Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 1x01 - "Second Contact"

[TimeIsAPredator]

That got a chuckle from everyone in my house.

My favourite scene too.

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

The TNG Season 1 and 2 "pajamas" did manage to last for about 16 years or so in-universe so at least that design held on for more than a few years.

What I want to know is what happened to Jean Lucs wardrobe over the years. Back in TNG he was all up for showing a bit of cleavage when not in uniform

 

[BillJ]

@Ketwolski, are the credits stagnant from week to week, or did they change in the second episode?

 

[Lord Garth]

My favorite scene was when they were in the holodeck running through different locations, then the guy Boimer (I know I got that wrong, I'm still learning the names) drops the ball and chooses Engineering as his choice of vista.

Then the discussion at the end with the Captain and Admiral about Ensign Trouble-Maker (I'll learn their names too).

 

[RAMA]

New York Times review.. Again, mixed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/arts/television/star-trek-lower-decks-review.html

 

[Trekker4747]

New York Times review.. Again, mixed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/arts/television/star-trek-lower-decks-review.html

Pay.

WALL!!!

ETA:

Oh, I guess not just wanted me to make an account. It's just jarring to click on a link and instantly seeing something pop up telling you to make an account.

 

[BillJ]

New York Times review.. Again, mixed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/arts/television/star-trek-lower-decks-review.html

Good thing I just watch the show and decide for myself.

 

[Lord Garth]

New York Times review.. Again, mixed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/arts/television/star-trek-lower-decks-review.html

The New York Times. I agree with them politically, and I'll just stick with that. Not once have I thought about looking to a newspaper.

When I look for reviews, I'll go with some select YouTubers (the ones who I don't identify as the Fandom Menace), Jammer's Reviews (despite what I said about him upthread), and posts here. Maybe Variety, but sometimes they come across too much like Film Snobs.

Even though it's a completely different animal, if I have to place this series somewhere, I'd put it above VOY/ENT and just underneath TNG/DS9.

 

[RAMA]

Good thing I just watch the show and decide for myself.

Just reporting show reaction from the big names. I always decide for myself.

 

[RAMA]

It's interesting to see the reviews from "outsiders". Sometimes it can involve far less baggage.

So far these media reviews are bucking the CBSAA Trek show trend of great critical reaction. In this case I agree with them, but it's still early.

RAMA

The New York Times. I agree with them politically, and I'll just stick with that. Not once have I thought about looking to a newspaper.

When I look for reviews, I'll go some select YouTubers (the ones who I don't identify as the Fandom Menace), Jammer's Reviews (despite what I said about him upthread), and posts here. Maybe Variety, but sometimes they come across too much like Film Snobs.

Even though it's a completely different animal, if I have to place this series somewhere, I'd put it above VOY/ENT and just underneath TNG/DS9.

 

[Trekker4747]

New York Times review.. Again, mixed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/arts/television/star-trek-lower-decks-review.html

In counterpoint, the show tweaks the franchise’s tradition of hyper-virility, with a Kirk- and Riker-like first officer, Ransom (Jerry O’Connell), who can dispatch green giants in hand-to-hand combat and is given to pronouncements like, “Nothing compares to the firm, hot pulse of a joystick in your hand.” The determination to take the “adult” in adult animation seriously can take even less subtle directions, as when a crew member mistakenly offers a token of timber, rather than crystal, to an alien leader and the dignitary recoils and cries, “He’s got wood!” There are several Prime Directives being violated there, one having to do with lazy joke writing.

Well...

Certainly look forward to that.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Pay.

WALL!!

‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Review: Life as Phaser Fodder
An animated addition to the “Trek” universe is part fan service, part smutty office sitcom.





“Star Trek: Lower Decks,” CBS All Access’s latest offering in the “Trek” franchise, focuses on the kinds of low-level characters who get stuck doing all the paperwork.Credit...CBS All Access

By Mike Hale

• Aug. 6, 2020
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• 
  
  Comedy. The final frontier.

“Star Trek: Lower Decks,” the latest “Trek” extension from CBS All Access (following “Discovery” and “Picard”), goes where no series in the franchise has gone before, at least not intentionally: full-time laughs. The “Trek” shows have had their playful elements from the start. But when your primary source of humor over the years has been making fun of Vulcans or androids who have no sense of humor — well, you see the issue.

“Lower Decks,” whose 10 episodes appear weekly beginning Thursday, also stands out for being animated, but that’s not a first. The earliest “Star Trek” spinoff, back in 1973, was “Star Trek: The Animated Series,” a straightforward continuation of the original for which most of its cast supplied voices. (Its two seasons are also available from All Access.)

The new show goes its own way, in keeping with the somewhat freewheeling vibe the television side of the franchise has exhibited under the supervision of Alex Kurtzman. Developed by Mike McMahan, a specialist in animated, adult-oriented science-fiction comedy — he was a creator of Hulu’s “Solar Opposites” and an executive producer of the category’s ne plus ultra, “Rick and Morty” — it’s about half “Star Trek” fan service and half smutty workplace sitcom.

Apparently, that’s not an easy formula. Through four episodes, “Lower Decks” feels caught in between. It’s a smooth and zippy package, but it doesn’t register very strongly as either a geekfest or a transgressive satire. Which is another way of saying it’s not all that funny. Wherever it’s going, it’s not doing it very boldly.

Plots abide by “Star Trek” norms as misunderstandings with funny-looking aliens or viruses picked up on-planet lead to pitched battles that look catastrophic until suddenly everything’s OK again. Boimler gets to spend a lot of time screeching about the rules, much in the style of the touchy teenager Morty on “Rick and Morty.”

As background music, there’s a continual hum of “Trek” nostalgia and gentle mockery, for which viewers’ appetites will vary. Much of this comes in enthusiastic outbursts from Mariner, a Starfleet history buff, though her facts are shaky. (The legendary Spock “fought Khan and some space whales.”) Reference is made to the “most important person in Starfleet history,” an in-joke that will delight fans of “The Next Generation” and “Deep Space Nine.”

In counterpoint, the show tweaks the franchise’s tradition of hyper-virility, with a Kirk- and Riker-like first officer, Ransom (Jerry O’Connell), who can dispatch green giants in hand-to-hand combat and is given to pronouncements like, “Nothing compares to the firm, hot pulse of a joystick in your hand.” The determination to take the “adult” in adult animation seriously can take even less subtle directions, as when a crew member mistakenly offers a token of timber, rather than crystal, to an alien leader and the dignitary recoils and cries, “He’s got wood!” There are several Prime Directives being violated there, one having to do with lazy joke writing.

 

[Tuskin38]

Well...

Certainly look forward to that.

I certainly am.

 

[Trekker4747]

I certainly am.

Ah, yes, low-brow sexually explicit humor.

Star Trek!

 

[fireproof78]

Context will make a difference.

 

[Trekker4747]

Context will make a difference.

“Nothing compares to the firm, hot pulse of a joystick in your hand.”

No matter the context, that's a level a humor I think is just way out of place. Even if he's literally holding a pulsing (!) joystick to manually steer the ship or something, what's being said is quite clear and... Come on.

 

[fireproof78]

Ah, yes, low-brow sexually explicit humor.

Star Trek!

Picard walking around with a Risian fertility totem.

Kirk remarking on the "delight" aspects of the Eymorgs.

Mudd lusting over some android replicas.

And, of course, the rather phallic shaped rock.

Star Trek is not always high brow.

“Nothing compares to the firm, hot pulse of a joystick in your hand.”

No matter the context, that's a level a humor I think is just way out of place. Even if he's literally holding a pulsing (!) joystick to manually steer the ship or something, what's being said is quite clear and... Come on.

"Out of place." For what? A job site? I've heard worse from my counselor colleagues, all with graduate level degrees or higher.

 

[Tuskin38]

Ah, yes, low-brow sexually explicit humor.

Star Trek!

Wouldn't be the first time in the franchise.

 

[fireproof78]

Wouldn't be the first time in the franchise.

I grow so tired of the constant myth that Star Trek is for the intellectual elite, as though it has never had low brow comedy in it all all, and we should all clutch our pearls at such indignity.

This is the same franchise that told a kid to suck it up over his dead mom but Riker is all morose over the fact that Deanna was engaged.

 

[Trekker4747]

I'm allowed to have my opinion, and I think remarks about pulsating rods and "he's got wood" is a bit more extreme than fertility token (that you have to know what it means in order to get it) and a styrofoam prop that happens to look like a penis.

I'ts not pearl-clutching it's just, I PERSONALLY FEEL AND YOU IN NO FUCKING WAY ARE TO AGREE WITH ME AND THAT I AM ENTITLED TO HAVE MY OWN GODDAMN THOUGHTS ABOUT THESE THINGS that those kinds of lines are a couple bars too low than Kirk smirking at an attractive woman or some rock people see a penis in.

But sure, giggle all you want over lines about pulsating rods.