Let's talk about the elephant in the room, this series violates Roddenberry's vision big time
- Thread starter Sci-fi fan
- Start date
I agree Emissary is the gold standard. You'll notice I never said otherwise. That doesn't make Farpoint, Caretaker or Broken Bow any better though. Also, I'll grant you that the logistics of how they chose to introduce this story with a prologue before, in effect, a 're-pilot', (for lack of a better term) are definitely questionable in terms of trying to hook people into the series, but I still would rather watch VH/BBS than any of the 3 mentioned pilots. And that's even without the third episode (which I didn't even like as much as others here. I only included it in the discussion because others did).
DSC's pilot episodes have better characters, better story, far better tension, far better action and far better visuals.
"Grimdark" is such a silly expression...
Sounds like a Harry Potter character."Grimdark" is such a silly expression...
Needs an old fashioned first name. Ambrose Grimdark. Leticia Grimdark
Funny, because I watched all of them from start to finish. But STD is the first Star Trek show I've ever quit watching. I honestly don't want to just bash, so I won't be posting in the STD forum much. But suffice to say if there's a single good or correct creative decision in the history of this show, I cannot imagine what it would be.
"Grimdark" is such a silly expression...
It sure as fuck is - exceeded in its doofitude only by "noblebright."
Ambrose Grimdark. I like it.
Wasn't arguing against the Spock stuff. I said in another post the Spock arc works really well. It's just everything else around that feels somewhat stock.
Well, let's look at TOS's first nine episodes.
- Kirk is forced to kill his best friend.
- Rand is nearly raped by evil Kirk, and then publicly humiliated by Spock joking about how much she enjoyed the experience.
- Criminally insane people are subjected to experimentation and brainwashing.
- Women are emotionally manipulated into being dependent on drugs, and serve as mail order brides to lonely men on a harsh and distant mining colony.
- An orphaned young man grows up alone, and is forever separated from his own kind despite begging to stay.
- Children watch their parents die of a disease, and grow up knowing that they too will suffer the same fate.
- People are killed by shapeshifters which suck the salt from their victims
Remind me again which show is the positive view of the future, and which one is grimdark?
Many of those are my favourite episodes!
The two STD pilot episodes do have at least one interesting character. Sadly, she's dead by the end of episode 2. The story, if you want to call it that, is padded with pointless flashbacks and very nice to look at CG-shots. There is not much substance there. That far better action is hurt by the visuals that don't let you see what's going on in that battle and a main character that needs to stop the action dead to run to her quarters to call home to daddy.
I can somewhat agree with some of that - not all - but nobody said it was perfect. It remains far better than Farpoint, Caretaker and Broken Bow.
It's all about the presentation. TOS is not grimdark. Disco isn't grimdark.
"Grimdark" is such a silly expression...
Dunno if you are a Warhammer 40,000 fan, but it makes a lot more sense in context - it comes from the famously pessimistic opening scrawl of all Warhammer 40,000 material - perhaps the most humorously dark setting off all time.
It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
Additions, not arguments:
-MMoM
...which Spock unhesitatingly insists he do as soon as humanly possible, before he's actually hurt anyone with the newfound abilities so recently thrust upon him through no fault of his own, and moreover immediately after his first significant use of them has actually been to save the entire ship from imminent disaster at the hands of incompetent crewmembers!
...and the rape-y half is shown to be the key to Kirk's command ability, without which he is merely a useless weakling!
...and the ship's psychiatrist heartily approves! And on a whim decides to implant a false memory of an inappropriate sexual relationship they never actually had in Kirk's mind as a simple test of the machine's capabilities!
...but they're totally fine with it, and with endangering the entire ship and crew, and with deceiving and tricking the poor saps into marrying them, all because it's the only way they can escape their miserable fates as spinsters on their own planets!
...after callously mudering the entire crew of the ship who rescued him in the first place, and persisting in sexually harassing Rand to the point where she pleads with Kirk to intervene, and his solution is to slip on some tights and do a bit of good-natured wrestling with the lad!
...and Kirk deliberately plays on a pubescent girl's budding attraction to him in order to gain her cooperation, simultaneously inspiring her jealousy for Rand, which leads to the Yeoman's capture and bondage, and nearly to Kirk's demise when the juvenile delinquents gang up and attempt to beat him to death. Oh, and in spite of everything, Rand still wishes Kirk would notice her legs more!
...just one illusion-projecting saltsucker actually, with which a lonely scientist has been knowingly and willingly living as man and wife for years, since his actual wife fell prey to and was replaced by it. Despite the creature's attempts to explain that all it really wants is for our heroes to give it the ordinary salt it needs to sustain itself without tricks, and it's being the last of its species in existence, they kill it.
-MMoM
Last edited:
"The Vulcan Hello" isn't really a pilot. The first season of DISCO was already sold before shooting began, so there never really was a pilot to be sold and used as the basis for the series. A proper term would be "series premiere" or even just "first episode". This is yet another example of a Trek show breaking away from the traditional conventions of its predecessors. A lof of shows have been functioning this way in recent years, especially serialized shows on streaming platforms.
I don't think they meant for Discovery to be so depressing but it isn't accurate to dismiss the relevance of Gene's so called vision or canon.
Executive Producer Alex Kurtzman:
"You have to respect canon as it's being written... You have to understand the timelines and what the different timelines were and what the different universes were and how they all worked together. I think that the core of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's vision... And that there is an optimistic outlook to where we can be going. So, he gives you hope. Star Trek gives you hope".
Discovery and hope??
True, but then, Vulcan Hello was transmitted on CBS, and as they are releasing an episode a week, that function of getting your audience and showing the set up still applies. Hasn’t it been documented that essentially speaking episode 3 was the true pilot or series premiere (same way Ds9, Voyager and ENT were all greenlit out of the gate, so it’s not that new for Trek.) which seemed very apparent once we got to it. I am enjoy DSC, and hope they get the big continuity quibbles squared away (I don’t care about the Federation aesthetics, they are broadly explainable, but the spore network, the Klingon mutations...these things need squaring for me.) but, it seemed to be not the greatest opening, and Georgiou was the best thing in it....and she’s dead by its end. If I was a new viewer, I am not sure Burnham is enough of a draw that I would keep viewing. We know Saru and some no-namers carry over too, but again, not sure it’s enough of a draw and where it’s left it’s not clear anything other than Burnham and the War will be the story.
If you compare that to the two most recent Space Opera serials I can think of, Dark Matter and Killjoys, they both have their premise, their characters, their ongoing threads, pretty much set in their first hour, no matter how much they twist further down the line. Those were good premieres. (A shame we won’t get to find out where Dark Matter was headed, but it’s time loop episode was much more fun than DSC, and despite having a darker tone than Trek in general, was also lighter. But then, Dark Matter is the most obvious child of Trek DNA since Babylon 5 and Andromeda.)
I think the story needed some thought, and maybe yeah, those two hours should have been flashbacks.
Everyone hopes they and the federation survive the war. We know it does. Prequelitis. We don’t know these characters will, so the job is to make us care. If of course it is the alleged reboot, then the federation can fall, but then it’s a dishonest use of the Trek branding as it’s just a Space Oper War Story and Apocalypse (tm) with the stickers slapped on it. And possibly the Mass Effect ones filed off here and there. (Or Spirits Within, as i am fond of saying...the spore drive fits right in there, along with DNA and people being modified to be part of the solution too.)
