Spoilers First Reviews

[Discovery McDiscoveryFace]

Watching the reviews, and the comments, I really do worry at the sheer volume of Star Trek "fans" who are going to shit on this when it comes out. I think this is different from other series as there is a significant cohort of young, and inexperienced actors in this and I can already see there are personal attacks flying at some of them. And the same people who complained that the always adorable Mary Wiseman had gained weight, are now complaining that she's lost weight.....

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Watching the reviews, and the comments, I really do worry at the sheer volume of Star Trek "fans" who are going to shit on this when it comes out. I think this is different from other series as there is a significant cohort of young, and inexperienced actors in this and I can already see there are personal attacks flying at some of them. And the same people who complained that the always adorable Mary Wiseman had gained weight, are now complaining that she's lost weight.....

I too worry about the impact the more vile sections of the so called 'fandom' will have on these kids. It was wonderful to see how excited and engaged with their roles they all are during the blue carpet event. Thankfully the casts of all the current Trek series appear to be very tight with one another, so I can imagine the veteran actors will do a good job of protecting the younger ones.

But seriously fuck the toxic fanboys and their incessant need to shit on and hate everything. You show by your behaviour that you do not have the slightest clue as to what Star Trek actually is and what it represents.

 

[Michael]

By contrast the "modern" Trek period (well... 17 years since ST09...) - the main producers & directors regularly go directly to the press & say they never liked Trek and didn't understand the appeal of it, and now try to make a show for non-Trekkies and non-nerds.

Setting aside that I always thought this was a weird purity test, I think the way you’re phrasing it here is a bit of a misrepresentation. You almost make it sound like the people who said they merely weren’t fans of the franchise before they worked on it professed an active dislike. I have never watched a single episode of, I don’t know, Avatar: The Last Airbender, but that’s just out of ignorance and doesn’t mean I hate the show or whatever. But also, not being a fan of something doesn’t mean not understanding its appeal. I absolutely get why people love Avatar: The Last Airbender and why it’s a cult classic. It just never appealed to me to the extent that I felt like checking it out.

Not to mention that the track record of Trek producers who weren’t fans before working on the franchise creating some of the most cherished periods of Trek is pretty good. Michael Piller, Ira Steven Behr, Nicholas Meyer, Harve Bennett, Akiva Goldsman, the Hageman brothers — all of them have said that they weren’t massive fans, and yet their respective productions count among the most popular of the franchise. Doesn’t seem like there is a necessary correlation between being a fan and producing successful Trek.

 

[Rahul]

Setting aside that I always thought this was a weird purity test, I think they way you’re phrasing it here is a bit of a misrepresentation. You almost make it sound like the people who said they merely weren’t fans of the franchise before they worked on it professed an active dislike. I have never watched a single episode of, I don’t know, Avatar: The Last Airbender, but that’s just out of ignorance and doesn’t mean I hate the show or whatever. But also, not being a fan of something doesn’t mean not understanding its appeal. I absolutely get why people love Avatar: The Last Airbender and why it’s a cult classic. It just never appealed to me to the extent that I felt like checking it out.

Not to mention that the track record of Trek producers who weren’t fans before working on the franchise creating some of the most cherished periods of Trek is pretty good. Michael Piller, Ira Steven Behr, Nicholas Meyer, Harve Bennett, Akiva Goldsman, the Hageman brothers — all of them have said that they weren’t massive fans, and yet their respective productions count among the most popular of the franchise. Doesn’t seem like there is a necessary correlation between being a fan and producing successful Trek.

I get that, this is true for most professionals - most writers for crime shows are not fans of the specific shows they write for. But! They usually are or at least pretend to be fans of the crime/whodunnit-genre overall.

For speculative fiction it is a bit stricter though. You cannot just let any writer write for "Lord of the Rings" for example. That will just not work out.

The thing about Nicholas Meyer for example was - first of all all, he was a damn good storyteller in it's own right, who didn't get bogged down in minutiae. And second of all, he went in with a ton of respect & research: His first step was to watch all(!) episodes of TOS, before he even began with his first story draft.
I think his fandom for Sherlock Holmes helped here a lot - he wasn't a Trekkie, but he knew how difficult franchise fans can be. (And still TWOK wasn't without controversies - it was just so objectively good, in the end it won people over).

I have to say though, Kurtzman got a lot better with his communication over the years. As of now, he regularly talks about how much respect he has for the franchise.
In fact, I think there might even be an overcorrection of sorts - too many references, too many old plot points getting revived, hell, the 32nd century now looks way more like TOS than the 23rd century in DIS ever did!
When in reality - what people want is just good stories. There is a reason why people like ST09, despite it being an absolute canon clusterfuck. And don't like Into Darkness, despite it being 100% in line with ST09 continuity. Give us good stories, and a lot of nitpicks will be forgiven.
And in that front, SFA had no time to prove itself yet, at all, but also doesn't really get the benefit of the doubt anymore, because the creators, setting, storytelling are all known quantities already.

 

[Rahul]

Watching the reviews, and the comments, I really do worry at the sheer volume of Star Trek "fans" who are going to shit on this when it comes out. I think this is different from other series as there is a significant cohort of young, and inexperienced actors in this and I can already see there are personal attacks flying at some of them. And the same people who complained that the always adorable Mary Wiseman had gained weight, are now complaining that she's lost weight.....

I agree & disagree at the same time.
Tbh the only reason I will watch is the new cast - e.g. Caleb as the new lead and the other cadets and teachers. I don't really care for the 90s Trek connection (Doctor, Sisko), and even less about the 32nd century setting and it's worldbuilding (rebuilding the Federation) or having another season-defining pirate villain who gets blown up in the end.

So in this regard - I will be a "fan" watching, who tries to be open-minded, but will go in with the expectation of likely being disappointed. Aka being one of the "negative" ones.

OTOH - if this show wasn't part of the Star Trek franchise - I certainly wouldn't watch this show at all. Much less PAY for it, or discuss it on the internet with strangers. If it weren't for us grumpy fans watching the new shows regardless, time after time - these shows would be dead already way, way earlier, and we would have never gotten a SNW or LD.

 

[Set Harth]

It was wonderful to see how excited and engaged with their roles they all are during the blue carpet event.

Blue carpet? Right off the bat they can't even get the color of the carpet right! CANON VIOLATION

 

[Elaise]

The thing is - your franchise's built in audience is the first and only guaranteed audience. So you have to go & expand from there.

MARVEL studios road to success was taking their heroes (Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America,...) - and being really, really faithful to the core identity (!) of them. But then shaving off decades of lore, trivia, controversies, rough edges, streamline the heck out them, and make accessable stories that anyone can understand without needing years of backstory knowledge.

Now they are struggling, because between dozens of movies, streaming shows, hundreds of characters, references, ... they are just not easily accessible anymore for newcomers, their stories don't feel fresh anymore, essentially the same problem their comics had before, before they did streamline everything for the movies.

OTOH DC & Fox had the problem that they tried to distance themselves from their characters - much more even then current Trek - Superman & Batman murdering criminals, the Fant4stic being gritty and unpleasant, X-Men afraid of wearing yellow - they just lost their core audience, and general audiences fizzled away slowly after that.


Back then DS9, VOY, ENT all went in with the premise of "more like TOS", "more action", "more modern", "different" - but then I would argue still all were easy too similar to TNG from the start, like the nth CSI spin-off, with diminishing returns over time, until the last one got cancelled before reaching 100 episodes.

By contrast the "modern" Trek period (well... 17 years since ST09...) - the main producers & directors regularly go directly to the press & say they never liked Trek and didn't understand the appeal of it, and now try to make a show for non-Trekkies and non-nerds.
And then no one else other than the hardcore nerd Trekkies show up, those get reasonable pissed, and the only chance to stumble upon these shows is if Netflix recommended it, because there is no positive word of mouth chatter among fans & friends at all. Hindsight is 20:20, but that this approach didn't work should not have been a surprise to anyone, to be honest.

Marvel also tried to cater to a different audience that they hoped would show up but never did.

I agree that the shows were never made for nerds, but they are the ones that consistently showed up. So pissing them off is just not the best idea.

Though the term nerds has expanded so much from the days of TNG.

 

[Set Harth]

There is a reason why people like ST09, despite it being an absolute canon clusterfuck.

How much of that cannot be explained by the altered timeline?

 

[Rahul]

How much of that cannot be explained by the altered timeline?

Transwarp beaming invented by Scotty(?), Augment blood reviving the dead, alien species changing their biology and appearance, the introduction of "fate", being promoted to captain in an afternoon, ...?
And Michael Burnham is also nowhere to be found.
Srsly a clean cut (reboot or fully alternative timeline) would have been much better, than this "branching off timelines" nonsense.

 

[fireproof78]

Transwarp beaming invented by Scotty(?), Augment blood reviving the dead, alien species changing their biology and appearance, the introduction of "fate", being promoted to captain in an afternoon, ...?
And Michael Burnham is also nowhere to be found.
Srsly a clean cut (reboot or fully alternative timeline) would have been much better, than this "branching off timelines" nonsense.

But enough about Parallels.

these shows would be dead already way, way earlier, and we would have never gotten a SNW or LD.

Good.

Transwarp beaming invented by Scotty(?), Augment blood reviving the dead, alien species changing their biology and appearance, the introduction of "fate", being promoted to captain in an afternoon, ...?

All of that can be found in Star Trek pre 2009.

 

[Rahul]

To bring the topic back to SFA (& a more positive vibe):

Despite all their shortcomings, one thing these "new" wave of Trek producers (Abrams, Kurtzman) always absolutely nail is the casting.
Like, it happens so often that you watch a show and one or two of the actors, sometimes guest actors, but also often main characters, are just not bringing it to the table. Reading their lines awkwardly, or just looking like "actors", and not real people.
That NEVER happens in a bad robot or a secret hideout production.
I don't know how they do it. Especially since they often cast a lot of newcomers, young people, non -actors/comedians. They must have a special process there.

So yeah. I have a lot of doubts about this show. But weirdly none at all about the thing that makes our breaks most shows: I'm 100% confident in the cast, despite never having them seen before & not really watching all the promotional snippets.

 

[eschaton]

The thing is - your franchise's built in audience is the first and only guaranteed audience. So you have to go & expand from there.

MARVEL studios road to success was taking their heroes (Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America,...) - and being really, really faithful to the core identity (!) of them. But then shaving off decades of lore, trivia, controversies, rough edges, streamline the heck out them, and make accessable stories that anyone can understand without needing years of backstory knowledge.

Now they are struggling, because between dozens of movies, streaming shows, hundreds of characters, references, ... they are just not easily accessible anymore for newcomers, their stories don't feel fresh anymore, essentially the same problem their comics had before, before they did streamline everything for the movies.

OTOH DC & Fox had the problem that they tried to distance themselves from their characters - much more even then current Trek - Superman & Batman murdering criminals, the Fant4stic being gritty and unpleasant, X-Men afraid of wearing yellow - they just lost their core audience, and general audiences fizzled away slowly after that.

It's worth mentioning here that Kevin Feige wasn't a Marvel fan! In fact, he was a huge Star Trek fan. But once he started working for Marvel, he started reading through the back catalog of stories, trying to find stuff they could mine for the movies.

By contrast the "modern" Trek period (well... 17 years since ST09...) - the main producers & directors regularly go directly to the press & say they never liked Trek and didn't understand the appeal of it, and now try to make a show for non-Trekkies and non-nerds.

I'm not sure I agree here. Sure, Abrams wasn't into Star Trek, and to an extent just did ST09 to prove he had the chops to do Star Wars. But Kurtzman is a legitimate Star Trek fan (for all that people claim he doesn't understand the franchise. Goldsman is 100% a giant Trek fan. Chabon was a huge Trekkie heading into Picard's first season. Maybe the only person who's involved in modern Trek who isn't on record as previously being really into Star Trek is Michelle Paradise. I think we've actually leaned too far into the fannish territory recently, in things like the third seasons of Picard and SNW. Both were made by superfans who thought that just referencing a lot of cool shit from past Trek automatically made for a compelling story.

As I've said in the past, I think the primary problem with Kurtzman-era Trek is it largely avoids the didactic/allegorical model of storytelling, which is (IMHO) central to giving something a "Trek vibe." Because of that, thematically shows seem either hopelessly muddled with no clear messages, or seem to lack themes entirely. But the shows absolutely reference lots of super nerd shit all the time.

I'd also argue that maybe we could like cut the budgets by a third (or half) and just have more grounded space drama, rather than the VFX for its own sake we seem to be getting, but if they want to piss away money, that's their business.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Transwarp beaming invented by Scotty(?)

Why can't he invent it? Scotty and Spock are both residents of the late 24th Century. An era unexplored until PICARD

alien species changing their biology and appearance, t

A day ending it "Y" in Star Trek. A franchise known to have Changelings, Chameliods and those guys who helped Garth,

being promoted to captain in an afternoon, ...?

He was First Officer so after Pike and Spock were out, he's next in line. Should he have retained that rank upon return to port? Probably not. But he was a Big Damn Hero so....

Augment blood reviving the dead,

In "Space Seed" Khan's Augment physiology brings himself back from the brink of death with little or no assistance from McCoy. Kirk OTOH barely survived the process even with McCoy helping. The Canon has not been violated

 

[Set Harth]

Transwarp beaming invented by Scotty(?)

In what way is that a violation? It's a different timeline.

alien species changing their biology and appearance

As far as appearance is concerned, we crossed that bridge with TMP. No idea what the biology thing refers to.

And Michael Burnham is also nowhere to be found.

Surely that one can't reasonably be blamed on the Kelvin films.

 

[eschaton]

The makeup reboots only bother me because Glenn Hetrick seems to be something of a one-trick pony. His go-to with pretty much every makeup is a full-face silicone mask, which can look good, but get in the way of performance. It reached its peak absurdity in DIS Season 3, where they used full silicone masks on Orions (completely human in features other than green skin).

You need a special kind of actor to really live in the full mask properly. Rene Auberjonois had it. Armin Shimmerman has it. Doug Jones has it. But you need to compensate for your lack of facial expressivity by doing more with your body gestures, otherwise it just really reminds the viewer of the mask.

 

[Fateor]

And Michael Burnham is also nowhere to be found.

Timeline wise that at least makes sense.

After all, without the Red Angel changing time she would have died in the desert when she was a kid.

 

[Smear-Gel]

Transwarp beaming invented by Scotty(?), Augment blood reviving the dead, alien species changing their biology and appearance, the introduction of "fate", being promoted to captain in an afternoon, ...?
And Michael Burnham is also nowhere to be found.
Srsly a clean cut (reboot or fully alternative timeline) would have been much better, than this "branching off timelines" nonsense.

I've always bought the take that the alternate timeline affected the past the same way it affected the future, and the entire timeline is affected. A branching timeline in a universe where people can go to the past and change the timeline (we canonically know they were involved in the Temporal Wars after all) is more flexible.

 

[Dukhat]

Oh, the Tawny episode is sure to be good.

She loves Star Trek, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised for a moment if she called up Avery Brooks himself to get the okay to do whatever storyline she had planned.

Unless she was planning on him actually being in the episode, I'm not sure why she would need to contact him at all. She doesn't need Brook's permission for anything story-wise.