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On Star Wars Droids?

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).

All of which is true.

But I want to focus in on the Enterprise-D.

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.

For all their faults I don't think we can blame time travel being in Star Trek on the "lens flare films".

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.

Don’t forget the cure for death.

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.

For anyone who has not heard (don't think I've seen it in the thread);

Prodigy Season 2 hits Netflix July 1st.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But I want to focus in on the Enterprise-D.

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.

Official Trailer | Star Trek: Prodigy - Season 2 | StarTrek.com

 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.

SNW is fab.

Still don’t understand why the Klingon song wasn’t operatic but some of that modern drivel.

Silly writers.

In-universe it should have been Klingon Opera, yeah, but making it K Pop is a good meta joke.

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.

 LordofHats wrote:


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.

Blander than 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)

https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2024/06/21/return-voyage

On Discovery's feel;

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

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)

ccs wrote:

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

I think a large part of the reason Discovey S1 starts when it does was to have Burnham running around with Spock.

The modern cgi visuals would be more suitable to post Picard era IMO.

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.



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.