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Watched Section 31 and yeah I already forgot most of it. Special effects were good I guess but the FX in all the New Trek is good now. I think it may have been an attempt at a backdoor pilot but obviously it wasn't well received. It clarifies that ya she really is Space-Hitler you did not misunderstand her.

Stupidest part was:

 insaniak wrote:

A little over a hundred years. But because nobody knew what had caused it, everyone was reluctant to explore alternative warp technologies for fear of setting off another one.

I guess they did not achieve much in the hundreds of years before the Burn then....


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 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Watched Section 31 and yeah I already forgot most of it. Special effects were good I guess but the FX in all the New Trek is good now. I think it may have been an attempt at a backdoor pilot but obviously it wasn't well received. It clarifies that ya she really is Space-Hitler you did not misunderstand her.

Stupidest part was:

Spoiler:

I guess the Emperor of The Terran Empire is decided by some sort of Hunger Games like contest of random children? Like, massively stupid. Dictatorships always end up going de facto Monarchial.

Sounds dumb - def not how Hoshi took the throne.

The Romans did often adopt rather than risk their own bloodlines and they were often better.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

A little over a hundred years. But because nobody knew what had caused it, everyone was reluctant to explore alternative warp technologies for fear of setting off another one.

I guess they did not achieve much in the hundreds of years before the Burn then....

That's not fair. They learnt how to make annoyingly asymmetrical uniform jackets, and how to separate the nacelles from the rest of the ship for... reasons.

 Ahtman wrote:
I really can't get a bead on SFA. About a third like it, a third dislike, and a third are "eh, I guess". The only person in my irl circle that has seen just shook his head and said "no" when SFA came up.

Saru should have been the primary character in Disco.

Sorry if this sounds combative? But if you’ve not watched it yourself, definitely give it a whirl.

Not gonna promise you’ll love it. But I think it’ll surprise you. Certainly I don’t think I’ve seen negative opinions to match Disco or S31.

The last two episodes have been corkers, delving into a crew mate each, filling in some narrative blanks as it goes in, for me, a satisfying manner. It’s more than Member Berries as well. It’s not reordering or retelling, genuinely filling in unanswered questions. And ones I think are interesting, though I’ll of course let each decide that bit for their own.

I don't have Paramount + or easy access to it atm, and I'm in no rush. I'm behind on a bunch of stuff...I haven't even seen SNW season 3 yet!

My habit these days is to basically cycle through the sub services 4-5 months at a time. Or just well after something I wanted to see is done so I can binge it all. I'm on P+ at the moment but I'm mostly just rewatched DS9 and Lower Decks.

The 3rds thing has been my view of reactions to the show. A 3rd hate it. A 3rd like it. A 3rd just can't be assed to care one way or another. Which honestly feels a lot like the present state of new Star Trek stuff to me. The only thing that was generally broadly liked across the fandom was S1 of Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks, while everyone seems to agree S31 was ass. The rest exists in a haze of divergent opinions that roughly fit into three categories.

 insaniak wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

A little over a hundred years. But because nobody knew what had caused it, everyone was reluctant to explore alternative warp technologies for fear of setting off another one.

I guess they did not achieve much in the hundreds of years before the Burn then....

That's not fair. They learnt how to make annoyingly asymmetrical uniform jackets, and how to separate the nacelles from the rest of the ship for... reasons.

They also pretty much got rid of stairs. Everyone just transports everywhere now. Need to go to the bathroom down the hall? Bamn! You just transported there.


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
I really can't get a bead on SFA. About a third like it, a third dislike, and a third are "eh, I guess". The only person in my irl circle that has seen just shook his head and said "no" when SFA came up.

Saru should have been the primary character in Disco.

Sorry if this sounds combative? But if you’ve not watched it yourself, definitely give it a whirl.

Not gonna promise you’ll love it. But I think it’ll surprise you. Certainly I don’t think I’ve seen negative opinions to match Disco or S31.

The last two episodes have been corkers, delving into a crew mate each, filling in some narrative blanks as it goes in, for me, a satisfying manner. It’s more than Member Berries as well. It’s not reordering or retelling, genuinely filling in unanswered questions. And ones I think are interesting, though I’ll of course let each decide that bit for their own.

At least they finally acknowledged Sisko. He's one of the Federation's greatest heroes but seems like everyone just forgot about him.

Seems Avery Brooks walked away from it all. Or so we’re told. It’s one of those things that I just can’t find a solid source for.

The show is definitely New Trek. But unlike Disco? It feels like Star Trek. You’ve crew members with unique perks and abilities which are used as novel solutions for Treknobabble situations. And we spend time exploring ethics to boot.

Does it need the modern spin? Well. Possibly. I’m still on the fence. Some stuff is fine, some stuff feels a bit forced.

But the soul of thing is absolutely here.

I’d still prefer a return to 22 or so episodes. As covered before yes you’re inviting filler. But sometimes, especially in DS9? That filler is gold.

I think it’s a series you may want to watch every episode of. The first two or three have student rivalries driving things along. Which is…fine. I mean, they’re college age students. They’re meant to be a bit goof-off. But it doesn’t overly dwell on that, showing them developing quite nicely.

So, if the first three kinda put you off? Fair enough. But I think a second chance watching the others may pay dividends.


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Latest episode is honestly fine. Setting up some future stuff for certain. But we again get some character development, and some classic Trek Quandaries.

Honestly? I’d say it’s comfortably on par with the majority of Star Trek.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

A little over a hundred years. But because nobody knew what had caused it, everyone was reluctant to explore alternative warp technologies for fear of setting off another one.

I guess they did not achieve much in the hundreds of years before the Burn then....

That's not fair. They learnt how to make annoyingly asymmetrical uniform jackets, and how to separate the nacelles from the rest of the ship for... reasons.

They also pretty much got rid of stairs. Everyone just transports everywhere now. Need to go to the bathroom down the hall? Bamn! You just transported there.

Any range restrictions cos eventually you don't need starships.....

In the Kelvin timeline they can beam from Earth to Qo'nos, so obliviously they have some pretty significant limitations.

It’s likely a limitation of maths and uncontrolled variables.

If you’re beaming from orbit to surface or back? Being off by half a mm is most likely of no great consequence. But, when we scale that degree of drift up to interplanetary distances? You could miss the target by many miles.

Into Darkness isn’t just a silly film, but also the outlier so far as we can tell.

But, we know Khan was transporting back to Qo’nos. So it’s possible he had a fixed transmitter or signal booster, with additional sensors to account for local conditions etc.

Or, he had a series of relays setup, sending his signal along a daisy chain. It may be unique technology, born of Khan’s genius.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But, we know Khan was transporting back to Qo’nos. So it’s possible he had a fixed transmitter or signal booster, with additional sensors to account for local conditions etc.

Or, he had a series of relays setup, sending his signal along a daisy chain. It may be unique technology, born of Khan’s genius.

Hold up that was supposed to be Khan!? But they said Khan wasn't in the movie! (I'm being silly, it is just that Into Darkness has sooooooo many problems on so many levels. I can't help but mock it.)

I wonder how those films would have turned out if they hadn't tried to tie it to the previous series and just treated it as a total reboot. The actors were all good choices but the behind the behind the camera team (writing, directing, producing) were, uh, what is the opposite of good?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Into Darkness isn’t just a silly film, but also the outlier so far as we can tell.

The transporter that Khan used in Into Darkness was the one Scotty threw together in the first movie to beam onto the Enterprise while it was in warp. Khan using it to beam to another planet was, IMO, significantly less silly than that.

I like the Kelvin movies despite their flaws, but the transporter thing really annoyed me.




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 Ahtman wrote:
I wonder how those films would have turned out if they hadn't tried to tie it to the previous series and just treated it as a total reboot. The actors were all good choices but the behind the behind the camera team (writing, directing, producing) were, uh, what is the opposite of good?

The biggest problem with them, for me, is that they were made by a guy with no regard for spatial distances and who really wanted to be making Star Wars movies.

So the end result was an excellent audition for Star Wars, but less good as Star Trek movies. The third one is by far the best of the three, because it leaned more into trying to be good Star Trek, instead of just action space fantasy.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Seems Avery Brooks walked away from it all. Or so we’re told. It’s one of those things that I just can’t find a solid source for.

From what I've gleamed:

Brooks is a bit of an eccentric and can be hard to work with. Not because he's a bad guy but because he's very passionate. His time on DS9 was good because the cast and crew had good relations, but Brooks has spent most of the years since pursuing passion projects that interest him rather than looking for big budget TV or film work. I don't really know what he does these days. Throughout the 00s and early 10s he did a lot of theatre and community art stuff.

IIRC he is (primarily) a music Professor with Jazz as his specific field.

Yeah. There were rumors for a long time he got black balled for some reason or another, but afaik he really just is happy to do what he wants to do, and having a big and ongoing film career isn't it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That and nobody would’ve believed you if you’d found the source and told people it was an alien throwing a tantrum.

Nah, that's totally believable in Star Trek. In the Star Trek galaxy you have the Q, an entire species of omnipotent beings who can just rewrite the findamental laws of physical reality if they so wish, you have Kevin Uxbridge, a man who was able to commit a complete, instant genocide with a thought, you have literal Greek god Apollo, Not-God who needs a space ship, etc.

Star Trek is full of incredibly powerful beings who are capable of immense feats should they want to.

I suspect the didn't want people thinking of The Q because Q (the main one we know) would be more likely to have intervened and stopped The Burn happening in the first place. Of course not outright, but he'd have done some challenge to some Federation ship captain to ensure that they resolved the issue before it became a problem.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That and nobody would’ve believed you if you’d found the source and told people it was an alien throwing a tantrum.

Nah, that's totally believable in Star Trek. In the Star Trek galaxy you have the Q, an entire species of omnipotent beings who can just rewrite the findamental laws of physical reality if they so wish, you have Kevin Uxbridge, a man who was able to commit a complete, instant genocide with a thought, you have literal Greek god Apollo, Not-God who needs a space ship, etc.

Star Trek is full of incredibly powerful beings who are capable of immense feats should they want to.

I assume they all have some relationship or understanding so that they don;t come into direct conflict with each other - most seem more like the Ancients than the Ori - and I assume they don't want anyone to go down that path. Ie - don;t play with or break my toys....

I mean every recent series of Trek seems to have some extra dimensional machine menace trying to break in to the Federation part of the galaxy apparently without provoking the real powers of the area.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


I think it’s a series you may want to watch every episode of. The first two or three have student rivalries driving things along. Which is…fine. I mean, they’re college age students. They’re meant to be a bit goof-off. But it doesn’t overly dwell on that, showing them developing quite nicely.

So, if the first three kinda put you off? Fair enough. But I think a second chance watching the others may pay dividends.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Latest episode is honestly fine. Setting up some future stuff for certain. But we again get some character development, and some classic Trek Quandaries.

Honestly? I’d say it’s comfortably on par with the majority of Star Trek.

STA has been very uneven IMO and I'm not surprised by the mixed reactions. I bounced off of the episodes you really liked, but did like the one you thought was "fine". Different Strokes, etc.

I thought the first ep was ok and the next two were better. "Watchable" 6/10 rating or so, and better than most of the Nu-Trek I've seen. With SNW running concurrently, I don't have a problem with a YA spinoff aimed at women, and the Nu-Trek writing tends to be on the adolescent side with all the unicorns, so it fits.

I found the fourth episode to be positively bizarre/awful, and the fifth mediocre. They succeeded in making the photonic girl less annoying, but you can tell they were going for a Very Special Episode and I thought it fell flat despite the guest stars.

Episode 6 is IMO the best so far. Some cringe worthy parts and the plot doesn't make much sense (unless a traitor is revealed later), but exciting and even moving at times despite that. Zoe Steiner is a pretty good actress, and I like that the blackshirts are being used as more than the rival fraternity/jock faction they started out as. The new enemies are cool, too.

I don't love it but like it enough to finish the season. I'll probably be dissapointed, but after the last episode the Klingon has seemingly gotten a reality check much like Upham in Saving Private Ryan, and may yet become Federation material. And the main plotline with the space pirate and Tatiana Maslany might be better than anticipated. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

As I don’t think I’ve seen it since Picard started and finished? Giving Star Trek Nemesis another whirl.

It’s already a film that aged well, compared to its release. But now it’s not the final say in that era? I’m hoping it’ll have improved even more in terms of the storytelling and impact.

It’s already got a leg up on Insurrection, as whilst I’d be surprised if I enjoy it as much as First Contact? It at least doesn’t feel like an episode script dusted off and stretched out to feature length.

I am enjoying Tom Hardy’s Almost-Picard. He looks the part well enough, and whilst the acting and direction isn’t as lazy as Picard But Evil? His tone and cadence works pretty well.

I wince every time they say War College though. Doesn't seems very Star Trek. I acknowledge then been hardened a bit by the dark age they've gone through but I wish they had just gone with the Starfleet Marine Corps which is technically canon I think even though we've never seen them. A good old fashioned Navy-Marine rivalry is what they're going for.
I'm not even sure what the War College graduates become. MACOs?

I'm not 100% sure if the War College is supposed to be a Federation institution or a holdover from when Earth was isolated. I know they have non-human students now, but that might be a recent development.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
I wince every time they say War College though. Doesn't seems very Star Trek.

Is it because of their use military ranks? Their training in ship to ship combat? Their role in defending borders and being sent to warzones? Or was it Captain Kirk saying "I'm a soldier not a diplomat"? Starfleet tries to be peaceful and focus on other things but at it's core Starfleet has always been the military arm of the Federation.

I'd argue its not a case of "military arm" its simply that the Federation takes a practical approach and has most of their fleet as multi-role.

Which considering all the dangers they explore and discover, makes a lot of sense. If you're pushing into the unknown and far beyond your normal territory you might as well make sure you've got some good guns and combat training if things turn sour.



The Galaxy Class wasn't just an exploratory ship, it was also a top of the line battleship of the Federation.
Picard was a diplomat first, but also more than skilled in combat and command from single up to fleet level.



Honestly most of the factions in the setting are like that. It's just the Federation pushes exploration and science harder; meanwhile others like the Klingons push combat or the Ferengi push transport and trade.

pgmason wrote:
I'm not 100% sure if the War College is supposed to be a Federation institution or a holdover from when Earth was isolated. I know they have non-human students now, but that might be a recent development.

I guess that makes the most sense. They seem to be saying it was around during the whole "burn" period unlike The Academy. Maybe when Earth left the Federation a United Earth military took over the grounds in San Francisco.

 Overread wrote:
I'd argue its not a case of "military arm" its simply that the Federation takes a practical approach and has most of their fleet as multi-role.

By Federation standards that would count as the military arm. Starfleet is more ideologically driven toward peace but they aren't complete fools. For the most part. Most of the time.

I'd argue that Section 31 is the grotesquely unnecessary part hoisted on us that is antithetical to the mission of Starfleet and feels like Not Trek.

From Wikipedia

A war college is a senior military academy which is normally intended for veteran military officers and whose purpose is to educate and 'train on' senior military tacticians, strategists, and leaders. It is also often the place where advanced tactical and strategic thought is conducted, both for the purpose of developing doctrine and for the purpose of identifying implications and shifts in long-term patterns.

It should have essentially the same definition in the Star Trek universe, making sure that the senior Star Fleet officers are prepared for any military action they may need to take.

It's kind of following the new shows borrowing some things from STO. In STO the Federation refounded the MACOs to fight the Borg and such.

 Overread wrote:

The Galaxy Class wasn't just an exploratory ship, it was also a top of the line battleship of the Federation.
Picard was a diplomat first, but also more than skilled in combat and command from single up to fleet level.

Here was me thinking they didn't want a large permanent cast but wanted the same few characters to do everything