Star Trek Discovery: The Bryan Fuller TV reboot

I was commenting last episode how there is less technobabble and I like it!

feel like i know nothing about the bridge crew, which seems odd at this point in the series. like, the helmsman got her eye made weird in the first battle with the klingons and the navigator grew up among luddites and that's about it. the communications dude just looks worried a lot, and i don't know what's up with the buck rogers twiki person

have we seen the android guy lately?

Was there an android guy? I only remember the android (cyborg?) lady?

I just took it as read that theyre minor characters, like in TNG there were bridge crew you barely heard speak but they were always there.

xp wait, I rewatched one of the reboot movies last week and they were the ones with the android guy with a glowing hole in his head. my bad.

did everyone know about this except me?

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0003/0041/7038/products/btmr_700x700.png

I did not, and: lol

one of the signs that trek has too much baggage: the red angel person (people?) seems like a probable time anomaly and my first thought is, "isn't there an agency to keep tabs on that kind of thing, and is this guy one of them"

do we want to put money down at this point on whether the time traveling/teleporting/advanced tech being is someone we've seen before in other trek? seems like the Q angle is maybe ruled out if it's using some sort of mecha suit

Saru: You don't think I can uphold my duty as a Starfleet officer if I go down to my home planet??

*goes down to homeplanet*

Saru (within 60 seconds of meeting his sister): I COME FROM OUTERSPACE.

Anyway, midway through, I thought they were going to reveal that the Ba'ul were really the evolved Kelpiens, and that Saru's dad would be the one we'd see for the first time. Instead, they're a bunch of Armuses. So, good on the writers at least for surprising me, even if it's the more obvious route. Not to say that I liked this last episode much, though.

the directors may change, but they each give us one camera-swirling-around-everyone scene each episode lol

“Don’t break GO1”
...
“Sure! Fire off something with untested and unknown planet-wide consequences on your hunch, seems fine”

Has there actually been an episode of Star Trek where GO1/PD is mentioned and then subsequently not broken?

That's a good question! There's some episodes where it's an excuse for characters to be undercover, but I think even those episodes break it. I think TOS's "Bread and Circuses" used it as an excuse not to just beam the crew up out of peril.

prime directive very passive aggressively being followed to the letter in this episode:
https://img.youtube.com/vi/2neNjZReByk/hqdefault.jpg

one of the signs that trek has too much baggage: the red angel person (people?) seems like a probable time anomaly and my first thought is, "isn't there an agency to keep tabs on that kind of thing, and is this guy one of them"

do we want to put money down at this point on whether the time traveling/teleporting/advanced tech being is someone we've seen before in other trek?

But yeah, on a more serious thought, I wouldn't be surprised if they brought back the Federation temporal agents we saw in Enterprise and TNG. The Mirror Universe and Section 31 already play a big role in the story, so it doesn't seem they're afraid to bring back major elements from previous series.

Has there actually been an episode of Star Trek where GO1/PD is mentioned and then subsequently not broken?

Anyway, midway through, I thought they were going to reveal that the Ba'ul were really the evolved Kelpiens, and that Saru's dad would be the one we'd see for the first time.

My wife had the same exact guess while watching, and it certainly looked like they were heading towards that kind of plot twist. Given that they didn't, I find it a bit odd that the Ba'ul only communicated via audio, and the one individual who appeared onscreen was covered in black goo so we couldn't properly see its features... So maybe it's still some kind of a spoiler what the Ba'ul look like, and it's gonna be revealed later?

I would hazard a guess that there's a 0.01% chance we'll see a direct reference to a plot point in the Enterprise tv series. It's the trek property they're least likely to return to.

my incredibly horrible idea that has an even lower chance of being true is the guy in the Red Angel suit is... Picard

the new Picard series would then be a story about how he became a time traveler

it gives me a perverse joy to come up with the worst plot ideas possible, tbh

actually it's . . . nog

I'd be 100% in for that

I would hazard a guess that there's a 0.01% chance we'll see a direct reference to a plot point in the Enterprise tv series. It's the trek property they're least likely to return to.

is enterprise at all worthwhile? i don't particularly like scott bakula, but at least there's no neelix

in short: no

The first two seasons of Enterprise are mostly bad, with an occasional highlight. The third season has a long story arc that's quite ambitious and entertaining to watch, even if it doesn't always deliver. The fourth season is more episodic, and is mostly good, except for the very last episode, which was an infamous misstep and you would do better just to skip it (the penultimate episode provides a pretty good conclusion for the series, so you really can just stop there).

Bakula takes his time to find his groove, and he's notably awkward while trying to deliver lofty Picardian speeches, but he does also get better as the series progresses. All in all it's worth watching, if you're willing to accept that it only becomes truly enjoyable during the second half.

I don't know if it's just my TV but the sound mix on Discovery sucks. I have to turn it up to understand dialogue and then any music/special effects are blaring.

That's common on a lot of modern TV shows. If you're able to listen on headphones it's much clearer.

What if the red angel is Wesley Crusher? (srs question!)

Q was the other thought we had, but eh.

spock is my thought, since the first visions of the red angel were in his head. and he time traveled with "red matter" in the reboot movie.

Trayce, congrats on coming up with an even worse option!

ghost of all red shirts roaming time and space to prevent meaningless disposable deaths.

or michael burnham in a borg suit.

What if the red angel is Wesley Crusher? (srs question!)

That's common on a lot of modern TV shows. If you're able to listen on headphones it's much clearer.

I always thought of dialogue being hard to understand because of the contemporary fashion for "authentic" speech, which makes the clearer enunciation of TNG, DS9, etc. sound stagier.

the angel being wesley sort of makes sense, suit aside. you can imagine the trek rights holders being worn down after 25 years of him begging to be in something

I thought it was just me struggling with dialogue in so many recent shows! I am quite deaf but dear god, the dynamic range in some shows is ridiculous. I'm forever yelling STOP MUMBLING at the tv.

What was with the inky monster thing on that note. Was he an alien or a NIN video?

He was supposedly the Ba'ul, but it's impossible not to also think of the oil slick that killed Tasha Yar.

counterpoint: it was possible

Oh Sorry I knew it was Ba'ul, I guess I meant what was with his ridiculous industrial band angsty goo form (he was even moving like people Ive seen at goth nights on the dancefloor tbrh)

the ba'ul are an aquatic skeksis or somesuch

Disco set to change showrunners again: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/02/star-trek-discovery-gets-renewed-for-season-three-adds-a-new-showrunner/

That was a good episode! The pacing was excellent, and when Georgiou purposely missed phasering Burnham, the WUHT look she gave was IRL LOL.

Yeah, I liked this one. I don't know why they even bothered with the time anomaly b-plot though.

The time anomaly subplot was actually pretty significant, no? First of all, the cyborg bridge officer (what's her name?) got infected, which will obviously play out in later episodes. And what happened with the probe suggests that either the Red Angel is not as benevolent as most people thought, or that there's another time-travelling faction working against the RA. Maybe they really are bringing back the Temporal Cold War?

The plots of this season are better than in the last one, but jeez, these people still suck at writing dialogue! The dialogue between Michael, Amanda, and Sarek felt so unnatural, even for a sci-fi show. They're supposed to be a family but they talked to each other like they were total strangers.

Stop trying to make Enterprise references happen!

"My mother taught me the greatest mysteries come in threes."

sorry kid your mother was an idiot.

Just caught up with this. The last two episodes were great. I loved the NIN sludge monster - a rare selfconsciously creepy design that was actually effectively creepy. I thought they were gonna full Cthulhu with it at one point.

Separating burnham from the crew seems like a good opportunity to finally let her do something.

enjoyed the cheesiness of having the TOS tie-in