How is/isn't Discovery Star Trek?
- Thread starter seigezunt
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I think it's pretty clear the real reason they go to war with the Federation is because things in the Empire are a bit shit and it's easier to point the finger of blame at an external enemy than to deal with it.
We don't even see anyone privately admit it that there is more to the war, like L'rell while she's captured on Discovery. We don't see anyone discuss the reasons for the war. The motivations of these Klingons are flimsier than the Biker Klingons from the Berman years. Which wouldn't be a problem, if they didn't have two main characters in the show.
100 years later, didn't ezri dax have a monologue about the klingon empire being a dying empire due to its own corruption and hypocrisy?I think it's pretty clear the real reason they go to war with the Federation is because things in the Empire are a bit shit and it's easier to point the finger of blame at an external enemy than to deal with it.
there's a lot of material, even if it's just subtext that could explain their actions. but nuance is hard.
Yeah, they were looking for any excuse to start a war as a way to unify the houses. L'Rell finds a way to achieve this without war, ending it. They're driven more by religious belief and social pressures than reason or what's best for the future, which given that the writers mentioned they were based on certain political groups in the US makes sense. They're more focused on short term goals than anything stable and that is always going to collapse in on itself.I think it's pretty clear the real reason they go to war with the Federation is because things in the Empire are a bit shit and it's easier to point the finger of blame at an external enemy than to deal with it.
Data dreams, finds his family, develops.
Picard Borg experience resurfaces now and then...Family is the next part of the BOBW story, and it surfaces heavily in I,Borg.
Geordi is no longer the introverted helmsman, he’s in a leadership role...there’s loads of development across TNG, it just doesn’t jump and down slapping you in the bits and pieces screaming ‘character development!!! Have some development!’ Or start with characters with deliberate holes to be filled smoothed and polished from day one (ok...there’s a little of that with Picard and his relationship to Beverly and his attitude to kids, and a smidge with Data’s basic want to be human...but even those are organically filled because neither of these are the absolute pivot around which the whole character revolves, and the character development was organic, not the forced approach.)
It’s easy to dismiss things in order to favour our chosen champion, but it is also disingenuous to do so. DSC has many admirable things, but to pretend those same things did not pre-exist in the franchise is unfair, and if anything attempts to set DSC apart...when what most want is for it to be a part of Trek.
Are you talking about the klingons or about the writers?
:P Because that's my impression of the first season; jumping wildly from one flashy item to the next, without being committed to any of them. And yeah, if that's the whole "change" we got out of discovery (apart from design, but that's a different animal), than I'm more infavor of the old shows.
To be fair, hey kind of danced around it. There’s an implication t’kuvma believes the federation and its approach to be a existential threat (which...from a certain point of view to a Klingon, it is.) and that’s how he rally’s his people. But he’s dead in short order, and after that it’s just ‘rar we are at war so we fight’ and no one, not a one, talks about why ever again. Not even l’rell or Ash McSomepartsdidntfitbutweglueditupanyway.
L'Rell gets upset when she finds out that the Klingons are not fighting as a united front, which was what T'Kuvma was trying to do.
Along with the tractor beam and the medical staff?
This has basically been my sense of The Orville.
Now, I want to be clear here: I don't like The Orville. I don't think the jokes are funny, many of the characters are very irritating, and the format is outdated. People say, "Oh, it's TNG," but really it's much closer to the worse parts of ENT, where they tried to "humanize" the characters by (for example) making Trip answer a third-grader's "poop question," and kept iterating on the same old plots that had already been exhausted by the Voyager ended. (Hello there, "ORV: Into The Fold"! You were much better when you were "ENT: Dawn", and even better when you were "VOY: Innocence"!)
But The Orville has aimed at the essence of Star Trek in a way that Discovery has not. It's doing so pretty badly with it so far, but you can see a lot of room for improvement, for it to find its own voice, for it to incorporate some of the conventions of modern television, and become a Trek for the 21st century. I'm going to keep watching in hopes that it does so... and because those little glimpses of what Star Trek Is ("About A Girl", "Mad Idolatry") have been so tantalizing. I missed Star Trek so much that I'm willing to give pretty bad Star Trek a chance. I mean, hey, I gave TNG and ENT chances after their awful first seasons, too, right?
The problem with Discovery isn't that it has changed the formula. Trek's formula needs to change in the 21st century. But Discovery has abandoned the essence of the show in a way no other show has done or could do while still being recognizable as Star Trek. I don't see a path forward for Discovery where it remains recognizably Discovery but also starts doing the sort of exploration and character realism that define Star Trek.
ANOTHER THOUGHT EXPERIMENT:
Imagine you've watched Discovery but with all the proper nouns removed, as well as the arrowhead badges, the title cards, and some of the incidental equipment design (like the iconic dual-nacelled ships). Basically, you watch Discovery but with the continuity references bleeped out. Everything else remains, so you get the full stories and character arcs. Once you're done watching, someone asks you what franchise you think Discovery is a spinoff of. How do you answer?
My answer is that it's a distant-past prequel to Battlestar Galactica. I can see people saying The Expanse, based more on its set design. But Star Trek? I might get there eventually, but it wouldn't be my first guess.
To my mind, that's a real problem for a show that wants to be thought of as Star Trek.
You're begging the question, aren't you? If The Orville is Star Trek in some sense, then it deserves to hijack all the threads!
Frak me that’s an interesting question.
But I tend to agree - it certainly looks like it exists in the nuBSG universe. They were only missing the vipers and the “Klingons” could have been the original snake cylon aliens.
That being said, I still don’t think I would have liked Michael. She’s no Starbuck. Starbuck had flaws but she had personality. Michael just irks me. She’s like Worf in the DS9 era: constantly convinced they’re right and a bit rude to everyone.
I just finished watching Judgement from ENT last night, and the way not-Martok describes the Klingon Empire at this time... dumbing itself down by becoming more and more warrior/combat driven and warping the meanings of honor, courage, and victory....certainly felt like it could evolve into the empire destabilizing over time and everyone becoming huge and trigger happy jerks who fight to control each other.
Taking into account that all the while the Humans on the other side of the neighborhood are becoming more and more powerful (and probably imperialistic from the Klingon perspective), this probably left the average Klingon warrior feeling a bit insecure. Everyone is hungry for power but with no unifying force, leaving the Klingons all war-thirsty, hot and bothered... just waiting to get their frustrations out.
I don't know much about the Klingons in ENT since I haven't finished the series (although I do know about the Augment virus) but so far the Discovery Klingons are pretty believable in their actions and motives for me, even if the motives are thin. That seems to be the point, that the Klingons are SO destabilized now they would want to go to war just for the hell of it, because victory is victory, is victory. These are the Klingons that not-Martok is afraid will overrun the Empire and bring its downfall, which apparently it did.. I can totally believe that these same Klingons would go out of their way to genetically/surgically modify themselves to look EXTRA Klingon in response to the Augment virus.
And their xenophobia and ideas of supremacy fit with...certain things that seem to be happening around the world today, so that tracks with hammy ST allegory.... however the overall execution on whatever political statement they were trying to make was really muddled with the plotting of the thread.
Full agreement here! The themes and 'lessons' or morals or whatnot that Discovery puts forward are full of interesting concepts that ST could address in a ST manner, but then just chooses not to. It uses these deeper concepts as jumping off points for what could be an intellectual analysis, but chooses instead to use them as a plot device for an action/adventure story without addressing a message at all.
Taking into account that all the while the Humans on the other side of the neighborhood are becoming more and more powerful (and probably imperialistic from the Klingon perspective), this probably left the average Klingon warrior feeling a bit insecure. Everyone is hungry for power but with no unifying force, leaving the Klingons all war-thirsty, hot and bothered... just waiting to get their frustrations out.
I don't know much about the Klingons in ENT since I haven't finished the series (although I do know about the Augment virus) but so far the Discovery Klingons are pretty believable in their actions and motives for me, even if the motives are thin. That seems to be the point, that the Klingons are SO destabilized now they would want to go to war just for the hell of it, because victory is victory, is victory. These are the Klingons that not-Martok is afraid will overrun the Empire and bring its downfall, which apparently it did.. I can totally believe that these same Klingons would go out of their way to genetically/surgically modify themselves to look EXTRA Klingon in response to the Augment virus.
And their xenophobia and ideas of supremacy fit with...certain things that seem to be happening around the world today, so that tracks with hammy ST allegory.... however the overall execution on whatever political statement they were trying to make was really muddled with the plotting of the thread.
Full agreement here! The themes and 'lessons' or morals or whatnot that Discovery puts forward are full of interesting concepts that ST could address in a ST manner, but then just chooses not to. It uses these deeper concepts as jumping off points for what could be an intellectual analysis, but chooses instead to use them as a plot device for an action/adventure story without addressing a message at all.
It's so much easier to complain about the show if you just ignore how the show addressed the issues you complained about.
I don't want to give away spoilers while you watch ENT. I'll just say Klingons aren't the only ones alarmed by the rapid rise of the humans. And I agree, that rapid rise does make sense for a lot of reactions in Discovery.
I think it's a mistake to assume that Klingons will react or think like humans. Especially since the main Klingon we've spent the most time with on any show was raised by humans and clearly didn't have the best understanding of them himself. How a group claims they act is often completely different than how they act in reality. Much like how America likes to claim it was based on freedom and liberty, but has been built on slavery and oppressing certain groups to various degrees to the present and with no end in sight.
Appreciated! It's hard not to run into spoilers when you're watching a 15 year old show for the first time, lol. I mean, at least with the stuff that hasn't been spoiled by piecing together general Star Trek history. But I'm SUPER excited to find out why these goddamn Vulcans are all collectively acting a fool. I know it has something to do with Surak so I'm looking forward to that!
TNG?
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