It is. The first one that popped up that had transcripts.
“Jean-Luc Picard is back”: will new Picard show eclipse Discovery?
- Thread starter Groppler Zorn
- Start date
It is. The first one that popped up that had transcripts.
Not seeing a Klingon doesn't mean there aren't any hostilities, right? I mean, no one saw a Romulan before Balance of Terror, but we know the Federation and Romulans have certainly had hostilities and even war and negotiations. 
Oh dear, and Spock had so many things in Star Trek 6, like didn't he say there's an old Vulcan proverb "Only Nixon could go to China"? And didn't he also say Sherlock Holmes is an ancestor of his? And when his line was written about 70 years, well you know they just picked something that sounds good, right? I'd imagine in Discovery they're trying to tell their best story right now, and aren't going to worry about every little thing that was ever said, because you can just easily brush those away and say it's an error or it's been changed, it's not like it's really something truly important, and no matter what they do there's so much contradiction from before that you just know someone's going to find something to get all worried about.
I felt Discovery did such a wonderful job showing how a fractured Klingon Empire comes back together because of fear, and now you can see why they're such a constant threat about ten years later or so during Captain Kirk's career as captain.
Oh dear, and Spock had so many things in Star Trek 6, like didn't he say there's an old Vulcan proverb "Only Nixon could go to China"? And didn't he also say Sherlock Holmes is an ancestor of his? And when his line was written about 70 years, well you know they just picked something that sounds good, right? I'd imagine in Discovery they're trying to tell their best story right now, and aren't going to worry about every little thing that was ever said, because you can just easily brush those away and say it's an error or it's been changed, it's not like it's really something truly important, and no matter what they do there's so much contradiction from before that you just know someone's going to find something to get all worried about.
I felt Discovery did such a wonderful job showing how a fractured Klingon Empire comes back together because of fear, and now you can see why they're such a constant threat about ten years later or so during Captain Kirk's career as captain.
Shouldn't Spock's line been "140 years of unremitting hostility" then?
I love how one person can determine what's important to another person.
I suppose when space is so big, some of the notion of hostility against the Federation could just be political, such as discouraging alliances, spreading propaganda, and disrupting trade. No direct contact need be required . We know from Day of the Dove that the Klingons love their propaganda .
Long-form serialized-drama doesn't need to be epic and high stakes. But I do agree that for science fiction it works better if the plot is somewhat "epic." That said, a good epic story needs to unwind over more than 15 episodes. If DIS really wanted to go this route they should have spent the first season "setting the table" by developing the characters and building the tension up to the war, then have everything explode for the season finale, setting things up well for the second season. DIS overplotted the first season in terms of things that happen, yet did it with great haste as well.
They overshot on many things besides the Klingons almost destroying Earth though. The ISS Charon almost destroyed the whole freaking multiverse? Burnham both "started" the war and ended it. Her deceased captain was one of the most decorated in the fleet. She personally caused the death of the two most prominent leaders in the Klingon Empire. The Discovery was the most technologically advanced ship in the Federation fleet, and responsible for basically all of its victories until it vanished into the MU. That is "epic" stakes raising to an absurd degree.
Worst of all, none of it was needed from a story standpoint. DIS would have worked just as well if Burnham was a disgraced XO who got her captain killed, but her captain was a comparable nobody, and it wasn't the flashpoint which started the Klingon War. Discovery could have been some random-ass decrepit ship which needed warm bodies, so she was called up out of dishonorable discharge to serve under Lorca. Then tell a story about a crew of B-listers barely scraping their way through the war, as Burnham tries to redeem the memory of Georgiou. That would be a fantastic story - certainly a more relatable one.
Once you save the Federation and multi-verse, what else is left?
Burnham has to be the super-bestest EVAR!!! Which is why you usually keep "superfans" away from Star Trek.
You see what's out there.
But it'll never have the dramatic punch of saving the Federation and the Multi-verse. Everything else will seem like small potatoes.
It is like Star Trek Beyond, once you blow-up Vulcan and threaten Earth twice, the stakes just seemed tepid.
I think one of the most enjoyable things in the third NuTrek movie was the banged up old Ship coaxed back into service. It might have been interesting to see something similar in Discovery. They could even have had a rag-tag cast of non Federation types in the first season and gradually transition to a more traditional Starfleet cast as time went on.
They wrote the season, quite honestly, as if they expected they were only going to get one, so they might as well go balls to the wall and hit the "climax" that most serialized drama waits till the 4th or 5th season for.
I'm not getting into the ways in which they built Burnham up too much as a character as opposed to how they just made her the fulcrum of the fate of the entire federation, since that's character-related, not plot related. The whole "Spock's sister" angle was dumb as executed - particularly because we get to see Sarek have a far warmer relationship with Burnham than he ever had with Spock. Though if it were just the only "special" aspect of her it would have been tolerable.
Except she isn't.
I find ever-raising stakes game overrated.
As long as the stories are good, I wouldn't mind if the biggest stakes for the rest of the show were if Tilly's hair will stay in place
I liked Beyond's stakes way more than the other two. I could feel Sulu's fear for his family rather than watching Spock deny all feeling about his people. And we actually got to know some of the people on Yorktown Station, as opposed to the movie expecting me to care about Earth/Vulcan for no other reason than because it is Earth/Vulcan.
When you stop to think about it, Nomad was a kind of precursor to V'ger.
This is something I struggle to understand. But, I've never been one who needs ever heightening stakes in order for something to be enjoyable. What I prefer is personal stakes and how it impacts the characters overall.
I guess it boils down to entertainment, which is obviously highly subjective. But, I love DSC and DS9 and their war plots because of the impact on the characters, not because I ever believed the Federation would actually be destroyed. I guess an imperfect analogy would be "Heartbreak Ridge." Since it happened in WW2 we know what happens. But, the personal story is far more engaging than just the war back drop.
COMPUTER: Klingon homeworld Qo'noS?
BURNHAM: Unwelcoming to the Federation.
COMPUTER: Correct. Klingon political order?
BURNHAM: 24 great houses.
COMPUTER: Correct. Location of the most recent Klingon terror raid?
BURNHAM: ...
COMPUTER: Unacceptable duration between query and correct response. Number of survivors at the Human-Vulcan science outpost at Doctari Alpha?
BURNHAM: ...
[...]
GEORGIOU: Michael, almost no one has seen a Klingon in a hundred years.
BURNHAM: I have.
[...]
ANDERSON: Next time, you might try not disturbing the property of a warrior race we've hardly spoken to for a hundred years. Our only choice now is to navigate this situation with as much finesse as possible.
BURNHAM: Admiral, if I may, the ideal outcome for any Klingon interaction is battle. They're relentlessly hostile, Sir. It's in their nature.
ANDERSON: The Federation and the Klingon Empire have always been on the cold side of war. We've had only fleeting run-ins with them for a century, and now you presume to know their motivation, because it is in their nature?
(Remind me, what happened to Anderson again...?)
If "almost no one has seen a Klingon for a hundred years" then that means at least a few people have. Possibly quite a few more who didn't live to tell the tale, too, like Burnham's parents for example. If the Feds have "hardly spoken to" (sounds pretty hostile to me) them in that time, that means they have spoken to them at least a bit. Their "run-ins" may have been "fleeting" but there were obviously several of them. Between these sporadic encounters the Klingons remained "relentlessly hostile" and "unwelcoming to the Federation." Imagine you only see and/or speak to someone a couple of times in decades, but they basically tell you they hate your guts and try to fight you every time. Unrelenting hostility, meaning an attitude or feeling of ill will, dislike, distrust...not necessarily frequent or constant fighting on a continual basis.
Again, in TOS the Organians imposed a peace treaty on the Feds and Klingons, and yet there remained a hostile atmosphere between them nevertheless. And as @Marynator said, the Romulans were unremittingly hostile toward the Feds for a century without ever being seen by them at all...that we know of...
-MMoM
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Not necessarily, no, because the Klingon government was working in cooperation with ours (well, with Section 31 anyway) to handle the Augment virus crisis in "Affliction"/"Divergence" (ENT), and for all we know there are further tales to be told in future stories of more amenable times before things soured again...the NX-01 apparently visited Qo'noS a further time that we never saw on ENT per "The War Without, The War Within" (DSC)...
-MMoM
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Certainly not a very Star Trek one.
Also, I think David Gerrold already wrote a similar story away from Star Trek.
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