New Star Trek series - 2017

[steve5424]

Apart from all the changes you mean? The saucer taper at the edges is different, the impulse engines are different, the connecting dorsal between the two hull sections is very different (to the point where at least two whole decks are missing as far as I can tell), the nacelle struts look like someone turned the ones from the movie era refit into novelty potato peelers with those slits in them, the nacelles themselves are different and the engineering hull is an entirely different shape with a huge 'landing strip' at the back for the shuttlebay. Quite why you'd need a landing strip in space is beyond me, but there I go again with bothersome things like stuff having to make sense...

The Enterprise:



The Discoprise:



I mean, the nacelles I could easily forgive...but where did the rest of the connecting dorsal between the saucer and the engineering hull go?!

It's actually still similar enough that anyone could recognise what the ship is.

It's not like they totally redesigned it from scratch .Still instantly recognisable as the Original Enterprise.

Could have been far worse .

 

[JRS]

Well, it's still saucer+lower hull+two nacelles. I'll grant you that. But it certainly isn't "mostly the same aside from the scale" like you said earlier, when it barely shares a single line with the original. And sure, it could have been worse - could have been the JJprise from the new movies, which is properly gopping.

But you know that joke about how the Porsche 911 designer is the laziest guy in history because he just uses tracing paper each time? Go ahead and look at an early 911 compared with a modern 991 variant. Notice how while you could still tell that they were made by the same company and share a sort-of lineage not one single line is shared between them? That's the sort of thing going on here. The problem is that this is like releasing the 991 ten years before the 911 and trying to pretend that no, we didn't go back in time and radically alter history

 

[aardvark]

i think you are taking this far too seriously

 

[JRS]

i think you are taking this far too seriously

What, asking for a franchise that until STD came along managed to show 228 years of history with pretty reasonable continuity to actually respect that continuity is "taking this far too seriously"?

Uh huh.

You know what irks me the most? If the show was actually good, if the plots made sense and the characters weren't one dimensional morons and the writing wasn't so clunky, then I'd be able to get past some of the continuity problems. Sure, we never knew about Bonehead being Spock's sister before now - but hey, they might get around to explaining that. Sure, the spore drive sure seems like it would have been useful to Voyager - but hey, there could be a really good explanation why a ship that managed to build new shuttlecraft every week and beat up on Borg cubes all by itself didn't build one. Sure, they changed how the ships look - but I can always squint really, really hard and pretend that I can't see it. Alcohol goes a long way in that regard.

But what's the point in rationalising this stuff when nothing makes sense? When the main character is a full blown Mary Sue who gets to redeem herself at the cost of making Starfleet and the Federation look like a bunch of genocidal maniacs? When people left, right and centre are getting killed in stupid ways? When the plot 'twists' are telegraphed so far in advance thanks to the hamfisted writing that nothing that is meant to be surprising is, in fact, ever a surprise? When great characters with some moral ambiguity get reduced after a few episodes to cartoonish moustach-twirling villains that wouldn't be out of place in a Roger Moore era Bond film?

I read a comment on a review site that stands quoting, because it shows how the first season (after the double-header pilot story) could have been plotted out in a way that makes much more sense:

Maybe in an alternate universe, the writers decided:

En route to penal colony, Michael gets rescued from a Klingon attack by Discovery. Saru becomes acting captain after the captain dies during the mission. Saru gets the exact same arc.

Michael gets stuck on DISCO because war. A bunch of people got killed rescuing her so now they need people in engineering, so she has something to do, and she feels double-guilty.

There is no Lorca, meaning we don't have to go to MU at all. We get to spend that time on getting to know the Klingons as real people/culture instead of props standing in circles in the pilot. (Don't get me wrong, Lorca was great but since he was thrown in the garbage why not just delete him altogether?) Through L'Rell's eyes we see the toll of war and feel them coming to the brink of internal collapse. Maybe the Orion Syndicate has been using the Federation/Klingon conflict as a way to take over Klingon Empire, so Clint Howard still gets his green cameo.

Stamets just deteriorates throughout the season, and the mycelial network weakens due to our misunderstanding and misuse of the it. (If this was supposed to be DISCO's environmental allegory, blaming it all on the evil MU was a serious cop out.) Now we can't make more spore ships and magically beat the Klingons with magic. (Though if you still want to make the MU sojourn for the purpose of showing Burnham a glimpse of !Voq then this could have been handled in a single-episode spore drive malfunction.)

Saru's Kelpian fear of predators and general distaste for mutiny predispose him to agree with Starfleet's plan to nuke Kronos, a plan that gets hatched immediately after the midseason break, because the cloak breaking schemes fail in the time-honored "Mr. Worf, fire" fashion. We spend the whole second half working on the bomb. We get to explore Saru's inner demons and see his struggle with fear vs. Starfleet ideals. Maybe we even have time to for EVERYONE on DISCO to weigh in (Lol, jk).

Michael and crew have to convince Saru there's another way. They hatch a plan with L'Rell, who has spent the season not in the brig, but on Kronos where she has witnessed firsthand that the current path is destroying her people too. It would have been actually interesting to see a fundamentalist revise her views over the course of the season based on her actual interactions with humans. Rather than magically changing because she's been in a cage for months.

All zero-sum Michael/Lorca stuff and Michael/!Georgiou stuff is now replaced with Michael/Saru stuff, which was genuinely interesting in the first few eps and had great potential before being reset. (Think of the friendship we got from Bashir/O'Brien S1 conflict.) It still gets to be a redemption arc for her finally at the end of the season earning Saru's trust and forgiveness. She still loses Tyler, but she has gained a friend or two--not unlike the end of Casablanca (though I realize Casablanca is not a TOS episode).

She waits til the end of the last episode to give the telescope to Saru, at which point it would have been genuinely touching and a visual symbol of the ship getting back to its mission of "discovery".

This route would have been more coherent, told the same story, and requires zero twists (though Tyler/Voq could remain unchanged).

Now, wouldn't that have been rather better than what we ended up with? It doesn't fix everything, but it certainly fixes a lot.

 

[hornetstinger]

Discovery sucks.

Orville is 10x the better star trek series.

Trekie here.

 

[steve5424]

The second half of Discovery Season 1 was really good and it showed that the creative team had changed and were trying to undo some of the silly changes that Fuller tried to inflict.

 

[JRS]

The second half of Discovery Season 1 was really good and it showed that the creative team had changed and were trying to undo some of the silly changes that Fuller tried to inflict.

Really?

I mean, I guess "Into The Forest I Go" was a reasonably strong (by Discovery standards) episode. But at least one plot point in that episode (Tyler is Voq) was still in the midst of the writers attempting (badly) to hide where they were going with it until the season finale in order to say 'surprise! Tyler is Voq! Aren't we clever, making you think he was Tyler when all along he was a Klingon!'...and I wouldn't mind (NARRATOR: he would, in fact, mind a great deal), but it was a rip-off of Boomer's story arc in the first season of the Battlestar Galactica remake anyway. Then four whole episodes dedicated to utter pointlessness (as far as the plot goes) in the Mirror Universe which served only to utterly ruin Lorca as an interesting character and get Michelle Yeoh back...as a much less interesting character than the one she played in the pilot story. Then another forgettable episode.

And then the insultingly bad season finale. Mary Sue Bonehead saves the day, and they hand the Big Bomb™ to L'Rell who doesn't then use it against the Federation because reasons. Or use it against her enemies in the Klingon Empire because, again, reasons. Out-*******-standing.

I mean, not one thing of substance or lasting consequence happened in that first season. Even TNG's oft-derided first season had more going on - the beginning of Q's trial of humanity, backstory for Data, backstory and character development for Worf, the death of Tasha Yar, the return of the Romulans to intergalactic politics. Like I said earlier in this thread, TPTB shut down fan productions like Axanar...and apparently it was to avoid this dumpster fire of a show having to compete with them.

The show has a good cast. Set design is great (JJTrek-style bridge notwithstanding). The visual effects are pretty damned good in parts, even better in others. But the writing is flat-out bad and the destabilising effect of chopping and changing showrunners permeates everything. Hopefully for season 2 they've spent some time working out not just where they want to get to but how they want to get there. Because otherwise it'll turn the show from salvageable to write-off.

 

[Calm]

Discovery sucks.

Orville is 10x the better star trek series.

Trekie here.

Orville seems to be benefiting from the fact that people aren't taking it as seriously (I appreciate your not supposed to). I preferred Orville to STD, but it wasn't prefect by any stretch.

The second half of Discovery Season 1 was really good and it showed that the creative team had changed and were trying to undo some of the silly changes that Fuller tried to inflict.

The best thing they done was sweeping the whole mess (somewhat hamfistedly) under the proverbial rug at the end of the season.

 

[james.miller]

i think you are taking this far too seriously

Oh what have you done .....

 

[JRS]

Orville seems to be benefiting from the fact that people aren't taking it as seriously (I appreciate your not supposed to). I preferred Orville to STD, but it wasn't prefect by any stretch.

The Orville had a big problem with the level of humour being expected from it - some fans wanted it to be Red Dwarf, the network wanted it to be Family Guy IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE!!!!! and the people making it wanted it to be Star Trek: The Next Generation with a few extra jokes. The initial trailer didn't get across the eventual tone of the series brilliantly well, it looked like it was going to be more overtly comedic. The first season had some quite serious, dramatic stuff going on at times.

The best thing they done was sweeping the whole mess (somewhat hamfistedly) under the proverbial rug at the end of the season.

Thing is, that's only going to matter if they've genuinely fixed the issues that the series has.

 

[steve5424]

By all accounts they are attempting to fix and change everything they can now.

There is a lot to change. Even to the point of making the other bridge crew less one dimensional and having them play a bigger role.

Ie when Discovery was first announced it was to be centered on Burnham, the first officer and would be less of an ensemble cast, like every other Trek show before it. Well that idea didn't really work well so its also noticeable they tried to include the other crew members, but when they have no back story or any kind of proper characterization its very hard to achieve .

 

[hornetstinger]

Hopefully all the STD crew will be fed to the sarlacc.

Well everyone but Tilly

 

[Malevolence]

Hopefully all the STD crew will be fed to the sarlacc.

Well everyone but Detmer

FTFY

 

[JediFragger]

Hopefully all the STD crew will be fed to the sarlacc.

 

[JRS]

STD's showrunner now admitting that continuity is too hard, so bugger it. He does seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that the books could all be considered canon though, which last I checked was not the case. The things that are canon for definite in the prime timeline are the live action series and the first ten films. Potentially canon depending on how you feel about things (CBS think so, Gene Roddenberry wasn't overly keen) is the Filmation animated series, along with two Voyager novels written by Jeri Taylor who was an exec producer on the show for the first five seasons ('Mosaic' and 'Pathways'). Elements of 'Mosaic' were sort-of previewed in the series by Taylor before the novel was published.

In short - no Kurtzman, Star Trek as a franchise was doing a pretty reasonable job of making 228 years of on-screen history hang together until STD showed up. Do better.

 

[james.miller]

Look who's gone and grown her hair back: (L'rell)

 

[Trig]

Sure there's a because she's worth it joke in there somewhere...

 

[Uncle Petey]

I was gonna say something about Klingon pasty, but...

 

[Marsman]

Just read the explanation given as to why the Klingons had no hair in the first series and why it appears to have returned (judging by the above picture of L'Rell).

I don't know if this has already been mentioned, but in case not: Basically, inspiration was taken from an episode of TNG, where a clone of Kahless cuts off his hair and dips it into a volcano and creates the first bat'leth. The lead designer on Discovery decided to make it so Klingons shave their heads when they go to war, and let it grow back in times of peace.

Sure there's a because she's worth it joke in there somewhere...

 

[JRS]

Just read the explanation given as to why the Klingons had no hair in the first series and why it appears to have returned (judging by the above picture of L'Rell).

An explanation that makes minimal sense.

Klingons as depicted in the franchise are very keen on history and tradition. But we're now expected to believe that this ritual of shaving all the hair off their heads during wartime will disappear sometime before ~120 years later when the Dominion War happens in DS9? When all those other rituals that Klingons are obsessed with live on just fine?

I'd have a little more respect for these prats if they just came out and admitted that they were changing stuff for the sake of 'cool' and to hell with continuity. At least that'd be honest.