Well, that saved me a purchase. Aliens in 4K will look like crap. I'll stick with the Blu-Ray I have. Yes and no. If it's a direct transfer from film to Blu-Ray it looks like the way it was intended to be, since these movies were mastered on film not to tape. HD looks better than SD. And 4K looks better than HD since that's the equivalent resolution of actual film stock. BUT, when they do more than just a transfer... that's when you start running into problems. I saw images of Alien in 4K, where it does look like they cleaned up all the grain... and now it looks WAAAAYYYY too clean for a movie that's as old as I am. Which is at odds with Ridley Scott wanting to make the movie look dirty, grimy, and for the Nostromo to feel lived in.
I mean fair and of course I want to respect your time. But I'm also morbidly curious too of different points of view.
On a serious note and in retrospect, having so many of the crew (or even anyone at all really) willingly give up everything they knew, all their non-Discovery friends and family, to join Burnham in the far future for what may have been (and ultimately ended up being) permanently was just not believable. At all. Especially if they had the option to back out with no judgment and no questions asked, as many of the offscreen crew of Discovery did. There's no realistic explanation other than that it's a tv show and these characters are signed up for the 32nd century season. It would've been more realistic if the crew had just been unwillingly sucked into the 32nd century without any choice.
if you want to add insult to injury they didn't even have to do it, they knew Control was destroyed before they entered the wormhole.
I mean, there is a sense of duty to their crew, and the protection of the Federation. They were willing to lay down their lives to protect the Federation, and so they did. To me, it's just like Voyager's crew staying with Janeway. They felt a sense of loyalty and duty to assist the crew, even in a 70 year journey, rather than find a place to settle down. "We are creatures of duty, Captain."
"Jumping the shark" implies that show was actually good at some point, which it wasn't. The entire direction of this show was wrong from the outset. Nothing exemplifies this better than looking at the writers. From the showrunners (Bryan Fuller, Alex Kurtzman, Michelle Paradise) to the staff writers. The vast majority of writers are a bunch of "The CW" shows, romantic drama, comedy drama (Desperate Housewives, GCB), soap opera, lesbian romance, young adult sexy vampire teen romance-drama (Vampire Diaries, The Originals) writers. They had two writers who worked on Star Trek before (Joe Menosky [TNG Darmok, First Contact, Legacy, The Chase, Conundrum, Suspicions, Time's Arrow, VOY Year of Hell, Distant Origin, The Voyager Conspiracy, Blink of an Eye, Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy, Dragon's Teeth, Future's End, Scorpion, Dark Frontier, Equinox, Unimatrix Zero, ditched after one episode in S1], Kirsten Beyer [Books, not TV]) and a few writers who worked on other JJ Abrams IPs (which isn't exactly a praise). But here is a scene that really grinded my gears. It's pure cringe, and definitively, without a shadow of doubt, proofed to me that show show is going to be bad: Stuttering special needs silly Tilly. This scene is the perfect distillation of what is wrong with the direction of modern Star Trek, it's sensibilities, and whom it's trying to appeal to.
This thread is a fascinating read. The new Star Trek wasn’t written for me, which is totally fine. I sampled it and didn’t find it appealing. If the target market likes it… good for them! Char Kais post showed me that the writers were more experienced with young adult shows. As I’m not into teen werewolf or wb shows it makes sense that this wouldn’t appeal to me. Which is totally fine. The universe doesn’t revolve around me…. Though maybe it should the fact that it’s lasted so long would surely indicate that it resonated with someone. Which is great that they were able to get a show that appealed to their tastes. Who knows, perhaps it drove some to sample the earlier iterations.
Here's my biggest thing about Star Trek (warning, possible rant ahead): Star Trek espouses to be about diversity, celebrating differences, and embracing other points of view while respecting individuals, species and cultures. What often gets declared in fan circles though is the opposite. This show isn't for me, therefore the writers are stupid/lazy/incompetent/hate Star Trek, and people who like the show are stupid, easily entertained, and unintelligent. They also possibly hate Star Trek. If a show is unliked then it being on the air is proof of conspiracy. All of this makes no sense! A show is not produced out of hatred and spite. That people don't like simply proves Star Trek's base thesis-we are all different but can celebrate those differences rather than shaming people for daring to like something different in their Star Trek. No, Discovery did not "jump the shark" because that implies something different than what Discovery did. Discovery, from its outset, was to be different. It was to focus on Burnham, her character, her relationships, her growth. If the character of Burnham isn't for you (for whatever reason, and nothing untoward expressed here) then the show is not going to work for you. And that's ok. That doesn't make it bad, evil, an abomination before our Lord Roddenberry, or whatever. It's just not for you. And that is what makes Star Trek great. Not everything is for everyone.
I don't think it's ever jumped the shark, just lived a deeply muddled existence, powers that be changing it's identity over and over and a general decline in quality from season 3 onwards. The time jumping episode this season only served to remind me how much more I liked season one. The characters used to have an edge, now they're all ultra-soft blankets.
I like Old Discovery and New Discovery for different reasons, but this is definitely NOT the same show that got me officially hooked with "Context Is for Kings" where I outright said, "This is the best Star Trek since DS9 ended!" and went up to the bashers and all but came out and said, "What the fuck is wrong with you people?!" I didn't put it in those exact words, but I might as well have. I feel like we're a long way from that now. The last time I consistently agreed with Jammer was during the BSG days. But he said something in his review of "Whistlespeak" that I agree with, where I thought, "I can't see eye-to-eye with you about Discovery but I can agree with you about at least this point." Here's what he said: https://www.jammersreviews.com/st-dsc/s5/whistlespeak.php "It's really interesting to consider where Discovery started compared to where it is now. Tonally speaking, Discovery began as an envelope-pushing, boundary-breaking, expensive and often excessive take on Trek that was all about heightened sensation and spectacle. It has since turned into an (overly) emotionally contemplative journey of self-discovery using traditional Star Trek values." He's right. As far as edginess, maybe it's the "I'm in my 40s now" talking, but everyone having an edge to them isn't everything. I don't know. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it, but it doesn't have to be the end-all/be-all. Which is why I just can't take people seriously who are absolutely determined to bash Discovery no matter what. It's clearly still not the same show it was back in 2017, but they're still acting as if it is. Which means they have blinders on. Or they're trashing a show they haven't watched in a long time. Out of a bad habit they need to drop.
There are elements of Discovery that I've always liked over the years, and some really interesting ideas, but I've never felt it worked or was "great" because the execution of those ideas are not done well. It's not the same show it started out as, but each iteration is flawed in ways that made it not exactly click. To me, Discovery is one of those shows that exemplifies what Bojack Horseman explains in the "Becker Speech." The titular character compares his relationship with his mother to watching the Ted Danson sitcom Becker. You can see all the elements of something good, you keep thinking this should be good, and stay with it hoping things will get better when it's not great because in the back of your head you think this should work. But, for some reason or another, it never does. And, to me, that's Discovery. In my humble opinion, the "original sin" of the show was not fully committing to Fuller's vision of totally reinterpreting Star Trek or, failing that, just scrapping the whole thing and going back to the drawing board.
I was totally ready for them to reinterpret Star Trek. I think CBS was determined to say, "It's all one timeline!" and that screwed the pooch. Then, the moment Picard was announced, I knew that Discovery would somehow have to weave into TNG. I always figured they wouldn't retcon the look of TNG the way they retconned the look of TOS. Even when other people were worried they would, I always kept saying they wouldn't. TOS was the only one effected. I don't think it was an Original Sin committed by Discovery. I think Discovery was the result of Collateral Damage. The original sinner in this case was CBS. Discovery looked like a reboot that wasn't officially a reboot. Same applies to Strange New Worlds. Then they jumped Discovery into The Future and made the whole issue irrelevant, at least for that series. I'm not going to hold it against Discovery that they didn't commit to a full reinterpretation because (besides the mess that was studio politics) I couldn't have known it at the time but, at the end of the day, a reinterpretation turned out to not be what I wanted. Obviously not only am I a fan of Picard, but I also actually ended up liking it a little bit better than Discovery. Even before PIC Season 3. Some people aren't going to like hearing that, but what I think is what I think. Ultimately, I have to go with what I ended up liking better. What I really wanted was a continuation, not a reboot. This is part of why I wish DSC hadn't started off as being Pre-TOS. If it started in the Lost Era, there would've been no retconning of how the TOS Era looked and no one would've batted an eye at the Discovery being based on the Enterprise design from the scrapped Planet of the Titans. It's a supreme bit of irony for me that Section 31 will be taking place when I wish early-Discovery had taken place. A reboot is something I thought I wanted -- as far back as 2003 when JMS first said he wanted a shot at rebooting Trek -- but when I look at the Kelvin Films, SNW, and the first two seasons of DSC, the only quasi-reboot I was drawn to was Disco. So, making something a reinterpretation (if we're not going to use the word "reboot") didn't automatically mean that I was going to become a fan of it. It's something I wasn't able to actually realize until hindsight.
I think that there was a sense of deliberate reference to this in Voyager, although the stakes are higher of course. For many of us watching Voyager at that time, the scene where Janeway and Chuck walk into the empty cargo bay and Janeway is overcome (amazingly done by Mulgrew) is one which made an impact when we saw it for the first time.
The thing which rankles with me is that it felt like the direction of the show was shaped by those who were opposed to its nature. It didn't just lose its edge, but became downright mawkish in its character interactions, while the time jump felt like it was purely a way to answer complaints about canon rather than to tell a good story. I'd have much preferred that they stuck the course and just worked on better execution (eg sticking the landing of the storylines, which they didn't manage until the fourth season). They were never going to win back the vocal critics, so changing the nature of the show only risked alienating existing fans.
I didn’t realise the actor that plays Grey is trans. What’s the point of having gender reassignment surgery just to dress, speak and act like the gender you already were?