Any thoughts on Star Trek Discovery?

The main character is Spock’s long lost human foster sister.

If that’s not straight out of a 10th grade fan fiction I don’t know what is.

I’m tentatively interested to see where it’s going to take the story, but I’ll say I’m not paying for CBS All Access to do it.

@Muad_Dib Didn’t know that was even a thing. And it’s a total unnecessary distraction. The plot point where she runs off the bridge to open a secret communication to her foster father, where the bridge communication officer doesn’t even notice, and she runs back to attack and incapacitate her captain in the middle of a military battle situation is what killed it for me. She deserves to be court-martialed and thrown out of Starfleet.

The only character I liked was Michelle Yeoh and I kept wanted to see a katana in her hand. She was hampered by a plodding script and poor directing.

Oh! And I hated the set design also. Star Trek bridges are supposed to be bright. You need colors and space. Even JJ’s bridge was bright. This bridge is dark, with shiny lights and is hard to look at.

It’s my understanding that she is going to be court martialed and imprisoned.

I’m pirating it – have you seen episode 2 yet or am I ahead?

I have to admit I liked the Elizabethan look of the Klingon armor. Appealing to the “Shakespeare in the original Klingon” gag. Gave me a chuckle.

I didn’t catch what year this is in relation to the other Star Treks? Why are we at war with the Klingons? Is this before we made peace with them? Or did the peace fall apart?

I didn’t like how the Klingons looked, but maybe I will get used to it.

I did like the beginning scene when they make their footprints in the sand in the shape of the communicator pin.

I definitely want to give it a chance.

It felt more like a bad Mass Effect adaptation, and not like Star Trek. Not the visuals, not the characters, and so far, not the story either.
The Orville is better, despite the bad attempts at humour.

It was free for me from my local TV antenna and was better than e-talk or entertainment news. I hope that might not have to get cable renewed to watch more episodes,

@RedDeerGuy1 – You’ll be able to watch it on Space channel. Loli will get it on Netflix. We Americans either have to pony up $6 a month or pirate it.

@Muad_Dib Thanks… I will wait for it to go to syndication.

@JLeslie – The story begins 10 years before the events in the original Star Trek – so yes, before the Federation/Klingon alliance. Not that it matters, because so far nothing at all has happened that’s timeline-specific – it could just as easily have taken place 50 years after Voyager, considering that the Klingons in question are Kahless fundamentalist whackadoodles and not representative of Klingon culture as a whole.

Thanks.

(I forgot it was on and missed the first 10 minutes.) Too fancy, too busy. And why drastic changes to Klingons?? It may be a matter of a photon torpedo detonating before it could be launched.

I have to say that at first I wasn’t happy with how the Klingons looked in more recent movies and shows compared to the old shows. After a while I got used to it.

@Muad_Dib Can you PM me or email me about the pirating thing?

@Rarebear – absolutely. Check your messages at the other F site

Okay, so I saw the second episode and it’s EVEN WORSE than the first. I spent the entire episode pinging @Muad_Dib complaining about it and her saying, “I know, right?”

Yep.

I’m still withholding judgement, since this is basically the “prologue”, and most of these characters won’t be in the rest of the series. I mean, we haven’t even seen the Discovery yet.

But I don’t have high hopes.

Like most Star Trek after the original series and films, I’m not planning to give it a chance. This thread increases my lack of interest.

I never was a big fan of Star Wars anyway, so I’ll skip this.

We Star Trek fans are a picky bunch, but we were spoiled with high production value from the start.

This new series is attempting to fill in bad writing with pretty special effects and photography… and as Trekkies we are WAY too detail oriented for that to fly.

If you like whiz-bang and to be visually entertained and don’t care about Star Trek much, you’ll probably really enjoy it.

I just totally didn’t understand the bait and switch. Why start with one ship and crew and then go to a completely different ship and crew?

It’s Star Trek so bound to be shite

@Rarebear – It seems to be happening a lot in modern sci-fi/fantasy writing. I blame George RR Martin for doing it twice in the first book of Game of Thrones.

@Muad_Dib I read the first book, but it was oh, so many years ago. What bait and switch was that?

Well personally I actually loved it. It was an excellent modern instalment of star trek. I don’t think the show was boring at all, in fact it was one of the more action packed episodes of a star trek series I have ever seen in a long time.

Character development? We’ve had two episodes, characters develop over time. That’s why its called “character development”. However I do think there could have been more scenes with crew interaction. But I guess the creators wanted a ‘get to the point’ direction for this series. I am hoping we get to see more crew interactions further on into the series. Especially when we actually get to see the USS Discovery and Anthony Rapp’s character

A complete disregard for how professionals would actually act? No totally disagree. There have been many occasions where crew have spoken out against Captain Janeway in STV and she did drag them into her ready room to talk some sense into them (Harry, B’elana 7 of 9 etc). Same thing happened on Discovery. In fact the original series even had mutinies (and it was done in a more comical style)

The Klingons looked stupid? I also don’t agree. The Klingons in this series are meant to look more menacing and warlike. But I do not agree that this interpretation was to ‘stupidity’, it was tribal pride. In fact they did something very relatable with the phrase ‘remain klingon’. It’s not that different from ‘Trump’s America.’ The Klingons are not stupid, they are proud of their heritage and they clearly have a legitimate grievance with the federation.

@NerdyKeith Sweet! Glad you liked it.

Thanks @Rarebear

@NerdyKeith I didn’t think the Klingons look stupid, I just am not used to the look. I tend to not like very menacing or ugly in a very distorted from human looking anything, so that’s what I meant.

@JLeslie That’s a fair point. It is going to take viewers time to get used to their modified look. As I’m sure it took people some time to get used to them since their first makeover in The Next Generation (from their original look on the original series)

^^Yes, it took me time to adjust every time.

I liked it. I am looking forward to seeing where it goes. There was lots of hysteria (even without Social Media) in 1987 because the Klingons looked different in TNG, the uniforms were a bit different, there was a Klingon on the bridge (gasp) and other differences.
I am delighted that someone has picked up the franchise with an interesting new vision.

And actually, Rarebear, most of us are calling it DSC, in keeping with TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT. Sorry, but the STD joke was done to death months ago.

“Sorry, but the STD joke was done to death months ago.”
Not true. AIDS takes years to kill you.

The most interesting thing I’ve heard so far is that they’re thinking of making this an anthology series (think American Horror Story). That I could get behind, since American tv writers seem to have forgotten how to develop likable characters long-term.

Here is what my favourite hackfrauds thought of it

Oh dear I wish they just abbreviated it to DIS lol

As a sidenote episode 3 was amazing. I suspect that the USS Discovery is a section 31 vessel.

@NerdyKeith I had completely forgotten about Section 31. Good thought. Yes, I liked episode three a bit better than the first two. The tribble was a nice touch.

My husband just said the only way to watch the show past the pilot episode is streaming online. Is that true?

I missed the tribble. But I am interested to see where they go with this.

I was worried Jason Isaacs would be a good guy. He’s such a lovely villain, it would have been a shame.

@JLeslie – Keith can watch on YouTube, since he’s in Ireland.

We’re stuck paying or pirating.

vpn+netflix

Also, I wonder about the excuse they come up with for the fact that the monsterklingons activate a giant light, and everyone can see it immediately, even hundreds of lightyears away, because in this “star trek” version, the speed of light apparently does not exist anymore.

@Muad_Dib It was on the captain’s desk when he was asking her to stay on board.

@ragingloli I’m assuming that the light was some sort of subspace beacon. Star Trek has always played loose with the laws of relativity.

@Rarebear
No, they measured the thing in lumen, and when the MC had her chat with holographic Sarek, he told her that everyone just saw a new star in the sky. So, yes, it was actual light.
Please also tell me how the footprints they left in the desert were not covered up by the bloody sandstorm 5 minutes after they made them.

That whole thing was incredibly stupid, I agree – Like the friggin’ shuttle is going to see a handful of footprints in the sand from that high up anyway, ignoring the sandstorm completely.

Maybe if they’d dug a sand trench… maybe.

Also in the end, and fuck spoilers, she sets the phaser from stun to kill and kills the lead klingon in revenge, starting an interstellar war against the klingons.
and this is the character I am supposed to root for? irredeemable.

Also, the very reason she called Sarek, asking him how the Vulcans established diplomatic relations with the klingons, was bullshit to begin with.
She was raised on Vulcan, so she should already know this stuff.
And besides that, are we supposed to believe that the Vulcans never shared this information with the Federation?

I’m definitely not rooting for her at this point. So far I’m Team Hyper-Phobic Alien Dude, even though he’s a bit of a pansy. So far he’s the only person talking any sense.

@ragingloli Agree on the desert footprint thing.

I think many people are romanticizing past Star Trek iterations. Many of them had rough starts. I happened to really like the start of STD.

I’m the first to admit the first season of Next Gen had massive issues.

But it’s hardly 1987.

I was in med school when the first episode of TNG came out. I went over to a friend’s house to watch it on a 17 inch TV (big for that time). We watched it and at the end we were like, “What the actual fuck?” But as others have mentioned, it got better.

I loved TNG from the start!

Voyager also.

Deep Space 9 I never really got into though.

I tried watching Encounter at Farpoint a while ago. Had to turn it off, so awful it was.
DS9 was the best.

Pre-Beard Riker was pretty awful.

My favourite series though myself has to be Voyager. It was there ‘going back to basics’. Actually exploring strange new worlds in which no one in the federation had gone to before.

I disagree. Voyager was forgettable, and they completely squandered the premise of a ship being stranded 70 years from home without supply lines or support, and how that would challenge and test the ideals and values of the Federation, like DS9 managed to do with its Dominion War arc.
The only glimpses of what Voyager could have been thematically were “Year of Hell”, and “Equinox”.
The occasional mentioning of “replicator rations” just does not cut the mustard.
Wasted potential.

Still, I would take Voyager over Discovery any day.

Fair enough we shall have to agree to disagree @ragingloli

@ragingloli I agree with you on DS9. I was initially very skeptical in that the space station was static. I was wondering how they could make it interesting when they were not travelling around the galaxy. But that constraint allowed the writers to explore the other themes you mentioned.

The whole god-like thing towards the end bugged me though.

Yeah, they should have wrapped up the Pah Wraith plotline a lot earlier and focussed solely on the conclusion of the Dominion War.
And Dukat’s story should have ended with Waltz. Having him bang Kai Winn was, ugh.

Finally caught up with all nine episodes. I like it..

Omg twist. Wow. Don’t want to give spoilers but dam!

Its even more awesome now damn!

Have not seen a new episode in a month. Is it canceled?

@RedDeerGuy1 I’m watching on Netflix UK & Ireland, so maybe there is a glitch with CBS All Access. But season 1 is finished and it will be back in January for season 2.

I compare all the things I watch with each other. So based on what I’ve seen: it’s not bad. It’s not great but it’s not bad.