What the hell is going on in this thread and how can we stop it?
Spoilers Star Trek: Discovery 5x07 - "Erigah"
- Thread starter Commander Richard
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We have a "real" writer in the chat!
Sigh.
I would have preferred there to be a bit more... "differentness" to the 32nd century tech although by and large i'm fine with how things work given some context.
There seems to be something of a tech regression that occurred due to the Temporal War and the subsequent banning of time travel tech and then the Burn. Also there may just be an issue of the Federation kind of approaching a Singularity... there's only so much more than can develop. I'm not against the idea of them somewhat hitting a wall and basically just refining what they have.
The transporter-buffered phasers are pretty cool.
As for this episode, I think it was my favorite of the season so far. My usual issue of "Burnham being terrible" was pretty nonexistent here, which was refreshing.
I feel like this episode worked better than most DSC episodes with giving more people things to do. The show tends to consistently shine when it relents on its "All Burnham All The Time" approach and lets some other people do things.
I really thought Culber had bit the dust (again) and I found myself to have actually had a reaction to it. I was like actually kind of angry and sad, thinking of how devastated Stamets would be. Kudos to DSC for finally getting to me care about some of the characters. Took a long time, but they made it.
Overall, this has shaped up to be the best season of DSC. I'll reserve final judgement for the end, to see what the payoff of all this is... DSC has been notoriously terrible with the payoffs. Last season was the only one that was... fine. I'm really hoping the show can stick the landing in its final season.
As much as I generally loathe Discovery, i'm still a Star Trek fan damn it and I want it be good. It's had flashes, it did some stuff well, but also did much more that was just awful. I really want to see it end on a high note.
My issue is I like the federation, and how their engineers kept pushing forward with technology, heck its even a meme in universe. It speaks to humanities tenacity (whole vision of trek.) The future version does not resemble the federation to me anymore
I agree with you that this is the best season despite my issues with parts of it. I'm glad you enjoy it, though this episode had elements that bothered me. We were introduced to a special security team that were complete failures to service the plot. Burnham allowed Moll and L'ak to be together with a BS excuse given their criminal history, and resourcefulness to escape. Even after beating up the security team, shooting the doctor Burnham allowed Moll to come back and then tell the Breen all about the progenitor tech that was super secret at the beginning of the season.
The concept of last season was amazing, but the execution was just meh.
Yes, and with such a dramatic event as the Burn I would expect it.
I can understand and appreciate that, although I would counter that they do seem to be still continuing to advance... it's just those advancements aren't as dramatic as they once were and maybe not as noticeable.
I'd point to the real world as an parallel. Look at like, cell phones. They've existed since the late 1970's. It was slow going at first, but once a breakthrough moment happened they rapidly advanced and changed for quite some time... and now, for the past probably decade or so... we're mainly just seeing refinements of the technology.
Now just extrapolate that over a millennium.
I can easily accept that while advances are still being made, there's only so much they can do. A phaser is a phaser.
At the end of the day, it's still Star Trek and these types of things have always been a part of it. I personally don't judge episodes based on things like that because in the end, most episodes make some sort of leap for story purposes.
There is also the quite literal regression of tech due to banning time travel related tech. Going by some hints from Daniels in ENT, at least parts of it were almost ubiquitous. I have a feeling that even things that weren't even directly time travel related had some element or component that was or could be used as such.
3, 4 and 5 have been miles from perfect but they're my favorites by even more miles.
We'll likely have something that is an implant long before the 32nd century. In Trek's 32nd century, they should have somekind of organic technology that is intertwined with humans.
Heck, they had subcutaneous transmitters in the 23rd century.
Because it's STAR TREK.
STAR TREK has phasers.
And warp drive.
And transporters.
If you want something else, watch a different show.
Yes. No. What purpose did it serve to go 800 years into the future, if they weren't going to leverage that setting and everything that comes with it? It honestly doesn't feel any different than 24th century Trek.
Yep. Star Trek has a language. A ray gun is a phaser. They travel via warp. They transport via...well. transporters. Advancement usually means things like adding "quantum" as a prefix. But the function and result is the same storywise.
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Giving tech a different name and FX to signify it being "different" and more "advanced" than what we are used to, then having it play the exact same role in the setting as the original tech did doesn't exactly seem fresh, original or unique. A ray gun is a ray gun, whether it shoots orange or blue beams or whether we call it a phaser or a plasma caster... or a phase pistol, for that matter. Yay, Enterprise had "different" tech than the TNG era to make it feel "low-tech", but they still polarized the hull plating every time the Enterprise-D and Voyager would've raised their shields.
THAT is very anti-Star Trek. They generally don't do that, to the point of being actually quite militantly against it.
I agree... for a different reason though.
The tech doesn't really bother me.
The society does. 800 years later Federation should be almost completely alien to our 23rd century explorers. They went 800 years into the future to basically just be in a place that's exactly the same as the place they left, except they use transporters for more things.
Then you're saying growth and change are anti-Star Trek. People change. Unfortunately, Star Trek never has.
"Growth" isn't necessarily defined the same for everyone and not all "change" is for the better.
Anti-transhumanism has been a pillar of Star Trek. I don't think that's anything that needs to or should be changed. It's absolute ingrained into the psyche of Star Trek. It's part of what it is.
That's Star Trek. None of the shows feel that different, The "props" will always be the same: ray gun, spaceship, comm device, Galactic organization, space navy...etcetera. 100 years, 200 years. 800 years. Trek gonna Trek.
I do, because Star Trek has become incredibly stale.
I've already said this in different discussions, but the problem with time-travel stories is that no matter where you go, the setting needs to be relatable for the audience. Sure, there might be a few story ideas in future starships accidentally shorting out Discovery's entire power grid with a single sensor sweep, Zora crashing when she tries to calculate the Stardate, the ship being casually blasted out of the sky with a 32nd century handgun, future people treating our heroes as anthropological curiosities or museum pieces... for a few individual episodes. They would wear themselves thin extremely quickly if there's nothing familiar for the audience to latch onto. Should we really expect stories like these to last three full seasons complete with arcs? Who would the audience even root for?
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