Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x01 - "The Vulcan Hello"

[Noname Given]

But they got to cut down on the Klingon stuff. It is tedious.

I really liked the first two episodes overall - but I SO AGREE with the above comment. I've said before I give them an A for effort of this part but a D in execution. That said, from the Producers and Show Writers comments, I think (unfortunately) that won't happen (IE we won't see less of that aspect, it'll be a constant through this season. Remember the scripts are finished and as I type this they are finishing principal photography on episode 15 (the final one for the season) and the majority of the episodes are finished an through post production and editing.

So, I think that if the audience reacts to all this like we are - the best we can hope for is that if they get a second season, and it still involves Klingons or another alien race in a major way; that they learn from this, and do the whole 'alien language' aspect in a different 'more traditional' Star Trek way in any future Seasons.

We'll see.

 

[dahj]

Well, it's a Runaways Quote, which is being turned into TV as we speak

If I say "TV is youtube for old people" now will it kick off a recursion?

 

[Noname Given]

If I say "TV is youtube for old people" now will it kick off a recursion?

"Get off my VCR dammit!"

 

[Trekfan12]

OK, I watched episode 1. What a mess.

As much as other characters went on about Burnham being very Vulcan-like, I couldn't see it. Unless she's supposed to act like a hot-headed, impulsive, borderline irrational Vulcan with PTSD. I don't like Burnham at all. She registers at 15 on the Mary-Sue scale of 1 to 10. The whole mutiny thing was stupid, I don't care how right she was in the end. I mean, of course she has to be right and everyone else wrong since she's a Mary-Sue for the ages. That's how it works.

Too many plot holes to count. Shredded lace has more cohesion than this story. It's more sketchy contrivances held together by dull exposition than anything else. At least Sarek is still a sanctimonious jerk. There's your Prime continuity maintained. I still don't get why he ended up as Burnham's guardian. I mean, there are more than six Vulcans, aren't there? And the "Vulcan Hello" nonsense. Please. I know the Vulcans could be stingy with crucial information, but it's more helpful to go ahead and share that Klingons prefer a punch in the face rather than an invitation to tea. And way more helpful to let the higher-ups at Starfleet know about it rather than slip it to Mary-Sue at the last moment. Maybe Sarek really does hate Starfleet more than he's letting on.

The Klingons. Hard to be afraid of a warrior race when it looks like they'd break or fall over if they moved too fast. I'm fine with making them look alien and ferocious. But I couldn't tell you if any of them were able to change their facial expression even a little. Between the actors being straightjacketed, sealed in foam rubber (for freshness?), fitted with dental appliances that made even Klingon hard to understand, and having them speak in nothing but stilted, lethargic, marble-mouthed Klingon, all their scenes ground the narrative pace to a halt. It was excruciating to watch and read. T'Kuvma might as well have started his part with "Call me Ishmael" for as long as he rattled on. I can honestly say I miss the campy Klingons of TNG and DS9 now. They aren't nearly as boring.

I could complain about the array of tech that leapfrogs TOS, TMP, TNG, DS9, etc, but what was more irksome was the tech they should have, like scanners and subspace communication, that only works under optimum conditions and then only just barely.

So much for my earlier misgivings about content. I have no interest in watching episode 2.

♫♩ This reboot's made for walking, and that's just what I'll do... ♬♪

I SO enjoyed reading your review....thank you

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

I SO enjoyed reading your review....thank you

I'm glad you enjoyed it! If only the episode had inspired me to write something else.

 

[BillJ]

So I'm rewatching the first episode. Why exactly are they walking through the natives area when they already know where the well is at? Why didn't they simply beam down to it?

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

So I'm rewatching the first episode. Why exactly are they walking through the natives area when they already know where the well is at? Why didn't they simply beam down to it?

Think of all the superfluous banter we would have missed!

 

[BillJ]

Spoiler: Burnham

She's mentioned as the senior tactical officer in David Mack's book, but calls herself a xenoanthropologist in the episode.

Whoops!

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

Spoiler: Burnham

She's mentioned as the senior tactical officer in David Mack's book, but calls herself a xenoanthropologist in the episode.

Whoops!

Fastest canon violation I've seen in ages.

 

[BillJ]

Fastest canon violation I've seen in ages.

She acts much more like a tactical officer, as the episode progresses. I guess she could be both. But the super characters that are awesome in multiple disciplines are kind of cliched.

Or someone just tossed xenoanthropology in there at the last minute.

 

[Noname Given]

Spoiler: Burnham

She's mentioned as the senior tactical officer in David Mack's book, but calls herself a xenoanthropologist in the episode.

Whoops!

The book is earlier...I'll bet she's not First Officer yet either?

 

[BillJ]

The Torchbearer sure go dressed quick to go out and confront Burnham.

I'm still confused about the Klingons actual plan here? Surely they would know the shielding/cloak on their one ship was malfunctioning. Which I guess was designed to lure someone, but it was hidden in such a way that it almost wasn't picked up. What was the plan if the Shenzhou hadn't picked it up, fixed the communications buoy and went on its merry way?

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

She acts much more like a tactical officer, as the episode progresses. I guess she could be both. But the super characters that are awesome in multiple disciplines are kind of cliched.

Or someone just tossed xenoanthropology in there at the last minute.

Mary-Sue strikes again.

 

[BillJ]

Voq is supposed to be Donald Trump.

"I recognize you as someone who has lived on the outside."

 

[BillJ]

The Shenzhou logs must have been classified. Spock calls cloaking "theoretical" less than a decade later.

 

[BillJ]

Was Sarek waiting around for Burnham's call? He is like instantaneously connected to. It is like a second.

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

Was Sarek waiting around for Burnham's call? He is like instantaneously connected to. It is like a second.

I can't imagine him hanging by the phone like a teenage girl waiting for her bestie to ring up.
Actually, I can. It's funny.

 

[Noname Given]

Was Sarek waiting around for Burnham's call? He is like instantaneously connected to. It is like a second.

They have Holoular phones

 

[Mr Awe]

Fastest canon violation I've seen in ages.

Novels aren't canon.

 

[JRTStarlight]

The very idea a telescope through a window could see something their cameras and sensors couldn't is stupid. How do they think cloaking tech works - do they think it hacks the scanners of enemy ships and gives them false readings? Ridiculous. It bends light such that no image of the ship is going out so much as whatever is 180 degree opposite is curved around and sent along on its path as if it were uninterrupted.

However, given they had working cloaks in ENT, this is not just EM (light) signals. It may haven been, at first, but thanks to better tech, Archer began detecting other things besides light (subspace signatures, or other funky emissions, the details of which are unimportant for us viewers) and he could see through those as their scanners detected them and painted "false color" images on their view screens, as well as the normal EM stuff too, of course. Looking out a window and using a telescope would do nothing to help.

But since Archer-tech taught the Federation how to beat the older cloaking tech, the Romulans quickly stopped using that model for the next 100 years - why use something that doesn't work, so it wasn't used during that last war. They disdained visual communications, but we could see their painted bird of prey ships no problem. So it's not really at odds with canon facts.

100 years pass and along comes Spock and his knowledge how they can beat that old tech by detecting things ships still have - like subspace signatures, warp signatures, impulse signatures, or a host of other things beyond the visual spectrum, but not everything a ship puts out. To conceal all that stuff, why, the power costs would be enormous. But the Romulans had continued working on their tech, and they solved most of those problems, so sure, it was a surprise to Spock to learn they had new cloaking tech that could beat ALL those expected signatures (visual light the least of them, but more besides).

As sensor tech evolved, so too must the cloaking tech or the newer scanners could see through it.

But at no point would one look for or detect only the funky stuff like subspace signatures and just forget about the normal visual EM range, so this was a profoundly stupid thing they did with the telescope.

OR - and I always admit this - I missed something or it was better explained in part 2, and they'll even toss out a reason why such new information doesn't get out to someone like Spock, or why the Klingons have this great cloaking tech but don't use it everywhere else, etc. etc. Maybe they did, or will, in this series, but if so, it has so far escaped me.