Star Trek Discovery: The Bryan Fuller TV reboot

Khan's older stoner brother Chad.

CHAAAAAAAAAD

lol

I liked this quite a bit and I think it's about as good as a Star Trek show could be in 2017. It's not what I would consider ideal, but it's what works now. Hopefully, they can keep it up.

the internet informs me that giving strong female characters traditionally male names is a 'trademark' of fuller or one of the other three dozen executive producers

i don't really gi

i’ve met several women named michael, just kind of figured they decided in the future “michelle” is just how french people pronounce the name

and let’s not forget queen of all michaels, michael hyatt aka mama barksdale

http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/558867506da8111716adf0f6-840-688/screen%20shot%202015-06-22%20at%203.51.04%20pm.png

whoa, Michelle Yeoh

however i will probly never watch

who plays Sarek?

james frain

which is weird bc he’s the “bad guy” in like, everything. so seeing him play sarek is some cognitive dissonance like “ok well i ~guess~ he’s cool bc he’s sarek ...but it’s james frain so he might be plotting the downfall of the entire starfleet!”

we don’t have a lot of cool-mannered, calculating figures who look like that who normally play protagonists

serious sheldon cooper vibes from lieutenant saru (whose name is maybe a nod to joe meek's i hear a new world?)

ha, i was thinking the same thing about saru

this was fine, i guess? the floaty-camera dutch-angle shots were getting pretty tiresome by the end of the second episode but, having said that, i did enjoy how much more they made of the freedom of movement available in space than previous star trek shows - ships not always lining up in neat horizontal angles and the off-centredness of the accretion rings was cool

i also liked how the lighting helped the spaces inside the ship feel more like they were actually in space - instead of the flat, institutional lighting of tng or voyager the sets and characters were sometimes lit by sources outside the ship's windows, and it looked great

kind of a bummer that michelle yeoh isn't going to stick around but since she was listed as a guest star in the opening credits it was immediately obvious that she'd end up getting killed :(

i also liked how the lighting helped the spaces inside the ship feel more like they were actually in space

It's one of the weird/interesting things about Trek that it never feels like a space show in *actual* space - it's just set in spaceships. There's no dogfights, space walks, gravity losses, all those cliches - every time you see a Trek character in a space suit, it feels like the rules are being breached. Even the space battles feel like turn-based RPGs rather than action sequences. (I'm sure there are exceptions - "The Doomsday Machine" springs to mind.)

My partner was like "The whole point of spaceships is to *avoid* being in space - sailors don't keep jumping in the sea to get things done."

"kind of a bummer that michelle yeoh isn't going to stick around" well fuck, that was actually the main reason I was even going to bother watching it.

i think she'll be showing up in flashbacks in future episodes fwiw

she's ghost mom, sarek appearing via katra vision is ghost dad

Finally watched - that was pretty fun. I enjoyed it more than any single episode of Voyager or Enterprise I can recall.

The design worked, I think - all that primary colour neon is lovely. But the direction was pretty wretched - the floaty camera makes everything look like an RPG cutscene.

Michael is a bit wooden so far, but will hopefully be a bit more layered after next week's time jump.

The theme is growing on me but it doesn't build - just when it should be climaxing it segues into the old TOS fanfare.

#StarTrekDiscovey joins "Game of Thrones" as one of the most pirated TV shows in less than 24 hours: https://t.co/WLUg8O1J7d pic.twitter.com/nN57FF0ZQU

— IndieWire (@IndieWire) September 26, 2017

shocking news

This is smugly delivered and full of old staple TNG jokes... but the clips are very endearing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Zc8Co2H3w

The lead actress (RIP Michelle Yeoh ;_;) does bungle at least one of her lines, but most of her dialogue and delivery are pretty effective -- I was looking for pointy ears just based on her demeanor before we're told that she grew up on Vulcan.

I liked how the show is splitting the difference of society's worst traits between Starfleet and the Klingons, particularly the Klingon wariness about Starfleet's "We come in peace" rhetoric. Also, it's a corrective to Starfleet's stated mandate of scientific exploration masking its imperial impulses. I don't expect it to be carried out much further, though.

The SF half of the cold open was hokey, but I guess one of the most Trek things of this so far.

I did like how they departed from Vulcan pacifism to a Gonzo pragmatic realpolitik.

Also the reviews saying that the hologram communications were novel are forgetting that it was already introduced by DS9, and I'm pretty sure Voyager used something like it too. (I was bound to go into out-nerding mode!)

Michelle Yeoh's death was kind of offhand and (mostly) offscreen - I kind of felt like she wasn't definitely, definitively dead.

Or maybe it was just bad direction.

who knows, maybe she'll show up in future episode in a captain pike-style techno-wheelchair

Would watch a Star Trek iteration where the entire crew is consigned to Pikechairs.

I watched the first two episodes, was mostly disappointed. I guess I was optimistic in believing that a return to original Star Trek timeline would make this series more like the previous Trek TV shows and less like the Abrams movies. But the first two eps were exactly like the rebooted movies: more violence, more grim and gritty action scenes, a brooding and edgy anti-hero protagonist, who starts the story by neck-pinching her captain and attempting a mutiny.

OTOH, the utopian idealism and the cool sci-fi concepts that made the best of TV Trek so unique were nowhere to be found. Okay, pretty much none of the pilots for other Star Trek have been perfect, but at least all of them tried to explore some neat sci-fi ideas, even if they weren't always successful. Here, however, it's just Klingon and Federation ships shooting each other in space, protagonists arguing and shouting at each other, Klingons being stereotypically proud and violent and stupid.

The Klingons were really the worst part. I guess I can live with the inexplicable change in their physical features, but the story made them look more childish and stupid than ever before, even for race who's niche has always been that they're the Space Vikings.

To summarize, a random spaceship captain summons the leaders of the 24 ruling Houses. This captain, whom none of the other leaders seem to rate very highly, tells them that they should start a war against the Federation, pretty much for the sole reason that he doesn't like humans. The leaders don't seem to be particularly convinced, but then captain dude fires his weapons at Shenzhou and provokes a battle between the Klingon and Federation ships. And somehow this random and pointless act makes the other Klingon leaders suddenly think he was right, and at the end of the episode they're chanting his name like he's some kind of Messiah... Even though he still hasn't provided any better justification for war than his personal feelings towards the Federation.

So, basically, we're supposed to accept the leaders of the great Klingon Houses are like little kids, willing to wage a war against an powerful interplanetary coalition because another kid dares them to do that? It's just corny.

And of course there's the time-honoured tradition of Starfleet captains ignoring Starfleet regulations and personally going on dangerous off-ship missions instead of ordering someone else to do it. This time it was particularly stupid, though, cos captain Georgiou thought it would make sense for the two highest-ranking officers to board a Klingon ship and take no one else with them, not even the redshirts seen in the previous episode. I guess the writers at least wanted to point out how silly this is, cos their mission failed utterly, leading to Georgiou dying and the Klingon captain becoming a martyr, which is exactly what they wanted to avoid.

On the acting level, the protagonist seemed decent, but as much as I've liked Michelle Yeoh in HK movies, it feels she was miscast here. All that technobabble just didn't seem to suit her well, in some of the more jargony scenes it felt like she was reading directly from the script. Sarek's actor was okay, but it felt like he was being a bit too nudge-nudge, wink-wink, a bit too human compared to how Mark Lenard played him.

Also the reviews saying that the hologram communications were novel are forgetting that it was already introduced by DS9

Can't blame anyone for not remembering the DS9 comm holograms, cos they were introduced in one episode, then maybe used in one more, and after that promptly forgotten for the rest of the series.

Oh, yeah, I meant to add to the actor reviews that the guy playing the big alien did a fine job, he was pretty much the highlight of pilot. I could imagine him becoming the Data or the Phlox of this series. His spider-sense for death was total anti-scientific bullshit tho. And I was gonna say the same about Sareks' intergalactic telepathy, but I guess it was already established in that "Beauty and Beast in space" Enterprise episode that some telepaths can communicate over extremely long distances. Still, makes you wonder why no Vulcans have ever been shown using this ability before? I'm sure it would've been handy in the countless episoded where the away team is stranded on a planet and they're communicators won't work.

Same reason why we've never heard mention of Spock's adopted sister before now, it's a handy retcon.

they're very quiet about it when among outsiders

So, basically, we're supposed to accept the leaders of the great Klingon Houses are like little kids, willing to wage a war against an powerful interplanetary coalition because another kid dares them to do that?

And yet the possibility of something like that happening in the regards to some actual world leaders isn't that far off.

I don't think establishing that the Klingons, especially in the early Federation days, as a culture that prizes battle as social interaction and victory as a marker of social prestige is any thing new. Even in the relatively diplomatic Klingon era of DS9, you still have the idea going to battle together is how you cement a partnership, and the risk of dying in battle isn't a negative, it's a cost of doing business.

"this battle has a high risk of casualties" isn't a moment for klingon introspection. for them, they're thinking "fuck yeah, that is a worthy battle"

I thought the use of stealth mode not to, as many would, gain a tactical position on which to fire but using stealth as a weapon in itself and intimidation tactic was kind of new but still very Klingon

using stealth to sneak up behind your enemy -> weak

using stealth to get close enough you gloriously ram their ship -> for the empire!!!

Insane Clown Fosse (Leee) at 5:38 27 Sep 17

Same reason why we've never heard mention of Spock's adopted sister before now, it's a handy retcon.

Well yeah, but at least they've promised an in-story explanation for why the adopted sister has never been mentioned before... I kinda doubt they'll do the same with the long-range telepathy.

how many people in Trek have both had a connection to someone else's katra *and* been trained enough in Vulcan culture to be able to tune in?

Might have been some situation with Tuvok on Voyager but he was on the same ship as the people he'd had to mind-meld with for the most part, Kirk definitely was an unfocused mind, etc

mh at 5:54 27 Sep 17

"this battle has a high risk of casualties" isn't a moment for klingon introspection. for them, they're thinking "fuck yeah, that is a worthy battle"

Well yeah, but my point is that they were tricked into a battle by a guy who they don't respect much, and for a reason only that guy seems to care much about. So their sudden conversion, where at the end of the episode they're chanting the captain's name, and being all, "hell yeah, he was right!", felt unearned. That's like a stereotype of the Klingon bloodlust, but the problem is that the other Trek series have already made that stereotype more complex. For example, it's been shown several times that "proper" Klingons don't fight unless they feel the fight is honourable. How is being tricked into joining someone else's personal war honourable? If the captain dude had somehow made it look like the Federation started the conflict, then it would make more sense for the House leaders to demand revenge... But they were right there and then when he fired the first shot at Shenzhou, and he made his whole plan quite clear to them.

uniting the empire seems honorable!

it's a problem in search of an enemy

Michelle Yeoh's death was kind of offhand and (mostly) offscreen - I kind of felt like she wasn't definitely, definitively dead.

Or maybe it was just bad direction.

I felt like this was the worst part of the pilot, except for the scene right afterwards with the albino Klingon and T'Kuvma when they zoom all the way in on his face. Everything in that sequence is so telegraphed and pokey and dumb.

the federation is without honor, "we come in peace" isn't a way you make allies. you make allies with war, and come to a detente via respect (seen in how the vulcans apparently acted)

B-b-but Vulcans are a part of the Federation!

how many people in Trek have both had a connection to someone else's katra *and* been trained enough in Vulcan culture to be able to tune in?

T'Pol and Tucker definitely had a strong psychic bond, and there were many episodes where one or the other was stranded on some planet where the Enterprise couldn't find them with their sensors. This kind of remote telepathy would've been pretty handy then.

I can't be as negative as Tuomas as I thought it was pretty fun and unlike the Abrams movies. And even as a gold-plated Trekkie nerd, I can't bring myself to give a shit about the internal consistency between shows.

But, yes, it was kinda disappointing that it all ends with a space battle and a lame punch-up, and none the characters who believe in peaceful negotiation get a sympathetic ear.

Really the only good Star Trek fights are the TNG ones where someone gets clocked in their living quarters and falls over a table.

Enterprise wasn't real, that was Riker watching a tv show version of the past

I'm sticking with this

xpost
Nah, any original series punch up where Kirk gets his shirt ripped is CLASSIC in every sense.

Fair, I'll add anything that involves sweaty shirt ripping

T'Pol and Tucker definitely had a strong psychic bond

i believe they actually did have a remote telepathic scene in one episode. towards the end of the series there was a case of "why are you in my dream?" then t'pol explained something similar to the explanation in discovery

So last night was pretty bad all around -- dialogue, acting, characters, plot. (Was the tehcnobabble on the other series so poorly delivered as it was last night?) Overall, the worst thing about the episode was how ham-handedly it tries to say, "THIS AIN'T YOUR DAD'S STAR TREK," especially with the gore and the one-off profanity.

Lorca is like Zach Snyder's version of Kirk with his unscrupulous cowboy diplomacy x 10 (and wtf was he doing with a tribble?).

Black alert sounds cool, though -- I wonder how involved Discovery is with Section 31.

I do wish we got to see some of the AI characters a little more.

Discovery is the first time that the Aspie stand-in is an actual human Aspie. Don't know how successful that will be.

ep3 suuuuuuuuucked ;_;