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Zarikov posted:I watched "The Quality of Life" last night and didn't want my idle doodlings to go to waste, so why not pop into the Star Trek thread?  The Golden Gael posted:[Ep 2 discussion] The parasitic ice was pretty lame, they got lazy with the ticking clock - I have suspicions it wasn't meant to be quite as lame but something got changed because they realised late that it just didn't work as they'd hoped.
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Oct 28, 2020 07:49
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Strong Convections posted:I think it's just a matter of taste. I pretty much hated everything in the saloon, so there's a lot that I want to pick on. I enjoyed the stuff back on Disco as campy fun, so I give things more leeway there. Yeah it's contrived, but that describes the majority of Star Trek in my opinion. RLM pointed out that TNG had two ways of doing this kind of episode - 'picking up the pieces' and 'the escalating problem'. Both valid, but you have to actually make them the crux of the episode. In episode 2 the crux of the Episode is the Western plot, the rest of the discovery crew having to pick up the pieces is tonally completely different and is obviously there in the plot to give them something to do. The moment the Saloon scene is resolved Staments gets up from his heart attack and fixes the circuit. There's no actual tension or linkage to the themes of the episode, it's just time to close off his plotline because he doesn't need to be busy anymore. e: and it shows how thin 'the rest of the crew' is that the only problem on Disco we see getting fixed is a blown fuse. CF with TNG's 'Disaster' which manages to have five plotlines running in parallel and the characters in each of them get meaningful development as they face a personal challenge. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 10:39 on Oct 28, 2020 |
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Oct 28, 2020 10:36
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My experience with people who are big TNG fans (like RLM) is that they are unfairly critical of every other Star Trek, and look past or excuse TNG's many, many flaws. Discovery is not TNG, it's not trying to be. No other Star Trek is TNG. And that's good, times change. I've mentioned before that the editing in these two episodes is so choppy that I think they were meant to be woven together but were pulled apart into "the Michael episode" and "the Discovery episode" later. I don't think the Discovery stuff was meant to carry as much of the episode as it ended up. I think, given the repetition of the character's trait, that it's meant to remind the audience - hopefully to build on for character growth throughout the season. It's not about the "fuse", it's about the characters. The editing is shockingly bad across every season given the budget of the production. If you can look past it, there are some great scenes, but often placed next to other scenes they shouldn't be next to. And sometimes you have to mentally edit out the unnecessary exposition ADR, or ignore the tonally inappropriate music. I'm okay with all that, and can deal with it enough that I really enjoy the show. Even if it sometimes has dumb saloon scenes resolved with kicking people in the face.
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Oct 28, 2020 11:37
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I agree with you, but I think the point RLM were making specifically there is more a truism of how to tell 'things going wrong' stories. And Discovery just gets this storytelling fundamentally wrong - the crash is a 'picking up the pieces' story, but Western bar plotline only works if it's about slowly escalating tension. The two stories don't complement each other and as you say, the editing is a mess.
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Oct 28, 2020 12:17
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It never really felt like Discovery was at risk in regards to the Bar story, only Tilly and Saru. Which is weird. Probably because the stories weren't connected in any way. Like, I think if this kind of thing was being told on Stargate Atlantis - you'd have the city desperately needing a MacGuffin and if they don't get it the city will blow up, and then Shepherd and his team are off-world somewhere trying to get this thing and hit an obstacle and now they're at risk and the people on the city are getting worse and the only way to resolve that story is if the team brings back the MacGuffin to save the other people. Discovery didn't need the MacGuffin they brought back, it was just a comms thing so they could contact Burnham after they took off - and then you find at the end of the episode Burnham found them without even needing the comms macguffin so what was the point of all that? They never needed to leave the ship at all. What should have happened was, they know from the start that the ice will kill them and they know that there was people on the planet that can help nearby with ships with tractor beams to pull them out. So the crew is frantically doing all they can to repair the ship and extend their time while Saru and Tilly go for help - then do the whole bar thing - and the ending being that those miners ships save them and they help out with some repairs too, showing off their cool tech. Then just cut to Burnham picking up their comms and her being super happy and reunite next episode. And for Staments plot, just make it so the spore drive is at risk and his engineering team think they can handle it themselves but he knows the most about it and thinks only he can do it even if he's in really bad shape. Basically the same plot as he got but more relevant to him than "only I can plug an eps relay into another relay".
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Oct 28, 2020 14:42
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The point about the Stamets story was that he was by no means the only one who could fix it though. If it was a job genuinely only he could do then that stop it being about his feeling useless, it has to be somehting literally anyone could do. Don't get me wrong, how they did it in the episode didn't work, once the other engineer showed up they should have sent her up there to sort it. Brief reminder though, what Stamets was fixing was one of a couple dozen similar junctions, they weren't just waiting on him to fix the only critical system, he just ended up being last because he was hurting, but again they didn't show it well in the show.
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Oct 28, 2020 15:52
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Thom12255 posted:
Oh yes, the only thing the Disco crew manage to achieve in that episode is get the bartender's brother killed and then get thanked for it. Their efforts are rendered totally irrelevant by the sudden appearance of Burnham. It's very meta.
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Oct 28, 2020 16:48
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Alchenar posted:Oh yes, the only thing the Disco crew manage to achieve in that episode is get the bartender's brother killed and then get thanked for it. Their efforts are rendered totally irrelevant by the sudden appearance of Burnham. the bar isn't under the oppression of the mustache-twirler anymore! maybe
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Oct 28, 2020 21:35
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Finally got around to episode 2. Like the first one this wasn’t unwatchable, but has so many head-scratching moments that you just have to let slide. Whatever The scene with Stamets waking from his coma was fairly slick. Most of the minor char problems are still there from previous seasons, no real updates there. Georgiou should absolutely be imprisoned after her antics in this episode; she won’t be of course but within the story I have no idea why not, since Saru clearly doesn’t trust her and she’s constantly insubordinate and oh yeah, also an amoral murderous fiend from an empire of evil. Detmer still has the most personality of the minor bridge crew, which is to say that she has one and the rest don’t. Speaking of, there’s definitely something wrong with Detmer. They’re not gonna waste all that time and spooky musical cues on “it was PTSD”, this isn’t really that sort of show. They even made sure to specify that she wasn’t concussed. There’s something really awkward about how excited everyone on the bridge was to see Burnham. Even like, Rhys and the other guy who have probably spoken like three lines to her between them. You can obviously see what they were going for here but as usual the show did not do enough setup and laid the big feels on too thick instead. I find Burnham’s reactionary obsession with “not letting the future stand” (from the next ep preview) to be an interesting theme for the season. I wonder if any of the crew will have a different opinion?
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Oct 28, 2020 22:00
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skasion posted:
Yes, Georgiou, to prove Burnham is right
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Oct 28, 2020 23:36
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wait, is spock gonna need to have a buddy sitting next to them on strange new worlds
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Oct 29, 2020 01:49
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I just noticed this happy Klingon bussing in Lower Decks. I dig the design.
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Oct 29, 2020 04:32
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So someone mentioned Lower Decks wasn't the worst thing ever, so I gave it a try. There was a gag where Mariner had a family-guy style flashback that involved her friend getting brutally murdered. It was a comedy moment. It promoted further comedy in the episode. Holy poo poo is that loving not okay. Literally sickening. Worst Star Trek since that abominable tribble short where a guy with social maladaption was killed for laughs. The Orville was way more tonally coherent and it was literally made buy the family guy guy. Don't kill people in the name of comedy, loving Star Trek. How hard is that? gently caress. I'm mad. Anyway, I finished Lower Decks and the finale was actually really good and had some thematic coherency. It was saying something about maintaining ideals, not just thinking big things and leaving it at that. I liked it. I guess Lower Decks is a land of contrasts or whatever. It took a lot of alcohol to enjoy and I'm glad I'm done with it. I watched all of loving Voyager, so if they're making more Lower Decks I guess I'll keep with it since I've watched the entirety of Star Trek, but I have more sympathy for people hate-watching Discovery now. (Even though Discovery is legitimately good at its core and way better than the ideological mess that was Lower Decks.)
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Oct 29, 2020 06:06
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CaptainSkinny posted:I just noticed this happy Klingon bussing in Lower Decks. I dig the design. Somehow this got me thinking on a tangent, picturing an ordinary workaday Klingon complaining about how that all honor and battle crap is something that only the rich and established get to indulge in.
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Oct 29, 2020 06:25
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Roadie posted:Somehow this got me thinking on a tangent, picturing an ordinary workaday Klingon complaining about how that all honor and battle crap is something that only the rich and established get to indulge in. Archer's lawyer in an ENT episode basically does this.
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Oct 29, 2020 06:33
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Eiba posted:So someone mentioned Lower Decks wasn't the worst thing ever, so I gave it a try. I guess you haven't seen the litany of jokes that have accreted in Star Trek fandom over the years about all the ways that people could and probably did just bite it randomly in Starfleet based on what happens on the Enterprise on a daily basis...
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Oct 29, 2020 06:34
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nine-gear crow posted:I guess you haven't seen the litany of jokes that have accreted in Star Trek fandom over the years about all the ways that people could and probably did just bite it randomly in Starfleet based on what happens on the Enterprise on a daily basis... People can make fun of the show itself all they want and that's fine. But the show itself trying to make the audience laugh with a death is incredibly uncomfortable and gross. I will admit the season 2 opening of Discovery kind of did as well, where the sexist guy got comeuppance with a karmic death. And that was pretty uncool too, but not nearly as bad as the tribble short and the Mariner flashback in Lower Decks. I'll admit, I'm still under the effects of the alcohol that made Lower Decks tolerable, but I don't think Star Trek has sunk to that depth outside of those three examples. That's pretty much my hard limit. I feel like Lower Decks skirted that a lot- trivializing really serious situations. But I think man-splainer's karmic death in Discovery, that awkward guy in the tribble short, and Mariner's friend dying in a flashback for the sake of a gag are each the absolute nadir of Star Trek as a franchise. Like, if the show is kind of lame, whatever. If you don't like Picard or Discovery, whatever. It's trying. There is an attempt idealistic message, and maybe it missed. Who cares. If the show is actively trying to make you feel good about someone dying, making you laugh or whatever, just... gently caress all the way off. That's gross and the most un-Star Trek thing imaginable.
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Oct 29, 2020 08:03
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New episode is up and it's... pretty good! - They resolved the conflict without killing anyone! And they used something resembling diplomacy! - The scene with Saru formally taking command was nice. - Detmer definitely has PTSD and that'll be a running theme this season. - Stamets is still great and I'm cautiously optimistic about him apparently finding a protege in Adira. - I really like Burnham and Booker's relationship. I know constantly rattling off previous unseen adventures is an old trope, but the way they played off each other felt natural and charming. - Earth turning isolationist and no longer being part of the Federation while Starfleet goes into hiding is a decent little twist to the "What the hell happened" plot. - The tree scene at the end was also nice and sweet and, even though that moment feels completely unearned for half those characters, I'm glad they're apparently making an effort to give me a reason to care about the bridge crew. - gently caress it, I hope we do get a Dax next episode. Embrace your new continuity and give DS9 a shout-out for once.
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Oct 29, 2020 08:12
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Time to go eat some Goldfish crackers and watch Star Trucks.
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Oct 29, 2020 08:14
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It was pleasant to see that Earth, while no longer in the Federation, isn’t some Fallout: New Vegas dystopian apocalypse shitbucket. Everything is still there. Civilization is still there. Just without Starfleet.
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Oct 29, 2020 11:50
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re: DSC "People of Earth": the "Book puts on the uniform" scene in particular was fun; I can believe these are characters that have spent a while together - also, this season is already starting to feel more focused and less haphazard than the last two. Saru finally becoming captain could also let them give more of the rest of the crew some more attention - I remember the original marketing pitch for Discovery emphasizing that this was the first ST series to not really be an ensemble show and Burnham was the main character, but I think we all agree that DSC is best served fleshing out the rest of these people that have been through a bunch of insane poo poo together if they want emotional moments involving the crew to land. Anyway, thumbs up, feels weird to be looking forward to ST again every week tho edit: oh yeah, during the battle my initial reaction to Discovery intercepting the torpedoes was, well, nothing, because we've seen that a million times before... but then a half-second before they hit I was like "oh poo poo those are future quantum torpedoes" - oops there go all the shields. i dunno how long they'll tolerate having the hero ship be made of eggshells but i hope they keep it up most of the season - as someone else said this is kind of a second chance to do some of things Voyager could have bothered with but didn't. edit 2: ALSO, I appreciated the Titan-Earth conflict resolution as feeling like an echo of past series where there's effectively a caste system between worlds in the same star system that the crew has to bust down; not as much of a metaphor when it's humans instead of aliens oppressing one another but hey it's 2020 Crusader fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Oct 29, 2020 |
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Oct 29, 2020 11:55
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Captain Saru!  Diplomacy!I can't wait for Jet Reno to interact with Adira. Arglebargle III posted:No it's gonna be gritty and dystopian. lol
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Oct 29, 2020 12:21
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Oct 29, 2020 13:08
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I was sitting there watching DSC thinking Hey, that raider captain sounds like Todd....
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Oct 29, 2020 13:29
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Strong Convections posted:
gently caress, that would have been a good twist to pull as well. Have us follow both Burnham and Discovery through the wormhole and see their separate adventures simultaneously, assuming that they came out in different places and can't get in contact due to the issues the communications guy exposed. Then twist at the end of the second episode where we suddenly realise they have been showing us events a year apart. Would have given the audience some of the sense of time travel fuckery the characters are meant to be feeling. Episode 3 is good. It does feel weird that Earth wouldn't have even kept up communications with the rest of the solar system though, but I suppose they're trying to sell a message of how damaging isolationism can be.
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Oct 29, 2020 13:34
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Senor Tron posted:Episode 3 is good. It does feel weird that Earth wouldn't have even kept up communications with the rest of the solar system though, but I suppose they're trying to sell a message of how damaging isolationism can be. By showing that Earth is still a perfect paradise it kind of instead shows that isolationism is great if you're already rich - no need to care about the poors outside your gates. This would just embolden isolationist and nationalist people to think they're right.
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Oct 29, 2020 15:49
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Good episode. Wish we didn't have Evil Lady do an ebin dab on diplomacy two episodes in a row to get the resolution started, but the rest was good. Having a symbionte in a human sounded weird but Riker had one too at one point, right? I also have zero memory of how Burnham in any way was in consideration for captain or commander, but meh.
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Oct 29, 2020 16:14
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Eiba posted:There was a gag where Mariner had a family-guy style flashback that involved her friend getting brutally murdered. It was a comedy moment. It promoted further comedy in the episode. Holy poo poo is that loving not okay. Literally sickening. Worst Star Trek since that abominable tribble short where a guy with social maladaption was killed for laughs. The Orville was way more tonally coherent and it was literally made buy the family guy guy. It wasn't really played for a family guy straight-for-laughs gag, though, it was just depicting the motivating incident for her extreme even by her standards behaviour during the episode. And it was part of the overall commentary of the episode, paralleled with the Vancouver chief engineer plot: that the antics we see week-to-week on any of the trek shows would be traumatizing, with the Vancouver chief desperate to escape his 'hero' ship. And it was in the process setting up up a basic building block of her character: that her past being a Starfleet whiz-kid who's right out there exploring all the strange new worlds and experiencing things like that directly contributed to her now being such a messed up person. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Oct 29, 2020 |
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Oct 29, 2020 16:20
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LDS's release date getting pushed up several months caught Cryptic by surprise, and with the added complications of a dispersed work team due to COVID the only thing LDS-themed thing they were able to put in the game for the premiere were doffs of the main cast. They don't even have the uniforms ready yet; you can kinda make out how Boimler's uniform is painted on with Photoshop. Anyway, someone at CBS must have complained, since Cryptic swapped out those portraits with art from the cartoon about a week after the doffs were put in the game, but it's not hard to find the original art. I don't think there was anything wrong with the original art, but I guess it was a likeness issue or a "brand consistency" issue or some other drat thing. 
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Oct 29, 2020 16:22
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MikeJF posted:It wasn't really played for a family guy straight-for-laughs gag, though, it was just depicting the motivating incident for her extreme even by her standards behaviour during the episode. And it was part of the overall commentary of the episode, paralleled with the Vancouver chief engineer plot: that the antics we see week-to-week on any of the trek shows would be traumatizing, with the Vancouver chief desperate to escape his 'hero' ship. And it was in the process setting up up a basic building block of her character: that her past being a Starfleet whiz-kid who's right out there exploring all the strange new worlds and experiencing things like that directly contributed to her now being such a messed up person. Yeah in a show where 90% of the content is humorous that was one of the few moments played relatively straight. The death wasn't a joke, it was literally a reasonable explanation for why Mariner was being so paranoid about Boimler's girlfriend. Picard was far more egregious in its depiction of violence for violence's sake.
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Oct 29, 2020 16:29
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Marshal Radisic posted:LDS's release date getting pushed up several months caught Cryptic by surprise, and with the added complications of a dispersed work team due to COVID the only thing LDS-themed thing they were able to put in the game for the premiere were doffs of the main cast. They don't even have the uniforms ready yet; you can kinda make out how Boimler's uniform is painted on with Photoshop. Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford all look rather believable. There's something about Boimler that just does not work at all in real life. I dunno if its the hair, or the face, or the inescapable aura of Absolute Dink that just comes with Boimler in general, but he's just one of those chatacters whom a 1:1 translation into realism is ill advised.
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Oct 29, 2020 16:30
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Big Mean Jerk posted:
If they ever did go to Bajor it's be cool if DS9 is still there at the mouth of the Wormhole next to a modern station because even though it's a thousand years later are you kidding that's the Emissary's station where he discovered and guarded the Celestial Temple during the time of the locusts and then the Reckoning no way are you demolishing it MikeJF fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Oct 29, 2020 |
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Oct 29, 2020 16:30
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nine-gear crow posted:Mariner, Tendi, and Rutherford all look rather believable. There's something about Boimler that just does not work at all in real life. I dunno if its the hair, or the face, or the inescapable aura of Absolute Dink that just comes with Boimler in general, but he's just one of those chatacters whom a 1:1 translation into realism is ill advised. I think it's the combination of hair and skin tone. We don't really ever see humans in Starfleet with crazy hair colors, so the purple is kind of weird, and his skin tone is just weird to me.
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Oct 29, 2020 16:32
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MikeJF posted:If they ever did go to Bajor it's be cool if DS9 is still there at the mouth of the Wormhole next to a modern station because even though it's a thousand years later are you kidding that's the Emissary's station where he discovered and guarded the Celestial Temple no way are we getting rid of it Naturally, they blew up the original DS9 permanently in the novels and replaced it with a kinda generic-looking thing.
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Oct 29, 2020 16:34
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Snow Cone Capone posted:I think it's the combination of hair and skin tone. We don't really ever see humans in Starfleet with crazy hair colors, so the purple is kind of weird, and his skin tone is just weird to me. To me it's the expression more than anything—he just looks kinda depressed, which is not what I get from bright-eyed optimistic go-getter Boimler on the show. But he also just looks pretty generic.
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Oct 29, 2020 16:41
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Honestly, it might take a bit of figuring out for the hair but I could see Jack Quaid (his voice actor) as Boimler in real life pretty well. Although almost all of the main characters in lower decks strongly resemble their actors. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Oct 29, 2020 |
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Oct 29, 2020 16:44
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feedmyleg posted:To me it's the expression more than anything—he just looks kinda depressed, which is not what I get from bright-eyed optimistic go-getter Boimler on the show. But he also just looks pretty generic. Yeah. That's it. They probably don't have a good "optimisticly anxious" facial expression set in STO so they just settled for "kinda pouty" and it's just anathema to who Boimler is.
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Oct 29, 2020 16:49
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I really like Tendi's hairstyle and it bums me out that it's mostly been co-opted by white supremacists IRL 
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Oct 29, 2020 16:52
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They're doing it wrong so. The fash haircut is that, but with a stupid little part that goes the opposite direction.
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Oct 29, 2020 16:56
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Arquinsiel posted:They're doing it wrong so. The fash haircut is that, but with a stupid little part that goes the opposite direction. I don't think the original Richard Spencer has the dumb part. But either way it's a bummer and I'm glad Tendi kicks rear end while rocking it.
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Oct 29, 2020 16:57
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