Star Trek: Discovery

[Jerol]

I have to say I'm rather under-whelmed to the point where I'm not going to cross a paywall to follow it up. Maybe it gets better but I just don't need another streaming service. And I'm aghast at the amount of time CBS milked for ads. I kept switching channels to the football game and you could watch a few plays, come back, and it was still a parade of ads for Young Sheldon. 

Among other issues I was bothered by: retcon of Spock having an adopted sister, adopted sister behaving in a manner quite illogical, speaking of logic there was a lack of it in the plot, two steps forward by having two female leads and one step backward for having one of them run through the ship in her white underoos, two steps forward by having two leads who are PoC and one step backward for having the Big Bad of the season be Black Klingons, the way the show treated Klingons in general ignored the established canon plus the ornate beacon was ridiculous and so was the fancy bat'leth, and just everything about Death Guy. 

[Jerol]

Oh, and another few things that bugged the living hell out of me. The carving of the Federation symbol into the sand was just ridiculous. A, the Captain should have said what she was doing; B, a simpler symbol would have been less time-consuming considering their dire circumstances, and good jebus, did they actually show a space ship INSIDE the planet's atmosphere. Didn't our relentless mockery of this on Star Trek: Into Dumbness cure these writers of that trope?!

[drawkcabi]

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

I liked the uniforms too.

Just like I don’t think we need knobs and switches all over the consoles, I also don’t believe we need to see Number One walking around in a miniskirt to be consistent.

In fact, my only gripe with the uniform is a small one.  I understand why the Enterprise emblem has been adopted as the uniform for all of Starfleet now; but I would be fine if they had different emblems for the different ships like in TOS.

What was the Crew member with a giant toaster on his head?  Is that an attempt at an early AI?

I agree pretty much with the essence of your post. But in technicality, it's causing me to nerd out.

Number One would not have been walking around in a mini skirt in any case. As we see aboard Pike's Enterprise, at that time both female crew members Number One and Yeoman Colt wore the same uniforms as the men, meaning tunic and slacks.

Even when Kirk took command, in his pilot episode the females were still wearing the tunic and slacks uniform as evidenced by Dr. Elizabeth Dehner.

Also during these times the uniform colors were gold for command, blue for science/medical, and brown/beige-ish for security/engineering/support. 

It wasn't until the first proper episode "The Man Trap" we see the Gold/Blue/Red colors and mini-skirts for the female crew members.

I assumed the toasterhead was an A.I. and Trek saying "Like R2-D2 and BB-8? Well we've got something like that!" and will have a similar role.

 

2 hours ago, Rhom said:

I didn’t see Ep2.  So I didn’t see the designs on the ships that warped in.

Do any of the Federation ships look to have a nacelle design similar to the Constitution class?  Since we have decided that the 1701 is already out there somewhere in service, I would hope we see the raised nacelles at some point.

I was talking about the Klingon ships that warped in, in episode 1 right at the end. I haven't seen episode 2 either.

During this time there's supposed to be 12 Constitution Class ships, all pretty much the same as Enterprise. The Enterprise, Constitution, Constellation, Yorktown, Lexington, Defiant, Intrepid, Hood, Exeter, Excalibur, Potempkin, and one I don't think has ever been named during that era.

/nerdout

 

ETA:

Quote

Oh, and another few things that bugged the living hell out of me. The carving of the Federation symbol into the sand was just ridiculous. A, the Captain should have said what she was doing; B, a simpler symbol would have been less time-consuming considering their dire circumstances, and good jebus, did they actually show a space ship INSIDE the planet's atmosphere. Didn't our relentless mockery of this on Star Trek: Into Dumbness cure these writers of that trope?!

Yeah this bothered the hell out of me.

Ok a sandstorm is coming, wind is picking up, and thick clouds gathering above and a low ceiling to boot. What are you going to do? Make tracks in the sand!

You had phasers, couldn't you have used them like a flair?

There's certain license I can give a show for a "cool" image or choice of words or something that maybe slightly doesn't make sense, but this was over the wall stupid.

[Werthead]

The first two episodes are a single pilot, and it's weird they split them in half and hid the second half behind a paywall in the US. Here in the UK we just got both episodes on Netflix, which is a much better idea.

Overall, I like the casting, but some of the character choices are iffy and the new Klingon make-up is simply too stiff and unemotional, inhibiting the actors' performances. The lack of beams is also weird (beams are cool). Some of the dialogue was also really stiff. The early-episode banter between the bridge crew was quite good but then it got all serious and stolid. Burnham arguing the computer into allowing her to escape the brig was amusing though, like something from TOS but more believable (the Federation AIs having ethical programmes makes sense).

The weirdest thing is that this pilot is really unrepresentative of the series as a whole. The Discovery itself and her captain are nowhere to be seen, and we have no idea what the show is going to look like episode-to-episode.

 

Quote

 

Was it 1 or 2 episodes that they released? IMDB says 2.

 

They released 2 episodes, but only one on broadcast CBS and the other only on CBS All Access. Netlix outside the US has both episodes available as of today.

[Darth Richard II]

The entire thing is airing in Canada. *shakes fist*

[Jaxom 1974]

 The more I talk about it, the more I'm convinced it's a total hot mess.

Means it'll likely honor seven seasons...as I'm usual wrong on these things...

[Corvinus85]

Having seen only the first episode that aired on CBS, one other thing that I didn't like was how the main character acted during the crisis that was looming. I understand that they wanted to make the main character someone other than the captain this time around, to give a different perspective, as they put it. But does said character have to go full rebel out of the blue to showcase this perspective? From the start it was established that #1 and the captain had a good working relationship than has been going on for 7 years, and the captain was considering recommending her XO for her own command. And then it in the first military crisis they apparently face, Michael just goes 180 on her captain, and has the temerity to call on Vulcan logic to do it.   Not to mention that in JJ verse fashion, Michael had to walk half naked to the bridge, to warn everyone of the Klingon presence, because internal comms apparently cannot be used.

[fionwe1987]

16 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Having seen only the first episode that aired on CBS, one other thing that I didn't like was how the main character acted during the crisis that was looming. I understand that they wanted to make the main character someone other than the captain this time around, to give a different perspective, as they put it. But does said character have to go full rebel out of the blue to showcase this perspective? From the start it was established that #1 and the captain had a good working relationship than has been going on for 7 years, and the captain was considering recommending her XO for her own command. And then it in the first military crisis they apparently face, Michael just goes 180 on her captain, and has the temerity to call on Vulcan logic to do it.   Not to mention that in JJ verse fashion, Michael had to walk half naked to the bridge, to warn everyone of the Klingon presence, because internal comms apparently cannot be used.

I'm not someone with huge investment in the Trek universe, so maybe I don't get some deep in universe reason for why her action makes no sense, but to me the episode clearly communicated that she was behaving irrationally because she has deeply negative memories associated with the Klingons, who killed her parents. Even in her training in Vulcan, we see her failing when those memories are brought up, which I thought existed only to show that Vulcan training or no Vulcan training, Michael is very very human in how she regards those who killed her parents. 

So, after her explanation failed to move the captain, she decided to take matters into her own hands, because she saw yet another bunch of people she was close to dying if she didn't do so.

It never came across as being presented as the right thing to do. Desperate and foolish and not motivated by evil is the best you can say about it. And it looks like she'll pay the price for it, and these actions will form the core of her character arc over the season. So I'm confused at all the hostility towards that scene by Trek fans.

[williamjm]

I watched the first two episodes on Netflix. I did enjoy it overall, but I do have plenty of reservations about various things in the show. I didn't particularly like the new Klingon make-up, I could maybe get past the fact they look different for no reason but it felt like it was getting in the way of the acting. I did like the Federation cast, I thought Sonequa Martin-Green did a good job in the lead role and Michelle Yeoh unsurprisingly made a good Captain (it seems a shame she isn't in the show more), I also liked Doug Jones' character and James Frain makes a good Vulcan. Visually it looked spectacular, and I thought the action scenes were mostly done well although it's sometimes a bit hard to follow what's going on in the battle.

Unfortunately, I thought the writing let the show down a bit at times. The opening scene in particular had some dreadfully clunky exposition with characters telling each other things they already both knew and the Star Fleet symbol in the sands was very cheesy. Michael did seem a bit too gung ho at times and it felt like they'd decided how they wanted things to end up at the end of the second episode and then had to try to rationalise that, it doesn't really make sense that she could believe that Michelle Yeoh would ever agree to fire first since it's so completely against the Federation ethos, and it also seems to make tactical sense to try to stall for reinforcements for as long as possible.

The ending of the second episode definitely made me intrigued to see where the show was going next. In a way I might have preferred a more traditional Star Trek show that was actually returning to the exploration ethos, but on the other hand DS9 is my favourite Trek show and that also differed from the standard template.

I think it might have worked better in some ways if they had chosen a different time period, it fits uneasily in the pre-TOS time period and I think it would have worked better being some time post-Voyager, perhaps with another alien race substituted in for the Klingons.

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

I'm not someone with huge investment in the Trek universe, so maybe I don't get some deep in universe reason for why her action makes no sense, but to me the episode clearly communicated that she was behaving irrationally because she has deeply negative memories associated with the Klingons, who killed her parents. Even in her training in Vulcan, we see her failing when those memories are brought up, which I thought existed only to show that Vulcan training or no Vulcan training, Michael is very very human in how she regards those who killed her parents. 

So, after her explanation failed to move the captain, she decided to take matters into her own hands, because she saw yet another bunch of people she was close to dying if she didn't do so.

It never came across as being presented as the right thing to do. Desperate and foolish and not motivated by evil is the best you can say about it. And it looks like she'll pay the price for it, and these actions will form the core of her character arc over the season. So I'm confused at all the hostility towards that scene by Trek fans.

It reminded me too much of JJ's Star Trek, when Kirk runs all over the ship and then gets into a row with Spock right on the bridge. I get that she has a personal history with the Klingons, but as I said, she also has had a good working relationship with the captain for the past 7 years, and that just went out the window in 5 minutes.

[fionwe1987]

2 hours ago, Corvinus said:

It reminded me too much of JJ's Star Trek, when Kirk runs all over the ship and then gets into a row with Spock right on the bridge. I get that she has a personal history with the Klingons, but as I said, she also has had a good working relationship with the captain for the past 7 years, and that just went out the window in 5 minutes.

Sure, that part was reminiscent of the movies, but unlike the movies, where Kirk just comes across as a total dick who saved the day by being a dick, Burnham came across as someone who did something awfully stupid in a moment of emotional vulnerability, and it didn't work, and she's paying for it, and seems completely crushed at her own stupidity. I don't think they read as the same at all, barring the "escapes from sick bay to warn the crew" bit. 

[karaddin]

 

8 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

I'm not someone with huge investment in the Trek universe, so maybe I don't get some deep in universe reason for why her action makes no sense, but to me the episode clearly communicated that she was behaving irrationally because she has deeply negative memories associated with the Klingons, who killed her parents. Even in her training in Vulcan, we see her failing when those memories are brought up, which I thought existed only to show that Vulcan training or no Vulcan training, Michael is very very human in how she regards those who killed her parents. 

So, after her explanation failed to move the captain, she decided to take matters into her own hands, because she saw yet another bunch of people she was close to dying if she didn't do so.

It never came across as being presented as the right thing to do. Desperate and foolish and not motivated by evil is the best you can say about it. And it looks like she'll pay the price for it, and these actions will form the core of her character arc over the season. So I'm confused at all the hostility towards that scene by Trek fans.

I'm coming from the same background of less invested in the Trek universe and I had exactly the same take. She tries to rationalise it as Vulcan logic, but its her emotional panic. Look at the conversation she has with the science officer before it all happens too - he tells her that he is evolved to sense death and he senses it, she becomes convinced the death is the captains. Yes she betrays the captain but she does it trying to save her life precisely because of the bond between them. Not because of logic of any kind.

She says precisely this later when the captain is ripping herself apart over it all, saying she was foolish to think she could overcome Vulcan programming "this wasn't Vulcan logic, I did it because I was convinced you were all going to die, there was no logic here". I thought it makes her a wonderfully human character with a different background. Calling it emotional isn't even doing it justice, its a straight up trauma response that doesn't appear to have been well treated by Vulcans regardless of how well intentioned they may be.

[red snow]

I quite enjoyed it. It felt like Trek even if I still can't fathom how it fits into the existing continuity. Still feels like it could squeeze into the movie-verse more comfortably to be honest and I'd be ok with that over the hoop jumping for it to be in the TV one.

I like that we didn't see Spock - actually I'm hoping it's the case Spock isn't even aware of his "sibling". I think Michael is more of a black-ops project Sarek had and from what I saw in the first couple of episodes I'd say there are times Michael is operating via algorithms Sarek has implanted in her from the mind-meld on. Basically, the Vulcans are manipulating a war between the federation and the klingons. Which again would fit in more nicely with the movie universe in the sense those pesky Vulcans get what's coming to them.

Michael seems a worthy lead. She was a bit too Jack Bauer like in her "don't fight it" choke-hold vulcan sleep grip and "it's ok to go on the offensive because I'm Jack Bauer". Arguably she was right in the sense that if they'd destroyed the ship before the others arrived he probably wouldn't have become a martyr.

The Klingons. Besides the bizarre look, they did capture their war-like nature quite well and I agree from the showrunner comments that while they clearly aren't Trump/Brexit/AfD/le front nationale they are great allegories for a similar concept "people afraid their society has been eroded by the influence of others". I think this is what shows like Trek are great for being able to do these things without it being too direct. I'd argue the Klingons had a fair point - especially regarding how they were attacked by the Federation planting bombs on dead combatants being collected. Plus having the Federation as a sort of Ian Banks "Culture" empire is quite interesting. They do come in peace, but they tend to engulf your society and if you are a species that essentially thrives on piracy and the hunt being pacified is a major problem.

So I liked the Klingon concept. What I didn't like were the endless muffled speeches. It was like Tom Hardy coached them all in mumble-acting. On top of that there was some weird echo manipulation to everything they said making it feel like we were in the Klingon version of the red room from twin peaks. I found that really distracting and I felt sorry for the actors having to deal with that.

Albino Klingon felt like he was going to become the big bad from his introduction to be honest. That way they can really hammer home religious zealotry over the season.

New characters. Quite difficult to judge as I got the impression most of the cast won't turn up until the next episode? If I were to go off screen time I'd say only giant alien dude is going to be a regular as no one else got any screen time and felt utterly disposable.

As for distribution method: I'm happily watching this as part of my monthly netflix subscription. There's plenty of additional shows to watch besides discovery. Would I pay the same amount of money to essentially just watch the show? No way. I'm not that big a fan and if I was in North america and had netflix I'd probably find a way to change my location so I could watch it that way. Or simply wait until the season is over and CBS presumably airs it on their free to air channel.

CBS would probably be better simply doing a deal to allow Netflix to show all their content. From what I've heard netflix put most of the money into the new show anyhow.

[GrimTuesday]

Well, that was awful and great at the same time. having seen both episodes, I have to say that I like the premise of the show, or at least what they seem to be setting up here. The long term prospect of the conflict with the Klingons is something that gives me a bit of a hard on, but I just can't get over how garbage their new look is, and it doesn't look as though the explanation I was holding out hope for, that these were just a subspecies of Klingons from some kind of backwater who had evolved a distinct look, failed to materialize. There was no reason to change their look, it just such a senseless change that has no positive effect on this show.

12 minutes ago, red snow said:

The Klingons. Besides the bizarre look, they did capture their war-like nature quite well and I agree from the showrunner comments that while they clearly aren't Trump/Brexit/AfD/le front nationale they are great allegories for a similar concept "people afraid their society has been eroded by the influence of others". I think this is what shows like Trek are great for being able to do these things without it being too direct. I'd argue the Klingons had a fair point - especially regarding how they were attacked by the Federation planting bombs on dead combatants being collected. Plus having the Federation as a sort of Ian Banks "Culture" empire is quite interesting. They do come in peace, but they tend to engulf your society and if you are a species that essentially thrives on piracy and the hunt being pacified is a major problem.

So I liked the Klingon concept. What I didn't like were the endless muffled speeches. It was like Tom Hardy coached them all in mumble-acting. On top of that there was some weird echo manipulation to everything they said making it feel like we were in the Klingon version of the red room from twin peaks. I found that really distracting and I felt sorry for the actors having to deal with that.

Albino Klingon felt like he was going to become the big bad from his introduction to be honest. That way they can really hammer home religious zealotry over the season.

As you might be able to tell from my avi, I'm a big ol' Klingon fan, and I got to say, that if I close my eyes and just imgine that it is a TNG/DS9 Klingon speaking, this series is doing Klingons nearly perfect. Sure there are some issues, the fact that they give a shit about their corpses being one of the ones that jumps out at me, but I can forgive a lot of those since trek has always kind of played fast and loose with canon.

In my perfect world, the albino fella is THE Albino who had a bloodfeud with the Dahar Maters Kor, Kang, and Koloth. Those three would have been around at the time, and apparently the Klingon who was like, fuck this shit, is Kol, of house Kor, not to mention Kor is apparently in the show. This could get really cool if they don't fuck it up.

The more I think about it, had they forgone the second nostril and not made the ridges quite so prominant in the nose area (T'Kuvma's makeup is the worst example of this, makes him look like a weird rhino), and given at least some of the Klingons hair, I would say this was an acceptable design update. Still unnecessary, but not the worst.

[DaveSumm]

2 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

...and it doesn't look as though the explanation I was holding out hope for, that these were just a subspecies of Klingons from some kind of backwater who had evolved a distinct look, failed to materialize.

I was sooooooo hoping that at least some of the other 23 houses looked like regular Klingons (Edit: or even TOS Klingons? A single shot of the holograms be they smooth, ridged or rhino headed, binding all the looks into one, cementing all into canon.....what a wasted opportunity.) It would have been so easy, and then you don't see them as much so the series can happily carry on with its new look. But no. 

I had a weird thing about five minutes in where I realised I wasn't really processing what was going on, my mind was fogged with the expectation and possibility of disappointment. I think I'll have to watch again to really let it sink in. Generally, I liked it. It's a good series, and how Star Trek like it will be remains to be seen as this was all prologue. I hate to harp on about the same old issues, but it really, really annoys me how good this would look if it were set 20 odd years after Voyager. You'd have to change very, very little about it (what's the state of the Klingon houses in DS9 era? Couldn't they have disbanded and be in need of reuniting?) and just taken the 90's aesthetic instead of the 60's as your jumping off point. Such a waste.

[GrimTuesday]

46 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

I was sooooooo hoping that at least some of the other 23 houses looked like regular Klingons (Edit: or even TOS Klingons? A single shot of the holograms be they smooth, ridged or rhino headed, binding all the looks into one, cementing all into canon.....what a wasted opportunity.) It would have been so easy, and then you don't see them as much so the series can happily carry on with its new look. But no. 

I had a weird thing about five minutes in where I realised I wasn't really processing what was going on, my mind was fogged with the expectation and possibility of disappointment. I think I'll have to watch again to really let it sink in. Generally, I liked it. It's a good series, and how Star Trek like it will be remains to be seen as this was all prologue. I hate to harp on about the same old issues, but it really, really annoys me how good this would look if it were set 20 odd years after Voyager. You'd have to change very, very little about it (what's the state of the Klingon houses in DS9 era? Couldn't they have disbanded and be in need of reuniting?) and just taken the 90's aesthetic instead of the 60's as your jumping off point. Such a waste.

I agree completely, but there certainly is a difference in how the brow ridges of the various Houses look. For example, Kol almost looks like he could be a classic Klingon if you lightened his color pallet, got rid of the stupid nose and slapped on some hair. Here is a good picture of him,

http://media.comicbook.com/2017/08/star-trek-discovery-kol-1013744-1280x0.jpg

For now though, we're just stuck with Clingons.

[Ran]

Watched on Netflix. Visually, it often was quite cinematic, and some of the VFX were spectacular. The space battle, OTOH, was absolutely unimpressive.

The much bigger issues were the writing and editing, which were all over the place. Is there potential? Sure there is -- it's a beloved universe with some intriguing ideas in this iteration, and the actors are capable. But the writing... yeah, needs a lot of work, especially in regards to how ... bizzare Michael's choices and actions were; or, more precisely, how weirdly everyone around her reacted to them. Maybe they're trying to reiterate the idea that Starfleet isn't really a military force, but... well, yeah it is, and the casual insubordination and interactions going on left, right, and center felt extremely odd even in comparison to the devil-may-care gung-ho (future) days of Kirk.

As others said, pacing was off, and the editing of things like the fight scene was poor. I will say that I found the Klingons... interesting. Adapted to the new look, figuring that the double nostrils may well reference the idea that they've an extra lung or two. Actually, the only thing that bugged me about this is...

 

Spoiler

T'Kuvma died way easy -- Klingons are tough! They have redundant organs! One phaser shot through the chest should not have ended him.

Will keep watching, for my part, in hopes to see improvement.

[williamjm]

12 hours ago, red snow said:

I like that we didn't see Spock - actually I'm hoping it's the case Spock isn't even aware of his "sibling".

I don't know enough detail about the pre-TOS timeline or how old Spock was meant to be in TOS but I'm wondering whether Spock might have left the family home by the time Michael arrived? That could make it easier to believe that she's never been mentioned before, if they only vaguely know each other.

Arguably she was right in the sense that if they'd destroyed the ship before the others arrived he probably wouldn't have become a martyr.

I think if the other Klingons had arrived and seen a Klingon ship blown up by the Federation then they'd definitely attack just on general principle. Of course, Michael doesn't have any way to know the Klingons are about to arrive.

11 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

In my perfect world, the albino fella is THE Albino who had a bloodfeud with the Dahar Maters Kor, Kang, and Koloth. Those three would have been around at the time, and apparently the Klingon who was like, fuck this shit, is Kol, of house Kor, not to mention Kor is apparently in the show. This could get really cool if they don't fuck it up.

That would be a good nod to DS9 continuity, although if The Albino is being set up as the Big Bad of Discovery then it might be unlikely he survives the show.

[Denvek]

I liked these episodes, but the fact that the Discovery itself doesn't make an appearance makes it all feel like prologue, and thus completely unrepresentative of what the rest of the show is going to be like.

I also agree with the sentiment about preferring a more traditional Star Trek show with the exploration ethos, but you can't really go where no one has gone before in a prequel series.

Finally, the design ethos seems too much Enterprise and not enough TOS. If this is so close that Pike's Enterprise is already out there and The Cage has already happened, then there should be a lot less blue in the uniforms and a lot more of the raised-nacelle ship designs.

[Rippounet]

Just watched the first episode (I'll most likely watch the second one tomorrow, I got work to do tonight unfortunately).

Absolutely loved it. This is the Star Trek series I dreamed of fifteen years ago when Enterprise came out.

I'd like to pretend there were some things that bothered me, but I can't. I'm not even bothered by the Klingons' new look. I like what they're doing with the play around race and culture. The two lead actresses are amazing. The visuals are amazing. The script is decent: a bit predictable but most importantly they seem to have finally solved the pacing problem that plagued most Star Trek series and found a way to build a decent tension. And I'm eager to see a Star Trek space battle with 21st century visuals...

It's funny because I wasn't hyped at all and excepted to be disappointed on some level or the other. But so far, I'm a happy trekkie, and genuinely surprised by all the negativity. I mean, I've always loved the ST universe, but the quality of the shows/seasons/episodes tended to be a bit random ; you had some great episodes or couple of episodes mixed in with a lot of average or even mediocre ones.
Now there's finally some hope of having a more consistent series.