Starfleet Academy General Discussion Thread

[Detached Nacelle]

But he does have that moment were he finally calls Data, Captain.

Not much of a redemption for actually being a racist.

 

[Jason X-Mas]

Not much of a redemption for actually being a racist.

Well the assumption is he now will no longer think the way he does, because Data taught him a lesson. He still has his job and will become better for it. The more cynical thing would be him being relieved from duty and being kicked out of Starfleet. Which probably should be what happens in real life but in Trek we are allowed to believe that such a thing is not needed if a person actually becomes a better person.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Tech needs to be relateable. If starfleet was made up of a bunch of manned probes or whatever your testicles would probably shrivel up in rage and you and all the other people currently complaining about the 'lack of advancement' would be saying how it's not trek, because trek has starships.

The fact is we've seen cultures far older than the federation who still use starships. The Dominion is between 2,000 and 10,000 years old, the Klingons have been spacefaring for 1,500 years, the Voth have a culture that is millions of years old. All of them still use starships. Why is there this weird expectation that the Federation has to have ships that are piloted by brains in jars or whatever 1000 years from now?

If the tech needs to be relatable they could have had Discovery go to the 25th century. Instead they went 1000 years in the future where their spore drive far surpassed what starfleet had come up with in 1000 years. Why not just give us updated spore drives that just transport the ships instead of dilithium powered warp drives. Even better the writers could have saved the spore drive tech for after the discovery went into the future. The tech was so advanced it made no sense to have it before kirks time.

It never does. They change the names of things and come up with new special effects, but the action and story are almost never affected.

The 'shroom drive was an exception, because it gave Starfleet a leg up that could have permanently affected the storytelling. But it didn't.

Communications and transporters and shields will always work when the story calls for that and fail when that's required. They can talk about "programmable matter" and AI, but they still need a room full of people putting hands on things to make the stories happen.

That's why "Trek should always go forward and not back" is such a joke. Change the names of the aliens and allies and enemies - which side are Klingons on, this week? - and just keep doing the same things.

Star Trek stopped being anything like science fiction in most instances decades ago. It's a ritualistic storytelling format, hermetically self-referential, with its own storytelling conventions and rules just like westerns or superhero comics.

It's possible to tell a science fiction story in Star Trek, just as it's possible to tell an action story, mystery, war story, romance etc. But they don't do it often.

Quite right. The writers wanted to go back before Kirk's adventures and they decided to give us a wildly advanced engine that was like something we would expect starfleet to come up with maybe 2 centuries later and for sure 1000 years later.

I just have a feeling Kurtzman and his writers really didnt care to make the writing make sense. They just wanted to make sure the action and explosions were there.

What would you have them use? Stargates?

(Oops! Wrong show! )

Lol. The spore drives would have been a tech for the 32nd century. I would not have minded them putting it there. That kind of advance would have made sense. Instead we got it in the 23rd than when discovery went into the 32nd century Burnham after future starfleet told her the discovery was ancient decided to show just how much more advanced tge discovery spore drive was compared to the dilithium warp engines starfleet was still using.

 

[Danja]

Lol. The spore drives would have been a tech for the 32nd century. I would not have minded them putting it there.

The spore drive needs a starship to house it.

 

[TRON JA307020]

The spore drive needs a starship to house it.

Exactly. But its still a huge advance in technology. Even far beyond what they had in tng. They should not have written it as a 23rd century tech. They could easily made discovery a normal starship with just a warp drive, have them leap into the 32nd century abd discover that warp drive no longer existed and the spore drive was the new way that stsrfleet powered their stsrships. Instead it was written as the discovery with a spore drive travels into the 32nd century and for some reason the spore drive is far advanced to stsrfleets engines. 32nd century starships still can't transport instantaneously to a location they still need to travel via warp speed. Burnham even shows iff with the spore drive with her attitude of "you think our ship is primitiv? Watch this". The thing is shes right. They have nothing in the 32nd century earth ships to rival her spore drive.

Its just really bad writing.

 

[Firebird]

The tech level of Discovery's spore drive doesn't equate to bad writing, or even "really bad" writing. It was a choice the writers made, and they gave it consistent rules that made sense within the narrative framework.

Whether one likes the choice or not does not imply bad writing.

 

[Mudd]

The tech level of Discovery's spore drive doesn't equate to bad writing, or even "really bad" writing. It was a choice the writers made, and they gave it consistent rules that made sense within the narrative framework.

They didn't.

 

[TRON JA307020]

The tech level of Discovery's spore drive doesn't equate to bad writing, or even "really bad" writing. It was a choice the writers made, and they gave it consistent rules that made sense within the narrative framework.

Whether one likes the choice or not does not imply bad writing.

It didnt make sense. It wasn't and still isnt consistent.

 

[James Cole]

Thanks to a Black Friday promo, I'll have Paramount+ for the first 4-5 episodes of SFA. I'll give it a shot... I'm not expecting much, except that SFA will be the most "Kurtzman-y" of NuTrek, as he's devoted the most time and attention to it.

Shouldn't advance reviews be dropping any minute now? Or are they embargoed until near release?

 

[Lord Garth]

Thanks to a Black Friday promo, I'll have Paramount+ for the first 4-5 episodes of SFA. I'll give it a shot... I'm not expecting much, except that SFA will be the most "Kurtzman-y" of NuTrek, as he's devoted the most time and attention to it.

Shouldn't advance reviews be dropping any minute now? Or are they embargoed until near release?

Based on how things have been done with the previous series, I don't think there will be any advance reviews until 3 to 10 days before the premiere. So, it should be somewhere between Monday, January 5th and Monday, January 12th.

If there's still an embargo after January 12th, I'm going to interpret it as a Red Flag.

 

[Elaise]

Can you cite an example. I can watch a Berman era episode and a Kurzman era episode and it all just feels like Star Trek to me. Other than 90s camera quality and props but that is about the time not the people behind it.

That is not the way Jonathan Frakes tells it.

Pick about any episode from discovery, and lets say the the best of both worlds, and action episode. To me there is such a night and day difference on the feeling between the 2 shows. Now granted i'll give it to SNW they feel more like 90s trek. there are some stark difference but overall I get a much more trek feel from it when compared to disco.

As to the point about the nu trek feeling like trek, if I just use disco, i'd say no. Disco to me feels much more like star wars than star trek.

 

[camdudetenger2018]

here is what i think the new star trek intro would go

space the first frontier these are the new students of the starfleet academy to seek out training from lives to civilazations and boldy go where no species has gone before

 

[Detached Nacelle]

Pick about any episode from discovery, and lets say the the best of both worlds, and action episode. To me there is such a night and day difference on the feeling between the 2 shows. Now granted i'll give it to SNW they feel more like 90s trek. there are some stark difference but overall I get a much more trek feel from it when compared to disco.

As to the point about the nu trek feeling like trek, if I just use disco, i'd say no. Disco to me feels much more like star wars than star trek.

I just can't see where you're coming from honestly outside of maybe Discovery season 1 but the tonal shift into season 2 and beyond is just so filled with Trek-ness to me.

But this is a conversation about feelings, the ultimate in intangible subjectivity.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I love Discovery season 1. More than the entirety of Voyager, Picard and most of Enterprise.

 

[Detached Nacelle]

I love Discovery season 1. More than the entirety of Voyager, Picard and most of Enterprise.

It did give us her imperial majesty so I am eternally grateful to it.

 

[Santa Kang]

here is what i think the new star trek intro would go

space the first frontier these are the new students of the starfleet academy to seek out training from lives to civilazations and boldy go where no species has gone before

Don't quit your day job.