I never new that I needed this in my life.
If you'll excuse me, I have to clean the birandom fluxratio.
Magic to Make the Sanest...confirmed "bottle episode"
- Thread starter eschaton
- Start date
If you'll excuse me, I have to clean the birandom fluxratio.
Strange, at no time while watching it did I say to myself "this is a cheap filler episode".
People often accuse modern productions of having the attitude "forget the story, we have cool special effects!". Perhaps forcing them to concentrate on the script and story is a good thing.
People often accuse modern productions of having the attitude "forget the story, we have cool special effects!". Perhaps forcing them to concentrate on the script and story is a good thing.
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To be fair, the mechanics of how dilithium crystals work and the in-universe logic about them have been discussed multiple times throughout the franchise's run. They are an ST staple.
Time Crystals.. just came out of nowhere. The producers/writers just pulled the concept out of their collective asses because they conveniently needed a 'deus ex machina' for their time travel bottle episode.
By modern sci-fi writing standards, that's just contrived and lazy.
I don't care how often or seldom or never a piece of fake tech nonsense has been discussed in some other instance of something labeled Star Trek - it has no bearing on the entertainment value or quality of a story.
Whatever that shit McCoy was on in "City On The Edge Of Forever" came out of nowhere - they just needed him to go nuts. Deus ex machina, if that phrase really meant what you seem to think it does.
Frankly, my dear, I do not give a fuck.
Trekkies think Trek should be made for them; they are therefore always unhappy and the studio spends too much effort chasing their approval. This doesn't contribute to good storytelling.
Whatever that shit McCoy was on in "City On The Edge Of Forever" came out of nowhere - they just needed him to go nuts. Deus ex machina, if that phrase really meant what you seem to think it does.
Frankly, my dear, I do not give a fuck.
Trekkies think Trek should be made for them; they are therefore always unhappy and the studio spends too much effort chasing their approval. This doesn't contribute to good storytelling.
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You're comparing a medical steriod used to get someone's heart going again (which makes sense for McCoy to have).... to Magic Time Crystals that came completely out of left field...
The later requires much more suspension of disbelief. Star Trek has a mixed history with how it has handled Time Travel, but STD's Time Crystals were just introduced in a throwaway line in the most contrived manner. I can imagine the writers room with them saying we need a way for time to loop over and over, so we can reuse the same sets and similar shots... What about magic time crystals? Have they ever been introduced in Trek before? Nope. Should we explain anything? Nope. Okay sounds good.
I'm glad the writing and production team is gradually getting fired because the show's lazy writing really doesn't respect the intelligence of modern audiences at all, or they are just inept. Recent events shows the later is very likely as well.
The later requires much more suspension of disbelief. Star Trek has a mixed history with how it has handled Time Travel, but STD's Time Crystals were just introduced in a throwaway line in the most contrived manner. I can imagine the writers room with them saying we need a way for time to loop over and over, so we can reuse the same sets and similar shots... What about magic time crystals? Have they ever been introduced in Trek before? Nope. Should we explain anything? Nope. Okay sounds good.
I'm glad the writing and production team is gradually getting fired because the show's lazy writing really doesn't respect the intelligence of modern audiences at all, or they are just inept. Recent events shows the later is very likely as well.
My favorite episode of the season. I nominated it for a Hugo, and was thus pleased to see it on the final ballot.
This is one of the things I liked about it! And it's not a "lazy rehash[ ]" at all. "Cause and Effect" is a good ep, but if you watch it now, especially with someone familiar with genre tropes, it's blindingly obvious what's happening, and the characters take forever to figure it out. "Magic to Make" takes it as read that the audience knows what a time loop is, so it moves into doing interesting stuff with the concept instead of explaining it over again. It has fun-- I liked the idea of Mudd iteratively using the time loop to get better and better, like playing a videogame. Plus the killing Lorca montage is fantastic, and the character moments are charming.
It did feel like I was watching Mudd play a video game [with god mode on], I'll give you that.
While "Magic..." isn't my favorite episode of the season, what kind of explanation did we need? It was a plot piece to have Mudd shoot the crew a bunch of times. I'd rather have no explanation than go back to the TNG-era technobabble where they just string random words together.
Besides, any explanation would've been cut to ribbons just as quickly as no explanation. It is the way of the world.
I'm comparing one piece of hand-waving plot convenience with another.
That's all any of this is.
Another week, they discovered that their teleporter could shoot people between universes. Terribly popular bit of Trek canon.
Please don't say that you think some previously unheard-of fantasy gadgets are less contrived than others. I can't take that seriously, sorry.
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Most of Discovery episodes felt restricted to the same cast. The crew, a few undefined Klingons and later, mirror versions of the same. It was seriously lacking in new blood. Mudd was actually one of the few 'extras', apart from Ripper. At least with other Trek they would encounter an alien planet from time to time with actual aliens that don't look like pretty lights. The Pahvans were very disappointing. I guess they were done on the cheap too.
Have you ever watched any other Trek series? Because every single complaint you’ve ever made could be applied to all of them. This comes off as more of a performance than actual criticism.
Yeah, it seems like the decision to go from 13 to 15 episodes was a damn good one in this particular case.
There was an interview with a production designer which explained how the Pahvans happened. Basically as Jadeb said, the whole plot was pushed on them by CBS, who reminded the showrunners that a Trek crew is supposed to...uhh...go on away missions. They originally were supposed to be humanoids, but they decided to go with CGI energy beings after not liking how the humanoids were working. Which explains why the glowing energy beings had a yurt - it was a left over prop from when they were supposed to be physical beings, and the show's shitty coordination between the writing team and the production folks fucked things up yet again.
While the medical drug that McCoy brought to the bridge was convenient, it also didn't come completely out of left field. It's safe to assume McCoy would have compounds like that in his medical kit to treat injuries like Sulu's. Mudd bringing Magical 'Time Crystals' (that we've never heard about in the 50 plus years of Star Trek lore) aboard Discovery ... basically the type of deus ex machina you'd find on a CW superhero soap.
Like I said, I tend to give the 60s Trek a pass with some of it's more extreme gaps in logic, because it wasn't 'lazy' at the time. In the sci-fi landscape back then, many of these concepts were just being pioneered before they became overdone tropes in today's media.
By today's sci-fi standards, you can't honestly tell me the material on STD is more sophisticated than the cheesy writing on CW's Supergirl for example. The problem really comes down to the 'talent' behind the scenes on STD. The writers and producers just aren't visionaries (or even competent) when it comes to science fiction. It's no surprise hacks like Harbarts, Berg and Goldsmith provided a stressful work environment and created so many internal disputes with the staff before their unceremonious exits.
Previous Trek shows have had bad episodes where similar 'Deus Ex Machinas' were used in a lazy manner.
Doesn't mean the way it was used in STD was any less lazy and uninspired.
It’s technobabble, although one based on an actual concept in science that exists. So I really don’t understand why it’s a problem. It’s an example of Star Trek being Star Trek. Which is why I referred to all of this as a performance.
Yeah, honestly it was way less offensive than say the "hydrobomb" in the final episode. At least they (kinda sorta) based it on an actual scientific concept.
The only thing that made Magic...not a great episode (just a good one) was that it was basically ripping off TNG's Cause and Effect.
Both used time loops, but thats about it. They don’t have anything else in common.