Star Trek

A general discussion forum, plus hauls and silly games.
User avatar
Sparky Prime
Supreme-Class
Posts: 5225
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:12 am

Re: Star Trek

Post by Sparky Prime »

Ethan Peck's hair as Spock looks terrible here... Which is odd considering they'd already done it better when he was on Discovery. Personally, I don't think he's the best choice for Spock. He makes a good Vulcan... just, not Spock.

Interesting they finally gave Number One a full name... Una Chin-Riley. She'd used the name Una in an episode of Discovery, when she was being asked to state her full name for a debrief/coverup about the events following Discovery's jump to the future, but it was obvious the writers hadn't thought to actually give her one at the time. I like Rebecca Romjin in the role. She and Anson Mount as Pike were really good casting choices.

Seems a little odd to me Uhura and Nurse Chapel would already be posted on the Enterprise. I mean, I guess there's no reason they couldn't have been on the Enterprise before Kirk, I just feel it'd make more sense they were part of the new crew to be assigned to the Enterprise after Pike's era as captain. Celia Rose Gooding and Jess Bush I also don't think really look anything like the characters in the shots they show of them in character.

Nice to see Doctor M'Benga, although I think Babs Olusanmokun should have shaved to fit the look of the character a little more.

A couple new characters... Bruce Horak as Hemmer. He looks like he's an Aenar Andorian? Interesting reference to Enterprise. Kinda wish they'd smoothed out the make up, I don't really like the Discovery version of the Andorians with the extra ridges and spikes on their faces. Good to see an Andorian as a main cast crew member for the first time though. Melissa Navia as Lieutenant Erica Ortegas. And Christina Chong as La’an Noonien-Singh... Noonien-Singh? So she's obviously going to have some connection to Khan, right? Sigh... I already feel like that'll be a mistake.

Also got a new trailer for Picard, a mid-season Lower Deck's trailer, and a new Prodigy trailer.
andersonh1 wrote: Thu Sep 09, 2021 4:06 amI won't subscribe to Paramount + for this show, but I'm curious enough to watch it at some point. I just hope they cut the profanity like we saw in Picard, but I doubt they will.
It seems like they generally offer the first episode of these shows seasons for free for a limited time. But yeah, I won't be subscribing to Paramount + either. I just haven't cared for any of these series under Kurtzman's creative control.
User avatar
JediTricks
Site Admin
Posts: 3849
Joined: Thu Jul 17, 2008 12:17 pm
Location: LA, CA, USA

Re: Star Trek

Post by JediTricks »

Man, that new Picard trailer is so cringey, it's just awful.

The ST: Prodigy opening credits go on way, way too long and feel like Voyager for the Starbucks generation, then the ship has to transform so much moooooore!

Holy hell that Spock looks so bad, like an embarrassing cosplayer who really wants you to buy into his fantasy. And Number One should never, EVER, be smiling.
Image
See, that one's a camcorder, that one's a camera, that one's a phone, and they're doing "Speak no evil, See no evil, Hear no evil", get it?
User avatar
Shockwave
Supreme-Class
Posts: 6205
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2009 4:10 pm
Location: Sacramento, CA

Re: Star Trek

Post by Shockwave »

Ok, so I gave Lower Decks another try this week. I actually watched the whole series. I think my scathing assessment of it was a little harsh. A little. There's still a lot that I don't like about it. The biggest problem is Mariner's relationship to the captain, ie: being her daughter and enjoying a LOT of professional protection directly from that relationship. I don't think nepotism is what Gene Roddenberry had in mind when he thought of Starfleet officers. Also there's a lot of things that seem gross just for the sake of being gross. Like blood, snot, and other various liquids coming out of various orifices of various aliens. It all seems unnecessary. Having said that, there are things I do like about it. Most notable is the fact that the ship is California Class and all the ships in that class are named after cities in California. They're on the Cerritos, the rescue the Bakersfield, and Boimler mentions a possible promotion to the Sacramento, which is where I live, so that was cool. It's also well animated and the voice acting is great. So, not the shit show I thought it was, but still a lot of room for improvement.
User avatar
Sparky Prime
Supreme-Class
Posts: 5225
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:12 am

Re: Star Trek

Post by Sparky Prime »

I happened to see some of the season 2 finale of Lower Decks, and I have to say I liked a lot of what they did. The Cerritos needing to strip off the outer hull in order to prevent ionic plasma from a debris field from shorting out their systems to rescue the Archimedes was pretty good. I thinks it's one of the most actual Star Trek-y plots they've done. Not sure I like the idea of cetacean ops though. I mean, I don't mind the idea of aquatic crew members, but I've never liked the idea that humans would need dolphins to navigate in space.

Mostly, my problem with the show is that it is too self aware and self referential, to the point it comes off like a parody, which isn't what I think they're after. The show is better when they get away from making all the Star Trek references and do their own thing.

Prodigy's first episode also premiered on Paramount+ last week... I haven't been able to see any of it, but as I understand it, it mostly just sets up the main characters and plot.
User avatar
Sparky Prime
Supreme-Class
Posts: 5225
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:12 am

Re: Star Trek

Post by Sparky Prime »

Paramount+ has put the first episode of Star Trek Prodigy on their Youtube channel...

I really liked it.
Spoiler
This episode mainly serves to introduce us to the main characters and doesn't explain a whole lot... Which they're obviously setting up to do with future episodes as they explore and learn more about the ship.

For some reason, despite taking place in the Delta Quadrant, there is a lot of Alpha Quadrant aliens here... A Tellarite (doesn't look like a Tellarite), a Caitian, a Lurian (like Morn from DS9), a Brikar (who've only appeared in a novel apparently), and a Medusan. In fact, the only confirmed Delta Quadrant alien that appears is a Kazon. Although we don't know what species Dal is and where he came from, whatever Murf is, and the Vau N'Akat are new, so they might be from the Delta Quadrant.

Nothing is explained about the Protostar. I have to wonder if all the Alpha Quadrant aliens might be related somehow to it being inside Tars Lamora, since the ship is abandoned with no sign of the crew. It's interesting Zero says she thinks the ship should probably have a crew of around 20. They settle for the Tellarite engineer, since they don't think that many people would be able to keep the ship secret long enough for them to escape. Hologram Janeway only appears in like... the last 5 seconds of the episode. But it is so good to hear Kate Mulgrew voicing a version of the character again.
I got to say, I want to see more of this show. I'd be interested to see what a more typical episode will be like with these kids going on adventures with the Protostar.
User avatar
andersonh1
Moderator
Posts: 6323
Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 3:22 pm
Location: South Carolina

Re: Star Trek

Post by andersonh1 »

Thanks for sharing that, I'll have to watch the episode. I'd actually like to see Prodigy.

*edit - watched it last night, and I'd echo Sparky's comments. Good episode, very enjoyable. The characters are all a bit too "loud" and have excessive personality, which is typical for animation I guess and could get annoying at some point. But I generally like them, and I like the mystery the series has set up about what this ship is and why the alien played by John Noble wants it. Good to see the Delta quadrant and a Kazon again and very good to see Janeway, however briefly. And since it's a kid's show, they don't feel the need to have the characters drop the f-bomb every other episode like they did in Picard, so points for that.
User avatar
Sparky Prime
Supreme-Class
Posts: 5225
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:12 am

Re: Star Trek

Post by Sparky Prime »

The first two episodes of season 4 of Discovery have aired... My fiancée decided to get us Paramount+ (in part, due to several Star Trek series leaving Netflix, but also because of some interest in a few other shows on the service), but I refuse to watch this show on principle. Nevertheless, I'm still reading synopsis/reviews of the show out of morbid curiosity...
Spoiler
The Federation is rebuilding now that the mystery and threat behind "The Burn" is over. The Federation is back up to 59 members, from the 38 they had in the last season (although still significantly lower than the 350 member worlds pre-Burn). Starfleet Academy has reopened after it closed 125 years earlier (um... what? Some species in Starfleet are long lived enough for some of them to still be around, but how are there species like humans still in Starfleet if they've not accepted/trained any new officers in 125 years!?). However, the first new class only consists of 18 cadets. The new Federation President, Laira Rillak (who interestingly has human, Bajoran and Cardassian ancestry) introduces the new Archer Drydock, so that they can begin building and upgrading the fleet after 125 years (yet, the lack of a drydock didn't seem to stop them from performing a refit of the Discovery in the previous season). Currently, the Voyager J is docked there to fit it with a new "Pathfinder Drive" (a new, next generation take on Discovery's Spore Drive... So I take it the writers have completely forgotten the crew had agreed to stop using the spore drive when they found out it was damaging the ecosystem of aliens that lived within the mycelial network back in season 2), to lessen their dependence on dilithium. Starfleet gets a distress call from Deep Space Repair Beta Six, and Discovery is dispatched to help them. Turns out the station has been hit by gravity waves. Ultimately the station ends up destroyed, but despite the loss, the President sees this as a success because Discovery managed to save some of the personnel who otherwise would have died. I guess she and Burnham butt-heads over differing philosophies on this issue, as Burnham believes they shouldn't have lost anyone on the mission, but are interrupted with news that the gravity waves have also destroyed Book's homeworld, Kwejian.

Discovery is then sent to investigate the source of these gravity waves, and locate an anomaly 5 light years in size (5 LIGHT YEARS? How did they not see something that massive before now?!). Book and Stamets end up taking Book's ship into the anomaly to collect data (a planet and a space station light years away got destroyed by gravity waves this thing puts out, but a tiny ship can fly INTO it and survive?), because it has a debris cloud around it that deflects sensors. Although Stamets only joins him as a hologram, so as not to risk both Spore Drive pilots (which begs to question why either of them have to go at all. If Stamets can collect sensor data as a hologram on the ship, couldn't Book pilot as a hologram as well?). Things get dicey, but they get out of it. And apparently this anomaly is moving, seemingly randomly changing course, making it a threat to the entire galaxy...

Another thing of note... Apparently Gray is going to be getting a new Golem body that they'll be able to transfer his consciousness to once it is ready. It's the same technology that was introduced at the end of the first season of Picard to resurrect him. Apparently it never came into wide use due to a low success rate... Despite they've had 700 years to perfect the technology. But I'm glad they haven't "cured" death with this technology.
So, the writers keep making the same mistakes. Every season of this show is some galaxy spanning threat that only Discovery/Burnham can put a stop to. Which they keep compounding... War with the Klingons. An AI that wanted to evolve to be a real AI and kill all organic life. The Burn that destroyed most of the dilithium in the galaxy. A 5 light year sized anomaly that puts out gravity waves powerful enough to destroy whole planets and moves at random. It's a tired cliché. Not every story arc needs to be a universal threat.

Meanwhile, Prodigy has gone on a hiatus until January. I have yet to watch the episodes beyond the first one, but now that I have access to them, I plan on watching this series. One thing they revealed in the final episode prior to the hiatus...
Spoiler
The USS Protostar is equipped with a Protostar Engine, in addition to having a dual warp core system. I assume the idea is somewhat similar to the Romulans using an artificial quantum singularity to power their warp drives, only Starfleet has somehow figured out how to contain a baby star instead, and the drive appears to only be used to give the ship a massive speed boost while at warp.
Edit: Watched the first 5 episodes of Prodigy last night. I really like it. I was a bit leery about the concept of a bunch of kids finding a starship and going on adventures... But they pull it off pretty well I'd have to say.

Little more in depth on Prodigy...
Spoiler
Holo-Janeway quickly realizes the kids are not officers, but concludes they must be cadets. Not sure if she actually believes this or not, since it should be obvious they aren't cadets either... Janeway then explains the Federation to them and asks if they want to plot a course there. The kids are excited (bit ironic considering many of them are from Federation worlds in the first place) except for Dal, who sees the Federation as just another word for someone in charge, which he does not trust. Instead, he points them towards a red giant. The kids then explore the ship (putting Gwyn in the brig, finding the crew bunk area, the captain's quarters and engineering).The ship is equipped with a dual warp core system, just one of which Jankom Pog says can get them to warp 9 (begging to question why such a small ship would need to generate so much power with two cores). Zero is perplexed by a larger 3rd core between the 2 warp cores, which Jankom Pog hasn't figured out yet. The star Dal has directed them to turns out to be somewhat more of a death trap... as a white dwarf is consuming its partner red giant, and the gravity from the two is preventing them from escaping. Gwyn briefly escape the brig during the situation (and attempts to use the ship's shuttlecraft replicator to escape), but is stopped by Rok-Tahk. After eventually asking holo-Janeway for help, the kids are able to figure out how to get the situation under control, and escape the stars gravity.

Following their close encounter with the binary stars, the kids have taken holo-Janeway's advice to learn how to operate the Protostar. Holo-Janeway informs them sensors have detected an M-class planet nearby (in the Hirogen system) and suggests, as Starfleet cadets, they check it out and the kids are excited to get off the ship for a bit. After landing (it would seem the Protostar is not equipped with a transporter, which is odd for a Starfleet vessel in this era. That or the kids have yet to discover it), the planet turns out to be a bit more of a death trap, trying to trick the kids into staying so it can consume them. I assume this is actually a plant on the the planet, considering the episode portrays it as vines attacking them, but the characters don't make any distinction, making it out like the planet itself. I have to wonder if this is meant to be the Hirogen homeworld. It may explain why they became a race of nomadic hunters. And we find out Jankom Pog came to the delta quadrant on a sleeper ship. It explains how some alpha quadrant species are here, but I hope they elaborate on this a bit more, since I feel it still leaves some questions.

Gwyn once again escapes and attempts to steal the Protostar (and sends a message to her father), but vines from the planet disrupts power and forces the ship to crash back down (holo-Janeway attempts to save the ship while Gwyn escapes, but finds most of the ships power is being used for protostar containment, which she has no knowledge of and cannot access). Strangely, there is an abandoned Klingon ship on the planet the kids briefly take refuge in while trying to make their way to the Protostar. The Diviner arrives, and rather than help his daughter, attempts to obtain the Protostar for himself.. but it turns out to be the vines tricking him. The other kids reach the real Protostar and rescue her. The Diviner returns to his ship and chases them at warp. The Protostar is being over taken, and with the rest of their power being taken up by gravimetric protostar containment, Zero realizes the third core is a protostar. After seeing her father choose the ship over her, Gwyn turns against him, and activates the protostar drive... Allowing the Protostar to escape with a massive boost.
User avatar
Sparky Prime
Supreme-Class
Posts: 5225
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:12 am

Re: Star Trek

Post by Sparky Prime »

Couple more episodes of Discovery have aired...
Spoiler
Tilly I guess believes the anomaly is a super massive black hole, but some of the data doesn't fit. Stamets has taken to calling it a dark matter anomaly or DMA for short and comes up with a theory that it's a primordial dark matter wormhole... What does that even mean exactly? A wormhole is a tunnel through subspace. How is dark matter a factor here? At any rate, apparently it displays all the signs of being a wormhole. One sign he points out it could be a wormhole is that it can change direction... except anytime we've seen a wormhole move in Star Trek, the opening jumps from one location to another, it doesn't just drift in space, randomly changing directions like this. Except they didn't detect any tachyons, which would seem to rule that out as a possibly as well. In short, they still have no idea what it is...

Meanwhile, with Gray's golem body ready, Guardian Xi appears as a hologram to perform a zhian'tara "unlike any other"... Except when Jadzia underwent her zhian'tara, and Curzon wanted to stay in Odo's body, they made it seem like it wasn't unheard of for the memories of a previous host to be permanently removed from a symbiont. The Guardian in that episode even explained Jadzia and the Dax symbiont would be fine, they'd just need to adjust to the new balance. Guardian Xi appearing as a hologram also seems problematic, as it was shown the Guardian in DS9 needed direct physical contact to be able to transfer the memories. Xi apparently doesn't even use the same hologram technology Stamets used to appear as a hologram on Book's ship in a previous episode to be able to feel the environment he was being projected into. Xi's apparently just a projection with Gray pointing out he'll hug him when he sees him, since he wouldn't be able to hug him as a hologram. It kind of bothers me, in the clips I've seen, holograms have the tendency to 'glitch'. I think it may be the creators way of reminding the audience this character is appearing as a hologram... but it makes holograms of the 32nd century seem less advanced than those of the 24th century, since barring some sort of malfunction, holograms didn't glitch like the holograms in this show often do.

I'm curious what they're going to do with Gray's character moving forward, or if they're just going to write him out... I mean, it was interesting that he and Adira were tied at the hip so to speak. It gave Gray a reason to be there. But now? If Gray want to become a Guardian for the symbionts on Trill, as he says, there's no reason for him to be in the series anymore.

The Vul... Ni'var have finalized negotiations to return to the Federation, but at the last minute announce that they want to add an exit clause. With this new anomaly threat, they want the option to be able to split off unconditionally. The Federation President rejects this, saying it would make the Federation weaker as a a whole. Other member worlds would want similar exit clauses, and it wouldn't be practical for worlds to be able to have all the benefits of membership, just to be able to leave whenever they want without any conditions. Doesn't seem like any of the worlds that left following the Burn really had any repercussions in the first place though, which begs to question how this situation would really be any different. Really goes to show the writers never think these plots through on this series...

Tilly also takes some cadets on a little mission which runs into some trouble... And Tilly decides to leave Discovery to become a teacher at the new Academy. But the interesting thing I've found out about this, one of the human cadets mentions she's from Titan and that she'd never seen an alien before joining Starfleet. Really? Hundreds of different alien species live on Earth in the 24th century (probably more by the 32nd century), and probably throughout the entire solar system. Even with The Burn isolating planets from each other, and Starfleet headquarters relocating... I find it hard to believe any humans living in the Sol system in the 32nd century wouldn't have ever seen an alien before.
User avatar
Sparky Prime
Supreme-Class
Posts: 5225
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:12 am

Re: Star Trek

Post by Sparky Prime »

Discovery season 4 episode 5
Spoiler
The USS Janeway (as much as I like Voyager references they've made in this series... couldn't they spread some love to some of the other series? I mean, having both the Janeway and the Voyager-J seems superfluous), along with another Starfleet ship and a Vulcan ship are monitoring the Dark Matter Anomaly, when it suddenly disappears... And then reappears seconds later 1000 light years away. For some reason, the characters don't believe natural phenomena can disappear and reappear elsewhere... Even though we have seen things in Star Trek that "disappear" into subspace, and reappear in another location. Such as unstable wormhole openings like I mentioned in the previous post, or a graviton ellipse. At any rate, this leads them to conclude that it must not be a natural anomaly, somebody created it. But the power requirements to produce this anomaly is well beyond their technological capabilities.

Starfleet considers several advanced civilizations, like the Iconians (despite being extinct for thousands of years?), Nacene (pretty sure Voyager established they're not from the Milky Way, with only Caretaker and Suspiria left behind), Metron, and the Q Continuum (apparently Starfleet hasn't had contact with them in 600 years), as having the ability to create it, but doubts any of them would. So they ultimately have no idea who may have created the anomaly. A Risaian scientist named Tarka (he's also apparently the guy in charge of working on the second generation spore drive, but has yet to figure out a solution for the pilot) comes abort to help Staments trying to figure out exactly what the anomaly is (Tarka believes Stamets is right about a wormhole being present, but they aren't clear about why or how), while Discovery goes on an evacuation mission to a planet being threatened by the anomalies new location. In order to confirm the anomaly is artificial, Tarka and Stamets create a micro version of it on Discovery (despite saying they could contain both ends of the wormhole in a containment field... we only see one), but Saru shuts down the experiment before they can stabilize it, as it threatens to breach containment.

With Discovery not having the power to stabilize even a micro sized version, Tarka believes for the full sized anomaly, it would take the energy equivalent to a hyper giant star. Again, I have to question the writers take on advancements in technology by this century... how can Starfleet not be capable of producing this level of power by the 32nd century when they could contain and harness the power of a protostar in the 24th century?! And Discovery is only just one starship... Retrofitted from the 23rd century no less. Despite being upgraded with 32nd century technology, is the ship capable of producing the same level of power as ships built in the 32nd century (900 years is a pretty big jump, I'd have to think there would be some technological limitations to just how much they could retrofit the ship with that big of a gap)? How about the Starbase and all the ships pooling their energy, as we saw them doing to produce the massive distortion field to encompass the entire fleet in the previous season?
User avatar
Sparky Prime
Supreme-Class
Posts: 5225
Joined: Wed Jul 23, 2008 3:12 am

Re: Star Trek

Post by Sparky Prime »

Discovery season 4 episode 6
Spoiler
Discovery is sent to investigate the subspace rift the anomaly left behind. Didn't a subspace rift the Enterprise D encountered threaten to destroy the ship just by being near it? Yet, Discovery is able to enter this subspace rift no problem... Like it's just a portal in space, rather than damage to subspace. I have to question if these writers even look up how these terms have been used in Star Trek before, because this really seems like an entirely different thing compared to the subspace rift we saw in TNG. Inside, they find nothing. It's just void with absolutely nothing. I don't know what they were expecting to find. They launch a DOT robot to probe further, which dissolves after traveling a short distance from the ship. Why didn't they send in a probe in the first place? Why did they take the whole ship into the rift?

With no way to navigate in this void (why can't they see the entrance they came through in the first place?), Discovery is in danger of being dissolved like the DOT. They attempt a Spore Jump, but it fails, and sends an energy surge through Book. After examining him, apparently they detect particles in his brain from the Galactic Barrier around the Milky Way Galaxy. Book I guess will be fine, the particles will dissipate on their own within hours but this apparently indicates to the crew that the anomaly originated from outside the Milky Way.

One of the crew figures out they can use sonar to follow the galactic barrier particles to navigate out... So these writers clearly have no idea how sonar works. But the crew have another problem... apparently the crew will not survive travel back through the opening with their shields so low. Everyone, except Burnham wearing an EV suit (because of course she'll be fine, despite it being too dangerous for the rest of the crew), goes into the transporter pattern buffer until the danger has passed. Burnham and Zora (the ship's rapidly evolving AI personality) have a discussion to keep each other calm and they make it through.
Post Reply