For me, one thing I don’t like is how they talk. What really sealed the deal was how the aliens on the crystal planet switched to the “fast talking quips”. That’s the only way I know how to describe it. At times this show feels like Galaxy Quest to me. Lines like, “What is this , Kirk in the 2260’s?” really ruin the illusion that this is meant to be taken seriously. I know it’s more comedic than previous shows but it still has to be grounded in something serious. I can’t really express how I feel very well (which is a bad thing for a forum) but it doesn’t feel right to me.
“More comedic”? It's a full-on comedy. It's not meant to be taken too seriously at all. I agree, though, that the lightning-fast dialog filled with as much Trek in-jokes per second as possible could be toned down just a tad. Other than that I'm still pretty surprised how much I like the show, the setting, the characters, the style and the humor.
I'm not really a fan of how referential it is. I get it, McMahan loves TNG and we live in pretty creatively bankrupt times, but the constant references and fan service is getting a bit much. Obviously some of that is great, but I think he takes it a step too far.
Too much silliness and yes, annoying dialog. But I still like it much more than Discovery and Picard, so all right.
WAAAY too far in my opinion. It’s almost getting to fan fiction level. Does it make sense when I say that it has to have an element of seriousness to be funny? This almost feels like a parody of Starfleet life set within the Trek universe. Like this is something that cadets will watch. It’s not something that is “actually” happening within the universe.
Yeah, it's just silly. The hyper fast and histrionic delivery, the googly eyed character design, the childishness of it all. For something set "in" continuity, it's just too ridiculous.
Less is more would work better in this case. Spoiler: Episode 3 Or they could just do references to the lesser trek characters like they did with Miles O'Brien.
I tend to see it that way, yes. I think there are quite a few alien crewpeople in the background. Most of them are just the forehead-of-the-week kind of aliens, nothing too outlandish.
If anything, this strikes me as one of the more realistic depictions of what life in Starfleet would probably actually be like. Stuck up senior officers taking all the credit when things go right and lashing out at the crew when things go wrong. Lower ranked officers doing the real heavy lifting and getting crappy accommodations. A ship that gets the more routine assignments and isn't making first contact with a new species or saving the galaxy on a weekly basis. Starfleet is a predominantly human organization. Their headquarters is on Earth after all. I will say, the aliens of the week seen in Second Contact and Temporal Edict are a hell of a lot more interesting and creative looking than almost all the aliens of the week seen in the Berman era.
Indeed yes. For me, having written a couple of different characters in Trek RPGs the biggest struggle is simply that between missions and off duty hours there is not a lot to do. And bored people get up to some weird shit. For me, Lower Decks is straddling a line with seriousness and silliness. Mariner's over the top antics are concealing a personal pain that I think she doesn't want to deal with. Likewise, the captain is struggling with being amongst giants in Starfleet history and feeling quite inadequate. There is a lot more to these characters than just silliness. Is it over the top? Yes, it is. But, to me, there is a serious foundation, but it isn't going to be exposed fully for a while.
The interesting thing is, I think it could be possible to do a serious drama with these exact same characters acting exactly the same way they do now, and it could still work.
Completely agree. I recall mentioning in another thread (can't remember which one, now) but that I really wanted Trek to take a page from Brooklyn 99 which is definitely a comedy and I feel there is no way a lot of that stuff would fly within the real NYPD (though I'm sure someone will correct me). But it deals with very serious topics from the word go, even within the silliness. But, the base premise is comedy and I think that expecting fully serious basis is, I think, setting up for disappointment.
In all honesty, that's kind of a plus for me. I'm really burned out on twenty plus episode seasons. Shorter is better.
Maybe tone down the references slightly? And the intro is a little too over the top. The first thing made me giggle, then the monster sucking nacelle but the rest falls flat.
I do think it’s too goofy to be “real” in the Trek universe. But I don’t sweat continuity much, and I’d rather they err on the side of goofy than ugly, as Kurtzman Trek sometimes does. Silly as it is, this feels like proper Star Trek to me.