Star Trek Discovery (2017)

I loved the season overall but felt the ceremony at the end was wince-inducing.

There wasn’t a heavy emphasis on consistency and limitations on science that appears more prevalent in Next Generation; here Science! is like a Fallout skill that solves everything.

Also, anyone complaining about how Discovery can take a beating but one-hit anything should understand that Federation Plot Torpedoes pass through shields, armor and will instantly critical hit subsystems.

I think you remember TNG very differently than I do. I don’t think the use of “science” is all that different in Discovery than in other Treks.

Weird to me too was that half the brdige crew standing up there we hardly even knew the names of, and when they were calling them out they just skipped over them.

Kind of an interesting article - the decision to put Discovery on CBS Access drove their decision to make Discovery’s season more serial in nature. Or was it the other way around? I’m confused.

I’ve only just gotten around to watching Discovery, only starting Episode 1 after the last episode had aired. For some reason I wasn’t bothered about Discovery, even though I watched all the previous Treks (except for the latter half of Enterprise and the two latest Reboot movies). I heard no real news about it, so when I saw it in the Netflix menu I just skipped over it because I assumed it would be either rubbish, like Voyager, or some other kind of reboot nonsense, and I’m not a fan of reboot nonsense in any TV/movie.

But then a friend, who is a big Trek fan, kept going on about how it’s the best Trek ever, so I decided to give it a spin…

…great success! Mostly.

They only did a half-season, yet even with only 13 episodes, they still managed to get a few stinkers in there. e.g. that one on the planet with the weird coloured trees and the giant space radio.

Watching a Star Trek that wasn’t presented in a monster-of-the-week format made me want to go back and watch DS9, as I never managed to watch it all in episode order after season 4 or so. I guess I got confused by switching between the BBC (old) and Sky1 (new) airings or something and gave up watching it? Anyway, when researching a DS9 viewing guide (i.e. which episodes of the first few season to skip) I came across something I considered remarkable: aside from a few breaks e.g. over Christmas, or between seasons, there was practically a new episode of Star Trek shown every single week, from TNG s1e1 until the Enterprise finale! And there were also double episodes, and the fact that they were twice a week, e.g. when DS9 overlapped with TNG and then later Voyager.

I never really thought about it before, even though I was actively watching Trek at the time, but those shows were being continually produced, much like a TV soap. The breaks between seasons are often only 3 months long. I’m surprised they managed to keep the quality as high as it was, and I guess that’s why most people forgave all of crap episodes – because a new, possibly good, one would be along next week? They even managed to fit the movies in around all of this.

So I feel it’s much harder to forgive ST:Discovery for its crappier episodes and plot points. Not only are there fewer episodes overall, but they’re not having to churn them out on a near weekly basis. Why did we have to sit through the entirety of episode 8? Or watch an experienced Starfleet captain and first officer beam aboard a fully staffed Klingon vessel on a pointless raid? Or watch as Klingons somehow found the threat of blowing up qo’nos was in anyway honorable and something to rally behind?! etc etc etc.

(Then again even GOT, which has reduced seasons, manages to make some terrible episodes, and that has actual books already planned out for it to crib from)

But, even with some clunkers and terrible plot points in season 1, I’m looking forward to season 2. I want to see the new captain, see how they handle the Enterprise (I hope they retcon it and give it all TMP style LCARS or Discovery style touch screens), see what happens with the spore drive, see how the Klingons react to Discovery’s discovery of the Klingon’s cloaking vulnerabilities etc.


Anyway, after the first few eipsodes I began to read this thread, but wouldn’t advance beyond the airdates to ensure NO SPOILERS. Watching you guys discuss and play catch up on events I’d just seen, e.g. Lorca, was almost as entertaining as watching the show :) (And why am I not surprised it was @Steel_Wind of all people, who guesses it outright from the slightest bits of evidence? Though that’s not the earliest prediction I’ve seen, as I caught up on a few reddit threads about it posted from before then.)

So here are some relies to earlier stuff:

I think this went unanswered, but a) The number was chosen due to personal reasons and b) section 31 were around even in Enterprise.

All of the actors were credited in episode 1, e.g. Jason Issacs was! :P

The voice thing definitely gave it away once he started talking. At first I thought they might have done some voice over thing with a generic Klingon voice actor, but the more he did it…

edit: interesting article from olde times

I’ve always been of the opinion that Worf’s “we don’t speak of it” was a terrible way to handle it, and because of it we have this entire Enterprise “augment” mess.

What I feel they should have done, and note I thought this at the time, was either one of two options:

  1. Have Worf appear in that episode in old-skool makeup, but no-one bats an eyelid or even notices. This is what I thought would happen when I was watching it, and was slightly dissapointed when it didn’t.
  2. Have Worf be in his usual makeup, but no-one bats an eyelid about the difference in makeup between Worf and the TOS Klingons, because from their point of view they “look the same”. It’s only us, the viewers, who see the difference.

Had they not had Worf make his rubbish joke, Enterprise would not have felt the need to try and stuff everything up with their terrible augments story line. Though Enterprise really should have known better, as characters from TOS had already be seen in better makeup later, e.g. Kor, that Worf joke gave them everything they needed to make a new episode when they ran out of ideas. (I imagine the alternative was to spend that episode initiating First Contact with a species we already First Contacted in other Treks?).

(ps: What happened with KOR? He was augmented, then augmented back? Pah. When googling, to try and remember Kor’s name, it seems that Koq wasn’t the first Klingon in Trek canon to be a Klingon stuffed into a human body, e.g. Darvin. I don’t remember Darvin at all! And that’s in the tribbles episode! Interestingly, that site is of the same opinion that DS9 really dropped the ball on this makeup thing!)

Still, this “bumpy headed” thing is a great example of how the continuity of Trek canon has always been on utterly shaky ground. Why did people start complaining about Discovery, now, when every other show was just as bad? :)

Sounds the same as every other Trek? :P

I understood it that Burnham gave her speech before/after the medals, and the magic of TV editing intertwined them. But in general I wasn’t a fan of the medal scene. Especially as they never even said the other characters names. I genuinely have no idea what they are, other than my own names of robot-head, baldy-robot-eye, etc. I could look them up, but it’s not as if the show is attempting to present an ensemble cast to me. It’s all about the Burnham here.

That’s a full season for a serialised show on a subscription service. Hell, it would be two full seasons for a British show.

The latter part of Enterprise is the good part of Enterprise. The stuff after the stupid temporal cold war is as good as any of the other Trek shows, if not better.

I still firmly believe that a large number of posters in this thread have on serious rose-colored glasses when it comes to earlier Treks. I love Star Trek, but all of the series have some seriously, seriously, bad episodes. Certainly more than 2-3 a season. It’s only looking back, after several seasons, for any given show, that the mind focuses just on the best episodes. The good to bad ratio in Discovery is as good, or better, than any other Trek.

I think that the highs of previous Treks (e.g., TNG) are substantially higher than the highs of Discovery, but that’s not unexpected in a more episodic format versus a serialized one. The episodic format lets single episodes stand more on their own and also lets those episodes explore more unique ideas. The serialized format stands or falls, as an arc.

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More trouble in Discovery town:

But don’t worry, Discovery: Alex Kurtzman is always here for you. The The Mummy director—who co-created the latest Star Trek series, after serving as a writer on 2009’s Trek reboot and its sequel, Into Darkness—will now be stepping in to serve as the show’s new showrunner. (He was already an executive producer.)

Well fuck.

Well, we still have fake Trek (The Orville), right?

More here:

Sources say the decision to oust Berg and Harberts was based not on the creative but instead for leadership and operational issues. Production on Discovery’s first five episodes of season two are near completion, with Kurtzman likely taking over for episode six and beyond. Berg and Harberts, who were longtime collaborators with original showrunner Fuller, will likely still be credited on the episodes they oversaw. Sources say the budget for the season two premiere ballooned, with the overages expected to come out of subsequent episodes from Discovery’s sophomore run. Insiders also stress that Berg and Harberts became increasingly abusive to the Discovery writing staff, with Harberts said to have leaned across the writers room table while shouting an expletive at a member of the show’s staff. Multiple writers are said to have been uncomfortable working on the series and had threatened to file a complaint with human resources or quit the series altogether before informing Kurtzman of the issues surrounding Berg and Harberts. After hearing rumors of HR complaints, Harberts is said to have threatened the staff to keep concerns with the production an internal matter.

Sources tell THR that Discovery is nearing what has been characterized as a planned production hiatus after episode five, which will allow Kurtzman time to regroup the show’s writing staff. Production is not expected to be impacted by the showrunner change.

In another departure for season two of Star Trek, THR has learned that executive producer Akiva Goldsman did not return to Discovery after serving as Kurtzman’s right-hand man during its freshman run. Goldsman was brought in to help build the world of Discovery, but the veteran producer, who directed the season one finale, is said to have had a management style and personality that clashed with the writing staff. It’s unclear if Goldsman will continue to receive an exec producer credit on season two.

Definitely sounds like a troubled production. Guess it reflects my rather mixed impressions from the finished product itself.

Thank the maker yes.

Alex Kurtzman developing several new Star Trek TV shows

WELL FUCK.

I haven’t seen the first season yet, I’ll get to it this summer.

Season 2 :

Can someone explain why Pike has a different uniform?

I may have missed it—-did they ever explain why her name is Michael?

In story, I don’t think they ever mentioned it, although I like that the lack of a big deal over it adds some gender fluidity and open-mindedness to the show.

Out of story, it was a Michael Fuller thing; he likes to give masculine names to his female protagonists.

But that doesn’t happen if it is just one character. They haven’t established that it is common in this setting. Rather, it’s just Burnham.

Hey, I just cleaned off my rose-tinted glasses! No need to smear them up again, lol

(good point)