Star Trek Discovery (2017)

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203

I mean, most Trek shows/flicks throughout time have been very diverse in a number of ways, from a black woman on the bridge to a gay main character. And I do understand that sort of thing was a core part of Roddenberry’s vision, and I think it was a super admirable component of the whole that really enriched the universe.

On the flipside, it’s 2016, and Trek has always had a strong diversity element. I think hammering it home and crowing about it isn’t necessarily terribly productive. You’ll bring out the GG trolls just like Ghostbusters did (even if these guys have way less ground to stand on in terms of this sort of thing being a “shift” away from how Trek was “supposed to be,” but when has being illogical ever stopped them?), and also perhaps cheapen it just a bit. Given CBS’s recent trouble in the area, it feels a little bit like PR for the sake of PR instead of genuine.

Now, I have no doubt that Fuller’s genuinely into this angle and comes to it from a good place. The optics of how it’s been announced sort of waver a little more, though.

I dunno. This is probably one of my intellectual blindspots to some extent. Making a huge deal of it in 2016 seems weird because it shouldn’t be a big deal anymore like it was in 1960whatever. But then I look at P&R and have to begrudgingly acknowledge that maybe it still is a big deal and they need to over-emphasize stuff like this until it stops being one. . .

204

The information shared about diversity was done so during a Q&A session with critics and reporters. And while I don’t have a transcript in front of me, it’s pretty clear he was being asked about this stuff. So while CBS & Fuller might be beating their chest about how they plan to cast the show, they weren’t just spouting all this stuff in a vacuum. Certain bullet points are clearly information given in response to questions, but the article doesn’t break all the questions down individually for readers.

205

Diversity probably doesn’t matter as much to those of us represented by the majority of TV and movie characters. As a white guy, I’ve never once had to wonder why I don’t see actors like myself in major roles. But I’m 100% on board with shows actively mixing up the cast to make it more diverse. I’d love to have our two little girls grow up with that same experience, though there’s still a huge gap to cross before that happens.

206

So I guess this just got delayed 4 months.

207

While I’m disappointed, I saw the delay coming a mile away. They didn’t even start production until recently, marketing has been exceedingly sparse and crude, and certain design aspects are so far behind (such as a finalized design of the ship) that I couldn’t imagine a quality product being delivered in 4 months.

I don’t mind a delay if they can deliver a quality series. I NEED this show to thrive and succeed. I just want it to be more than a cheaply-made red-headed step-child of a niche show that disappers after a year or two of going ignored by studio heads and mass audiences alike. But maybe those expectations are already too high.

208

I wonder to what degree, if any, the bust of the ST movie had in their decision making.

In addition to the potential problems that Armando mentioned, I wonder if the execs blinked on launching the network with a franchise that suddenly wasn’t looking as huge as they hoped.

209

This summer was weird for movies, a ton of movies under performed this summer. Many were (like Star Trek ) well reviewed but just didnt get the box office, they expected. I doubt that the box for the Star Trek movie had much if anything to do with the delays. Im more inclined to believe that it just a time frame thing, as the earlier release date seemed a bit quick.

210

Given the amount of time it takes to create an effects-driven show like Trek, I was shocked they still hadn’t finished casting and started shooting. So I’m not surprised at all at the delay. Disappointed, but I’d rather have it be as good as it can be.

Ideally it would be so awesome it would reinvigorate the franchise. But even if it is, putting it on the CBS streaming network in the US means it won’t do that even if it’s the best Trek ever. :(

211

You guys sure have an awful lot of faith :/ This is already looking awful, and the obvious rushing that’s going on just seems to confirm our suspicions all the more. I wish I was wrong, but come on :(

212

I see nothing to make me think it’s going to be awful besides the first ship image which was admitted to be early. Other than that only a few basics have been talked about like timeframes so no idea how you can form such a complete opinion already. It’s been delayed several months so they aren’t rushing it, but the opposite.

Need to chill.

213

and

versus

I mean come on, is there even any competition here? Like, the 80’s special effects even now feel less cheesy to me than what they show in that new trailer. It’s coming out on some weird streaming service no one uses? For that fact alone, will anyone take this seriously? (Edit: Apparently it’s coming out on Netflix as well? Err ok, I guess that’s a little better. Still feels weird not being on TV but I guess there are other good/successful shows that are only on Netflix…) It feels like they’re gonna crap out a season or two and then it’ll get cut to save money on some quarterly report in 2019.

Look, I really hope I’m wrong. But nothing I’ve seen about this new series in any way feels like the same level of production quality and writing quality of everything else that has come after the original series and wasn’t made by JJ Abrams. Yeah, there’s some awful episodes here and there and especially the first seasons of some of the series can be rough. But they’re not playing off the other shows at all, are they?

Please prove me wrong! There’s just this giant universe they created in all the TNG and beyond shows that still has so many stories to tell. This purports to be part of that universe, no? So far the new show just feels like some sort of post JJ Abrams thing that’s all by itself.

214

Sure, it looks cool. But it doesn’t feel like Star Trek to me. Honestly it almost looks like some photo realism / anime / cartoony hybrid thing from some angles. The ships from the other shows looked WAY more real. Is this just because it’s early maybe? But it’s like, this is debuting in 8 months and they haven’t locked down the look yet? ARGH.

This is the remastered version from what, a decade ago? LOOKS WAY BETTER!

Maybe it’s just that Star Trek is something I grew up with and so nothing new will ever live up to that. But the JJ Abrams stuff was cool. But then again, I sort of look at that as its own thing that exists separately from the universe the shows were in so they don’t really count. This is trying to be in that same universe again. And it better not retroactively screw up my childhood damn it! :P

215

I’m as big a Trekkie as they come, at least on the sane side of fandom that doesn’t wear a Starfleet uniform to work because I believe in the Federation’s ideals. But come on, there are more bad episodes of post-original-series Star Trek than there are good ones:

  1. Most of TNG Seasons 1 and 2 and then a reasonable chunk of the remaining seasons, stuff like Night Terrors, Sub Rosa (Dr. Crusher has psychic sex with her dead Grandmother’s boyfriend!), Genesis (Barclay devolves into a Spider! Worf into a Klingon lobster! That’s some great SF!), etc.
  2. DS9: First 1.5 seasons.
  3. Voyager. Virtually every episode except for Year of Hell and maybe Endgame sucked. Kazon? Kes? The awesome Doctor, amusing Neelix, and Seven of Nine don’t make up for horribad writing.
  4. Enterprise: All the Temporal Cold War crap in Seasons 1-3. Four got pretty darn good at the end, and Season Five would have been awesome.
  5. Also, what do you mean “everything that has come after the original series.” Are you dissing the writing on TOS? Because we can take this OUTSIDE, motherf#$@er! :)

I’m not ignoring the great Trek… Best of Both World Part I, Brothers, The Inner Light, Chain of Command, the Dominion War episodes of DS9, In a Mirror Darkly, etc. But if you count the “Seriously? That’s your script?” episodes of all four series against the great ones, I think you’ll find the really good ones are in the minority.

Whereas what do we know about Discovery so far?

  1. The ship, NCC-1031, is based on a design that’s fanservice to the most hardcore of Trek fans. Whether or not you like it, I love that the people making it know enough about Trek to have dug out the McQuarrie design as inspiration.
  2. The lead, a female first officer called Number One. Wait, they’re doing something new and it’s not centered on the Captain? That actually sounds promising.
  3. The setting. By setting it before TOS, that’s 24 seasons of continuity they don’t have to deal with, making this more accessible to a new audience and not pissing off the hardcore crowd who are going to be annoyed that K’mpec was chancellor on Stardate 4402.3, not Gowron. I’m glad they’re not trying to follow all of that. (Also, very little happened post-TNG, because Spock went and destroyed that universe. Spoilers.)

That’s it. So it’s way too early to judge the show.

As for “rushing it,” they just gave it another five months.

I agree them putting it on CBS All Access sucks. Or does it? It has less pressure to perform due to it being part of a newly launched network than if it was on network TV. (Look what CBS did with Supergirl.) And they can get edgier in content than on broadcast. While I think CBS All Access is a flawed concept (my dad is one of the few people in CBS’s core age group of watchers technically savvy enough to get access to the network), getting its start while the fledgling network is in startup mode and doesn’t have the pressure to turn a profit is probably a good thing.

The video of the ship isn’t production quality, it was a promo piece put together for ComicCon. Probably a mistake given how much time hardcore Trek fans have spent picking apart minutiae of something put together quickly as a teaser.

Reading these complaints feels a lot like reading the threads here where people complain up and down about a game that’s not out yet based on a few early facts, even though they’ve never seen or played the actual game. :)

217

I grabbed my bat’leth off the wall with the intention of eviscerating you, as such a post indicates that you have no honor.

But… I’ll grant you make a compelling argument. But only in retrospect.

[quote=“Editer, post:215, topic:77660”]
I’m as big a Trekkie as they come, at least on the sane side of fandom that doesn’t wear a Starfleet uniform to work because I believe in the Federation’s ideals. But come on, there are more bad episodes of post-original-series Star Trek than there are good ones:

  1. Most of TNG Seasons 1 and 2 and then a reasonable chunk of the remaining seasons, stuff like Night Terrors, Sub Rosa (Dr. Crusher has psychic sex with her dead Grandmother’s boyfriend!), Genesis (Barclay devolves into a Spider! Worf into a Klingon lobster! That’s some great SF!), etc.[/quote]
    OK, that’s true. But ONLY if you don’t weight the episodes, and ONLY if you compare the writing and production values to more modern shows that very obviously learned from TNG’s missteps.

Best of Both Worlds Pt 1 was probably the best season-ending cliffhanger ever to air up to that point, with the possible exception of “Who Shot JR?” The greatness of episodes like that (and the others you cite) more than cancels out drek like Genesis… which was absolutely awful, granted.

But for the most part, even middling-quality TNG was still great TV for the late 80s. They were severely hamstrung by their primetime network slot and the mores of the time. Sure, it wasn’t as nuanced as BSG or as intricate as X-Files or as well-written as The Wire. But it was a far-sight better than the A-Team or Knotts Landing or Beauty and the Beast, and had some episodes that compared in quality to the best of Hill Street Blues or China Beach.

I guess I’m shuffling goal posts a bit, but I still think that’s a point that must be made.

Nah. DS9 struggled to find its voice for the first season or so, but most of the episodes were merely “middling Trek” not bad on the level of Voyager. Moreover, there was some really good stuff in the first season of DS9 (e.g., Duet), which, sadly, you really can’t say about any other Trek series except TOS.

For the rest of its run, the obligatory and terribad Ferengi episodes were more than eclipsed by stuff like In the Pale Moonlight.

I can’t argue this one. Voyager was painfully bad 80% of the time, and mostly middling for the remainder. The fact that it limped on for the full seven seasons certainly helps your thesis.

First season was damned bad, but not for the Temporal Cold War… it was bad for making us sit through interminable scenes of people rubbing “decontamination gel” over the nubile flesh of busty Vulkans. Hmm, maybe that part was pretty good in a way. But it was still bad. Good-bad.

The rest of Enterprise’s first few seasons was simply uninspired. There wasn’t much in there that was Genesis or Threshold-level terrible, but not all that many really great episodes either.

So yes. I will hang my bat’leth back up because you are technically correct. If you take something like Pale Moonlight and believe that it is utterly canceled out by Profit & Lace, or that Chain Of Command is a wash when you bring up Night Terrors.

218

It’s always a good time to read an argument (ok, discussion if you prefer) between folk that care about something. I don’t know if I’m interested enough in this to pay for an additional streaming service but I’ll be following this thread to hear how it goes.

220

Isn’t it? Even after watching that excellent series again, that is still one of my favorite episodes.

And the first time through the series (as it aired on TV) I never cared for the Bajoran religious stuff, but the episode after Duets is the season finale, I believe, and it’s the one where O’Brien’s wife is teaching kids in her class room about the beings in the wormhole. And Kai Winn (wasn’t that her name? I don’t remember how it’s spelled) objects to Bajoran kids not learning about their gods. It’s funny how that episode really captured me on my second viewing of the series, when it came out on DVD. George W. Bush was president on that second viewing, and religion vs science in the class room was a big topic again, and that episode really got to me.

And it’s funny, but not necessarily from the science side either. I mean, Kai Winn is an opportunistic politician, but her objection is actually one that I could see. After all, these timeless wormhole beings that have helped Bajor time and time again, who have no perception of time, even in the Star Trek universe they are not advanced enough to explain them through science. And they are beings that have helped many Bajoran people through the generations in their history. So who is to say that they shouldn’t be treated as gods? Of course, whether that’s appropriate in the science classroom is a different story. But what that episode did is give me a soft spot for Bajoran religion, and I enjoyed all the different Bajoran episodes throughout the series after that episode.

221

I thought this was hyperbole till I watched the U.S.S. Discovery clip. That was like 3DS Max amateur hour.

I will still give it a try, if only because I thought DS9 was going to bomb hard and it turned out to be the best Trek easily.

223

I think Season 1.5+ DS9 is probably the most consistently good Trek overall, and the Dominion War stuff is really good, so you’re in for some fun times.

224

I’m currently watching DS9 for the first time since it aired and am partway through season six (originally I never saw anything past season 2 during its original run). Jesus I am so fucking annoyed by a particular resolution near the end of Sacrifice of Angels to a significant on-going story arc/problem.

As for Keiko’s attitude when fending off Kai Ratched in regards to the school’s teachings, Keiko was 100% right.

225

Bad news for Fuller fans.