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I'm actually really starting to enjoy this more than I thought I would. Same with the Orville, I really hope both of these shows can find some kind of success and avoid early cancellation. There is definitely growing potential in both shows in different ways.

I watched the first three episodes last night - loved them! The only criticism I have is, it is under budget for the amount of work they expect to do with CGI and so there are a few shots in a few scenes that look bad. But I enjoyed the characters and the story. I enjoyed the visual. To me, it felt more like Star Trek than any of the recent movies.

Um.. so... yeah... apparently Starfleet has discovered their own form of grimdarktrek protoculture? I suppose the Augments from the real prime timeline will soon become the Zentraedi with Khan having a half metal faceplate for his inevitable cameo. Also, if you have seasonal allergies, does that exclude you from using the new form of space travel? I suppose you'll have to make due with transgalactic mind melds instead.

Ha, well one of the main characters does have bad allergies.

Episode 3, good stuff. Engaging story, the sci-fi horror bit was well done, if a bit cliched, and the mix of characters they've thrown together is definitely an intriguing one. Something I think this show had to do was avoid any characters that are just reusing old archetypes and they've done that quite well. Having several of the main cast being slightly to wholly unlikable is a bold choice but one that can definitely pay off, so long as Lorca doesn't go into full moustache-twirling villain mode and Burnham starts to move from regret to redemption.

Tilly and Saru provide a nice counterpoint to that, both seemingly inherently good people... Which given the tone of this show probably means they'll be 'orribly murdered at some point but I hope not.

I do think this show has plenty of legs to get into the same debates and discussions as classic Trek, just from a different angle that's far less played out; you can still have 'no good option' moral quandaries and such from the perspective of people who aren't wholly good like the TOS/TNG crew were. It's a break from tradition, but I think it'll be interesting to see how this new crew interact with such instances when they don't all have an altruistic goal.


Speculation on where it's going:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:


Trying to figure out the 'ole Star Trek colour code system for this era. Command seems to be gold and Science silver? Think the cadet may have been wearing bronze but was hard to tell. However, one of the convicts made a remark like "there's a lot of silver for a science vessel" which made it sound like silver was security. Also those cons questioned the black combadges which may actually indicate black ops. Possibly Section 31 is afoot here?

I think the line was 'that's a lot of silver, is this a science vessel'. The head of security was in gold, as were most of the armed crew, and I think most of the lab technicians were in silver, the science officer definitely was. And yeah, I'm assuming the black badges mean this is some kind of spec ops/off the books covert outfit.

Saru and Tilly are nice caricatures of the (especially TNG-era) Federation. Tilly is an insecure overachiever. Saru is haughty but also overcautious.

Then you have Lorca and Landry. He's like a more realistic Kirk - brave and creative but also dangerous and manipulative. And she is a cold surface/molten core True Believer.

I think Stamets is also bringing an angle that is screaming to be explored - is the relationship between science and military really as one-sided in favor of the former as, for example, TNG-era Feds seem to believe? In a way, Stamets's crankiness reminds me of Bones.

As to uniforms:

Gold = Command
Silver = Science
Copper = Operations

On Lorca:

Yeah, that makes sense.




Yep, roll on the rest of the series. I am really on board with this now, the more I think about it the more I can't wait to see how things go. Especially the crew; now we've seen the actual main cast, rather than the redshirts from the pilot, I can see some really interesting dynamics developing there.

The way I read it, a major theme here is the precarious balance between passion and principal. The captains represent extremes. Georgiou's passion was principle ("Starfleet does not fire first") and Lorca's principle is passion ("context is for kings"). I think Michael will mistrust Lorca because she ultimately mistrusts herself because she wants to live up to Georgiou's example rather than Lorca's. Put it another way, I think Georgiou is what Michael believes is the ideal Starfleet officer whereas Lorca is the reality. If you were to somehow combine Lorca and Georgiou, you would get James T. Kirk.

So...people are paying $6 a month to watch this?

The shushing Klingon was weird, but otherwise a solid episode.

 Frazzled wrote:
So...people are paying $6 a month to watch this?

To each his own I suppose. I've been watching/reading reviews. If it was availabe on cable like in Canada, I'd have watched it at least for the first season (like I did with Enterprise). If it was on Netflix like the rest of the world, then I'd have caught up once or twice a year when I renew my subscription to catch up on various series (including right now). Instead, in the US, we can't do either and instead have to pay for an otherwise useless (for me) streaming service at $6-10 a month just to be drip fed episodes once a week. If I could have binged on it on cbs all access then at least they would have gotten one month's membership out of me. Since they chose to do none of the above, I'll pass. YMMV.

 Frazzled wrote:
So...people are paying $6 a month to watch this?

It's kind of like AOS, there were a TON of people blasting it immediately that wound up playing it wholesale.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
So...people are paying $6 a month to watch this?

It's kind of like AOS, there were a TON of people blasting it immediately that wound up playing it wholesale.

Because AOS significantly changed because apparently the criticisms being leveled at it were grounded in truth. You forgot that part.

So, what's this I'm hearing about warp pollen? Is it the protoculture riff discussed earlier?

Yup. Mold based almost instanteous travel across the galaxy for people and eventually ships. And it looks like magic pixie dust from Peter Pan.

 AduroT wrote:
The shushing Klingon was weird, but otherwise a solid episode.

I lol'd at that part. You know something bad is going on when the Klingon soldier shushes you.

 warboss wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
So...people are paying $6 a month to watch this?

It's kind of like AOS, there were a TON of people blasting it immediately that wound up playing it wholesale.

Because AOS significantly changed because apparently the criticisms being leveled at it were grounded in truth. You forgot that part.

I was avoiding THAT wicket as I didn't want to turn this into another pro/anti AOS thing, but yeah, the changes made in this series seem at least as polarizing, if not more. I'm shocked they decided to Midichlorian warp travel. I'll wait with baited breath until they are forced to execute Dr. Lang's modular transformation.

 Paradigm wrote:
Episode 3, good stuff. Engaging story, the sci-fi horror bit was well done, if a bit cliched, and the mix of characters they've thrown together is definitely an intriguing one. Something I think this show had to do was avoid any characters that are just reusing old archetypes and they've done that quite well. Having several of the main cast being slightly to wholly unlikable is a bold choice but one that can definitely pay off, so long as Lorca doesn't go into full moustache-twirling villain mode and Burnham starts to move from regret to redemption.

Tilly and Saru provide a nice counterpoint to that, both seemingly inherently good people... Which given the tone of this show probably means they'll be 'orribly murdered at some point but I hope not.

I do think this show has plenty of legs to get into the same debates and discussions as classic Trek, just from a different angle that's far less played out; you can still have 'no good option' moral quandaries and such from the perspective of people who aren't wholly good like the TOS/TNG crew were. It's a break from tradition, but I think it'll be interesting to see how this new crew interact with such instances when they don't all have an altruistic goal.


Speculation on where it's going:

Spoiler:

I'd not be surprised if the climax of these arcs is Burnham committing mutiny again, but this time against Lorca with the crew behind her and for the right reasons rather than out of hate and revenge. That would tie in nicely with the theme that it's not just what you do, but how and why you do it that makes an action good or bad, and would be a nice way for things to go full circle. Series 2 then sees Burnham promoted up to Captain, given command the Discovery and embarking on an altogether more wholesome mission than all this 'secret weapon' stuff.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:


Trying to figure out the 'ole Star Trek colour code system for this era. Command seems to be gold and Science silver? Think the cadet may have been wearing bronze but was hard to tell. However, one of the convicts made a remark like "there's a lot of silver for a science vessel" which made it sound like silver was security. Also those cons questioned the black combadges which may actually indicate black ops. Possibly Section 31 is afoot here?

I think the line was 'that's a lot of silver, is this a science vessel'. The head of security was in gold, as were most of the armed crew, and I think most of the lab technicians were in silver, the science officer definitely was. And yeah, I'm assuming the black badges mean this is some kind of spec ops/off the books covert outfit.

Ah ok. I must have misheard. It makes sense now. If Manchu is right about copper being operations then maybe those gold security officers you saw were actually bronze? Usually those two are lumped together colour-wise for some reason.

Also think you're onto something with what will happen with Burnham and Lorca. Something about that Lorca that seems nefarious. He even must be shrouded in darkness because of an eye condition for extra sinisterness.... but who knows maybe he'll grow on me.

 Frazzled wrote:
So...people are paying $6 a month to watch this?

Or $10 without commercials. I re-watched the pilot episodes last night and liked them well enough to pay for more. If the quality continues, so will my dollars.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
If Manchu is right about copper being operations then maybe those gold security officers you saw were actually bronze? Usually those two are lumped together colour-wise for some reason.

You can see it fairly clearly here:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Also think you're onto something with what will happen with Burnham and Lorca. Something about that Lorca that seems nefarious. He even must be shrouded in darkness because of an eye condition for extra sinisterness.... but who knows maybe he'll grow on me.

FYI he can be in normal lighting conditions, the issue is changing lighting conditions (change must be gradual). (1) What was the cause? I think he implied, something to do with the war. (2) Will make going on away missions tough, making more room for Michael to be the main character.

 Manchu wrote:
(1) What was the cause? I think he implied, something to do with the war. (2) Will make going on away missions tough, making more room for Michael to be the main character.

It was a 'battle injury' and he could just wear shades...

I wasn't overly impressed with the first couple of episodes but this one was a marked improvement (a suspiciously culturally aware Klingon not withstanding). I really didn't like the stupid fungal spores thing though but as it isn't something that makes an appearance in chronologically later Treks its fairly safe to assume that there is something very wrong with the method (giant monsters for example) so it should hopefully sink into the background at some point.

For once none of the characters were annoying as well (aside from Tilly but that was intentional )

A decent 3rd episode. I like how things are shaping up overall.
I also read this series is set in the film ST universe and not the one from ToS, TNG, DS9 etc which might explain a few things.

I don't think there is any clear answer as to in which continuity
Discovery is set.

Episode 3 sent Burnham to Romulus in the mushroom-warp chamber bit, wasn't that destroyed in the new movie timeline?

 Paradigm wrote:
Episode 3 sent Burnham to Romulus in the mushroom-warp chamber bit, wasn't that destroyed in the new movie timeline?

In the Kelvin timeline movies, Romulus was destroyed sometime after TNG, as Spock is still old-man Spock when it blew up.. . .as this supposedly happens before Kirk, Romulus would still be a thing.

 Paradigm wrote:
Episode 3 sent Burnham to Romulus in the mushroom-warp chamber bit, wasn't that destroyed in the new movie timeline?

No thats about 100 years in the future. However, at the time of this series, they've never actually seen a Romulan (STOS Balance of Terror)

Ah, fair enough. I've not watched them more than once, and a long time ago.

 Frazzled wrote:
So...people are paying $6 a month to watch this?

Nope. I pay my Netflix so I can binge lots of stuff.

That I get to watch this into the deal is just a bonus

Yeah... Netflix doesn't have here.

Like pharma, people in the US are subsidizing non-US folks watching Discovery on Netflix.

More like subsidising those watching it from torrents.

Netflix apparently have the broadcast rights here (even though CBS now owns one of our commercial broadcasters) - yet there's nothing on netflix I want to watch.