Star Trek: Discovery

[MikeRoz]

I know that most people here are a tad more on the negative side than I am when it comes to the recent season of Trek. My opinion is that the past seasons have certainly had their flaws, but I was able to derive enough enjoyment from them that I was happier for them existing than it not. I'd hoped that the showrunners vaulting the ship and crew hundreds of years into the future would be an opportunity for a fresh start, free from the shackles of fifty years of continuity to worry about. However, I was largely disappointed by this season. They threw away more and more of that potential each episode in.

Things I didn't like:

• Like others, the infinite interior volume of Discovery really bothers me. Maybe there will be a brick joke moment in Season 4 where one of those guys thrown off a turbolift finally lands, weeks later. It was easier to look past the Breweryprise than this, and I hated that as it was.
• I don't think they were sure what they wanted to do with Osyraa. First she's a ruthless warlord with no scruples, then she's an empathetic statesman, then she (understandably) balks at being told she has to be tried as a tyrant (why was the Federation willing to ally itself with the Klingon Empire if every ally has to be held to Federation moral standards?), and then she is back to torturing and maiming - which, for some reason, comes as a complete surprise to her scientist friend. Then it's as though the writers realize they've hit a dead end with her, and she drops dead like a sack of potatoes. Her scientist friend is seemingly completely okay with this, and is now added to the collection of strays Discovery has accumulated. 
  
  She stepped on her own feet here - if she wanted an alliance with the Federation, there's no reason she had to pursue that at the same time as she was holding Discovery hostage and trying to acquire the spore drive. Vance and/or the civilian Federation leadership would have been more likely to believe her and less likely to play hardball. Feels more like bad writing than any tragic character flaw on Osyraa's part.
• Why were there random discharges in the computer core? On a par with Galaxy Quest "chompy crushy thingies". 
• Why was it so easy for the Emerald Chain to wipe the Discovery computers, which would have included the sphere data? Were portions of the sphere data irretrievably lost any time a DOT-23 got mowed down? How much of it survived to the end of the season?
• The Burn ending up being a child's tantrum feels more like Doctor Who writing than Star Trek writing. In a universe where continuity is less elastic, this presents a problem like Admiral Holdo's last stand or a poorly-calibrated time jump effectively turning Braxton's time pod into a solar system-destroying bomb. Some day, someone with bad intentions is going to reverse-engineer the physical process that Su'kal kicked off by accident, and then be able to unleash their own Burn offensively. 
  
  Also frustrating is the idea that in 100 years nobody was able to figure this out until Burnham arrived to wrap reality around her little finger.
• Why would they (Saru or the writers) pick Tilly for first officer over an entire bridge full of experienced officers? Why not ask Vance to give you someone who's not 700 years behind on current events? Feels like this happened more because of the popularity of Mary Wiseman's character than any in-universe reason it would make sense.
• I didn't like the way that Burnham was railroaded into being demoted. Black box or no black box, there was no way that Burnham was going to leave Book twisting in the wind, not after they'd bonded for a year by trying to survive without Discovery or the Federation. But the writers' need to show that Burnham is the only person with the vision to care about the apocalypse that levelled the Federation gets in the way of any more rational way she could have framed the necessity of the mission, or Saru's emotional intelligence to see that Burnham's not going to let Book die. I mean let the Black Box get away. Totally about the Black Box. Of which I presume that Starfleet has recovered none over 100 years, making this one essential.
• If you're going to do a backdoor pilot for the Section 31 show, at least introduce some of the characters and settings that are going to be in it. Otherwise your two-episode romp through the mirror universe that ends up all being a dream anyway just ends up seeming self-indulgent.
• The Disco bridge crew's near-orgasmic ecstasy upon finding Burnham. Burnham, spending a year without them, I can understand being super emotional. For the Disco crew, it's been about a day?
  
  I was just finishing up a TNG rewatch at around the time S3 started airing, and I remember one of the actors (I think it was Wil) in an interview saying that Rick Berman or someone else had straight up told him "Don't emote!" - I'm not going to pretend that TNG was perfect, but can't we find a happy medium?

There were some things I did like:

• Vance was cool.
• The refit Discovery was cool.
• The badges were cool. As AirPods and Apple Watches become ubiquitous, Starfleet communicator pins become less and less compelling as 24th-century technology. I was able to suspend my disbelief about the practical shortcomings of the TNG pins, I can live with suspending my disbelief for some of the rough edges of the new combo pin UI. Though, how can a transporter beam itself somewhere?

 

[Lexomatic]

DSC has so many problems that it's no longer worth our time to discuss them individually (*). Instead they can be grouped by type, and then arranged in a hierarchy: which questionable decisions represent a maker-audience difference in dramatic priority and style, and which are incompetent in any show? Which of them leave a show that's still salvageable?

At the show's start, fan discontent focused on visual continuity (Klingons, starship shape) and milieu continuity (what's this war we've never heard about?). Then the problems were Burnham as Mary Sue, and competently structuring a season-long arc. It's now inescapable that the writing is incompetent at an even smaller scale, with things like "the adversary's death is an afterthought" and "what's the hullaballoo about the Sphere Data?"

We can't attribute the incompetence to any single staffer, though; given the number of writers and producers, "too many cooks spoil the soup" is a definite possibility. Did the scripts get edited (badly) by producers? Were the individual writers told, "concentrate on your ep, and we'll script-edit so they fit together"?

(*) The entire mess would probably make a good-sized thesis -- business decisions, picking the production team and whether they have the right amount of experience, writing, the dynamics of audience discussion.

[Lexomatic]

38 minutes ago, MikeRoz said:

Though, how can a transporter beam itself somewhere?

This might have been addressed in an episode of the "Ready Room " after-show -- haven't watched it myself, but I'm told there's some useful insight into the worldbuilding intentions -- but here's how I posit it could work:

It's a two-step process. At your origin, the passenger is wearing a pair of teleport-modules, A and B. Module A sends B *out* to the destination. Module B, hovering in mid-air, beams the passenger and A *in*, then re-adheres to the passenger's lapel. All of this happens too quickly (ka-foomp!) for the separate steps to be visible.

Regardless, a "personal transporter" requires techniques other than those of the 24cen, which involve scanners and pattern-buffers which are all much larger than the cargo. Hmm. Maybe the instrumentality is larger, but it's hidden away, TARDIS-style. Apart from Discovery's exasperating turbolift-cavern, the Tikhov-M seed-vault ship also had an impossibly large interior, so maybe that's meant to be an enabling technology of 28cen-or-later, and the show simply neglected to tell us. ("Our 23cen refugees are practically neanderthals, but we can only allocate five minutes to learning about 32cen tech, so do it all on the bridge with their omnibadges and p-matter consoles.")

Edited January 11, 2021 by Lexomatic
Refined explanation.

[JB0]

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

The Burn ending up being a child's tantrum feels more like Doctor Who writing than Star Trek writing.

Honestly, reading about it instead of watching it I'm just thinking "Charlie X, only more dangerous and they brought him home anyways"

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

I know that most people here are a tad more on the negative side than I am when it comes to the recent season of Trek. My opinion is that the past seasons have certainly had their flaws, but I was able to derive enough enjoyment from them that I was happier for them existing than it not. I'd hoped that the showrunners vaulting the ship and crew hundreds of years into the future would be an opportunity for a fresh start, free from the shackles of fifty years of continuity to worry about. However, I was largely disappointed by this season. They threw away more and more of that potential each episode in.

The potential was strictly illusory.

They just traded one narrative dead-end for another.  They were very limited in what they could do with Star Trek: Discovery in seasons one and two because the 2250s were a fairly well-documented era, and they were flat-out prohibited from doing anything that would have far-reaching consequences because they were hemmed in by TOS in the 2260s.  Then they moved to the 3180s, and discovered that they had to basically break the Star Trek setting beyond all repair in order to have any potential for the kind of drama they wanted to write because Enterprise had established the Federation was a huge utopian society in the 31st century, that warp drive and matter/antimatter reactors were long-obsolete, and the scientific use of time travel would have allowed the events of the season to retroactively un-happen by fixing the Burn before it occurred.

 

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

Things I didn't like:

• Like others, the infinite interior volume of Discovery really bothers me. Maybe there will be a brick joke moment in Season 4 where one of those guys thrown off a turbolift finally lands, weeks later. It was easier to look past the Breweryprise than this, and I hated that as it was.

Yeah, on the outside Discovery is about the same size as the original Enterprise minus the warp nacelles being longer.  

On the inside, it seems to be about as big as V'Ger.

Mind you, there is precedent for starships of the 31st century to be literally bigger on the inside... but this vast emptiness in Discovery serves no useful purpose and there wasn't any acknowledgement that Discovery possessed that kind of displacement technology.  (Indeed, most of the technology in that ship seems to no longer exist in Discovery's setting, since that would've rendered "the burn" moot.)

 

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

• I don't think they were sure what they wanted to do with Osyraa. First she's a ruthless warlord with no scruples, then she's an empathetic statesman, then she (understandably) balks at being told she has to be tried as a tyrant (why was the Federation willing to ally itself with the Klingon Empire if every ally has to be held to Federation moral standards?), and then she is back to torturing and maiming - which, for some reason, comes as a complete surprise to her scientist friend. Then it's as though the writers realize they've hit a dead end with her, and she drops dead like a sack of potatoes. Her scientist friend is seemingly completely okay with this, and is now added to the collection of strays Discovery has accumulated. 
  
  She stepped on her own feet here - if she wanted an alliance with the Federation, there's no reason she had to pursue that at the same time as she was holding Discovery hostage and trying to acquire the spore drive. Vance and/or the civilian Federation leadership would have been more likely to believe her and less likely to play hardball. Feels more like bad writing than any tragic character flaw on Osyraa's part.

The weirdest part is that Osyraa was clearly willing to make some SUBSTANTIAL concessions in the name of forging an alliance with the Federation and Starfleet... but the minute she was asked to sacrifice something personally she lost her sh*t and started shooting.

 

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

• Why were there random discharges in the computer core? On a par with Galaxy Quest "chompy crushy thingies". 

Even more glaringly... why is there a massive column of inert programmable matter anyone could just fall into and suffocate?

Even by Starfleet's lax standards, the 32nd century Discovery is an OSHA nightmare.

 

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

• Why was it so easy for the Emerald Chain to wipe the Discovery computers, which would have included the sphere data? Were portions of the sphere data irretrievably lost any time a DOT-23 got mowed down? How much of it survived to the end of the season?

Even more of a headscratcher is why the Sphere Data was still there in the first place.

Discovery's original computer was duotronic.  That technology was obsolete by the early 24th century, never mind the 32nd century.  If Discovery's systems were modernized as Saru says, they would have replaced the entire computer core (or cores) with the latest technology not tried to run a new OS on a 930 year old system.

 

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

• The Burn ending up being a child's tantrum feels more like Doctor Who writing than Star Trek writing. In a universe where continuity is less elastic, this presents a problem like Admiral Holdo's last stand or a poorly-calibrated time jump effectively turning Braxton's time pod into a solar system-destroying bomb. Some day, someone with bad intentions is going to reverse-engineer the physical process that Su'kal kicked off by accident, and then be able to unleash their own Burn offensively. 
  
  Also frustrating is the idea that in 100 years nobody was able to figure this out until Burnham arrived to wrap reality around her little finger.

The Burn being caused by a radioactive mutant who developed magical subspace psychic powers that affect dilithium AND NOTHING ELSE is just some cr*p-tier writing.

It's like the writers got to the part of the season where they were going to unveil the cause of the burn and realized they'd never actually come up with one.

The showrunners excuse seems to be that Su'Kal's ability ONLY works because he was physically present on the dilithium planet and the massive dilithium reserves there.  If he goes anywhere else, his powers are useless/inert.

The writers at least tried to backhand an explanation for why Starfleet never properly investigated the Burn out in a few episodes.  Admiral Vance is pretty blunt about Starfleet in the 32nd century being spread VERY thin due to the massive losses it sustained in the Burn and the Federation having shrunk to a tenth of its original size with key members like Vulcan and Trill bailing.  They were so busy trying to keep what little was left of the Federation together and fend off the Emerald Chain that they didn't have the time to conduct major investigations of the burn... though analyzing the black boxes should've been SOP, and there's no excuse for them having not done that.

 

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

• Why would they (Saru or the writers) pick Tilly for first officer over an entire bridge full of experienced officers? Why not ask Vance to give you someone who's not 700 years behind on current events? Feels like this happened more because of the popularity of Mary Wiseman's character than any in-universe reason it would make sense.

It was a teaspoon shallow obvious setup for Burnham's second karma houdini and end-of-season promotion.

I'm more amazed that they let Tilly live, since her character is now redundant with the addition of Tal.

 

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

• I didn't like the way that Burnham was railroaded into being demoted. Black box or no black box, there was no way that Burnham was going to leave Book twisting in the wind, not after they'd bonded for a year by trying to survive without Discovery or the Federation. But the writers' need to show that Burnham is the only person with the vision to care about the apocalypse that levelled the Federation gets in the way of any more rational way she could have framed the necessity of the mission, or Saru's emotional intelligence to see that Burnham's not going to let Book die. I mean let the Black Box get away. Totally about the Black Box. Of which I presume that Starfleet has recovered none over 100 years, making this one essential.

The worst part is the writers acknowledged what a pointless stunt the whole thing was right in the episode.

Booker had been missing for three weeks.  Another twelve hours wasn't likely to change anything in his status.

 

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

• If you're going to do a backdoor pilot for the Section 31 show, at least introduce some of the characters and settings that are going to be in it. Otherwise your two-episode romp through the mirror universe that ends up all being a dream anyway just ends up seeming self-indulgent.

Section 31 is in development hell, and unlikely to ever be produced given the franchise's money troubles and the general audience dissatisfaction with the grimdarkness of it all.

Smart money says this was just Michelle Yeoh's exit from the series and franchise ala Denise Crosby.

 

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

• The Disco bridge crew's near-orgasmic ecstasy upon finding Burnham. Burnham, spending a year without them, I can understand being super emotional. For the Disco crew, it's been about a day?
  
  I was just finishing up a TNG rewatch at around the time S3 started airing, and I remember one of the actors (I think it was Wil) in an interview saying that Rick Berman or someone else had straight up told him "Don't emote!" - I'm not going to pretend that TNG was perfect, but can't we find a happy medium?

It's even more glaring when you watch it in close company with either season two or later season three episodes and you realize that it's all completely insincere.

This crew HATES EACH OTHER.  Passionately.  There is real loathing here.  Put them in a room together outside of a professional context and the loathing spills out into everything they say and do.

 

1 hour ago, MikeRoz said:

• The badges were cool. As AirPods and Apple Watches become ubiquitous, Starfleet communicator pins become less and less compelling as 24th-century technology. I was able to suspend my disbelief about the practical shortcomings of the TNG pins, I can live with suspending my disbelief for some of the rough edges of the new combo pin UI. Though, how can a transporter beam itself somewhere?

That's been a problem since Nemesis, with the miniature transporter that Data used to rescue Picard.

Mind you, if the 32nd century transporters works more like a spatial trajector (from Voyager) or the subspace inverter (from the Next Generation) then they may have an easy out.  Those were folded-space teleportation rather than "disassemble you at the subatomic level" teleportation.

 

 

 

[JB0]

29 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Even by Starfleet's lax standards, the 32nd century Discovery is an OSHA nightmare.

More proof they wanted to be writing Star Wars, I guess. Imperial safety standards make the Federation look like the strictest of nanny states.

[Chronocidal]

23 minutes ago, JB0 said:

More proof they wanted to be writing Star Wars, I guess. Imperial safety standards make the Federation look like the strictest of nanny states.

I don't know about that, there was at least one instance of proof that the Star Wars universe had physical elevator shafts that you could climb if the elevator went out.  "Charlie and the Great Glass Turbolift" even gives the "I just want a railing" scene a run for its money.

[pengbuzz]

53 minutes ago, JB0 said:

More proof they wanted to be writing Star Wars, I guess. Imperial safety standards make the Federation look like the strictest of nanny states.

I'm still trying to get over explodium.

[Dobber]

Regarding the s1 Klingon war, I could swear I remember Riker, in a TNG episode, referencing how the federations first contact or earlier dealings with the Klingons was disastrous and spoke about the lives lost in the ensuing conflict, But for the life of me I can’t remember the exact quote or episode. I just remember it standing out to me when I heard it back in the day and wondered what conflict he was referring to as I remembered the Earth Romulans war so like most things about Trek I wanted to know more but never heard anything else. Anyone else remember this?

Chris

Edited January 11, 2021 by Dobber

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, Dobber said:

Regarding the s1 Klingon war, I could swear I remember Riker, in a TNG episode, referencing how the federations first contact or earlier dealings with the Klingons was disastrous and spoke about the lives lost in the ensuing conflict, But for the life of me I can’t remember the exact quote or episode. I just remember it standing out to me when I heard it back in the day and wondered what conflict he was referring to as I remembered the Earth Romulans war so like most things about Trek I wanted to know more but never heard anything else. Anyone else remember this?

Chris

Actually, it was Picard in the episode "First Contact" (TNG):

Quote

"At their next meeting, a deeply concerned Chancellor Durken confronts Captain Picard with Commander Riker's discovery on the planet when Picard arrives in Durken's office. Picard explains that when Starfleet met with the Klingons, contact was "disastrous" and decades of war resulted. After that, the Federation decided that surveillance of this nature was necessary. He assures Durken that in time, full disclosure of the surveillance would have been made. Picard had hoped that his crew would have found Commander Riker before the Malcorians did, because the Malcorians most likely would have reacted negatively to the Federation's arrival. Durken is pleased with Picard's forthrightness, and comforted by the fact that he makes mistakes. Durken informs Picard that he will make a decision later regarding Riker. "

Link: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/First_Contact_(episode)

[Dobber]

YES!!! Thank you. That’s why I never had a problem with the conflict because TNG already vaguely referenced it. Doesn’t forgive all the other crap but the war is not the problem. Heck if anything it was too short. 
 

Chris

[Seto Kaiba]

10 hours ago, JB0 said:

More proof they wanted to be writing Star Wars, I guess. Imperial safety standards make the Federation look like the strictest of nanny states.

It definitely has that feel.  The interior of Discovery was straight-up Death Star/Starkiller Base nonsense for scale.

 

9 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I don't know about that, there was at least one instance of proof that the Star Wars universe had physical elevator shafts that you could climb if the elevator went out.  "Charlie and the Great Glass Turbolift" even gives the "I just want a railing" scene a run for its money.

Contrast "Charlie and the Great Glass Turbolift" to Star Trek V, TNG: "Disaster", or VOY: "The Haunting of Deck Twelve"... all of which show that Starfleet turbolifts travel in close shafts with emergency bulkheads and even come equipped with ladders for emergencies.

Though my favorite Starfleet safety faux pas is that there's a fair amount of evidence that Starfleet ships have actually had seatbelts since at least 2269 if you don't count J.J. Abrams movies, and the Starfleet crews just don't use them.  The original Constitution-class USS Enterprise had seatbelts in TAS (see TAS: "One Upon a Planet"), and at least some shuttlecraft in TNG like the Type-15 shuttlepod were shown to be equipped with what looks like a full five-point safety harnesses for all occupants (TNG: "Power Play").

 

2 hours ago, Dobber said:

Regarding the s1 Klingon war, I could swear I remember Riker, in a TNG episode, referencing how the federations first contact or earlier dealings with the Klingons was disastrous and spoke about the lives lost in the ensuing conflict, But for the life of me I can’t remember the exact quote or episode. I just remember it standing out to me when I heard it back in the day and wondered what conflict he was referring to as I remembered the Earth Romulans war so like most things about Trek I wanted to know more but never heard anything else. Anyone else remember this?

Yeah, there have been some weird takes on that over the years.

Prior to Star Trek: Enterprise, it was generally assumed that first contact with the Klingons occurred after the formation of the Federation at some point in the early 23rd century.  The comics and novels produced back then ran with the idea that there was a series of border wars in the early 23rd century that devolved into a cold war before Kirk became Captain of the Enterprise and that the Organians prevented the cold war from going hot in "Errand of Mercy" in 2267.

Post-Enterprise, the conflicts were pushed into the late 22nd century in the relaunch novel 'verse when the fallout of a lot of Archer's decisions in episodes like ENT: "Dead Stop", "Affliction", and "Divergence" destabilizes the Klingon Empire badly enough for there to be a brief but furious civil war between the regular Klingons and TOS Klingons over TOS Klingons afflicted by the augment virus revolting over being consigned to second-class citizen status in the Empire and de facto exiled to its borders.  Starfleet ended up having (more) egg on its face with the Klingons because the TOS Klingons acquired drone warships from a civilization that was dominated by the tech from the repair station in "Dead Stop", which Starfleet had been attempting to free from their dependency on it and Starfleet got the blame.

[Dobber]

Yeah, as fun of an episode as trial and tribbleations was, it really created a whole lotta crap. Instead of just accepting Klingons were retconned in TMP and quietly thinking Klingons always looked that way, they just had to make a joke about it and call attention to the difference. Which really makes no sense either as Federation officers, especially a Chief Medical officer, would’ve been familiar with the fact that Klingons use to look different in the 23rd century. Worf’s line “we don’t discuss it with outsiders” doesn’t make much sense either as plenty of people in the Federation and elsewhere had dealings with them in the past and know they now look different. 

MY head cannon is that the Disco Klingons are the result of an early attempt at trying to fix the Augment virus and it went too extreme in the “cro  magnon” direction. 
 

Chris

Edited January 11, 2021 by Dobber

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Dobber said:

Yeah, as fun of an episode as trial and tribbleations was, it really created a whole lotta crap. Instead of just accepting Klingons were retconned in TMP and quietly thinking Klingons always looked that way, they just had to make a joke about it and call attention to the difference. Which really makes no sense either as Federation officers especially a Chief Medical officer, would’ve been familiar with the fact that Klingons use to look different in the 23rd century. Worf’s line “we don’t discuss it with outsiders” doesn’t make much sense either as plenty of people in the Federation and elsewhere had dealings with them in the past and know they now look different. 

Eh... to be fair, all "Trials and Tribble-ations" did was acknowledge an issue that was already a subject of substantial speculation and debate in the Star Trek fanbase.

For what it's worth, "Affliction" and "Divergence" did a pretty good job of explaining it in a way that tied up almost all of the loose ends and meshes well with what'd been established about Klingon culture and its warrior ethos.  Dr. Antaak, General K'Vagh, and the other Klingons in the ENT two-parter mention several times that Klingons afflicted by the accidentally created augment virus would be regarded as physically deformed, mentally compromised, and "contaminated" by human genes.  They believed they would be outcasts in the Empire, and it's not hard to see why they would think that. 

We heard from Martok in "You Are Cordially Invited" that Klingons even in the late 24th century still have a strong bias against other races and cultures.  His wife Sirella believed that inviting aliens into their families meant risking losing their identity as Klingons.  Now imagine how Klingons of an earlier, less open-minded era might regard fellow Klingons who are "contaminated" with human DNA.  They would have been outcasts as a threat to Klingon cultural and racial purity.  Then, of course, there's the Klingon culture's attitudes on subjects like physical deformity and disability.  The Klingons considered deviations as minor as albinism to be culturally taboo, to the extent that having a child with a deformity is considered dishonorable and the child is either disowned or killed as in DSC's first season and DS9 "Blood Oath".  The Augment Klingons were much more deformed (by Klingon standards) than Voq or Qagh/"The Albino", meaning they would essentially automatically lose honor in the eyes of their fellow Klingons for living with a deformity.  We've also seen how the Klingons handle physical and mental disability.  In TNG "Ethics", we saw that the standard Klingon approach to nontrivial physical disability is for the disabled person to commit suicide.  Their attitude towards people with mental disabilities like the elderly Kor's senility in DS9 "Once More Unto the Breach" was dismissive at best, abusive at worst.  

Then, of course, there's Starfleet's role in the augment virus since the whole reason the augment virus came to exist was Starfleet's sloppy job dealing with the augments that Arik Soong stole from Cold Station 12 and their hostile actions against the Klingons in a bid to cover their tracks.  That got Antaak working on Klingon augments, leading to the virus which caused the deformity, mass-sterilization of Klingon colony planets, and an inheritable disability afflicting generations of Klingons.  Five'll get you twenty Earth Starfleet just buried the everloving hell out of the records pertaining to that little disaster.

When you think about it in those terms, it's not surprising that Worf's attitude would be "we don't discuss it".  The TOS Klingons are Klingons living with an inherited genetic illness and thus living in a permanent state of dishonor that their families couldn't escape from, living as outcasts among their own people on the Empire's borders, and all because of one of Earth's - and Starfleet's - greatest heroes.  It's understandable Worf wouldn't want to explain that to his Starfleet colleagues.  Dusting that one off would be disrespectful to all of the Klingons visiting K-7, would be sure to upset his Starfleet colleagues, and might draw attention because that's not something outsiders are supposed to know. 

Of course, there is also the possibility that Worf, having been raised on Earth by humans, is just as in the dark as his crewmates are and is making a joke about it in his trademark deadpan manner (or bluffing his way through the conversation since he's Proud Warrior Race guy and doesn't want to admit he's not familiar with this chapter in Klingon history).

 

Quote

MY head cannon is that the Disco Klingons are the result of an early attempt at trying to fix the Augment virus and it went too extreme in the “cro  magnon” direction. 

Given how Discovery massively exaggerates the physical traits of the Klingons to render them bestial and monstrous-looking, flanderizes their entire culture into a single-minded lust for violent conquest, gets the Klingon religion completely wrong, outright dismisses the entire concept of Klingon honor to depict Klingons as opportunists with very flexible loyalty who will sell their own leaders out for a decent meal or just to get ahead, includes a wannabe messiah who blasphemously proclaims himself their second coming, and has the "token good" Klingon be the one who abandons everything Klingon about himself... I have a rather different theory.

My headcanon is that Star Trek: Discovery is the 23rd century equivalent of the Turner Diaries or some other insane tract fantasizing about race war and intent on dehumanizing an entire group of people by exaggerating racist stereotypes.  Probably a low-budget holodrama penned by the real Michael Burnham, casting herself in the role of the protagonist who overthrows the Klingon Empire and saves humanity from an adversary depicted as bestial, subhuman, and so intent on malice as to be immune to reason.  That the reason nobody and nothing from Discovery are ever referenced anywhere else being that 1. it's wholly fictional and 2. the Federation is so deeply embarrassed by its very existence that it wasn't circulated widely when it was published.

Edited January 11, 2021 by Seto Kaiba

[Dobber]

My comment about Worf’s statement wasn’t as a critique about Worf not explaining things to outsiders but rather as a dismissal about something that in all reality should be common knowledge. Not the details, mind you, but just the fact that they did look different for some reason.  Along with both O’brian and Bashir not even knowing or having, apparently, never even hearing about different looking Klingons is HIGHLY unlikely. As for societal feelings/attitudes of Klingons, I agree with what you point out, but for me it actually makes the premise I’m talking about even more far fetched. If there is such a strong bias and stigma in their society, and as you point out there is indeed, then why would they be given positions of such power and authority? Such as Fleet captains and governorships. Kor, Kang, and Koloth seemed greatly revered. If their society is so bigoted to people with their “deformities” as they are in other far less substantial situations, as you pointed out, that would require euthanization or ritual suicide ect. Then it makes little sense that these types of people would be allowed to serve, much less rise to such high levels in their service or society.

Chris

 

 

[Chronocidal]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

My headcanon is that Star Trek: Discovery is the 23rd century equivalent of the Turner Diaries or some other insane tract fantasizing about race war and intent on dehumanizing an entire group of people by exaggerating racist stereotypes.  Probably a low-budget holodrama penned by the real Michael Burnham, casting herself in the role of the protagonist who overthrows the Klingon Empire and saves humanity from an adversary depicted as bestial, subhuman, and so intent on malice as to be immune to reason.  That the reason nobody and nothing from Discovery are ever referenced anywhere else being that 1. it's wholly fictional and 2. the Federation is so deeply embarrassed by its very existence that it wasn't circulated widely when it was published.

So.. STD is in-universe self-insert fiction posted on the TOS-era equivalent of DeviantArt or Livejournal?  That makes a somewhat baffling amount of sense.

It's like someone read "My Immortal" and said "hold my Romulan ale."

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Dobber said:

My comment about Worf’s statement wasn’t as a critique about Worf not explaining things to outsiders but rather as a dismissal about something that in all reality should be common knowledge. Not the details, mind you, but just the fact that they did look different for some reason.

Like common sense, common knowledge is often surprisingly uncommon.

 

2 hours ago, Dobber said:

 Along with both O’brian and Bashir not even knowing or having, apparently, never even hearing about different looking Klingons is HIGHLY unlikely.

Normal, ridge-headed Klingons were back to being the norm from 2271 onwards... so by the time of "Trials and Tribble-ations", the TOS Klingons hadn't been around for a good 102 years and counting.  It's not entirely surprising that they might not know since one is a physician and the other is an engineer.  Neither of them are historians, and by the time things started to get properly historical (the Khitomer conference) the ridge-headed Klingons were the ones on display again.

 

2 hours ago, Dobber said:

As for societal feelings/attitudes of Klingons, I agree with what you point out, but for me it actually makes the premise I’m talking about even more far fetched. If there is such a strong bias and stigma in their society, and as you point out there is indeed, then why would they be given positions of such power and authority? Such as Fleet captains and governorships. Kor, Kang, and Koloth seemed greatly revered. If their society is so bigoted to people with their “deformities” as they are in other far less substantial situations, as you pointed out, that would require euthanization or ritual suicide ect. Then it makes little sense that these types of people would be allowed to serve, much less rise to such high levels in their service or society.

Kang, Kor, and Koloth may have been insulated somewhat from the consequences of their condition by the fact that their families were extremely influential Klingon nobility, back in a period when the Empire wasn't quite so meritocratic as it was in the 2360s and beyond.  In the case of others, the IKDF troops along the Federation border may have simply gone to promote from within if commanders who weren't augment virus sufferers were unwilling to command a ship of dishonored troops.

(That the Klingons on the frontier weren't so Proud Warrior Race Guy as the ridge-headed ones we're familiar with from before and after would make sense... someone who hasn't got the opportunity to earn great honor wouldn't be as obsessed with honor in general.)

(If the civil war from the relaunch novels happened in canon, the influential augment Klingon families may also have been doing a bit of wearing fake forehead ridges in public in the more urbane parts of the Empire.)

 

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

So.. STD is in-universe self-insert fiction posted on the TOS-era equivalent of DeviantArt or Livejournal?  That makes a somewhat baffling amount of sense.

It's like someone read "My Immortal" and said "hold my Romulan ale."

It does explain a lot of the show's problems... especially if we assume the in-universe author was not actually Starfleet and didn't know how a lot of the tech works.

It's a neater explanation of the contraction between Burnham's mutiny conviction and Spock's later line about there being no record of a mutiny on a Starfleet ship.  It explains why we see so much anachronistic tech, why the non-anachronistic tech doesn't work the way it does in other shows, why Discovery has a propulsion system that's clearly ridiculous and setting-breaking, why these Starfleet officers behave so unprofessionally, and why Burnham seems to never actually face lasting consequences for anything she does and has every major galactic event revolve around her and only her on a level even Q doesn't stoop to.

That kind of heroic fantasy only works on the holodeck or in badly-written popular fiction.

The level of edgy ham is certainly reminiscent of the Doctor's holonovel "Photons Be Free" in Voyager.

[Seto Kaiba]

So, I was perusing a Facebook Star Trek group I frequent and saw that they were running a poll about who was the best Captain of the USS Discovery.  At time of writing, 865 users had voted and the votes fell as follows:

Spoiler

Captain Christopher Pike: 541  (62.3991%)

Captain Saru: 149  (17.1857%)

Captain Gabriel Lorca (Mirror): 127  (14.6582%)

Captain Michael Burnham: 46  (5.3057%)

Invalid Response: 4  (0.4614%)

Can we just appreciate this is a major Star Trek group with over 135,000 members and Burnham came in dead last by a huge margin in a Captains popularity poll specific to the series she's the main character of?  She barely managed eleven times the number of people who entered an invalid response!

Edited January 12, 2021 by Seto Kaiba

[tekering]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I was perusing a Facebook Star Trek group I frequent and saw that they were running a poll about who was the best Captain of the USS Discovery. 

If Michael Burnham is included in that poll, then Admiral Cornwell should be as well...

...and Emperor Georgiou, when Cornwell appointed her...

Hell, even "Captain Killy" had more screentime as Discovery CO than Burnham. 

13 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

So.. STD is in-universe self-insert fiction posted on the TOS-era equivalent of DeviantArt or Livejournal?

It's perfectly consistent with 23rd century Star Trek, as much of TOS plays like self-insert fan-fiction written by Jim Kirk. 

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, tekering said:

If Michael Burnham is included in that poll, then Admiral Cornwell should be as well...

...and Emperor Georgiou, when Cornwell appointed her...

Hell, even "Captain Killy" had more screentime as Discovery CO than Burnham. 

... well, maybe Georgiou and Tilly, but that'd just steal the remaining 40-something votes Burnham got.

 

 

6 hours ago, tekering said:

It's perfectly consistent with 23rd century Star Trek, as much of TOS plays like self-insert fan-fiction written by Jim Kirk. 

... oh god, you're right.  

This series DOES resemble one of the Star Trek novels penned by Shatner.  Did he have a writing credit on this turd, or is this just an unfortunate coincidence?

(Specifically, The Return... where Shatner un-kills Kirk after the events of Star Trek: Generations and has him not only defeat every major member of the TNG crew including Worf and Data, but also briefly captains a Defiant-class USS Enterprise, defeats a secret Borg-Romulan alliance, and dies destroying the entire Borg collective after sucker-punching Picard.)

[pengbuzz]

On 1/6/2021 at 10:28 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

There is a Tide (DSC 3x12): AKA "Space Karen demands to speak to Starfleet's Manager."

  Hide contents

The penultimate episode of Season 3.

Have I mentioned what a sad mess this show is?  This is supposed to essentially be building up to the climax of the season and literally the only scene in this entire episode that any Star Trek fan group is talking about is the scene where Admiral Vance puts Osyrra off her lunch by pointing out that replicated food is - in the loosest possible sense - made from recycled waste.  Something she really ought to already know, given that she owns at least one starship and that that's been the standard source of matter for replicators to rearrange since replicators were invented.

<snip>

Osyraa is picking at a fruit tray and complains that the replicated apples don't taste quite right and remarks how sad it is that Vance has never eaten a real apple.  He then launches into the "it's made of our crap" speech about how replicators recycle waste, indicating that it's better than luxury foods that you have to commit atrocities for.  She makes a speech about how capitalism needs to be respected in the Federation because the post-scarcity economy that defined the Federation collapsed with it.  Vance puts forward the point that the Emerald Chain uses slavery to prop up its capitalist economy and Osyraa rebuts that she's already forced through a motion for the Orion gov't to ban slavery.  (Which, if true, and Eli says it is, would've made her a visionary Orion civil rights leader if she weren't a ridiculously evil mobster.)  Vance says that she'll need to step down from running the Emerald Chain.  Osyraa then offers up an armistice in which she promises to adhere to the prime directive, walk back all previous prime directive violations and domestic interferences, and all manner of other concessions.

 

Thinking about it, Vance essentially told Osyrra to "Eat $#!t" lol

[Thom]

Loved Vance. Until the writers had him reward Michael for disobeying orders and basically getting lucky...

[Seto Kaiba]

9 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Thinking about it, Vance essentially told Osyrra to "Eat $#!t" lol

Quite the opposite!

In an unusual twist, Vance actually called Osyraa out as a spoiled, entitled, elitist, hypocritical space Karen precisely because she doesn't eat sh*t.

As bizarre and implausible as it sounds, the very 32nd century cosmopolitan Osyraa apparently doesn't know how replicators work.

Replicators were far and away the most economical and accessible source for all kinds of basic needs... including food and clothing.  Osyraa would have to be living in obscene luxury if she never eats replicated food even aboard Viridian and never wears replicated clothing.  That would mean that she's carrying massive stocks of natural foodstuffs and water, that she's got one or more private chefs working for her to prepare that food for her on-demand, and that her clothes are all individually tailored for her.  When much of former Federation, even the parts that are now Emerald Chain territory, is still struggling with basic necessities, Osyraa is living like Louis XVI right before the French Revolution.

Holodecks must work differently in the 32nd century, since when they were invented they used replicator technology heavily to create anything that might be worn, eaten, or otherwise inert matter that might leave the bounds of the holomatrix.  I'd assume programmable matter must be involved now though that raises some awkward questions about whether that's something that can be safely eaten, drunk, or inhaled.

 

24 minutes ago, Thom said:

Loved Vance. Until the writers had him reward Michael for disobeying orders and basically getting lucky...

Yeah, Fleet Admiral Vance was set to be the Reasonable Authority Figure in Star Trek: Discovery until he mysteriously developed a blind spot regarding Burnham's insubordination and chronic reg-breaking about two-thirds of the way through the season.

That he allowed Burnham to be promoted to command the Discovery is difficult to swallow, even if he did effectively demote the ship to a glorified freighter.

[pengbuzz]

On 1/14/2021 at 11:00 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

Quite the opposite!

In an unusual twist, Vance actually called Osyraa out as a spoiled, entitled, elitist, hypocritical space Karen precisely because she doesn't eat sh*t.

As bizarre and implausible as it sounds, the very 32nd century cosmopolitan Osyraa apparently doesn't know how replicators work.

Replicators were far and away the most economical and accessible source for all kinds of basic needs... including food and clothing.  Osyraa would have to be living in obscene luxury if she never eats replicated food even aboard Viridian and never wears replicated clothing.  That would mean that she's carrying massive stocks of natural foodstuffs and water, that she's got one or more private chefs working for her to prepare that food for her on-demand, and that her clothes are all individually tailored for her.  When much of former Federation, even the parts that are now Emerald Chain territory, is still struggling with basic necessities, Osyraa is living like Louis XVI right before the French Revolution.

Holodecks must work differently in the 32nd century, since when they were invented they used replicator technology heavily to create anything that might be worn, eaten, or otherwise inert matter that might leave the bounds of the holomatrix.  I'd assume programmable matter must be involved now though that raises some awkward questions about whether that's something that can be safely eaten, drunk, or inhaled.

 

Yeah, Fleet Admiral Vance was set to be the Reasonable Authority Figure in Star Trek: Discovery until he mysteriously developed a blind spot regarding Burnham's insubordination and chronic reg-breaking about two-thirds of the way through the season.

That he allowed Burnham to be promoted to command the Discovery is difficult to swallow, even if he did effectively demote the ship to a glorified freighter.

Good points.

Fitting, since the entire plot and script is full of "replicated food" :P

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

Good points.

Fitting, since the entire plot and script is full of "replicated food" :P

That, in and of itself, is kind of emblematic of how Discovery's writers don't seem to have had any real ideas for advancing the Star Trek setting.

The USS Discovery might've traveled forward into the 32nd century, but literally all that accomplished was to better-justify the set design looking far too advanced for the period it was originally intended for.  Everything else either stayed the same or got worse.  930 years have passed and everyone is still using conventional matter/antimatter reactors moderated with refined dilithium to power conventional warp drives, despite better alternatives for both having been available for over eight centuries.  Replicated food is still somehow "bad" or worse than "real" food despite being indistinguishable down to the molecular level, despite replicator technology despite eight and a half centuries of technological advancement.  The Orion piracy problem that Earth Starfleet was dealing with in the 2150s is still a problem a thousand years later.  The Discovery's spore drive is still a unique and impossible-to-replicate drive system 930 years after it was trialed (despite tech that does the same job better having been discovered over eight centuries ago and put into service six centuries ago).  Discovery has been updated, technologically, but nothing functional changed internally or externally except the interface for the spore drive and the addition of a cloaking device.

It seems like the only thing that changed was the year on the calendar.

[Thom]

57 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That, in and of itself, is kind of emblematic of how Discovery's writers don't seem to have had any real ideas for advancing the Star Trek setting.

The USS Discovery might've traveled forward into the 32nd century, but literally all that accomplished was to better-justify the set design looking far too advanced for the period it was originally intended for.  Everything else either stayed the same or got worse.  930 years have passed and everyone is still using conventional matter/antimatter reactors moderated with refined dilithium to power conventional warp drives, despite better alternatives for both having been available for over eight centuries.  Replicated food is still somehow "bad" or worse than "real" food despite being indistinguishable down to the molecular level, despite replicator technology despite eight and a half centuries of technological advancement.  The Orion piracy problem that Earth Starfleet was dealing with in the 2150s is still a problem a thousand years later.  The Discovery's spore drive is still a unique and impossible-to-replicate drive system 930 years after it was trialed (despite tech that does the same job better having been discovered over eight centuries ago and put into service six centuries ago).  Discovery has been updated, technologically, but nothing functional changed internally or externally except the interface for the spore drive and the addition of a cloaking device.

It seems like the only thing that changed was the year on the calendar.

Another problem with going so far forward in time. The world they had to create in order to be believable and not just a mirror to the time they left would have to be drastically different, not just in look but in its society as well. A thousand years earlier than our own time and the world was dominated with monarchies and religions and caste systems. But what we see in STD () is a society that has been basically stagnant for about eight centuries, at least until the Burn. Shortening the time frame they jumped to to a few centuries ahead rather almost ten would have been the better move.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

3 hours ago, Thom said:

Another problem with going so far forward in time. The world they had to create in order to be believable and not just a mirror to the time they left would have to be drastically different, not just in look but in its society as well. A thousand years earlier than our own time and the world was dominated with monarchies and religions and caste systems. But what we see in STD () is a society that has been basically stagnant for about eight centuries, at least until the Burn.

All told, it wasn't just stagnant... it was almost like a different timeline where the events and advances made in other Star Trek shows largely never happened.

There are nods to them, like the USS Nog, the Voyager-J, and Picard's recording of Spock's speech on Romulan reunification, but that just serves to make the prominent absences and plot holes weirder than they would otherwise be.

Of course, the oversights and research failures weren't restricted to Discovery.  Lower Decks still has the Borg around long after Janeway destroyed their transwarp network and Picard has the explicitly-destroyed transwarp network still being used.

 

3 hours ago, Thom said:

Shortening the time frame they jumped to to a few centuries ahead rather almost ten would have been the better move.

I'm not so sure... there's not a lot in the timeline between 2379 and the mid-27th century, but once you get to the mid-26th century you're into the Temporal Cold War era established by Enterprise but referencing events in TNG and other shows.  From there, the Temporal Cold War era kind of dominates things until the late 31st century.

[sketchley]

7 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That, in and of itself, is kind of emblematic of how Discovery's writers don't seem to have had any real ideas for advancing the Star Trek setting.

The USS Discovery might've traveled forward into the 32nd century, but literally all that accomplished was to better-justify the set design looking far too advanced for the period it was originally intended for.  Everything else either stayed the same or got worse.  930 years have passed and everyone is still using conventional matter/antimatter reactors moderated with refined dilithium to power conventional warp drives, despite better alternatives for both having been available for over eight centuries.  Replicated food is still somehow "bad" or worse than "real" food despite being indistinguishable down to the molecular level, despite replicator technology despite eight and a half centuries of technological advancement.  The Orion piracy problem that Earth Starfleet was dealing with in the 2150s is still a problem a thousand years later.  The Discovery's spore drive is still a unique and impossible-to-replicate drive system 930 years after it was trialed (despite tech that does the same job better having been discovered over eight centuries ago and put into service six centuries ago).  Discovery has been updated, technologically, but nothing functional changed internally or externally except the interface for the spore drive and the addition of a cloaking device.

It seems like the only thing that changed was the year on the calendar.

I have no problem with your critique except the part about the Orion piracy problem:

In the real world, the piracy that occurs is quite different now (Somali pirates, Straight of Malacca Pirates, etc.) compared to what it was like 10 centuries ago (something along the lines of Pirates of the Caribbean).  However, it still takes place.  So, I'd give it a pass (with the caveat that I haven't seen the series so I'm unaware of its portrayal in the 32nd century). 

[Seto Kaiba]

17 hours ago, sketchley said:

I have no problem with your critique except the part about the Orion piracy problem:

In the real world, the piracy that occurs is quite different now (Somali pirates, Straight of Malacca Pirates, etc.) compared to what it was like 10 centuries ago (something along the lines of Pirates of the Caribbean).  However, it still takes place.  So, I'd give it a pass (with the caveat that I haven't seen the series so I'm unaware of its portrayal in the 32nd century). 

Well, that was a fun trip down the Wikipedia rabbit hole... 

You have an excellent and well-made point about the enduring nature of piracy in specific regions... and it's not at all unreasonable that space piracy would be an enduring problem on the periphery of Federation space and outside of it, given the number of species that aren't quite sold on Federation values like the Orions and Nausicaans.  

I suppose a better way to frame my grievance with Discovery's new 32nd century setting WRT the Orions would be that they too are victims of this bizarre form of "setting stasis".

We're 1,035 years into the future from Earth's first (depicted) contact with the Orions in Star Trek: Enterprise's fourth season and they seem to exist exclusively in the context of piratical, slave-trading crime syndicates.  Discovery S3's writers dithered a bit mid-season about whether the diminished Federation's main antagonists - the Emerald Chain - were a government or not.  They were initially introduced as an Orion-Andorian alliance, and subsequently zig-zagged between that and "it's just an Orion crime syndicate" in subsequent episodes as they depicted the Andorians as just hired (or coerced) muscle and went on to depict it was increasingly villainous and seemingly exclusively Orion-led.  It lurched back towards "alliance" for a spell in the season finale when Osyraa proposed her truce and presented herself as a government official, but the writers walked that all the way back towards "crime syndicate" very quickly.  (Presumably it had something to do with the implications of Burnham gunning down the Emerald Chain's leader... which would be a diplomatic catastrophe unless she were a crime syndicate leader nobody would miss, and whose syndicate would fall apart due to infighting without her.)

The canonicity of Lower Decks is dubious, but that offers the ONLY instance of an Orion who isn't a crime syndicate member... who, in a rare moment of self-awareness, actually gets a little offended at being stereotyped as a space pirate.

[sketchley]

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, that was a fun trip down the Wikipedia rabbit hole... 

No problem!

There's a whole bunch to be said about modern piracy, but the most succinct and interesting would be: they made a movie about it with Tom Hanks, and the US armed forces are deploying anti-pirate sonic weapons (alas, they're not as cool as Basara Nekki or the flamethrower guitarist in Fury Road.)

Quote

I suppose a better way to frame my grievance with Discovery's new 32nd century setting WRT the Orions would be that they too are victims of this bizarre form of "setting stasis".

I'm completely OK with this (not to mention that it meshes well with your other critical points).

 

Thanks for providing the critique of season 3 in general.  I waded through seasons 1 and 2 last year, and from what you've said in combination with what I remember (the portrayal of Klingons... shudder), I have no desire to see season 3 at this point.  It just doesn't feel like Star Trek anymore...

There was something I wanted to say about a week ago.  I had just recently watched DS9's "Take Me Out To The Holosuite", and I had some kind of point about how an episode like that where the characters just exist could never happen in Disco... but I seem to have forgotten exactly what my point was!  LOL

[Seto Kaiba]

11 hours ago, sketchley said:

Thanks for providing the critique of season 3 in general.  I waded through seasons 1 and 2 last year, and from what you've said in combination with what I remember (the portrayal of Klingons... shudder), I have no desire to see season 3 at this point.  It just doesn't feel like Star Trek anymore...

Ah, no problem.  Unlike the start of Discovery's second season when Captain Pike took over, there really isn't a moment in Discovery's third season that actually feels like Star Trek.

A lot of the time, what it really feels like is Star Wars.  Booker feels like another poorly developed ersatz Han Solo ala Dash Rendar.  He's the rogueish loner cargo ship captain running cargo out of various seedy and lawless spaceports, who later ends up on the run from that crime syndicate (which, in this case, is also the closest there is to the government) as the result of a falling out over some cargo.  His ship even bears more than a passing resemblance to the Millennium Falcon or Outrider.  Osyraa's basically a mix of Jabba the Hutt and Darth Vader, being the leader of the crime syndicate he used to work for and is on the run from, running an oppressive regime that profits from slave labor, indentured servitude, and extortion while oppressing basically everyone from the comfort of a large gray wedge-shaped space battleship.  Like Han, the catalyst for Booker's transformation into an idealistic believer in La Resistance (in this case, the Federation) is meeting the True Believer girl of his dreams as she champions its cause and getting wrapped up in her agenda ending with him signing on himself after their first major victory.

 

11 hours ago, sketchley said:

There was something I wanted to say about a week ago.  I had just recently watched DS9's "Take Me Out To The Holosuite", and I had some kind of point about how an episode like that where the characters just exist could never happen in Disco... but I seem to have forgotten exactly what my point was!  LOL

Yeah, there really aren't any moments like that in Discovery.

There are some insincere "heartfelt" reunion moments like when Burnham finally catches up to the Discovery at the end of episode 3x02, but even three seasons in there's no sense of the crew coming together as a family.  The closest they get is Saru's staff dinner, which ends in everyone storming out on him (and Georgiou stealing the wine on the way out).  The crew of the Discovery just don't like each other personally or professionally, unlike the tightly-knit crews of the Enterprise, Enterprise-D, Deep Space 9, Voyager, and NX-01 Enterprise.

[Chronocidal]

10 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

The crew of the Discovery just don't like each other personally or professionally, unlike the tightly-knit crews of the Enterprise, Enterprise-D, Deep Space 9, Voyager, and NX-01 Enterprise.

I'm not sure if them getting along worse than Voyager's crew is a slight against Discovery, or Voyager.  

This, on the other hand, I found very entertaining.

 

[tekering]

That's hardly a fair comparison, is it? 

Discovery is hard sci-fi, a gritty look at a future society where actual people struggle with oppressive regimes, homicidal technology, and interstellar warfare.

Monsters, Inc. is an animated cartoon, full of whimsical creatures, slapstick humor, sight gags and storybook fantasy.

Sure, the plot's more engaging, the characters are more empathetic, the worldbuilding is more complex and well-thought out, and the setting feels more like a tangible reality, but that's because Pixar is full of talented, creative people who know what they're doing.  (Star Trek hasn't been able to make that claim for decades.)

We really shouldn't expect Discovery to be as realistic as a Disney comedy. 

[Lexomatic]

On 1/18/2021 at 3:51 AM, sketchley said:

I have no desire to see season 3 at this point.  It just doesn't feel like Star Trek anymore...

And that's the distillation of all these point-by-point critiques, isn't it? Does ST:DSC entice you to spend your limited entertainment hours on it, or do you pick an alternative? For any show, each viewer will look for a different combination of ingredients ...

Coherent plot, engaging mystery, quotable lines, individual performances, character interaction, fight choreography, space battles, mecha design, vistas, SF/F ideas and worldbuilding, commentary on current social issues or the human condition, whether it fits with/extends the larger fictional milieu, music

... and DSC doesn't excel at any of these. It has isolated moments, but it's mostly a slog. If you watched the whole thing in real time there was the hope that maybe the disparate pieces would eventually converge in a satisfying way ; but if you're on the fence, you can rely on reviews that no, they don't. A corporate owner relies on "fannish loyalty" regardless of quality, but a responsible entertainment-consumer will recognize commitment bias and sunk-cost fallacy, and jump ship.

[pengbuzz]

5 hours ago, Lexomatic said:

And that's the distillation of all these point-by-point critiques, isn't it? Does ST:DSC entice you to spend your limited entertainment hours on it, or do you pick an alternative? For any show, each viewer will look for a different combination of ingredients ...

Coherent plot, engaging mystery, quotable lines, individual performances, character interaction, fight choreography, space battles, mecha design, vistas, SF/F ideas and worldbuilding, commentary on current social issues or the human condition, whether it fits with/extends the larger fictional milieu, music

... and DSC doesn't excel at any of these. It has isolated moments, but it's mostly a slog. If you watched the whole thing in real time there was the hope that maybe the disparate pieces would eventually converge in a satisfying way ; but if you're on the fence, you can rely on reviews that no, they don't. A corporate owner relies on "fannish loyalty" regardless of quality, but a responsible entertainment-consumer will recognize commitment bias and sunk-cost fallacy, and jump ship.

I think Galvatron said it best about Discovery:

 

Edited January 19, 2021 by pengbuzz