Spoilers Star Trek: Boldly Go Comic Series Review Thread

It’s possible but the news broke that CBS will be using that as it’s official name at the same time the JJVerse ships came available In STO. They needed a name for them there after all.

 

That's right. The Encyclopedia is written as if it were an in-universe reference, so they needed a name that might be given to it in-universe. I'm guessing that CBS decided they'd make that the official designation across all their licensees, or something like that, and that's why STO picked it up so quickly.

 

We're Universe 1. You can be Universe A.

 

I would like to humbly suggest the name "Grimdark Bluniverse" for the Discovery TV series.

 

Boxing this for DSC spoilers (in case anyone still hasn't seen it all) and because it's a digression from the thread topic:

Spoiler: Discovery discussion

I don't see how Discovery's any more "grimdark" than DS9. Its first-season story arc was pretty much the same as the Dominion War arc -- the Federation is increasingly overpowered by a ruthless enemy, forced to compromise its ethics, until the point that the leaders are willing to go along with a villainous entity's plan to commit genocide, yet the lead characters refuse to let it happen and find a way to reach out to an enemy leader and negotiate a ceasefire, thereby saving their society from itself and reaffirming the values they embody. If anything, it was less dark as a portrait of the UFP than the Dominion War was, because the primary sources of villainy came from the Mirror Universe rather than being compromised Starfleet officers like Section 31. And Burnham, Saru, and the others repeatedly came down on the side of refusing to accept a moral compromise, rather than grudgingly accepting one (or trying to) as Sisko did in "In the Pale Moonlight." Many of the most effective and powerful moments in the season were moments where the characters stood up for what was right, reached out to one another, bonded as a crew, and found a better way. The only way in which DSC is darker than DS9 is in the strictly literal sense of set lighting and color schemes, and they even found a (very nonsensical) Mirror Universe-based excuse for keeping the lights low.

Keith DeCandido just posted his season overview on Tor.com, and I think one of his points there is relevant here. This season was plotted and written as a single arc, the sort that's often released all at once on services like Netflix and can be binge-watched; but CBS chose to broadcast it in the old way, one week at a time with a midseason break. So maybe that kept us from experiencing it the way it should've been experienced. Keith talks about how things that were done as intentional foreshadowing ended up feeling like "giving away" the story twists in advance, because we had so much time to think them through and predict where they were going. But another effect is that people saw the darkness at the beginning of the story -- the problems that motivated the characters to push back and demonstrate their better qualities over and over -- and assumed that darkness defined the entire narrative, when in reality it was more about the resistance against that darkness. Maybe bingeing the whole season at once would give a better sense of the intent.

 

Why so serious all the time? Sometimes a name is just funny.

 

I don't understand the use of "I was making a joke" to mean "You are not allowed to engage with the ideas the joke was referencing." Humor is not a shield from discussion. Humor is a way that people express opinions about things, and if you express an opinion, that is implicitly an invitation to reply and engage in discussion. The humor people use reveals their assumptions and perceptions, and if a listener believes those assumptions and perceptions are in error, then they have a right to critique them.

Anyone who knows me personally -- hell, anyone who knows any member of the Bennett family -- would find it laughable that you think I'm "so serious all the time." Humor is always part of how Bennetts communicate. But that's just it -- it's part of the greater whole, which also includes thoughtful analysis and discussion. Humor is not adversarial to that, it is integral to the process. Humor, ideally, is driven by thinking about things, by questioning things and looking at them from new angles. So to suggest that nobody should be allowed to question or evaluate someone's use of humor is, to me, utterly contradictory.

 

I fondly remember watching The Tonight Show as a young lad, when a guest would inadvertently set up Johnny for a witty one-liner like some of the more mundane humorists would resort to, and instead he would inevitably wow the audience with one of his classic 20-minute lectures on the history of comedy and bullet-pointed lists of why he was the funniest man in show-business, all while Ed backed him up with copious footnotes delivered in his gravelly voice as any great comedy sidekick should.

 

Thing is, humour really is perceived as a good indicator of certain aspects of intelligence, there are very good evolutionary reasons for finding wit attractive in others. It indicates the ability to think quickly, to be creative, to consider the world from alternative points of view in short order, it's also an amazing social lubricant.

Thing is, it's also a pretty nebulous concept and is entirely reliant on other people's subjective impressions to be said to exist at all. One cannot self declare wit and the preceding exchange illustrates this perfectly.

 

Also, some jokes miss the mark or just aren't funny. People who use "I was only joking" as an excuse to reject criticism of their humor will never be able to hone their humor. Listening to feedback from our audience is how we improve. People often respond to criticism of their jokes by saying "Don't you have a sense of humor?", but that ignores the sense part. A sense of humor is not blind laughter at everything, it's the ability to judge what's funny and what isn't. It implies the ability to say "that's not funny, and here's why."

Calling Discovery "grimdark" isn't funny because it implies ignorance of the subject. That impression may have seemed valid months ago, but if you actually watch the whole season, it becomes clear that it's not really all that dark compared to DS9 or even some of TOS. However dark the situation, the characters repeatedly refuse to compromise themselves to the same extent some DS9 characters did, and the overall thrust of the season is ultimately pretty upbeat and idealistic, even sentimental. So that joke just doesn't work anymore. It's outdated and it misses the mark.

 

You're making the mistake of assuming your sense of humour is absolute. The simple truth is, some people find things funny that you do not, and vice versa.

 

People who can't let a silly offhand remark ever slide without trying to crush it with a monotonous lecture because they've somehow convinced themselves that their opinions represent the objective truth are only hilarious unintentionally, despite the lengthy and tedious testimonials they give about how funny they and their family really are.

But there ain't no party like a Bennett party 'cause a Bennett party don't stop... until the mutually confirmed cessation of rambunctious activities agreed upon by all partygoers as per the minutes of our family meeting on the second Sunday of the previous month, as laid out in the Bennett Family Manual for Appropriate Celebratory Etiquette and Decoration, Vol. 3.0, Subsection F, Paragraph 5.

 

Whilst I agree that discovery is hardly "grimdark", @King Daniel Beyond is from time to time a funny guy.

One cannot assess whether a comment is objectively funny or not, it is by definition a personal and subjective take on the world. However it is safe to say there tends to be certain features of humour which are consistently seen as worthy.

The ability to see the world as multi layered and shift between those layers of meaning seamlessly, the ability to bring together diverse and otherwise unrelated aspects of reality on the basis of commonality, the ability to time one's insights for maximum impact, the ability to be flexible enough in one's thought processes to see things in ways other people would not until you prompted them.

Humour serves a purpose, it brings aspects of intelligence into common discourse in ways which succinctly demonstrate the mental skill set required to deliver those comments and insights without the need for lengthy analysis. It labels the user as having those mental attributes far more effectively then any claims or qualifications.

This is why comedians are so often seen as being intelligent, creative, sexy people. Their living is all about public displays of attributes we value in people, attributes we instinctively associate with leadership skills, social competence, quick thinking and lateral thinking.

 

And let's all remember - please! - that this is a discussion forum, so if one person wants to discuss the ideas behind a joke, that is absolutely their prerogative.

I don't want anyone to feel that they can't reply in their own way, in fear of sarcastic put-downs because "someone was just making a joke".


Now, where were we?

 

any news about the kelvin timeline's comics? mike johnson has vanished from twitter (weird he isn't even promoting the current discovery comics)

 

Well, Boldly Go #17 finally came out yesterday.

Spoiler

Oh wow! So Kelvin Timeline Gary Mitchell is the one causing the dimension jumps!