The Star Trek Thread

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zaratustra
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby zaratustra » Fri Sep 29, 2017 3:53 pm

She noticed there were 36 ships and there are 36 klingon clans and that means they were all ready to pledge allegiance to the huge or something.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mothra » Fri Sep 29, 2017 4:52 pm

Yeah the exact exchange was:

How many Klingon vessels have entered the system?
24, Captain.
The Klingon High Council consists of 24 houses. That can't be a coincidence. The number of ships... it suggests that someone is attempting to unify the Empire again. Against us.

I'm convinced! Let's start this war!!

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Bal
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Bal » Fri Sep 29, 2017 8:02 pm

Why are they doing this show? What essence of Star Trek are they capturing? There's nothing aspirational about this show. I can't imagine someone looking at this show and thinking "I'm going to be a scientist!".

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mothra » Fri Sep 29, 2017 8:16 pm

Mmm, I think that hits the weirdness on the head. This is like showing us the Romulan War. We know what happens by Balance of Terror, so, ???

I remember having this problem when Babylon 5 did "In The Beginning". Like, do we really need to see the Earth-Mimbari war if all the important stuff came a decade after its conclusion?

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Bal » Fri Sep 29, 2017 8:18 pm

It's telling that the best part of In The Beginning is the framing device of Londo 50 years later relating the tale to children on the night of his self-prophesied death.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mothra » Fri Sep 29, 2017 9:41 pm

Yeah holy shit. I love that you said that. Rewatched it real recently and that was the one part that had me gripped.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Thad » Fri Sep 29, 2017 10:04 pm

Bal wrote:Why are they doing this show? What essence of Star Trek are they capturing? There's nothing aspirational about this show.


I think the arc they're setting up is Michael's cynicism giving way to a more traditional Star Trek optimism. I think that's a pretty good arc for the time we're in right now, really; even when things are at their darkest, you do the right thing. Even if it gets you killed.

That also seems like a pretty good justification for making it a prequel: darkest before the dawn and all that.

Or it could just be an excuse to throw in a bunch of ill-conceived references to the original series like Sarek and Mudd.

I can't imagine someone looking at this show and thinking "I'm going to be a scientist!".


Doug Jones's character seems pretty cool. Is he a scientist?

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mothra » Fri Sep 29, 2017 10:18 pm

God, I'm just really really concerned that the great victory of this series is going to be the return to the status quo of TOS.

And to go a step further, the situation in TOS was that the Federation and Empire was at total war, so like, that better not be the payoff.

Thad wrote:Doug Jones's character seems pretty cool. Is he a scientist?

Doug Jones gives me hope. I adore his character and they NEED to give him a lot of screen time of this thing is going to be good.

He projects this very feminine male strength that I love to see in a show by a gay Star Trek veteran. It's seeing a sensitive character in a position of authority in a military organization. I hope they maximize that.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mothra » Fri Sep 29, 2017 10:29 pm

That said the fact that Abe Sapien introduces himself as a prey species does raise some real complications to reading of this as non-traditionally-masculine strength/leadership so, ugh

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Blossom » Sat Sep 30, 2017 4:35 am

The aspirational aspects of Star Trek have always been deeply fucked, though, and the franchise was at its best when it was DS9 and tore away at them to show the rotten underpinnings of Roddenberry's bad vision. A new show trying not to be TOS again is a very good thing. The last time Star Trek tried to be TOS again, it was Enterprise.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Bal » Sat Sep 30, 2017 7:45 am

DS9 wasn't not aspirational, it was about keeping ones ideals in the face of adversity. Early on that was the bitterness of the Bajoran people in the wake of the Cardassian occupation, later it was in the face of the Dominion War.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Thad » Mon Oct 02, 2017 10:04 am

"Keep your ideals in the face of adversity" does seem to be the lesson of the pilot, yeah.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Bal » Mon Oct 02, 2017 2:53 pm

So long as your ideals include giant wars, I guess.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mothra » Tue Oct 03, 2017 5:15 pm

Liked this one a lot. The black-site-as-a-ship idea is cool, Saru is wonderful, I liked Tilly, the work scenes and discussion of the blending of physics and biology were interesting, and I like the idea that the federation ideals are being stretched to breaking point to win the war. It’s DS9 territory, naturally, but having this be early in the federation seems like it makes it more believable that everyone hasn’t fully committed to the ideas yet. I fully expect some twist near the end of the show saying that the blue spores are a sentient being they’re killing every time they superwarp, meaning they’ll have to scrap the tech if they want to keep the federation’s soul.

Cronenberg scene felt pretty out-of-place, but part of me likes that they don’t shy away from how volatile and dangerous this rush for technology is going to be. Chase sequence was shaky and annoying. Alice in Wonderland stuff was really embarrassing.

Visual effects are unbelievably good. Hit me this episode when the shuttle was pulling into the docking bay to land. It was just a simple little scene that looked absolutely amazing in a really not-showoff-ey way.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mothra » Tue Oct 03, 2017 5:16 pm

Kind of cool to think that if the federation was truly going to build a warship, they’d build the biggest science vessel they could manage. Hundreds of people working on 30 separate science projects at a time, with military pressure to produce on a schedule.

Already the Discovery’s greatest weapon is a particular tech they figured out with the spores.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Sharkey » Tue Oct 03, 2017 5:42 pm

"If we kill him he'll become a martyr."

She kills him. He becomes a martyr.

I'm only up through the second episode but this two part pilot feels pretty self contained to me. So after sparking an interstellar war, assaulting her commanding officer and mentor in an attempted mutiny, ensuring the continuation of said interstellar war by assassinating a military and religious head of state in a moment of anger, our protagonist miraculously survives death in the void while thousands of good men, women, and Daft Punk people perish around her as a direct result of her actions. The soundtrack tries to play her court martial like some kind of dramatic low point, but I'm just relieved that they caught her and she's going to jail. I mean, "some bad things happened but at least the one responsible is on trial" isn't the most satisfying arc, but I'll take it. I guess she's Spock's dad's adopted daughter who was raised by vulcans after her family was killed by an army of jealous Mary Sues or whatever, but this was basically like watching the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand from the POV of Gavrillo Princep. I mean, you don't have to shoot her, but I'm not terribly concerned about what happens to her after the pilot. Maybe a post-credits easter egg epilogue of her cracking rocks with Space-Shkrelli on Rura Penthe or something.


I feel like I'm missing a reference. Like was she one of the Great Assholes of History that Kirk and Abe Lincoln had to fight or a background character in the space insane asylum or something?
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mothra » Tue Oct 03, 2017 6:06 pm

Yeah she is hilariously unsympathetic as a main character. I can't get over how weird it is for them to have set things up exactly so she could ruin everything, one after the other, in perfect sequence, for absolutely no reason.

I still cannot believe she outright staged a mutiny right before starting a war. And it was the shittiest, worst-executed mutiny imaginable.

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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Sharkey » Wed Oct 04, 2017 10:03 pm

Okay, giving the first (third) episode a go and hell if I can't keep thinking that Michael Ruins Everything (i.e. the last two episodes) might have worked better if they were delivered in flashbacks. You know, after we somehow established her as at least a competent or likable person. Which... this doesn't. Oh no, people hate Dementia Darkness Raven Way because their friends all died as a direct result of her actions. Boo fucking hell damn hoo. But she's portrayed as competent, at least, if only because the script repeatedly reminds us that she's THE SMARTEST. Which means she read vulcan wikipedia once and quotes Lewis Carroll because I don't know. Even if we could recut this dogshit as an in medias res thing that shit would be annoying.

Fuck this. I'm taking Star Trek out behind the barn.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Mongrel » Wed Oct 04, 2017 10:10 pm

It has long since ceased to surprise me that the film and television industry has literally no idea how to create a hopeful and optimistic show, without it being cloyingly saccharine to the point of being unwatchable. That's simply not what recent generations *do*.
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Re: The Star Trek Thread

Postby Büge » Wed Oct 04, 2017 11:46 pm

So the prediction that The Orville would be the better Star Trek show came true, then?
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