Anyone who may be familiar with my posts (rants?) on this forum might remember that I take myself to be a pretty serious Star Trek fan. Over the years I've seen every Star Trek movie and every episode of every TV series except (notably) maybe about half of Voyager and the last 6-7 episodes of Discovery. The basic reason I have not watched those exceptions should be obvious - they clearly represent the absolute weakest the franchise ever produced and even I can't bring myself to want to watch them to this day. To be clear if I could un-watch "Star Trek V" I probably would as well.
So naturally it fills me with a great sense of dread and annoyance to know that the same people who spewed Star Trek Discovery upon the world is now set to mess around with the "pre-Kirk" Enterprise of Pike, young Spock and Number One in their upcoming second season episodes.
I've seen news articles over the past few months where they've talked about casting new actors for these roles. To be clear I generally have nothing against new actors playing preexisting characters (for instance I think most of the actors who were in the newer "JJ Trek" movies did a fine job portraying Kirk, Spock, et al.). The problem I have is with the general lack of good writing and near total lack of canonical consistency shown by these idiots who are currently in charge of Star Trek Discovery.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Star Trek Discovery comes off like a bad "fan-fic" written by a 13 year-old whose only exposure to Star Trek was maybe 30 minutes of the first JJ Trek movie. Basically I'm openly claiming they don't have a clue about what made Star Trek worth watching in the first place and it's like letting a toddler play with your expensive china by throwing it around the room to see what breaks. It's practically heart-breaking to know this is the direction Star Trek is heading. It's also sadly breathtaking to realize that a true "fan-fic" TV show (represented by the work of Seth Macfarlane's [i]The Orville[/i]) is a far, far closer "spiritual successor" to Star Trek than the supposed "official" Star Trek show is.
But I digress. The main trigger that spurred this new thread was the release of a new pic of Rebecca Romijn (first pic) who's been cast as Number One who was originally played all too briefly by Majel Barrett (second pic).
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Again I have no real angst with this casting because she's a decent actress and she looks fairly close to Barrett's version of the character. The "problem" I'm likely going to have is that whatever story/dialogue they have these old characters run through is very likely going to be as horrible and silly as the first season of Discovery was which (if you're doing the math from above) I only managed to watch about half of before I gave up in disgust.
Considering that it's always been an interesting "what if" daydream to imagine what it'd be like to get "further episodes" of the Pike era of the Enterprise and then realize that the people who are finally poised to present that are the same people who couldn't seem to produce a sensible Star Trek episode to save their lives just seems like the ultimate in sad ironies. I almost wonder if Roddenberry isn't spinning in his grave over this.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Fixed it for you.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
My fear of this would be that they're not likely to act like the original crew at all. Gonna have to modernize them and everything!
I see your point but Discovery was fun for me.
Havent watched Orville yet...figure binge over xmas.
Hi. I'm Hope.
You were more generous than I Lothic. I gave up on STD after the 2 ep pilot. There's a lot I can normally forgive in a pilot, but that was just never gonna get better.
Clearly somebody somewhere must have liked it enough to motivate them to keep making more. Let's just say I'll (jokingly) blame it all on you from now on. ;)
I'll keep myself in check by simply responding with the following: At best Star Trek Discovery is a sadly mish-mashed generic "sci-fi show set in space" trying to be some kind of weird mix of Star Wars, JJ Trek and [insert any random dead-end SyFy show from the last 5 years] that has lurched aimlessly from episode to episode trying to be all "dark and edgy" while laughably not coming close to either of those things.
The purpose of Star Trek was to be about a group of diverse peoples working together for positive goals and for addressing interesting social storylines in the guise of sci-fi entertainment. The makers of Star Trek Discovery seem too self-involved and pleased with themselves that they finally got to say the word "fuck" on TV to worry about making meaningful episodes anyone would actually want to see. They were also too busy making a big meta-deal about having a gay couple as part of the cast and females as the main characters; who cares in 2018? Roddenberry's Star Trek unceremoniously pushed the envelope for its time (with things like the first interracial kiss on American TV and casting women and minorities as part of the bridge crew) and didn't bother to "pat itself on the back" for doing those things - the show just did them as if they would be the "expected norms" of the future. These whinny-assed SJWers running Star Trek Discovery today simply don't understand the great franchise they were given and discard established canon just because they must think it's simply funny to do so. It's pathetic and at best disrespectful.
Frankly the only reason I think they are desperately aiming to defile the untapped elements of the "Pre-Kirk Enterprise" storyline for their second season is that they've already run out of ideas for their own show and have no alternative but to try to squeeze any goodness they can find from Roddenberry's canonical leftovers. Again it's just sad and pathetic and I expect it to be an absolute hot-mess of missed opportunities.
Otherwise it's a wonderful show... lol
If you ever liked ST:TNG then you should enjoy The Orville. The Orville got a seriously bad spin by the reviewers who were apparently expecting the show (because of Seth Macfarlane's involvement) to be a full-on spoofy comedy on the order of something like a "Family Guy in Space". Sadly those people completely missed the point of the show.
I'm not going to lie and say there's absolutely no "Macfarlane-styled comedy" involved. Again it's probably easiest to visualize The Orville like a "spiritual successor" to ST:TNG with some episodes that have more "humorous moments" than ST:TNG had. But as a contrast many of The Orville's episodes were as spot-on serious and engaging as any ST:TNG show ever was with good stories worthy of an actual Star Trek series. Basically you have to remember (which many reviewers apparently failed to realize) that Seth Macfarlane has been an actual life-long Star Trek fan (to the point of appearing in cameos in earlier Star Trek episodes) and that The Orville is first and foremost an effort of love and faithfulness to the type of show Roddenberry would have wanted to produce. Again (although it continues to be painfully weird for me to have to say this) as far as I'm concerned The Orville is far closer to being an "actual" Star Trek show than Discovery ever wishes it could be.
The good news is that the second season of The Orville is set to return with a two-hour premiere on December 30, 2018. :)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Frankly I wanted to watch far enough to let Rainn Wilson have his stab at playing Harry Mudd. I mostly gave up when they managed to ruin that as well. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
You're nicer than me. I wasn't going to give it a chance when they changed Klingons.
Also, Orville is great :)
Yeah Orville is awesome. Very much looking forward to second season.
Klingons have been changed a few times so I wasn't gonna let that put me off. What DID put me off was they had supposedly been feuding among themselves for the previous hundred years, but at the drop of the hat they execute a flawless fleet action. (Badly done military action has been known to get me to yell at the screen and this was full of it.) There was just so much they couldn't make internally consistent within the story itself even if you divorced it from the lore.
You dodged a very badly swung batleth there Brand X.
Let's not mince words here. Discovery serves two purposes.
The first purpose is purely PARASITIC.
Take everything that was GOOD about Star Trek and feed it to the mulcher to make compost, then turn around and feed that to what few fans of the show will stick with it, draining their wallets the entire way.
The second purpose is to extend the claim of copyrights to Star Trek ... so that no one else can have them (and make something better).
RIP Axanar.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I recall being changed from TOS to what we knew in TNG, I don't recall any other versions, and DS9 made mention of it. When was another time they changed?
It certainly didn't help that the folks of STD (gods, it's sad that even the abbreviation for the show is itself a silly innuendo) decided to totally "re-imagine" the Klingons yet again. We already had several episodes sprinkled across TNG, DS9 and ENT which eventually better explained how/why the Klingons "changed" from the original TOS version to the movie/TNG version. All-in-all those episodes more or less handled the canon for the change well enough.
Of course after everything was settled STD had to rock the boat again by recasting the poor Klingons as a metaphorical stand-in for the Native Americans being persecuted by the "white man" Federation. Not only did STD totally trash the entire established background of the history of the Klingon Empire but they also had to go and change them visually (i.e. no hair, etc.) I guess "just to be different".
I usually don't mind when a franchise changes something because there's a good reason to change it but when they change stuff "just because they can" it usually turns out to be stupid. One nitpick that bugged me was how Discovery tried to have their Klingons be super-preoccupied with recovering their fallen dead and treating the bodies with extreme eternal reverence (like mummies from Egypt) when it had been established numerous times in previous Star Trek canon that:
Again it might seem like a nitpick but when people disregard so much established canon for no constructive purpose it shows a lack of caring or "attention to detail" that bugs the heck out of me. Don't even get me started on the "magic mushroom" infinite improbability drive technology that Starfleet apparently created before Kirk even commanded the Enterprise yet somehow no one's using that technology in the hundreds of years of established canon that supposedly comes [b]AFTER[/b] STD. Oh, and that Burnham just happens to be the foster sister of Spock no one's ever mentioned before... *sigh*
The only thing that keeps me from gagging on the vomit that STD has tried to foist upon us is my vain attempt to convince myself that STD is somehow [b]not[/b] part of the "prime timeline" and that's it's just a weird alternate reality that has nothing to do with ANY part of established Star Trek canon. It sadly bugs me that I'm forced to "dismiss" the show as a gross divergence instead of as a legitimate part of the greater franchise but I suppose we're all forced to do things we don't really want from time to time. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I will continue to proudly admit I have not spent a penny on the few STD episodes I have seen and unless the show turns a major "180" I will do my best to never pay for it regardless. Voting with my money (or lack thereof) is the only recourse I have for the time being.
On that note I'll throw out a RIP for the folks who made [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_Continues]Star Trek Continues[/url] as well.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Gonna have to agree with Lothric here as a ST fan old enough to remember when ST was actually good.
Also Discovery is technically abbreviated as DSC, like Enterprise was ENT and Voyager was VOY. but I prefer STD since its more descriptive of the quality of the writing.
Yeah that Loth[color=red]r[/color]ic guy sounds pretty cool and smart. I like Lothic too, but that might just be me. ;)
Theoretically one could use "DIS" as an abbreviation for the show as well since it is the first three letters of the word 'Discovery' (like VOYager and ENTerprise). But as a somewhat ironic coincidence that would also be as much of a "dis" against Discovery as STD would be. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Oh. I see now that you were referring to the cosmetic changes as opposed to "flip a coin to see if they're an enemy this season."
For what it's worth the Klingons were pretty much always "the enemy" of the Federation until TNG came along and established that they sort of were no longer enemies. But even that binary summary was clearly an oversimplification.
In truth the relationship between the Federation and the Klingon Empire over the centuries of established canon has always spanned a spectrum that ranged from "open warfare" to "relative cold war toleration". There's never truly been a point where the two factions were absolutely openly friendly towards each other. At best it's really always been a centuries-long cold war that's grown hotter or colder at various times.
All that being said the particular scenario you point out in Discovery where the Klingons had supposedly been completely "de-unified" for decades or more and then suddenly decided to all warp in simultaneously to fight together in a united front to execute some kind of spur of the moment "Custer's Last Stand" against the evil "white man" Federation was frankly laughable for multiple reasons. Again it's the kind of thing a 13 year old fan-fic writer might have dreamt up because it "sounded cool" regardless of the nonsense it actually represented. *sigh*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]