Star Trek Discovery: The Bryan Fuller TV reboot

mr veg has been joking about the rubble, like are they building with concrete in space?

also pyro budget must be sizeable, sparks & fireballs like the bloody wizard of oz

Just starting S2 and by god I will get through it this time but man I miss Sisko playing baseball with his idol and bridge crew string quartet shows. Grimdark is probably a bit extreme as a description but it's getting close.

Yeah stakes being pushed to such extremes means that all the side characters don't get fleshed out, in addition to the very shallow way the main characters are all overachieving Dunning Kruger idiots.

The Ba’ul sentry ship CGI was Doctor Who level crappy.

hi, i'm a qowat milat. i get to completely change my morality from time to time based on how i feel like defining the word 'hopeless'. (maybe someday one of us will take up the 'lost cause' of the confederacy!) it's *possible* that a mysterious space anomaly *could* turn in my direction at any time, giving me license to murder at will. i can use spaceships and transporters, but if you even ask me detailed questions about my actions -- let alone interfere with them -- i must regretfully kill you with a sword, because thousand-year-old stun technology is beyond me, as is bothering to hide my identity. i am a lone wolf who cannot seek help, except for when i'm attacking other peoples' spaceships and need accomplices in non-speaking roles. i live my life with absolute candor but see no contradictions in any of this.

fuckin romulans, man

This episode bugged the heck out of me. A good half of it felt like wasted "I have feelings and I dont know how to deaaaalll with them" rambles that did not service the plot. The whole discovery and rescuing of the entirely new species was almost an afterthought. They didnt even mention First Contact directives, cmon guys you're trying to restore the Federation can you not maybe follow its rules? No lets just boondoggle a fix for a massive, long broken ship in 10 minutes flat and then go "ok theyre good to go lets take off". Buh?

yeah i had similar thoughts about this one
show definitely weights emotional journeys over actual plot / things happening

i appreciate that (some of!) their experiences have future consequences -- remember when picard spent 50 subjective years with a family on a dying planet in 'the inner light' and it apparently didn't change him at all? and the characters *should* be pretty fucked up emotionally!

but having everyone tilt their heads at each other and blurt platitudes like 'i'm here for you' and 'everyone must grieve in their own way' isn't very compelling to watch either

Tilly with her therapy babble this week was really pushing me over the edge

Yeah Tillys character is starting to grate on me. She has a shipmate who just lost his whole family, race, and planet and she has to talk about how she fits in. Read the room lass.

This show moves sooooo slow. I can't tell if we've been on Sad Spock for three episodes or six.

for me this show is just a wait station for the Captain Pike show

I have hopes for the Section 31 show, Yeoh is great but they're going to have to make her more than the Joker in Space.

oh i forgot abt that- that oughta be good too

I've been thinking that Disco is a deconstruction of TNG-era Roddenberryism, where humanity has leveled up, everyone is a hyper-competent professional, and there aren't (supposed to be) interpersonal conflicts -- all edicts which the writers hated. I wonder if Disco is trying to show how unrealistic that idealism is, and that's why all the main characters constantly overestimate their objectivity, ability to compartmentalize, etc. Except in Disco, the characters never seem to learn their lessons and keep making the same mistakes, which compounds the "Being so emotionally invested in the situation makes me the PERFECT candidate for this mission" kind of emotional stuntedness that really bugs in this era of nu Trek.

that is a good observation!

i think Disco just has bad writers tbh

'deconstruction' might be giving the writers too much credit but it's absolutely a *reaction* to everything that roddenberry (and perhaps more importantly, berman) got wrong

but there are so many unearned moments! there was like a five-minute wake for mirror-georgiou, who was a complete asshole no one liked! it's typical trek that we only learned anything about airiam in the episode in which she was killed, but being haunted by her loss *forever* only works if you'd established her earlier

also it's nice that stamets is kind to adira and/or grey -- and that his partner is available to supply platitudes about the universe at large -- but suddenly, at certain times, they're his family? fucking earn it

100%

I think after a certain point, the audience understands that the characters have an emotional bond and they could just show us a silent clip of someone sitting at a bedside or holding a hand

I was just boggling at the scene following Booker’s mind meld where he’s obviously in much better spirits, having resolved some of his guilt via mind meld, and Stamets is like “I’m so sorry we put you through that. Reliving it, blah blah..” and I’m like, are you completely face blind or what? Booker’s had this emotional denouement that the viewers witnessed and you’re rewinding the vibe back to fifteen minutes ago here

Even when they give a character an inner life, and the actors successfully portray it, someone else has to jump in and fuck up the resolution

I swear to god if they spend any more time talking about Gray’s character evolution in terms of how risky the separation was, instead of moving on and maybe giving Adira a very brief subplot about feeling lonely, I’m throwing a shoe at the tv

The Gray download was sp badly written too! Like, they only bothered mentioning the dangers the minute they're about to start it. If you're going through the process of making sure you have informed consent, you'd damn well would mention at the way before they're going under the knife (so to speak), but then the writers worked have had to plan ahead instead of making up the story as they go.

A real missed opportunity would be exciting the very idea of consent when the individual in question can't communicate with the outside world, because Gray was totally at the mercy of Adira. We could've gotten a chewy sci fi thought experiment, instead of more sentimentality and narcissism.

I’m wondering if they did the ridiculous thing a lot of shows seem to be doing in the binge-times where they plot the entire season out, have one main plot they just kind of slowly progress in each episode, and the season’s emotional bonding has just been extremely front-loaded

In any case, that’s a terrible fit for a show that’s released weekly, and most of these episodes just don’t stand on their own. And the integrity of the whole thing is wrecked. There’s been enough repetition in the last two weeks that you could skip either of the episodes and lose nothing. Give me one A-plot that advances a character or two, a B-plot that services the seasonal arc, and 80% more Grudge

yeah they don’t really grapple with ideas much like previous shows

and yeah the gray download “story” this week (such as it was) was really a nothingy afterthought, oh just have adira worry and handwring a lot, hold their hand aaand they’re back. like ER coma-patient stories have had more drama!
why even DO it if that’s all you are going to do

should have mixed it up, had a different trill symbiote personality pop up in the new body first

yeah that could have been interesting

I think it's telling that posters in this thread tossed off some ideas that would've light years more interesting than what we got.

yup :(

A real missed opportunity would be exciting the very idea of consent when the individual in question can't communicate with the outside world, because Gray was totally at the mercy of Adira.

This is an amazing idea. A la the TNG ep where Data had to fight for his right not to be taken back to earth and dismantled. We could have had Adira being selfish and insisting Grey would be moved into the synth body but see him protesting "no! This isnt what I want shes lying!" or something. Though, its been established their relatioship doesnt seem the type that'd happen in but it would have been a great knotty ethics story.

should have mixed it up, had a different trill symbiote personality pop up in the new body first

hell yes imagine the android waking up possessed by joran dax

lol

Star Trek: You Got This

oh look, Tilly is leading a survey mission with cadets! surely nothing will go wrong

*two seconds later*

i swear to christ the next person who says “you got this” needs to be thrown out an airlock

mm and yes lets really do some more in-depth conflict resolution now in this perilous moment on this iceplanet while giant spiders are coming to eat your flesh, definitely a great idea. honestly sometimes im just WHAT the fuck IS THIS SHOW

ok i am caught up now and my most pressing question is what was that shit with the ice boots?

anyway this show is very daft but i still like it

holy shit @ the Georgiou eulogy scene - she was a genocidal maniac, actual Space Hitler! Mirror Saru immediately forgave her for eating his people and was willing to die for her - after the change main Saru was a raging asshole for four episodes, he would have shot her himself.

These are like 22 minute sci-fi stories plus 20 minute of unearned sad monologuing. Stamets and the Trill non-binary scenes were so badly written it undermined them (and it's Trek, there have always been non-binary species!).

The Starfleet Admiral having to get in a "oooooh, you bad boys used that unauthorized tech to do the thing I told you to do" moment every episode, yeesh.

Need a series where Pike, Book, Grudge and Emperor Georgiou galavant across the galaxy.

i really do need that Pike series like, NOW

With Yeoh gone and Book still just a bit player, I'm not sure there's any charisma left in the main characters. Stamets and Tig Notaro show promise but their Whedon banter has its limits.

I stopped watching this a few episodes into the third season - we just forgot to keep watching it. And then I started DS9 (for the first time!) instead and it was so much better. Point being, this thread isn't really persuading me to try again. Or I'll wait for the Pike show. I feel a bit underwhelmed that the retro white guy lead show is the one I'm really looking forward to.

Admittedly I don't get Pike's appeal but the other prestige, live action Trek show centered around a captain also has awful writing (sorry Trayce) so I have low hopes for Pike.

I am very angry with that latest episode. And so it would seem is everyone else, what a low IMDB rating.

I did love that they Redshirted someone 5 milliseconds in though.

trayce . . . you got this

i m d b…. rating?

star trek: let's do this

Third episode of the Kelpien dilithium arc, pure hate-watch now.

i was ok w this episode? way less selfhelp at least

Yes I liked this one. I feel like I missed something re the very end bit where Tarka was going on about using anger productively and then he fingered a scar on the back of his neck. What did I not infer there, it is driving me bonkers.