I don’t, nor was I saying he was… read closely- I was talking about his imitators. I realize their whiteness is completely irrelevant as well, sorry for the bad joke.
You may have missed they are in the middle of a war. It is an experimental technology with a Captain who is kind of a dick and is clearly getting in trouble with his superiors for his use and control of said tech.
I think you are looking for reasons to find fault in the show and not experiencing the full narrative before you make such grand assumptions about how it breaks Trek lore.
And you hated Q? One of the most loved villains and conituning stories in all of Trek? IDIC indeed but I can’t say I have ever met anyone who has hated Q.
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Overall, I liked the first 9 episodes of Discovery juuuust enough that I’ll watch more when it’s available. But it’s only fair-to-poor IMO. I’m taking it in the spirit of previous Trek series that started off weak and got better, and it will have to get better if I’m going to keep spending scarce TV time on it.
I really dislike the production design for the Klingons. Everything from the look to the language just feels wrong to me. The production design as a whole doesn’t bother me, though. Rainn Wilson’s character is pretty much pure fan service – but well done, for the most part. A worthy take on a classic character.
My biggest gripe is with Discovery’s science and tech. It’s not so much the spore drive itself, it’s the legitimately interesting concept underlying it. Sure, we’re going to have an explanation for why the spore drive is never ever seen again in the Trek universe, but how does the underlying phenomenon, a huge new piece of fundamental knowledge of the workings of life in the universe, also get lost entirely? That’s going to be much harder to explain away than the abandonment of a wonderful but impractical/unstable/dangerous new transportation technology. “Oh well, we accidentally destroyed the universal mechanism behind panspermia, now let the knowledge of it be lost for all time” is not going to cut it for me, if it comes to that.
I also find the general lack of curiosity puzzling and off-putting. Sure, they’re at war, but this is still supposedly a science vessel, the Discovery. Yet nobody except Burnham has any qualms about enslaving the tardigrade, there’s no interest in trying to communicate with it or, once they figure out it feels pain, learning more about it. Nobody really seems interested in “discovery” unless it serves a military purpose. I don’t find that radical break from ostensible mission, in the name of war, to be plausible.
On the whole, I think a lot of my disappointment stems from the show’s status as a prequel. I’d have preferred a fast-forward a century or two beyond the TNG/DS9/VOY period. Some of the science and tech in Discovery would actually make more sense in that scenario, IMO.
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I’m with you. I think Voyager gets a lot of unnecessary hate. Is it perfect? No Trek series is. Does it have some silly aspects? All Trek does. On the whole I think it’s perfectly good 90s Trek.
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I actually found that nicely covered by the fact that almost all scientists aboard the U.S.S. Discovery were working on their own skunk works projects. Very much in tune with an attitude of don’t ask, don’t tell, with lots and lots of weird experiments probably going on elsewhere that we never see. That is why so few knew that Ripper existed, or what Stannis did to himself, as you never find out about it in the first place, and mulling over why the captain is acting weird won’t help because he always acts weird, and you have an experiment that needs your attention now…
… you get the picture.
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I suppose it could be explained that way. But that just leaves me thinking that could have been the basis for a more interesting show than what we have. But that would imply a more old-school episodic/anthology approach, and apparently that doesn’t make for good television anymore… (mild sarcasm; I think Black Mirror is a fine example of a contemporary anthology series, and based on the one episode I’ve seen I’m expecting Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams to be another.)
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Likewise. The first couple seasons of both TNG and Voyager were particularly unimpressive. On the other hand, they aired on network television. CBS All Access is a bloody racket. I can definitely see non-US viewers holding Discovery to a lower standard given they can watch it on Netflix.
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To be blunt, TNG was godawful for the first season and only marginally better for most of the second. But not only was it on network TV, it was on network TV at a time when many of us had nothing more than a tiny handful of over-the-air channels, there was very little other TV sci-fi available, and there had been no new Star Trek on TV for almost 20 years. A bunch of advantages that simply no longer exist, which bought the show its two seasons of (mostly) dreck.
I don’t think Discovery is anywhere near that bad, but it’s one of a huge array of shows competing for viewers’ time. It can’t afford to be that bad.
I’m not in the US and Discovery is indeed easy enough for me to access. Once I cancel the cable (any day now, I swear), I’ll be able to get it on a Canadian streaming service (Crave) that I might subscribe to. But I certainly won’t go out of my way for it, and won’t add a new service just for that.
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mild disclosure, I watched it on Netflix in Europe
From what I understand, this first season was all about setting the stage for future series. The creators originally wanted to be more episodic, showing different periods in the history of the UFP. For all we know, we may find that the Discovery was reported destroyed, and jumped through time. The spore drive may be the McGuffin, or it might be the deus ex machina which the showrunners can use to return to their original idea of jumping back and forth in the history of the Federation.
That was an idea by Fuller early on in it’s production. That is no longer the case. As far as we know, this show will continue with the same crew, ship in the same time period it is in right now.
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Fair. Consider my comment withdrawn.
Interesting, I’ve never met anyone who didn’t think he was the JarJar Binks of Star Trek.
Guess there is no accounting for differences in people’s tastes.
I’ve watched them all.
I really want to like it still, and it is slowly growing on me, the latter mudd episode was quite good.
I’m more of a clean, bright, science, explory, type of ST fan…
I did like the dark, dirty, angular, shaky cam, blinking lighting on the fritz, war heavy, BSG reboot, but I didn’t want ST to be rebooted with the same treatment, because that doesn’t feel treky to me.
I can summarize my favorite parts of STD in one picture:
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Q was both annoying and fun for me.
I think I liked Q more when I heard about John de Lancie at con’s going ‘I do not answer stupid questions’ to anyone asking nerd fact/what if about the character.
And please everyone, Trek is one of my favorite shows, all of them. I will happily get out some popcorn and watch it given the chance. They did some ground breaking stuff with it too. But still it’s a TV show and to all the people getting upset of STD as an acronym ‘It is just a TV show’ and even as much as I like Trek it is so so easy and amusing to make fun of.
Also remember for the other folk it is okay to not like things.
ETA : And the spore/mushroom drive thing… I remember some 20 years ago now after hearing enough back and forth between two coworkers about dilithium crystals and how they work I had to jump in with ‘cause the script writers say it works guys’. I mean seriously it is just technobabble to explain how we can power ships to go faster than light speed. Fun and interesting technobabble but still just technobabble.
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So exactly this. I bought it on iTunes and have not been disappointed. In fact, I’ve been very surprised! I’m not surprised at all that Fox has already decided to renew it. They have a hit on their hands.
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And thank the stars for that.
Not to knock your what I will call “Casual viewing” preference (which I fully understand), but one of the problems with so many of those “everyone has to be ok and everything resolved by the end of the episode” shows is that nothing could ever really affect the characters in any sort of meaningful way. It’s like reading a book where what happened the chapter before didn’t matter to the characters in this chapter, and it put a lot of focus on the “guest stars of the week”, instead of the main cast.
Starting, IMHO, with Babylon 5 and later DS9, we started to see stories that actually affected characters on an ongoing basis, and many more episodes where the characters themselves became the stars of the show, not whatever incident happened that episode (and the guest stars brought in to interact with them).
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I love serials, but they’re terrible for casual rewatch.
There are times where I can be like “yeah, I’m going to burn a weekend binge watching something”, but most of the time, I’m busy and just want to put on a single episode of something while I eat dinner. That really needs to be episodic.
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There is plenty of room for both kinds of shows, IMO. The original Star Trek wasn’t really about character development and that was fine, because each episode was basically a play exploring a different topic like “Space Racism!” or “Space Courtroom Drama!” or “High Stakes Space Submarine Battle!”
I don’t mind that Spock & McCoy’s relationship never really changed in the three years they were on TV together any more than I mind that Wile E. Coyote never paused to reevaluate his Sisyphusian pursuit of that Road Runner.
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If there was a post worthy of the Pedant Pendant, it was that one. More, please! 
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I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until I get around to seeing Discovery! I can probably complain about the time line shenanigans involving the Borg, since it was a recent episode of Enterprise I watched where they had to destroy a borg ship that had been left from when the Borg went back in time and tried to stop Cochran’s first warp engine test from First Contact! But wouldn’t they have a record of it prior to Encounter at Far Point, and know something about the Borg BEFORE that?
As far as I know, all the shows and films prior to the reboot films are in either the prime or the Mirror, Mirror universe, same for much of the books and comics, but only the reboot films are the Kelvin. I’m sure some other nerd will step in if I’m wrong here.
Now, we did just pick up a Q star trek comic which DOES cross over the Kelvin with the Mirror, Mirror universe! Funny story about that… the comic guy at our comic/record shop came up to my daughter while we were buying comics and showed it to us, as she’d just been talking about Star Trek and Q… and she pulled a total “shut up and take my money” moment. He barely said anything, just, “oh, here is a star trek comic with Q you might like” and she just took it out of his hands and dropped it on the pile of purchases! He was like “wait, don’t you want to know more about it…” and she was like, "but it’s Q, the reboot universe and the Mirror, mirron universe!
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Q had some fun episodes. We’re they great TV? Not really. But he could be an amusing foil to Picard’s straight man.
Those two, plus Stamets got more interesting after he experimented on himself. And Lorca has potential, but it’s yet to be tapped. I also like Admiral Cornwell. The scene where she helps Lieutenant Tyler through his PTSD flashback was one of the better ones so far.
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