[WinterPhoenix]

Yeah the technology issue is basically impossible to reconcile with a pre-Kirk time period, it makes zero sense. I understand that they have updated the technology to match the expectations of modern viewers, but it seems to me this could'e been achieved in such a manner that was mostly visual, without making certain wildly advanced technology one of the driving points of the core narrative.

As for you other point, I got the impression throughout the show (prior to their reaching Corvan II) that the entire planet was a huge dilithium mining operation, i.e. much more than just 1 mine. Nonetheless, if that were the case it makes zero sense for it to be so lightly defended, in point of fact I imagine such a planet would have to have a permanent military presence it being so important, not only to the war effort but continued space travel in general. And of course when they actually arrived the show definitely made it seem like it was the only mine there, which of course makes it even more absurd it did not have a permanent military installation.

[Cause]

So far I think the biggest divergence it has from past Trek is the focus it has on one character, Michael Burnham. We have the captain (Lorka), we have the scientist guy (???), we have first officer Saru and we have awkward red head (????). I don't even know half the bridge crew, in fact the only ones I'm sure I have seen before are female robot person and female with cyborg implant on her temple person. In contrast while voyager had its standout characters who got more screen time than say harry kim it was impossible to say who was the Star (Well it was the Dr but my point stands). TNG had Worf, Data, Picard, Riker and Wesley crusher all having major arcs. Deep space nine had bashir, sisko, kera, dax etc,. I feel like I want this to change in discovery but I think the captain would have to stay mysterious and scientist guy is too unlikeable.

I enjoy the more future appropriate redesign of the show. Holograms to talk to people, more realistic computer screens and switched etc. As our own technology grows so too must our dreams of what the future must hold. Speaking of I'd love a holo deck episode (should they even exist yet?) because Id like to see a more modern take on it. One where the technology generates ultra realism and yet I know if their would be signs of gamification. I kinda liked the orvilles take on this actually, where when the one character was fighting an ogre or something the holodeck kept score. However a holodeck episode does not seem like it would fit the show at all.

[Nevyn]

4 episodes in, and the most sympathetic characters are Klingon zealots.

[QuickTidal]

WinterPhoenix, on 10 October 2017 - 02:06 AM, said:

Yeah the technology issue is basically impossible to reconcile with a pre-Kirk time period, it makes zero sense. I understand that they have updated the technology to match the expectations of modern viewers, but it seems to me this could'e been achieved in such a manner that was mostly visual, without making certain wildly advanced technology one of the driving points of the core narrative.

^^This 100%.

And they even have an example show that has done that with DOCTOR WHO. The Tardis interior, while being updated over the years has never lost much of its original look, or functioning.

I think STD just wanted to have fancy effects and canon-be-damned. That's what it seems like when the crew on the show talk about it. They essentially are like "suck it up. And that bothers me a lot.

This thread makes me realize that it's portably a good thing I opted out of this show after 3 eps, as it sounds like it would have simply further enraged me to watch.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 10 October 2017 - 04:14 PM

[worry]

The "wildly advanced" technology is doomed to fail though, isn't it? Or abandoned, more likely, and for ultimately moral reasons. Seems to me that has to be the arc.

[WinterPhoenix]

worry, on 10 October 2017 - 11:52 PM, said:

The "wildly advanced" technology is doomed to fail though, isn't it? Or abandoned, more likely, and for ultimately moral reasons. Seems to me that has to be the arc.

I would be mightily surprised if that isn't the ultimate destination as far as the narrative is concerned yes, but that really only serves to alleviate the issue to a certain extent it doesn't really kill it completely. If the technology had ever existed at all then there would be some mention of it down the line, this is the sort of instantaneous travel that would literally undermine entire episodes across multiple series. Unless they are somehow blasted forward in time to a post dominion war future of course.

I mean obviously it's a retcon and as a lifelong fan of comic books, fantasy and sci-fi I can get behind that concept and the suspension of disbelief more often than not, but if the reasons it is abandoned are ultimately moral ones - as indeed Michael's tortured Vulcan expressions, and yes the contradiction is noted, in the previous episode suggest - it will have to be extremely well written for it to feel like anything but a poorly implemented retcon, the main purpose of which is quite clearly to dazzle with fancy special effects. At least that's how it feels so far. And perhaps it will be well written and well handled, I not sure I have any confidence in that at this juncture though.

[worry]

Let us then hope -- in opposition to all norms and traditions -- that this show we're watching is written and handled well!

[Morgoth]

This is why prequels are dumb. Or, one of many many reasons.

[Tattersail_]

Ah, but someone like me, who has not really watched much Star Trek, thinks STD is fantastic. I'm eagerly waiting for each episode. I don't care about past or future technology and I'm enjoying what these guys are bringing to the table. I doubt you're going to find many creatures like the one that helps them navigate the Discovery. Anyway, its enjoyable and i'll watch number 5 asap.

[Nevyn]

Tattersail_, on 11 October 2017 - 07:52 AM, said:

Ah, but someone like me, who has not really watched much Star Trek, thinks STD is fantastic. I'm eagerly waiting for each episode. I don't care about past or future technology and I'm enjoying what these guys are bringing to the table. I doubt you're going to find many creatures like the one that helps them navigate the Discovery. Anyway, its enjoyable and i'll watch number 5 asap.

Yeah, if you have no Star Trek backround, really the only complaint you can make is that none of the characters are likeable and they could kill off ANYONE in the next episode and no one would care.

Oh, wait, thats a fairly big one.

[Cause]

Unless the technology causes space cancer on an intergalactic scale I can't imagine what moral reasoning could justify its abandonment. Nukes are morally reprehensible but the USA, China, Russia will never abandon them completely so long as there is a chance they might need it one day. Rescuing Voyager in the delta quadrant or saving the federation from the dominion might have been a good time to dust off the tech.

If the tech does cause space cancer they would never stop researching ways to find a way to use it safely. Its not just a weapon, a tool of transport and trade that would have no equal. In TNG we learnt that warp drive faster than 5 caused damage to space time and they didn't stop using it. In DS9 section 31 used a biological weapon against the changelings.

There is no way to accept this as part of continuity. I enjoy the show on the premise that I treat it like the movies. A Star Trek in an alternate reality.

[Tattersail_]

I like the relationship between Michael and Saru and I like the discovery itself

[worry]

"Likable characters" is the least important possible thing to me in a story, so I guess I'm safe there. Saru's pretty fantastic though.

Aside from the fact that using this particular warp system carries the risk of turning your whole crew inside out -- which, to me at least, is worse than even space cancer -- it also necessitates stabbing a giant tardigrade in the chest while you do it. Would you fill your gas tank with living hamsters if that's what it took to run?

[WinterPhoenix]

Cause, on 11 October 2017 - 02:01 PM, said:

Unless the technology causes space cancer on an intergalactic scale I can't imagine what moral reasoning could justify its abandonment. Nukes are morally reprehensible but the USA, China, Russia will never abandon them completely so long as there is a chance they might need it one day. Rescuing Voyager in the delta quadrant or saving the federation from the dominion might have been a good time to dust off the tech.

If the tech does cause space cancer they would never stop researching ways to find a way to use it safely. Its not just a weapon, a tool of transport and trade that would have no equal. In TNG we learnt that warp drive faster than 5 caused damage to space time and they didn't stop using it. In DS9 section 31 used a biological weapon against the changelings.

There is no way to accept this as part of continuity. I enjoy the show on the premise that I treat it like the movies. A Star Trek in an alternate reality.

This, 100%! Honestly even if they did manage somehow to write the season arc well enough that I'd be willing to overlook these issues I'm still not sure I could be made to believe that their intentions were not largely informed by wanting fancy special effects in a new Star Trek show. Any explanation as to why this technology is not standard in the future is most probably going to feel like a tacked on explanation after the fact. It seems better to approach it as an alternate reality as you suggest Cause, but seeing as they will most likely invent a reason to abandon the tech at some point in the series, it seems as though this is definitely meant to be in continuity :/


Worry, I personally wouldn't want to murder hamsters just to make my car run, no. However, if an intergalactic organisation, often the target of hostile empires - Klingons, Romulans, The Borg, The Dominion to name a few - knew about a working propulsion system that would give them the unimaginably powerful edge of instantaneous galaxy wide transport, but required a few hundred hamsters to go anywhere, then they would farm, breed and murder hamsters in their millions just to do so, this is a fact. If rodents were our most powerful weapons the US would've dropped a few thousand Capibara on Japan. In point of fact it is arguable that refusing to kill a hamster to potentially save the lives of thousands if not millions of Federation citizens is actually the morally reprehensible course of action and plenty of people would argue that, strenuously.

I'm with you on the whole 'turning inside out' being a bad side-effect comparable to, if not worse than, space cancer though, worry. The issue is that even if most people were reasonable and saw it that way, it would never have stopped scientists from pursuing a safe method of use. To use an example straight from the Star Trek universe, multiple scientists from different races have attempted to synthesise Omega particles, despite the fact that on every occasion the synthesis if achieved proved fleeting and the result was a massive explosion. One that can cause the destruction of sub-space for light years around, destruction on an immense scale. The possibility of bad consequences rarely stands in the way of scientific progress for long in the Trek world and ours.

This post has been edited by WinterPhoenix: 11 October 2017 - 08:43 PM

[worry]

But the question isn't why wouldn't they use this during the war -- they just did use it -- it's why doesn't this technology "exist" in the future. The answer is: the Federation lives closer to its ideals the further into the future the series goes. And even then it's not fully up to it -- Picard just happens to be an exceptionally moral captain.

[WinterPhoenix]

Except this technology is obviously extremely practical to use in peacetime as well, just the fact that you can use it is a deterrent for anybody who cannot (in a way more effective manner than nuclear arsenals as well tbh) and the trade applications are beyond obvious. It'd be like using flight with great efficacy to bomb other countries and then refusing to see it's uses in a post-war setting - though I'll give that the morals qualms for this tech are perhaps greater than pollution, depending on point of view. Once this had been realised - i.e. almost immediately - no society would ever have allowed moral qualms to curtail it's use, it's simply too useful. Perhaps that is rather cynical a point of view, but it's realistic too.

Unless Lorca has failed completely to make any reports to the Starfleet command and somehow the information never makes it off the ship, either by the crews death or some time travel like story I theorised above then I can't see how this tech would ever have been allowed to disappear.

EDIT: I guess it seems like I hate this show more than I actually do, the way I am arguing. It's not that bad really, apart from Michael who I hate. I will watch the next episode and probably at least to the end of the series now that I've started, but I might have to do like Cause and think of it as an alternative universe and maybe I will enjoy more than I do right now.

This post has been edited by WinterPhoenix: 12 October 2017 - 12:41 AM

[worry]

Star Trek isn't "realistic," it's idealistic, by its very nature. The Star Trek you see in The Next Generation isn't just the future of this show, it is OUR future too...one might as well knock TNG based on what is happening now on present day Earth, for as much as anything that's happened so far on Discovery. It's the same continuum, from now to then.

[Macros]

[QuickTidal]

Aaaaaaand Akiva Goldsman just admitted it's not the Prime universe OR Kelvin...and is its own thing entirely.

https://www.polygon....original-series

How's THAT as a big fuck you to all those fans they swore up and down to not to worry, and that this takes place in the Prime Universe.

Gods what an asshole.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 18 October 2017 - 11:44 PM

[QuickTidal]

I honestly can't get past how utterly morally bankrupt it is to set up a show on your new streaming service...tell everyone "don't worry, the show is canon and takes place in the Prime Universe"....only to walk that shit back by episode 5 and say it's really not the Prime universe.

I mean for some die hard trekkies who signed up for this show, that's some BAD bait and switch.