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Zurui posted:Some good news out of Goldsman regarding Strange New Worlds returning to a more episodic, optimistic format and tone. quote:As fans well know, all the older Trek series, from TOS to Enterprise, were traditional TV shows in that each episode was its own self-contained story (with the exception of a few multi-episode arcs along the way). But Discovery broke with that tradition by going for a serialized narrative spread across an entire season, a move that rubbed many old fashioned Trek fans the wrong way. When Picard was later announced, many hoped the show would return to the classic Trek storytelling approach, but instead season 1 presented another serialized narrative. That's...not what rubbed people the wrong way about DISCO or STP...
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# ? May 20, 2020 00:48 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 12:53 |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UEnVZ3j6UA
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# ? May 20, 2020 01:27 |
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Astroman posted:That's...not what rubbed people the wrong way about DISCO or STP... It is a pretty common complaint from detractors - and something people in this very thread have expressed an interest in.
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# ? May 20, 2020 01:35 |
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I think people want more competent storytelling and not a boring season-long plotline with the kitchen sink thrown in for time that they know won't resolve in a satisfactory way. "Gimme a Star Trek with a season arc storyline that's told well. Can't do it? Ok, fine, just make one-offs. Do something right you hacks."
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# ? May 20, 2020 02:27 |
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Zurui posted:It is a pretty common complaint from detractors - and something people in this very thread have expressed an interest in. Yeah, and one of them was me. But that article seems to imply that regressive Trekkies are the dum babbies who can't handle modern *~~Prestige TV~~* and that was the only reason they disliked the otherwise awesome DISCO and STP. And I also say that as someone who generally liked both shows. Nobody who has either mild or major issues with DISCO was saying it would be improved by losing arcs and storyline. I just think it would be refreshing and lighten the dramatic load if Strange New Worlds (SNW?) is episodic. And we can get our fix of weighty season long space operas on DISCO and Picard. And Untitled Section 31 Show That Has Been Teased Longer Than TAS Ran, I guess.
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# ? May 20, 2020 02:38 |
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There's something to be said that the endless escalation of stakes gets wearisome after a while. Look at the final battle of the season for Discovery. It wasn't tense, it was just visual noise serving as backdrop to a story that you know had to reset the status quo for the larger universe. That's also one of the things I hated about Picard's finale. It wasn't enough to explore the idea of whether or not sentient synthetic life had the right to exist independently, we had to pull in robo-cthulhu to "up the stakes" as if genocide wasn't a weighty enough topic to explore. Intimate stakes often lead to better stories since you have to care about the effect on the CHARACTERS rather than the universe ending if they fail. That's one of the things that makes TWOK so excellent. If Khan won, the Enterprise would have been blown up and he would be living it up on a new planet. Maybe that's something the federation would have had to worry about down the line, but it wasn't like he was going to nuke earth. We care about the story because we care about the characters. I mean, it's not like Star Trek is a stranger to big stakes (Star Trek IV, the most lighthearted movie, oddly enough had some of the biggest stakes rivaled only by TMP probably.) The series finale of TNG had some of the biggest stakes ever (maybe, if you believe Q would have let it happen and it wasn't all just an elaborate deception to begin with). You just can't trot out the whole 'everything we know is going to die' card for every season. By all means have serial story elements and continuity between episodes. Let your characters grow. Build the universe. It's just if you use every on screen minute to service a pivotal moment in the season finale where all will be lost if 'x' does or doesn't happen, it all becomes a bit of a bore and it becomes increasingly difficult to make the payoff worthwhile.
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# ? May 20, 2020 03:21 |
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Yeah, there was a line in Disco season 1 where IIRC Stamets said something like "if the spore network collapses it will destroy all life everywhere in the multiverse" and it was hilarious because it was so ridiculous. Not only did it come out of nowhere, it's almost literally impossible to raise the stakes any further. I'm pretty sure that's not the tone the writers were aiming for.
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# ? May 20, 2020 05:05 |
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I think I'm already done with the Voyager podcast. They just recap the episode, the discussion is a Patreon only thing that gets pushed multiple times. I don't object to Patreon but coming right out of the gate with it everywhere and keeping half your content paywalled isn't for me.
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# ? May 20, 2020 05:13 |
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Is this a good Federation ship?
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# ? May 20, 2020 05:55 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:Is this a good Federation ship? I think that's the model after the NX-class but before the ball-headed ones.
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# ? May 20, 2020 06:12 |
SlothfulCobra posted:Is this a good Federation ship? idk, how does it look if you copy-paste a fleet of 200 of them
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# ? May 20, 2020 07:41 |
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Hey which of these icons looks most like "Sensor array" technically bottom left is standard for smart device sensors these days but I'm a little concerned it looks too much like a communications/signal icon. Still, it might suit best. Subspace does have a very different icon already: MikeJF fucked around with this message at 07:52 on May 20, 2020 |
# ? May 20, 2020 07:49 |
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MikeJF posted:Hey which of these icons looks most like "Sensor array" They’re all a bit ‘tactical radar’ rather than sensors. Maybe either 2 or 3?
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# ? May 20, 2020 08:00 |
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Of those, top right. If it's a game or whatnot, maybe combining comms and sensors is not so bad?
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# ? May 20, 2020 08:09 |
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MikeJF posted:Hey which of these icons looks most like "Sensor array" I like 3 and 5 myself.
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# ? May 20, 2020 08:16 |
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Grand Fromage posted:I think I'm already done with the Voyager podcast. They just recap the episode, the discussion is a Patreon only thing that gets pushed multiple times. I don't object to Patreon but coming right out of the gate with it everywhere and keeping half your content paywalled isn't for me. I’ve not listened to the new episode yet, but I’ve not been impressed so far - Wang is nowhere near as funny as he thinks he is, and McNeill doesn’t seem as interested in it. I have to wonder what happens when Coronavirus ends and McNeill goes back to his regular line of work - will he have time for this? The behind the scenes titbits are interesting, but I never liked the Patreon from the start - irrelevant of their actual situation it feels dirty for stars of one of the biggest sci-fi series of the 90s to beg for money before the podcast begins. Doubly so when it turns out all the interesting stuff is behind the paywall and we’re getting Garrett Wang telling us the story of the episode and regaling us with his atrocious Janeway accent. I guess it could get interesting when they do certain episodes like Threshold, or that period of time Wang was suspended for being late and/or high?
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# ? May 20, 2020 09:01 |
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thotsky posted:If it's a game or whatnot, maybe combining comms and sensors is not so bad? In an incredibly nerdy pasttime, I'm making a thingymabob to try to make it easy to digitise and make browsable all those ship map things that people've made over the years and view them in one of those multilevel 3D maps like they have at the mall. (EG: TOS Romulan Ship. Very early days, lots of readability improvements ahead)
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# ? May 20, 2020 09:07 |
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MikeJF posted:In an incredibly nerdy pasttime, I'm making a thingymabob to try to make it easy to digitise and make browsable all those ship map things that people've made over the years and view them in one of those multilevel 3D maps like they have at the mall. Dude
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# ? May 20, 2020 09:09 |
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I've gotta pass The Lockdown somehow. ... MikeJF fucked around with this message at 13:03 on May 20, 2020 |
# ? May 20, 2020 09:22 |
curiousTerminal posted:I'm not exactly hating the characters in ENT like I was before, they're mostly still unlikable but some of them have certainly gotten enough writing that I find them interesting. Reed and T'Pol chief among "interesting but unlikable" and Hoshi and Tripp among "likeable but uninteresting." I still really just wish that anyone else was talking Phlox and Archer's spots, and also does Mayweather exist anymore?? Basically they came up with a great idea for a character with Mayweather and then realized it was a narrative dead end. A guy who's been on smaller starships his whole life and is now on the best one and has a unique perspective on space, being effectively a Belter from the expanse, doesn't have much to add. I guess. There's a lot of stuff where they go "ah gently caress" and realize they gave a lot away. More shuttlecraft sounds great until it's not.
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# ? May 20, 2020 09:47 |
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Zaroff posted:I’ve not listened to the new episode yet, but I’ve not been impressed so far - Wang is nowhere near as funny as he thinks he is, and McNeill doesn’t seem as interested in it. I have to wonder what happens when Coronavirus ends and McNeill goes back to his regular line of work - will he have time for this? I think they’re already falling into the same trap that a lot of rewatch podcasts do; most of the show’s episodes just aren’t interesting enough to warrant their own focused podcast episodes. They should have just grouped the lovely ones together or cherry-picked the most well-known eps to talk about. Another thing that would help a ton is if McNeill wasn’t so passive about everything and actually contributed to the conversation. Most of the time it’s just Wang rambling on. I actually liked their Caretaker episodes quite a bit, but man it’s been slim pickings since then. Are there any other actual decent Trek podcasts that aren’t Greatest Gen or the Cirric Lofton/Aron Eisenberg one? I tried to get into Treks and the City but it’s really dependent on the guests. Big Mean Jerk fucked around with this message at 09:56 on May 20, 2020 |
# ? May 20, 2020 09:54 |
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:Basically they came up with a great idea for a character with Mayweather and then realized it was a narrative dead end. A guy who's been on smaller starships his whole life and is now on the best one and has a unique perspective on space, being effectively a Belter from the expanse, doesn't have much to add. I guess. There's a lot of stuff where they go "ah gently caress" and realize they gave a lot away. More shuttlecraft sounds great until it's not. I mean they could've always developed him further to keep him interesting. He doesn't have to have only one single hook.
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# ? May 20, 2020 10:04 |
MikeJF posted:I mean they could've always developed him further to keep him interesting. He doesn't have to have only one single hook. Since this is the creative team that wrote an entire episode about finding a comet, ooing and ahhing at it for 37 minutes while Archer Napoleon Syndromes at some bored vulcans I dont think they could possibly have come up with it munch.
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# ? May 20, 2020 10:22 |
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Mayweather knew he needed to keep his head down and shut up, because being the black guy with actual experience just gets you labeled uppity when your boss is a white guy who got his job through nepotism.
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# ? May 20, 2020 11:10 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:Is this a good Federation ship? "What we got back didn't live long... fortunately"
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# ? May 20, 2020 13:06 |
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Hooray, we finally got to "Cause and Effect" in our TNG watching, and it's still a perfect episode! A masterpiece of both writing and directing. (Some others I remember fondly haven't quite held up. Which makes sense since I must've been like 6 the last time I saw them. That whole Sela thing seemed a lot cooler when I lacked the ability to critically evaluate whether plot twists were actually worth it...) There's so much to appreciate about it. The cold open is not only a great spectacle, it also efficiently gets the first "loop" out of the way so they can get right into building up the layers of deja vu. It's also really cool how almost every repeated scene uses different shots even though in many cases it's the same take, I think, since the line readings sound identical, except when they aren't supposed to. And the short length of the loop, plus how quickly the catastrophe happens, helps us not to be frustrated with the characters for not figuring out what's going on and making better choices. There's really nothing differently they could've done for the most part, except of course when they finally do figure it out. They're doing the best anyone possibly could, they just don't have enough time. And lastly, the solution actually kind of makes sense and doesn't rely too much on technobabble BS. Data planting the idea in himself to be obsessed with the number 3, so that he'd eventually realize it and start looking for that number everywhere to find some kind of link, makes sense as a simple but effective and reinforceable message to his past self. Plus a great way of using the poker game to tie it all together.
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# ? May 20, 2020 14:42 |
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Astroman posted:That's...not what rubbed people the wrong way about DISCO or STP... And for that matter, significant portions of DS9, Enterprise and even drat Voyager had at least some measure of persistent serialized storytelling going on, proving that the current stewards of Trek can neither determine how television works in the present or the past. This franchise is being shepherded by human markov generators.
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# ? May 20, 2020 14:47 |
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Sir Lemming posted:Hooray, we finally got to "Cause and Effect" in our TNG watching... One of my very favorite episodes Man I was blown away when that first aired
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# ? May 20, 2020 14:48 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:Is this a good Federation ship? Ah nice, the USS Musai
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# ? May 20, 2020 14:48 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:Is this a good Federation ship? Ok but where do the Vipers recover?
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# ? May 20, 2020 14:50 |
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Sir Lemming posted:Hooray, we finally got to "Cause and Effect" in our TNG watching, and it's still a perfect episode! A masterpiece of both writing and directing. (Some others I remember fondly haven't quite held up. Which makes sense since I must've been like 6 the last time I saw them. That whole Sela thing seemed a lot cooler when I lacked the ability to critically evaluate whether plot twists were actually worth it...) Sela's fine in Redemption. Groan-worthy in Unification II. SlothfulCobra posted:Is this a good Federation ship? It looks like a balsa-wood model of a Defiant-class bolted onto an art nouveau NCC-1701 engineering hull.
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# ? May 20, 2020 14:52 |
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Zaroff posted:I’ve not listened to the new episode yet, but I’ve not been impressed so far - Wang is nowhere near as funny as he thinks he is, and McNeill doesn’t seem as interested in it. I have to wonder what happens when Coronavirus ends and McNeill goes back to his regular line of work - will he have time for this? Garrett Wang kind of reminds me of someone who was really in to high school and decades later has all these enthusiastic stories about the school, and the people and teachers, and that one time he scored a touchdown and won the game. Then McNeill is the normal guy who found high school O.K. and kind of vaguely remembers those stories but has moved on and has had better memories since then.
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# ? May 20, 2020 15:21 |
I find it really fun to listen to Wang's stories because he's obviously having fun telling them and has a goddamn fantastic memory, it's just a shame they got kinda boring and very specific to him.
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# ? May 20, 2020 15:27 |
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Drone posted:I find it really fun to listen to Wang's stories because he's obviously having fun telling them and has a goddamn fantastic memory, it's just a shame they got kinda boring and very specific to him. I really liked that story he told in Caretaker part 1 or 2 about the casting agent who really liked him and made an exception, and she NEVER makes an exception, and he nailed the audition, and his asian hero was jealous of him getting the part, and Braga stole him for the show from that movie, and he almost ran over Harrison Ford and all this stuff and it was the best day ever. And then I think about everything that happened to Harry Kim on the show and Wang's career afterwards and drat, I think he peaked in that one audition.
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# ? May 20, 2020 15:37 |
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piratepilates posted:I really liked that story he told in Caretaker part 1 or 2 about the casting agent who really liked him and made an exception, and she NEVER makes an exception, and he nailed the audition, and his asian hero was jealous of him getting the part, and Braga stole him for the show from that movie, and he almost ran over Harrison Ford and all this stuff and it was the best day ever. piratepilates posted:and that one time he scored a touchdown and won the game.
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# ? May 20, 2020 16:12 |
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I just saw the episode of Voyager where Q brings his teenage son to Voyager, and that kid plays an entitled prick way, way too well for this show. It's the best acting I've ever seen on any episode of Voyager, to the point where I'm wondering if he's just a rich kid playing himself. EDIT: lol he's John De Lancie's son
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# ? May 20, 2020 17:08 |
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:EDIT: lol he's John De Lancie's son The De Lancies are renowned for their smug prick-offs, it's a trait finely honed in their clan
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# ? May 20, 2020 17:12 |
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piratepilates posted:I really liked that story he told in Caretaker part 1 or 2 about the casting agent who really liked him and made an exception, and she NEVER makes an exception, and he nailed the audition, and his asian hero was jealous of him getting the part, and Braga stole him for the show from that movie, and he almost ran over Harrison Ford and all this stuff and it was the best day ever. The first convention I ever went to was a year or two after Voyager got started, and Garrett Wang was one of the guests of honor. I remember in his keynote speech, he talked about the acting gig he'd had before getting cast on Voyager: a one-second appearance in a Burger King commercial. He was wearing the paper hat and carrying a tray of food, and turned around with it to face the camera and say "At everyday low prices!" (A bunch of people in the audience went "whoa" as they suddenly remembered the commercial from that description.) I'm glad he escaped commercial-gig hell with Voyager, but it kind of sucks that he never really escaped the resulting typecasting.
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# ? May 20, 2020 17:40 |
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Powered Descent posted:The first convention I ever went to was a year or two after Voyager got started, and Garrett Wang was one of the guests of honor. I remember in his keynote speech, he talked about the acting gig he'd had before getting cast on Voyager: a one-second appearance in a Burger King commercial. He was wearing the paper hat and carrying a tray of food, and turned around with it to face the camera and say "At everyday low prices!" (A bunch of people in the audience went "whoa" as they suddenly remembered the commercial from that description.)
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# ? May 20, 2020 17:47 |
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# ? Apr 25, 2024 12:53 |
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doctorfrog posted:I think people want more competent storytelling and not a boring season-long plotline with the kitchen sink thrown in for time that they know won't resolve in a satisfactory way. My stance is that making a Star Trek episode or movie is like conducting a pharmaceutical drug trial; most of your efforts are going to end in failure, but it's worth it for the great payoff if you succeed. That's why every episode has to be good by itself, without requiring a bunch of previous episodes for context.
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# ? May 20, 2020 17:54 |