Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
March 28, 2024, 03:42:34 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Search:     Advanced search
we're back, baby
*
Home Help Search Login Register
f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  General Discussion  |  TV  |  Topic: Star Trek (CBS VOD 2017) 0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.
Pages: 1 ... 11 12 [13] 14 Go Down Print
Author Topic: Star Trek (CBS VOD 2017)  (Read 128502 times)
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11839


Reply #420 on: November 13, 2020, 04:28:54 PM

This show is so good right now.


"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
lamaros
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8021


Reply #421 on: November 14, 2020, 11:14:51 PM

I don't think I can keep watching this anymore, it's just that bad.
Reg
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5270


Reply #422 on: November 15, 2020, 06:23:03 AM

I know better than to believe that you'd actually just stop watching the show and shut the fuck up. So do carry on.
lamaros
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8021


Reply #423 on: November 15, 2020, 04:07:28 PM

I know better than to believe that you'd actually just stop watching the show and shut the fuck up. So do carry on.

I'm getting mixed messages here.
Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #424 on: November 16, 2020, 12:58:51 PM

I've liked this season a lot. Feels like Trek and yet also feels different in a good way.
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11839


Reply #425 on: November 16, 2020, 01:48:09 PM

I did not have high hopes for it. But so far, great.

I keep expecting the lazy shitty plot twist. Earth would be evil? No they are fairly reasonable. Surely star fleet admiral guy will be needlessly malicious or inexplicably incompetent? No, just cautious.

Even main character has been within the emotional range of a  competent professional in unusual circumstances.

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
lamaros
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8021


Reply #426 on: November 18, 2020, 06:30:42 PM

I did like Admiral Guy's performance. Not so keen on Michael being a whiny manipulative shit, but I guess we're meant to think this comes from all her trauma and understand. I agree with Khal's points about the character, as an idea. The writing and acting can't just sell it for me.

When the show itself is making jokes about her over-emoting, but she keeps doing it... do they think it's endearing?
Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #427 on: November 18, 2020, 07:32:33 PM

They've had to bend over backwards to avoid saying, "She got some good sex in that year with an actual man as opposed to a sullen double agent weirdo, so she let her hair down and washed that Vulcan nonsense right out", cause that's pretty much how it looked, a kind of Trek "How Stella Got Her Groove Back".
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11839


Reply #428 on: November 19, 2020, 01:05:12 AM

I did like Admiral Guy's performance. Not so keen on Michael being a whiny manipulative shit, but I guess we're meant to think this comes from all her trauma and understand. I agree with Khal's points about the character, as an idea. The writing and acting can't just sell it for me.

When the show itself is making jokes about her over-emoting, but she keeps doing it... do they think it's endearing?

In prior seasons I'd agree.

In the last episode I think they really hit the balance right. She didn't come across as whiny or manipulative in this episode, just overly certain of being right and continually tempted to believe that is more important than star fleet's regulations.

Also the interactions with Saru were great. Previously people have either let Michael do whatever the fuck she wants or been needlessly restrictive for the sake of it. Saru is the first authority figure to call her on crossing the line in any sort of professional or competent manner.
 
« Last Edit: November 19, 2020, 01:08:23 AM by eldaec »

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
luckton
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5947


Reply #429 on: November 19, 2020, 04:51:43 AM

They've had to bend over backwards to avoid saying, "She got some good sex in that year with an actual man as opposed to a sullen double agent weirdo, so she let her hair down and washed that Vulcan nonsense right out", cause that's pretty much how it looked, a kind of Trek "How Stella Got Her Groove Back".


This. She's always been vocal about her opinions on things, but now instead of complaining in the style of Vulcan logic, she does it with sass DRILLING AND WOMANLINESS.

Which is ok, I guess. We'll see how it goes.

"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."

"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
Tale
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8558

sıɥʇ ǝʞıן sʞןɐʇ


Reply #430 on: November 19, 2020, 04:36:29 PM

Is Book even human? I thought that might be why they went out of their way to say "no, no, we didn't even" (not that different species don't get it on, just that perhaps his doesn't get it on in a human way).

I have suspected that Michael's sass and freedom is related to something she knows that others on Discovery don't yet. Something over-arching like the situation they're in is not entirely real (but she has to play along) so she's liberated by not having to act like it's the real world. See her "not Starfleet protocol" killings on Trill.
Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #431 on: November 19, 2020, 06:32:19 PM

So I think that's the subtext of what the show is doing this season: how much is Starfleet's ethos about orders and discipline and rank and how much is it something that's heartfelt in the soul, such that if you're cut off from Starfleet you'll still do what's right?

It's been the basic issue with the Prime Directive all along: it sometimes prevents people from doing what is, in their judgment, plainly and obviously the right thing to do. It holds out the threat that maybe you don't actually know what the right thing to do actually is and that you can't know what it is when there's a gross power imbalance between you and the people you're interacting with. Against that, again and again, we get episodes that suggest that some kind of ethical obligation sentients owe to one another transcends power imbalances. It's a very contemporary debate and it should remind people that we still are working shit out from the 1960s.

I like the idea that the crew has to decide for themselves: what do you owe to people who have been shaped into what they are without any real dependency on what you chose centuries ago? If a group of knights who fought for Charlemagne were suddenly transported to 2020 Paris, and they fairly quickly recgonized that they were often romantically invoked as heroes of France etc. but that also 2020 France literally had nothing to do with people in the era of Charlemagne, and that any claims to the contrary were ideological garbage or shallow-minded and incurious, what next?
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11839


Reply #432 on: November 20, 2020, 08:34:02 AM

Start of the episode I thought 'oh not again', but the substance of the mission was pretty great, and the bit at the end they managed to make about Saru growing into being captain and less defined by his relationship with Micheal.

Liked what they did with Evil Michelle Yeoh as well.

Fridays bringing both consistently good star trek and star wars  is blowing my mind.


Also I am eagerly awaiting Internet post hoc rationalisations of how a detached nacelle works.
« Last Edit: November 23, 2020, 11:14:54 AM by eldaec »

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
luckton
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5947


Reply #433 on: November 20, 2020, 12:17:19 PM

Also I am eagerly awaiting Internet post hoc rationalisations of how a detached nacelle works.

Seriously...they make a big to-do about them being detached, but we don't get a demonstration or explanation as to how?!


"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."

"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
Tale
Terracotta Army
Posts: 8558

sıɥʇ ǝʞıן sʞןɐʇ


Reply #434 on: November 29, 2020, 04:11:35 AM

Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #435 on: November 29, 2020, 06:39:32 AM

Well, she didn't have access to a large database, she hung out with a guy who had very particular and focused interests and who mostly seems to have been involved with Orion-controlled planets, FTL travel is sharply curtailed and folks only seem to know much about the two or three systems in their vicinity. Think about how much Booker knew about the Federation's current status or the specifics of its post-Burn (or pre-Burn) history, which was almost nothing.

Nevertheless, I would have thought that the moment that Discovery had access to Federation databases, they would have been reading avidly about the history of the last millennium, starting most specifically with the century + following their initial adventures. I especially would have thought that once Michael found that there was an important experiment on FTL alternatives that she had to access, she would have found it was conducted on Vulcan, which would have been an immediate tour down the rabbit hole.

More importantly, I would have thought that Michael (and the rest of the crew) should need to know about the current state of the Federation and Starfleet in order to know whether either are consistent with the values that Discovery's crew still believes in. I mean, these are supposedly well-educated sapients who have studied history--they should all know that a millennium is a long time and that things change, even fundamental things. They should have been somewhat alarmed in fact that the Starfleet of this time still has the same ranks and wears recognizably similar uniforms and speaks apparently recognizable languages and uses basically recognizable technology. If a Roman from 1 AD went forward to Rome of 1000 AD, he'd understand the language somewhat; he'd be startled by some of the look of the city; he wouldn't be all that nonplussed that the newly created Roman Empire didn't exist, that would almost be expected (Romans and Greeks in antiquity believed history trended towards decay and diminishment). Christianity would fascinate and annoy him, very likely. But ok. Now take a resident of London in 1000 AD and send him to 2000 AD. He's completely fucked--only a handful of professors would could talk to him and learning contemporary English would be a lifetime project for him. The city and its technology would be absolutely baffling. The basic ethical and social norms of life would be almost unimaginable to him.

So some intervals, I guess, are more like Rome 1 to 1000 AD, but you'd still think that in the logic/science duel, Michael would have had to concede even more forthrightly that she actually doesn't know much of anything about the Federation and Starfleet in this time period. In fact, she should be acknowledging that a Federation without Earth OR Vulcan as members is deeply unsettling and worrisome to her. On the flip side, I was kind of stunned that she didn't make the fundamental move of saying that the Vulcan science purist cannot tell her that his data cancels her data but that she can't see his data--that's anti-science at a basic level. You can't have a debate governed by logic if one person is privy to information that is concealed from the other person and says that the concealed information is the determining information. It was sort of a weird scene designed to set up the Kowot Milat dissection and Michael's epiphany about not putting the peace of Vulcan/Ni'Var at risk.

I liked the episode a lot, mind you, but the crew should be spending every down moment studying what the Federation became over the last thousand years. No way should theyl have had to learn that dilithium supplies were already dwindling before The Burn as an idle side remark in a conversation with the president of Ni'Var--it should in fact have been a very pressing and obvious question (how has the Federation handled being a galactic-level civilization and the attendant resource demands required over the last thousand years)?

I am really liking this season but precisely because they're pressing into this territory they better have some really good ideas about what's going on.

And also, I grant that Discovery takes place before every other Trek show besides Enterprise, but it should be a huge tip-off that they're primarily dealing with an Admiral...And a huge concern that Georgiou has had time alone with anybody in Starfleet and that she has relatively free run of the ship. They know what she's capable of and they know how she thinks and acts--Saru should have someone assigned to be with her at all times.
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11839


Reply #436 on: November 30, 2020, 03:36:15 PM

I really didn't care at all about the spock thing and thought it reasonable that the writers wanted to deal with her reaction on screen.

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #437 on: November 30, 2020, 05:59:26 PM

Yeah, it makes great dramatic sense and it made for a good story.

But I have to say that if you drop me down in 3020, the first thing I'm doing is finding out what happened in between, assuming there are histories I can access that I'm allowed to access. Figuring out what I do next comes after that.
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11839


Reply #438 on: December 01, 2020, 03:19:47 AM

The missing year does feel a bit weird whenever they mention it.

It is a long time for how little she worked out and how little we specifically know about what she got up to, but too little for a convincing 'I'm a totally new person' act.

She talks to her Discovery pals like it was a great trauma, but all we see on screen is how she spent the year hanging out with the cool slug whisperer guy and a cool cat both of whom she seems to like. When she talks to Book there is very much a sense that there were fun times, hijinks, and cool jackets.

Almost as if the writers don't know what she did that year.


All that said, I thought the way they worked with it in this episode was great. The whole 'be honest to gain trust' thing was delivered better than usual, and I liked the resolution, which in a sense was main character acting like a grown up for a change and frankly that was blessed relief.

Whole thing felt like a classic trek lower budget 'people talking in a room' episode. These can be high on the cringe scale. But this one found a way to really lean in to the cringe so hard that they came out the other side.
« Last Edit: December 01, 2020, 03:27:53 AM by eldaec »

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #439 on: December 01, 2020, 05:46:13 AM

It could be as simple as "she spent a lot of time at a single trading post or in a single community trying to get a sense of what the galaxy was like and not succeeding very well because local records were poor and she couldn't just go anywhere."

I mean, this is a century after the major galactic power collapsed. It almost feels like Star Trek: Foundation, only there isn't a Terminus around that they know of. It's clearly dangerous and expensive as all hell to go anywhere--every planet we've seen so far has very strong defensive protections. There has got to be a lot of warlordism, plus a lot of planets are likely in a state of continuing anarchy (I mean, the Vulcans and Romulans are experiencing multiple *insurgencies*, so imagine most other places). So maybe Booker took her on a couple of animal-saving expeditions and she got a chance to look some shit up on the local computers, but it would be fine if they said, "I spent a lot of the year just doing nothing much".

The problem is going to be if they keep throwing out "oh yeah and then in this situation she did this important thing in the year, she forgot to tell everybody about it".

The remaining shoes to fall would be: what's the status quo on the Klingons (another thing that the Discovery crew would be fascinated by even if it was just catching up to TNG), what's the status quo on the Dominion/Bajor/Cardassia, what's the status quo on the Borg? I'm not sure there's any other planet or setting where we need to know what's going on.

The Sphere data is obviously going to be a big deal at some point as well. Not sure why they haven't thought to try and study it for other FTL technologies.
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11839


Reply #440 on: December 01, 2020, 09:18:12 AM

The sphere data should really be as big a deal as the spore drive. They did, after all, attempt to destroy the spore drive in order to destroy the data.

Fwiw I honestly don't need a tour of planets to check in on all the old species. And I think I trust the discovery writers not to do that unless it is sufficiently cool.

We're due a fundamental shift in the premise of the show right about now anyway.

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #441 on: December 01, 2020, 09:44:22 AM

Yes, that too. Love to see some completely new challenges. The whole question of how to sustain a galactic civilization without resource exhaustion is a great one if they really want to dig into it. Some new kind of threat or problem, too.

I really hope Glasses Man isn't a Mirror Universe guy or that the Mirror Universe is responsible for blowing up the dilithium, I could do without Mirror Universe shit for the rest of Trek's future history.

rattran
Moderator
Posts: 4257

Unreasonable


Reply #442 on: December 04, 2020, 11:50:27 AM

I just hope it's not the Past Enterprise or Future Discovery stuck in the Nebula that caused the Burn. Enough time-paradox circular plots already.
[edit] or Control on a ship.
Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #443 on: December 04, 2020, 01:35:19 PM

What's sort of interesting is that they've confirmed the whole Temporal Accords thing, which...well, if you had a period in your past where people were using time travel to fight each other, in some sense, that period never ends, does it? At the least it gets pretty confusing to think about. Unless they have some absolutely comprehensive time-travel detection gear that makes any violation of the Accords instantly known everywhere (which can't be, because then the whole galaxy would have been chasing Michael from the moment she arrived) the danger would really never go away, considering that the Trek universe has established that time travel with any warp-capable ship is pretty easy to do. I'm content if they just say "this means from here on in Discovery, no time travel period, no matter what. Never. Nope."

Be kind of interesting if it just turns out it's a natural property of dilithium--essentially the equivalent of a galactic (or universal?) event, that it has a form of catastrophic decay that propagates through subspace, that when one warp-capable source of dilithium 'burns', all dilithium within a large radius 'burns' in spooky-action-at-a-distance fashion. There was sort of a TNG episode that implied just that, where high warp speeds were creating space-time instability of some kind.

We've already seen the spore drive can't be reproduced. So it would be interesting if Discovery eventually introduces an FTL technology that causes entirely new story situations and problems. Say, the classic warp gate/hyperlane idea where you can only travel FTL safely along particular lines of connection between star systems, which tends to make those lines of connection fought over. (What if additionally, to build warp gates takes most of the resources of a solar system, say at a rate of 1 solar system to roughly ten gates? That would be a great moral conundrum for the Future Federation.)  Or what if sustainable superliminal speed is no faster than 3X lightspeed, making deep space truly deep and forcing FTL civilizations in the Milky Way to build generation ships or far more interstellar space stations? I dunno--but this would be a great chance for them to change the basic premises and shake it all up a bit. They're already underplaying the importance of Discovery being the only near-instantaneous travel ship in the entire galaxy--leaving aside the dilithium hoard, that should have led it to being a target for every remaining FTL capable power in the Milky Way.
BobtheSomething
Terracotta Army
Posts: 452


Reply #444 on: December 05, 2020, 02:23:25 PM

So, make Star Trek less like Star Trek?  Isn’t there already some Netflix series with generation ships and limited FTL?

I mean I honestly don’t understand the appeal of taking the iconic elements out of this baggage-laden series instead of starting a new series with an uncluttered sandbox.
Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #445 on: December 05, 2020, 09:29:01 PM

Look at it this way. If you're going to do mainline Trek--five-year mission, discovery and diplomacy and exploring new worlds and sometimes fighting Klingons/Romulans/Cardassians/Ferengi/Borg, then Discovery is a failure from the get-go--it's never been that. If you throw them into the far future and they're still qualified to do that in a basically unchanged Federation, what's the damn point? It's like throwing William the Conqueror into the US Marine Corps stationed in Afghanistan and acting like there's nothing particularly unusual about him swinging a sword around and talking in Norman while he commands a Special Forces Unit.

It's the same deal as with Voyager, only Discovery is doing better with the idea--throw your guys into a very different situation and see if they can keep their sense of duty and self. Voyager just basically forgot most of the time that it was "a very different situation" and it had totally boring ideas about the Delta Quadrant. So make the situation very different, since that's what it actually is, and then let that play out. What are our Federation folks like when the status quo is irreversibly different from what they're used to? One way or the other the show has to play that out for a while. Now it might be that they eventually decide that the far future is so different in ways they can't undo that it's not a good sandbox, at which point I'd say you have to hit a magic reset button of some kind that brings your characters back to their present, maybe without their ship or at least without the Sphere data. Or bring them back to the time period of Picard at least so you can use them to tell more stories in a continuity that your audience recognizes.

Though that raises another problem. It's now clear that they're doing two things: a) the Abrams-verse is a parallel reality *created* by an event in the standard Trek universe (Spock and Nero's crew going through the red matter warp) and thus b) the standard Trek view that going back in time and changing things changes the Prime timeline is no longer true. If they eventually let the Discovery crew come back to their own original time or near to it, that will create no end of time-travel what-the-fuckery if they end up wanting to intervene in whatever will eventually cause the Burn. 
BobtheSomething
Terracotta Army
Posts: 452


Reply #446 on: December 05, 2020, 10:09:51 PM

I’m in the Discovery was a failure camp.
Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #447 on: December 06, 2020, 07:39:11 AM

I get that. It's been a serious mess. But they're in a groove now telling some halfway interesting stories and they're finally doing real character work. But they can't flip into the standard "ship explores, does diplomacy, phasers the occasional bad guy" mode--it's just not available to them.

I think the Pike show is going to be a more conventional "Enterprise go there, Enterprise do that, Captain does Captain things, strange new worlds get explored, new life and new civilizations gets sought out".
luckton
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5947


Reply #448 on: December 10, 2020, 02:52:06 PM

Episode 9:

"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."

"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
rattran
Moderator
Posts: 4257

Unreasonable


Reply #449 on: December 10, 2020, 03:21:11 PM

This show cannot achieve pacing.
Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #450 on: December 11, 2020, 08:38:37 AM

Yeah, it feels like the showrunners are so very ADHD. They don't seem to set meaningful goals for a season, like: build up the supporting cast's backstories, or have a single major theme, or have one and only one major plot arc, or have some really good stand-alone episodes.
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11839


Reply #451 on: December 12, 2020, 04:22:50 PM

I liked s1 mirror episodes but this one not so much.

If they are going to take mirror universe high politics this seriously, they need to explain how the fuck it is a sustainable world.

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
Khaldun
Terracotta Army
Posts: 15157


Reply #452 on: December 13, 2020, 07:22:34 AM

Yeah. I thought Grant Morrison got it about right when he rebooted the idea of an evil-DC Universe parallel Earth--that you use it to call attention to the metafiction of the good guys always winning in the main universe, that it only makes sense if there's some cosmic principle forcing outcomes one way on the evil world and another on the good world. Whereas Trek seems to want the Mirror Universe to have characters who are "naturally" evil, only sometimes they're not. That's all one thing when it's a one-off and another thing if it's a persistent storytelling engine and the Mirror people are aware of their counterparts.
rattran
Moderator
Posts: 4257

Unreasonable


Reply #453 on: December 17, 2020, 12:58:20 PM

At least the Mirror-verse didn't last the whole rest of the season. I expect Michelle Yeoh to return for either the season finale or next season though.
eldaec
Terracotta Army
Posts: 11839


Reply #454 on: December 19, 2020, 01:12:52 AM

Edit : nvm, double posted for some reason.

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
Pages: 1 ... 11 12 [13] 14 Go Up Print 
f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  General Discussion  |  TV  |  Topic: Star Trek (CBS VOD 2017)  
Jump to:  

Powered by SMF 1.1.10 | SMF © 2006-2009, Simple Machines LLC