 years separating the events of the episode "Timeless" from "the Burn"?  Even if there wasn't, what's stopping them from just synthesizing a crapload of the stuff and keeping the extra inside stasis fields until it's needed?

As narratively interesting as an event like "the Burn" would be in another series, in Star Trek it just means the entire galaxy is collectively holding the Idiot Ball and ignoring a dozen different established technologies from previous shows that would effectively demote it from a calamity to an at-worst mild inconvenience once you were past the initial tragic loss of life.

 

(Moreover, why was everybody still using the same warp drive technology in 3060 that they were using in 2257?  With a half-dozen different, more advanced and capable technologies on the table you'd think a conventional warp drive would be on the level of dusting off the spare tire for a 31st century starship.  The one 31st century ship we saw prior to this didn't even HAVE a matter/antimatter reactor or warp drive, so it wouldn't have been affected by "the Burn" anyway.)

 

I know this is kind of damned-by-faint-praise, but Star Trek: Discovery's biggest problem right now is that it insists on pretending it's Star Trek.

If they took the "Star Trek" out of the title and just presented it as an all-original sci-fi series called Discovery from season 3's start onward, it would be an engaging show that I might actually be willing to pay for a subscription to follow.

[Kanedas Bike]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

If they took the "Star Trek" out of the title and just presented it as an all-original sci-fi series called Discovery from season 3's start onward, it would be an engaging show that I might actually be willing to pay for a subscription to follow.

Not sure why, but as a Star Trek fan that thought/idea strikes me as pretty tragic. 

CBS really should have just let Star Trek as a property rest a bit after Star Trek: Beyond. 

-b.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Kanedas Bike said:

Not sure why, but as a Star Trek fan that thought/idea strikes me as pretty tragic. 

CBS really should have just let Star Trek as a property rest a bit after Star Trek: Beyond. 

IMO, it actually marks a significant improvement.

I'd have characterized the first two seasons of Star Trek: Discovery as unwatchable regardless of what the title was thanks to the godawful writing and the way the characters seem to despise each other.  That season three's first episode feels like it'd be strong enough to stand on its own merits if it weren't burdened with the Star Trek legacy poking holes in its plot left and right says a lot about how far the writing has come.

 

Spoiler

"That Hope is You, Part 1" has a few seemingly self-aware moments... most seem to be aimed at die-hard Star Trek fans this time around, instead of being Burnham ignoring epiphanies about what a horrible person she's being.

Booker, for instance, remarks that in 3188 you still sometimes see the true believers in the Federation and its ideals proudly wearing Starfleet badges because they refuse to let the dream die.  Or Sahil's remark about how, despite having never been sworn in as a Starfleet officer, he's manned a Starfleet outpost for the last forty years as a kind of inherited family duty from his father and grandfather waiting and hoping for a real Starfleet officer to arrive and raise the Federation flag once again.

In a way, it seems to echo the fanbase's discontent with "new Trek" and how they've held out hope for the appearance of a worthy successor to the title.

 

[Thom]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well... Star Trek: Discovery's third season has started coming out and morbid curiosity led me to give its first episode a look.

"That Hope is You, Part 1" unfortunately continues the Star Trek: Discovery tradition of "this show would be better off without the Star Trek name on it"... because the premise would be pretty interesting if the writers hadn't completely f*cked it up or failed to think it out properly.

 

  Hide contents

Specifically, "the Burn".

Contrary to fan speculation that they'd be reviving the Star Trek: Final Frontier animated series pitch by having the galaxy rent asunder by omega particle detonations destroying subspace, "the Burn" was a mysterious and unexplained event in the mid-to-late 31st century in which the overwhelming majority of the galaxy's dilithium just spontaneously exploded.  This event apparently destroyed most of the starships in the galaxy, crippling interstellar commerce and leaving most of the galaxy in total isolation without any way to achieve faster-than-light travel.

Apart from the fact that the Burn is kind of a completely ridiculous plot device on its own - one transparently intended to make the USS Discovery the most important Starfleet ship EVER despite it being nearly a thousand years out of date in 3188 - the whole premise comes freighted with a truly staggering number of plot holes and a terrifying amount of insane troll logic:

Probably the single largest plot hole involving "the Burn" is that you don't actually NEED dilithium to power a warp drive.  Dilithium crystals are only necessary if your warp drive is powered by a pair-annihilation reactor, because it's used to control and moderate the reaction between matter and antimatter.  It isn't a power source in and of itself.  The Romulans had perfected a dilithium-free warp drive powered by an artificial quantum singularity seven hundred years before "the Burn".  Nobody remembers those are a thing?  That seems unlikely, given that Daniels was from approximately that time period and had an encyclopedia of All The Things that included the specs on hostile ships from the past millennium.

The writers apparently remembered that, in Star Trek: Enterprise, the 31st century Federation had portal tech that allowed them to instantly travel interstellar distances and through time.  Their solution to the massive, galaxy-sized hole this shot in their story premise was that all temporal technology everywhere was arbitrarily outlawed and destroyed after the Temporal Cold War.  While this might serve to explain why Burnham didn't immediately end up in Time Prison after blowing past a Federation time cop like Daniels on her way to 3188 from 2257, it makes no sense whatsoever in context.  The whole Temporal Cold War was about the signatories to the Temporal Accords preventing unscrupulous parties from messing with the timeline for their own personal gain.  Even if you want to pretend abolishing the various temporal enforcement agencies involved was in any way a sane idea, what was stopping them from converting the time portals they used to instantly cross time and space to just travel instantly across space?  It makes absolutely no sense at all.  Moreover, what happened to the earlier version of that same technology... transwarp beaming?  Prime!Spock gave the existing formula for it from his own timeline to the Scotty of the Kelvin timeline, which means it already existed in the prime timeline c.2387.  Hell, the Dominion had transporters with interstellar range as early as 2375.  They never tried to reproduce the spatial trajector technology Voyager acquired in the 2370s or work on the modified trajector system used on Borg cubes for the Queen in the subsequent seven centuries?  That sucker had a 40,000 light year range.  What was stopping the Federation or other galactic powers from recommissioning ships which used temporal displacement drives for power and travel?

Booker's ship has a quantum slipstream drive, but he has no benamite crystals for it.  USS Voyager, using only onboard equipment and the ingenuity of its chief engineer, was able to synthesize benamite crystals while lost in the Delta Quadrant back in the 2370s.  Was there no advancement in synthesizing benamite in the 685 years separating the events of the episode "Timeless" from "the Burn"?  Even if there wasn't, what's stopping them from just synthesizing a crapload of the stuff and keeping the extra inside stasis fields until it's needed?

As narratively interesting as an event like "the Burn" would be in another series, in Star Trek it just means the entire galaxy is collectively holding the Idiot Ball and ignoring a dozen different established technologies from previous shows that would effectively demote it from a calamity to an at-worst mild inconvenience once you were past the initial tragic loss of life.

 

(Moreover, why was everybody still using the same warp drive technology in 3060 that they were using in 2257?  With a half-dozen different, more advanced and capable technologies on the table you'd think a conventional warp drive would be on the level of dusting off the spare tire for a 31st century starship.  The one 31st century ship we saw prior to this didn't even HAVE a matter/antimatter reactor or warp drive, so it wouldn't have been affected by "the Burn" anyway.)

 

I know this is kind of damned-by-faint-praise, but Star Trek: Discovery's biggest problem right now is that it insists on pretending it's Star Trek.

If they took the "Star Trek" out of the title and just presented it as an all-original sci-fi series called Discovery from season 3's start onward, it would be an engaging show that I might actually be willing to pay for a subscription to follow.

You throwing out nuggets of in-series reality is like me now eating stale pop-corn... So thanks.

True all though. If they had gone with the Final Frontier version of the 'Burn' (which I had thought they were doing) all would be well. But why open a door to so many alternate plot holes? Looks like I'll have to leave any deep thought out of the viewing experience!

[Seto Kaiba]

1 minute ago, Thom said:

True all though. If they had gone with the Final Frontier version of the 'Burn' (which I had thought they were doing) all would be well.

That's actually a really good point.

Because practically all of the alternatives to warp drive also use subspace in some way or another, if they'd just gone wtih the Final Frontier take on it they'd have almost been home free with only the "time portals" to worry about.

 

[pengbuzz]

Alternative to warp speed: each planet as a HUGE slingshot they load the starship into...

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Alternative to warp speed: each planet as a HUGE slingshot they load the starship into...

You joke... but both The Next Generation and Voyager did something that was pretty much THAT with a perfectly straight face.

The one in TNG worked, but had serious implementation issues.  The one in VOY worked pretty much perfectly.

 

Spoiler

Star Trek: the Next Generation's 5th season had an episode called "New Ground" in which they were testing a point-to-point form of FTL called a soliton wave where a ship could surf on a wave of faster-than-light soliton particles projected by a ground station to travel interstellar distances without warp drive, as long as there was a second station at the destination to dissipate the wave and "catch" the ship.

Star Trek: Voyager's 6th season episode "The Voyager Conspiracy" featured a graviton catapult that looked and worked like a gigantic slingshot to launch ships across dozens of sectors in a matter of minutes.

 

[pengbuzz]

18 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

You joke... but both The Next Generation and Voyager did something that was pretty much THAT with a perfectly straight face.

The one in TNG worked, but had serious implementation issues.  The one in VOY worked pretty much perfectly.

 

  Hide contents

Star Trek: the Next Generation's 5th season had an episode called "New Ground" in which they were testing a point-to-point form of FTL called a soliton wave where a ship could surf on a wave of faster-than-light soliton particles projected by a ground station to travel interstellar distances without warp drive, as long as there was a second station at the destination to dissipate the wave and "catch" the ship.

Star Trek: Voyager's 6th season episode "The Voyager Conspiracy" featured a graviton catapult that looked and worked like a gigantic slingshot to launch ships across dozens of sectors in a matter of minutes.

 

I knew about the first episode you mentioned; the second I never saw. 

 

Still funny when you think about it though....

[Kanedas Bike]

On 10/20/2020 at 10:16 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

IMO, it actually marks a significant improvement.

I'd have characterized the first two seasons of Star Trek: Discovery as unwatchable regardless of what the title was thanks to the godawful writing and the way the characters seem to despise each other.  That season three's first episode feels like it'd be strong enough to stand on its own merits if it weren't burdened with the Star Trek legacy poking holes in its plot left and right says a lot about how far the writing has come.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

"That Hope is You, Part 1" has a few seemingly self-aware moments... most seem to be aimed at die-hard Star Trek fans this time around, instead of being Burnham ignoring epiphanies about what a horrible person she's being.

Booker, for instance, remarks that in 3188 you still sometimes see the true believers in the Federation and its ideals proudly wearing Starfleet badges because they refuse to let the dream die.  Or Sahil's remark about how, despite having never been sworn in as a Starfleet officer, he's manned a Starfleet outpost for the last forty years as a kind of inherited family duty from his father and grandfather waiting and hoping for a real Starfleet officer to arrive and raise the Federation flag once again.

In a way, it seems to echo the fanbase's discontent with "new Trek" and how they've held out hope for the appearance of a worthy successor to the title.

 

Fair point, I think I'll start my viewing of Discovery with season 3.

-b.

Edited October 22, 2020 by Kanedas Bike
grammar

[Lexomatic]

Episode 3.1 focuses on Burnham, and she's too emotionally drained (*) to ask the right questions about the new era in which she's arrived (**). In episode 3.2 (tonight) it appears the Discovery and the rest of the cast will arrive -- much later, because handwave-wormhole-dynamics -- and maybe then we'll get necessary milieu details to judge the quality of the worldbuilding (use of smart matter, alternative-drive ships, hybrid people with genetic or cyber super-powers, how many post-Federation fragments there are, etc.).

One promising point is this: Burnham's no longer set up to be the cause of galactic events. Instead, she's going to make the best of the place she's arrived -- as a "true believer" she will try to improve the world, so she may remain central to the show, but that's the role of any TV show's idealistic main character. It might still be a "as outsiders, this crew is uniquely positioned to make a difference" situation -- is that a variant of the "white savior" trope?

(*) A lot of fan complaints about her shock at the Book's news the Federation has fallen (***), which is an objectively reasonable event after 900 years. But (a) her first priority was that life of any kind survived, (b) it's reasonable if she never really thought about the UFP's long-term prospects, (c) her UFP is only a century old and hasn't faced the many existential threats of the TOS and TNG eras which we know are lurking, (d) she's completely forgotten any emotional training she learned on Vulcan. Actually, I'd've been happier if her emotion had tilted to the "drained and numb" end ("What? Gone? But... Oh. 900 years. That's not surprising. I guess?") rather than histrionic. More Arthur Dent after Earth is demolished by Vogons ("start with something smaller ... there will never again be a McDonald's hamburger").

(**) Despite the fact she and Book -- however reticent he may be -- spent hours trudging across the moors of space-Iceland. I swear, sometimes TV writers forget what "compressed time" is.

(***) Her first assumption is they're talking about the same Federation, which from her POV isn't necessarily true -- in 900 years it may have fallen, revived, and been conquered several times. It's our assumption, because we're privy to far-future characters like the USS Relativity and Time Agent Daniels.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Lexomatic said:

One promising point is this: Burnham's no longer set up to be the cause of galactic events. Instead, she's going to make the best of the place she's arrived -- as a "true believer" she will try to improve the world, so she may remain central to the show, but that's the role of any TV show's idealistic main character. It might still be a "as outsiders, this crew is uniquely positioned to make a difference" situation -- is that a variant of the "white savior" trope?

... I don't know if I'd go that far.

Burnham is absolutely still set up to be the cause of galactic events.  In this case, they seem to be pretty clearly setting her up as the prime mover behind the restoration of the Federation.

 

 

1 hour ago, Lexomatic said:

(*) A lot of fan complaints about her shock at the Book's news the Federation has fallen (***), which is an objectively reasonable event after 900 years.

[...]

(***) Her first assumption is they're talking about the same Federation, which from her POV isn't necessarily true -- in 900 years it may have fallen, revived, and been conquered several times. It's our assumption, because we're privy to far-future characters like the USS Relativity and Time Agent Daniels.

To be fair, while it is objectively reasonable in purely academic terms... people tend to think of the institutions that existed when they were growing up as somehow being permanent and unchanging.  Children often struggle with the idea that their parents and grandparents didn't simply spring into being at their current ages.  The idea that governments can very easily come and go in a matter of years, or the space of just a few lifetimes, is kind of an alien concept to western audiences whose home nations have existed for hundreds of years, but less so for Eastern European or African audiences.  When we think of long-lived civilizations we tend to think of examples like Rome, which lasted for either 985 or 1962 years (if you count the Eastern Roman Empire).

As a more advanced civilization that had de facto solved most social problems, it's not altogether surprising that Burnham would be stunned to discover the Federation had dissolved in the wake of "the Burn".  She is, in a way, very like the Roman citizens who were so confident the Rome was eternal.

(Her first assumption that they're talking about the same Federation is pretty well borne-out by what she's been told so far, which isn't surprising to the audience since time travelers from the previous century had made it fairly clear that the Federation that was around c.3052 was the same Federation that was founded on Earth in 2161.)

[Lexomatic]

Episode 3.2 "Far from Home": We see what happened to Discovery (TL;DR, they emerged a year after Burnham). We still haven't gotten a full run-down of the future's circumstances, but more importantly we get (a) an ensemble-style story, and (b) Saru being adamant about Starfleet principles. Unfortunately the director is again Olatunde Osunsanmi with his fondness for shakycam. Also, the script makes the common mistake of assuming the ship is the only resource the characters have: no mention of auxiliary craft (not even "they were all lost in the battle against CONTROL"); "internal communications are down" but they don't fall back on handheld communicators.

The bridge crew are addressed by name and get lines. Linus the Saurian speaks for the first time. We have extended interactions between Stamets and Culber, Stamets and Reno, Saru and Tilly, and Saru and Georgiou. Oh, and Dr. Pollard's first name is Tracy (per the end-credits).

The thug-courier Zareh uses the term "V'Draysh," as established in Short Treks; it seems to be an insulting term for the former Federation (I had theorized that it might apply to a fragment of the UFP -- successor states to the Star League, for BattleTech fans among you). We see a future repair-kit in use, with the term "programmable matter." A critical communications "transtator" is disabled and they need "rubindium" to repair it -- terms dating back to TOS. Zareh comments that "the Burn was the best thing that happened to me" which can be interpreted either as (a) he thrives in the lawless environment or (b) he's old enough to have lived through it, a century ago -- which is biologically more interesting. Upon arrival, Discovery has 88 crew, including injured.

They quickly establish that this planet isn't Terralysium, but when Saru and Tilly meet the locals, they learn it's never received a proper name -- so it's not Hima from last week. (Still played by Iceland, though.) There appears to be a giant hole in its side, it's surrounded by rocks, and more rocks are hovering above the surface, like Avatar's Hallelujah Mountains -- and it's a while before anybody (namely, Tilly) comments on them. Discovery is able to plow through the rocks (let's just assume efficacious structural integrity fields), then crash (with some cushioning by shields and graviton beams) on an ice field (well, at least its flattish shape makes it a better candidate than some ships). The ice is "parasitic" (wouldn't be the strangest lifeform Trek has encountered).

Re: Burnham's freak-out over the demise of the Federation: The point is, she's not thinking straight; she's not only lost Vulcan control, but also Vulcan logic, i.e., first establish your premises before drawing conclusions. She hadn't even established that she was in the same part of the galaxy as "her" 23cen UFP. That's either a scriptwriting flaw (sometimes writers show poor theory of mind: what they know isn't what the characters know) or an intentional shortcut.

[tekering]

13 hours ago, Kanedas Bike said:

I think I'll start my viewing of Discovery with season 3.

That would be awfully disorienting, I imagine.  While Lower Decks remains largely episodic, Discovery employs seasonal arcs the same way most modern television series do... and there's enough leftover baggage from season 2 that I'm finding it a little confusing myself (since it's been nearly eighteen months since last season).

2 hours ago, Lexomatic said:

Linus the Saurian speaks for the first time.

Actually, we heard him speak in at least two previous episodes from last season ("An Obol for Charon," "Through the Valley of Shadows").

[TehPW]

"successor states to the Star League, for BattleTech fans among you"

 

*sniffles* 

[Chronocidal]

1 hour ago, TehPW said:

"successor states to the Star League, for BattleTech fans among you"

 

*sniffles* 

Eh, call me when they have to fight off the Kodan.  

[JB0]

26 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

Eh, call me when they have to fight off the Kodan.  

That might go poorly, since the Discovery isn't a Gunstar.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, tekering said:

That would be awfully disorienting, I imagine.  While Lower Decks remains largely episodic, Discovery employs seasonal arcs the same way most modern television series do... and there's enough leftover baggage from season 2 that I'm finding it a little confusing myself (since it's been nearly eighteen months since last season).

On the one hand, there is some amount of inter-season baggage carried over from season two.

On the other hand, season three is basically Star Trek: Discovery making as clean a break as possible with its largely reviled grimdark take on the TOS era and starting there means skipping two entire seasons of plot holes, retcons, bad fanfic-tier writing, and the race to the professional bottom as the crew treat each other with thinly-veiled contempt or overt loathing.

About the only things of value you miss by skipping seasons one and two are that first couple episodes of season two where Anson Mount's Christopher Pike makes it feel like an actual Star Trek series for a bit before the cancer that is Burnham metastatizes again and the Short Trek where Harry Mudd is actually in-character instead of just being a serial killer with a handlebar mustache.

[tekering]

I must say, I'm happy to see the reduced budget hasn't significantly impacted the scope of the storytelling.  The Icelandic settings are epic and otherworldly, the visuals retain their feature-film sensibilities, and (other than some dodgy greenscreen compositing) the effects still look great.  

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

the Short Trek where Harry Mudd is actually in-character

Ah yes, "The Escape Artist," second-best of the Short Treks. 

Honestly, though, here's the one real advantage Discovery has over Picard or Lower Decks; since every legacy character is recast, and the production design is so far removed from classic Trek, it's easier to simply accept it as alternate-universe setting (like the Kelvin timeline stories) and judge it on its own merits.  Mudd is as unrecognizable as bearded Spock, grey-haired Pike, or hairless Klingons, but that's fine if you approach the show as a remake (regardless of the producers' intentions).

With the participation of Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis, John De Lancie et.al, the other shows are more difficult to dismiss.  

[Thom]

17 hours ago, Lexomatic said:

Episode 3.2 "Far from Home": We see what happened to Discovery (TL;DR, they emerged a year after Burnham). We still haven't gotten a full run-down of the future's circumstances, but more importantly we get (a) an ensemble-style story, and (b) Saru being adamant about Starfleet principles. Unfortunately the director is again Olatunde Osunsanmi with his fondness for shakycam. Also, the script makes the common mistake of assuming the ship is the only resource the characters have: no mention of auxiliary craft (not even "they were all lost in the battle against CONTROL"); "internal communications are down" but they don't fall back on handheld communicators.

 

I was thinking, while Saru and Tilly were walking across the landscape, why didn't they just use a shuttle..? Thinking upon it, it's possible they don't have any shuttles left after the battle with Control. In which case, a little dialogue would go a long way.

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, tekering said:

I must say, I'm happy to see the reduced budget hasn't significantly impacted the scope of the storytelling.  The Icelandic settings are epic and otherworldly, the visuals retain their feature-film sensibilities, and (other than some dodgy greenscreen compositing) the effects still look great.  

We'll see if they can keep it up... Star Trek: Discovery's production crew ran into a lot of trouble with Netflix in the previous two seasons because Kurtzman doesn't know what "fiscal restraint" means.  The previous two seasons both went way over budget because of his spendthrift attitude towards production management and all the reshoots they needed, and that led to the budget being slashed by Netflix.

 

13 hours ago, tekering said:

Honestly, though, here's the one real advantage Discovery has over Picard or Lower Decks; since every legacy character is recast, and the production design is so far removed from classic Trek, it's easier to simply accept it as alternate-universe setting (like the Kelvin timeline stories) and judge it on its own merits.  Mudd is as unrecognizable as bearded Spock, grey-haired Pike, or hairless Klingons, but that's fine if you approach the show as a remake (regardless of the producers' intentions).

Easier, for sure... but it'd undermine one of the few things about Discovery that's keeping at least some die-hard Star Trek fans paying for CBS All Access.

Namely, that Discovery is (on paper) a part of the "prime" universe that all of the pre-Abrams Star Trek shows and movies belong to.

Kurtzman's Star Trek has enough trouble getting fans to watch it as it is even with the borrowed goodwill of the prime timeline.  Take that away from it, and viewership will just drop further because it won't even technically be real Star Trek anymore.  (Even now, a lot of fans refuse to watch Discovery because they insist it's part of the Kelvin timeline based on its tone and aesthetic choices.)

 

6 hours ago, Thom said:

I was thinking, while Saru and Tilly were walking across the landscape, why didn't they just use a shuttle..? Thinking upon it, it's possible they don't have any shuttles left after the battle with Control. In which case, a little dialogue would go a long way.

Dialog with Tilly?  HARD PASS.

[Thom]

11 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Dialog with Tilly?  HARD PASS.

That girl does need to mature! After two seasons of facing alternate evil versions, the rampaging Klingons and an AI bent on total biological destruction, she's still acting like a first season, first episode character..?

[Seto Kaiba]

8 hours ago, Thom said:

That girl does need to mature! After two seasons of facing alternate evil versions, the rampaging Klingons and an AI bent on total biological destruction, she's still acting like a first season, first episode character..?

That girl needs to be written out of the goddamn show.

Her existence is something I can't understand.  CBS had literal decades of audience feedback from previous Star Trek shows that should have left no room for doubt that this kind of character is cancer as far as the audience is concerned.  Tilly manages to seamlessly combine the wide-eyed chirpy naivete of Kes, the total lack of growth and overwhelming whininess of Harry Kim, and the near-total social obliviousness of Neelix.  That's the worst traits of three different characters Voyager's showrunners attempted to write out of the series with varying degrees of success.

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That girl needs to be written out of the goddamn show.

Her existence is something I can't understand.  CBS had literal decades of audience feedback from previous Star Trek shows that should have left no room for doubt that this kind of character is cancer as far as the audience is concerned.  Tilly manages to seamlessly combine the wide-eyed chirpy naivete of Kes, the total lack of growth and overwhelming whininess of Harry Kim, and the near-total social obliviousness of Neelix.  That's the worst traits of three different characters Voyager's showrunners attempted to write out of the series with varying degrees of success.

So...she's the Federation version of Spongebob Squarepants then?

[Dangard Ace]

Finally started season 3 and I’m glad the early reviewers were right in that they’re jettisoning the season 1&2 dark  atmosphere and going forward with a hopeful narrative.  Sarus speech to Gheorgio about who the Federation are and their ideals inspiring hope for that outpost/colony.  That’s my Star Trek.  I’m now willing to watch the rest of the season.  

[sketchley]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That girl needs to be written out of the goddamn show.

(...)

I actually don't mind her (that much).

Part of the reason is that there are people in RL just like her—so in one sense, she's there because she's the 'everyman' that represents the audience (or part of it, at least).  And the writers do tend to treat her with more dignity than, for example, Noel Shempsky was (Fraiser, for those that don't).

The other reason is she's one of the few (and I do mean few) characters on the show whose character is actually developed beyond a cardboard cutout.  If the show took more time out from its constant plot, and spent some time developing its other characters, I might have a different opinion.  But it is what it is...

Edited October 25, 2020 by sketchley

[Thom]

I wonder what's happening with Detmer? Did she just get her bell wrung a little too hard or is something more going on?

[tekering]

On 10/25/2020 at 10:36 PM, Thom said:

I wonder what's happening with Detmer?

Whatever was being set up in the second episode, there was no evidence of it in the third...

Seeing the bridge crew sharing a little downtime at the end of the episode, it occurred to me how underdeveloped these characters still are.  I only remember Detmer's name from the previous episode, and Tilly because she seems to serve in every part of the ship simultaneously... but after 32 episodes, the others are still just familiar faces with no names or memorable character traits.

It may be too soon to tell, but third season certainly seems to be more optimistic than previous seasons, despite the rather dystopian future setting.  So far, there have been nothing but stand-alone episodes, and it feels like they're still struggling to find the premise for season 3.

 

[Dangard Ace]

Season three is going to be more episodic like TOS, TNG etc.  At least that’s what the guys at polygon are saying.  they’ve seen the first four episodes already. I don’t need cliffhangers and dire galaxy ending situations in every episode.  TNG only used those sparingly and for big moments.  Mostly to do with the Borg.  Speaking of I hope they explain where the Borg are in this future. 

Diplomacy is back (kinda) in this episode. Plus they’ve pulled off a ScoobyDoo moment that could be leading to the beginnings of a new Federation.  
 

https://www.polygon.com/tv/2020/10/15/21518039/star-trek-discovery-season-3-review-preview-cbs-all-access

[derex3592]

Ok, weeelll....my boss gave me his CBS login, so last night I started Discovery.  Watched the first two episodes.  I figure for free, I'll slog through this and see what all the fuss, good or bad is all about. 

[Thom]

With Detmer, she seemed a bit more 'rebellious,' as in questioning Saru's orders during the battle with the raiders, which surprised some peeps.

And, though I am glad they are getting more optimism and diplomacy back, the resolutions are a little too clean cut and dried. That was a long conflict between Untired Earth and the Titan Raiders (sounds like British soccer teams!) for them to be willing to talk so quickly. 

Technologically, I want to hear how those future ships work! What is holding their separate sections in place and why? And why no replacement had been found for the dilithium? Surely there was something else that could be substituted for it, either alien tech or otherwise. Seven centuries is a long time to be reliant on only one piece of such critical tech. Much less almost two hundred years with no one able to come up with even a mediocre replacement.

And will they be up-arming Discovery, seeing how one hit from that UE ship just about knocked them right out?

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Thom said:

With Detmer, she seemed a bit more 'rebellious,' as in questioning Saru's orders during the battle with the raiders, which surprised some peeps.

And, though I am glad they are getting more optimism and diplomacy back, the resolutions are a little too clean cut and dried. That was a long conflict between Untired Earth and the Titan Raiders (sounds like British soccer teams!) for them to be willing to talk so quickly. 

Unfortunately, the new paradigm for TV shows these days that emphasizes visual quality over all else means that they just don't have enough time to spread these things out... the season's fourteen episodes tops, instead of the more comfortable thirty-plus.

An optimist might look at it as the sudden reappearance of someone who's paying more than lip service to Federation ideals reminding these folks of how it used to be in the good old days and prompting them to return to a more idealistic mindset themselves.

 

4 hours ago, Thom said:

Technologically, I want to hear how those future ships work! What is holding their separate sections in place and why? And why no replacement had been found for the dilithium? Surely there was something else that could be substituted for it, either alien tech or otherwise. Seven centuries is a long time to be reliant on only one piece of such critical tech. Much less almost two hundred years with no one able to come up with even a mediocre replacement.

Eh... past performance being a pretty reliable indicator of future results in most cases, I'd be prepared to bet a nontrivial sum that the crew working under Kurtzman and co. simply didn't think that far ahead.

As indicated at length in one of my previous posts, we KNOW they didn't think that far ahead when it comes to "the burn" and warp drive technology.  Dilithium's only necessary for warp drive if the reactor powering your warp drive is a matter/antimatter reactor.  The Romulan Star Empire's entire fleet had gone to quantum singularity-based warp cores in the 2360s and beyond, and if you want to take unproduced plots from Enterprise's fifth season at face value the Romulans may have been using variants of that technology since the Earth-Romulan War in the late 2150s.  The Federation absolutely knew how that technology worked by the 2370s, with Starfleet crews assisting in repairs to Romulan ships on at least a few occasions in TNG.  Even if they were entirely dependent on conventional warp drive, "the burn" should have been no more than a mild inconvenience once you got past the initial loss of life.  (That's not even getting into why the faster, more energy-efficient, and all-around superior quantum slipstream technology Voyager brought back with it from their time in the Delta quadrant ought to have supplanted it entirely centuries ago... or all the other alternative propulsion and energy generation technologies that we know exist in the time between 2257 and 3189.)

 

4 hours ago, Thom said:

And will they be up-arming Discovery, seeing how one hit from that UE ship just about knocked them right out?

TBH, that Discovery survived even one quantum torpedo strike is kind of unbelievable. 

She's a ship of the 2250s, and quantum torpedos would've been a one-hit kill on most ships of the 2370s.

[Thom]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

TBH, that Discovery survived even one quantum torpedo strike is kind of unbelievable. 

She's a ship of the 2250s, and quantum torpedos would've been a one-hit kill on most ships of the 2370s.

Maybe it was just a 'glancing' blow. That, or their plot armor is set to maximum!

[JB0]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Dilithium's only necessary for warp drive if the reactor powering your warp drive is a matter/antimatter reactor. 

And early in Kirk's career some vessels just used lithium crystals!

[tekering]

Okay, I'm getting tonal whiplash here.  Discovery's actually gone full-on treacly now.