Star Trek Discovery: The Bryan Fuller TV reboot

fwiw it doesn't really bother me vis-a-vis the consistency of the universe the federation has been shown to have questionable ethics and some kind of "not our business" PD could make plenty of intuitive sense even tho i feel like maybe this is generally a darker federation than in other series? but i'm not really an expert.

they keep referring to it as 'general order one', which i guess may not precisely be the PD?

I think that's what TOS calls it (TNG calls it the PD).

Yup

General Order 1: "No starship may interfere with the normal development of any alien life or society." (TAS: "The Magicks of Megas-Tu") General Order 1 was also better known as the Prime Directive. (TNG: "The Drumhead") It superseded all other laws and directives, with the exception of the Omega Directive. (VOY: "The Omega Directive")

enough with the corny-ass burnham voiceovers

Enjoyed this week's. Seemed to have some grit in my eyes at times too. Lol at all the fanboys whinging at the science fantasy aspect of it, as if Trek has always been some paragon of hard sci-fi.

But yeah, the voiceover at the end was a bit much. Had to check it wasn't the mid-season finale as it had that kind of vibe about it.

did the show hire voyager's science advisor? because it felt like a writer wrote down "(TECH) will save him!" and an advisor replaced it with "DNA".

feels like they are trying to explain things from TOS that didn't need to be explained. like how season 1 was trying to explain why TOS Klingons looked human... never mind that they were only spies in their first TOS appearance and that it was clearly a budget issue. now we have an extradimensional network that could explain how spock put his mind in mccoy. i'm guessing the whole spock plot in discovery is trying to explain Jerk Spock from The Menagerie part 1 -- he was a jerk because roddenberry was a bad writer.

Getting through the second half of season 1 was pretty tough, enjoying the first couple of S2 much more. If they kill Tilly at any point, I'm done with the series.

The awful expository dialogue (explanation of WWIII to a room full of people who definitely had history classes at Starfleet Academy) is the worst part.

I’m still amused by the fact one of my work team members convinced us to name our software development team “Section 31” way back in 2012 or thereabouts, before the trek writers decided to throw that premise into... everything

if only we were still around, we could have had team merch

Technobabble saves the day? Well, that's a Trek tradition too, unfortunately.

so was the section 31 ship cloaked before tyler called it for help? seems like technology that might have been useful in that recent war they almost lost to the klingons

yeah I thought it was jarring that the tech in this series seems above and beyond anything centuries later used in VOY/DS9.

I’m still amused by the fact one of my work team members convinced us to name our software development team “Section 31” way back in 2012 or thereabouts, before the trek writers decided to throw that premise into... everything

so was the section 31 ship cloaked before tyler called it for help? seems like technology that might have been useful in that recent war they almost lost to the klingons

Yikes, those voiceovers. "There is no word for the unique agony of uncertainty" -- unless it's, er, "uncertainty".

I really, really like the crew (much more the Voyager or ENT) but the scripting is so bad sometimes. I noticed this episode was written by one of the now-fired showrunners. So that could be a good sign for the second half.

Berg & Harberts are credited with the story of the Saru cold episode. Which had flaws but wasn't terrible. I read that they were fired for abusive behavior in the office.

I feel bad about how much I like Pike

I think he was consciously Shatnering this week too

I still want more of that saurian with the sinus problems

Technobabble saves the day? Well, that's a Trek tradition too, unfortunately.

the problem with this show is there's not enough technobabble! it all moves too quickly and nothing is explained.

1) there is a subspace fungus permeating the entire multiverse.
2) ????
3) we can travel anywhere instantaneously!

I was commenting last episode how there is less technobabble and I like it!

feel like i know nothing about the bridge crew, which seems odd at this point in the series. like, the helmsman got her eye made weird in the first battle with the klingons and the navigator grew up among luddites and that's about it. the communications dude just looks worried a lot, and i don't know what's up with the buck rogers twiki person

have we seen the android guy lately?

Was there an android guy? I only remember the android (cyborg?) lady?

I just took it as read that theyre minor characters, like in TNG there were bridge crew you barely heard speak but they were always there.

xp wait, I rewatched one of the reboot movies last week and they were the ones with the android guy with a glowing hole in his head. my bad.

did everyone know about this except me?

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0003/0041/7038/products/btmr_700x700.png

I did not, and: lol

one of the signs that trek has too much baggage: the red angel person (people?) seems like a probable time anomaly and my first thought is, "isn't there an agency to keep tabs on that kind of thing, and is this guy one of them"

do we want to put money down at this point on whether the time traveling/teleporting/advanced tech being is someone we've seen before in other trek? seems like the Q angle is maybe ruled out if it's using some sort of mecha suit

Saru: You don't think I can uphold my duty as a Starfleet officer if I go down to my home planet??

*goes down to homeplanet*

Saru (within 60 seconds of meeting his sister): I COME FROM OUTERSPACE.

Anyway, midway through, I thought they were going to reveal that the Ba'ul were really the evolved Kelpiens, and that Saru's dad would be the one we'd see for the first time. Instead, they're a bunch of Armuses. So, good on the writers at least for surprising me, even if it's the more obvious route. Not to say that I liked this last episode much, though.

the directors may change, but they each give us one camera-swirling-around-everyone scene each episode lol

“Don’t break GO1”
...
“Sure! Fire off something with untested and unknown planet-wide consequences on your hunch, seems fine”

Has there actually been an episode of Star Trek where GO1/PD is mentioned and then subsequently not broken?

That's a good question! There's some episodes where it's an excuse for characters to be undercover, but I think even those episodes break it. I think TOS's "Bread and Circuses" used it as an excuse not to just beam the crew up out of peril.

prime directive very passive aggressively being followed to the letter in this episode:
https://img.youtube.com/vi/2neNjZReByk/hqdefault.jpg

one of the signs that trek has too much baggage: the red angel person (people?) seems like a probable time anomaly and my first thought is, "isn't there an agency to keep tabs on that kind of thing, and is this guy one of them"

do we want to put money down at this point on whether the time traveling/teleporting/advanced tech being is someone we've seen before in other trek?

But yeah, on a more serious thought, I wouldn't be surprised if they brought back the Federation temporal agents we saw in Enterprise and TNG. The Mirror Universe and Section 31 already play a big role in the story, so it doesn't seem they're afraid to bring back major elements from previous series.

Has there actually been an episode of Star Trek where GO1/PD is mentioned and then subsequently not broken?

Anyway, midway through, I thought they were going to reveal that the Ba'ul were really the evolved Kelpiens, and that Saru's dad would be the one we'd see for the first time.

My wife had the same exact guess while watching, and it certainly looked like they were heading towards that kind of plot twist. Given that they didn't, I find it a bit odd that the Ba'ul only communicated via audio, and the one individual who appeared onscreen was covered in black goo so we couldn't properly see its features... So maybe it's still some kind of a spoiler what the Ba'ul look like, and it's gonna be revealed later?

I would hazard a guess that there's a 0.01% chance we'll see a direct reference to a plot point in the Enterprise tv series. It's the trek property they're least likely to return to.

my incredibly horrible idea that has an even lower chance of being true is the guy in the Red Angel suit is... Picard

the new Picard series would then be a story about how he became a time traveler

it gives me a perverse joy to come up with the worst plot ideas possible, tbh

actually it's . . . nog

I'd be 100% in for that

I would hazard a guess that there's a 0.01% chance we'll see a direct reference to a plot point in the Enterprise tv series. It's the trek property they're least likely to return to.

is enterprise at all worthwhile? i don't particularly like scott bakula, but at least there's no neelix

in short: no

The first two seasons of Enterprise are mostly bad, with an occasional highlight. The third season has a long story arc that's quite ambitious and entertaining to watch, even if it doesn't always deliver. The fourth season is more episodic, and is mostly good, except for the very last episode, which was an infamous misstep and you would do better just to skip it (the penultimate episode provides a pretty good conclusion for the series, so you really can just stop there).

Bakula takes his time to find his groove, and he's notably awkward while trying to deliver lofty Picardian speeches, but he does also get better as the series progresses. All in all it's worth watching, if you're willing to accept that it only becomes truly enjoyable during the second half.

I don't know if it's just my TV but the sound mix on Discovery sucks. I have to turn it up to understand dialogue and then any music/special effects are blaring.

That's common on a lot of modern TV shows. If you're able to listen on headphones it's much clearer.

What if the red angel is Wesley Crusher? (srs question!)

Q was the other thought we had, but eh.

spock is my thought, since the first visions of the red angel were in his head. and he time traveled with "red matter" in the reboot movie.