Ran Posted January 25, 2019 Share Posted January 25, 2019 The show is visually very spectacular, with some really cinematic sequences. They really know how to use their money. But the veering of this season to wild amounts of corniness is bugging me. I know, I know, a lighter season, less doom-and-gloom, a bit of homage to the original series. I'm fine with that. I don't mind the technobabble adventures, either, that's par for the course for all the good Treks. But they're not writing it well enough. I'm afraid Tilly is really the major source of the problem, where it feels like the positive response to the character and the actress from last season (at least, I assume it was positive, because she _was_ fun in her neurotic, ADD-afflicted sort of way) made them decide, "Okay, we just need to do that BUT MORE and they'll like her even more!" Well, no, folks. Dial it down. Giving her a quirky, cutesy imaginary friend absolutely does not help. Have they explained why they call it General Order #1 and never refer to it as the Prime Directive? Also, Kurtzman, Babylon 5 already did the mysterious angelic beings carrying people away from Earth for their mysterious purposes. Just sayin'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gertrude Posted January 25, 2019 Share Posted January 25, 2019 So ... the ghost. Personally I kind of found Tilly's little arc the most interesting portion. The obvious mystery of what the hell is this stuff, but then we have her vision and it being a parallel of Hugh in the system. Not sure why May was her spirit animal, but it's in early stages I guess. The Sixth Sense has heightened all of our abilities to pick up on visions and ghost, heh. I'm equally interested in the extreme coincidence of the Discovery picking up that signal at that time, having the means to travel there and also just happening to have the solution to a very immediate threat. Ran, I don't disagree with you on Tilly. I like her, but her caffeine-addled stint on the bridge was just not needed. Stamets feels off to me too. I know he went through a lot, but he's not clicking. Somewhere in my gut I'm feeling that there's mirror or spore shenanigans happening. I assumed General Order 1 evolved into the Prime Directive - I'm pretty sure GO1 has been referenced before in other shows. edit: after a quick search, There is a long list of General Orders and the terms GO1 and Prime Directive are interchangable. General Orders have been referenced before, but not GO1 specifically (I think?). It's always been called Prime Directive as far as I can tell, so not sure when or why the common terminology changed. Perhaps the writers are just carving out a small space in the canon to claim as their own (it changed at this time and here's why) Sorry if you guys all knew this already, I didn't think that much about it, honestly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karaddin Posted January 26, 2019 Share Posted January 26, 2019 Yeah I thought it was pretty clear the ghost isn't imaginary, it's a manifestation or presence of some kind from the mycelial network that's either plucked the memory from Tilly or is the legit ghost of that girl. Remember the green spore that settled on her after their jump back from the mirror universe in s1 - that was set up that would have been criticised if it went no where, this is where that's going . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted January 26, 2019 Share Posted January 26, 2019 I was using "imaginary friend" a bit sarcastically. Yes, May is clearly something unusual sparked by her contact with the dark matter energy pulse, probably connected to the mycelial network which appears to be where "souls" go, and the Vorlons angel-aliens seem to be inhabitants or shepherds of it. That's my guess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Relic Posted January 28, 2019 Share Posted January 28, 2019 I don't hate this show, and that's surprising considering how much i disliked the new movies. Michael seems to me like she's sort of modeled after the Female Shepard from Mass Effect, and that's fine by me, as FemShep was a total bad ass in my play through. However, either its the Vulcan aspect of her personality, or the actor herself, but find the performance to be....stilted? Not great? Bordering on bad? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red snow Posted January 28, 2019 Share Posted January 28, 2019 9 hours ago, Relic said: I don't hate this show, and that's surprising considering how much i disliked the new movies. Michael seems to me like she's sort of modeled after the Female Shepard from Mass Effect, and that's fine by me, as FemShep was a total bad ass in my play through. However, either its the Vulcan aspect of her personality, or the actor herself, but find the performance to be....stilted? Not great? Bordering on bad? It's always hard to tell with suppressed emotion characters whether the acting is good or they are just flat actors. I only have walking dead to judge her other acting roles from but again that was a non main character until the episode they decided to kill her off (like an anti red shirt where there try and add depth before killing off) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The BlackBear Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 Really liked this episode, I like Pike a lot. Tilly seems to have been dialled up a bit from last season which I think was a bad move. Hopefully they keep this up and keep fleshing out the rest of the crew. I've decided to do a watch of TNG in order, as I've only seen a handful of episodes out of order on tv. Only got to episode 2, and Tasha Yar has already mentioned 'Rape Gangs'. Yikes. Also I don't recognise her, so I'm going to assume she isn't long for this world galaxy. Didn't realise Q was there from the start, and Picard starts off way more furious than I expected. Riker get on growing that beard, your face is creeping me out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 13 minutes ago, The BlackBear said: Really liked this episode, I like Pike a lot. Tilly seems to have been dialled up a bit from last season which I think was a bad move. Hopefully they keep this up and keep fleshing out the rest of the crew. I've decided to do a watch of TNG in order, as I've only seen a handful of episodes out of order on tv. Only got to episode 2, and Tasha Yar has already mentioned 'Rape Gangs'. Yikes. Also I don't recognise her, so I'm going to assume she isn't long for this world galaxy. Didn't realise Q was there from the start, and Picard starts off way more furious than I expected. Riker get on growing that beard, your face is creeping me out. You have the joys of Episode 3 ahead of you, also known even to the cast and crew as "The Massively Racist Episode". Season 1 is mostly a bust, apart from maybe 5 episodes at best which are cheesy fun-to-actually-decent (The Big Goodbye, 11001001, Heart of Glory, Conspiracy, The Neutral Zone). Season 2 is quite a bit better, although it has its own Massively Racist Episode Mk. 2 (Up the Long Ladder, where the Irish get the brunt of the racism). The show doesn't start being consistently good until Season 3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heartofice Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 Yeah episode 2 was a bit better than the first one in this season. It had the self contained feel of an old school trek. Team beams down, finds odd community, gets captured, stuff happens, imminent mortal danger, last minute scientific solution gimmick seems to work, they beam back, job done. Thats kind of how I like it. Where it was lacking however was the lack of imagination and creativity around the plot this week, it really did feel like something I've seen 100 times before, from the story, to the characters, the setting, costumes etc. Pike is great though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red snow Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 I've only watched two of the shorts (thanks to williamjm showing me the arcane path to discovering them on Netflix uk) and have to say the show could do with applying the storytelling employed there a bit more in the show itself. The shorts are reminding me that maybe trek is at its best when doing bottle episodes and not so focused on arcs. Or at least having one-off stories with the arc in the background. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heartofice Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 1 hour ago, red snow said: I've only watched two of the shorts (thanks to williamjm showing me the arcane path to discovering them on Netflix uk) and have to say the show could do with applying the storytelling employed there a bit more in the show itself. The shorts are reminding me that maybe trek is at its best when doing bottle episodes and not so focused on arcs. Or at least having one-off stories with the arc in the background. Yeah I completely agree. The big failing of last season for me was the shows urge to tell a bigger story over the smaller ones. I have enjoyed the bigger arcs on past Star Trek shows, but never at the expense of those bottle episodes. I can barely remember one single episode of S1 of Discovery as a self contained story, it all just blurs in my mind. I've been watching the Kirk original series on tv recently, and there is just such a sense of wonder and creativity, i think you can also see that in TNG as well. I don't get that feeling in Discovery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red snow Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 2 hours ago, Heartofice said: Yeah I completely agree. The big failing of last season for me was the shows urge to tell a bigger story over the smaller ones. I have enjoyed the bigger arcs on past Star Trek shows, but never at the expense of those bottle episodes. I can barely remember one single episode of S1 of Discovery as a self contained story, it all just blurs in my mind. I've been watching the Kirk original series on tv recently, and there is just such a sense of wonder and creativity, i think you can also see that in TNG as well. I don't get that feeling in Discovery. The only one that comes to mind is the crystal planet. It's problematic for a show called discovery. The klingon war and previous captain with an agenda explains this and i guess Archer also fills same role/excuse but given they have a unicorn drive that can take them pretty much anywhere - including other dimensions it seems a missed opportunity that they use it for surprise attacks and going to the familiar mirror universe. On the plus side characters like tilly and the mycelium dude at least have a genuine sense of wonder about the galaxy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heartofice Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 49 minutes ago, red snow said: The only one that comes to mind is the crystal planet. It's problematic for a show called discovery. The klingon war and previous captain with an agenda explains this and i guess Archer also fills same role/excuse but given they have a unicorn drive that can take them pretty much anywhere - including other dimensions it seems a missed opportunity that they use it for surprise attacks and going to the familiar mirror universe. On the plus side characters like tilly and the mycelium dude at least have a genuine sense of wonder about the galaxy. Agree, and the crystal planet was my real highlight of that first season. There are elements of season 2, the angel for instance, which hint at that sense of wonder and 'discovery', I'm hoping there is going to be a lot more of that, and a lot less political plotting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 There's also the time loop episode with Harry Mudd. I enjoy time loop stories, and that one was no exception. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corvinus85 Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 Episode 3 of season 2 was weaker than the first two, because of pretty much a total separation between three plotlines, with Michael being the only link. The moments between Michael and Amanda were good, the Tilly plot with the parasite was fun, and pretty much good Trek stuff, the Klingon plot was meh, marred by an atrocious fight scene. For a show that has seemingly prided itself in delivering strong (and flashy) action scenes, the choreography for the Klingon fight was terrible. (I partially blame it on the unwieldy costumes the actors are made to wear) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arch-MaesterPhilip Posted February 1, 2019 Share Posted February 1, 2019 Could the albino child or L'Rell and Voq be the Albino who had the beef with Kor, Kol and Kang on DS9? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gertrude Posted February 7, 2019 Share Posted February 7, 2019 Yeah, ep 3 was not great. The Klingon story was uninteresting and made me remember how unwieldy it all was in the first season. I just can't be assed to care about any of their shit. While I don't mind the redesign of the Klingons, I do mind that the prosthetics hinder the actors. Now that they are speaking English instead of Kingon, it's more obvious than it was before and it makes those scenes painful. I am really not a fan of the Ash/Voq thing happening. The payoff was meh for all the hoops they jumped through to make it happen. I was happy for him to disappear on the sidelines. Was also not a fan of the visual for the fungus after it was sucked out of Tilly. Don't mind the story (actually kind of intrigued), just thought it was executed a bit cheesily. This was an obvious set-up episode and I get it - you need them sometimes, but this one was pretty clumsy. I've seen the theory about the albino talked about and I think it stretches the timeline a bit, but is workable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arch-MaesterPhilip Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 Tig Notaro is my favorite part of the new season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heartofice Posted February 8, 2019 Share Posted February 8, 2019 "I heard postwar the Klingons are growing their hair again" Roughly translated as: " The Klingons looked silly in S1, and tested poorly.. if we just give them their hair and beards they will look better" And they did. They still look silly though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveSumm Posted February 10, 2019 Share Posted February 10, 2019 Still a bit all over the place this show isn’t it? I kinda like it, but there’s something so desperate about it ... “hey, you want long haired Klingons? Speaking English? You got it! And more Star Trek type plots, sure ... here’s a ‘trapped in a sphere trying to kill us’, here’s a ‘prime directive’ episode ... but you still want pace! And action, and flashing stuff! Have it all!” It has to spend so much time being all these things that it doesn’t really arrive at it’s own tone it seems. Somebody pointed out the music earlier in the thread, I’ve never once noticed it in another show but yea, it really grates after a while having wall to wall music. I just kinda want someone to take a deep breath and sit down and talk quietly for a while. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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