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Star Trek: Discovery


Werthead

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Some good visuals (not the Klingons, of course) but the dialogue and especially the music is very ugly.

Really not looking forward to this.

Man, this is Star Trek. It is not that difficult to make it good.

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Since 40% of Americans aren't in favor of LGBT/etc , or characters based on these communities, and that number is pretty similar across the West where this show will air, not only are they taking a risk on their delivery message, but their content.  These 2 things combined are going to make the success of this show a very steep uphill battle in my opinion.  Which sucks, as I'm really looking forward to some of the characters and ideas they are implementing in tradition of past Trek (DS9 being the first woman/woman kiss on prime time, TOS having one of the first really multi racial casts, etc). 

 

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39 minutes ago, SerHaHa said:

Since 40% of Americans aren't in favor of LGBT/etc , or characters based on these communities, and that number is pretty similar across the West where this show will air, not only are they taking a risk on their delivery message, but their content.  These 2 things combined are going to make the success of this show a very steep uphill battle in my opinion.  Which sucks, as I'm really looking forward to some of the characters and ideas they are implementing in tradition of past Trek (DS9 being the first woman/woman kiss on prime time, TOS having one of the first really multi racial casts, etc). 

 

Bizarrely, I'd never really considered this (or just grown so used to it I forgot). Probably because watching reruns as a kid, race isn't really an issue (which is why it's probably a good idea for shows to make the effort). Sulu, Uhura, Scottie and chekov. Spock could be a stand in for mixed race and arguably mental conditions like autism. Funny how the obvious can pass you by so that the focus was on the first inter-racial kiss.

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Red Snow, I think that's a great point - Gene R and the cast and crew performed as if this "ground shaking" concept of mixed race casts was completely normal.  Most of us accepted what they put forward as the new normal, which is about as progressive as you can get.  DS9, I remember watching the episode live when the Dax character kissed one of her symbiant's former hosts/lovers.  I didn't take any special note of it, and only after reading in the media back then as it was, all the fuss about it being such a "shocking" thing having two women kiss, did I realize it was a "first" for prime time TV.

Considering how split the nation is right now on LGBT rights - and everything else - having this issue added to the numerous other things this new Trek series needs to battle...who knows, maybe since it's the right thing to do, it'll have the opposite effect and help this series surmount other problems.  I remain concerned, but I'm hopeful.  

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4 minutes ago, SerHaHa said:

Red Snow, I think that's a great point - Gene R and the cast and crew performed as if this "ground shaking" concept of mixed race casts was completely normal.  Most of us accepted what they put forward as the new normal, which is about as progressive as you can get.  DS9, I remember watching the episode live when the Dax character kissed one of her symbiant's former hosts/lovers.  I didn't take any special note of it, and only after reading in the media back then as it was, all the fuss about it being such a "shocking" thing having two women kiss, did I realize it was a "first" for prime time TV.

Considering how split the nation is right now on LGBT rights - and everything else - having this issue added to the numerous other things this new Trek series needs to battle...who knows, maybe since it's the right thing to do, it'll have the opposite effect and help this series surmount other problems.  I remain concerned, but I'm hopeful.  

I suspect, though it's just a suspicion, that the rates of acceptance among the target audience of a show like this are likely to be higher than among the general public.

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I would like to think that's true as well, hopefully those detractors won't matter.  Still, I wish they would release it through regular channels, or at least NetFlix or some other similar, and already established, outlet. 

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Like sehaha said it's a shame they can't just play it cool anymore but this is impossible with social media. Both the examples he mentions in TOS and DS9 would have been praised and criticised (by those who didn't like and those who didn't go far enough) months before the episodes aired and then that scene becomes the sole focus.

7 hours ago, Swordfish said:

I suspect, though it's just a suspicion, that the rates of acceptance among the target audience of a show like this are likely to be higher than among the general public.

I think on average that's a reasonable assumption. At the same time I also think it's more likely to have people whose intentions are well founded derailing even good intentions on the show. eg if there isn't an LGBT character in the show, or there isn't enough or even more derailing the actor portraying said LGBT character won't exactly match the profile. Irrespective of Sonequa Martin playing the first black female lead in a trek show if she plays a trans character there will probably be a lot of vocal complaing about the fact they didn't cast a black female trans actor. I kind of get their point but it would be really sad if a decent show striving to be diverse is panned for that.

And I'm currently bathing in the irony of pointing it out as it means I'm part of the social media distraction. Even worse I'm discussing it before it's even a thing.

I still hope they are going to explore gender, race an religion in the show as these are things trek have addressed. I'd like a mix of doing so directly with human characters but also via the prism of alien cultures and physiology.

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Post-Voyager would be too overpowered with tech for my tastes.  I'm happy to go earlier, because there are plenty of room for good stories.

 

I thoroughly disagree. Going earlier creates problems in the backstory and canon, and ignoring the canon just pisses off all of the existing fans who will be your early adopters and who will be selling the show to their friends.

As for post-Voyager being too advanced, not at all. They can ignore some of the more series-breaking stuff they introduced mostly in Voyager (which a lot of fans have eliminate from their person canon anyway) and move on from there. The only thing I'd make a point of referencing from Voyager is that the Borg have been utterly destroyed so no-one is tempted to use them again. The ship of the Borg being an interesting and compelling villain sailed at least twenty years ago.

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Man, this is Star Trek. It is not that difficult to make it good.

To date there have been 28 seasons of Star Trek, maybe half of which were awful-to-mediocre (TOS Season 3, TNG Seasons 1-2 and 7, all seven seasons of Voyager, at least three seasons of Enterprise, maybe the first season of DS9 if you're feeling particularly harsh). There have been 13 films, straight up half of which have been meh-to-actually-bollocks (I, V, VII, IX, X, XI, XII).

I think that proves that hitting the sweet spot of what makes "good" Star Trek is actually quite difficult.

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It's too much canon that'll kill Star Trek.  I doubt they're making this show in order to attract the 50-70 year olds who watched it live on CBS in their youth and who along with Bjo Trimble wrote letters to save it.  They want millennials to buy into it and continue watching it for a few decades before they start trying to attract the Next Generation of viewers.

I'm not saying canon should be hauling garbage...  I'm saying it should be hauled away as garbage.

 

Hint:  I have to admit I was pretty gleeful writing that line.

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On 5/18/2017 at 3:21 PM, Werthead said:

There's a small but vocal subset of critics who claim that the 1980s/1990s look was "blackface" and racist, and they very much wanted them to go in a different direction.

Wow, what a load of crap regarding the TNG iteration of Klingons.

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20 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

It's too much canon that'll kill Star Trek.  I doubt they're making this show in order to attract the 50-70 year olds who watched it live on CBS in their youth and who along with Bjo Trimble wrote letters to save it.  They want millennials to buy into it and continue watching it for a few decades before they start trying to attract the Next Generation of viewers.

I'm not saying canon should be hauling garbage...  I'm saying it should be hauled away as garbage.

Hint:  I have to admit I was pretty gleeful writing that line.

But that's what they've done. JJ Abrams made some "new" films and immediately had Vulcan and Romulans and Borg tech in it and immediately recreated the Kobayashi Maru and immediately had Spock's mother in it and the green slave girls and tribbles and KHAAAAN and so much canon it makes your head hurt (the emotional and dramatic stakes in Into Darkness make almost no sense if you haven't watched The Wrath of Khan, which is problematic as watching TWoK also makes you realise how dogshit Into Darkness is in comparison). Discovery has Sarek in it and references the original tricorders and phasers and has Vulcans and Klingons and will focus on "major historical event" referenced in the original show (almost certainly the Klingon Four-Year War, which is why they canned the Axanar project which was going to tread on the same ground). The main ship is based on a Ralph McQuarrie concept art for The Motion Picture, because they wanted to attract those 50+ year old fans.

They've already reversed the canon garbage truck up the drive and dumped it on the lawn. Enterprise actually worked as a prequel far better than either the Abramsverse or Discovery (which, more correctly, is an interquel being inserted between existing parts of the puzzle).

A new show set 20+ years (or 50 years or 100 years) after Voyager, on the other hand, has the absolute freedom to do what the hell it wants. Set up a new paradigm, have the Klingons mutated into a race of chickens, have Data/B4 show up in Episode 3 or completely ignore everything from the previous series altogether and do new stuff and never mention the Romulans or Ferengi again, and deal with the technology by using wit and intelligence and writing skill.

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8 hours ago, Werthead said:

I thoroughly disagree. Going earlier creates problems in the backstory and canon, and ignoring the canon just pisses off all of the existing fans who will be your early adopters and who will be selling the show to their friends.

That is an important point. And there is really no reason to remain just a few years or decades after Voyager. They could go right into the next century, establishing a remarkably different setting and tell interesting stories from there. A hundred years later whatever remains of the Dominion, the Cardassians, Romulans, Klingons, etc. could easily enough look and be completely different. Things change. Stuff could have happened.

But if you go back in time then you are at a great risk of pissing off a lot of people if you are doing it wrong.

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

To date there have been 28 seasons of Star Trek, maybe half of which were awful-to-mediocre (TOS Season 3, TNG Seasons 1-2 and 7, all seven seasons of Voyager, at least three seasons of Enterprise, maybe the first season of DS9 if you're feeling particularly harsh). There have been 13 films, straight up half of which have been meh-to-actually-bollocks (I, V, VII, IX, X, XI, XII).

I think that proves that hitting the sweet spot of what makes "good" Star Trek is actually quite difficult.

Well, I was talking as a fan there. There are certainly rules how to make Star Trek good. What I saw (and especially heard) in that trailer didn't look or sound anything like that. It just feels weird. It is not that I think this might be bad Star Trek. I'm not even sure it qualifies as Star Trek.

I'm with you on Voyager and some of the movies but I do like Enterprise.

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14 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

 

Well, I was talking as a fan there. There are certainly rules how to make Star Trek good. What I saw (and especially heard) in that trailer didn't look or sound anything like that. It just feels weird. It is not that I think this might be bad Star Trek. I'm not even sure it qualifies as Star Trek.

I'm with you on Voyager and some of the movies but I do like Enterprise.

Oh I'd say it doesn't. Not yet. Along with things like the Online Game and the Abramsverse, it's Trek in name only.  Maybe they pull something off, but I doubt it.  That it's gotta be on the streaming service only is also a nail in its coffin, as it severely limits accessibility, which feels like it goes against Trek's tennets...but that might just be me...

And I, as always, remain a hyper partisan of the novels and they way they've expanded the Trek universe post Voyages and Nemesis...

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is there a reason why they will not show us the aftermath of the Dominion war and the Federation's recovery from that war?

I believe one reason is that TNG-DS9-Voyager created a substantial amount of continuity over the course of 21 seasons (and 534 episodes!). Although the Star Trek series was mostly made up of stand-alone episodes, there did accumulate a significant amount of backstory and continuity. The fear seems to have been - from the studio - that any new series in this time period would get bogged down in callbacks and references pretty quickly, although there's no evidence or requirement that this be the case.

There's also the feeling that the technology got too much, too quickly, especially in Voyager. Transwarp technology should allow the Federation to cross the entire galaxy in a matter of months and there isn't too much of a threat out there.

My feeling is that this is pretty much BS. Star Trek often introduces amazing new technology and ideas and forgets about it 5 episodes later, so I don't see why they can't just handwave away the stuff that's far too overpowered.

However, I think the main reason is that none of the people who've come along have wanted to do it, so the studio keeps doing prequels and reboots.

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is there a reason why they will not show us the aftermath of the Dominion war and the Federation's recovery from that war?

Nostalgia?

14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 The fear seems to have been - from the studio - that any new series in this time period would get bogged down in callbacks and references pretty quickly, although there's no evidence or requirement that this be the case.

 

However, I think the main reason is that none of the people who've come along have wanted to do it, so the studio keeps doing prequels and reboots.

I often get the impression with most prequel that they are just as bogged down with call-outs to the future and shackled by continuity. If Discovery wants to include a new race then said race either has to become extinct or somehow erase everyone's recollection of their existence. It's easier to do new when setting it ahead and so much easier to surprise us.

I agree there's an issue with current creators being obsessed with the past. I suspect studios think there's less risk in a prequel than a sequel as well. Which is odd for Star Trek given that the show that failed the most in terms of longevity was Enterprise - the only prequel show the franchise had tried. Which makes it seem odd that they are doubling down on it.

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