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Star Trek Discovery


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I loved it to be honest. I assume we'll get more of the crew as we go on which tends to be where I love Trek the most, but it was a solid set up for the key players.

The visual choices were gorgeous with the one exception of

Spoiler

the shot of Michael in the spacesuit which looked really tacky.

 

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I found the camera angles really jarring, especially the scene where she talked to hologram Sarek. I get that it's in space so there is no up and down, but I'd like to think the artificial gravity affects the cameraman too. Otherwise enjoyed it. 

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2 minutes ago, Colly said:

It flickered from one to the other in that  scene for me about an hour ago. Thought it was my telly and now I've fucked the colour settings... 

Yeah I noticed it too, I thought it was my tablet going into power saving mode and dropping the brightness down or something. there's some other screenshots here, it did some weird things to the episode:

https://imgur.com/a/K4Fs5

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I liked the first two episodes. Very solid opening and I am looking forward to Monday for the next episode, which is something I couldn't say for Enterprise (Voyager had a decent pilot but never kicked on from there until Seven turned up, two years of the Kazon being the main villains was FAR too long, then the writers set about ruining the Borg. Now that I think about it the main problem I have with Voyager is the lack of a well written villain, particularly glaring after DS9)

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I thought it was awful. The opening scene is one of the laziest, clumsiest bits of sci-fi I've ever seen.

There's just no heart to it, no character, no sense of creativity, imagination, or original thought. Oh, here's a bit where the alien crew member recognises that the commander is stressed and describes her bodily functions - "you are perspiring at the hairline" - because he's an alien, and he's not like us.

The whole thing just felt bland and insipid, completely uninspired. All the dialogue is generic sci-fi technobabble, delivered with unbearable smugness by actors who have absolutely no chemistry with one another, which makes the whole thing feel even more stunted and unnatural, and none of it carries any weight, any sense of drama or tension - and the action scenes are no better. And nobody ever fucking shuts up. There's never a moment where the - admittedly quite impressive - scenery and set-pieces are allowed to sink in, and give us a minute to appreciate them, because there is always somebody talking.

There's also a scene where the Admiral shuts down the Commander, saying "given your background, you should know better than to judge based on race" or something like that, which is just so blunt, so insulting to the audience's intelligence to think that we're incapable of picking up on the slightest bit of nuance, and so utterly at odds with Star Trek. The whole point of Star Trek is that it's post-racial, it's post-prejudice, that the commentary it makes on modern day social issues is by their absence in the Star Trek universe, not by drawing attention to them. So clumsy and unnecessary.

I'm far from a Trekkie - I've seen most of the movies with the original cast, a couple of the Next Generation movies, and the first two of the reboot movies, beyond that I've seen a handful of episodes from the Original Series more than twenty years ago, and maybe a couple of episodes of Next Generation, but I'm not even sure of that - but this is by far the worst Star Trek product I've seen.

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32 minutes ago, Skumanoid said:

The whole point of Star Trek is that it's post-racial, it's post-prejudice

See, but this is the thing I liked about this one - it's showing that isn't always true. People aren't post-racial and post-prejudice, as much as we work to it we will always have our prejudices, but it's trying to look past those prejudices and see the similarities and what unites us which is what Trek is all about.

This is a woman who has seen her family destroyed by an alien race, was then raised by another alien race, and then was forced back into society with her original race. There's absolutely no way in hell that doesn't skew your world view. Heck, just look how many people were in denial about race, sexuality, and gender problems just a decade ago and how that's come to the forefront now.

I'd argue Trek has never actually been post-racial - the enemies over the course of the universe include The Borg, The Klingon (originally intended as the Trek version of Russia), The Vulcans, The Romulans. They aren't very often inter-mixed factions of different races, they are very much the human race/species plus some token aliens versus other race/species.

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I see your point, but I still think it was needlessly heavy-handed. We could have inferred that meaning ourselves, without being hammered over the head with it.

Quote

I'd argue Trek has never actually been post-racial - the enemies over the course of the universe include The Borg, The Klingon (originally intended as the Trek version of Russia), The Vulcans, The Romulans. They aren't very often inter-mixed factions of different races, they are very much the human race/species plus some token aliens versus other race/species.

I broadly agree with this - though the idea of Star Trek is one of utopia, of all races and nationalities working together. Of course, that means that other species become allegories for other races or nations when writers have deemed necessary - but, again, that doesn't need to be spelled out. Referring to the Klingons as a "race" in that context, even, felt very odd to me. Mostly, though, it just felt like it was consciously stripping all nuance and subtlety from her backstory and saying "DO YOU GET IT YET?".

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29 minutes ago, Skumanoid said:

I see your point, but I still think it was needlessly heavy-handed. We could have inferred that meaning ourselves, without being hammered over the head with it.

Yeah, definitely agree with that point.

I''ll admit I tend to give pilots a free pass on stuff you have mentioned because they are introducing characters and motivations. It's like when they are introducing someone with "I was talking to my sister Alice" to a person who (in the show) already knows Alice, because they're trying to establish to the viewer what the relationship dynamic is. In later episodes they won't bother to mention "my sister Alice", it'll just be "Alice", but it's sort of a setting the stage you have to get through and hammer home initially for some people.

Same applies with the alien - we know he's an alien just looking at him, but to an alien body language would mean a lot, so he notices the perspiration and mentions it so we're establishing that he's a character who pays attention to this kind of stuff and will probably be the one to give you exposition on alien cultures and is maybe at least mildly educated in anthropology in some way.

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On the heavy handedness - I really thought the music and the camera work didn't help. I don't think either of them ever stop. 

No quiet moments. Everything is always moving. 

It all felt like trying to Star Trek but also not be Star Trek. 

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post racial? there's literally an episode where they have half-white/half-black people fighting with half-black/half-white people just because their skin colour is different. There's an episode where a black character goes back in time to experience what it was like being black and racially abused in america. 

Abraham Lincoln called Uhura a negress and then they had a chat about why that was wrong

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9 hours ago, Hobo said:

It all felt like trying to Star Trek but also not be Star Trek. 

It's Abrams Trek, and it bums me out that we're probably not going to get anything different for a long long time. This could've been a really show, but I feel like the setting and writing both are just wrong. The visuals are amazing, but like you and others have said you never really get to appreciate them.

Ideally - for me anyway - this would've been set somewhere in the Star Trek Online timeline. You could still have done the origin of Michael Burnham as the Federation and the Klingons are at war during the game and there's so much more to explore - the destruction of Romulas, Cardassia under civilian rule, Species 8472 infiltrating the Alpha Quadrant. There's so much more scope there than what Discovery has.

Maybe it'll get better as the series goes on, but if not, I'll probably stick to watching the other series on Netflix, or playing STO.

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4 minutes ago, K said:

post racial? there's literally an episode where they have half-white/half-black people fighting with half-black/half-white people just because their skin colour is different. There's an episode where a black character goes back in time to experience what it was like being black and racially abused in america. 

Abraham Lincoln called Uhura a negress and then they had a chat about why that was wrong

I think he means that the Trek universe is post-racial, not the actual show.

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Cardassians and Bajorans had a fifty year war with Cardassians claiming racial superiority.

Those Black and White guys hated the White and Black guys.

Humans encountering vulcans for the first time sparked a new wave of racism, and to be honest even as far forward as DS9 that was still present

Spock was bullied relentlessly for being half-human

 

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