I still want a proper follow up to the Dominion War.
No Lower Decks doesn’t count on behalf it’s bloody awful, poorly aminated with a crappy voice cast who have to overact because the amination is so……..crap……they can’t even manage to scrawl, with a crayon, on the wall, with their tongue sticking out the corner of their mouth, anything which might resemble an actual facial expression.
Sorry, despite my verbosity right here I’ve got my arse in my hands.
If you enjoy Lower Decks? Good on you and completely ignore this post. I’m not the ultimate arbitrator of taste.
The issue here is that we kinda know what the follow-up was: A group of Changelings bided their time, hooked up with the Borg Queen who suffering the ill-effects of whatever Janeway did to her 20+ years ago, and hatched a plan to usurp the UFP from within.
But yes, overall, I'd like a proper Trek series set post-Dominion war.
Episode 1; Funny idea of Voyager becoming a museum ship and all the throwbacks to the series. The throwback to Tuvix was a surprise. Bold strategy.
But I also hate the stupid fandom attitudes on that episode so I was anticipating something eye rolling and I guess it kind of went there but whatever.
Episode was still fun. Liked Boimler's arc and how it ended for Mariner. And oh my god Ma'ah?! Yey!
Spoiler:
gak
Episode 2;
Much better episode imo. Mariner and Ransom are still hilarious together. Love Rutherford's whole deal with Livik.
The dilemma with the Tuvix situation: I always had a solution to it that I'm surprised never got used.
In a ST:TNG episode it was shown that a transporter could duplicate a person (Will Riker) and have them be EXACTLY the same (Tom Riker).
Step 1. Fill Tuvix in on the plan. Step 2. sedate him so he can't change his mind half-way through. Step 3. Transporter clone him. Step 4. Take one of the Tuvix's and split them. Step 5. Enjoy that you have all three entities living.
Yeeeaaaahhhh… The problem there is the transporter clones are still their each own person, so you’re still killing dude, you’re just doing it while he’s asleep so he can’t beg for his life.
It has to do with transporter signals getting interrupted and I'm not sure it's something that can be freely replicated.
With Tuvix proper, it's one of the few Voyager episodes where the writers actually remembered that Voyager wasn't in the Federation and had to make tough decisions like that to keep everyone alive.
AduroT wrote: Yeeeaaaahhhh… The problem there is the transporter clones are still their each own person, so you’re still killing dude, you’re just doing it while he’s asleep so he can’t beg for his life.
Yeah, kind of the point. The real problem with Tuvix being split was that it was against his will. If you get his consent first, and then make sure he can't back out once there are two of him, it makes it much less ethically questionable.
Although, I wonder if you could somehow link the process? Split him in the transporter AND double him at the same time? That way, technically, there was never a second Tuvix, but you still get Nelix and Tuvok back.
Lower Decks is out!? I'm so behind. Just finished Strange New Worlds. I thought it was quite good. My favorite part was Spock's future Mother-in-law. Just like the first season that Spock is comedy gold!
By Mad Doc Grotsnik, aged 43 and a bit, IQ probably.
The Defiant is the ultimate expression of just how mental hoomans am.
Leave us alone, and yes we’ll arm our ships for defence, but will mostly focus on our largely benign poking and prodding about the Universe.
If we poke and prod too far, we’ll be Super Polite and apologise and back off, whilst politely negotiating terms and that.
But. If your insist on being a dick? Then get ready, brace, bend over and think of your home world, because The Defiant class is what happens when we turn all our knowledge to kicking all your teeth square down your throat.
It’s ridiculously overpowered. Always on the verge of tearing itself apart. But we’re up for that. Indeed, that’s part of the fun. Can we manage this stupid and turn it into stupidly offensive because nobody ever expects the nerd out the corner with a breeze block nailed to a cricket bat, being swung with mathematical precision .
The Sovereign was in the same vein as a Galaxy though, a capital class vessel rather than an upgunned escort.
The Sovereign is primarily an exploratory vessel with science in mind that is also just has the Federations up to date tech making it a powerful combat vessel.
The Defiant on the other had is all warfare. No families, no science labs, barebones as possible to allow for maximum combat efficiency.
The Sovereign likely gets seen more as a warship because we only ever see it in films in moments of battle. Unlike the Galaxy class where we've several seasons of it exploring and doing other stuff outside of combat.
That said the Defiant also highlighted how most factions don't actually build warships in the setting. The Enterprise in each of its iterations was basically able to go head ot head against most of the other races top warships.
The whole Dominion War and the Romulan warship in that one film - both highlighted how most of the Alpha Quadrant aren't on the warpath - even the Klingon warships are not all that heavily armed when you consider how many weapons the Defiant has on it for its tiny size.
I disagree with that notion. The reason the Federation was able to stay ahead of the Cardassians and Klingons in most areas of technology was entirely because those empires were so dedicated to conflict and militarism.
The Klingon political system encouraged conflict between the Houses of the empire and promoted the warrior lifestyle over all else which led to its technology largely stagnating and the KDF fleet consisting largely of outdated ships that were kept in service out of necessity. For example, the K't'inga was introduced all the way back in the 2250s and served all the way to the end of the Dominion War. Vessels like the Vor'cha and Negh'Var were recent additions to help reduce the KDF's reliance on older ship classes.
The Cardassians had many of the same problems. With a culture dominated by the military, their scientific community was small and underfunded leaving their ships outgunned by pretty much everyone. But they were fanatic soldiers and a sort of natural xenophobia made them formidable foes in battle.
The few advances they did make had to be for military purposes.
The Romulans on the other hand were very much on par with the Federation in terms of power. Their Warbirds were strong and had the benefit of cloaking technology which the Romulans pioneered before any other race. Even with their losses in the Dominion War, it took the destruction of Romulus itself to take them down from their position as a major power.
That isn't to say the warships the Federation did make weren't good but that they were so good because of Starfleet's main goal as a scientific and exploratory organisation rather than a military one.
Thing is the Federation didn't build warships until the Defiant and the focus of their designs wasn't on battle but on exploration and multiple roles. And yet their ships could stand up to the dedicated warships of other nations.
When your Romulan Warbird is on-par with a Galaxy Class starship and one is built purely as a weapon and the other is built as a catch-all science vessel with defences - then something has gone wrong with the warship.
Again this comes back to look at ships like the Defiant and the Romulan Scimitar. Both were built for war and nothing else and both focus on the concept of having multiple weapons banks.
Many other ships have only one or two torpedo bays (fore and aft) as well as one or two primary phasers. Again most of the factions focus on this idea of one super big super powerful phaser bank. Or perhaps a pair of disruptors.
Age of the ships nor their relative technology levels isn't really what I'm looking at. What I'm comparing is the design philosophy and armament itself.
We just don't see any faction really building warships as well as they could. Even Klingons don't actually sport all that many weapons. The Bird of Prey is considered pretty fearsome and for its size (and with its cloak) it is well armed; but as they scale up their ships they don't really add many more weapon systems.
Honestly its mostly because Startrek was never a military series and in many series their budgets were sorely limited in terms of how many effects they could have. So they went with designs that focused on that. Few powerful weapons.
I'd argue that the Federations technological gain isn't because they are peaceful and focusing on science whilst other factions are not. I'd argue its more that they've a much bigger population overall and a much greater diversity of thinkers and species. As a result they can gain technological advances by leveraging their collective understanding. Most other factions are very mono-cultured and often regard many other races as "lesser" or not worthy or such. So they basically limit what their sciences can do. Plus several are quite isolationist. So again they aren't really tapping into the wealth of cultures and backgrounds that the Federation has access too.
The Galaxy-class was the equal of a D'deridex Warbird but how many Galaxy's did Starfleet have compared to the Romulan's entire fleet of Warbirds?
The Romulans made a ship the equal of the Federation flagship and made hundreds of them.
In a one-on-one fight the two ships are evenly matched but even disregarding the fact that the Romulans are dirty cheats, Starfleet had every right to fear the D'deridex when it outnumbered their most powerful class of ships by the hundreds.
With regard to the Federation being advanced because it's peaceful, how does cooperation between races and cultures not feed into that? The Klingons and Cardassians subjugated other species and forces them into servitude while the Federation uses peaceful diplomacy and cooperation to build alliances.
My headcannon has always been that technologically, the Federation's multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary society has probably produced the most advanced civilization of its immediate neighbors. In terms of tech, at least.
As observed, a peaceful ship of exploration in the Federation's eyes is capable of going toe-to-toe with Romulan, Klingon, and Cardassian capital ships. The only forces that could match or exceed the Federation were the hyper-militaristic Dominion and the Borg (who share the Federation's advantage by other means).
If the Federation were to build out and out warships as a matter of course, they could probably blow their rivals out of the water (figuratively). Just look at the Defiant and her ability to fight much larger ships in her tiny 'guns strapped to an engine' frame. Or the Prometheus and it's, admittedly silly but on-screen powerful, Multi-Vector Assault Mode.
That's just not how the Federation normally thinks. The Federation, and Starfleet by extension, prefer nonviolent conflict resolution. They fight only when attacked or lose faith that a conflict can be headed off diplomatically.
Also it's not like the other powers have science ships distinct from the military, the few times we see ships from the Romulans, Klingons and Cardassians engaged in something that could be seen as research, it's their warships. A lot of the tools needed for exploration, conveniantly also are going to be useful on a warship (high quality scanners, good cargo bays etc)
A Galaxy may have more labs then a D'deridex but I'd not be suprised if even a Klingon Vorcha had some scentific labs aboard.
To be fair I think part of that is simply budget limits, but also that we never really explore into the other factions territories all that often. It's always in the Neutral Zone or on the boarders so always in a "war" region that we encounter them.
I'm sure within they will have science ships and the like. Perhaps even on boundaries that don't run alongside the Federation since most factions bumping up against it have a boundary that can't be expanded into
BrianDavion wrote: Also it's not like the other powers have science ships distinct from the military, the few times we see ships from the Romulans, Klingons and Cardassians engaged in something that could be seen as research, it's their warships. A lot of the tools needed for exploration, conveniantly also are going to be useful on a warship (high quality scanners, good cargo bays etc)
A Galaxy may have more labs then a D'deridex but I'd not be suprised if even a Klingon Vorcha had some scentific labs aboard.
We have seen Romulan Scout Ships, and a Klingon transport ship (allegedly full of refugees, but all of which had rather carelessly all died prior to boarding).
You could even argue that the Federation is highly reckless in sending their best and brightest off to the farthest edges of known space and risking their lives every day in exploration on a science vessel with some guns.
Meanwhile other factions send military ships, ensure that the region is protected and safe and then bring in their scientists.
Do science in the Federation and who knows what might happen to you!
Do science for the Romulans and you are kept safe! You don't see Romulans having to battle wits with a god-child every other month
Overread wrote: You could even argue that the Federation is highly reckless in sending their best and brightest off to the farthest edges of known space and risking their lives every day in exploration on a science vessel with some guns.
Meanwhile other factions send military ships, ensure that the region is protected and safe and then bring in their scientists.
Do science in the Federation and who knows what might happen to you!
Do science for the Romulans and you are kept safe! You don't see Romulans having to battle wits with a god-child every other month
you could argue that but you'd be wrong, yet againw e see D'deridex's specificly used in research missions. Having dedicated science ships seperate from military ships is a modern LUXERY.
Overread wrote: You could even argue that the Federation is highly reckless in sending their best and brightest off to the farthest edges of known space and risking their lives every day in exploration on a science vessel with some guns.
Honestly, who dreams of exploring space from behind a drone's camera?
People have mentioned this before when criticizing a setting fundamentally defined in the 70s and 80s before drones were a serious thing, but I don't see it as meaningful.
If people are going to explore, they want to actually go there. No one brags about seeing Singapore during a layover where they didn't even step off the plane, and the weirdos who do are weirdos. It's completely unsurprising Starfleet isn't filled with heavily automated drone ships. Who the hell wants that except some armchair theorist who sits around all day and never lives a single day of actual life and just comments on the Internet 24/7? It's a sort of internet hot take fresh from the Internet. If I had the chance to hop on a Starfleet ship and go explore some fething quasars, that's what I'm gonna do.
Except I suck at math so you know, they'd probably fire me XD
What about the Fereng? They are basically using armed cargo ships, mostly privately owned, and yet their most common large ship is stated to be the tactical equivalent of a Galaxy class.
If anything they'd be insanely scary if they ever turned their focus onto actual war. Considering that many wars are won and lost based on the ability to afford; they could just financially outlast most opponents.
Also lets not forget that their first encounter showed that they do have capable warriors (though they were more using whips back then than lots of advanced weapons).
With their trade systems as well they likely do have the capacity to land their hands on a lot of private and hidden tech that other races have.
If they were to pool resources over many years they could build some very fearsome warships. The main barrier is the fact that they culturally are not setup for going into largescale warfare. So they could have all the toys and no idea. Or the other risk is that they'd rely heavily on mercenaries and whilst that could allow them to make a very powerful opening gambit in war; they'd burn out quickly as even their coffers would dwindle and the various mercenary forces might not work together in the long term.
Great for fast raids but not a prolonged war.
They also seem to have escaped the Dominion War possibly the best of most races as they didn't really engage with it and likely skimmed profits off everyone. Plus the potential social changes that they were going through at the end could potentially mean a doubling of their profit-earning potential! All those women suddenly able to earn profit would likely seek it off-world where there would be less established stigma against them initially.
Just gonna think of the Star Trek Ascendancy board game when I played as Ferenghi and won. Ended up neighbors with the Klingon player and established early trade relations with him. Kept feeding him money he used to wage war on the other players while I hid in his territory and spent my way to victory. Only got into one real fight to repel a large enemy fleet that had blown thru the Klingon’s main defensive system and free the planets for the Klingon’s to retake.
I do love how DS9 took what was basically an "alien of the week" faction*; started them off as the comic relief and along the way built a deeper understanding to the point where you could still have them doing comical stuff now and then; but realise that behind it all they were a very serious race and very capable. Not to mention then presenting them going through huge social changes.
*a little mean as I think they appeared at least three or four times in TNG
They were the species Homer designed (oh god the awful acting in their debut), clawed back a bit of credibility (the remote torture of Picard), and finally made good, becoming one of the most interesting species.
The Romulans on the other hand were very much on par with the Federation in terms of power. Their Warbirds were strong and had the benefit of cloaking technology which the Romulans pioneered before any other race. Even with their losses in the Dominion War, it took the destruction of Romulus itself to take them down from their position as a major power.
IMHO, the Romulans tend to seem to always shoot their own foot. . . They are usually depicted as highly suspicious, especially of themselves, and so by "necessity" they need to keep a tight reign on basically everything. One could probably argue that, as the usual joke of everyone stealing their cloaking tech, they are so focused on their own paranoia and internal back stabbing, that they let slip too much tactical advantage, and that could include even up to ship design with the massive D'deridex and how it's generally depicted as far less maneuverable than even the "slow" Galaxy class.
Manuverability isn't super nessscary with cloak, if I was going to design a romulan warship my main focus would be excessive firepower in a single arc, with the idea of being to decloak and win the battle in one Volly
Which is the opposite theory compared to the Bird of Prey by the Klingons; which is well armed and very manoeuvrable and able to threaten ships of a far larger class than itself.
The big risk with cloaking as ST does it is that you have to have your shields down whilst cloaked. So there's always a moment of vulnerability as you decloak.
One massive assault as you decloak is a valid approach, but it also means it might only work against a single target. Even then if you miss critical systems; underestimate the power of your opponent or such - you've just blown your cover and your gamble.
In contrast less weaponry, but the ability to dive, swoop and make multiple attacks and switch your cloak on and off fairly quickly. That leaves your opponent far more vulnerable.
Almost like having different factions with different cultural inflections, tactics, and design choices makes for an interesting story.
The Romulans make their big powerful ships because they believe they're truly the superior race. This proves true when the D'deridex is a match for the top ships Starfleet can build and the Romulans outproduce those top Starfleet ships ten-to-one. The preferred tactic of Romulan captains won't always work but that's true for any captain of any starship. The fact remains that in terms of threat, a D'deridex is a bigger problem than a Galaxy because you know there's only one Starfleet ship in front of you, but you can't be sure with the D'deridex.
Got to say one thing that confused me with the Picard series was why the Romulan's had no Warbirds! I've always considered them one of the best looking ships in ST
Because Picard is not a good show. It has some good moments but it was poorly written and played itself off for maximum nostalgia points at every opportunity without any substance. Shock value for no payoff.
Overread wrote: Got to say one thing that confused me with the Picard series was why the Romulan's had no Warbirds! I've always considered them one of the best looking ships in ST
at that point the Warbird is at LEAST 40 years old and there's been a major war (that would have revealed design flaws) since, Romulus also was destroyed, these factors together make it easy eneugh to see why by this time the Romulan remnaints may have adopted a differant class of ship. partiuclarly as they seem to have gone with a handful of large command ships supplemented by smaller ships, it's possiable the massive d'deridrex and Valdore's are too hard to maintain
Overread wrote: Got to say one thing that confused me with the Picard series was why the Romulan's had no Warbirds! I've always considered them one of the best looking ships in ST
at that point the Warbird is at LEAST 40 years old and there's been a major war (that would have revealed design flaws) since, Romulus also was destroyed, these factors together make it easy eneugh to see why by this time the Romulan remnaints may have adopted a differant class of ship. partiuclarly as they seem to have gone with a handful of large command ships supplemented by smaller ships, it's possiable the massive d'deridrex and Valdore's are too hard to maintain
I can see them being hard to maintain, esp if we assume that they lost most of their primary shipyards when their homeworld was destroyed. At the same time if your faction is bad off enough that you've refugee problems over a decade later then I'd almost assume that they wouldn't have the resources to build an entirely new fleet and would be stuck with older ships pressed into service beyond their normal lifespan. Also don't forget the only reason the Enterprise D was decommissioned was because it was crash landed on a planet. Ships of that size would likely be kept in service and re-fitted over being simply replaced.
Ya, I think Star Fleet's most successful ship class is the Excelsior. It was being made for over a century. So even Starfleet has old designs that stick around. Sometimes the engineers just nail it with a design and it sticks around forever.
Gert wrote: Depends on the variant because "Bird of Prey" is a catch-all for about 8 different Klingon and Romulan ships each.
K't'inga-class, one would expect? They were in service for about 140 years.
The K''t'inga-class was seen in TMP and was an upgrade of the D7 seen in TOS and is not usually listed as a 'Bird-of-Prey'. Those are usually the K'vort and B'rel-classes that used the model seen in The Search for Spock. The Memory Beta Wiki has a list of what they believe qualifies as a 'Bird-of-Prey'.
I dunno, I like a good T’Lyn focused plot. I thought it had some good moments and overall enjoyed it. Early guess that the mystery enemy is Peanut Hamper’s return, or possibly Badgey. One of the two.
P.S. There’s a pretty good Shax focused one shot comic out this week.
I like T'lyn as well but the overall just didn't gel for me, especially having Vulkans suddenly being so psychically powerful that there sub-conscience can override almost an entire ship and practiced telepaths.
To be clear I still enjoyed it but it was one of their weaker episodes.
Another great episode, S4 has been amazing so far. T'Lyn joining the Cerritos is almost like Worf coming to Ds9, it just rounds out the cast in a way you didn't even realize was needed.
Ahtman wrote: I like T'lyn as well but the overall just didn't gel for me, especially having Vulkans suddenly being so psychically powerful that there sub-conscience can override almost an entire ship and practiced telepaths.
To be clear I still enjoyed it but it was one of their weaker episodes.
This is not the first time we've seen Vulcans do that though, the same thing happened with Sarek on the Enterprise D. They didn't pull it out of their ass just for this episode.
Lower Decks always has a legit precedent for a goof, which I think makes it better.
But I enjoyed it well enough and Lower Decks still very much sits in a strong spot on my show rankings.
Even the with all the jokes it's still Star Trek and deals with real issues.
Ah this was a fun one. I love the realistic detail that for all the talk and showing of the society becoming more progressive, they still have their conservatives because you can see at least one (conveniently censored) naked female sitting in the background.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh, and new theory. The alien ship attacking other ships isn’t destroying them, or at least not killing the crews. I’m betting they’re capturing/collecting them. They’re going too far out of their way to show them grabbing one ship from each species so far. To what end? No idea.
creeping-deth87 wrote: This is not the first time we've seen Vulcans do that though, the same thing happened with Sarek on the Enterprise D. They didn't pull it out of their ass just for this episode.
Lower Decks generally feels the most classic Trek thing that's been made in a long long time.
Whilst I really liked the Picard series for looking at the darker side of the Federation (even if it took them 3 seasons to get an ending that didn't feel rushed); Lower Decks just feels like a pure mix of classic Original and TNG with a bit of DS9 thrown in.
It legit feels like its been written by fans of the series and like it hasn't got a producer breathing down their necks to innovate in modern ways or something. Nor writers trying to change Trek into something else.
Might be also because the way how they tell a story
Picard needed a season of episodes to tell the storyline of a single TOS/TNG Episode, while LD uses that style of story telling and adds in the DS9/Voyager season arc stories
for the same reason Orville feels much more classic trek
creeping-deth87 wrote: This is not the first time we've seen Vulcans do that though, the same thing happened with Sarek on the Enterprise D. They didn't pull it out of their ass just for this episode.
It's so weird to think back to when LD first got teased and I was so very wary it was just going to be a Rick and Morty clone with annoying voices and awful characters that are all terrible people but I am delighted to say it has proved me wrong.
The stories are fun, the references are good and not heavy-handed, and the actors are great.
The entire staff for writing did change halfway through season 3 airing.
It shows, the ship mystery is honestly frustrating tbh, if it's all addressed and fixed on one episode, it will br a poor season throughline
I admit it also took a while for Lower Decks to grow on me, but they've included interesting sci-fi plots that scratch the itch. The theme this season seems to be professionalism in the workplace which I appreciate, it was always an aspect modeled in the Federation but rarely explicitly discussed. Mariner's arc is getting a bit dark though, I suppose Federation tech ironically enables some very self-destructive behavior ("just grow me another liver, Doc!").
That was... an OK episode. I can't think of any course of events where Rom could end up grand nagus, that was downright bizarre. Almost felt like a total regression of the character. I'm also not sure how many more times Mariner can be made aware of her efforts to constantly self sabotage before it gets old. We're rapidly approaching that point though.
I anticipate another seasonal holodeck/movie spoof episode where a character (Mariner) goes on a journey of self-discovery to deal with their issues.
Again.
While I've really enjoyed the movie episodes, I agree with the sentiment here. Very easy to overdo. I think they're only doing crisis points during the odd numbered seasons though, s2 did not have one.
Yeah, Zek passed the title to Rom at the end of DS9.
Rom becoming Nagus ushered in a new age for the Ferengi. With a more democratic outlook and importantly rights for women, the Alliance became more profitable than ever. Zek specifically chose Rom to be the new Nagus because no traditional Ferengi could do the job.
Rom was the opposite of a traditional Ferengi but still had the smarts to bring the Alliance even greater prestige and profit than ever before.
Yeah people easily forget that Rom is actually very smart. He's just not got the "lobes for business". However he is smart in many other ways and those new ways were what the Ferengi needed more of to advance socially.
Plus he's still likely got the support of the old Nagus and his Mother, who was basically running the Ferengi' empire near the end of the old Nagus's tenure; and who had also laid some of the groundwork for the social and management changes that Rom followed through with.
0h wow, I don't remember him becoming nagus at the end of Ds9 at all. Alright I retract my objection about that, but I still think the episode was pretty mid.
Rom's characterization is maybe a bit off, but it's fitting with the tone of Lower Decks vs the tone of DS9. And whose to say Rom would grow into his role, supported by retiring Zek and Moogie and Leeta to become a reasonably saavy leader who can use the impression that he's a dunce to his advantage?
I thought it was more fitting than not.
Can we also appreciate how hilarious it is that Boimler got addicted to Ferengi television XD
I also hope that the Tendi/Rutherford thing goes somewhere before the show ends, or at least that the writers wouldn't leave us hanging. They're so sweet >.>
Also are we ever going to address the whole Jennifer thing? Cause Mariner easily forgave the captain and her friends but I kind of hope Mariner and Jennifer get some kind of closure for how that relationship exploded at the end of S3.
And this is why I predict the next fortune t obe made in TV streaming is going to be a firm that manages to take 1 payment per month to give you credits to activate on X number of separate streaming services each month so that you can have 1 account but access multiple streaming services so you can chase your favourite shows around.
I have to say I was expecting Badgey to be behind the mystery ship attacking ships but this was a fun episode. I especially liked the twist with the B plot.
I have to say I was expecting Badgey to be behind the mystery ship attacking ships but this was a fun episode. I especially liked the twist with the B plot.
I forgot peanut hamper had been imprisoned, had them or badgey pegged as the mastermind as well, but at least I was right about them not actually being destroyed.
Enterprise got the short end of the stick.
It had a good cast and had some excellent stories but it was the tail end of three decades of non-stop Trek.
Lack of branding didn't help either. Paramount really screwed the pooch on it trying to maintain so much control.
I've said it before but listening to the Shuttlepod Show with Connor Trineer (Trip) and Dominic Keating (Malcolm) has given some great insight and they're really good together.
I always feel like the big mistake with Enterprise was that whole temporal war thing. In a series where people wanted to see how it all started, they went veering off into a war that kind of went other places .
Just Tony wrote: Made it to the episode "Cogenitor" for my Enterprise marathon. Damn, did that one hit hard...
One of my favorite Trek episodes, I like that the debate about the ethical dilemma comes after the damage has already been done. A lot of early Enterprise is them making mistakes and having to deal with the fallout.
Overread wrote: I always feel like the big mistake with Enterprise was that whole temporal war thing. In a series where people wanted to see how it all started, they went veering off into a war that kind of went other places .
The issue with Enterprise was ultimately the quality of the writing imo.
Like, every Star Trek show has ups and downs. Good episodes and bad episodes. Bad seasons and good seasons. Enterprise, unfortunately, had a high ratio of badder episodes, especially in its first 2 seasons. The stories either spun their wheels too much. Focused on manufactured drama for drama's sake. Some of them were just plan stupid ('The Communicator' could be a lesson in why the Prime Directive should exist, or it could be a lesson in just because you can't tell the truth doesn't mean you should start WWIII).
By the time Enterprise found its footing and started upping the quality of its stories and really getting the characters to work, I think too many people had made their mind so the 'bad seasons defined most of how Enterprise was remembered even though season 3 and 4 did improve the quality of the show.
I wasn't around for the first time but re-runs were a big part of being home sick from school for me for Enterprise, and honestly might have been my first foray into Trek until 2009 rolled around.
Looking back on it now, TNG started rough but was new so it took. DS9 was rough but had (IMO) the best Trek cast it developed really well. Voyager was rough and stayed rough. Enterprise didn't really stand a chance after Voyager and the studio was really heavy-handed with it.
It was the first Trek series to not allow the actors to ever direct an episode which by that point was a staple for the cast. Dominic Keating even got the last hurdle before the execs decided they didn't want it to happen anymore.
Throw in the ditching of "Star Trek" as the brand until S3(?) definitely didn't help.
But honestly? I think people were also just tired, both show staff who had been running with Trek since TNG or DS9 and fans.
The writers on Enterprise didn’t really have a chance until the 3rd season or so. You can see the fudgy fingerprints of the producers all over the series, from the temporal Cold War to the Akira-shaped Enterprise, from the stale Voyager formula scripts to the catsuit.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The writers on Enterprise didn’t really have a chance until the 3rd season or so. You can see the fudgy fingerprints of the producers all over the series, from the temporal Cold War to the Akira-shaped Enterprise, from the stale Voyager formula scripts to the catsuit.
You can definitely see them trying to copy that Seven of Nine energy in T'pol's character early on.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The writers on Enterprise didn’t really have a chance until the 3rd season or so. You can see the fudgy fingerprints of the producers all over the series, from the temporal Cold War to the Akira-shaped Enterprise, from the stale Voyager formula scripts to the catsuit.
You can definitely see them trying to copy that Seven of Nine energy in T'pol's character early on.
Well they did have the decontamation chamber for some cheap thrills
A lot of early Enterprise episodes had some fun in-Universe worldbuilding that felt very grounded. For example there's a pretty extended scene where the bridge crew record a video message for elementary school kids about how the ship works that was fun. Much of it felt like a cheap Ken Burns documentary recreation of how the Federation was founded. That said I think they really found their stride in Season 3 and 4.
That was my favourite episode in the last couple weeks. I actually kinda liked it had nothing to do with the mystery ship, that's been dragged on for too long. I'm really hoping T'Lyn comes back for the last 2 episodes.
I'm floored they brought back such a deep cut character. You have to really nerd out on trek to recognize a character like Locarno. Really enjoyed the episode and I'm so glad they brought back both the Klingon and T'Lyn for this one.
I do think s3 was better, but 4 hasn't been bad at the very least.
I was also excited to see Ma'ah return to the show and get some moments to be badass. My favorite Klingon since Martok by far.
And yeah.
I feel like trek fans probably know who Locarno is by the sheer virtue that they recognize Robert Duncan and that whole thing highlights the character more than most 1-offs. Even so, that is absolutely some low key brilliance on the part of the writing team linking all these things from the past shows together in a way that actually makes a bit of sense.
Also probably should have expected they'd tie all this back in the end to the actual episode Lower Decks that inspired the series.
Though this also means Mariner is like, in at least 30s and way older than the rest of the cast as a character which is a bit jarring. It was one thing when it seemed like her career stalled out for a few years but a whole decade damn girl. It is nice to see her character arc continuing to payoff though.
I'd also argue that unlike a lot of shows, it's naturally progressing with some good plot points.
I would be fully on board to do another season of LD because the characters are so well rounded.
Boimler got to be a captain, Mariner isn't self destructive all the time, Rutherford is going to have to deal with the loss of his best friend, and T'lyn has accepted that the Cerittos is the place for her.
Also Tendi doing Orion things should be fun.
I think the other thing is that it feels like a ST show made by ST fans and people embracing ST for what it is. It's doing some new stuff along the way, but its not trying to re-invent ST as something else entirely (indeed they've poked fun at that a few times). A lot of the storylines play within what was created before, rather than trying to re-invent the wheel every other episode.
It just feels very Trek whilst so many of the newer shows keep trying to rebuild things. Either pushing super far into the future to get away from everything; or going into the past but changing loads of details to tell their own story. Or just straight up doing the whole "lets make an alternate timeline for everything" angle.
The result is a good few of the big new shows feel like they want the ST fanbase but don't really want the baggage of its past. They want to make their own sci-fi show doing its own thing or just take the ST core and go way off the deep end of crazy ideas with it.
Just finished Lower Decks myself. It is one of my favorite Trek shows but with the crossover with Strange New Worlds you can't ignore this is canon now. So like, the captain of the Cerritos really did invite an alien captain to dress up as Mark Twain on the holodeck and talk in a southern accent? They may have to turn down the zany just one notch...
Also, I guess in my headcanon, Tom Paris is Locarno he just changed his name. His backstory makes sense for Paris. IIRC he was actually supposed to be Locarno but they had to change the name otherwise they'd have to pay some writer royalties on every episode of Voyager. That makes no sense to me but I guess it does to lawyers...
Through not fault of her own, Janeway finds her and her crew stranded, albeit with the means to get home.
That’s depressing enough. They then encounter a really annoying being as Morale Officer. A being that can’t possibly relate to the crew’s predicament in any meaningful way. Because reasons.
I mean it’s established early on that the equally crap Kazon can’t possibly compete with Voyager. Yet…let’s keep this pointless, irritating, incompetent tosspot aboard.
I guess Janeway felt the crew hadn’t suffered enough.
Over the holidays binged the last season of LD and both seasons of SNW. Loved both. The remastered 1701 "dash nothing" might be my favourite rendition of the E.
So we’re more than halfway through DS9, and would like to check out Picard S3 and Lower Decks next. Which TNG episodes do you feel are essential viewing for a newcomer before moving on to those series?
PS: Also, just found out Keiko hate is a thing, and I totally get it. Supposedly the actors playing the O’Briens didn’t get along and that’s why the couple has negative chemistry. Does it feel anyone else like the writers had a grudge against her?
I think its more that as she wasn't a core character, the only time she gets brought out is when there's a disagreement/argument/strife in their relationship. So we only see her in a negative light or when something is going wrong/extreme. The rest of the time she's off-screen.
Keiko rarely has moments where she seems to be anything but an argumentative force for the chief. There are a few moments, like when she tricks Julian and Miles into spending time together or the episode where Molly ends up in some time warp thing. In those we get to see that the O'Brien couple do get along.
But in most episodes their marriage seems to be rocky and littered with unhappiness, and it's often hard to see specifically why they stay married imo aside maybe from their children.
Which TNG episodes do you feel are essential viewing for a newcomer before moving on to those series?
Some choice TNG Episodes; Measure of a Man, The Drumhead, Yesterday's Enterprise, Best of Both Worlds 1 & 2 (introduced the Borg), Darmok, The Defector, Chain of Command 1 & 2, and definitely do watch Tapestry. EDIT: Also see Just Tony's comment below. He is correct.
Before watching Picard watch Tapestry and Unification 1 & 2. These episodes will help detail Picard as a person and his relationship with the Romulans.
There's a series of episodes that detail Worf's story before he joined the DS9 cast; Sins of the Father, Reuinion, Redemption 1 & 2, and Rightful Heir.
The episodes Ensign Ro and The Wounded serve as prequels to Deep Space Nine, introducing the first iterations of the Bajorans and the Cardassians.
Watch the following episodes bbefore watching Lower Decks; Lower Decks (the TNG episode that inspired the later series), and The First Duty (the first appearance of 'Tom Paris' *whistling*).
Actually "Q Who?" was the first onscreen appearance of the Borg, with 1st season episode "The Neutral Zone" hinting at them with the starbase disappearances.
Keiko rarely has moments where she seems to be anything but an argumentative force for the chief. There are a few moments, like when she tricks Julian and Miles into spending time together or the episode where Molly ends up in some time warp thing. In those we get to see that the O'Brien couple do get along.
But in most episodes their marriage seems to be rocky and littered with unhappiness, and it's often hard to see specifically why they stay married imo aside maybe from their children.
I think we have to believe that outside of those conflict moments, their relationship is generally positive. It's just that their relationship isn't a core focus of the whole series and they just didn't inject those positive moments because they weren't "something is happening" moments. It's a bit like we only get one episode in the whole run which shows Miles going through a whole day fixing things. Small and big things. The entire rest of the time we just see him mostly fixing big problems that arise one by one.
It could be said to be a flaw that we don't see a happy marriage all the time, but we do get those positive moments and in general I think the writers just make the assumption that if they aren't focusing on something then things in the background are "going well"
Star Trek has been doing quite well on TV of late but it’s time to beam back to the big screen. While a fourth Star Trek film on the Kelvin timeline is still in the works, now a new project has been revealed too.
Deadline broke the news, and while there are no specifics on what the film will entail, it’s described as an origin story. We already saw the origins of all the main characters in Abrams’ original, so we are making the educated guess that Starfleet would be front and center.
As for that latest news, is Abrams personally involved with the new movie, or just his production company?
Automatically Appended Next Post: On Keiko: I don’t count the time she tricked Miles and Julian as an example of a good relationship. First of all, it was manipulative, and she seemed very comfortable with that. Second, why did she get them to spend time together? Oh right, because she had just returned that day, seven months pregnant, from a year away from Miles, and he wanted to spend time with her. She was not cool with that.
Of course they’re talking to JJ Abrams despite the fact that nobody has ever been particularly fond of his take on the material, Wars or Trek, and in the years since the Rise of Skywalker he’s done almost nothing and nobody’s missed him. To add insult to injury it appears they are doing yet another origin story movie.
I can't fathom how a movie about the origins of Starfleet can be anything but contradictory with previous material. Which never ends well in Star Trek.
Also why? That's gotta be the laziest premise they could come up with.
Then again, maybe I'm just tired of the timeline of the Star Trek property seeming to constantly go backwards. Why the hell is a science fiction series constantly going in reverse in its own chronology?
because modern Hollywood is avoiding all risks and as nostalgia sells, doing "origins" and reboots is the way to make money
yet we can expect another re-design and no big plan behind it so just a combination of good scenes that have nothing to do with each other hold together by low quality fillers
(and just because it worked for 1 TV show)
Look at how many times the Marvel super hero films are just origin stories followed by one or two sequels and then either a big group up film or two or another reboot to the origin story again. Spiderman did it 3 times (the 4th and I think 5th we are on now at least changed some things around), Hulk did them almost back to back.
I think its also because Origin stories write themselves, they don't have to "worry" about losing people because it starts "from the beginning" as such.
And yeah ST has some odd elements in its writing. Ever since Voyager they've had this idea that they've basically explored the whole Galaxy. That's part why Voyager was thrown to the other quadrant. So for some reason the writers feel like its hit the limits of range; that there is no more beyond
Heck the 2nd season of Picard had that huge portal from what we presume is another Galaxy and I was 100% prepared for that to be the start of a new season "exploration of the new Galaxy" End of Season 3 it could even be with Seven and her crew/ship doing that adventure.
Not only all that but his characters also don't feel like Startrek characters, nor behave like them.
Heck he couldn't even master the Triad of Kirk, Spock and McCoy over several films. Spock just steals the show every single time; McCoy is almost entirely ignored and pushed to tertiary character level and Kirk is generally a bumbling comic act until the last few moments of the film where his "charisma" lets him take over and somehow win things even though he displayed no real such talent leading up to it.
The chemistry between them is all wrong and unbalanced.
But ultimately none of them behave like mature ST characters that we see in other films. To be fair this is also something we see with a lot of the very new trek series. Granted the Original Series did have a lot more wild moments in it and Kirk was generally shown to be more of a flirt and rough-and-ready captain; but he still had a lot of maturity in his position as well.
Modern Trek creators seem to have shifted the Vulcans from mysterious uncaring/unemotional to just stern and mature .
Also I'm never a fan of "these adults who originally met up for the first time as adults were also apparently childhood and university friends who just somehow kind of forgot that they were " As the excuse/reason behind why origin stories end up having the same cast of named characters
I treat the Abrams Trek as a "What If...?" and I am content with it. It doesn't replace the Prime timeline for me. And as far as the prequel Naysayers? Both Enterprise and Brave New Worlds are good. Disco is a good counterpoint, though...
BobtheInquisitor wrote:Thanks for the episode recommendations!
As for that latest news, is Abrams personally involved with the new movie, or just his production company?
Automatically Appended Next Post: On Keiko: I don’t count the time she tricked Miles and Julian as an example of a good relationship. First of all, it was manipulative, and she seemed very comfortable with that. Second, why did she get them to spend time together? Oh right, because she had just returned that day, seven months pregnant, from a year away from Miles, and he wanted to spend time with her. She was not cool with that.
Waitaminit...
1 year > 7 months. That means she got pregnant 5 months after the last time she saw Miles. Was that an error or am I in for one hell of a surprise when I finally get around to binging DS9?
The episode has Miles cleaning up his bachelor pad because it has been a year. However, when she mentions she’s pregnant, it comes up that they had one liaison together during the whole year, and Mike’s keeps saying things like “one time!” Or “I thought we would have to try longer for a second child.”
It’s also the second episode in which Keiko returns from an extended stay on Bajor and immediately gets tired of Miles trying to spend time with her. But this time she didn’t ring up her close botany friend on Bajor who always makes her laugh.
TBF, there wasn't a whole lot of space to explore Miles and Keiko when they already had Bashir and Dax, Sisko being lonely, Odo and Kira, Dukat and Kira, Odo and Quark, Garak and Bashir, Bashir and Leeta, Rom and Leeta, Dax and Worf, Sisko and Cassidy, Odo and the Female Changeling, and Quark and Latinum.
Plus every single one off character was more interesting than Keiko.
Exactly. We see her in moments of conflict within the story because those are interesting character development moments. The rest of the time we just don't see her. She's not a one-shot character, she's just a side character and so gets limited development.
In the end their relationship might not be all hugs and kisses every few moments, but it is likely positive.
Consider that the Federation has no real barriers to divorce; there's no state religion to follow; no social stigma; no clear financial pressures.
Though there does seem to be a general push toward what many would consider a Christian/western style relationship and family development within the Federation, but other than that there's no real overt pressures for them to remain together if they chose to separate.
Plus their relationship clearly seems to survive quite a lot of separation in general. Perhaps part of it is that they spend a lot of time apart and then have to settle back into actually being in a relationship and dealing with another person in their life.
I agree that the intention is for us to accept they have a good marriage and love each other. Unfortunately, the writing and the negative chemistry/body language paint a different picture. If it’s true the actors didn’t get along and that the writers had a “Miles must suffer” policy, then the subtext may even be a deliberate choice to some degree.
Ah yes, "Tonight on DS9 Miles O'Brien gets put through a woodchipper, reconstituted with a transporter, and then kicked in the nards by a Cardassian child".
My favourite.
... this upcoming "Star Trek" film, which is destined to examine the early days of Starfleet a generation or so after the events of the prime universe's "Star Trek: Enterprise," from a screenplay written by the king of literary mash-ups, Seth Grahame-Smith ("Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," "Abraham Lincoln," Vampire Hunter," "The Lego Batman Movie").
J.J. Abrams will act as producer under his familiar Bad Robot banner.
I'm a little concerned that Seth Grahame-Smith is more of a comic/horror writer than he is sci-fi or "serious" stuff writer.
Which if you pair with JJ Abrams and his earlier renditions of characters like Kirk in his reboot makes me a bit worried that we are going to get another rather juvenile take on the ST universe and the start of Starfleet.
They are going back to "prime universe" (how I hate that that's become a term!) which is a boon, but I'm still worried they'll mess it up somehow. Heck I'd argue even Enterprise messed itself up by jumping for all that Temporal War thing
Yeah, its just that article theorizing that it will be an origin story of Starfleet probably because whoever wrote that article never watched Enterprise. I agree though that we good for prequels for. like forever, with Star Trek. Not that big a fan of Picard but at least it did make the timeline.... go forward through time.
It seems the Star Trek timeline is catching up with the real world.
I was just watching the ds9 episode where Sisko, Dax and Bashir go “back in time” to 2024.
Can’t remember the title, but it was the one about the “Bell Riots” where the dystopia that is our period (August 30, 2024 I think) starts a period of civil unrest that ends up, in some weird way, becoming the cornerstone of the Federation.
Didn’t think times were quite that rough, but considering the price of gas and groceries, who knows? We might just get there.
So, what are YOU planning on doing to usher in the Golden Age? Or make things worse if you’re the Khan Noonien Singh type?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just looked it up. “Past Tense” was its name.
I find it interesting that the episode accurately predicted the significant role the rising cost of living and a stagnating labor market would be in 2024. Apathy on the part of the broader population. Use of force by police. The growing gap between affluent and subsistent living that have been slow rolling through the world as the middle class backslides.
Obviously the situation in the US isn't as dystopic as the episode presents, but I find it neat that they correctly predicted some the social stresses/controversies that are running around right now.
Granted back in the 90s, between the LA Riots, the MOVE bombings, NAFTA controversies, maybe it's not that impressive. Most of what we're dealing with now we were dealing with then too. They just weren't as prominent in culture and public discourse at the time the episode was made.
But that's the cool thing about DS9, imo. Homefront and Paradise Lost take on new meaning in a post-9/11 world. The characters of Dukat and Wynn have imo only become more relevant over time. The Ship is still a great story episode about the way large conflicts grow from distrust and the bad blood that results. DS9 was a solid series with a lot of good episodes and even some of the mediocre ones still speak to the world we live in.
One question, and I didn’t even think about it until we started this discussion. Why was the timeline unaffected?
In every other ST time travel episode that I can think of, even the slightest shift in things, even if it’s just some social worker getting run over by a bus, instantly changes the entire future.
But in this one, Kira and O’Brien are just going on talking about what happened in the “present” universe, and apparently nothing has changed.
So why isn’t Quark all of a sudden the Mentat-Ferengi Emperor of the all-conquering Bolians? Why hasn’t anything changed?
Perhaps more importantly, since nothing has changed, why don’t they do the smart thing and leave well enough alone, rather than trying to fix what ain’t broken?
There's a few time-line moments where in general I think we have to assume that the timeline being interrupted and changed is part of the constant timeline.
There's also a few spots in Earth's history where in general they don't mind messing with things (eg modern times) because of WW3 basically destroying so much that its like a restart button.
So in theory the timeline was always changed by that time-jump event. Perhaps there was a point at which the time jump never had actually happened and the future was different, but then it happened and no grand overseeing power (eg the Q) was concerned enough to see it fixed (or they approved/encouraged the change)
Timeline alterations are always a bit on the messy side and its why I always liked how, historically, ST kept them to one episode events where at the end mostly everything is back to normal. Cause once you start messing with time it gets, well, messy
NapoleonInSpace wrote: I totally agree that timeline changes are a mess, but, as you point out, once you’ve let the genie out the bottle, whatcha gonna do?
Really, I think they work well for humorous episodes and not much else.
I think they work well as single episode and can be very serious, but they are like Q events. Once you let it out of the bottle, you have to put it back at the end too. That's why I always appreciated Q storylines. Q can mess EVERYTHING up way more than time travel. Yet each time the Q are used they are taken out of the bottle - played around with - and then put back in the bottle at the end. Even the Picard series achieved this. Lessons are learned, a few changes are made but most are made to the characters developing and evolving as people and learning about themselves and the universe, rather than changing it all. What changes that do happen are often on the personal level not the "Oh and we remade Starfleet and the Universe"
Of course you can also do Timetravel badly in that regard - like how Enterprise went from the founding of the Federation era and early first contacts to a Time War where you already know they have to win by the end (because we already know the future of the setting).
My ‘favorite’ take on altering timelines has to be when Molly fell into a time hole and then spent 10 years completely isolated, ending up feral and broken.
Miles: we can just reset the time thingy and beam her out before her ten life-ruining years of tortuous solitary confinement. *knowing thousand yard stare*
Doctor: That would be unethical. We can’t take those years from her. It would be like this gibbering shell never existed.
I still like my pet theory that the Mirror Universe is the true universe.
See, their actions match what we might expect. See alien spaceship, steal alien spaceship, figure out how it works, head out into the stars to steal more tech.
That’s Dirty Little Tech Monkey 101. Spesh given they were survivors of a horrendous war suddenly passed a shiny new weapon.
And it was a causal loop of The Borg’s failed attack, and Cochran finding out “then we become this wonderful thing, and spread peace and plenty” that stayed their hands, creating the “Prime” universe.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: So we’re more than halfway through DS9, and would like to check out Picard S3 and Lower Decks next. Which TNG episodes do you feel are essential viewing for a newcomer before moving on to those series?
Have you watched Voyager? Unfortunately, you could make the case you need to watch almost all of Voyager to watch Picard. At least when 7 of 9 becomes part of the cast.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: So we’re more than halfway through DS9, and would like to check out Picard S3 and Lower Decks next. Which TNG episodes do you feel are essential viewing for a newcomer before moving on to those series?
Have you watched Voyager? Unfortunately, you could make the case you need to watch almost all of Voyager to watch Picard. At least when 7 of 9 becomes part of the cast.
I think she carries herself well in the Picard series, but I do agree if you've no understanding of who she is she will seem somewhat hollow in Picard because she's presented and used as a mature character, not a fresh new one.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: So we’re more than halfway through DS9, and would like to check out Picard S3 and Lower Decks next. Which TNG episodes do you feel are essential viewing for a newcomer before moving on to those series?
Have you watched Voyager? Unfortunately, you could make the case you need to watch almost all of Voyager to watch Picard. At least when 7 of 9 becomes part of the cast.
I think she carries herself well in the Picard series, but I do agree if you've no understanding of who she is she will seem somewhat hollow in Picard because she's presented and used as a mature character, not a fresh new one.
Ya, in fact she might be the best of Picard just like she was the best part of Voyager.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: So we’re more than halfway through DS9, and would like to check out Picard S3 and Lower Decks next. Which TNG episodes do you feel are essential viewing for a newcomer before moving on to those series?
Have you watched Voyager? Unfortunately, you could make the case you need to watch almost all of Voyager to watch Picard. At least when 7 of 9 becomes part of the cast.
I think she carries herself well in the Picard series, but I do agree if you've no understanding of who she is she will seem somewhat hollow in Picard because she's presented and used as a mature character, not a fresh new one.
Ya, in fact she might be the best of Picard just like she was the best part of Voyager.
She does really well in Picard and honestly I'd love to see her captain her own ship on a series!
In fact its such a Trek thing that someone who basically got brought in because the producers wanted "big boobies sell" went on to just star because of her acting and character. It would be awesome to see her then as the series lead in an exploratory season .
BobtheInquisitor wrote: My ‘favorite’ take on altering timelines has to be when Molly fell into a time hole and then spent 10 years completely isolated, ending up feral and broken.
Miles: we can just reset the time thingy and beam her out before her ten life-ruining years of tortuous solitary confinement. *knowing thousand yard stare*
Doctor: That would be unethical. We can’t take those years from her. It would be like this gibbering shell never existed.
Meanwhile, on Voyager: "feth this Tuvix who is a separate, conscious entity to the beings that he was accidentally created from, kill him and get us those two back."
Janeway really only became a character I liked in Prodigy, where she was out of focus enough you could just enjoy her absolute MOM energy but she wasn't constantly flipping her moral principles incoherently.
LordofHats wrote: Janeway really only became a character I liked in Prodigy, where she was out of focus enough you could just enjoy her absolute MOM energy but she wasn't constantly flipping her moral principles incoherently.
But that's just a hologram of Janeway... The holodeck AI probably stabilized her personality.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: My ‘favorite’ take on altering timelines has to be when Molly fell into a time hole and then spent 10 years completely isolated, ending up feral and broken.
Miles: we can just reset the time thingy and beam her out before her ten life-ruining years of tortuous solitary confinement. *knowing thousand yard stare*
Doctor: That would be unethical. We can’t take those years from her. It would be like this gibbering shell never existed.
Meanwhile, on Voyager: "feth this Tuvix who is a separate, conscious entity to the beings that he was accidentally created from, kill him and get us those two back."
You make it sound like saving two friends is an irrational choice (and their loss trivial or irrelevant) rather than blindly hoping that a hybridized industrial accident will magically work out over the long term (or even the medium-to-short term), and that any potential physical or mental complications simply won't happen (with no real ability to predict if the fusion will stick or be benign). Transporter accidents tend not to have a happy history.
Not sure how much damage its premise that Vulcan society is basically a non stop sitcom where everybody is Sheldon Cooper will do to the property in the long run, but it's fun.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: My ‘favorite’ take on altering timelines has to be when Molly fell into a time hole and then spent 10 years completely isolated, ending up feral and broken.
Miles: we can just reset the time thingy and beam her out before her ten life-ruining years of tortuous solitary confinement. *knowing thousand yard stare*
Doctor: That would be unethical. We can’t take those years from her. It would be like this gibbering shell never existed.
Meanwhile, on Voyager: "feth this Tuvix who is a separate, conscious entity to the beings that he was accidentally created from, kill him and get us those two back."
You make it sound like saving two friends is an irrational choice (and their loss trivial or irrelevant) rather than blindly hoping that a hybridized industrial accident will magically work out over the long term (or even the medium-to-short term), and that any potential physical or mental complications simply won't happen (with no real ability to predict if the fusion will stick or be benign). Transporter accidents tend not to have a happy history.
I think arguing that a sentient, conscious being, capable of making its own choices and voicing its own desires, can be killed on the basis of hypothetical potential physical or mental complications is immoral and unethical. This also isn't the only time that Janeway did this either. Her forcibly disconnecting 7 of 9 from the Borg, against 7's own wishes, and refusing to return her afterwards, again against 7's own wishes, was also a denial of autonomy. You can argue that 7 was better off outside the Borg, but was that Janeway's choice to make? White slavers made the argument that slavery in western nations was better for african people than freedom in their own countries, that it was for their own good to be enslaved so they could be "civilised", the wishes of the slave were discarded as others "knew better".
Let's reframe it. Two crew members are dead, Janeway is offered the choice to bring them back by sacrificing a different crew member. That crew member does not wish to be sacrificed, and rightly points out that they are a sentient being and have all the rights of any other member of the federation, she kills them anyway. That is what happened. The crew of the Enterprise didn't just decide to kill the alternate Riker created by a transporter accident in case he caused problems in the future. They recognised that he was a being protected by the laws of the Federation.
It raises the question of are we okay with authority stripping people of their own right to self determination, of their own right to exist?
A Town Called Malus wrote: It raises the question of are we okay with authority stripping people of their own right to self determination, of their own right to exist?
If they aren't human, regardless of the airs they put on, absolutely: veryone know only humans have souls.
If a slave wants to remain with their abusive owner is it right to separate them by force; or to allow their return to their owner?
Many would argue that its in the best long term interests that the slave be separated, educated and given their independence.
Thus you can make the same argument for 7 of 9 being forcefully kept away from the Borg. She was captured by them as an infant and was never given choice. Once part of the Borg she had zero free will and choice in her life. That's not just akin to slavery, that's almost perfect slavery.
So if anything preventing her from returning to the Borg, even if it caused her short term pains, was indeed the right choice for the general morality of Starfleet.
Also lets not forget, short term alliances of desperation aside, the Federation is at War with the Borg. Whilst its not like the Dominion War, mostly because the Borg are so far away, the Borg and Federation are not and have never been at peace. The closest you get is ex-borg who are released from the collective and the unique setup established in Picard Season 2 where a separate splinter of the Borg evolved which based their assimilation on choice rather than force. It likely raises the question of if the Borg term should be a racial or social one
Tuvix was a good example of what Voyager could have been if the writers hadn't been lazy or afraid.
Voyager should have been taking losses and adding new members to the crew even as background characters.
Difficult decisions should have been commonplace not the rarity.
I'm not saying it should have been a gritty edgefest with psycho maniacs but the fact that the Maquis crew turn Starfleet almost immediately is pretty insane.
Throw in the fact that the end crew manifest is actually higher than the original and the casualties are basically equal, nothing ever actually seems to go wrong for Voyager.
At least by Enterprise, the writers learned how to do it properly with the Xindi arc.
The core problem with Voyage is that the producers basically wanted to do Season 1-2 style TNG. Yet they gave it more of a Battle Star style of setup.
It also followed the super strong story telling of DS9. So basically they set everything up for a long story arc with loads of changes and struggles and then just kind of tried to make it alien of the week.
The result was a bit messy because you never really felt them struggle or survive; nor the strains of two crews thrust together or anything. You got the odd episode; but by the next one Voyager would be repaired up; the crew healed and the only real sense of difference was that Kneelix happened to grow food for them (which in itself always felt strained because replicators).
You never even got things like the interior of the ship changing much save for when they added Seven. Everything is neat, tidy and ship-shape. No open panels or rigged up bits of equipment because they ran out of X or Y
Honestly for some reason the show producers keep wanting to do Alien of the week and that's totally fine. The problem is they keep thinking that everything is explored everywhere so they keep throwing mad ideas as the wall. Other side of the Galaxy; alternate timelines; historical shows etc... The vastness of space escapes their imagination somewhat as they've given a sense that everything is known, explored and discovered.
They could easily have done a ship through the Wormhole exploring the far reaches of the Delta Quadrant.
As I’ve wibbled about before? They should’ve leant into the BSG type thing.
Voyager is pulled through as happens. But, thanks to its neural gel pack things, suffers significantly less damage than the other ships which have also been pulled through. Period of negotiations and that tech is shared with the others, leading to a rag-tag fleet of Alpha and perhaps Beta Quadrant ships beginning the long voyage home.
From there you have a wider pool of crews, the potential for clashing cultures and personalities. Ships and crews can be lost, technology purloined and developed and so on and so forth.
Yeah, Voyager should have been “Year of Hell” the whole way through.
On the timeline changes, I always like the approach taking in Dune; time has momentum and although you might alter minor details, it takes a really significant interference (or interference at a very key point) to change the general flow. MDG’s head cannon for prime vs mirror universe works well in that context.
First two episodes are up. And it’s, fine. As a sci-fo it’s pretty solid. But in terms of Trek, still a bit too much of a departure for me, tech wise. I particularly don’t like the floaty nacelle and transform-a-ship gubbins.
LordofHats wrote: Hopefully Lower Decks S5 comes to our streaming screens this summer. Don't know if we've gotten an official release date yet.
I’m hoping Lower Decks is deleted from reality entirely.
Crap animation. Low rent voice acting. Scripts from the floor sweepings of Voyager, which itself was scripted by the floor sweeping of the TNG script writers room.
I utterly loathe Lower Decks. Especially the animation, where even stage school brats wouldn’t recognise the emotions it’s meant to convey.
Disco S4 (the one I couldn’t stomach) might be Bloody Awful. But at least those involve have some kind of emotional range. And some sod has put in something approaching effort.
Crap animation. Low rent voice acting. Scripts from the floor sweepings of Voyager, which itself was scripted by the floor sweeping of the TNG script writers room.
I utterly loathe Lower Decks. Especially the animation, where even stage school brats wouldn’t recognise the emotions it’s meant to convey.
'
And yet the vast majority of Star Trek fans and critics like Lower Decks more than STD. It must really chap your tushy that as much as you hate LD it is still a more beloved and anticipated series than that dumpster fire.
AduroT wrote: So apparently season four of Orville is happening. No word on where or when.
I have to say in general I've never really liked anything Seth makes. However clips of Orville and the fact that its gone from basically a full on joke spoof into something that honestly embodies a lot of classic Trek themes it strikes me as crazy that the "spoof" series is actually turning out to be much more classic Trek than what the Trek creators can make these days.
The first two seasons of Orville are Great. They have some really good and abundant humor, but it’s Not Family Guy, and we also get really great “Star Trek” kind of stories and stuff. Season three after they left Fox isn’t Bad, but it’s not as good. Way less humor, some episodes downright depressing. The season premiere is 90 minutes on suicide. I’m hoping season four is closer in two to the first two, but I’d still watch another season like three because it still had good stories in there.
AduroT wrote: So apparently season four of Orville is happening. No word on where or when.
I have to say in general I've never really liked anything Seth makes. However clips of Orville and the fact that its gone from basically a full on joke spoof into something that honestly embodies a lot of classic Trek themes it strikes me as crazy that the "spoof" series is actually turning out to be much more classic Trek than what the Trek creators can make these days.
I don't think he ever intended for it to be a spoof but got the studio believe that he was in order to get it produced. "I'm Seth McFarlane all I do is make wacky comedies and I want to make a Star Trek show" to which they assumed this would also be a wacky comedy, but they were ,all of them, deceived, for a more considered show was planned.
Crap animation. Low rent voice acting. Scripts from the floor sweepings of Voyager, which itself was scripted by the floor sweeping of the TNG script writers room.
I utterly loathe Lower Decks. Especially the animation, where even stage school brats wouldn’t recognise the emotions it’s meant to convey.
'
And yet the vast majority of Star Trek fans and critics like Lower Decks more than STD. It must really chap your tushy that as much as you hate LD it is still a more beloved and anticipated series than that dumpster fire.
Nah, to each their own.
For I am privy to an ancient Media Art. A technique utterly unknown to Mary Whitehouse, Moral Majority, One Million Moms Well We Say One Million We Actually Mean A Few And By Moms It’s More By Way Of Grumpy Middle Aged Men With Seemingly Nothing To Better To Do.
That secret, Dear Dakkanaut? Not watching stuff I don’t like or find objectionable. For I…seemingly alone….I know the location of The Button What Changes The Channel Or Otherwise Let’s Me Change What I’m Watching, So If I’m Not Enjoying It I Can Pick Something Else Instead.
AduroT wrote: So apparently season four of Orville is happening. No word on where or when.
Oh wow. Thought for sure it was done.
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AduroT wrote: The first two seasons of Orville are Great. They have some really good and abundant humor, but it’s Not Family Guy, and we also get really great “Star Trek” kind of stories and stuff. Season three after they left Fox isn’t Bad, but it’s not as good. Way less humor, some episodes downright depressing. The season premiere is 90 minutes on suicide. I’m hoping season four is closer in two to the first two, but I’d still watch another season like three because it still had good stories in there.
To each his own I guess like MDG is saying. Hard disagree with him on Lower Decks and I think Orville's S3 is the best by far. The first 2 seasons are just prep for season 3 which fully realizes all of its ongoing storylines.
Crap animation. Low rent voice acting. Scripts from the floor sweepings of Voyager, which itself was scripted by the floor sweeping of the TNG script writers room.
I utterly loathe Lower Decks. Especially the animation, where even stage school brats wouldn’t recognise the emotions it’s meant to convey.
'
And yet the vast majority of Star Trek fans and critics like Lower Decks more than STD. It must really chap your tushy that as much as you hate LD it is still a more beloved and anticipated series than that dumpster fire.
Nah, to each their own.
For I am privy to an ancient Media Art. A technique utterly unknown to Mary Whitehouse, Moral Majority, One Million Moms Well We Say One Million We Actually Mean A Few And By Moms It’s More By Way Of Grumpy Middle Aged Men With Seemingly Nothing To Better To Do.
That secret, Dear Dakkanaut? Not watching stuff I don’t like or find objectionable. For I…seemingly alone….I know the location of The Button What Changes The Channel Or Otherwise Let’s Me Change What I’m Watching, So If I’m Not Enjoying It I Can Pick Something Else Instead.
My apologies if I misunderstood. If you had just said "it's not to my taste", or equivalent, there would have been no issue. Instead you were caustic and insulting and thus came across as wanting to be treated as someone who was caustic and insulting. It's a little hard to buy the "oh I'm so sophisticated I just leave things I don't like alone" after going out of your way to be obnoxious. I'm sure it assuages your ego but it comes across as bad faith.
For what it's worth I started watching Lower Decks with my daughter because she wanted to see the animated show after catching the Strange New Worlds episode with Boimler and Mariner in it, But we had to shut it off due to the severe amount of innuendo and profanity included in the series. Even the stuff that was bleeped out was giving her some really uncomfortable vibes. What I'd like is a Trek series that I could watch with her and not have to shut stuff off because of grossly inappropriate stuff that's crammed in there.
I argue that you don't need to compete with Quenton Tarantino movies to tell a story.
I find it a bit odd it still has to be pointed out that "animated" doesn't mean "made for children". Of course I'm also surprised by the comparison of Quentin Tarantino and Lower Decks, but ç’est la vie.
I didn't have the sensor the original series, and I barely had the sensor any of the live action series after that up until Discovery. Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks were the beginning of me not watching Star Trek with my kids because there was too much inappropriate content. That is enough for me to refuse to accept it as the best Trek ever as accessibility to the masses would be one of my highest benchmark points.
Just Tony wrote: I didn't have the sensor the original series, and I barely had the sensor any of the live action series after that up until Discovery. Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks were the beginning of me not watching Star Trek with my kids because there was too much inappropriate content. That is enough for me to refuse to accept it as the best Trek ever as accessibility to the masses would be one of my highest benchmark points.
The issue isn't that it is something you aren't comfortable showing your kids, that is your choice and perfectly reasonable, but it isn't remotely on par with a Quentin Tarantino film. That is just asinine.
Despite it not being accurate since at least the dawn of Beavis and Butthead, there’s still an assumption “animation = kid friendly”.
Add in Star Trek, and confusing Lower Decks with Prodigy, and we can see where genuine confusion might arise.
We as Nerds know Lower Decks and Prodigy are different shows. And many of us will know they have very different target audience and content. But to the Man In The Street? Trek and animation is kind of a child friendly safe assumption.
Just Tony wrote: I didn't have the sensor the original series, and I barely had the sensor any of the live action series after that up until Discovery. Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks were the beginning of me not watching Star Trek with my kids because there was too much inappropriate content. That is enough for me to refuse to accept it as the best Trek ever as accessibility to the masses would be one of my highest benchmark points.
I watched 3 episodes of Lower Decks because I heard folks saying it was like a love letter to the originals. It most certainly is not for family viewing, unless you're a family of sociopaths.
I've maintained for the last twenty years that there isn't any good Star Trek being produced and I stand by that. Sure they've made a lot of content with Star Trek branding, but actual Star Trek they are not making.
As much as I enjoy Lower Decks and Picard I do agree that the last really good really Trek Trek was DS9. Voyager was ok, but suffered because of multiple issues not least of which was trying to go too far back to "monster of the week" formulas after the super strong story work of DS9.
Enterprise got a really good start but I feel like they veered the story off the deep end going for the Temporal War. So instead of seeing the foundation of the Federation we all knew and loved in other series; we instead get a temporal war that isn't really mentioned outside of that season in any of the series of Trek that chronologically followed it.
The Reboot Films are just terrible writing. Kirk has none of the roguish charm or skill he's supposed to have and spends most of the early parts of the films bumbling around or being shielded by others until he has to do his final stand at the end; Spock is by far and away winning on all fronts and is honestly more of everything Kirk should be whilst McCoy doesn't even really do anything of note. You certainly don't get the sense of the 3 forming a strong bond not to mention the legion of other issues that scatter about the series.
Visually impressive but just not Trek
And then there's a series where someone decided that the turbolifts should be moving people through alternate dimensions or something that looked really cool in a CGI fight scene but make utterly no sense what so ever
Final season of Picard I found to be pretty superb, and kind of wish they’d lead with it.
A handing over the keys, ala Generations, letting us follow Seven and Picard Jnr on their continuing voyage, to seek out new life and new civilisations. To boldly go where no one has been before.
And you know? As I type that?
That is what current Trek has been missing for me. The exploration. The interesting moral quandaries when they went beyond “well of course your human side is the morally right side”. The sort of thing where it’s a civilisation with a totally different outlook they need to help make peace with.
DS9 left a lot of stuff to be resolved, post Dominion War. Voyager squandered that. Enterprise just….didn’t bother. Picard S3 at least gave it a try (successfully enough for me). Disco has done an Enterprise, but this time ignoring it from both ends.
Even the Treknobabble just isn’t there anymore for the most part. At least not in the same way. Sure we get some technical solutions, but they’re few and far between - and often a bit lame.
I wish I could get on with Lower Decks, but the animation and overall style is just so not for me. I can well do without the over exaggerated shrieks and arm waving.
Guess I’m down to hoping I can get to the end of this season of Discovery (S4 was a bust for me), and we get a Seven of Nine centric Generation After The Next Generation.
You know the whole massive super wormhole at the end of Picard Series 2 and the end of Series 3 with Seven a captain of her own ship. I'd love to see her go into the Wormhole to explore an alien galaxy or whatever is on the other side.
For me there's a few things that modern treks have lost
1) A sense of exploration and discovery
2) A sense of mature characters
3) Magic/Mystery. Go back and vulcans were freaking mysterious things; modern trek mostly just treats them as emotionally cold and useful for mindreading.
I feel like a lot of modern Trek has leaned into spacebattles and fights and really simple combat and conquest stuff. Which yes that did really well at the height of DS9, but we've lost the wonder, exploration, mystery, magic and all of exploring the unknown and space.
Heck they way they kept jumping into other subregions of the galaxy gave the feeling that the writers have no where left to explore. That everything has been done and dusted and now its just up to fight over the rest.
So go on let Seven captain her own ship and jump into that wormhole (ok its not its a transwahatist) and go exploring and adventuring
What worked for me about Picard is him being somewhat Fish Out Of Water.
The Federation and Alpha Quadrant moved on since his glory days, his star somewhat faded. Part retired, part put out to pasture.
It just wasn’t handled terribly well in the first season, with too much happening Off Screen. I know they wanted to make the timeline contemporary, where the time that’s past in the real world since TNG is what’s passed in Trek. And I do applaud that. But they fumbled it, for the most part.
Season 1 had a hard start as a LOT of things happened off-screen I agree. The whole setting had changed in big ways and there was a huge amount of ground to cover whilst also trying to cover Picard changing too over those years.
I think they did well with what was very ambitious but I felt in seasons 1 and 2 that both ended somewhat early and felt like they had to rush a little after very steady starts. Series 3 felt like it had hit its stride; but it was also VERY much a fanservice series as well. Honestly it also felt like it was the next film after First contact for the whole crew after a couple that kind of never felt all that special beyond a regular series episode bulked up a bit.
Just Tony wrote: I didn't have the sensor the original series, and I barely had the sensor any of the live action series after that up until Discovery. Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks were the beginning of me not watching Star Trek with my kids because there was too much inappropriate content. That is enough for me to refuse to accept it as the best Trek ever as accessibility to the masses would be one of my highest benchmark points.
Heavy swearing including f words, violence bordering on gore porn, sexual suggestiveness, and moral ambiguity bordering on flat out criminal behavior. You are right, I made a completely off base c.omparison...
The issue isn't that it is something you aren't comfortable showing your kids, that is your choice and perfectly reasonable, but it isn't remotely on par with a Quentin Tarantino film. That is just asinine.
Just Tony wrote: I didn't have the sensor the original series, and I barely had the sensor any of the live action series after that up until Discovery. Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks were the beginning of me not watching Star Trek with my kids because there was too much inappropriate content. That is enough for me to refuse to accept it as the best Trek ever as accessibility to the masses would be one of my highest benchmark points.
I watched 3 episodes of Lower Decks because I heard folks saying it was like a love letter to the originals. It most certainly is not for family viewing, unless you're a family of sociopaths.
I've maintained for the last twenty years that there isn't any good Star Trek being produced and I stand by that. Sure they've made a lot of content with Star Trek branding, but actual Star Trek they are not making.
It kind of just sounds like none of you did even the basic level of research before watching LD.
It can be a love letter to Trek with its themes and stories and frankly, the fact that it makes sex jokes is perfectly on brand for Star Trek.
If it's not your brand of comedy then that's perfectly fine but if you watched 3 episodes then declared it Not Trek then you're in the same boat as everyone who said TNG wasn't Trek, or DS9, or Voyager, or Enterprise, or Discovery.
Part if the issues are: actual technology, competency of creators, segmentation of society.
Actual technology - to make science-fiction used to involve a lot of creative ingenuity as well as audiences being actively willing to suspend their disbelief. Now it is relatively easy to make fancy-looking science fiction which requires less buy-in mentally from audiences.
Competency of creators - sci-fi creators had to LOVE sci-fi and be willing to hone their craft in order for studios to take a risk on sci-fi. Why spend time and money investing in hokey sci-fi when you can just slap together a cheap and profitable cop/lawyer/doctor show? Now there is SO MUCH sci-fi being created that you're not getting dedicated, passionate creators who have proven genre track records. Especially in the writers rooms.
Segmentation of society - it used to be that there were limited viewing options and everyone had the same options to choose from. Now the whole entertainment landscape is so fractured that you have to specifically seek out what you want. If there were only 3-6 channels, then you had limited options to choose from and you might land on something you didn't expect. Because of the limited options you had to try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. So even if you're making a niche genre show, you'd try to have a variety of characters and stories that you could flesh out over the course of a 26 episode season. Now we have short seasons and narrowly focused shows that aren't geared towards mass attraction.
So, in closing, I would like: relatively cheap creative sci-fi made by seasoned professionals with a goal of making broadly appealing content.
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Gert wrote: It kind of just sounds like none of you did even the basic level of research before watching LD.
It can be a love letter to Trek with its themes and stories and frankly, the fact that it makes sex jokes is perfectly on brand for Star Trek.
If it's not your brand of comedy then that's perfectly fine but if you watched 3 episodes then declared it Not Trek then you're in the same boat as everyone who said TNG wasn't Trek, or DS9, or Voyager, or Enterprise, or Discovery.
I watched it and hated it. The main character is a sociopath who can do no wrong. I understand that Rick and Morty popularized that trope, but I find that type of character and storytelling to be the opposite of entertainment. They filled the show with memberberries to make you think they care about the past, yet the whole show (or at least the 3 episodes I watched) totally is in polar opposite to what Star Trek was.
I'm not sure how doing research in advance would make me apreciate characters and storytelling that I found to be utterly repugnant.
If you like it, good for you. You are allowed to like it. I did not. I'm allowed to not like it.
Never said you weren't, all I did say was that to say LD isn't Star Trek because it's not your personal cup of tea is exactly what was done with all these other Star Trek shows, all of which have die-hard fans and are beloved entries into the franchise.
I think another issue is the arcing story that’s the modern preference.
TNG had elements of that, such as the ongoing Rite of Succession which left Gowron as Klingon Chancellor. But those more brought a sense of distinct continuity. DS9 really leaned into it, showing us Trek where they didn’t just warp away at the end of the episode and hope the solution stuck.
Voyager undid most of that, with nothing ever truly sticking. No running low on crew, never any lasting damage to the ship, a seemingly infinite number of shuttle craft.
Instead? They did the episode “situation of the week”. Even DS9, albeit to a continuing background of hostilities and “oh what now” stuff.
Discovery and Picard? All about that one story. Which in itself isn’t a criticism. There’s nothing wrong with a series or season long arc to tie everything together.
But Trek kind of needs its episodes. Each a different lens on the setting and the crew.
Disco is also missing an ensemble crew, and of course meetings to air opinions and options. Now I still don’t think it’s bad telly. But it’s not very interesting Trek. Spesh not when something as potentially interesting as The Burn turns out to be the result of one maladjusted kid throwing a strop.
If one only watched the first three episodes of TNG, what would they think of that show?*
I haven’t seen LD yet, but I think I might try jumping in halfway through the season to see what the show is like once it starts hitting its stride, and then go back later if I like what I see there.
*I absolutely gave up on Picard after three episodes, so I’ll own the hypocrisy here. Still, I watched the RLM and Steve Shives reviews of the show far into the second season, so I feel my distaste for that show stands on steady ground.
It’s just…..Burnham is always off somewhere else when those she’s meant to be leading are getting the problem actually solved, especially problems caused by her sodding off on another jolly.
Like the worst sort of manager you can encounter.
Happy to take the credit, but never really being part of the finding of the solution.
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BobtheInquisitor wrote: If one only watched the first three episodes of TNG, what would they think of that show?*
I haven’t seen LD yet, but I think I might try jumping in halfway through the season to see what the show is like once it starts hitting its stride, and then go back later if I like what I see there.
*I absolutely gave up on Picard after three episodes, so I’ll own the hypocrisy here. Still, I watched the RLM and Steve Shives reviews of the show far into the second season, so I feel my distaste for that show stands on steady ground.
I’d genuinely suggest just watching Picard Season 3.
I will say that I think Lower Decks does come into its own once it gets going. To be fair you can honestly say that of a lot of TV series - many need a good half a first season to really establish themselves, their characters, stories and structures .
A rare few start out super strong and don't need that, others do and honestly I don't blame series for needing that breathing room.
Sometimes they are establishing a lore and setting; other times they might already have that or establish it quick, but the characters take a little longer to settle and for you to invest enough in them to care to see more.
I think Lower Decks fits into that, especially because its what I'd call a "casual serious" animation.
It seems like most of the great Sci Fi series have weak first seasons (or first half-seasons), such as TNG, DS9, B5, The Orville, SG1, and so on. I’ve found that series that start strong from the first episode usually fizzle quickly and become terribad if given the chance to linger, like nBSG, Buffy and the X-Files. I believe in my heart of hearts that Firefly would have become infuriatingly awful if it lasted to season 3.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: It seems like most of the great Sci Fi series have weak first seasons (or first half-seasons), such as TNG, DS9, B5, The Orville, SG1, and so on. I’ve found that series that start strong from the first episode usually fizzle quickly and become terribad if given the chance to linger, like nBSG, Buffy and the X-Files. I believe in my heart of hearts that Firefly would have become infuriatingly awful if it lasted to season 3.
I don't think its quite so simple as I'd argue many series can start strong, but they evolve and change over time and how they end might not be how they began. DS9 is a great example of a series that I'd argue, started strong, but then evolved and changed considerably over its lifespan.
Stargate though is one I'd argue did the same, but once its primary story arc was mostly over, it lost its way. A few elements felt lazy in the latter seasons (every alien spoke American); and their story writing slipped into the whole "new bad must be even more powerful" until its 4 people fighting almost literal gods.
I think in the end it depends on the storytelling itself and on the actors and how they carry their characters.
I'd say there are many factors including one that both B5 and Stargate fall into which is learning when its time to end. When the spark and flare are a little bit gone and its time to let the story conclude.
The start can set things up but its how it evolves as a whole that's important and that gets complicated.
I watched it and hated it. The main character is a sociopath who can do no wrong. I understand that Rick and Morty popularized that trope, but I find that type of character and storytelling to be the opposite of entertainment. They filled the show with memberberries to make you think they care about the past, yet the whole show (or at least the 3 episodes I watched) totally is in polar opposite to what Star Trek was.
Which character on Lower Decks is portrayed as doing no wrong? They’re all shown to be quite flawed and work on their problems as time goes on.
No one has said you had to like it or that you had to show it to your kids; you keep going back to arguing against things people aren't saying. The only point of contention is in pretending that a PG-13 rated tv series is somehow the equivalent of hard R films.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: It seems like most of the great Sci Fi series have weak first seasons (or first half-seasons), such as TNG, DS9, B5, The Orville, SG1, and so on. I’ve found that series that start strong from the first episode usually fizzle quickly and become terribad if given the chance to linger, like nBSG, Buffy and the X-Files. I believe in my heart of hearts that Firefly would have become infuriatingly awful if it lasted to season 3.
Part of that I think are the writers trying different tones, and gauging audience reaction to each, as both sides suss each other out. And each will eventually find the right mix, which will influence the following sequels. Not just giving the customer what they want, but with good writers? Taking the show the way the writers want, but adapted to a way the audience will find palatable.
TNG was a risk because Picard, his crew and the show were going for a more…I guess serious and dramatic tone than TOS. Where Kirk was quite swashbuckling, Picard was much more reserved and statesmanly.
DS9 needed to root itself in Trek, but then became a wonderful study of the Federation, its foes and allies, not to mention third parties like the Ferengi. And it became one of the best sci-fi shows hands down, because it built itself on the strong foundation of TNG’s background without just being a copy. Whilst TNG continued being all shiny and hopeful, DS9 let us explore the grubbier side of things, where compromises are made out of necessity.
God I love DS9. Broken record but By The Pale Moonlight is absolutely Peak Star Trek. Especially because Garrack was 100% right, and even Sisko knew it, however much he hated that fact. Better than there only being four lights.
Perversely, Discovery’s extended sojourn to the Mirror Universe was pretty damned good too. Just a shame they went the way they did in the end.
Gert wrote: Never said you weren't, all I did say was that to say LD isn't Star Trek because it's not your personal cup of tea is exactly what was done with all these other Star Trek shows, all of which have die-hard fans and are beloved entries into the franchise.
Also, Roddenberry wanted orgies in the background on Risa in TNG.
Free and easy sex has always been in the DNA of Star Trek.
I'm pretty sure somewhere in the Prime Directive and the Starfleet Manual there's something like a "Kirk Directive" which reads "no matter how hot aliens look, do NOT engage in romantic relations on first contact"
Because darn he had a relationship with almost every single race they met!
Riker was a Randy bugger, no dispute there. But he didn’t knob everything in sight.
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DS9 perhaps hamstrung the other shows to some degree.
Pre DS9, the balance of power in the Alpha Quadrant was pretty set. Yes there were plays to shift that now and again.
The Dominion War fundamentally shifted that though. Having fought together, relations between the Federation, Klingon and Romulan Empires are inherently changed, arguably for the better. At the very least diplomatic relations may very well have eased. Not to mention not a single major power didn’t get some kind of a kicking during that war, reducing ability if not necessarily appetite for further conflict.
And with the then ongoing threat of The Borg? One can easily see how skilled diplomats and politicians on all sides might want to keep things fairly friendly, as there’s at least one known threat where such a previously unprecedented alliance could well be needed again.
And so….where’s the big threat now? What’s the interesting and evolving situation with emerging powers?
The Borg were always an odd threat if just because they clearly consider the Federation to be a huge risk to them and yet they only ever send one Cube*.
We regularly see them with extensive fleets of cubes and that a single Cube can bring the might of the Federation Fleet almost to its knees.
Yet they never send two or three or four.
They are strangely willing to put their queen at risk whilst for some reason holding almost all their forces on one quadrant and not moving them out.
Story wise I also feel like we never get the feeling of a long drawn out war with the Borg like we do with the Dominion during DS9. During DS9 we know that there's a warn on; we know there are front lines with ships being lost on both sides all the time even if they aren't the primary focus of an episode.
With the Borg on the other hand, we don't really get that feeling of a sense of a long war. Picard series touches on it I think the best of any series; but in general Borg are an "Alien of the week/film" type deal. Once their weekly ship or film ship is defeated that's basically it for the threat for a while. You don't get that sense that there's a far flung corner of Federation space that's constantly under threat of invasion.
It's strange because the storylines do cold war and boundaries really well. There are several boarders and neutral zones and the like in effect that we do get a sense of the constant threat of the Romulans; or Carsassians. Of the boarder wars with the Marquis and of the risk that one day the Klingon Empire might want to stretch its wings again and push out.
*In fact Picard series 3 is one of the few times where them sending a single cube with the Queen actually makes logical tactical sense because its a last-ditch assault. Yes you could argue that she might have done better to slink off to a corner of space to hide and attempt recovery; but you can see the logic in one last major assault against their greatest foe.
The other times though its, strange how they act.
My guess is the Borg have ultimately finite resources. And in their logic, it’s better to spread those out, because every assimilation of person and technology is potentially the key to the next major assimilation.
If we look at The Federation? Assimilate say, the Enterprise D or E? And you now have an expert level knowledge, and cutting edge examples of, that culture’s technology.
From there you can nick off back to Borg Space to properly analyse and consider the new haul, and how you might marry Unique Technology A from Species Y to all the other examples, creating useful new hybrid technologies.
And so, when you next return? You’re already better adapted. And maybe that is when go mob handed.
After all, if a species can defeat one Cube, you could assume they can do it again, potentially in rapid succession. Send them one at a time? It’s finite resource expenditure, and at the very least you gain new knowledge on how it was defeated, and how you can avoid it.
It’s also assuming the likes of Species 8472 are rare, and the overall collective isn’t engaged in really tricky conflicts elsewhere, with the Cubes sent to the Alpha quadrant there more to try to create new sources of Drones, without reducing the forces committed to all out war.
The thing is the Federation can't reach the Borg home systems for a very long time. They are a major threat (mostly because they organise and unite at a large level and the Borg clearly thrive when systems are in conflict with each other and they can pick them off one at a time); but they are also a far off major threat to the Borg.
Also if the Federation can kill one cube and have proven that they can do it; then sending them one at a time is just sacrificing cubes. It's basically the same kind of attack I'd expect from an RTS game AI - attack the same heavily defended point with the same volume of units every X period of time. Whilst the defender (human player) adds more defences and repairs each time.
All the AI is doing is wasting resources and not actually gaining any ground.
The single Borg cube attacks at the same, they don't really achieve very much that the Borg then capitalise on. Yes they smash up a fleet very heavily; but the Borg don't then send another Cube right after; instead the Federation is allowed long enough to repair, rearm and improve.
Again we see in Voyager that the Borg have many, many cubes. If the Federation is such a huge threat to them you'd think they'd send three or four or five. Actually destroy the heart of the Federation and even if those cubes are lost they'd have shattered the Federations powerbase and allies for generations.
Plus all that still doesn't explain why you'd also send your Queen. Ants do not attack an enemy swarm with the Queen in the front lines and if they did she'd be with the majority of the Swarm not a single splinter.
LordofHats wrote: Hopefully Lower Decks S5 comes to our streaming screens this summer. Don't know if we've gotten an official release date yet.
I’m hoping Lower Decks is deleted from reality entirely.
Crap animation. Low rent voice acting. Scripts from the floor sweepings of Voyager, which itself was scripted by the floor sweeping of the TNG script writers room.
I utterly loathe Lower Decks. Especially the animation, where even stage school brats wouldn’t recognise the emotions it’s meant to convey.
Disco S4 (the one I couldn’t stomach) might be Bloody Awful. But at least those involve have some kind of emotional range. And some sod has put in something approaching effort.
Wow. My reation could not possible be any more diametrally opposite to this one.
I don't begrudge anyone liking Discovery, though, so it'd be nice if people would not hope for stuff other people enjoy to be deleted from reality, though.
Honestly, I think this is a good thing. Shows should end at some point and keeping them going forever leads to good shows turning terrible.
5 seasons is strong as hell and it's pretty great that LD went past 1 let alone 4.
Agreed, esp as often as not if there's no big overall plot to structure it; shows can fall off the rails of repeating themselves or going off the deep end of just totally random
I think the difference with LD compared to other Trek shows is that it didn't need to fill a 25 episode quota so there's very little in that is filler.
TNG, DS9, Enterprise, and even Voyager all had to fill the quota and had a lot of guff that lasted until the end even if in between that guff there were stellar episodes like Lower Decks, any of the Quark episodes, Cogenitor, or *insert Voyager episode here*.
Ok, maybe not Voyager, but the rest count.
Overread wrote: The thing is the Federation can't reach the Borg home systems for a very long time. They are a major threat (mostly because they organise and unite at a large level and the Borg clearly thrive when systems are in conflict with each other and they can pick them off one at a time); but they are also a far off major threat to the Borg.
Also if the Federation can kill one cube and have proven that they can do it; then sending them one at a time is just sacrificing cubes. It's basically the same kind of attack I'd expect from an RTS game AI - attack the same heavily defended point with the same volume of units every X period of time. Whilst the defender (human player) adds more defences and repairs each time.
All the AI is doing is wasting resources and not actually gaining any ground.
The single Borg cube attacks at the same, they don't really achieve very much that the Borg then capitalise on. Yes they smash up a fleet very heavily; but the Borg don't then send another Cube right after; instead the Federation is allowed long enough to repair, rearm and improve.
Again we see in Voyager that the Borg have many, many cubes. If the Federation is such a huge threat to them you'd think they'd send three or four or five. Actually destroy the heart of the Federation and even if those cubes are lost they'd have shattered the Federations powerbase and allies for generations.
Plus all that still doesn't explain why you'd also send your Queen. Ants do not attack an enemy swarm with the Queen in the front lines and if they did she'd be with the majority of the Swarm not a single splinter.
As the Borg are, they’re not really shown to advance on their own. By sending one Cube you get to learn what the targets have, and also inspire them to create counters to you that you can learn from the next time. Also, given their Queen has forth dimension escape measures, there’s not really a reason Not to have her go along since she’s not in any real danger.
Overread wrote: The thing is the Federation can't reach the Borg home systems for a very long time. They are a major threat (mostly because they organise and unite at a large level and the Borg clearly thrive when systems are in conflict with each other and they can pick them off one at a time); but they are also a far off major threat to the Borg.
Also if the Federation can kill one cube and have proven that they can do it; then sending them one at a time is just sacrificing cubes. It's basically the same kind of attack I'd expect from an RTS game AI - attack the same heavily defended point with the same volume of units every X period of time. Whilst the defender (human player) adds more defences and repairs each time.
All the AI is doing is wasting resources and not actually gaining any ground.
The single Borg cube attacks at the same, they don't really achieve very much that the Borg then capitalise on. Yes they smash up a fleet very heavily; but the Borg don't then send another Cube right after; instead the Federation is allowed long enough to repair, rearm and improve.
Again we see in Voyager that the Borg have many, many cubes. If the Federation is such a huge threat to them you'd think they'd send three or four or five. Actually destroy the heart of the Federation and even if those cubes are lost they'd have shattered the Federations powerbase and allies for generations.
Plus all that still doesn't explain why you'd also send your Queen. Ants do not attack an enemy swarm with the Queen in the front lines and if they did she'd be with the majority of the Swarm not a single splinter.
As the Borg are, they’re not really shown to advance on their own. By sending one Cube you get to learn what the targets have, and also inspire them to create counters to you that you can learn from the next time. Also, given their Queen has forth dimension escape measures, there’s not really a reason Not to have her go along since she’s not in any real danger.
But they'd already sent (and lost) multiple ships and at least one cube during the TNG series. This wasn't an exploratory Cube it was an invasion. Considering their losses thus far and the potential for Picard to have shared even more information (which he does and it results in the single cube blowing up); the logical thing would have been to send several cubes either in formation or to attack multiple parts of the Federation at once. Considering that the Federation isn't one world and one race but multiple; it would stand to reason that they could lose Earth and still remain quite functional.
I'd have expected cubes hitting Earth, Vulcan and probably few other key worlds all at once with trans-warp trickery.
Again the Borg seem to act really oddly with the Federation. We see them go nuts trying to kill Species 8472, but when the Federation is the next greatest threat they seem like they want to lose.
Gert wrote: I think the difference with LD compared to other Trek shows is that it didn't need to fill a 25 episode quota so there's very little in that is filler.
TNG, DS9, Enterprise, and even Voyager all had to fill the quota and had a lot of guff that lasted until the end even if in between that guff there were stellar episodes like Lower Decks, any of the Quark episodes, Cogenitor, or *insert Voyager episode here*.
Ok, maybe not Voyager, but the rest count.
Hey now, there were some pretty good Voyager episodes too. Memorial, Jetrel, Living Witness are ones that come to mind for me (feel free to disagree of course).
Again the Borg seem to act really oddly with the Federation. We see them go nuts trying to kill Species 8472, but when the Federation is the next greatest threat they seem like they want to lose.
for what we have seen, it does not look like the Federation is seen as a threat but rather a source
Voyager has established that the Borg use certain planets as research facilities, 1 cube invasion taking everything but the minimum and let the civilisation develop again until they reach a certain technological point and send a 1 cube invasion again
So the Borg figured out that they can find everything that makes the federation on earth so going there and "harvest" it with 1 cube (much more efficient to only assimilate 1 world were everything is combined than several different worlds for the same result) without ever intended to wipe out the Federation in the first run but sending in another cube years later to see what new stuff the Federation developed and this over and over again to drive their own development
they tried the same with Species 8472 but realised that they are on a different level and usual tactic of almost destroy them on a regular bases to get new technology does not work as they were able to fight back on a large scale
and here the Borg might have gotten the impression for the first time that the Federation is a threat because they could adept to something they could not
yet because they cannot make their own research as they lost the ability to come up with something new on the way, the Federation has become much more interesting as future source for technology (instead of destroying a possible threat)
Last Episode of Voyager than established that the Federation will develop the technology to do the same as 8472 and fight the Borg on a large scale without them being able to adept and in the long run will destroy them
Something the Queen learned the hard way so what does not make much sense here is to send again only one cube in First Contact as a large scale invasion to wipe them out should have been the way to go.
Except if this was already the last ditch effort because the collective was not able to operate any more.
By the time of First Contact, the Unicomplex was destroyed and the Unimatrix Zero rebellion should be still ongoing
so it makes sense assuming this was the plan of an isolated Queen trying to prevent the destruction that happened
just destroying "present" earth or the Federation was not enough as damage was already done, so removing the Federation from the timeline so the destruction and rebellion never happen and in addition add a warning about 8472 and/or the technology to fight them into the collective
Genuinely somewhat impressed. Two crew mystery of time jumps, and clearly a way to integrate the new Commander with the crew, as he experiences some of what they’ve been through together.
lord_blackfang wrote: Not a response to Disco as I haven't seen it, but in general I wish Trek had never gone for Back to the Future style time travel shenanigans.
Star Wars isn't science-fiction, it's space opera.
Star Trek isn't science-fiction, it's science-fantasy.
That's my take at least. I don't mean to be derogatory with that either, just better descriptive, at least in my own mind.
Meanwhile in Canada, Star Trek migrated from the streaming service that has HBO which I have to Paramount+ which I don't have so I'm going to wait until the whole season is done before picking up a one month subscription.
lord_blackfang wrote: Not a response to Disco as I haven't seen it, but in general I wish Trek had never gone for Back to the Future style time travel shenanigans.
I'm very much the same. It was never really a thing beyond the odd episode and movie in the past and now its just run of the mill everyone is jumping around in time and it honestly makes for very messy stories in my view unless its built in from the very start and ST was never supposed to be about lots of timetravel. I know why producers like it; they can write whatever they want and use time to mess with it - got a series that isn't popular, just time-write it out; want to follow the metrics/whatever and do something that wouldn't work with the current series but you want to keep the ST name - timetravel it in.
lord_blackfang wrote: Not a response to Disco as I haven't seen it, but in general I wish Trek had never gone for Back to the Future style time travel shenanigans.
Star Wars isn't science-fiction, it's space opera.
Star Trek isn't science-fiction, it's science-fantasy.
That's my take at least. I don't mean to be derogatory with that either, just better descriptive, at least in my own mind.
Just the opposite. Star Wars is the one with swords, magic, wizards, princesses, etc.
Star Trek is space opera. Which is a subgenre of science fiction.
lord_blackfang wrote: Not a response to Disco as I haven't seen it, but in general I wish Trek had never gone for Back to the Future style time travel shenanigans.
Star Wars isn't science-fiction, it's space opera.
Star Trek isn't science-fiction, it's science-fantasy.
That's my take at least. I don't mean to be derogatory with that either, just better descriptive, at least in my own mind.
Just the opposite. Star Wars is the one with swords, magic, wizards, princesses, etc.
Star Trek is space opera. Which is a subgenre of science fiction.
Star Trek depends a little which series. Original was much more space fantasy; whilst following series are more sci-fi with little injections of fantasy here and there (mostly Q).
Neither is a "Hard sci-fi" series based on Newtonian physics and current understandings of space and space travel.
But unlike Wars, Trek does what is most important for Sci-fi: explore the biological, societal and moral ramifications of (imaginary) technological advancement.
And don't get me wrong, I appreciate the anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist sentiment of Star Wars, but its story isn't affected by the tech of the setting in any way.
True, though I feel like sci-fi doesn't have to have tech-technobabble just like fantasy doesn't have to have intense complex magical systems.
It's an aspect which can be a focus, but not the only one.
Also I'd argue that Trek was at its best when it had just that element of mystery, wonder and a bit of magic to its explorations. I feel like modern Treks kind of lose that to the techo-babble and combat elements a bit too much these days.
what is magic and what is alien is not really something were you can draw a line
problem with modern trek up to a point is that the creators "hate" what old trek is standing for (not what it is but what the memes in pop culture think it is) and therefore try to make it different but missing the point
Star Trek used the Science to explore alt-history and what if scenarios as questions to the audience with the main story not being the focus but the vehicle to those "what if" questions
Star Wars are adventure stories with the focus being the story and the characters behind it
hence why those get less interesting as soon as the story and characters fails as a vehicle for that advanture
Then elaborate more because I don't get what you mean that they "hate" what previous shows "stood for". Star Trek was about promoting diversity and equality in a sci-fi setting. It was about tackling social and personal issues ranging from racism to mental health.
I'm not the biggest fan of Discovery and Picard but god damn did Picard do a heartbreakingly good job at showing someone with a degenerative neurological condition and the effects it had on their life.
The stories might be poor sometimes but you can't pretend that every other Trek show has some absolutely shocking episodes. Someone I work with has just started TNG and asked me for recommendations and a told them to skip most of it because its really bad.
Oh yeah, TNG you skip season 1, I don't think there is really anything in there worth watching, except for maybe the episode with the traveller so you understand Wesley's arc.
You skip the first season you miss out on Tasha Yar; Q, Wesley arc and a few other things too. Sure the series was finding its feet; that's true of almost every multi-series long thing. Heck even books often have a slow 1st book starting out and big series (eg Discworld) can be very different in book 1 of 20-30 but still that opening and those early parts are important.
lord_blackfang wrote: Not a response to Disco as I haven't seen it, but in general I wish Trek had never gone for Back to the Future style time travel shenanigans.
I'm very much the same. It was never really a thing beyond the odd episode and movie in the past and now its just run of the mill everyone is jumping around in time and it honestly makes for very messy stories in my view unless its built in from the very start and ST was never supposed to be about lots of timetravel. I know why producers like it; they can write whatever they want and use time to mess with it - got a series that isn't popular, just time-write it out; want to follow the metrics/whatever and do something that wouldn't work with the current series but you want to keep the ST name - timetravel it in.
Are you a lazy writers room? Do you know what fans love? Nostalgia? Do you know how to deliver it? Time travel? Do you know what else they love? Time travel saying it is all a dream so everything is the same as before in a very forced way!
Discovery should have been set in the future the whole time. Keep everything about it mostly the same, hell even keep the Klingon war because 200 odd years from the end of DS9 could easily have a weird religious cult dedicated to the Old Ways after the rest of the Klingons joined the Federation.
Spore Drive works as a way to try and replace Warp Drives after the Burn. Ships with funky 21st-century designs don't look off because they're supposed to be older than the 1960s Enterprise design.
I will give Discovery credit for reigniting Trek again though. Without it there'd be no Lower Decks, Picard, or SNW and I like at least two of those.
Random odd thought on modern Trek compared to TNG era. I don’t think it’s a hot take, but we’ll see.
First, what I don’t like about Discovery is the look of the tech. Things like haptic control panels and holoscreens a few years before TOS is set - making the NCC-1701 seem like a throwback designed by some manbunned Hipster gimp.
Second, with its fuuuuuuuture tech refit, those stupid floaty nacelles which only seem to have a vague purpose right at the arse end of the final season, where they’re tucked up when flying into a much larger ship’s launch bays.
Now? What I liked about the TNG Era.
It felt like an organic development. Good bit more advanced and futuristic than TOS due to larger budget and cheaper fancy prop availability,
But…TNG era had an advantage Disco didn’t. And that was being contemporaneous with the later TOS movies. Which meant various sets built for one another were available for use with some lighting changes or light redressing.
That really helped it meld the two fairly disparate eras together and feel like a cohesive progression of technology. And it wasn’t until post-Borg encounter we saw Starfleet really develop its ship design - the most dramatic example of course being the USS Defiant. But even then, there was a clear design lineage, with the occasional “here’s a ship you’ve never seen before” to help bridge gaps and further refine the overall progression, including the Enterprise C and USS Bozeman, all the way through to the Enterprise E.
Then….people fiddled. I appreciate the Discovery’s exterior design predates even TNG, bring a Ralph McQuarrie concept for what would become The Motion Picture. But the interior (not even counting that moronic turbo lift scene) was just too different.
The issue of going back in time in a sci-fi series and having apparent superior tech to the future seasons that were made decades before also happens in Starwars.
Droids in Starwars 4-6 are mostly fairly clunky and slow. In 1-3 they are slick, agile, efficient and highly effective.
You look at something like C3PO and compare his motions to the Droids of the Trade Federation and its almost backwards. Yet there's no apparent tech drop in Starwars as a setting.
In part its because new advances let them do what they wanted to do first time; its also cause actually doing retro might not fit with "modern audiences" and what they envision a futuristic ship to look like today compared to what we thought decades ago.
Heck even things like the ST Communicators and "Alex......Computer" are things we have today.
It's tricky, but it does justify going forward; sadly show runners/writers/producers seem to feel like at the end of Voyager all major exploration in the Milky Way is done, dusted and over. So they keep going more and more outlandish.
C-3PO and R2-D2, and indeed the majority of the Droids we see in the OT and Sequels are…more or less domestic models.
The Trade Federation Droids are Battle Droids. Sure they still feel overly more fluid in motion (thanks, CGI), but I think there is enough hand wavium there.
But Discovery is something very different.
The USS Enterprise NCC-1701 was the Federation flagship. A statement of its overall intent as an organisation - exploration and the pursuit of knowledge, but if you’re intent on a fight well at least give you a run for your money.
So to see the Discovery (micellium drive entirely apart, they explained that one at least to my satisfaction) have far more advanced controls and doobeeries and wotsits just doesn’t work for me. There’s no explanation for that.
Sure, TOS with its physical switches and random blinky lights wouldn’t fit into the modern era particularly well. But even the shape of the furniture was off.
And it all makes it stick out too much, despite S1 being really pretty good, thanks to extended mirror universe shenanigans and really solid baddies and middies.
Star Trek's overall visual design imo has suffered heavily from just being too much of the norm for a modern scifi series. Holograms everywhere. Lots of shiny and reflective surfaces mixed with vague lighting.
A lot of this comes down to the modern norm of CGI enhanced visuals, which can look nice, but also give everything a very uncanny valley sheen and also making it look like every other CGI enhanced set there is.
As dated as red carpets and beige bulkheads can be, the practical sets of older series' have aged better than Discovery and just look more authentic and less bland. Even though the color coordination is very barfy.
Strange New Worlds still has this problem imo. it improved on the general flaws of Discovery's character writing, but visually has all the same weaknesses.
But as to Discovery S1 and the awkwardness; a lot of the initial premise of Discovery and its set up is on par with bad fanfiction.
A super special super awesome ship that is also super special super secret? Check. Section 31? Check. A hitherto unknown relative of a main character who had a super strong relationship with him but that he never brings up ever? Check. Main character does what they think is right but the organization tells them they were wrong and now they're on the gak list? Check. Characters generally being as smart or as stupid as the plot demands and with little consistency? Check.
Discovery improves across Season 1. I'll give it that, but Discovery's starting point is basically a what's what of every Star Trek fan fiction cliche there is. The only thing they were missing was that Burnham's name should have been Mary Sue. They can stick as much edge on the show and Burnham as they want. She's basically always right, and if she does a wrong she's not really wrong because she was clearly right and anyone who doesn't see it is unreasonable until they learn better (looking at you Saru).
To me, there’s a certain timeless quality to it which lived and died within the show’s lifetime.
As, once again, the Federation’s flagship, it was a statement of where the Federation was at that time.
Much to Picard’s initial chagrin, it was a ship which carried families out among the stars. The result of a period of relative peace and prosperity, where relative luxuries such as carpetting wasn’t thought twice about, or included deliberately.
Over the seasons and events of TNG, the Federation was knocked out of such complacency, and so we saw some of more indulgent luxuries missing on subsequent ship designs. Whilst never truly utilitarian (other than the Defiant), they went back to mostly practical with some creature comforts.
Disco, especially in the seasons set in the future was just too much.
Book’s ship and its ‘variable geometry’ just didn’t land for me. The whole floating nacelles likewise turned me off, because it just seems wasteful. Sure, it’s fancy physics and magitech. But a ship has finite power generation capability. And given we never see the floatiness come into play until a plot convenient “blink and you’d still not care” occurrence? Seems to serve no particular purpose other than I guess to others looking cool and future on the screen (and if that’s you, please don’t think I’m saying your opinion is wrong, I’m only speaking for myself here).
It just feels like another mirror universe. Which if I’m honest could’ve been a super bold move once the Spock nonsense was introduced. And dare I say, might even have silenced a lot of the (not unjustified) criticism.
I think the thing is a lot of new Trek outside of Below Decks and Picard; feels less like they wanted to make Trek and more like they wanted to make something else.
The more they want to make something else they more they change in Trek via various things (time travel/ alternate realities) to try and keep it cannon whilst kind of admitting that its not really true to the old classic Trek.
Now you're going to get some changes in a long long series, even Original Series actually stands out as a bit of a sore thumb in its style compared to what came after.
However TNG, DS9 and Voyager all worked within the same style very strongly. Enterprise danced a bit, but I feel like whilst the first season started well, they quickly lost track with the time-war storyline.
After that it just feels like Trek goes into a kind of free-for-all fall of different directors and focuses and styles and gets pulled in all kinds of crazy directions trying to re-invent itself.
Meanwhile a core of fans kinda just want that Trilogy of TNG/DS9/Voyager style Trek back. And yes whilst Voyager 100% had issues committing to its loan ship story and had problems in the writing room and more; it still at least kept many of the aesthetics and styles that mark it as very faithful to that core.
Another big and easily avoidable problem with Disco's more hi-tech look is simply the timeline.
Why on Earth did they set Disco up during OT Trek?
All of those valud criticisms of it being too modern along with the super-secret drive tech that makes no sense in-universe at that point on the timeline just go right out the window if they'd simply set it in the future to begin with.
Overread wrote: I think the thing is a lot of new Trek outside of Below Decks and Picard; feels less like they wanted to make Trek and more like they wanted to make something else.
The more they want to make something else they more they change in Trek via various things (time travel/ alternate realities) to try and keep it cannon whilst kind of admitting that its not really true to the old classic Trek.
Now you're going to get some changes in a long long series, even Original Series actually stands out as a bit of a sore thumb in its style compared to what came after.
However TNG, DS9 and Voyager all worked within the same style very strongly. Enterprise danced a bit, but I feel like whilst the first season started well, they quickly lost track with the time-war storyline.
After that it just feels like Trek goes into a kind of free-for-all fall of different directors and focuses and styles and gets pulled in all kinds of crazy directions trying to re-invent itself.
Meanwhile a core of fans kinda just want that Trilogy of TNG/DS9/Voyager style Trek back. And yes whilst Voyager 100% had issues committing to its loan ship story and had problems in the writing room and more; it still at least kept many of the aesthetics and styles that mark it as very faithful to that core.
This whole point is why Strange New Worlds is doing so well, I believe.
The writers are hopeless at operating within a framework. The whole concept of leaving things so they have a future is beyond them. They seem hard wired to do bigger and better in outlandish ways and write themselves into a corner. Remember those lens flare films? We can n ow transport across the galaxy. Or time travel full stop.
I wasn't blaming lens flare films for time travel. Just felt i had to add it in as while it does the whole memberberries for fans it destroys even more any sort of sensible writing.
Disco’s jump drive thing itself didn’t bother me so much. It was introduced as highly experimental, and 50% of the ships equipped of trial it came to a horrifically sticky end.
And the solution was genetic engineering of a human, a big no-no within Starfleet at the time.
But the haptic controls and everything being More Fyootcha than TOS, on an earlier mark of ship if memory serves? Nope. Too much.
Update it, yes. Because in a 21st century show physical switches, swirly screens and glowy lights just aren’t going to convince. But it went far too far.
To me, there’s a certain timeless quality to it which lived and died within the show’s lifetime.
As, once again, the Federation’s flagship, it was a statement of where the Federation was at that time.
IMHO, I think that's where the other shows of its time did so well. Ok, so, as you (and others) have said, the D was the "pinnacle". It is the flagship of its day, and as such is regarded as the best ship having the best stuff overall.
But. . . Voyager? It was smaller, with a mission originally much more limited in scope. So, it had more advanced sensors and sciencey gubbins than the Ent D. But its' pew pews were less flashy than the flagships.
The Defiant?? Uber awesome amazing pew pews, but less advanced in other areas because, like VOY, it was mission tailored to do it's one job well.
Then, we get to disco. Again, as mentioned, its the super duper so top secret not even section 31 knows about it ship. Even though it's designed (on paper at least) for one job: to test the mycelial spore drive, it still somehow has all the pews of the Ent. All the shields, and all the shuttles, and space walking suits, and, and, and. . . I agree with y'all that it's too much
It would be like asking the USS Dallas (hunt for red october) to also have the flight deck and full aviation complement of Enterprise from the same movie. It just doesn't work that way, and it does mess with us as fans who have ideas of what a "flagship" is supposed to mean, even in universe.
Overread wrote: The issue of going back in time in a sci-fi series and having apparent superior tech to the future seasons that were made decades before also happens in Starwars.
Droids in Starwars 4-6 are mostly fairly clunky and slow. In 1-3 they are slick, agile, efficient and highly effective.
You look at something like C3PO and compare his motions to the Droids of the Trade Federation and its almost backwards. Yet there's no apparent tech drop in Starwars as a setting.
Lucas's in-universe explanation for this was that the Prequel era was more focused on bespoke craftmanship, while the Empire era was all about cheap, mass-production. It's not a perfect explanation, but it was the way he approached the design work for the prequels, and it works well enough to explain the discrepancies if you don't think about it too hard.
Star Trek doesn't have that, although with Discovery at least a lot of the more advanced tech can be hand-waved away as experimental stuff used specifically in that vessel and not used elsewhere for... reasons. I did like Pike's 'Well, we just won't use the holo systems any more' to explain why TOS Enterprise didn't have that technology...
But yes, Disco should have just been set in the future to begin with. Obviously, that would have prevented the tie-ins with Spock and Pike's Enterprise, but SNW could have been launched on its own and would still have done well, because it's good.
I've slowly come to not dislike Discovery's design as much as I did at the beginning... but floaty nacelles are bad, and should feel bad.
Just Tony wrote: This whole point is why Strange New Worlds is doing so well, I believe.
Yes reading this thread it always seems to me like people completely forget SNW exists, despite it completely avoiding all the issues they (rightfully) have with STD.
I'm probably stepping on a freshly sacred cow, so I preface this with; Strange New Worlds is better than Discovery.
But Strange New Worlds has most of the same problems as Discovery.
The sets are poor. The setting is oddly flighty. The characters are flat and the plots aspire to more weight than they carry. Everything lacks a sense of weight that would lead one to think any of it matters because so much of the show is just 'going through the motions.' It's better than Discovery, so it doesn't take flak like Discovery because it's never as nakedly bad as Discovery.
But I don't think Strange New Worlds is particularly memorable. It's neither as goofily weird as S1 of TNG or Voyager, nor is it as bizarrely bad as Enterprise at points. But it never reaches the heights of TOS, TNG, or DS9 or Lower Decks.
Strange New Worlds, is in essence, not talked about much because it's a very bland show. It'll do, but there's not a lot in there that really sticks in the mind after the episode is over save a few excellent moments and gags. Which is a shame because I think the cast and crew work very hard, but the sum just isn't any greater than the sum of the parts.
TLDR: Strange New Worlds isn't bad, but there's nothing about it that stands out as very good either.
Its time period doesn’t do it any favors. My friends and I have no interest in a Star Trek prequel. If we had, we’d just watch Enterprise.
In addition, it doesn’t look like Star Trek, especially not for its supposed time period. If we wanted imposter Star Trek, we’d watch the Abrams movies.
Saying “SNW is good” is about as helpful scratching g my Star Trek itch as saying “The Expanse is good”. Thanks.
The sets are poor. The setting is oddly flighty. The characters are flat and the plots aspire to more weight than they carry. Everything lacks a sense of weight that would lead one to think any of it matters because so much of the show is just 'going through the motions.' It's better than Discovery, so it doesn't take flak like Discovery because it's never as nakedly bad as Discovery.
I generally agree with the sentiment of your whole post, but wanted to address something related to this.
Now, in general, SNW is my favorite, or maybe 2nd favorite NuTrek (toss up between this and LD). But you're right, other than a couple of highlight episodes (looking at you, musical Trek), I don't recall that much of the overall plot. I remember the distinctly sexy crew. Like, there's no fething reason for one ship to have one crew that has that much hotness encapsulated in it.
But, the thought I had reading the bit quoted is this: I have to wonder if this is something peculiar to shows created in the age of streaming, but I feel that the lack of weight could be somewhat attributed to the axe hanging over everyone's head. It seems that streaming platforms have very little qualms with axing a show mid-production, or mid-season. So the show runners may feel the need to vomit out all the ideas they have, because they aren't sure if next season will come and allow them to fully explore that idea in a meaningful way.
IIRC, didn't TNG start off "guaranteed" 3 seasons, and when the numbers backed up its existence, it got much better in seasons 4+. I seem to recall that the "norm" for a TV show of that era was, if the pilot went well, they'd get signed to 2-3 seasons for sure, and then negotiations for additional seasons depended on overall performance. But. . . I could be very wrong in that regard
I don't know about streaming (I've pondered it) but I would consider those to be flaws common in modern television. So much of modern entertainment is focus tested to death, overly interfered with by the board who want money more than entertainment, and so obsessed with reaching as broad an audience as possible.
Basically, all of it ends up so water down on all fronts, its rare for a modern TV show to any notable quality. They're rarely outright bad. They're just bland.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Its time period doesn’t do it any favors. My friends and I have no interest in a Star Trek prequel. If we had, we’d just watch Enterprise.
In addition, it doesn’t look like Star Trek, especially not for its supposed time period. If we wanted imposter Star Trek, we’d watch the Abrams movies.
Saying “SNW is good” is about as helpful scratching g my Star Trek itch as saying “The Expanse is good”. Thanks.
Hm, that is a take. I think it does fine as an immediate TOS prequel. It's not trying to set up the greater universe like Enterprise or Star Wars prequels had to, it's just setting up Kirk's Enterprise in particular. Besides the raw production quality of the props being higher (ie not painted cardboard boxes), I don't see much off in the visual design, and the themes are definitely Trek.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Regarding the pitfalls of modern micro-seasons Penny Arcade just had a blog on it
(most might not know that for a crass gamer comic it has a looot of very erudite blog posts)
It just feels like another mirror universe. Which if I’m honest could’ve been a super bold move once the Spock nonsense was introduced. And dare I say, might even have silenced a lot of the (not unjustified) criticism.
Exactly.
Once they revealed Spocks adopted human sister, whom he was close with, but has never before even been mentioned in passing over 50some years of any Trek media (shows/movies/book/comics/whatever)?
I just assumed I was watching a tale set in some alternate universe.
So we have:
ToS/TNG/DS9/Voyager/Enterprise/Picard & related movies
The Mirror Universe (evil)
The JJ Abrams verse
Now the Disco verse (Discovery, SNW, Lower Decks, Prodigy?)
The future
The past (relative to whatever universe you're watching)
Once they revealed Spocks adopted human sister, whom he was close with, but has never before even been mentioned in passing over 50some years of any Trek media (shows/movies/book/comics/whatever)?
I mean, he didn't mention his parents, his half-brother or his fiancee until they were directly relevant to the plot either. Kirk, supposedly his closest friend, didn't know his father was Ambassador Sarek, or that he was engaged, or that Sybok existed. It's not exactly out of character for Spock not to have mentioned an adopted sister who apparently died before he met Kirk.
I wouldn’t call Lower Decks part of the Disco verse. It had the SNW crossover episode, sure, but that’s because it’s what was running at the time. It makes FAR more references to the older stuff.
Prodigy is more its own thing as well. Near future in a different quadrant.
The only difference in continuity between these series is that some of them are bad and some of them are good.
The irony is that Lower Decks makes hordes of back references to the rest of the franchise but is its own show and confidently written and performed.
Just good. And memorable and fun.
In contrast, Discovery, and to a lesser degree SNW, feel like they want to be Star Trek shows more than they manage to be Star Trek shows. The box is very nice, but it's mostly packing peanuts in there.
Prodigy and Lower Decks don't have to prove their chops because they have actual substance.
Yeah Lower Decks feels not just like its written by fans, but fans who get the original material and used it whilst creating their own show.
A good few more modern Treks (esp the reboot films) feel much more like they are written by fans of ST, but who wanted to kinda do their own thing.
In a sense they are much more like comic book heroes in that each creator is not just adding their own voice, but redefining the entire setting at the same time
The result is things that "kind of" fit but also really don't fit.
Also it scares me how the Orvil is almost the most ST of live action creations
Season 2 of Prodigy has finally seen the light of day.
Only got the first 3 episodes before bedtime.
Shaky start but I guess that comes a bit with how S1 and S2 have to have different tones. Given how S1 ended. Gotta hand it to the cast and crew though. They take the shaky start in episode 1 and make it work for them by focusing on the characters struggling to adjust to how different things are for them. They even turn a goofy 'temporal mechanics' joke into part of the theme.
It's a kids show, but I appreciate a kids show that doesn't take 'kids' as an excuse to be lazy. Though it also feels like they maybe noticed the viewing audience trends older than the original target demo. It's still a kids show, but I feel like it stepped up the appeal for older viewers.
2 and 3 split the plot into two and then bring the 2 back together but things were kind of just getting started where I left off. But it's still a good show, and I'd honestly rank it as a better show that Discovery or SNWs despite being a kid's show.
It's just good TV.
Spoiler:
11/10 points for 'the Doctor is a terrible actor' joke. Bravo writers.
EDIT: Post season opinion, it's a good season. A little shaky in the middle. Time travel is kind of the entire story and that's always been one of Trek's wonkier parts but on the whole it's still entertaining and the show ends on a pretty good climax. The closing of the season is decently affixed to the broader franchise and has a note of both 'we can leave it here' while leaving the door open to a third season if the opportunity ever aises. Overally I'd give Prodigy S2 a firm 8/10.
