Star Trek Discovery: The Bryan Fuller TV reboot

I guess I hadn't been paying attention but, uh, you have to pay for some CBS streaming service to watch this beyond the first episode? Really? I hope everyone enjoys the first ST series to last exactly one season.

It's on Netflix in the UK and a bunch of other countries

A few reviews have slipped through the embargo and been decent

This should be worth a flyer just for more Michelle Yeoh.

I'm sorry, I misunderstood: CBS is only airing the first half of the two hour pilot on actual TV. Fun idea.

If they streamed it only on the CBS app but allowed digital purchases on amazon, itunes, etc. it'd make more sense. but, afaik, they are making it only available on the CBS app

so irritating, I'd shell out for the entire season purchase even if it trickles out a week at a time as per usual

i'll probably wait until next year and stream the whole season then. or find "other ways" that will appear soon, i'm sure

I just did the free CBS trial on my tv device, but I guess it doesn't air until tonight? boo

I guess I hadn't been paying attention but, uh, you have to pay for some CBS streaming service to watch this beyond the first episode? Really? I hope everyone enjoys the first ST series to last exactly one season.

― Señor Winces (Old Lunch)

yeah i mean i know game of thrones seems to do ok and all but i'm not sure why directly adopting a piracy-based business model is cbs's schtick here

anyway when the streaming service fails they'll probably just toss it to another streaming service. doesn't necessarily doom the show.

Phase II - proposed for Paramount Television Service, a fourth US network
Voyager (1995-2001), Enterprise (2001-2005) - designed to support UPN (1995-2006)

nice ship -- too bad they haven't invented probes yet and have to send their first officer into lethal radiation

this was fun but fuck CBS for making me watch a thousand NAVY SEALS promos and then asking for money to keep watching

points for having the main plot thread be about a black woman trying to tell everybody "no really, they're going to kill all of us" and being shouted down

cbs has consistently been tightassed with digital access to its programming since the tv-web boom, it's annoying

Enjoying this!

First question: how can I get one of those dope uniforms

We signed up for free trial - canceled after 2nd ep & got a month free so 4 more episodes

But seriously $6 for 1 original show and commercials is a joke. $10 if you want commercial free? Eat a dick

A few minutes in, it looks right at least. The ship and cinematography look like a Star Trek show (vs. the new movies).

New Klingons - ehhhhhhhh. The makeup is so heavy their faces barely move.

Huh.

The theme manages to have twelve different sections, goes a bit Mahler for some reason, not very catchy

Although I speak as someone who liked Faith of the Heart so ignore me

Only seen the first hour - I feel like I can semi-credibly guess which ideas/dialogue came from Fuller and what came from Kurtzman/Goldsman. Not bad but the character-backstory shit is hacky and painful.

Thought it was ok. Will keep watching.

But yeah, the theme tune is a mess

I liked the show!

At the beginning I was thinking "hmm, is this Star Trek enough?"

But, thinking back, the best shows start out with their own scope and integrate. Enterprise was slavishly devoted to tying into continuity while not fleshing out much history. More than anything I got the impression that someone (Fuller? looked like he was the writer w/Ortzman) had an understanding of what TNG and DS9 did well.

The previews make it look like it's going to be scientific discovery (hah!) in a time of war. Which is a clearer mission statement than we've gotten recently.

Yeah did enjoy that and thought there was going to be more, but I guess CBS is running it as a weekly show and selling it on elsewhere.

Gotta free up airtime for those Chuck Lorre productions and NCIS: Anchorage.

I know it's a Toronto production, so I hate to say this but most of the sets looked pretty lacklustre. Felt like they were adding the occasional lens flares out of sheer desperation to spice it up. And yeahhh, the guys playing Klingons can't even act in all that get up. Hopefully they will sort it out as it goes along.

I'm guessing the backgrounds in the Klingon ship were put there in post-production, because they were pretty ornate?

I thought the story was engaging & the character development pretty solid for a 2-ep premiere. I am so used to expecting exposition dumps for new shows but this played out like a mini movie, it was kinda thrilling tbh

I think the Michael character has been set up with good layers & i’m really interested to follow her journey now

Doug Jones was great & I loved Michelle Yeoh

Klingon makeup looks more like the movie Romulans but dont they always seem to screw around with their look iirc?

Mr Veg had some gripes about how it doesn’t look like it’s taking place before the original series but i wasnt too bothered by that myself

I was wondering if teh original Klingons were supposed to look like evil humans intentionally. Seem to be a bit Hispanic pirate update in the tv series or something don't they? Is that why they were made to look less human.

Latest look has shades of Tudor era doublet and hose and tunic look don't it?

klingons lose a bit of menace when they sound like they're trying to talk through a retainer.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/1/1f/Shelley.png
today ish a good day to die, you turdsh!

lol

should I watch this or is it going to be totally cancelled within a year

(I hated enterprise and found most of voyager boring as fuck)

it won't get "cancelled"... i'm sure first season's in the can
also, if they're really using this as a push for CBS All Access (I wonder how The Good Fight did) they'll probably keep it alive for that alone, regardless of ratings or quality. i mean look at Netflix's insane stable of shows, who knows how well any of these do or how much they cost to keep going with the verticality of it all

i can't even imagine picking up another subscription tv service, not for this. piracy it is.

The first hour was a disaster. tons of pilot-speak where characters explain things that should be obvious in their world. tons of phrases that they put in because they sounded cool despite not making sense -- how is a species both "prey" and "bred to sense death"? the michael actress ruins a bunch of her lines. i found michelle yeoh's accent distracting, but the rest of her performance was solid. filler with an optical scrambler that lets them do the "go back to old technology" bit, which has been done frequently in Star Trek but still sucks. crap CG during the space walk.

second hour does the "balance of terror" / enemy below thing. not the best use of it but it still works. lots of forced parallels that are more coincidental than meaningful. i was pleasantly surprised by the ending.

oh and i was distracted by trying to figure out where in the ST timelines this happens -- young Sarek + Klingons gone for a century = shortly before TOS, timeline still not split. i suppose ST fans will just look it up online.

Continuity-wise, Shran from Enterprise will be happy to see they've named a ship after him... it's certainly BEEN A LONG ROAAAAAAAAAAD

I thought this took place before Enterprise?

100 years after Enterprise, or thereabouts. About a decade before the original series.

Just read it said that it was supposed to be about 10 years before the Shatner series. But that might be open to debate.

They might run into, or at least hear about, the Enterprise commanded by Christopher Pike

oh I'm sure they will at some point if not this year then next year when the ratings start to flag. expect a time travel episode with someone from TNG at some point too to revive interest.

they've already got Sarek, what else do they need?

Khan's older stoner brother Chad.

CHAAAAAAAAAD

lol

I liked this quite a bit and I think it's about as good as a Star Trek show could be in 2017. It's not what I would consider ideal, but it's what works now. Hopefully, they can keep it up.

the internet informs me that giving strong female characters traditionally male names is a 'trademark' of fuller or one of the other three dozen executive producers

i don't really gi

i’ve met several women named michael, just kind of figured they decided in the future “michelle” is just how french people pronounce the name

I hope the reveal is that the Cronenberg character is actually David Cronenberg...

There's something super-Canadian about latter day Trek (not that Trek was ever lacking Canadian-ness via Shatner) that gives it an off-brand forgettableness. I think Callum Rennie was even in ExistenZ(!)

Yeah Red Angel all over again was what came immediately to mind for me too xps

Also stunned that the first clue points to Trill, just after Adira says she's happier separated from Gray

i torrented the first two episodes but in the highlights from last season someone 'felt seen' and then in the first scene all the annoying characters (i.e. *not* owosekun or at least detmer) are being sad/bitchy and you know what? fuck that, i'm out

*almost* want to keep watching just for cronenberg but it's not enough

I watched S05 E03 but have no real memory of it

Trill mindmeld and cloaking monster and puzzle piece something something something (why have Klingons disappeared in the 32nd century?). It's still bad but now I'm stuck and have to finish the season.

Amazing how the then-seemingly-bad first couple of seasons seem solid in comparison, at least you had Jason Patrick and Space Hitler chewing scenery.

S3 was really weird and the plot is feeling horribly clumsy. It seems to basically be turning into zelda triforce fetchquest. Ugh.

Oh and as someone on IMDB pointed out, whats the point of finding any of this now when they had a Genesis device in S3 of Picard?

Sorry I meant EP 3, dammit.

But having said that - Culber-as-Jinraal was pretty fun, Wilson Cruz acted that up really well, and I liked how it was a callback to when all the DS9 crew had to go around manifesting Curzon and all Dax's other peeps.

oh man the actor who manifested joran(?) for ezri in DS9 s07 was almost unbearably over-the-top

Was he the serial killer one the whole point it was for? I cant actually remember it now lol, and I only watched it last year.

yes! so bad

Joran, the pick-me serial killer

Discovery this season seems like a video game, collect all the pieces of the puzzle type quest. The graphics seem kinda gamey too cf Michael surfing on a spaceship in a "warp bubble".

So, I thought I didn't enjoy last nights episode for various reasons, but...
it turns out its one of the most liked/popular of the show!? Clearly I missed something. All I kept thinking was "if Burnham and Stamets kept reappearing in the past how come they dont remember it happening before? Why isnt Burnham fighting herself breaking the frickin timeline? What have I missed?" Apparently the whole thing was a callback to a VOY episode called "Shattered" which completely escaped me, so ok.

Also bummed they mentioned Lorca but he was conveniently out on a mission *kicks dirt, grumbles*

The bit where Stamets was desperately trying not to fuck the timeline up by saying the wrong thing was pretty funny, tbf. Also Reno's one appearance. "ah no, are you stuck in a time loop?" *rolls eyes*

i know this is an ongoing thing but it just takes so much longer to DO LITERALLY ANYTHING on this ship in this seriez because everyone has to use the right tone & let everyone’s voice be heard and omg this episode would be half as long on a normally fuctioning ship that just fucking takes orders lol

covert anti-woke series in the guise of a woke one