The Star Trek Thread

[Mothra]

Okay Episode 4 of Season 2 was fantastic.

Reno immediately fits into engineering perfectly, to the point where it feels like we've been missing one third of the dynamic up until now. I love her and she is perfect.

[zaratustra]

Voq uses L’Rell’s resources and plan to undergo a ludicrously horrific, painful, vastly overcomplicated procedure that transplants his organs into the corpse of a human and leaves his mind shattered. No clear plan is ever revealed - Discovery wasn’t a threat at that point in the war, nor was the original ship that they both might want revenge on a threat. It’s never stated what Voq was actually supposed to do.

He wants Michael Burnham's head. That he completely forgets about it once he's in his human suit is just another chapter in Voq Is In Over His Head Because Klingons Confuse His Swaggering For Actually Knowing What He's Doing, the series.

Like, everything makes more sense if, instead of seeing Voq as some genius underhanded villain, you think of him as someone that never got a decent military education because of prejudice and now is both too incompetent and too hard-headed to recognize it.

[Mothra]

This latest one with Saru's homeworld was the most buck wild thing they've done in a long while.

Just, show up, beam down with the one person guaranteed to piss the Ba'ul off, piss the Ba'ul off immediately, run away, leaving Saru's sister at their mercy, get Saru captured, deploy a SPECIES-ALTERING MEGAVIRUS, trigger a genocide, then only survive said genocide by the deus ex machina of the red angel.

Disco flies off having turned all kelpians into super-strong, incredibly angry hyper-predators who want to wipe out the Ba'ul for all they've subjected then to for generations.

[Mothra]

Any time Jet Reno isn't on screen, all characters should be asking, "Where's Reno?"

[Thad]

I'm only three episodes into the new season.

I like that the first two seem to be focused mostly on doing classic Star Trek plots, even if they're leaning too hard on classic Trek by introducing Captain Pike and...oh, you just did the Poochie joke, didn't you? Because I was going to make that reference in regards to Spock.

"Does the Prime Directive apply to humans who were magicked off of Earth prior to the discovery of the Warp Drive?" made for an interesting philosophical Star Trek question, though I don't believe it was addressed in a satisfying manner.

And then the third episode brought back a bunch of season 1 stuff that I was not at all interested in seeing again. And I guess Michelle Yeoh is getting her own spinoff? I like her, but I can't say as I'm terribly interested in her storyline.

[Mothra]

Yeah I absolutely am not into this Section 31 shit for the exact reason that they're dredging up all these B-list characters whose arcs are fully resolved.

Like none of these people have any interesting motivation or desire, they're just like, doing the ol' 9 to 5, and it sucks.

[Friday]

[Bal]

Star Trek has always been such a big part of my life that I just can't help but hate this shit. Kelvin-verse had problems, but it still mostly felt like Star Trek. As I've expressed before, I don't know what this is supposed to feel like, but it feels like shit to me.

[Mongrel]

Star Trek has always been such a big part of my life that I just can't help but hate this shit. Kelvin-verse had problems, but it still mostly felt like Star Trek. As I've expressed before, I don't know what this is supposed to feel like, but it feels like shit to me.

Man, I've felt like this for like... twenty years.

[Friday]

The thing about Trek is it's been sliding away from TOS/TNG high concept/low violence toward PUNCH KICK FLIP SHOOT for a long time.

Here's a timeline:

TOS: Whacky and weird, but it had integrity.
TNG: The high water mark. Entire episodes pass with no punching, no kicking, no flipping, and no shooting.
DS9: More shooting and punching, but examined in a gritty, realistic way, mostly focused on how horrible war is and what it does to good people.
VOY: You can definitely see the start toward more shooting, but there are still some high concept episodes sprinkled in with the shooting and the truly bad episodes about going warp 10.
ENT: As the only person here who has watched the entirely of ENT, (that I know of, anyway) I can definitively say that the first two seasons, while having more than their fair share of punchkickflipshoot, tried to be like the original series. Weird whacky planets and shit. Then the ratings started to flag and the network said "why not have an alien attack on earth and also the Romulans are secretly in control of the Vulcans and are making them shoot things" and seasons 3 and 4 are all shooting aliens all the time.
Kelvin Verse Movies: PEOPLE LOVE SHOOTING. Like, I'm not going to say the movies are all bad but my god, the fucking kickflips.
STD: VIOLENCE GIVES YOU RESPECT

[Brantly B.]

I'd be all for it if the crux of the show was idealism struggling with the reality that violence usually wins out in at least the short term, but I get the feeling that's not at all where they're going with it. Where they're going with it is DEAR GOD HOW DO WE MAKE THIS VENTURE PROFITABLE WITH THE FUCKING PROPRIETARY STREAMING ALBATROSS WE'VE PLACED AROUND ITS NECK

[Thad]

I'm still a few episodes behind, but I just saw An Obol for Charon and I think it's the best episode of the series to date. Classic Trek "encounter some strange alien object and have to figure out the mystery of what the hell its deal is" plot.

It wasn't a perfect episode -- Stamets and Tilly singing Space Oddity right before he drills a hole in her skull is, at best, so-bad-it's-good -- but I think it's the best Discovery's ever been.

[Mothra]

I agree that An Obol for Charon is the best episode since the time loop one. A big reason is that Saru got tons of screen time, and Reno was introduced to the crew. She seriously is this crucial missing piece to the engineering group. I can't believe it took this long for her to get brought in.

Anyways she disappears after that episode, so, I guess they only have Tig for a few episodes? It's another thing that feels off about this show: I don't know what the fuck anyone's job is most of the time, if they even have stated jobs. People just seem to wander from role to role arbitrarily.

[Thad]

Okay so wait Pike sees Georgiou and he says "I thought you retired" and I have so many questions.

Like, I saw the first couple of episodes. Burnham mutinied, Georgiou died, there was a court martial, and fucking everybody heard about it. There is no conceivable way Captain Pike didn't hear Georgiou died.

So was Starfleet just like "yeah we were just kidding, she's alive, but she's retiring now, and we wanted to make sure everybody knew that before she joins this off-the-books black-ops spy organization"?



Or should I just assume, hey, it's Star Trek, people come back from the dead all the time and nobody's fazed by it anymore?

Of course I realize that the answer to all these questions is "this show is on its fourth showrunner." But still, Jesus Christ.

[Mothra]

They kinda handwave it at the end of Season 1.

Anyways, the latest episode was actually encouragingly good - the one with the TOS callback to the Pike pilot.

Feels like the writing and the direction was way better, somehow. Even got some good Tyler scenes. Hope we get more Michael and Pike like this.

[Mothra]

I’ve been noticing the lens flares a lot more these past three episodes and they’re so fucking stupid it distracts the shit out of me.

I stopped, rewound, and watched where the flare appeared the last few times it happened, and there’s no window or light or anything from which the flare could come from, it just appears, randomly. There was one in the middle of the cafe with no open windows in view.

[Mongrel]

So... the "Twelve-year-old discovers Photoshop" school of editing?

[Thad]

Star Trek Comics Humble Bundle.

I've only ever read one Star Trek comic, Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever. It's at the $15 tier and I'd say it's worth it.

I haven't read Star Trek/Transformers, but I love the decision to make the characters look like their respective '70s/'80s animated versions, and John Barber has written some pretty great Transformers comics. And also "Prime's Directive" is a pretty good title.

[zaratustra]

star trek discovery s02e10 spoilers:

Michael Burnham is the Red Angel.

WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BLOWN AWAY BY THIS STUNNING REVELATION.

I wonder if there'll be one final twist because this one was telegraphed from so far away it's ten shillings per letter.

[Thad]