Star Trek Discovery

[Crash]

Who's watching it?

We began watching this just before the series came back from its break over Christmas.

For me, this is the Star Trek that we've been waiting for since Voyager (because I have difficulty fully accepting Enterprise as part of Star Trek and feel the same way about the three 2009-onward films).

This, to me feels like the Star Trek that they should be making in 2017 that still fits together with The Original Series and Next Generation.

My only slight gripe is that the starship design is only marginally better than that of the JJ Abrams films.
Everything else is just great.

I grew up from the age of about 4 with Captain Kirk's adventures in TOS and then got used to Picard, then Sisko and Janeway.
For me, Kirk (as played by Shatner), Picard and Janeway are the top tier of starship captains with Sisko following a short way behind.
At the moment, Captain Lorca is making his way into that top tier and he's only even been in a handful of episodes.
He's nothing like what you would expect of a starship captain. I dunno what else to say about the character except that ... out of every captain you've ever seen in Star Trek, he is the one that you least want to get in the way of.

What I like about Discovery is that, while the show is 30 years evolved from TNG (and there are lots of changes that fans seem to find oddly difficult to digest), Discovery feels like genuine, heavy-duty Star Trek, the same way that TOS and TNG do.

I hope that I haven't set the expectations unreasonably high for anyone that hasn't seen it yet.
When I downloaded it, I didn't know what to expect and set my hopes fairly low based on the comments that I'd seen on TrekCore and the like but I was quickly pleasantly surprised.

[felice]

The bad news is that it's explicitly following up on events from Enterprise! And in general it feels much more like Enterprise: TNG than a prequel to TOS. The unnecessary redesigns bug me; if they didn't want the show to look anything like TOS, why choose to set it in that time period? And if they don't want the main antagonists to look like Klingons, why call them Klingons? (Oh, I guess we do know why they wanted a different look now.) And having Burnham sentenced to life in prison for mutiny and starting a war seemed bizarre when her captain forgave her for the mutiny and took her on a crucial away mission, and the war started because they didn't follow Burnham's advice.

The show is growing on me, though; I've enjoyed the last few episodes a lot.

Have you caught up with the latest episodes? If not, I'd suggest avoiding reading too much discussion about the show, for reasons I can't explain without getting spoilery.

[AndyThomas]

Although I tend to have to watch it on a small screen, it's certainly what you'd expect from a modern Trek that's thrown off any sense of a "PG" rating in how it deals with things - it's pretty brutal in places and in that sense is very different to most of what's come before. It faces that core dilemma that all Trek shows have - given that we can now do the graphics, should we not do it because we're pre-TOS that didn't have touch screens, holographic comms channels and so on? Now, for those of us who know our Trek Lore what probably hits home most is out and out technological advances that seem out of place. So now we have pulse phasers, not beam phasers, as capital ship weapons. Go anywhere drives. And yet... yes, it's still Trek. Dark Trek, X-Files Trek, call it what you will. But still Trek, somehow.

What I think really strikes me is that this is very heavily character driven - and these are imperfect, flawed Star Fleet officers. It's like Ensign Ro, Shelby, the Maquis. Far less of the moralising that I rather liked from the original Trek run - this is just win at all costs stuff for Lorca at least. Thing is though, whilst Enterprise has been name checked, I'm not necessarily assuming they're in "our" core universe. I think it's been established that they have an infinite improbability drive so all may not be as it seems. That said, I haven't looked at the dates closely - Enterprise has also been name checked in the modern films, where does Discovery fall within that timeline? When did the Romulan ship come through to change the timeline with Kirk's birth in it? Even then, the Klingons we've seen in the new films don't tie in to Discovery's rendition of them?

I think we just have to accept it as it comes at the moment but they've rather cleverly given themselves a larger than average playground to mess around in...

[Crash]

I think the show has more in common with TOS - it mentions captains like Deckard, April and Pike and constitution class ships like the Enterprise, which must either have been in development or newly-launched at that point.
It even has Harry Mudd.

Whereas it seems to reference Enterprise very little.

The new look to the Klingons bothered my wife more than it bothered me.
It's the same as the holographic displays and LCARS GUIs. We couldn't have a 2017 sci-fi without those things.
TNG inspired so many things now-common-place in the home like smartphones that we can't realistically imagine the 23rd century without them.

We couldn't have a bridge that looked somehow less modern that captain Kirk's TOS bridge to form continuity with a show from 1965. Nobody would watch that series in 2017.

Besides, the hand phasers and communicators are very in-keeping with the original series.

I'm not fond of the pew pew phaser effects which seem to be a hold-over from the Abrams films.
Phasers are distinctive because of how they were portrayed in TOS/TNG. Let the Klingons have pew pew disruptors and Star Fleet have real phasers.


PS: I realised what it was that bothered me about the Abrams movies recently.
In the 2009 film, the Enterprise fires on a helpless (albeit very big) ship at the end and kills the Romulan crew rather than trying to rescue them and put them on trial.

[felice]

it seems to reference Enterprise very little.

Elements from a specific episode of Enterprise are very important in Discovery episode 10 and onwards.

[Crash]

... Now I'm with you.
That connection hadn't escaped me as I was watching but it had slipped my mind.

I'm looking forward to see how they present that constitution class ship in this series.
I hope they don't do anything with it because the design already looks great in CGI on the TOS blu-rays.
It'd be like tweaking or modernising a Spitfire or Thunderbird 2.

Do you think we'll see some Tholians? I seem remember them having some connection to that episode of Enterprise. Those are my favourite aliens in Star Trek bar none.


I found a 3GB copy of episode 12 on the pirate bay this morning. It should be nearly downloaded at home.

[AndyThomas]

Ooooh yes, Defiant. There's a YouTube video that's basically a summary of that episode (yes, the Tholians had found the Defiant and were trying to fix it up). The really great thing about the video? Someone had the genius idea to put the Airwolf theme on it! So as they start up Defiant it's like they're powering up Airwolf! That tickled me! It then continues with the actions shots using Airwolf combat themes, brilliant! Oddly I wasn't surprised when they mentioned Defiant on Discovery, but wasn't aware it was down to an Enterprise linkage I just thought "oh yes, the Defiant was in the Terran Empire timeline". That's reminded me of something else though, I wonder... Still an episode behind!

[Crash]

I'm guessing Andy hasn't seen the 12th episode yet otherwise we woulda had a reply by now.
The only reason I'm quiet is that I don't want to spoil it.

[AndyThomas]

Ok, caught up except for this week's now! Well, well, well, well well. Well. SPOILERS.









Did I see it coming? A touch. There was a clear telegraphing of the fact that when they were supposed to jump to the starbase, he ran something through his chair control that suggested to me he'd actively chosen a particular destination and I remember thinking it was odd that he'd done that rather than the navigation officer. One thing that irritated me was that his fall was accompanied by a TIE Fighter-esque sound effect which rather detracted from it for me for some reason. I do wonder whether his proximity to the mycelium on his demise is going to give him a chance to continue somehow...

Still, really solid few episodes, seemingly tying up a few things but one big question for me has to be, if that was nasty Lorca, where's nice Lorca? Did I miss a detail? Did he end up in the Mirror Universe? Or did evil Lorca kill him off and replace him? Not sure if there's any mileage in that. Perhaps that'll be addressed in the episode I haven't seen yet. I do now wonder where on Earth the series is going to steer itself, it looked like they need an alternate time travel method at the end of the last episode I watched!

Also, please tell me his former second in command is now finally deceased. "Is the containment field still up?" She just grates on me for some reason. Probably just the way she's written, but she's almost zombie-like in her adoration of Lorca and also gets the daftest stuff to do.

[Crash]

The security chief woman who got killed by the space cow monster and then got killed again in the mirror universe ...
the actress that played her also played a very unlikeable character in Battlestar Galactica.
Hopefully, as you say, we've put up with the last of her.

The next episode; 14, lets everything catch up with everything else while pushing the story forward some more.
Not a huge amount of exposition in episode 14 but the story does move along some at the same time.

1 more episode to go and I just hope we get the captain back in some form or another in a hurry in season 2. We only have until the start of next year to wait.

In the meantime, I'm gonna pre-order one of the $500 dollar Anovos phaser replicas because ... well, you can always make more money.