How is/isn't Discovery Star Trek?

[jaime]

Better we got that party with that music than just another sedated gathering of people listening to a quartet.

I always felt Ten Forward should have had music playing all the time. For whatever reason it was too much treated as a place for monks, with the only background noise being the A/C.

I think looking at that music choice in DSC revealed more about fandom, when I see it discussed here. Because it gets discussed as the disco track it’s sampled from, as opposed to the later track it actually is. It’s almost how you can gauge target audience vs who is actually discussing the show.
To be fair...either way it was a naf track lol.

 

[jaime]

Making them more human like is the one concession I can make for the future shows.
I would love to see someone wearing a Superman shirt around. I swear I see someone wearing one almost every day.

Wrong studio, Lois.

 

[Spot261]

In what way? It was a fairly upbeat show, one was about them throwing a party with time loop shenanigans that made one of the best episodes of the season.

And therein lies the problem. For some people it was too dark, others complain about the party scene, Tilly and the campy Mirror universe arc.

Some people go down the "it's not canon" route, others say it plays too loose with the timeline and continuity, others complain it took too few risks.

As someone mentioned upthread, every iteration of trek has faced exactly the same criticism, we've even had the Klingon complaints before.

At the end of the day people can either watch it or not, but it IS Trek, simply one that may not to be to everyone's taste.

 

[thribs]

Nemesis had a boring battle??? That’s just crazy talk.

 

[Jinn]

I never read those. I basically have The Cage to go on.

Oh, yeah, based on that I wouldn't like Pike either.

 

[Rahul]

1) Star Trek is a Space Opera action adventure show set in space, with mysteries, plenty of good guys and bad guys, weird technology, aliens and more speeches and moralising than you might reasonably expect from the format.

2) Star Trek looks at issues of today or the past through a different lens to make a point about them or ask a question.

3) Star Trek does emotional, heart wrenching episodes about people, that don’t really have a message or a meaning, but are powerful in their own right.

I would add one other, major important point: That humankind has evolved and let it's darker sides behind it.
This is something where TNG has been overly preachy about it - it's better shown then told - but it has been there right from the beginning:

The TOS crew were 18th century explorers without the imperialism. The 60s era astronauts without the racial and gender segregation. They made a deliberate attempt in showing Uhura - a black woman - in a position of power - and it wasn't treated as something unusual. We know that there is peace on Earth (and the Federation), and crime and racism (almost?) exctinct.

This might be just a minor background detail. But it's an important one. It seperates Trek from almost all other science fiction, which showed humanity in the exact same flawed state as it is today (Babylon 5's problems with alien racism on Earth, BSG's flawed humans, Star Wars' Empire), or even worse.

Many people don't like it, but I think it holds true - our world today, as crappy as it might be - is still a thousand times better in EVERY regard - be it warfare, medicine, famine - than any other point in history before. And in the Trek future, we stay on this part (braodly - bumps on the road like WWIII and the eugenic wars included), and continuisly better ourself and humanity as a whole.

For me, this is even more important then the every once in a while morality episodes - you can have those in Stargate or Firefly as well.

For me, Star Trek is a simple space adventure show, in which the protagonists have learned from and avoided the mistakes of humanitys past.

Entirely by the way, I don’t get the nuBSG comparison at all. With the possible exception of being serialised, it goes against nearly everything that nuBSG set out in its Bible that it wanted to be. Discovery has aliens and magic technology, it has ‘better’ humans, it has time travel and parallel universes, evil twins and bumpy foreheads, it isn’t ‘naturalistic’. It is exactly what Ronald D Moore walked away from to make BSG.

DIS is in the same way a BSG-clone as "Stargate: Universe" is - in that they try to replicate the feel of the show, without actually copying the core concept. Essentially they wanted to lift the Battlestar and it's protagonist in their own respective universe, but keep the "realism" of the main ship and the flawed characters and their betrayals and drama. But on the way kinda' missed the point on why this works on BSG and is not so easy transferable to a universe with much more fantastic elements.

 

[jaime]

Oh, yeah, based on that I wouldn't like Pik either.

Meant to ask btw...where’d the illustrated av come from? They have been popping up and am curious.

 

[SPCTRE]

re: comparisons with TNG

"This isn't star trek, this is too dark, this isn't Gene's vision!"

Also: rape gangs

 

[cultcross]

would add one other, major important point: That humankind has evolved and let it's darker sides behind it.
This is something where TNG has been overly preachy about it - it's better shown then told - but it has been there right from the beginning:

The TOS crew were 18th century explorers without the imperialism. They 60s era astronauts without the racial and gender segregation. They made a deliberate attempt in showing Uhura - a black woman - in a position of power - and it wasn't treated as something unusual. We know that there is peace on Earth (and the Federation), and crime and racism (almost?) exctinct.

This might be just a minor background detail. But it's an important one. It seperates Trek from almost all other science fiction, which showed humanity in the exact same flawed state as it is today (Babylon 5's problems with alien racism on Earth, BSG's flawed humans, Star Wars' Empire), or even worse.

Many people don't like it, but I think it holds true - our world today, as crappy as it might be - is still a thousand times better in EVERY regard - be it warfare, medicine, famine - than any other point in history before. And in the Trek future, we stay on this part (braodly - bumps on the road like WWIII and the eugenic wars included), and continuisly better ourself and humanity as a whole.

For me, this is even more important then the every once in a while morality episodes - you can have those in Stargate or Firefly as well.

For me, Star Trek is a simple space adventure show, in which the protagonists have learned from and avoided the mistakes of humanitys past.

That's fair, and I'd argue that Discovery meets this point too - to the TOS level, at least, and with a few TNG high moralising moments in there ("Starfleet doesn't fire first"). They certainly didn't shy away from the frequent Trek trope of our moral heroes standing up to the amorality of their superiors, either.

 

[Refuge]

For me, Star Trek is a simple space adventure show, in which the protagonists have learned from and avoided the mistakes of humanitys past.

Discovery began with an act of mutiny in which the lead is sentenced, supposedly as an indication she did wrong. Yet it ends with the same character getting her own way by threatening mutiny again and getting a medal for it. I don't know what humanity is supposed to be proving here. They used a form of terrorism with L'Rell the vehicle to end the war. Humanity proves once again the bigger weapon wins the day.

 

[jaime]

That's fair, and I'd argue that Discovery meets this point too - to the TOS level, at least, and with a few TNG high moralising moments in there ("Starfleet doesn't fire first"). They certainly didn't shy away from the frequent Trek trope of our moral heroes standing up to the amorality of their superiors, either.

The problem is, they then proceeded to whomp the shite out of those with Starfleet ideals that we like to see. Then they turned one of them into a war criminal (which incidentally is the part that put me off the show, and even though my opinion of it has improved, it still hasn’t fully recovered from. Not least as it wallowed in the grotesque.) before having her killed an eaten. Those idealised humans were mocked and made into meat, quite literally. Then we made heroes of characters that were weaker in their expression of those ideals. (Lorca and his heel turn does not change how he was portrayed for the first half, and everyone blindly follows his lead on stuff like the tardigrade etc. It’s a bit of a mess.)

The ‘amorality of their superiors’ thing is also a mess for pretty much these same reasons. Especially as those superiors (Cornwell) were seen to arrive at their ‘amorality’ through brutalisation. At no point was there the equivalent of O’Briens ‘I don’t hate you Cardassian’ speech, and no one blinked at Empress Ming taking control at the end. It was a terrible mess. They have room to get things back on track, even with Mirror Georgiou perhaps, but there is also a danger of doubling down. Atm, it is a bit of a guagmire.

 

[BillJ]

The ‘amorality of their superiors’ thing is also a mess for pretty much these same reasons. Especially as those superiors (Cornwell) were seen to arrive at their ‘amorality’ through brutalisation. At no point was there the equivalent of O’Briens ‘I don’t hate you Cardassian’ speech, and no one blinked at Empress Ming taking control at the end. It was a terrible mess. They have room to get things back on track, even with Mirror Georgiou perhaps, but there is also a danger of doubling down. Atm, it is a bit of a guagmire.

Those final three episodes sound like so much of a mess. Guess we'll watch them this weekend to see if they live up to their reputation.

 

[jaime]

Those final three episodes sound like so much of a mess. Guess we'll watch them this weekend to see if they live up to their reputation.

I’d avoid having younglins in the room or watching during dinner. They aren’t as bad as their rep maybe, but they have a few issues shall we say xD

 

[Rahul]

Discovery began with an act of mutiny in which the lead is sentenced, supposedly as an indication she did wrong. Yet it ends with the same character getting her own way by threatening mutiny again and getting a medal for it. I don't know what humanity is supposed to be proving here. They used a form of terrorism with L'Rell the vehicle to end the war. Humanity proves once again the bigger weapon wins the day.

Let's just pretend that final episode of the season never happened...
Like with Threshold, we're simply better off this way...

 

[eschaton]

Yet... exploration is a HUGE element to Star *Trek* Hello??

I disagree, except in a metaphorical sense.

DS9 had very little exploration. Nonetheless, it in many ways held truer to the Trekkian format than VOY and ENT, insofar as many of the episodes focused upon a particular issue or theme and ran with it, rather than just being shallow action-adventure.

Even if we want to wind it back to TOS, a lot of the episodes didn't really involve exploration, but shuttling around between "known" parts of the galaxy. This includes such classic episodes as Devil in the Dark, Charlie X, Dagger of the Mind, The Trouble With Tribbles, Amok Time, etc. The conceit of exploring new worlds was of course mostly dropped by TNG - the missions framing TNG stories more typically are things like shuttling ambassadors around.

Those final three episodes sound like so much of a mess. Guess we'll watch them this weekend to see if they live up to their reputation.

For me personally, that was when the wheels came off the bus. Up to that point I was basically thinking "Discovery has its flaws, but maybe it's going somewhere interesting." But in the last three episodes it becomes painfully clear they either didn't have a plan, or they were just very, very bad at writing out a season arc.

 

[Lord Garth]

Those final three episodes sound like so much of a mess. Guess we'll watch them this weekend to see if they live up to their reputation.

There are two particular scenes in "Will You Take My Hand?" where you'll have to decide how old is your 11-year-old. A Klingon taking a piss (no members are shown) and Tilly getting high.

 

[BillJ]

There are two particular scenes in "Will You Take My Hand?" where you'll have to decide how old is your 11-year-old. A Klingon taking a piss (no members are shown) and Tilly getting high.

I think from a maturity stand point, he'll handle them fine. Though I can imagine him rolling his eyes at them now.

 

[1001001]

There are two particular scenes in "Will You Take My Hand?" where you'll have to decide how old is your 11-year-old. A Klingon taking a piss (no members are shown) and Tilly getting high.

Tilly Rules!!

Carry on.

 

[XCV330]

There are two particular scenes in "Will You Take My Hand?" where you'll have to decide how old is your 11-year-old. A Klingon taking a piss (no members are shown) and Tilly getting high.

The prior scene, hell that's awkward to me NOW. The second, honestly it's a pretty good life lesson to teach your kids. Keep your eyes on your stuff at all times, and don't trust strangers, especially creepy Orion dudes.

 

[BillJ]

Tiily Rules!!

Without Tilly and Stamets, the show would be unwatchable to me.