Synobun
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Oh, boo, Discovery is in Prime too?
Ugh.
Well. I still vote yes to retconning their klingons.
All Things Star Trek
- Thread starter hobbsyoyo
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Ugh.
Well. I still vote yes to retconning their klingons.
I have no idea WTF happened to my last post. The formatting went completely screwy, so I will try to fix it and repost.
hobbsyoyo
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I think that's a silly interpretation of the prime directive.
Edit:
Also they've already been contacted and indeed abducted by a warp culture. They are not galactically naive the way an actual pre-warp culture would be.
The Bajorans didn't develop warp drive on their own but that didn't stop the Federation from contacting them.
Edit:
Also they've already been contacted and indeed abducted by a warp culture. They are not galactically naive the way an actual pre-warp culture would be.
The Bajorans didn't develop warp drive on their own but that didn't stop the Federation from contacting them.
The Prime Directive is the most flexible mandate in Star Trek history. That it's actually been used in the spirit of the directive, rather than simply the letter (or just being flat-out ignored), I think that deserves credit, even if it's misguided.
Besides, as I recall the episode, the colonists have integrated their saviour into their religion. That's hardly an understanding of warp culture and the greater galactic society.
Besides, as I recall the episode, the colonists have integrated their saviour into their religion. That's hardly an understanding of warp culture and the greater galactic society.
hobbsyoyo
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They did fold it into their religion but they still recognized that it was an alien abduction. And not all of them took the religion that seriously either, I think.
I see your point though, I just don't agree with it at all.
Why are they calling it general order #1 in this series?
Technically, that is the official name of the directive. It was over time that it became better known by the catchier Prime Directive.
Ajidica
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I'm pretty sure that has been said of every producer and executive producer since the first movie was made.
Timsup2nothin
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Yeah, just usually not in public by actors on the payroll.
warpus
In pork I trust
I just finished watching Discovery S2 and I have to say.. I am bored of every single thing being about the end of the universe and some sort of a villain who can destroy the galaxy/the universe/sentient life.. And in both recent star treks, the big bad guy is essentially the same thing? What lazy writing. I can understand now why people might not have liked all that in Picard. When I was watching Picard and following the story I had not yet seen the same thing on Discovery. Now when I see it on Discovery for the first time, I roll my eyes and groan.. I already just saw almost the exact same thing on the other show.. Are they going to tie them together and have Picard and Michael save the multiverse at the end of all this? What's the grand vision? Or are they just making it all up as they go along like the Star Wars people?
I liked the ride, more or less, but.. too much stuff happens in those first 2 seasons, it's like the crew of that ship stepped into the point in time in history where EVERYTHING happens. It's too convenient. And where do you go from here after you defeat something like that? Is the next season going to be about a time travelling hyper inteligent Romulan fish which gives birth to Andorians who can mind meld with Starships from another reality and freeze all of space-time? Or will it be a laid back season about random aliens of the week and Michael getting a new haircut?
See, you can't win now, the next heights to meet are too high, and the lows will feel too low. Hopefully it's an interesting season about Discovery being lost in truly alien place. Maybe another galaxy? That's sort of a clean slate for story possibilities. But given the existing pacing on the show, you half expect half the crew to die in S3, then to come back to life, and the other half to be reborn as insects. The pace has been set to an unreasonable standard, so what the hell are they going to do now?
So after saying all that.. I do enjoy (most of) the characters, and that's what I mainly focus on when I watch these sorts of shows - the characters and the interactions and relationships between them.. That's what drives a story for me.. I loved DS9 mainly because of the characters.. So many good characters on the show, and so much great chemistry between characters and actors.. The show threw them into interesting situations and most of the time it was a great success.
So I will watch the next season of Discovery, I am curious enough where they are, and I am invested enough in the characters. But the people who write these shows need to work on their pacing. If we kill the final boss at the end of every single season, what enemy or challenge will you have to think up for next time? Don't blow your whole load on the first date
I liked the ride, more or less, but.. too much stuff happens in those first 2 seasons, it's like the crew of that ship stepped into the point in time in history where EVERYTHING happens. It's too convenient. And where do you go from here after you defeat something like that? Is the next season going to be about a time travelling hyper inteligent Romulan fish which gives birth to Andorians who can mind meld with Starships from another reality and freeze all of space-time? Or will it be a laid back season about random aliens of the week and Michael getting a new haircut?
See, you can't win now, the next heights to meet are too high, and the lows will feel too low. Hopefully it's an interesting season about Discovery being lost in truly alien place. Maybe another galaxy? That's sort of a clean slate for story possibilities. But given the existing pacing on the show, you half expect half the crew to die in S3, then to come back to life, and the other half to be reborn as insects. The pace has been set to an unreasonable standard, so what the hell are they going to do now?
So after saying all that.. I do enjoy (most of) the characters, and that's what I mainly focus on when I watch these sorts of shows - the characters and the interactions and relationships between them.. That's what drives a story for me.. I loved DS9 mainly because of the characters.. So many good characters on the show, and so much great chemistry between characters and actors.. The show threw them into interesting situations and most of the time it was a great success.
So I will watch the next season of Discovery, I am curious enough where they are, and I am invested enough in the characters. But the people who write these shows need to work on their pacing. If we kill the final boss at the end of every single season, what enemy or challenge will you have to think up for next time? Don't blow your whole load on the first date
This is the thing about Discovery. Previously (if you except voyage home) the science you could sort of believe. It is not hard sci-fi, but if you do not think too hard it makes sense. As soon as you have at will time travel, you need something to prevent "go back early enough and win". The temporal cold war sort of did that, but Discovery made no effort. Are they going to have the cold war starting before TOS? Where can they go from this?
This makes me glad I decided not to bother with season 2, and I didn't bother with the end of season 1 of Picard.
There's a Voyager fanfic I'm reading and it's basically how some of the Voyager characters are coping with the events leading up to Picard, focusing on Chakotay, Tom and B'Elanna, Harry, Naomi, the Doctor, and so forth.
Not to mention the idea of routine historical research missions as shown in "Yesteryear" (Animated Series episode in which Spock dies as a child and adult Spock has to go back in time via the Guardian of Forever to save himself).
The slingshot method is extremely dangerous, though, which is why it never became routine.
warpus
In pork I trust
People say Discovery S2 was better than S1, but I liked the first season more. In the first season you are still getting used to everything and wondering what is going on.. It has that sense of.. mystery.. and discovery? In the second season you're on a crazy rollercoaster ride. You end up getting lightheaded before the season is over. I just wanted to have the last couple eps over with so I could see where they end up (because I heard some spoilers that they would end up in some weird time or place).. But we didn't even get to find out where they went, which I suppose is not a bad way to set up S3.
Overall I think the 90s Trek had worse opening seasons.. Yeah, TNG, DS9, and VOY.. Discovery and Picard first seasons were stronger than those 90s opening seasons.. but the stories in the 90s Trek were more more grounded and sensible in the long run. So I gotta say, this new Trek is way too fast paced and they're trying to outdo everything way too much.. like a date trying way too hard. But they did get some stuff right. The episodes are entertaining more or less, and I liked a lot of the characters.
I think Voyager messed up time travel though.. for Trek.. and the Borg as well, it turned them into something else. I was not a fan of Voyager until like season 3 or 4. I thought the premise was great but executed in the worst way possible. So many missed opportunities in the way they set up the show, the first baddies suck, a fractured crew they do nothing with, pan-aboriginal Chekotay I had problems with, other characters, etc. 90s Trek had those sorts of problems. This new Trek has new sorts of problems.
They need to find a good balance between the two. There's no reason they can't give us a fast paced even gritty 14 episodes a season that tell a single story. that also has great characters, a fun story and story arcs, and the PACING IS NORMAL. If they do all that and get the other details right, these 2 shows could end up being great (DISC and PIC).. I hope these first seasons were just a way for them to set up the real story they're telling in the latter seasons.. Both shows have sort of new beginnings now, so hopefully they'll do something worthy with it.. and not just "OMG it's the end of the world, the super AI is coming". And fan service is good, but you don't need to finger it with us 24/7 either, throw it in here and there in places where it helps the story, and don't overdo it
Overall I think the 90s Trek had worse opening seasons.. Yeah, TNG, DS9, and VOY.. Discovery and Picard first seasons were stronger than those 90s opening seasons.. but the stories in the 90s Trek were more more grounded and sensible in the long run. So I gotta say, this new Trek is way too fast paced and they're trying to outdo everything way too much.. like a date trying way too hard. But they did get some stuff right. The episodes are entertaining more or less, and I liked a lot of the characters.
I think Voyager messed up time travel though.. for Trek.. and the Borg as well, it turned them into something else. I was not a fan of Voyager until like season 3 or 4. I thought the premise was great but executed in the worst way possible. So many missed opportunities in the way they set up the show, the first baddies suck, a fractured crew they do nothing with, pan-aboriginal Chekotay I had problems with, other characters, etc. 90s Trek had those sorts of problems. This new Trek has new sorts of problems.
They need to find a good balance between the two. There's no reason they can't give us a fast paced even gritty 14 episodes a season that tell a single story. that also has great characters, a fun story and story arcs, and the PACING IS NORMAL. If they do all that and get the other details right, these 2 shows could end up being great (DISC and PIC).. I hope these first seasons were just a way for them to set up the real story they're telling in the latter seasons.. Both shows have sort of new beginnings now, so hopefully they'll do something worthy with it.. and not just "OMG it's the end of the world, the super AI is coming". And fan service is good, but you don't need to finger it with us 24/7 either, throw it in here and there in places where it helps the story, and don't overdo it
Season 1 lost me at the Doctor Who monsters calling themselves Klingons, not to mention the incredibly tedious subtitles that I was too busy reading to pay attention to what else was happening on the screen... not that I really wanted to, since it was so stomach-turning.
And I find tardigrades extremely creepy, and not in a good way. Some think they're cute, but to me they are really repulsive.
I didn't care much for DS9 when it was first on. There are still large parts of it I don't like, but some others are growing on me. Considering that CTV Sci-fi (I wish they'd have kept the "Space Channel" name as I loathe the term "sci-fi") runs multiple episodes of the different Star Trek series every weekday, let's just say I'm catching up on a lot that I either haven't seen in decades, or never saw at all. Even Enterprise is becoming a tolerable way to spend 4 hours, though I still don't consider it part of the same timeline as TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, or Voyager.
"Emissary" does an adequate job of setting the series up. Nearly all the characters have some personal baggage that they need to deal with, and in some cases they take most of the series to do it. They're changing and growing, at least most of them. And I will admit that DS9 has the best set of developed second and third-tier recurring characters of any TV series, not just Star Trek series. It took novelists and fanfic writers to explore the second-tier TOS characters (they did it decades before DiscoTrek and the Abramsverse came along and crowed that they were so "original" in how they presented the characters), but DS9 put it on TV from the get-go.
Voyager's first episode(s)... I've seen this so many times, but I'm still confused about how Harry and B'Elanna recovered from whatever the Caretaker did to them. Maybe I just managed to miss the explanation in the dozen or so times I've seen this?
There's a long fanfic story posted on fanfiction.net in which it's Voyager, not the Val Jean, that gets destroyed, and most of Janeway's crew dies. Janeway ends up on the Val Jean... and not as the captain. I don't know if the story is any good (I tend to avoid most J/C stories as Chakotay is so boring most of the time), but given how many chapters have been posted, there must be quite a few people who like it.
There are plenty of alternative scenario-Voyager fanfics; one I've been reading for the past few years has Seven and Chakotay meeting even before Chakotay joins the Maquis (he's aged downward for this story, to make them closer in age so the story makes more sense). In this story, Seven is the only survivor of a Borg cube that crashes on Chakotay's home planet and she's adopted into Chakotay's family; later on, they both join the Maquis and Seven is on Voyager from the beginning. Seven is less rigid in this version of the series, though not to the point she is in Picard. And in this story, Kes is still on Voyager.
I rather like the idea of the timeship Relativity. At least it let the fans see Seven in a normal Starfleet uniform, and opinion is generally that she should have been wearing it all along, since it suits her very well. I wouldn't mind a series of stories about the Relativity, and in one of my own story ideas, Seven ends up as one of their 24th/25th-century agents, dealing with unscrupulous time travelers trying to change history. But then I love Poul Anderson's and Robert Silverberg's series about time travel, and Seven seemed to fit in so well with that kind of story.
As for the "travel back to the 20th century" episodes... this was a fun two-parter. One of the pro novelists incorporated Rain Robinson into a wider story so she ends up working with Roberta Lincoln and Gary Seven (from "Assignment: Earth" in the TOS series). After all, she did learn some things about the future that would be useful to Gary Seven and Roberta, and it would be a way to keep her out of trouble. So while she and Tom never get to have a date (
), she wasn't forgotten.I have to admit that "Encounter at Farpoint" hasn't aged well at all. I still like Q and it's nice that McCoy survived so long (there are some fanfics dealing with McCoy's death, and they're heartbreaking...). But the rest... yikes. Troi and her silly outfit and gogo boots... I know fashion comes and goes in cycles, but they should have put her in a regular uniform from the get-go. I guess my fondest memory of "Encounter at Farpoint" is the circumstances of when I first saw it.
TNG premiered here on the same day as the local SCA group's annual Harvest Feast, which also included archery and heavy fighting tournaments. So while TNG was on TV, the rest of us were either at the tournaments or at the church hall getting the feast ready. The person in the group who had both a VCR and a living room big enough to hold a lot of people decided to tape it and invite everyone over after the feast. Some of the people were from out of town and they went home, but there were a couple of dozen of us left (some of the out of town people stayed). We all crowded into the living room there, many still in our medieval costumes, including the King and Queen (it was unusual to have the royalty there, as these two were from somewhere in Washington state). The King and Queen got the chairs, the rest of us were on the floor, and we all watched "Encounter at Farpoint."
I remember someone saying that Q must be Trelane all grown up (referring to the TOS episode 'The Squire of Gothos"), and we were all happy to see McCoy. Most of us were familiar with Patrick Stewart, either from watching Excalibur, Lady Jane, or I, Claudius.
So the experience was fun. The episode... as said, I don't think it's aged well, and even at the time I noticed some things that didn't add up.
I've wondered if they're pushing Picard because of Patrick Stewart's age. He isn't young anymore, and there's no guarantee that he'd be able to finish out the series if they go for many more seasons.
Or maybe that's just how TV shows are done now.
I don't watch very many new ones. As far as I'm concerned, the best Star Trek that's come along in the past decade is the fan film series "Star Trek Continues." It literally continues from the closing scene of "Turnabout Intruder" all the way to when Captain Kirk becomes Admiral Kirk. They had to cut three of the planned episodes because CBS cracked down on fan films (thanks, Axanar) and would only allow those already in production to finish.
hobbsyoyo
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Bruh
Spoiler :
100% agree that the pacing was massively off and the massive ups and downs are very frustrating. Like I said before, at one point Starfleet was all but wiped out, then one episode later they had a huge armada. Same for the Klingons at various points.
Also they absolutely need to get their crap together when it comes to technology (especially the spore drive and time travel) to enforce some sort of consistency in the show. They're all over the place and constantly breaking canon. I'm not a purist so I don't care that much about this kind of stuff but they are over the top with it.
Did you guys here they are making a new Star Trek show featuring Enterprise, Spock, Number One and Pike?
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