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Josh Lyman posted:Yeah they really screwed up from the start by making it the Michael Burham power hour when the format of Star Trek lends itself to an ensemble. This is not 24 in space, much as the show runners seem to want it to be. Yeah, SFDebris actually brought this issue up in his new review of The Voyage Home in comparison to Final Frontier. Trek is best when it’s an ensemble piece.
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Dec 7, 2020 11:11
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An honest thing that just happened. I have watched and rewatched ~700+ episodes of treks countless times. Most favourite ones are often used for 'gotta do this thing and better turn some trek on while working etc'. In pale moonlight, Year of hell, Inner light, tapestry... So this moment came today after a few months and without any second thought your loyal trekkie (me) had only one name in list of 'rewatch until it bleeds'. Lower decks. This is how good it is.
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Dec 7, 2020 11:52
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Erulisse posted:B..b..but Mary Sue sells! Look at rey palpatine! Look at all the success of new star wars! Her name is Rey Star Wars.
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Dec 7, 2020 15:59
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Drink-Mix Man posted:Michael and Philippa go back in time, Michael is stranded in the past, sets up a distress signal so the Discovery can wake her up from cryo-sleep. May or may not have to do with "Calypso." poo poo, I've seen this before. Atlantis pulled something like that off beautifully if I'm remembering right.
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Dec 7, 2020 16:02
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Yeah I believe it was Dr. Weir ending up during the evacuation of Atlantis by the Ancients and having to set things up so the city doesn't straight-up kill the expedition when they arrive and turn everything on
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Dec 7, 2020 16:12
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mythicknight posted:poo poo, I've seen this before. Atlantis pulled something like that off beautifully if I'm remembering right. And it was an episode of Doctor Who too - Before the Flood.
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Dec 7, 2020 16:18
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Brawnfire posted:Yeah I believe it was Dr. Weir ending up during the evacuation of Atlantis by the Ancients and having to set things up so the city doesn't straight-up kill the expedition when they arrive and turn everything on The "first" time around the city is proper-hosed with the ZPM's utterly drained and the city completely flooding rather than shutting down incrementally, and a handful manage to find the time-traveling Puddle Jumper while everyone else drowns ignominiously. They wind up back when the Ancients are preparing to abandon Atlantis 10,000 years ago, and get one of them to rewrite the protocols so that A: the city feeds off the ZPM's individually rather than burning through all three simultaneously, and B: gets them to program the city to auto-surface instead of just let itself be flooded. The "second" time around (the series perspective) finds a very old Weir in stasis because she hung around and Ancient Stasis only delays aging so much over 10,000 years. It's also how the time-traveling Puddle Jumper winds up in the Milky Way Galaxy; This time they took it with them.
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Dec 7, 2020 17:30
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Oh yeah, Doctor Who plays with this tool a lot. The 8th Doctor having to live on Earth from 1899 to 2001 on his own without the TARDIS, Amy in the Pandorica, etc etc. That said, I really hope Michael doesn’t cause the destruction of the federation just so she can get rescued 900 years later.
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Dec 7, 2020 17:49
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I thin the shift to a ten-episode season average instead of twenty for TV shows has sadly killed these sorts of episodes in shows like Star Trek, because you gotta keep that plot chugging along there's no time to stop and do a purely-silly/gimmick episode anymore. B5 did an episode like that when it was in peak all-episodes-are-core-plot mode because if you are a decent writer you can use them to show off other important parts of the world / overarching plot. Probably not with the Discovery writing team though I guess.
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Dec 7, 2020 18:09
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Josh Lyman posted:Yeah they really screwed up from the start by making it the Michael Burham power hour when the format of Star Trek lends itself to an ensemble. This is not 24 in space, much as the show runners seem to want it to be. I wonder if that's something that came from Bryan Fuller's version.
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Dec 7, 2020 18:55
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Lord Krangdar posted:I wonder if that's something that came from Bryan Fuller's version. It sounded like Fuller set the show up to be about Michael's self-discovery in the context of ethically ambiguous wartime shenanigans. Torn between two different ideologies represented by the two captains in her life. It also sounded like he intended to be more consistent about using the Alice stories as a kind of framework for the first season. Kind of sounded cool to me on paper. Drink-Mix Man fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Dec 7, 2020 |
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Dec 7, 2020 19:00
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And now the show is telling everyone you meet how you saved the universe while crying but they wouldn't have heard of it because it was super secret top secret mission and you'd have to kill them if you told them about it because you are a highly classified army seal ranger
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Dec 7, 2020 19:04
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Drink-Mix Man posted:It sounded like Fuller set the show up to be about Michael's self-discovery in the context of ethically ambiguous wartime shenanigans. Torn between two different ideologies represented by the two captains in her life. I read that he also wanted to have each season set in a different era. I guess it would make sense to have Michael stay the main character, but we'd see different points in her life with different supporting casts each time. Instead of how the end of season two needed a really huge contrivance to justify all of them jumping into a different era (although that decision has helped the show a lot, IMO).
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Dec 7, 2020 19:10
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Lord Krangdar posted:I read that he also wanted to have each season set in a different era. I guess it would make sense to have Michael stay the main character, but we'd see different points in her life with different supporting casts each time. Instead of how the end of season two needed a really huge contrivance to justify all of them jumping into a different era (although that decision has helped the show a lot, IMO). A Star Trek Anthology style show like that would be pretty neat, but I imagine it would be super pricey given all the needed set changes every year.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:07
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King Burgundy posted:A Star Trek Anthology style show like that would be pretty neat, but I imagine it would be super pricey given all the needed set changes every year. That's what I thought when I first read that. But didn't they sorta do that anyway? The first season they reportedly tore down and rebuilt the Discovery set multiple times due to production troubles, for the second season they built the main Enterprise sets and Section 31 sets for just that season, and now this third season is set in a new future with many new sets, costumes, prosthetics, CG, etc.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:11
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Lord Krangdar posted:That's what I thought when I first read that. But didn't they sorta do that anyway? The first season they reportedly tore down and rebuilt the Discovery set multiple times due to production troubles, for the second season they built the main Enterprise sets and Section 31 sets for just that season, and now this third season is set in a new future with many new sets, costumes, prosthetics, CG, etc. I see you’re under the assumption the Disco producers are/were competent.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:20
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HD DAD posted:I see you’re under the assumption the Disco producers are/were competent. More like they must have the budget to be bad at their jobs and get away with it.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:21
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Lord Krangdar posted:I read that he also wanted to have each season set in a different era. I guess it would make sense to have Michael stay the main character, but we'd see different points in her life with different supporting casts each time. Instead of how the end of season two needed a really huge contrivance to justify all of them jumping into a different era (although that decision has helped the show a lot, IMO). I feel like this show would shed a lot of dead weight if Michael weren't at the nexus of every problem and solution. Everything else would become much more interesting and the damned thing could open up and breathe. I wait for every episode to figure out how Michael will solve, or suggest the solution. No one else is allowed to. This last one was a bit egregious too. On a whole planet of empaths, no one ever thought to get together and communally ask the locusts to leave. Instead, they needed to wait for ole' Michael Burnam to show up, and suggest that two estranged brothers do it and have Discovery magnify it across the planet. Nope, no one of the large civilization below thought to actually try that, they just threw that hands up and said there's too much.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:26
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Lord Krangdar posted:That's what I thought when I first read that. But didn't they sorta do that anyway? The first season they reportedly tore down and rebuilt the Discovery set multiple times due to production troubles, for the second season they built the main Enterprise sets and Section 31 sets for just that season, and now this third season is set in a new future with many new sets, costumes, prosthetics, CG, etc. IIRC the S31 set was an extensive redress of existing sets and only the Enterprise set was brand new. And with the latter I have a hard time believing it was never intended to be used in an inevitable Pike show, which just happened to be announced earlier this year. And a lot of the sets this year seem to either be existing redresses or small set portions with mostly CG extensions. The actual physical set for Starfleet HQ is probably just the Admiral’s desk area and maybe a door archway.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:31
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They must be looking at the Mandalorian’s production tools - its shot in an LED walled cylinder - and just feeling dumb.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:36
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With the Bryan Fuller concept, even if he stuck around, I refuse to believe he wouldn't have just left the show halfway through season 1 the minute another shiny new high-concept idea crossed his mind, like he always does. He's a good idea man, but I swear he has Hollywood ADHD.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:41
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TraderStav posted:I feel like this show would shed a lot of dead weight if Michael weren't at the nexus of every problem and solution. Everything else would become much more interesting and the damned thing could open up and breathe. Yea, it was classic trek. sticklefifer posted:With the Bryan Fuller concept, even if he stuck around, I refuse to believe he wouldn't have just left the show halfway through season 1 the minute another shiny new high-concept idea crossed his mind, like he always does. He's a good idea man, but I swear he has Hollywood ADHD. I'm amazed he worked on Hannibal as long as he did. We would've had another season or two if he agreed to Amazon's terms of starting production right away.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:42
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well why not posted:They must be looking at the Mandalorian’s production tools - its shot in an LED walled cylinder - and just feeling dumb. They've already bought one for S4.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:43
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TraderStav posted:I feel like this show would shed a lot of dead weight if Michael weren't at the nexus of every problem and solution. Everything else would become much more interesting and the damned thing could open up and breathe. No one is as smart as Michael hence why nobody in the galaxy actually looked at black boxes of destroyed ships and noticed the time differences.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:44
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sticklefifer posted:With the Bryan Fuller concept, even if he stuck around, I refuse to believe he wouldn't have just left the show halfway through season 1 the minute another shiny new high-concept idea crossed his mind, like he always does. He's a good idea man, but I swear he has Hollywood ADHD. Any tv exec who hires him to be anything other than a writer/world builder is a fool. I wouldn’t even trust him to produce an entire season of something at this point.
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Dec 7, 2020 20:48
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TraderStav posted:I feel like this show would shed a lot of dead weight if Michael weren't at the nexus of every problem and solution. Everything else would become much more interesting and the damned thing could open up and breathe. CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Yea, it was classic trek. It's been rattling around in my brain lately whether or not people would be complaining about Michael being at the center of everything if she were literally Kirk or Picard instead. Or if SMG was just straight up playing Sisko, Emissary of the Prophets, in a modern DS9 whether people would be bitching all the time about the character being space Jesus. Not even trying to make a statement here, legitimate questions. Drink-Mix Man fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Dec 7, 2020 |
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Dec 7, 2020 20:59
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Man, when was the last time Discovery ran into someone that wasn't immediately standoff-ish, if not outright hostile? I guess that's an old Star Trek trope, but they are really milking it.well why not posted:They must be looking at the Mandalorian’s production tools - its shot in an LED walled cylinder - and just feeling dumb. I mean, there's only like 2 of those things in the world right now. I'm sure it's the future of Star Trek.
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Dec 7, 2020 21:01
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Drink-Mix Man posted:It's been rattling around in my brain lately whether or not people would be complaining about Michael being at the center of everything if she were literally Kirk or Picard instead. I don't think so...I think Burnham not being the captain is what leads to a lot of the story knots Discovery ties itself into. The first officer (or now I guess, random hanger-on) just can't be the main character in a Star Trek series.
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Dec 7, 2020 21:02
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Drink-Mix Man posted:It's been rattling around in my brain lately whether or not people would be complaining about Michael being at the center of everything if she were literally Kirk or Picard instead. How often did Picard save the entire galaxy, how many universe threating plots circled around him and how special he was? The borg assimilating him is the only one that comes to mind?
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Dec 7, 2020 21:03
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Drink-Mix Man posted:It's been rattling around in my brain lately whether or not people would be complaining about Michael being at the center of everything if she were literally Kirk or Picard instead. Well people complained plenty about literally Picard, the series The difference with Kirk or Picard on their shows is that they were actually in charge, which makes a huge difference, and much of TOS really was about Kirk dealing with poo poo, or at least Kirk and Spock and optionally McCoy.
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Dec 7, 2020 21:03
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socialsecurity posted:How often did Picard save the entire galaxy, how many universe threating plots circled around him and how special he was? The borg assimilating him is the only one that comes to mind? Well, I'm just saying, say he was written that way? What if the show was about junior officer Kirk/Picard/Sisko?
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Dec 7, 2020 21:05
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It would suck. The other characters and their relationships and motivations hold interest. Ignoring those blows.
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Dec 7, 2020 21:07
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I feel like they were almost on to something with the show focusing on a junior officer instead of a captain, especially when the original captain was a corrupt rear end in a top hat. Like it could have been a good setup to tell stories relevant to a contemporary audience, being about someone with relatively little power trying to do the right thing under an authoritarian power structure. Instead it just kind of turned into a young adult novel.
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Dec 7, 2020 21:13
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Drink-Mix Man posted:I feel like they were almost on to something with the show focusing on a junior officer instead of a captain, especially when the original captain was a corrupt rear end in a top hat. Like it could have been a good setup to tell stories relevant to a contemporary audience, being about someone with relatively little power trying to do the right thing under an authoritarian power structure. Instead it just kind of turned into a young adult novel. Imo that idea just doesn’t agree too well with the setting at its core. It could be a good storytelling concept for something else, but people like Star Trek because they want to buy into the fantasy of “what if people with power were good and righteous or at least tried their best to do what was right”. If they want to see the other kind of stuff they can just look at the news. TNG and especially DS9 increasingly ran into the problem that our heroes sometimes seemed like the only good guys left in an organization of incompetent and/or corrupt shitheads. That was a real problem, but not the kind that could be solved by just leaning into it.
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Dec 7, 2020 21:27
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Drink-Mix Man posted:It's been rattling around in my brain lately whether or not people would be complaining about Michael being at the center of everything if she were literally Kirk or Picard instead. Just imagine TNG but remove every part that doesn't focus on Picard, or him solving the problem of the episode. It would definitely be a much weaker show. socialsecurity posted:No one is as smart as Michael hence why nobody in the galaxy actually looked at black boxes of destroyed ships and noticed the time differences. This one actually does make sense, because nobody else had the spore drive to actually go around so far to collect the different black boxes.
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Dec 7, 2020 21:30
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Lord Krangdar posted:Just imagine TNG but remove every part that doesn't focus on Picard, or him solving the problem of the episode. It would definitely be a much weaker show. She found 2 of them before Discovery came back, the third they got in that one episode but they didn't spore drive there they took Book's ship.
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Dec 7, 2020 21:35
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socialsecurity posted:She found 2 of them before Discovery came back, the third they got in that one episode but they didn't spore drive there they took Book's ship. Hmm too bad, that makes less sense. But I guess Discovery came to the future with much more real dilithium than anyone in this time period normally would have, allowing them the freedom to go off on a tangent like that? EDIT - Also for the future characters the Burn is old news. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Dec 7, 2020 |
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Dec 7, 2020 21:38
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I think if Burnham was the captain it'd feel less weird for her to constantly be sent off on things that don't necessarily make sense for her to be sent off on.
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Dec 7, 2020 21:54
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Taear posted:I think if Burnham was the captain it'd feel less weird for her to constantly be sent off on things that don't necessarily make sense for her to be sent off on.  My extensive lullaby disambiguation skills are required! (this was one of the best inside-baseball gags on LD which is saying a lot)
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Dec 7, 2020 21:57
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socialsecurity posted:No one is as smart as Michael hence why nobody in the galaxy actually looked at black boxes of destroyed ships and noticed the time differences. Lord Krangdar posted:This one actually does make sense, because nobody else had the spore drive to actually go around so far to collect the different black boxes. I think the big sticking point with the "let's look at some black boxes" thing is that it took basically no on-screen effort. It sounds like a really simple, obvious and easy thing to do, and any good explanation for why it isn't needs to be just as easy to explain. Michael only needed three of them and she was able to gather them within a year and entirely without Discovery's help. (Remember, she went rogue and took Book's ship in order to get the last one.) That makes it sound like anyone with the smarts and guts to do it could have done it, had they only come up with the idea. If it took dozens of them and they were spread far apart, that would make it effectively impossible for anyone who didn't have resources to spare to collect them, so we could have gotten a couple episodes or so of Discovery spore jumping to disaster sites in search of black boxes, solving problems along the way. If Michael still needs to be the solution to all of the problems, then Starfleet could already have tried and failed because they couldn't collect enough of them and they had more urgent things to spend their limited resources on, making the idea seem common but difficult, and Michael showing up with a few more just so happened to be the last ones they needed to triangulate the solution. Heck, even a throwaway line from the Admiral like "we know it has an origin, and we know a very broad area where that could have been, but it's very far away and we have a Federation to keep from falling apart" would get rid of most of the feeling that Michael is the only one who cares enough and is smart enough to try to figure it out.
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Dec 7, 2020 22:02
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