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Spoilers Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1x06 – “Come, Let’s Away”

Rate the episode...

  • 10 - Excellent!

    Votes: 41 29.5%
  • 9

    Votes: 53 38.1%
  • 8

    Votes: 16 11.5%
  • 7

    Votes: 13 9.4%
  • 6

    Votes: 1 0.7%
  • 5

    Votes: 1 0.7%
  • 4

    Votes: 5 3.6%
  • 3

    Votes: 4 2.9%
  • 2

    Votes: 2 1.4%
  • 1- Terrible.

    Votes: 3 2.2%

  • Total voters
    139
There’s the concept of good faith discussions. Believe it or not, I don’t actually spend my day worrying about what TRON or anyone else on this board is or isn’t doing, nor do I go out of my way to read all of your or anyone else’s posts. If someone is talking in the episode discussion thread, I would presume that they’ve watched the episode and that we are on the same level of understanding regarding the episode. I for one don’t even typically click into the thread until I’ve watched it. But maybe that’s just me.

So, yes, I stated that they used the SNW bridge. I also made plenty of references to different productions utilizing the same sets in different time periods in Star Trek. I figured you were aware of the actual story of the episode. I was incorrect in my assumption.

Well I jumped to conclusions way too early. I saw a production shot of the ship and thought it was SNW 23rd century. Not the best thing to do. I need to realize that. So it was my initial wrong analysis that started the subject and discussion. Sorry. Ill wait next time.
 
I noticed all of those as well, but kinda put them in the category of mistakes a human artist might do as well, especially if they’re in a hurry and use different reference material. But yeah, the sheer variety on the uniforms and hairstyles could also be an indicator for the us of AI. There are definitively signs it was done by a person, too, though. AI wouldn’t flip the same character or background illustration to use as three different panels, for example.

Like you I would be curious to learn who was responsible for the comic book. :)
I don't think there's much AI used professionally in these sort of circumstances that's not massaged in some way by human artists after generation.
 
One thing that bothered me, though, was the question of why the trap was set. If the Venari Ral have a ship that can relatively easily destroy/disable the USS Sargasso with just two or three shots, why did they have to lure them away from the station? Couldn't they have simply attacked the station with their entire fleet?
I assumed that the initial hostage situation with the "no Starfleet vessels within a light-year" demand was ensure that "capital ships" that could have effectively responded or alerted to the attack on the station to be out of range.
 
I mean, I think people liking Burnham and Ake is bullshit. But that just how things role in the media world.
Shaw is a character who makes no sense in the context of the world.

Burnham at least does. Ake is one that I still reserve judgement on.
 
One thing that bothered me, though, was the question of why the trap was set. If the Venari Ral have a ship that can relatively easily destroy/disable the USS Sargasso with just two or three shots, why did they have to lure them away from the station? Couldn't they have simply attacked the station with their entire fleet?

Given his attitude thru the episode and especially the final message, I think setting the trap and proving how much smarter he was than Starfleet and Ake was just as important to Braka as actually stealing the experimental gear.
 
People want to prove themselves constantly as better.

Exactly…plus his last message is basically a riff off this quote from WoK…

"I've done far worse than kill you. I've hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her: marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet. Buried alive... buried alive..."
 
Exactly…plus his last message is basically a riff off this quote from WoK…

"I've done far worse than kill you. I've hurt you. And I wish to go on hurting you. I shall leave you as you left me, as you left her: marooned for all eternity in the center of a dead planet. Buried alive... buried alive..."
Isn't this episode and the whole story arc a TWOK copy i.e. OTT villain who hates the captain? Star Trek is supposed to be more than that.
 
I made the effort of isolating all of the “Tales from the Frontier” spreads they show in the episode (including the handful of individual panels they show) and unfortunately I don’t think they went to the trouble of creating an actual comic book for the episode. There doesn’t appear to be any sort of narrative coherence and the speech bubbles we do get to read contain kinda stock phrases like “And not a moment too soon!” or “This is not the world we were expecting”. Some of the same character illustrations and background images even seem to be reused throughout the pages.

I don’t see any super obvious signs of this being created using AI, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. The art looks kinda bland and the layout of the panels doesn’t seem like a genuine comic to me. The only stuff I’m seeing that could be AI mistakes is the hand in that final individual panel apparently showing more than five fingers (if you count the knuckles) and the sun on the first panel seemingly shining through the rock formations in front of it. If it’s not AI it’s still obviously put together pretty hastily. So for everyone who was hoping this was going to be an upcoming IDW comic, I sure don’t think so. It’s more likely that someone in the art department just got the job of throwing together a few pages of a comic that could look believable if you only see it for a few frames.

What’s also a little odd are the uniforms, and I think it’s not unlikely that earlier versions of the script had the Miyazaki as a TOS-era ship. Maybe they changed it to a merely 100 year old ship when they added the idea of the singularity drive?

View attachment 52086
View attachment 52087

Six-fingered hand in the last bottom right panel.
Also Kirk randomly wearing regular sunglasses.
Preeetty sure it's AI.😎

And the prompt was something like "make a star Trek comic", that's why it's Kirk & co.
I guess if they went for a (much better fitting) far future comic, the uniform designs wouldn't be consistent over several panels, that's why it weirdly is a TOS comic, despite it supposed to be set in the 31st century.

(Also - nice effort collecting these!)
 
Solid 8/10. Liked it a lot.

Nus Braka coming into his own as a genuinely interesting villain with real teeth is a great development. Paul Giamatti delivers as we might expect of him, it's always fun to watch him work, but here he also gets to bring some true menace to the proceedings, and the mental chess match between him and Nahla (I always approve of Nahla) is genuinely involving.

Lots of great character work from the cadets -- especially Caleb and Tarima, and with a much-welcome closer glimpse into Bavi's character before what happens -- a truly spooky group of Reaver-style mooks in the Furies, and just overall fine performances from pretty much everyone combine with a good, solid and quite dark action storyline into a pretty great episode. I like that we get reintroduced to a sense of just how fragile this remnant Federation is, and how dangerous its galaxy still is.

There are some odd "how small is the galaxy?" moments of the kind that I've learned to endure from the NuTrek style and formula but will probably never learn to like; one of DISCO's innovations was to introduce an in-universe explanation for this storytelling quirk, but SFA can't avail itself of that, so I notice it here in a way I didn't in the parent show. I also feel like the "convenience" of Nus Braka being the only dude with the solution to their problem, and his being so oddly close at hand to get involved, should have raised alarm bells earlier (it's to Nahla's credit that she does sense something off even if she doesn't get to the conclusion in time, but it's odd that she's the only person this occurs to). And on a minor note: I feel kind of bad for that one cadet who is apparently the Designated Screwup (you know the one, she gave us the "swallowed my comm badge" gag in Episode 1).

So those flaws keep it from landing the perfect ten. Still, though, very good episode. Ranks up with DISCO at its best (and that's coming from someone who actually understands the quality of the parent show, by which I mean to say that it's high praise).
 
Also Kirk randomly wearing regular sunglasses.
Preeetty sure it's AI.😎
I wouldn’t be too sure about any of that. Even if AI was employed, I doubt it would just randomly put sunglasses on one of the characters. I’m pretty certain this was done deliberately as some sort of inside gag. (Either prompted to give him glasses or drawn that way.) But I wouldn’t take the glasses alone as an indication that it must necessarily be AI. As @Mudd noted, even if they used AI this most certainly would have gone through a process of being polished by a human artist. The face of what seems to be the captain character appears to be decently consistent from panel to panel, which is something AI tends to get wrong, too. I wonder if they used photos of a production member as reference for the face (either for a human artist or AI). If you look closely you’ll also notice that the control panels on the bridge (?) use the same kind of future LCARS design as they used on set. So they certainly didn’t just prompt an AI to generate some generic “Star Trek comic”. At least some thought and work went into this.

And on a minor note: I feel kind of bad for that one cadet who is apparently the Designated Screwup (you know the one, she gave us the "swallowed my comm badge" gag in Episode 1).
I wonder if they are somehow setting up Pickford saving the day in the season finale or something like that. Would be kinda in keeping with the idea that they are individuals, each one with their own strengths and weaknesses, which seems to be kind of the theme of the show. I for one would enjoy Pickford getting her moment in the limelight. :)
 
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