For sure. MacFarlane - love him or hate him - has his finger on the pulse of pop culture like few other people in contemporary Hollywood.
Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 1x03 - "Context is for Kings"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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And let's not forget that he was responsible for the death of the shuttle pilot.
I've watched the episode three times, now. I really enjoyed it. Most of my thoughts have already appeared elsewhere in this thread, so I'll just leave some random observations:
- The boarding party vests appear to have flashlights built into the shoulders, but the away team still used hand-held lights. If those things aren't flashlights up there, what are they?
- I like that Tilly's apparent awkwardness in her personal encounters didn't affect how she does her job. Her command to the hidden Klingon to show himself was that of a confident, assertive professional. Exactly what I expect from Starfleet.
- The time-stamps on the various consoles were out of sync with the dialogue. Landry tells Burnham that she's on the day shift and will be escorted to her duty station at 08:00. The time on the replicator turns to 08:00 as soon as she zips up her uniform, rights as Saru arrives. However, the time stamp on the equation assignment she gets reads 17:30 (or close thereto) shortly after arriving at engineering. It later reads something like 08:15 when she closes it and brings it back to Statens. I think they accidentally reversed the second and third time stamps.
- I'm happy to see beam weapons, but would like to see at least one starship without a bridge window. Pulse weapons and bridge windows don't really bother me all that much, though. I just like variety.
- I'd like to see what they wear under the long-sleeve uniform jackets. Do they have undershirts in departmental colors? If so, I imagine that could look very similar to the various TOS-style uniforms.
- Lorca's got a bit of a sense of humor to him. Between that and the undercurrent of mild creepiness, he's unlike any Starfleet captain I can recall. I like him.
- The boarding party vests appear to have flashlights built into the shoulders, but the away team still used hand-held lights. If those things aren't flashlights up there, what are they?
- I like that Tilly's apparent awkwardness in her personal encounters didn't affect how she does her job. Her command to the hidden Klingon to show himself was that of a confident, assertive professional. Exactly what I expect from Starfleet.
- The time-stamps on the various consoles were out of sync with the dialogue. Landry tells Burnham that she's on the day shift and will be escorted to her duty station at 08:00. The time on the replicator turns to 08:00 as soon as she zips up her uniform, rights as Saru arrives. However, the time stamp on the equation assignment she gets reads 17:30 (or close thereto) shortly after arriving at engineering. It later reads something like 08:15 when she closes it and brings it back to Statens. I think they accidentally reversed the second and third time stamps.
- I'm happy to see beam weapons, but would like to see at least one starship without a bridge window. Pulse weapons and bridge windows don't really bother me all that much, though. I just like variety.
- I'd like to see what they wear under the long-sleeve uniform jackets. Do they have undershirts in departmental colors? If so, I imagine that could look very similar to the various TOS-style uniforms.
- Lorca's got a bit of a sense of humor to him. Between that and the undercurrent of mild creepiness, he's unlike any Starfleet captain I can recall. I like him.
Noticed this as well, the shoulder-lights aren't turned on. My guess is that during filming they are actually a nuisance because they keep shining directly into the camera, which would be a weird flaw on the custom designer's part. That or they just decided they wanted the scenes on the Glenn to be darker for atmospheric purposes.
The scenes on the Glenn were very, very dark. I had a little trouble watching it on an older LCD TV with a lower contrast ratio.
Spock does not talk about his family, not even to his close colleagues. e.g Journey to Babel and STV.
Word!
Like the introduction to the next characters. Only thing is that I thought it seemed a bit small universe for both Saru and the helms/Ops woman to also be on the Discovery. Things are a bit off on that ship and I liked it. But I really hope they don't go S31. Let the black badges just be Intel or MACO or whatever the SWAT unit of Security might be. Overall enjoyed the episode.
When we saw Tilly without her hair tied back I almost did a River.
When we saw Tilly without her hair tied back I almost did a River.
Orville is also a comedy.
As much as I otherwise love it, nothing can top DS9 for ridiculous "small universe" moments. At the end of the series, two main cast members were heads of major Alpha quadrant governments (albeit briefly in one case) and a third was a god.
Not strictly, more a dramedy or something along those lines.
Hey, since Lorca's family business was making fortune cookies, will we see him in the ship's galley sometime making them? Jeez, talk about a weird vision!
Yeah I dunno where they are goin with that one.
Nope. DS9 was the best of the Berman era shows and the Dominion War arc was excellent.
Discovery isn't supposed to be just like The Orville. Discovery and The Orville each have their own type of humor and distinct approaches. And, it's not even a competition--although that seems to be the lens through which you see it. They're both doing well in their own ways.
I guess I'm just lucky that I can appreciate and really enjoy both for very different reasons.
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- It's not a pimple. Get over it, not everyone is model perfect.
- Things "fly" through space. It is a perfectly accepted term. Try not to namecall the writers about something you are ignorant about.
- I think it is totally reasonable that Lorca could also be developing all kinds of weapons. Burnham just jumped to the right conclusion about the wrong science experiment.
- As for Burnham with Spock's family. I think the writers wanted to establish a close connection to TOS and they felt Spock's family was the way to do it. Actually, come to think of it it was probably Brian Fuller's wish. He seemed to single out Amanda as a character he really liked, so he probably wanted to include her in Discovery and this was a way to do that. Sure some people don't like it. I don't mind it so much, though I would have been perfectly happy with it being another Vulcan family.
- The sporedrive has already shown severe negative consequences for a failure, so who knows how reliable it will turn out to be. The answer to the later non-existance of bioweapons is simple, it is against the Geneva Protocols, and Starfleet likely never implements them (if any are even successful).
- I am sure there is plenty of hunger and strife on planets/starbases attacked by Klingons or any cut off from the rest of the Federation by the war. Yeah, Earth might not be hurting, but there are potentially millions and billions of Federation citizens hurting out there. 10 years later the damage (excepting the loss of life) will be repaired.
- Those were my big questions remaining from this episode. Where did the Klingon ship go and what if anything did they learn from the Glenn? I figure we will get some answers later on.
Rewatching the episode: I think the pilot was swept off the ship while it was not at warp (she seems to get swept forward) but simply within the electricity species cloud - so she was still in the immediate vicinity. I think it was likely the Discovery saved her since it arrived immediately afterward. Plus, despite Lorca requesting a prisoner rerouted to his ship, there is no evidence that he contributed in any way to the accident with the pilot, and since they repaired the shuttle and sent it on its way with the other prisoners, there is no reason Lorca would wish the pilot killed.
Maybe it is a little small universe, but it isn't like they came out of left field or weren't set up long ago. Worf helped Gowron get the chancellorship back in the early days of TNG, and has been a friend/enemy to Gowron ever since. Martok was initially introduced as Gowron's senior commander and served that way in both wars (vs. Cardassia and vs. Dominion). From the first season, Grand Negas Zek had involved Quark and his family in Negas-y stuff and had been long involved with Quark's mother. All of these were relationships established over years, and though I agree that handing the Negas-ship to Rom was a leap and obviously influenced by Ishka, they are based on logical, relationship- and character-based developments rather than simply being small universe. I think of small universe as in "oh, I just found out I am secretly a prince too" or "oh yeah, [the villain] and I went boarding school together"... Though YMMV. (Oh and I think that the Bajorans would see Sisko more like a saint than a God.)
Do we know that pilot died? Could have easily been beamed up by the Discovery. The shuttle flies off again at the end of the episode, so someone's at the controls.
The problem with shorter stories is younger kids want to hear them again, but the parent orating doesn't want to read that same damn book again, look kid I bought 5 new books yesterday, please quit it with the dang Alice in Wonderland.
So it would take three nights to read that book (including the rest of the rituals/routines for putting a child down) to Sybok and Michael, and then what? Either Amanda read the same book to these kids three times a week, over and over again for years, or it's the only book she read to ever, and only the once... So why then the sentimentality of carrying around a hard cover to a novel you'd already memorized?
How many times more in season one is there going to be a call back to Alice?
How likely is it that Michael is going to wind up going through a looking glass?
It's also more of a science fiction adventure series.
The latest ep made me wish they'd drop the comedy, or at least the more intrusive jokes. It was the closest yet to a straight sci-fi adventure series and was by far my favorite.
I hope the comedy eventually becomes more integrated and organic. If they're aiming for MASH, like Seth says, they've got a ways to go.
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