New Star Trek series - 2017

JRS

JRS

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I'm going to miss the commentaries @JRS, well until Academy starts :D

My mental health won't! :p

The bolted on piece was a terrible cringefest and I echo what you said above. I'm relieved it's over.

Yeah.

They needed something, because obviously the rug got pulled when it did. But that wasn't it, IMO. I'm firmly on record that I think the whole 'Discovery is a family' stuff came from right out of nowhere in this series, and those are the moments that make it feel the most unearned.
 

JRS

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No explanation given in-universe for why they un-refitted the Discoball at the end to send her off for her eventual appearance in the Short Trek "Calypso". Out of universe it's because they changed the look of the ship after that short was made. But in-universe there doesn't really seem to be a reason why you would.

Several times it seemed like a scene had ended up on the cutting room floor. Like Burnham and Moll ending up back on the platforms having dropped down into the fire pit for part of their fistfight, or some of the stuff with Saru and Nhan with the Breen Primarch's fleet.

Just exactly how dumb Michael Burnham is was encapsulated in one scene - turning her back on Moll with the Progenitor Puzzle Interface Of Great Justice™ right there. You don't need to turn away Burnham - all of your tech lets you project a screen in whatever direction you need. She could quite easily have worked on establishing comms with Book without turning away. Too. Damned. Stupid.

Owo, Detmer, Bryce, Reno, they didn't get an invite to the wedding eh? Just to the inconsequential dream sequence in the coda. Hey ho.

I'm stuck on how laughably simple the interface puzzle and 'riddle' were, and yet it took Moll until never and Burnham forever to figure out. Like I said in the commentary, there are nursery age kids who could have worked that out quicker than a Starfleet captain and an allegedly motivated adult.

Clearly the budget for the coda wasn't quite as generous as that of the rest of the episode. The CG deer and the critters in the river were like something out of a video game cutscene.
 
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SPG

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What have I just watched.......an abomination of a ending for a utter Travesty of a show.... So boringly predictable.... A sci fi turd.

However......

Thier has been many highlights of utter ####ness during these 5 seasons but the highlight of these stunningly laughable bits of writing has to the episode with the magical speed of light turbo lifts.
 
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Let down of a finale to add to most of this season, really hoped it would have been done differently with them knowing it was the final season alas we got more of the same as previous seasons, even the endings shown for the characters didn't really feel that good or make you feel happy for them.
 
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And done..........

Thought Discovery started out really well, the Lorca episodes were excellent - really wished he remained as Captain, Section 31 etc. But as each season went on, the worse it got.

I didn't mind the finale, it wrapped things up, although yet again, all about Burnham.
 

JRS

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Is anyone else as tickled as I am that Discovery's final season, after flinging themselves into the far-far-far-future to be unbound by the shackles of previous Trek canon, was basically one giant reference to a TNG episode? :p

How did the Discoball make the final jump to where the events of "Calypso" happen? Did they figure out a replacement for Stamets as an interface with the mycelial network by the time of the coda? They still needed him to jump the Breen ships out to the Galactic barrier in the episode itself.

So Emily Coutts (Detmer) and Oyin Oladejo (Owosekun) had scheduling conflicts that kept them from filming much for S5. But it's a shame that they couldn't have been brought back for something rather more consequential than Burnham's daydream on the Discoball bridge in the coda.

I know I snark about the scripts elevating Burnham to Godhood, but I'm glad that they showed her rejecting the chance to control the power of the Progenitor (or, as it turned out, pre-Progenitor) tech. Fully God Mode™ Burnham might be a line that even the most ardent fans of the character wouldn't want crossing.
 
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Right then. For the, thankfully, last time - a Discovery commentary.

5x10 - Life, Itself



:rolleyes:


1) Recap serving only to underscore just how wretched this all is.
2) VFX team put in some overtime.
3) Oh, drat. Burnham lived.
4) Tries to hail the Disco because that bunch of galactic misfits is exactly who you'd want in a crisis.
5) No dice. But it gives her the opportunity to deliver exposition out loud.
6) Bored already.
7) Mary Sue Burnham The Ever Right™ making several leaps in logic to determine what it is she's looking at. Which will doubtless be vindicated by the script.
8) Oh, please jump. That'd improve things.
9) More VFX.
10) And a rough ride into the next section, which sadly still fails to kill her.
11) A spot of weather. And a dead/dying Breen.
12) Still trying to call the ship.
13) And now a living Breen making a running tackle.
14) Gratuitous slo-mo.
15) Gratuitous hand-to-hand combat. Kirk-fu in TOS was much more entertaining to watch.
16) Of course Burnham wins the fight against an armoured aggressor.
17) Deus ex machina. Or is it deus ex Burnham?
18) Another burst of slo-mo. Quick pause while I look up who directed this crap...Olatunde Osunsanmi, who was responsible for some of my least favourite Discovery episodes. Explains a lot.
19) Slo-mo Burnham jump, as the soundtrack goes for 'epic' but hits 'meh' before it can get there.
20) This is all stupid and terrible and I hate it.
21) And she's made it back to the platform where she started.
22) Dynamic entrance from Breen. Followed by even more dynamic entrance from Moll. Who is trailing blood at a rate that probably shouldn't leave her standing.
23) Burnham tossing her a dermal regenerator to tend her wound. *record scratch* Pausing again. A dermal regenerator for a sliced femoral artery? These things before now have been shown to repair cuts, grazes and burns. I don't believe even in this far-far-far-future Trek we've ever seen one do that kind of surgery? Plus, she's already bled out a bunch.
24) Witless dialogue ensues.
25) This is all still stupid and terrible and I'm hating it more and more.
26) And all I win for sitting through that 11 minutes of dreck is the Discovery intro and theme.
27) Still, at least the light coma that this puts me into will be restful.
28) Only amusement is counting the people with a producer-level credit, which must comfortably outweigh any other role in the production.
29) More VFX.
30) Back with the Discoball. Spinny camera. Flamethrowers. Sparks. Lights.
31) Boredom.
32) This pair at the front even less compelling to watch than Owo and Detmer would have been. At least those two got an attempt at fleshing out their characters from the showrunners.
33) Vague approximation of witty dialogue between Rayner and Ensign Ricky #3.
34) Breen fighter craft flying in to pound on the Discoball some more.
35) Meanwhile with Vance, Nhan and Saru.
36) Saru and Nhan volunteering for an entertaining opportunity for suicide.
37) Oh, God. "The crew of Discovery is family to us both, Admiral." Please sod right off with the lame attempts at making this crew a band of brothers. It doesn't land :rolleyes:
38) Witless dialogue continuing between Burnham and Moll.
39) Devolving into gratuitous fight.
40) Spinny cam.
41) And now a forest with a magenta filter.
42) A sprinkle more witless dialogue.
43) I expect this is meant to be exciting.
44) I just heard Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool fangirling about superhero landings with that one from Moll.
45) Fighting in the fire. Kirk and Kruge did this bit better in the third film.
46) Osunsanmi really got fond of slo-mos for this one.
47) The Discoball still running from the Breen fighters and chasing the portal.
48) Exposition piled upon exposition.
49) And Rayner deciding on Plan B - space battle.
50) Book going to take a shuttle, just as soon as someone's worked out how to keep him safe from all the radiation around the portal.
51) Engineering has quickly built a MacGuffin for the radiation issue. Very quickly. Almost as if they already had it ready to go. Which begs the question - why wasn't it already fitted anyway????
52) Episode crashing to a shuddering halt while they waste time talking about this. This series never did get away from that.
53) Culber going with him. So the episode slows down even more as he and Stamets talk about it all. Still, at least their relationship is halfway convincing. Unlike...well, pick another relationship shown in this dumpster fire of a show.
54) Burnham and Moll still fighting, having made it back up to the platforms off-screen.
55) Witless dialogue. And whispering.
56) And boredom. So much boredom.
57) Meanwhile on the bridge, no cliché left untouched with Rayner's 'time to switch from defence to offence' line.
58) Tilly with a plan that Ensign Rickette #6 is going to explain.
59) Hang on. This is just a variation of the Riker Maneuver from Insurrection, isn't it?
60) More witless dialogue between Burnham and Moll. And leaps in logic.
61) Burnham The Ever Right™.
62) A wide eyed look from Burnham. Cussing from Moll.
63) Saru and Nhan have caught up to the Breen fleet.
64) Doug Jones remains one of the few bright points about this series.
65) "You speak of 'maybes' and 'mights'. I offer certainty." See, this is what I never got about this series. Occasionally they'll screw up and write a line as good as that. And then the rest of the time it's complete trash.
66) No-sell. But Saru a half-step ahead.
67) Burnham and Moll slogging through the field.
68) Exposition.
69) Sex position joke. My heart's not really in it, but there you go.
70) If you don't know what's about to happen long before it does, then you ain't been watching this show.
71) Pacing has all but disappeared now.
72) Book trying to hail Burnham.
73) Yep, there we go from 70). 'Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal', and all that.
74) Moll builds a triangle with the interface, which won't do what she wants. Because she's stupid.
75) Exposition on the Discoball.
76) The Riker Maneuver worked.
77) But the dreadnought is back in the game.
78) VFX team still earning their corn.
79) Culber with the insight. Deux ex scriptwriter.
80) Tractor lock.
81) Meanwhile with Saru and Nhan.
82) Saru engaging in some psychology.
83) And poker. Not quite Kirk against Balok, but pretty decent. Also, that 'look into my eyes, you think I am bluffing?' bit? Easily 1,001% more badass than anything Burnham has ever done.
84) Burnham waking up from the clonk on the head.
85) Jesus H. tapdancing Christ, there are young kids at nurseries who can figure out this puzzle quicker than these idiots! :rolleyes:
86) Burnham's elevation to Godhood complete.
87) A Progenitor.
88) And, somehow, a slow episode gets even slower.
89) "Time functions differently in here." And, indeed, in the Discovery writers room.
90) For once, Trek getting Magic Fun Time With DNA™ right. Broken clocks, and all that.
91) There have been many, many better works examining the whole "technology is neutral, it's what you do with it that counts" deal than this. In the Trek wider universe see "Federation", by Judy and Gar Reeves-Stevens. Later Trek productions left it irreconcilable with canon (First Contact, for one) but it's a brilliant book.
92) Mystery piles upon mystery.
93) Book and Culber. Exposition.
94) No real answers, but it's alright. Again the writers screwing up and coming up with something vaguely worthy.
95) VFX.
96) Saru with the late breaking update.
97) Rayner and Tilly back-and-forth.
98) Exposition layered with Treknobabble layered with witless dialogue. The unholy trinity of Discovery script writing.
99) A plan. A stupid plan, but a plan nonetheless.
100) Back to clichés.
101) And, unfortunately, back with Burnham. And exposition.
102) Stupid, terrible, hate it.
103) Exposition still wanging on.
104) Rayner's plan, shuffled to the background in all of this expository BS from the Progenitor to Burnham, worked. Because the spore drive is, in fact, actual magic.
105) It's still going on.
106) Showing Burnham a part of creation.
107) Aaaaaaaand back to the platform, to break the news to Moll that - for her, at least - this was all a gigantic waste of time.
108) Witless dialogue between Book and Burnham.
109) Having been at a snail's pace for most of the episode, now we're just racing past bits in order to get to the next slow, talk-about-our-feelings scene.
110) Whispering. Of course.
111) IDIC getting a namedrop.
112) Burnham The Ever Right™ is the one who gets to make the decision about the Progenitor tech. Of course.
113) Quick pause. I suppose we should be glad that they didn't use the Progenitor tech as a fix-all for this universe - bringing back Book's planet and people, for example. I still can't help but think 'is that it?' though. One again an idea that showed some kind of promise very early on founders on the rocky coast of the We Can't Write For **** Bay.
114) Book visiting Moll in the sickbay.
115) Who is going with 'snotty', though even someone as terminally stupid as her must realise that she brought it all on herself.
116) Witless dialogue.
117) Kovich exposition with Burnham.
118) He really is an utter waste of David Cronenberg.
119) Yeah, yeah, Burnham's awesome, we get it :rolleyes:
120) Gratuitous references to other Trek. The Chateau Picard bottle, Geordi's VISOR, Sisko's baseball.
121) The 'reveal', such as it is, that Kovich is Daniels from Enterprise and the Temporal Cold War crapola.
122) Saru and T'Rina married, in a seemingly very human ceremony and reception.
123) Yes, yes, let's talk about our feelings some more. That won't make the audience want to vomit up their own internal organs.
124) And a hook for the Academy series.
125) Did Book just say "Talaxian" pirates? As in, Neelix's lot? How in God's name are they still around, and how on Earth could they possibly have delayed him?
126) Witless dialogue continues.
127) And continues.
128) It's still continuing.
129) And on, and on, and on...
130) Book and Burnham back on then.
131) Kovich wants another word.
132) Here goes the timeskipped coda then, which AFAIK was written and filmed after the showrunners decided season five was to be the end of this dreck.
133) An older Burnham and Book.
134) Space deer! Conspicuously CG'd.
135) This guy is Burnham and Book's son, then.
136) Witless dialogue.
137) Wahey, a 47 reference with the shuttle hull number. Joe Menosky began inserting references to the number during his time on TNG, and the trend caught on.
138) More conspicuously CG'd animals.
139) Witless dialogue between mother and son continues.
140) Undoing the change in look on the Discoball, presumably to get it back in sync with the Short Trek episode "Calypso"?
141) Zora.
142) About to get abandoned in space. So yeah, 140) confirmed.
143) Witless dialogue between Burnham and Zora.
144) At least Detmer and Owo made it into the episode. Even if it was only in dream/flashback.
145) Jesus, just put a bullet in the show's head already...
146) Honour guard for the Disco's departure.
147) Buh-bye.
148) The adventure continues. Just not on this show.

The episode

Well, that was genuinely awful. Pacing - schizophrenic. Dialogue - thoroughly nauseating. Direction - plain weird in places, generic 'action Trek' in others.

Discovery in a nutshell, really.

The season

It was a promising idea, the hunt for the Progenitors. We'd already done it in Trek of course, with TNG's "The Chase". But handled well it could have added something.

Heh. 'Handled well', as if that was ever going to happen. I really do crack myself up sometimes...

To somehow tell less story in ten episodes than TNG managed in one was impressive, in a way. Also impressive was how they managed to do a little fleshing out of the Breen while at the same time making them so much less than they were in DS9. Moll remained a thoroughly uncompelling and barely repentant villain all the way through, looking and feeling like a refugee from a Farscape script.

The series

Thank God that's over.

I look back at the shows which went before. TOS proved that there was a place for intelligent sci-fi on our screens instead of shlock like "Lost in Space". TAS proved that there were still stories to tell in that universe. The movies proved that the audience was still clamouring for more. TNG proved that you can catch lightning in a bottle more than once. DS9 proved that the universe could tell overarching, serialised storylines. VOY (at its best) proved that you could take Federation ideals and have them survive a long way from the relative safety of the Federation. ENT proved that there was still a place for Star Trek in an increasingly cynical world.

I'm always reminded with TV and film by the Nick Meyer line about how "all works of art are ineluctably products of the time in which they are created". You see it in all of Trek. From the hopes and fears of late '60s America permeating TOS, the changing social attitudes running through Berman-era Trek, to here with Discovery and the other modern shows. You look at PIC and SNW, you see that politicians don't come out of it looking very good at all. The people who do are the people like Picard, and Pike. People willing to stand up, do the right thing, do the hard things, fight for a better way to be.

And then you get this. Which was trying to do similar, but kept missing the mark somehow. In fact, it missed the mark with virtually everything it did. I noted years ago that Discovery had started out grim, and gritty, and hip-deep in war and had become, as time went on, a lot about finding your identity and place in life. They chose to do that by having lots of scenes where characters talked about their feelings, their problems, their fears. All fine, in a way. But it was always at about the least appropriate moments in the story! Even in this series finale it was happening. And all it does is just kill any sense of momentum that the story was building up.

That, really, was the fundamental weakness of this show. The showrunners, writers, directors, everyone just kept making the same mistakes and never seemed to learn how to avoid them. They never, ever did get to the point where a season felt like they had a handle on where they were going and how they wanted to get there. Plot twists were always telegraphed in hamfisted fashion. Continuity was always a thing to be ignored whenever it was inconvenient rather than embraced and used to make the writing better.

If Discovery has a legacy at all it's that other, better shows are on TV in part because it was made. Strange New Worlds is the prime example, a show made because fan reaction to Anson Mount in Disco S2 was so overwhelmingly positive. And that really says it all. Fan reaction to the guy who just shows up in the story one day was so much more positive than the reaction to the main character who you spent almost every line of every script trying to show as being awesome that he ended up with his own show.

I didn't have high hopes for the show all the way back when it was first mooted. And I didn't get any more hopeful as more details about what they had planned trickled out. And yet somehow, in a lot of ways, it was even worse than I expected.

So, yeah. Thank God, indeed, that it's over.
Pretty much sums it up really.

All that running around in the previous nine episodes, quite a few lives lost in the process and - this!

Best summed up as an hour of quasi action, with the main comments from both myself and the missus watching... Burnham/Moll scenes FFS cut out the nicey nicey Federation carp and just shoot or at least stun her FFS. The touchy feelie hand holding at Fed HQ and on Discovery, just get going will you.

Followed by 20 minutes of sappy, soppy rubbish.

Followed by 5 minutes of where the hell is she off too,
Ending almost taken from Babylon 5 Sleeping In Light, except if I heard the dialogue correctly, unlike Sheridan, Burnham wasn't going beyond the veil with Discovery to the artifact but wmping out and somehow, never really explained, making her way back to the cosy Federation. At one point I had hoped all the touchy feelie and the ending was all part of some fantasy that was still being played out as a test inside the artifact, but no it was genuine sick bag inducing stuff.

Can post this without a spoiler, but I still think they should have gone with an ending where the Progenitors/Artifact sent Discovery back to its original time with the crew just having the vague recollection of having been somewhere and done something.
 
Soldato
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As someone who has generally enjoyed most of the show. That was a complete dog turd of a season ending. It was as if I was the only person in the world who wasn't completely turned off this series so they had to produce an episode that fulfilled all of damning condemnations published in this thread to ensure I could resist no more. There literally was nothing redeeming about that other than the the fact it ended just before I performed a violent act.
 

JRS

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A brief read around t'internet seems to suggest that even some of the most ardent fans of Discovery have opinions on the finale that range from moderate disappointment to outright derision. I'm not sure I've even seen a wholly positive take on it yet.

That could be the new legacy for the show I guess. Much like with Enterprise, everyone on both sides of the love/hate divide can agree that the finale was indeed kinda crap ;)

Peace in fandom at last!
 

Kyo

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What did we just watch? So much side eye with my wife, awful.

Same really poor imo. In the end I didnt care what was going on. I just wanted it to end. Whoever came up with the screenplays needs to go back to writing school. It was awful. Such a good show first few seasons descended to that trash. It was really when they jumped into the future that it started going really wrong. Eventually decended to that mess in the last few seasons. Absolutely spoiled it.
 
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Well look on the brightside...
No more Anthony Rapp with that irritating smirk nearly every time he speaks.
No more Mary Wiseman, who in any quasi military organisation would have been told to hit the Starfleet gym and lose 30lb and told in no uncertain terms "airhead/flake" is not officer material.

Until they turn up in another show... :)
 
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about the only good thing i can say about the final was at leased they did do the bloody obvious. had assumed
that saru was going to die pointless
that the Breen and starfleet had shown up and were on the verge of all out war over the tech
when Burnham comes out of the portal with a ressed L'ak who claims his place as the new breen emperor with a nice speech from Burnham as well
all sides leave with a new sense of love and peace
 
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This was the perfect ending to the show.. If it was good that might have made some people have unfounded feelings of joy for such a travesty of writing..
This terrible ending showcased the exact point everyone has been screaming about for 5 seasons.
I don't think the VFX or directing has been to bad but the script writers need to find new lines of work.
 
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Kyo

Kyo

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This was the perfect ending to the show.. If it was good that might have made some people have unfounded feelings of joy for such a travesty of writing..
This terrible ending showcased the exact point everyone has been screaming about for 5 seasons.
I don't think the VFX or directing has been to bad but the script writers need to find new lines of work.

How did it go so wrong though the first seasons with Phillipa (Michelle Yeah) was good. From the point where she left and they left for the future was it the same writers?!?
 

JRS

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How did it go so wrong though the first seasons

I mean...starting the whole shebang with an opening two-parter where the first episode and second episode were done by different writing and directing teams might have been an indication that things were gonna get a tad muddled, no?

I'm sorry to the folks that liked this show...actually, I'm not. I couldn't give one half of a solitary ****. It was trash from episode one.

It started out poorly, and got steadily worse culminating in a rockingly stupid season finale that probably ought to have killed the show there and then.

Then there was the retool for the second season. Which, let's be fair, produced the only truly good episode of the whole series...but even then only about half of it worked. The rest of the season kinda sucked and ended on the single most insultingly stupid note that the writers could have crapped out.

But, at least we'd time-skipped out of the way of any existing show for the third season. Now they could tell new and interesting stories! So they made...this. Hmm. Ooooookay, a kid living on a planet that has a lot of dilithium gets sad and makes all the dilithium everywhere stop working... except some of it...and stuff that doesn't require dilithium also stops working for some reason...and no-one uses other power sources for FTL travel that previous shows had given us...yeeeaaaahhhh, not sure that this is entirely making sense...

But, you know, maybe now was the time to shine. They'd figured it all out, here was the show they wanted to make at last, and the fourth season...was still hot trash.

*Spock eyebrow*

Which brings us to season five. A ten episode tangential reference to a single TNG story, with a good portion of the regular cast suddenly missing in-universe because [reasons], the remaining cast shuffled ever more into the background in favour of Mary Sue Burnham The Ever Right™, the writing not improving at all, the production quality taking a hit in places as the budget got pinched...then a pointless, highly problematic coda that had to end the series and tie in the "Calypso" short in ways that were never intended in the first place.

How did it go so wrong, you ask.

When did it ever go right????
 
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