Plus Discovery has lens flare. Although not as bad as the new movies where it’s completely out of hand.
I think the issue with the Klingons is that the heavy prosthetics they’re using make expressive speech difficult.
Yes and also their makeup may also make it difficult to have meaningful facial expressions. It leads to this weird mix where the acting in the Starfleet scenes is top notch and the acting in the Klingon scenes is almost non-existent.
Yeah, I said the same thing earlier. It’s a dumb decision to lock into something that limits expressiveness and is likely time-consuming and otherwise impractical, for no real benefit at all. Nobody would have been unhappy with the simpler makeup of Worf, etc.
I’m guessing the Captain is a red shirt…
With all the shit on network TV it sucks that I have to pay to watch this on my computer.
Have not decided if I’m going there…
Same problem. But if I do decide, I will go boldly!
I’ve heard a million times (and maybe it’s bullshit, but maybe not) that one of the golden rules Roddenberry or other showrunners had in the original 60s series wad that alien make up should never hide the expressiveness of the actors. So they went light on the prosthetics.
I’m not happy about subscribing to a service as crappy as CBS All Access.
But if you’d come to me a few years ago and said “We’re going to do a new big-budget Star Trek series and you can watch it for $3 an episode,” I’d have jumped at the chance. So I’m just looking at the CBS AA fees that way. (I’ll cancel between the last ep in November and the second part starting in January.)
I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t feel like Star Trek and it definitely doesn’t feel like “Discovery”. The only thing they discovered is that they should fight the bad guys.
I’m not too impressed by the main character. She’s got the typical problem of strong female characters in American shows where the writers don’t know how to actually make her strong, so they just make her impulsive and not listen to other people. When she’s right there next to Michelle Yeoh it just reminds me of all the actually strong female characters I’ve seen her play.
So it’s not bad, but with so many other choices it’s hard to justify watching. There’s a new k-drama called Borg Mom about a robotic mother that probably has as much to do with Trek as this does.
You have to be the bees’ knees to claw your way to success even after being exiled from your homeland and having the hardest to remember name of anyone on the entire planet.
Wait, are you talking about Kirk? (Nu-Kirk or old-Kirk, doesn’t matter.)
I don’t see it as that. She didn’t do what she did on a whim. She was absolutely convinced that the “Vulcan hello” was the right way to go, based on sound information. The way the two episodes went, they left very much open the possibility that it was the right way to go.
For me, it feels like trek in that so far there’s much bridge drama and argument about the correct way to act, with cultural misunderstandings getting in the way.
It was a little too action heavy (pre-war Klingons!), but this was a pilot episode. I can see the groundwork for a very Trekish series here. But we won’t know until the series starts up proper.
I am very optimistic, though. It feels they know what they are doing (aside from some rushing in the tense action scenes, but this is not a movie and I like they made space for bridge stuff).
Yeah, I’ve purchased quite a few TV shows on iTunes for $3/episodes. Including some which I didn’t really intend to watch more than once, it’s just as a cord cutter, purchasing on iTunes is often the only way to watch a show that’s currently on. So arguably CBS AA is cheaper.
Of course, getting them through iTunes means I own them (sort of, I assume there’s legal mumbo jumbo about how I actually only have a license). And for Star Trek shows, I definitely do watch them again.
Price wise $5.99 or $9.99 for 4 episodes of quality TV just doesn’t sound like that much. Compare that to the price of going to a movie or even renting an 1.5 to 2 hour movie. I’ve got HBO for $15/month largely for Game of Thrones and WestWorld. Their movie selection just isn’t that great so the subscription really is for their internally produced TV shows. But they do put out some real quality TV now and in the past (thinking of Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Rome).
So if it really is quality TV, I think the price is actually pretty reasonable. We’ll just have to see what the long term quality is. So far after the first two episodes I’m hopeful.
I guess I’m one of the few who don’t mind the Klingons. I want a species that don’t act like humans and you can’t read their expressions. I want strange and unknown not a human in fancy makeup.
I thought it was all but a forgone conclusion that it was the correct course of action, if you wanted to avoid an extended war with the Klingons. If they had fired when Michael wanted the other 23 houses would have warped into a broken/dead minor house that picked a fight with an enemy. Without a unifying force they would have laughed at him and warped out. I suppose it’s possible one out of the 23 houses might have recognized the opportunity to unite them all and go for revenge, but I take it T’Kuvma’s house was pretty much a foundered one trying to claw it’s way back and not of much notice, being stocked with outcasts. So I doubt they would have cared about revenge.
On the other hand, it’s a pretty unthinkable way for the Federation to act so no surprise it was never seriously considered.
Okay, you have a point there. But Kirk acted like that after it was already established that he was a strong leader. On this show they needed to build her up first before she goes all Jack Bauer and starts taking the law into her own hands.
I’m on my second viewing. I’m sure I will enjoy the series.
The tech is oddly advanced but i guess I shouldnt compare it to 60s special fx. It would have been nice to have something post Voyager rather than follow Enterprise because half the fun of ST in the latter series was high tech so advanced it was approaching magic.
Yeah, the holodeck in TNG is such a civilization changing technology its absurd. Its really the only unbelievable thing in Star Trek besides the transporter (and I guess FTL travel).
In Voyager they even have a holodeck crew member, and its not like he’s a janitor or anything. He’s one of the most important staff officers on the ship, the chief medical officer. He literally has the crew’s life in his hands. I would argue he’s more advanced than Data, the most advanced being on Federation payroll. When I saw that character one of my first thoughts was “what if a while crew were made up of holodeck people?”. They actually investigate this a bit by having that same actor play other programs like a diagnostic tech. The logical conclusion is a ship that has a holodeck only crew. That would be insanely interesting, especially if they evolved while they traveled. You could literally send them on a 10,000 year voyage or until the ship deteriorated into dust.
Why would you have that rather than just an autonomous ship? At most, the ship would need some mobile drones or such for internal repairs (similar to how our own immune system works). It sort of reminds me of the idea of giant robot mecha. Cool as a form of entertainment, but not really the most efficient form factor.
Voyager got nutty with the Doctor when they came up with the “mobile emitter”, which basically just made him another crew member.
Exactly. You need humanoid looking representatives to go have diplomatic dinners and help the natives and whatever else away teams do. Drones are sweet but they don’t replace that. Obviously the ship probably wouldn’t bother generating the crew while in deep space but might “spawn” them like in a video game for an away mission. Of course you could still have different models/projections for the different Federation races so its not all human, etc.