Biggest missed opportunity: showing us what happened to mirror Discovery in the prime universe.
Spoilers Missed opportunities in DSC?
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
The Klingons had a good music video in them, to the sound of Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name Of". Especially once they broke up into 24 factions.
"We're going to be discovering the Klingons from a point of view I don't think we've done before. Mainly, when you cut away to Klingons (in previous Treks), they're screaming 'Qapla!' and firing torpedoes. (And on Discovery) you're going to find a race of people who have their own philosophy ..."
-Aaron Harberts
Not At All Out of His Depth
-Aaron Harberts
Not At All Out of His Depth
And yet she still has a vulcanish hairstyle in the first 2 episodes.
Small part of a larger problem of her character and absolutely yes. She's a IS a vulcan in all the ways that matter, she was raised from a small child as a vulcan, she's socialised and religiously Vulcan. The show never really explores this beyond just having her act moody teenage borderline aspergic and has her completely dump any connection to her basically Vulcan upbringing, beliefs and attitude basically after the first 3 episodes.
Again, it's also just a really contemporary haircut, something that is completely out of place in the setting of the era Discovery takes place in. It's not only her, everyone in Discovery looks like they are from 2015, not the late 2200s which according to canon, referenced multiple times in other Star Trek shows, has a very distinct 1960s futuristic look.
Oh please, what is wrong with what I said? Discovery absolutely let dumbass American troop worship into the show at several points which is absolutely not in the spirit of Star Trek and that party scene was absolutely lazy crap.
Perhaps Burnham didn't have access to hair straightening products in confinement and continued with that hair after being freed so the producers could show her gradually moving away from pure Vulcanian logic or some such. (Note: this choice may not be woke.)
Am bursting with suspense to see what her hairstyle will be in season 2.
Am bursting with suspense to see what her hairstyle will be in season 2.
You do realise that when TOS was made, that was a very contemporary look, right?
And you get that DSC is a very deliberate new look for Star Trek, ignoring everything that came before?
And? Don't set it in the same era as TOS if you're not going to use the TOS aesthetic. Not hard. It's established in Trek multiple times that is REALLY what TOS and the era looked like.
Yes, but it is CBS who claim this is part of the Prime Timeline and absolutely 100% fits into canon when it clearly doesn't. I didn't make CBS copy Mass Effect rather than Star Trek for the visuals, if they wanted a Mass Effect TV show, should have just got the rights for that, instead of grabbing the Star Trek brand, setting it in the most iconic aesthetic era of Sci-Fi of all time and turning it into Mass Effect.
It's literally just Mass Effect
They even just flat out copied the uniforms (you can see both the normal Discovery Uniform and the Tactical uniform here!)
The show should look like Star Trek, it's set in the late 2200s, instead they went with a completely different franchise instead and called it Star Trek.
Just ignore them and watch it as a reboot.
The Klingons.
Period.
Period.
Well, there's probably a lot of misses.
One thing I feel that is missing is: the moment. The slow settling dramatic moment that let the whole of it sink in for the characters as well as the audience, realization dawns and all that came before makes sense when put together. It was all just rushed for the most part in some attempt to make it all blockbusterish.
One thing I feel that is missing is: the moment. The slow settling dramatic moment that let the whole of it sink in for the characters as well as the audience, realization dawns and all that came before makes sense when put together. It was all just rushed for the most part in some attempt to make it all blockbusterish.
I have to give this to you. This is pretty incredible, and a huge missed opportunity that would have made it feel far more like Trek. The Drumhead was released in 1991 and became even more relevant over a decade later. Yet this Star trek was made two years after a crisis that has defined European politics (with obvious historical allegories to be made), was set during a war, and it failed to make any social commentary on it. I missed this, and I consider myself pretty in tune with global issues.
Here I disagree, I thought it was a great move. If we're talking about representations of race, which Star Trek is known for, you'll know that black people (especially black women) wearing their hair naturally is a pretty important part of that discussion. As recently as 2016 I've read cases of people being told not to wear their hair naturally in the workplace after being told it's 'unkempt', 'unprofessional', and so on.
In fact it reminds me of that old anecdote Patrick Stewart discusses, about someone questioning Gene Roddenberry why a bald man had been cast as captain, "In the 24th century surely there will be a cure for male pattern baldness?" to which Roddenberry supposedly replied, "In the 24th century no one will care".
As far as the character goes, remember that Michael is half human. If anything, I found it sillier that she was presented as a character that would have straightened it due to her Vulcan upbringing.
Totally agree on the representation of Star Fleet as some sort of frat house. As for Tyler's jingoistic speech, it could be seen as an ongoing conflict between the militarism and exploratory elements of Starfleet. If we're talking about missed opportunities, I would have loved for Stamets and Lorca's characters to have butted heads more often about the purpose of his research. Again, make some social commentary for God's sake, this is very relevant to the real world.
Well, if I didn't hate Mass Effect before...And? Don't set it in the same era as TOS if you're not going to use the TOS aesthetic. Not hard. It's established in Trek multiple times that is REALLY what TOS and the era looked like.
Yes, but it is CBS who claim this is part of the Prime Timeline and absolutely 100% fits into canon when it clearly doesn't. I didn't make CBS copy Mass Effect rather than Star Trek for the visuals, if they wanted a Mass Effect TV show, should have just got the rights for that, instead of grabbing the Star Trek brand, setting it in the most iconic aesthetic era of Sci-Fi of all time and turning it into Mass Effect.
It's literally just Mass Effect
They even just flat out copied the uniforms (you can see both the normal Discovery Uniform and the Tactical uniform here!)
The show should look like Star Trek, it's set in the late 2200s, instead they went with a completely different franchise instead and called it Star Trek.
Yes, please. I'm tired of universal translators across Sci-Fi narrative, from Doctor Who, to Star Trek.
On Star Trek: Discovery appearing to have borrowed from Mass Effect, it's surely a cyclical thing. Mass Effect itself borrowed heavily from Star Trek and a melting pot of other sci-fi representations of the future. No doubt just as Star Trek did before that.
I'm biased as I love how both Mass Effect and the series look, but I consider it more important to give the designers the artistic freedom to borrow from whatever sources best represent ideas at the time.
I'm biased as I love how both Mass Effect and the series look, but I consider it more important to give the designers the artistic freedom to borrow from whatever sources best represent ideas at the time.
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My mistake. Michael is human. The point otherwise remains unchanged.
Yes but the writers - and there is not a black female writer amongst them - have not done anything other than superficial representation. She's got some weird half afro going on. There is more to black hairstyles than a half afro. If the writers were honestly interested in representing race, her hair would be in one frankly weird hairstyle. Black women are still banned from wearing things like sister locs or braids in certain parts of the military, ironically Michael's hairstyle conforms perfectly.
Missed opportunities?
Hell the whole show is a giant missed opportunity. Watching it next to TOS episodes makes this painfully obvious.
What made TOS Trek so cool wasn’t the Enterprise or special effects or cheap drama scenes. It was Kirk and Co. acting like real individuals who genuinely cared for each other,reacting to real-life allegorical situations no other TV show could touch.
While the same social TV censorship doesn’t exist today (thankfully) ,I think there’s a LOT of room for allegorical stories that Discovery could use with real life resonance. A storyline of Starfleet admirals & Klingons house leaders selling out their societies for war-related money is an idea I just came up with; but it has direct connection to the US defense complex and generals cutting contract checks for handouts and favors.
Picture -instead of Burnham deciding to throw away her career and ethics by random mutiny- the Klingons come out disruptors blazing, because Starfleet admirals and Klingon generals ally secretly to start the war to get paid from ship and weapons construction . T’Kuvma and Burnham’s teams both work out the scam through the season on their sides ,join forces at the end and crush the sellouts before the pointless war causes more loss of life. The Neutral Zone then becomes a political concession allowing both sides to stop fighting via armistice without exposing each other’s respective embarrassing corruption episodes publicly.
I just beat the writing staff of Discovery in one post,and I’m so not a writers guild member. There’s plenty of better stories they could do,but they choose a crappy one instead .
Hell the whole show is a giant missed opportunity. Watching it next to TOS episodes makes this painfully obvious.
What made TOS Trek so cool wasn’t the Enterprise or special effects or cheap drama scenes. It was Kirk and Co. acting like real individuals who genuinely cared for each other,reacting to real-life allegorical situations no other TV show could touch.
While the same social TV censorship doesn’t exist today (thankfully) ,I think there’s a LOT of room for allegorical stories that Discovery could use with real life resonance. A storyline of Starfleet admirals & Klingons house leaders selling out their societies for war-related money is an idea I just came up with; but it has direct connection to the US defense complex and generals cutting contract checks for handouts and favors.
Picture -instead of Burnham deciding to throw away her career and ethics by random mutiny- the Klingons come out disruptors blazing, because Starfleet admirals and Klingon generals ally secretly to start the war to get paid from ship and weapons construction . T’Kuvma and Burnham’s teams both work out the scam through the season on their sides ,join forces at the end and crush the sellouts before the pointless war causes more loss of life. The Neutral Zone then becomes a political concession allowing both sides to stop fighting via armistice without exposing each other’s respective embarrassing corruption episodes publicly.
I just beat the writing staff of Discovery in one post,and I’m so not a writers guild member. There’s plenty of better stories they could do,but they choose a crappy one instead .
Save for the fact that the conflict and tension with the Klingons continued through TOS all the way to TUC.
Also, repsectully, no, not even close on the writing staff.
What would have been a deeper representation?
I'm not familiar with military rules about this, but looking at the list of 'unauthorized styles', I'm doubtful Michael's would conform at all. It's true they could have been bolder, but would that have matched Michael's character any better?
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