Spoilers Star Trek: Prodigy General Discussion Thread

[The Old Mixer]

It's like they're supposed to be cruising around outside the 3-mile limit off the California coast, and suddenly they're ordered to hightail it to the Philippines...because for some reason we don't have a Pacific Fleet, just one damn training ship.

There's lots of little business like that in TWOK that doesn't make much sense, like McCoy questioning why they're training a new crew instead of manning the Enterprise with an experienced crew....as if this group of cadets is only being trained to be the new crew of the Enterprise, and training cadets isn't a standard part of keeping a larger fleet running.

 

[Christopher]

There's lots of little business like that in TWOK that doesn't make much sense

There's lots of big business in TWOK that doesn't make any sense, like how the Reliant can't count the number of planets in the system or why telescopes didn't detect the huge explosion long before they got there. Or how Khan's people were a bunch of twentysomething fashion models after having been stranded as adults 15 years before. Or how a torpedo programmed only to rearrange the matter on the surface of an existing planet was somehow able to improvise an entire planet out of diffuse space gas, and possibly also manufacture a sun. Or why the warp engines were scripted to be powered by a fission reactor complete with radioactive cooling rods that had to be withdrawn before it could come back on line. The whole movie is sheer nonsense.

 

[Danja]

And yet, people speak of it reverentially ("TWOK is magnificent! All hail TWOK!")

 

[fireproof78]

And yet, people speak of it reverentially ("TWOK is magnificent! All hail TWOK!")

Its ridiculous.

 

[captainkirk]

There's lots of big business in TWOK that doesn't make any sense, like how the Reliant can't count the number of planets in the system or why telescopes didn't detect the huge explosion long before they got there. Or how Khan's people were a bunch of twentysomething fashion models after having been stranded as adults 15 years before. Or how a torpedo programmed only to rearrange the matter on the surface of an existing planet was somehow able to improvise an entire planet out of diffuse space gas, and possibly also manufacture a sun. Or why the warp engines were scripted to be powered by a fission reactor complete with radioactive cooling rods that had to be withdrawn before it could come back on line. The whole movie is sheer nonsense.

TWOK is my goto example when people try to point out inconsequential flaws in the new movies and act like they prove the movies are objectively bad. Aside from the fact that a movie can't really be objectively good or bad, they're willing to overlook all these things in older Trek that they crucify new Trek for.

 

[Christopher]

TWOK is my goto example when people try to point out inconsequential flaws in the new movies and act like they prove the movies are objectively bad. Aside from the fact that a movie can't really be objectively good or bad, they're willing to overlook all these things in older Trek that they crucify new Trek for.

I'm weirdly the opposite. I dislike TWOK because it's such a dumb, dumb story, and unlike most people I don't find the character story engaging enough to turn a blind eye to the stupidity. But in the case of ST '09, I recognize the nonsensical plot elements but I do find the character work and direction satisfying enough that I can forgive them. I'm not sure why that is.

Well, part of it is just my inclination to root for the underdog and buck conventional wisdom. I kind of resent that TWOK is so popular, whereas I feel '09 gets treated worse than it deserves.

Still, you're absolutely right. From Enterprise to now, I've seen repeated iterations of fans denouncing problems in new Trek that were no different from the problems they forgave or shrugged off in old Trek. They just don't stop to examine their own opinions and realize that they've just had more time to rationalize away the problems in the older stuff. It's not that the new stuff is worse, it's just that we're less accustomed to it.

 

[fireproof78]

Well, part of it is just my inclination to root for the underdog and buck conventional wisdom. I kind of resent that TWOK is so popular, whereas I feel '09 gets treated worse than it deserves.

Same here. 09 received far too much of a beating up and I find it terrible, and that the film does a much better job. The changes it brought to the franchise are pretty much like TWOK, yet Meyer gets praised and Abrams' lampooned?

Still, you're absolutely right. From Enterprise to now, I've seen repeated iterations of fans denouncing problems in new Trek that were no different from the problems they forgave or shrugged off in old Trek. They just don't stop to examine their own opinions and realize that they've just had more time to rationalize away the problems in the older stuff. It's not that the new stuff is worse, it's just that we're less accustomed to it.

This is my experience as well and it becomes quite fatiguing after a time. New Trek isn't worse than old Trek; it's just new and different but with the same type of problems shown in the old series/films. Apparently tolerance levels are just lower or something...

 

[UssGlenn]

Maybe sectors have sub-quadrants?

That is my thought as well. At first I thought they would have to be pyramid shaped, but that would make 6. They would have to be Octants, assuming sectors are cube shaped, that is.

 

[Christopher]

This is my experience as well and it becomes quite fatiguing after a time. New Trek isn't worse than old Trek; it's just new and different but with the same type of problems shown in the old series/films. Apparently tolerance levels are just lower or something...

No, it's always been this way. That's the thing. People keep insisting things are worse now, but they're exactly the same; we've just had more time to get used to the older stuff, as I said. The phenomenon of fans denouncing the newest incarnation of Trek as unforgivably bad and non-canonical goes back to the animated series. It's happened with every single new incarnation. It happened with the original movies; a few years back someone posted a reproduction of a 1982 letter to Starlog insisting that TMP and TWOK just had to be an alternate universe from TOS because of all the inconsistencies. It happened with TNG; it took years before the old-school TOS fanbase was mostly won over and stopped complaining about how you couldn't have real Trek without Kirk and Spock, and even many of the TOS cast were vocally hostile to TNG. (I don't think Shatner changed his tune until they hired him for the movie.) And it's happened over and over since. Every single time, fans insist the new Trek is totally wrong and unacceptable or at best a reboot/alternate universe, and then a decade or so later, when the next new incarnation comes along, fans denounce it as the first ever incarnation of Trek that failed to be as perfectly consistent and unified as everything before it. It's ridiculous, and it's no different now than it was 40 years ago (aside from having the Internet to amplify it more).

 

[fireproof78]

No, it's always been this way. That's the thing. People keep insisting things are worse now, but they're exactly the same; we've just had more time to get used to the older stuff, as I said. The phenomenon of fans denouncing the newest incarnation of Trek as unforgivably bad and non-canonical goes back to the animated series. It's happened with every single new incarnation. It happened with the original movies; a few years back someone posted a reproduction of a 1982 letter to Starlog insisting that TMP and TWOK just had to be an alternate universe from TOS because of all the inconsistencies. It happened with TNG; it took years before the old-school TOS fanbase was mostly won over and stopped complaining about how you couldn't have real Trek without Kirk and Spock, and even many of the TOS cast were vocally hostile to TNG. (I don't think Shatner changed his tune until they hired him for the movie.) And it's happened over and over since. Every single time, fans insist the new Trek is totally wrong and unacceptable or at best a reboot/alternate universe, and then a decade or so later, when the next new incarnation comes along, fans denounce it as the first ever incarnation of Trek that failed to be as perfectly consistent and unified as everything before it. It's ridiculous, and it's no different now than it was 40 years ago (aside from having the Internet to amplify it more).

It sucks that it has always been this way.

 

[Christopher]

It sucks that it has always been this way.

It's just human nature, a quirk of our neurology. We rewrite our memories over time to fit our preferred narratives, and we gloss over or forget the worse bits, so that creates the illusion that the past was better than the present. People are always saying that "Hollywood's run out of ideas" or "everything today is remakes" or "this generation's music is just noise" or "today's technology makes people dumber," and they don't realize that their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents said the same things in their day. The problem isn't that it's always been the same, the problem is that people don't realize it's always been the same and assume that their perception of newer things being worse is legitimate. We just need to have more perspective.

 

[eschaton]

Again, the central issue with TWOK - honestly with all the Augments stuff - is it's just implausible to believe Khan is superior in any way other than arrogance. He's comes across as downright stupid in TWOK.

I know it's generally speaking very hard to "write smarter" than you are - which is why average writers resort to shorthand like other characters saying the character is smart - but you shouldn't use a super genius antagonist if you don't show them actually using their genius.

 

[fireproof78]

Again, the central issue with TWOK - honestly with all the Augments stuff - is it's just implausible to believe Khan is superior in any way other than arrogance. He's comes across as downright stupid in TWOK.

I'll maroon you and force you to watch your crew die and a planet explode creating a near uninhabitable environment to survive in...see how the intelligence fairs. I'll be curious to see the plant from that seed.

 

[Danja]

TWOK is my goto example when people try to point out inconsequential flaws in the new movies and act like they prove the movies are objectively bad. Aside from the fact that a movie can't really be objectively good or bad, they're willing to overlook all these things in older Trek that they crucify new Trek for.

Same goes for the TV shows (TNG: "What's a Frenchman doing with a British accent?")

 

[Christopher]

Same goes for the TV shows (TNG: "What's a Frenchman doing with a British accent?")

Which is so silly. Plenty of bilingual people can speak both languages without an accent, especially if they learn them both from childhood, as Picard probably would have. The conceit that non-native speakers are somehow incapable of speaking English without an accent is a fictional shorthand to code people as foreign, and doesn't reflect reality.

I learned recently that Arnold Schwarzenegger needs voice coaching to keep his Austrian accent, since he's lived in the US long enough to have lost it otherwise. Which means that, really, the implausible thing isn't that Picard doesn't speak with a French accent, but that he doesn't speak with an American accent, since he's spent decades surrounded mostly by people who do. (Or at least some kind of hodgepodge of American and British accents, like Marina Sirtis has these days when she's not performing.)

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

The one that gets me is the Generations prologue. We know for a fact that the E-B is stuck at impulse in the Sol system, and yet it's the only ship available to rescue the refugee ships from the Nexus. Doesn't Sol system have any kind of a Coast Guard? Shouldn't there be a large Starfleet presence overall?

That's the part that doesn't make sense to me.

Every major Star System with a significant population should have the Space equivalent to a Coast Guard that monitors the volume of space that is their HelioSphere, 1 Light Year radius from the center of the Star System, and/or monitors for 1 Parsec radius from the center of the Star System.

That should be standard for every member Star Sytem within the UFP.

Granted, modern day Coast Guards go long past the Coasts of their Country, but still.

Local space within a Star System that is heavily populated shouldn't be so empty.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think it may be more specifically an issue of the Enterprise-B being the only starship in range. There are presumably other vehicles in the Sol System, but the Enterprise was likely the only vessel of sufficient size and capability to execute a timely rescue. Other vessels might have been smaller patrol craft and could have lacked adequate-sized medical facilities, passenger space, etc.

The caveat might be that in those days, a starship might have been considered a special type of vessel, separate from other ships in the Starfleet.

 

[Danja]

Meet Rylee Alazraqui, the voice of Rok Tahk on Prodigy:

https://twitter.com/rylee_alazraqui/status/1433812451917586437?s=19

She's on Star Trek while she's still in elementary school!

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Meet Rylee Alazraqui, the voice of Rok Tahk on Prodigy:

https://twitter.com/rylee_alazraqui/status/1433812451917586437?s=19

She's on Star Trek while she's still in elementary school!

Novel idea, casting children to voice act as children.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Meet Rylee Alazraqui, the voice of Rok Tahk on Prodigy:

https://twitter.com/rylee_alazraqui/status/1433812451917586437?s=19

She's on Star Trek while she's still in elementary school!

I believe Rylee is the daughter of voice and tv actor Carlos Alazraqui. Carlos voiced Rocko from Nickelodeon's Rocko's modern life among others and also played Deputy Garcia on Reno 911! Voice acting runs in the family.