A new Trek series

[Nate the Great]

I know I said I'd keep out until the premiere, but I'm about to say something positive about Enterprise. Since apparently pigs are flying, whales are dropping from the sky, and I've become my own grandpa, I think I deserve a freebie.

Enterprise took place in a completely different era as prior series. The uniforms were completely unknown. And Enterprise used the same division colors as TOS!

Discovery can't even use the correct division colors for undershirts, keeping them as a minimal splash of color against a more muted uniform. No, bright colors in any amount are unthinkable for a modern show, replace that nonsense with metallic colors instead!

[NAHTMMM]

I mean, I'd much prefer the bright colors of TOS too, but I'll take what I can get.

And there are some continuity lines they shouldn't cross. Like transporters. They were far inferior to TNG-era tech in TOS, even if they did magically solve a few plots. Transporters don't reliably hit moving targets, they aren't good at beaming through solid rock, and I'm pretty sure they don't do intership beaming or site-to-site -- there has to be a transporter pad at one end or the other.

[Nate the Great]

Too many snarky comments...must resist...

Four more days...

I must remember to make a Majora's Mask joke tomorrow.

[Nate the Great]

Yeah, the Majora's Mask joke wouldn't work because the "end of the world" is happening at night instead of dawn.

However, because I'm easily amused, I'm going to inflict a half hour loop of the Clock Town theme on you anyway...

[Zeke]

Tonight's the night!

Please be good.

Pleeeeease.

[Nate the Great]

No spoilers, just reactions.

A Trek BBS forum thread discusses the pilot.

I realise it has been a while, but I can't think of any previous Trek show that had a 'knock it out of the park' first episode. Most are lacklustre at best, and suffer many of the same problems The Vulcan Hello does - expositional clunky dialogue, characters not quite set yet, variable acting depending on the scene.

The post goes on to describe the failures of the earlier pilots. My response: maybe this is okay when the public can watch subsequent episodes on TV for free, but if you want us to pay for this stuff-expend more effort getting the first episode right!

I think that brings up the overall problem with the episode. There seems like there was a lot of confusion behind the scenes about what they wanted to say and what they wanted to show. I think the "too many cooks" plays into that.

I've covered this before.

I think they made a big mistake setting the show in the prime universe because anyone familiar with the prime universe can clearly see that this does not fit in the prime universe.

The technology is way too advanced. And obviously the Klingons have been totally changed in appearance. When GR changed the appearance of the Klingons in TMP, he asked the audience to accept that they always looked like that, but didn't have the makeup in the 1960s. I always thought that was a fair explanation.

The TMP-24th century Klingons looked great. There's a difference between change by necessity and change for the sake of change.

They should have known better.

For me, this just didn't feel like Star Trek. I felt no optimism here. No sense that this was humanity at its finest. It was way too dark.

I can't see how this show would fit with Pike's Enterprise.

The amazing thing is that with very few tweaks, this show could have been set 100 years after Picard and most of these problems would be avoided.

Told you so.

And again

A few plot points and character arcs don't quite track, and some aspects of the show haven't gelled yet. The Klingons, who are dangerous enemies in this world, are very elaborately garbed and their scenes are often ponderous and too slow (the actors give their level best, but they labor under imposing facial prosthetics that make their expressions hard to read). Another complaint: The new Federation uniforms are terrible. Why give these capable officers panels of disco-friendly gold cloth on their hips?

When it comes to covering alien characters in layers of prosthetics, either stay away from the mouth enough so they can talk clearly, or dub over them later. I thought this was mastered decades ago! And someone else thinks the uniforms are awful, yippee!

And again

There are significant pacing issues, interrupting the action sequences with flashbacks and Klingon councils that are either unnecessary or linger too much on clunky world-building and dialogue.

You'd think after over seven hundred episodes these guys would have such silly skills as "pacing" and "editing" mastered.

Time for a positive review!

On first contact with the new series, it's clear CBS is planning to play it safe in terms of not contradicting all of the Star Trek history that came before it...

Ha ha ha ha!

Splitting the difference between commercial slickness and graphic novel solemnity, this Trek offers PG-13 violence, audience-pandering exposition dumps, cliffhanger endings, Game of Thrones-style pomp, and a touch of Lost's mystery box plotting, but also poker-faced musings on quantum science, moral relativism, logic vs. instinct, race vs. culture, and the military's tendency to corrupt science in service of war...

These are good things?

The Straight Dope forum weighs in

I enjoyed it but I think CBS did themselves a disservice by not airing Episodes one and two together as a combined two hour Pilot as I don't think Episode one alone sold the series or told the full story well enough. I was also a little sour because they delayed the streaming premiere to 8:48 pm to match the Football overrun on the network. That was dumb and annoying.

That's a good point: since when did Star Trek not air the full two hour pilot at once? You need two hours to introduce everyone and the setting, right?

I would have preferred the new Star Trek to just be "A ship full of interesting characters explores space".

I've remarked before that it looks like this show is just about a trinity, and the other guys are just living props.

Yes, the first episode seemed to focus heavily on some conflict on the bridge and had more action than you'd expect to see on an inaugural episode from this franchise, but it is WAY too soon for me to write this show off right out of the gate.

If you want the audience to spend money on this, then I would disagree with the "it gets better later" argument being valid. Discovery may well be better later, too bad every failure of the pilot lost you paying customers!

Another forum thread

One thing I'll be curious to see going forward is whether the series actually makes use of the time period. I'm not a fan at all of it taking place 10 years before Kirk, but they should at least utilize it; just replace Sarek with Tuvok and the klingons with mystery species X and you could set this 50 years after Voyager.

Where have I heard this before?

I'm quite surprised by the amount of continuity they've kept, right down to the Vulcan script in the testing pits. Someone in the art department knows their stuff.

It's a shame the continuity bug never reached the ship designers, or the uniform designers, or the set builders, or...

[Flying Gremlin]

I liked both episodes so far.

[Nate the Great]

Source

Playing fast and loose with continuity would allow Discovery to cherry-pick what works while excising what doesn’t from the different versions of the franchise. While Fuller did say this series is in the Prime timeline, this fact has been played down since, especially after he stepped down as showrunner. Given Star Trek’s long and often contradictory history, splitting the difference with an alternate/mixed reality could be its best bet. It would allow the writers to make the references and connections that fans demand while also allowing new, uninitiated viewers a fresh start point.

Prime universe status has been downplayed? That's new to me. I'll cover the "fresh start point" later. The article goes on to say that Discovery could be retconning prior series like recent comic book universe events. Can someone explain to me the supposedly subtle difference between "new universe" and "we're retconning most of the Prime Universe"?

Don't expect Season Two in 2018

Apparently the studio wants to match the effects of Game of Thrones to justify All Access.

[Flying Gremlin]

So what did you think, Nate?

[Nate the Great]

First, I forgot to cover the "this isn't really a fresh start" thing. The article points out that while technically someone totally ignorant of Trek could jump in, for most practical purposes the creators are assuming that you've at least seen Enterprise and the Kelvinverse.

Second, I'm not going to watch Discovery in the near future. Retcons aside, why would I want to watch anything that emulates Enterprise or the Kelvinverse?

If CBS wants me to watch Discovery, they need to put out a whole critically-acclaimed season and release it on Netflix or broadcast television where I can watch it. And admit that this is a new universe.

[Flying Gremlin]

Teasers for Season 2 were released

[Nate the Great]

So now uniforms that look vaguely like TOS uniforms are okay? Is Discovery supposed to be more of a grungy, workhorse assignment justifying different uniforms, like the early days of DS9?


And even if that was the case, I'd expect the Discovery uniforms to obey the TOS division colors. No, I won't let the division colors thing go!