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Star Trek: Discovery #2, set phasers to stunned.


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4 hours ago, Arch-MaesterPhilip said:

Did anybody catch Lorca's Make the Empire Great Again bit?

It wasn't "great" again, they had it 1% more veiled by using "Make the Empire Glorious Again". Still a word that starts with G, so its still MEGA.

55 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

I think a number of people from Starfleet are under the misconception that because Michael killed that Torchbearer, she drew first blood. I'm pretty sure the Klingons are using that as pretext.

I think it would be unfair of an omniscient show perspective to blame her for starting the war, but other Star Fleet officers that don't know all the details? Yeah that works. That she blames herself? She killed the Torchbearer as Corvinus states, giving the Klingons the pretext. She gave into her emotions and mutinied to try save her captain, an action which influenced her captains behaviour in the battle. She convinced her captain to beam over to the ship of the dead and capture T'Kuvma because she knew his death would make him a martyr. Then she again fails her Vulcan logic and sets her phaser to kill to get revenge after he stabs Georgiou, even though she knew this would make him a martyr and spark the conflict. I'd say it was unrealistic if she didn't blame herself for starting the war. None of them have the info we have that T'Kuvma was looking for an excuse, almost looking for martyrdom.

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Hey little bit of a derailment here, but this was the only Star Trek thread open and I didn’t want to start another just for a simple question. 

So I’ve seen the original Star Trek series with Kirk and Spock as most every casual fan has. I’m trying to get into some of the other shows that were made and I wasn’t sure where to start. Are they all worth watching? The only other series I’ve heard references made to is The Next Generation. 

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3 hours ago, Ghjhero said:

So I’ve seen the original Star Trek series with Kirk and Spock as most every casual fan has. I’m trying to get into some of the other shows that were made and I wasn’t sure where to start. Are they all worth watching? The only other series I’ve heard references made to is The Next Generation. 

Sure; if you enjoy the original, I don't see why you wouldn't appreciate the rest. TNG does take a couple of seasons to hit its stride; start with the pilot (Encounter at Farpoint), but if that doesn't leave you wanting to watch everything, then it's fine to skip ahead and only watch the most highly regarded episodes. Deep Space Nine is the best series, and has a lot more ongoing plot and character development - you can't watch episodes at random so much, especially in later seasons. Voyager largely squanders its potential, but the Doctor is great. Enterprise has the least engaging crew, but gets quite good by its final season.

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7 hours ago, Ghjhero said:

Hey little bit of a derailment here, but this was the only Star Trek thread open and I didn’t want to start another just for a simple question. 

So I’ve seen the original Star Trek series with Kirk and Spock as most every casual fan has. I’m trying to get into some of the other shows that were made and I wasn’t sure where to start. Are they all worth watching? The only other series I’ve heard references made to is The Next Generation. 

The first two seasons of TNG are cheesy at times but once Gene Roddenberry and the writers from TOS were removed it got better. 

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6 hours ago, felice said:

Sure; if you enjoy the original, I don't see why you wouldn't appreciate the rest. TNG does take a couple of seasons to hit its stride; start with the pilot (Encounter at Farpoint), but if that doesn't leave you wanting to watch everything, then it's fine to skip ahead and only watch the most highly regarded episodes. Deep Space Nine is the best series, and has a lot more ongoing plot and character development - you can't watch episodes at random so much, especially in later seasons. Voyager largely squanders its potential, but the Doctor is great. Enterprise has the least engaging crew, but gets quite good by its final season.

 

2 hours ago, Arch-MaesterPhilip said:

The first two seasons of TNG are cheesy at times but once Gene Roddenberry and the writers from TOS were removed it got better. 

Thank you, it seems like I can’t go wrong with any of the series. I’ll start with TNG and go from there. 

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10 hours ago, Ghjhero said:

Hey little bit of a derailment here, but this was the only Star Trek thread open and I didn’t want to start another just for a simple question. 

So I’ve seen the original Star Trek series with Kirk and Spock as most every casual fan has. I’m trying to get into some of the other shows that were made and I wasn’t sure where to start. Are they all worth watching? The only other series I’ve heard references made to is The Next Generation. 

I started this thread when I decided to watch DS9. DS9 is largely considered the best Trek series. I've watched a bit of TNG as a kid, and I watch Enteprise, too, but I couldn't get into Voyager. I think DS9 is definitely worth watching.

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On 1/30/2018 at 2:48 AM, karaddin said:

It wasn't "great" again, they had it 1% more veiled by using "Make the Empire Glorious Again". Still a word that starts with G, so its still MEGA.

It was extremely stupid either way.

So wait, what, is Mirror Lorca supposed to be Trump now? (Trump should be so flattered, he's certainly not anywhere near as smart, or charismatic.) Then they're saying USA has always been a racist Evil Empire terrorizing the rest of the world? (No comment.) Who is Emperor Georgiou - who commits genocide without a thought, kills her closest associates just to make them keep a secret, and enslaves and eats sapient beings, supposed to be then? Obama? I don't think so. Hillary/Bill Clinton? Every US president ever? (No comment again.)  

The entire setup is dumb, because they apparently expect us to suddenly root for the Emperor against Lorca - why? They're both equally horrible people. Why should we care which of them wins? The optimal outcome would have been if they had killed each other. And now Michael has brought the evil, genocidal Emperor to the Prime Universe, just because she looks like her old mentor?! Wow, great job! Saru should especially be happy to see her, maybe she could tell him how useful and tasty she finds his species to be. 

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Meh - I'm not sure where this is going. I've discovered something odd - my enjoyment of this series depends a lot on what I think the potential is, not what is happening in the moment. Coming back to a war-time footing is one of my least favorite ways this might have gone. And they killed (... maybe?) Lorca, so boo. I don't know what they could have done with super evil Lorca, tbh, but they didn't have to make him mustache-twirling evil to begin with. There are lots of reasons a person might want to overthrow an emperor who doesn't draw the line at eating Kelpian flesh. Unless he just signed on for a year and done, if so, then carry on.

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In some ways I agree with the objection to what they ended up doing with Lorca, and that it undermined the interesting concept they seemed to be exploring before that, but if I tilt my head and look at it a different way I like what it's saying thematically.

Current media has a trend of celebrating the grey, giving us anti-heroes and anti-villains, painting the world as a grim place which justifies a utilitarian outlook. Star Trek has mostly avoided this up till now, in part because it hasn't had a modern iteration until now, with DS9 going the closest and even then the Federation and Sisko were still the side of good with a couple of questionable choices.

So we get a new, modern take on Trek. It's a prequel setting and purported to be exploring the Klingon war, we seem to be getting a more complex take on a Trek captain - he's willing to be shady, make the hard decisions to win the war. That's definitely a new direction for Trek, and over 11 episodes it drew us into (or for others tried to draw them in) this conceit, "maybe under dire circumstances Star Fleet would need it bend its code?". Then this - an emphatic "No" to that train of thought. Utilitarianism is not the answer, the people that would do monstrous things in the name of the greater good are just more monsters themselves, Lorca isn't a new take on a Trek captain - he's not the Trek captain of this show at all. Saru steps up and seems to be a much better fit for embodying that role, and I hope we get to see him there. I think that story has value to be told right now.

Of course that could all be undone by where they go with Saru as captain and mirror Georgiou, but I'm continuing to give the show the benefit of the doubt for now.

As for the Trump reference - I don't think it's saying anything about America as a whole, it's commenting on Trump, white supremacy (human supremacy in show) and fascism.

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13 hours ago, Corvinus said:

I started this thread when I decided to watch DS9. DS9 is largely considered the best Trek series. I've watched a bit of TNG as a kid, and I watch Enteprise, too, but I couldn't get into Voyager. I think DS9 is definitely worth watching.

Thanks for the thread! For some reason I was under the impression that DS9 was the worst series, but I’m glad I was wrong. 

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7 minutes ago, Ghjhero said:

Thanks for the thread! For some reason I was under the impression that DS9 was the worst series, but I’m glad I was wrong. 

In like 1994, that was a valid opinion. Both DS9 and TNG stuttered in their opening two seasons. But by the end of the third season DS9 had risen above that. 

I forget when exactly Voyager launched, but the primary complaint was that it effectively abandoned the "mixed crew with low resources" thing that was supposed to make it interesting early on. The ship only needed more dilithium when the plot demanded it. There were some good / entertaining episodes though. But then the finale was horrible. Don't click this unless you've decided not to watch Voyager:

The ending provides no denouement at all. We get a bit of alternate reality stuff but then it's overwritten. It's basically "they get home" which like. duh.  

 

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13 hours ago, Gertrude said:

Meh - I'm not sure where this is going. I've discovered something odd - my enjoyment of this series depends a lot on what I think the potential is, not what is happening in the moment. Coming back to a war-time footing is one of my least favorite ways this might have gone. And they killed (... maybe?) Lorca, so boo. I don't know what they could have done with super evil Lorca, tbh, but they didn't have to make him mustache-twirling evil to begin with. There are lots of reasons a person might want to overthrow an emperor who doesn't draw the line at eating Kelpian flesh. Unless he just signed on for a year and done, if so, then carry on.

nah - lorca has become one with the mycelium network so he can probably turn up in any reality/time/place going forwards. But there's enough wriggle room for Jason Isaacs to pursue film roles if they appear.

Things were maybe a bit neat and I felt they were a bit too simplisitc with "Lorca is bad" when "guy trying to overthrow a fascist regime" could have been a lot more complex. Yeoh's emperor turned out to be a bit soft and felt Burnham was a little too quick to forget this was someone upholding an awful regime. I can see why she was blinded but next season better not have her redeeming herself.

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4 hours ago, Ghjhero said:

Thanks for the thread! For some reason I was under the impression that DS9 was the worst series, but I’m glad I was wrong. 

Some people objected to it because it didn't fit the Star Trek formula established by TOS and TNG closely enough, being set on a space station instead of a starship. That was always a very silly objection.

1 hour ago, red snow said:

Yeoh's emperor turned out to be a bit soft and felt Burnham was a little too quick to forget this was someone upholding an awful regime. I can see why she was blinded but next season better not have her redeeming herself.

She has already been instrumental in saving all life in every possible universe; if that doesn't earn you a bit of redemption, I don't know what does! :P Though that doesn't give them much room to up the stakes in future seasons...

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8 hours ago, karaddin said:

In some ways I agree with the objection to what they ended up doing with Lorca, and that it undermined the interesting concept they seemed to be exploring before that, but if I tilt my head and look at it a different way I like what it's saying thematically.

Current media has a trend of celebrating the grey, giving us anti-heroes and anti-villains, painting the world as a grim place which justifies a utilitarian outlook. Star Trek has mostly avoided this up till now, in part because it hasn't had a modern iteration until now, with DS9 going the closest and even then the Federation and Sisko were still the side of good with a couple of questionable choices.

So we get a new, modern take on Trek. It's a prequel setting and purported to be exploring the Klingon war, we seem to be getting a more complex take on a Trek captain - he's willing to be shady, make the hard decisions to win the war. That's definitely a new direction for Trek, and over 11 episodes it drew us into (or for others tried to draw them in) this conceit, "maybe under dire circumstances Star Fleet would need it bend its code?". Then this - an emphatic "No" to that train of thought. Utilitarianism is not the answer, the people that would do monstrous things in the name of the greater good are just more monsters themselves, Lorca isn't a new take on a Trek captain - he's not the Trek captain of this show at all. Saru steps up and seems to be a much better fit for embodying that role, and I hope we get to see him there. I think that story has value to be told right now.

Of course that could all be undone by where they go with Saru as captain and mirror Georgiou, but I'm continuing to give the show the benefit of the doubt for now.

As for the Trump reference - I don't think it's saying anything about America as a whole, it's commenting on Trump, white supremacy (human supremacy in show) and fascism.

Oh, I'm sure they weren't trying to comment on US as a whole, but that's what they ended up doing - because they wrote it stupidly. Unfortunate Implications and all.

A commentary on human supremacy and fascism though...Mirror Lorca's attempt to usurp the Emperor, Mirror Georgiou? Sorry, what?! That's an ideological conflict now?! How, when Mirror Georgiou is also all about human supremacy and fascism? They have the same ideology and goals, it's a pure power struggle. I don’t even know why MU Lorca"s followers are supporting him. Maybe they just think he's more charismatic than Georgiou? Otherwise, what's the reason? Lorca simply claims he would be better at fascism and human supremacy and fascism than Georgiou, though there is no evidence she has been anything but an efficient genocidal mass murderer and fascist tyrant. But now we're suddenly supposed to see her as a lesser evil, or even root for her or hope for redemption, when in fact, we've seen her do far worse things than Lorca has, on screen at least? What he is promising, she was already doing. All that we have seen Lorca do on screen is manipulate Michael, kill a guy who wanted him dead and kill a guy who had betrayed him, and we learn he had groomed young Michael for a sexual relationship, which is creepy and gross - but apparently ir is supposed to outweigh all we have seen Georgiou do, which includes promptly wiping out the rebels/alien races present on the planet, murdering all but one of her court just to shut them up, regularly torturing people, and happily eating Kelpians?

This was a definite jump the shark moment for me. And to think that, at the beginning of the MU arc, it may actually turn out to be the best MU arc in TV Trek...Now it's just above the worst of DS9 MU episodes (note: DS9 is the best Star Trek show by far, but its Mirror Universe episodes were awful, and they got worse as it went on. The only one of them that was any good was the firsr one.) Enterprises "In a Mirror, Darkly" could be a lesson to the Discovery writers how to do a good MU episode: it never pretends that any of the power-hungry, paranoid, horrible humans fighting for the top position is better than the other. It never acts like we should root for any of them. The only sympathetic people  are the aliens they are torturing and oppressing.

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9 hours ago, felice said:

 

She has already been instrumental in saving all life in every possible universe; if that doesn't earn you a bit of redemption, I don't know what does! :P Though that doesn't give them much room to up the stakes in future seasons...

I guess one deserves some credit for such things :)

It's not like she started the war that the Klingons appear to now be winning either.

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Regarding the Trump thing:

http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/star-trek-discovery-lorca-jason-isaacs-1202682156/

Quote

 

Lorca is revealed to be someone who is pretty racist …
That’s absolutely right. The Terran world, unlike the original incarnations of the Mirror Universe where they were just a kind of one-dimensional evil, this is a world that is not very far from our very own. We could all wake up and be mirror versions of ourselves any day. It’s a very Darwinian world, and a world that from Lorca’s point of view and for millions of people with his point of view, where assimilation is a bad thing and there’s a natural hierarchy of racists. To disrespect that is to sow chaos and anarchy, and lying is a perfectly reasonable technique to get what you want. Sadly, I don’t think we need to look very far to find those these reflected in our headlines every day.

Was it important to you that his thinking be rooted in something and that he not just be a mustache-twirling villain?
Yeah, I wouldn’t have taken the job. But luckily it was important to everyone. I had no interest in playing a mustache-twirling villain and they had no interest in creating one. When we got to the mirror world, it was very important to me that the dialogue feel like it was in many ways ripped from the headlines. It’s no coincidence that I’m exhorting my followers to make the Empire great again.

 

Personally I thought he got a little mustache twirly in that last episode. 

Also:

Quote

He’s perfectly able to incorporate the complexity of, “You know, Saru’s a good officer, but when it comes to it, I’d grill him. Or maybe I’d fry him with some garlic.”

 

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1 hour ago, RumHam said:

Regarding the Trump thing:

http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/star-trek-discovery-lorca-jason-isaacs-1202682156/

Personally I thought he got a little mustache twirly in that last episode. 

Also:

 

So, Trump lives in a world where everyone, including his rival for the throne, is and always has been just as racist as he is?

They're really not making this terrible botched metaphor any better, are they?
It kind of makes me think of Melinda Snodgrass thinking that she was writing a great pro-choice metaphor in TNG "Up the Long Ladder". Oh, boy...

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56 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Yeah, it does seem like they didn't think it through.

Not related to discovery, but this episode of TNG written by an AI is pretty great.

http://botnik.org/content/tng.html

Edit: I misunderstood, it wasn't strictly speaking written by an AI, but by people using predictive keyboards.

:rofl::lol:  This is all so random. :rofl: :rofl::rofl::lol::lol::lol::lol:

I've just spent 15 minutes laughing out loud uncontrollably. Some of my favorite parts:

Spoiler

Heavy German breathing heard over the loudspeakers

Troi frowning telepatically

"then we could give them to the Holodeck to make them into electricity as the computer wants!"

Riker: "Ensign Crusher, we need to make sure that I do fun drugs at parties. No one is going to listen to me if I don't know what's going down."

Riker looking like fettucine

Worf constantly randomly telling people "You have insulted my father with your words"

Security bears enter. They look good.

 

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