I tried to watch ep 15 a second time and couldn't get through it. That changes my mind about it quite a lot. Here's a very good review of the episode and the season:
So Saru is the next captain right? (Ugh)
That was the point of his needless "ummmm you mean Acting Captain" line.
The crisis with Pike will prevent them from going straight on to Vulcan.
I doubt it, they were heading to Vulcan to pick up the actual Captain, that dosen't mean he's Klingon though, it just means that he's on Vulcan.
Is this going to be a brand new Captain, or a name familiar from the TOS?
Could a Matt Decker or Robert Wesley from TOS stride onto the bridge of the Discovery? I doubt it, but you never know.
I was reading an final season review of Discovery and from what it sounds like, when they wrote the season, they started at the end and worked back to the beginning.
So they basically white boarded, end of war with the Klingons, Elevation of Berman, and then worked backwards. The problem when you write like that and you basically put your foot in the dirt on an ending is you end up with these incredible leaps of logic, and over powered devices like the Spore Drive as you try to jam elements into a tighter and tighter box to get there.
the other thing that happens, is that you end up forgoing a lot of the development of story and character to get there.
When I took a few writing courses, because at one point I wanted to write, the best thing that a teacher ever said was, have an idea of an ending or two or three, but don't get married to those ideas.
So if you for example say.
At the end the Klingon War is over and Berman is redeemed.
Or
the Klingon War is on going, Michael is redeemed
Or the Klingon War is over and Michael isn't redeemed
Then you can kind of leave it there and map out the start
Michael mutinies, and starts a war with the Klingons that leads her to the death of her Captain.
Now you can start progressing forward and giving your self options.
What it felt like instead was they started with a puzzle that they had a definate idea of what it looked like and started jamming pieces at random with a hammer to get there, and the pieces didn't quite fit, and the characters were never quite developed, and the background characters became button pushers. Then to make sure you reached it, you put in a over arching technology that could fix every single problem.
Honestly to me, if thet're smart, they have to use the Spore Drive to help the Enterprise with whatever the distress call is, and the thing fails catastrophically and kills Staments. Like in the first show, because now you have this story line of solving problems without insta-jumps and a meta-being that can basically see through the universe and all dimensions.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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Again, I haven't really watched the episodes in the last half of the season because I have no appetite for it but I have read the synopsis.
The whole wrapping up the war in 10 minutes (bomb Qo'nos!) and brushing the revolutionary spore drive under the bed (unethical!) sounds really stupid.
They should have pulled a DS9 where they found some sort of property of the spore network they could weaponize against the Klingons to force their hand but the trade off would be they lose their ability to use it ever again. That's kind of DS9'y with the wormhole but that would have actually tied the plot into the whole spore thing that came out of nowhere.
Again, I haven't really watched the episodes in the last half of the season because I have no appetite for it but I have read the synopsis.
The whole wrapping up the war in 10 minutes (bomb Qo'nos!) and brushing the revolutionary spore drive under the bed (unethical!) sounds really stupid.
They should have pulled a DS9 where they found some sort of property of the spore network they could weaponize against the Klingons to force their hand but the trade off would be they lose their ability to use it ever again. That's kind of DS9'y with the wormhole but that would have actually tied the plot into the whole spore thing that came out of nowhere.
You know what I really liked about DS9 and their war against the Dominion. They didn't use gimmicks in it for the most part. They didn't force an inverse tacyhon beam through the secondary injectors into the tertiary adjunct of the Quadrophonic deflector array to defeat them.
That whole war was ship against ship, and soldier against soldier.
they had a brilliant episode where the Discovery Crew were in a land battle against the Jem'hadar. And they worked with a group of soldiers who had been there too long.
It was an incredible episode, because you had casualties, you had a major character losing his leg, everyone was dirty, and tired and despondent. You could feel that the Federation was on the edge, you believed that they could lose, or be pushed back.
Or another episode where they were displayed phaser coils that had been used up in battle, and there were a bunch of them on the wall.
The desperation to win in the "Pale Moonlight". These massive battles where you could see people dying on both sides. In nearly every episode, they would talk about a loss, or casualties. But they backed it up by showing loss or casualties.
At the end of the day, they did what Discovery tried to do, but were incredibly clumsy about it, with the whole genocide thing.
They had section 31, and they had the virus in DS9 that was killing off the Changlings, and Star Fleet knew about it and were ok with it because all paths to victory, but the DS9 crew didn't go along with it and it was really well done.
I know its a comparible, but I just didn't feel those things with the Discovery. the Klingon War didn't feel like it was actually a thing because they rushed it and didn't show it.
On a side note, when they were going to murderize the Klingons, even though it would really screw up the time line I was hoping for it, because these Klingons were frankly annoying and not very interesting, even though they tried to make them interesting by basically ripping one of them apart and having sex with him to make a spy.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
I just don't know what to make of this show. It just didn't seem to have any flow. Was really excited to start watching this.
Show starts...what ship is this? BAM Klingons! BAM! War breaks out BAM! Filler episode BAM! Spore Drive Issues BAM! Parallel Universe! BAM! More Klingon War BAM! Wars over BAM! Enterprise
WTF AM I WATCHING?!?!?!
And one thing that hasn't been glossed over yet and I fully admit I'm REALLY nitpicking here but what the hell is with Cameron's hair?? What is that?? I just.....
Safe to say I'm not all that interested in watching any of season 2.
Apart from the break neck pace and continual twists and turns, I didn't mind the first season. The glossed over war is good and bad to me. I would have liked to see the actual war, one of the driving forces of the whole season, fleshed out in a way that made it more meaningful. At the same time, I'm a guy who actually liked Star Trek The Motion Picture, so I'm anxious for something more traditional Trek. With the war over, there might be a few more episodes like that going forward (but far less than other series, given the tone Discovery is setting).
Burnham is a slightly frustrating character, but I've really started to like Saru, Stamets, and Tilly.
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"I see as much misery out of them moving to justify theirselves as them that set out to do harm." -Dr. Amos "Doc" Cochran
I thought they developed Tilly fairly well, though she at times still annoyed me. But she was the designated court jester of the show. When things got too dark, oh that Tilly would lighten the mood, and I'm fine.
I go back to the whole, this was different, far different then the other Treks which you could call ensemble casts. You had the major characters but you also built up minor or casual characters, and it helped reduce main character burnout, and really kept things kind of fresh. It also made you care more overall for the entire crew.
Instead what we got here was a show focused around
Michael, Saru, Staments.
On a secondary level you had Tilly, Lorca.
Then you had the rest of the crew that were living breathing card board cutouts.
So why did it matter?
the moments that were meant to be heartfelt.
Detmer going to sit with Tyler, the doctor dying after trying to build him up in a hurry in one episodes, really had no impact emotionally whatever.
When Tyler killed the doctor, in a moment that was meant to be a Oh my god moment, really had no feeling or emotion to it, he might as well have been wearing a red shirt.
When Detmer say with Tyler, who really cared, sure visually it looked nice, but it meant nothing, and the sad thing is that she was a story and build up just waiting to happen. Someone who had really paid the price for Michael's actions, someone that had to overcome her rage not only at Michael, but at the Klingons for taking her face. But we didn't get that, imagine someone with a reason to hate Klingons going over to sit with Tyler. Instead she might as well have sat down and passed the salt.
The other major impact was that they used these people in the mirror universe. Detmer was a vicious sadistic first officer, the helmsmen killed brutally by Lorac, but you don't care about what they are in the mirror universe because they are pretty much nothing in the prime universe.
They might as well have had a alien character named Farty the Elevator operator. He basically runs the elevator, and farts nervously when people get on and tell him what floor to go to.
Then in the mirror universe, he's the Captain of the flagship.
The bottom line is this, if your a writer or actor or creator of a star trek series, your going to absolutely no matter what get more then one season to establish things.
Instead they rushed everything and then finished everything and basically rebooted the series in the span of a season.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
On a side note, when they were going to murderize the Klingons, even though it would really screw up the time line I was hoping for it, because these Klingons were frankly annoying and not very interesting, even though they tried to make them interesting by basically ripping one of them apart and having sex with him to make a spy.
They should have dropped a brow-smoothing bomb to tie it into canon.
It looks like things are picking up for Season 2 of Discovery with some casting announcements coming out in the last few days.
Anson Mount (who formerly co-starred with Miles O'Brien himself, Colm Meaney, on the Calgary-shot Hell on Wheels) has been cast to play Captain Pike.
Appropriately, Mount has changed his Twitter profile pic to this...
Also, comedian Tig Notaro has been cast as the chief engineer of a ship named the USS Hiawatha.
The extent of either of these roles is unknown for now. They might be series regulars, or they might not amount to more than a one-episode guest appearance.
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I just don't know what to make of this show. It just didn't seem to have any flow. Was really excited to start watching this.
Show starts...what ship is this? BAM Klingons! BAM! War breaks out BAM! Filler episode BAM! Spore Drive Issues BAM! Parallel Universe! BAM! More Klingon War BAM! Wars over BAM! Enterprise
WTF AM I WATCHING?!?!?!
And one thing that hasn't been glossed over yet and I fully admit I'm REALLY nitpicking here but what the hell is with Cameron's hair?? What is that?? I just.....
Safe to say I'm not all that interested in watching any of season 2.
This is what I want from my Star Trek. Nothing about the six episodes of Discovery I watched indicated this was a show capable of delivering Star Trek.
If Deep Space Nine were made today, every conversation with Worf and O'Brien would involve them recounting an adventure they had together on the Enterprise, even though they rarely interacted with one another when they were there.
Fans of the show, is there any clip from Season 1 that's remotely as interesting as any of these moments in four random DS9 episodes?
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Not exactly a change as Kurtzman has been working on the show. He also executive produced Star Trek into Darkness, which isn't a endorsement of his skills.
Hey, maybe they'll have the crew of the Enterprise run into Kahn, while the crew of the discovery delivers packages for Space Amazon.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
The further away from DS9 we get the better it ages. It's so far above and beyond the other series even TNG it's not even funny. Seasons 3 thru 7 are brilliant, just brilliant.
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The further away from DS9 we get the better it ages. It's so far above and beyond the other series even TNG it's not even funny. Seasons 3 thru 7 are brilliant, just brilliant.
DS9 right now remains my favorite Star Trek series, mainly because they hit a homerun in terms of the characters and how they were developed. Also I loved it because frankly they showed that the Federation was not all that great, and were just as dirty as the other races.
In terms of series
1) DS9 - Awesome characters, a deeply flawed but determined Captain who was a good man. The minor characters like Garak were interesting and the Klingons were awesomely used. They also stumbled upon a great enemy that they didn't ruin. Also they had some really wild episodes like Pale Moonlight, but the episode where Sisko was a writer slowly going insane as he tried to get his story about a space station commanded by a black man in the 1940's blew my mind.
2) Star Trek TOS - I always get heat for ranking it so highly, but I don't care. The chemistry between Kirk, Spock and McCoy is unmatched, the minor characters were interesting and they tackled some highly controversial stories like Interracial love and racism.
3) TNG - I didn't like a lot of the series, I hated the Enterprise E design as it looked like a hotel, the Characters were all too flawless and because of that there was a flatness to them. The show did become better in later years mainly because Patrick Stewart really evolved his character. It was a solid addition to the Star Trek Universe, but I think it could have been better.
4) Enterprise - Not a great series, which was sad because it had potential with human's taking their first steps into a larger universe and they were the most formidable race in the universe. I loved the ship design, as it felt claustrophobic like a submarine and they had a whole season where the ship was just beaten to pieces. It got stronger in the last year, the two late season mirror episodes represented nearly the best episodes of any series.
5) Discovery - Just a freaking mess, the characters weren't interesting. The storylines were poorly done. The mirror episodes started strong but became stupid as they progressed. The effects and outside the ship scenes were confusingly bad. The Klingons looked stupid because they were over made up and they spoke like Native Americans. Hopefully they fix this in season two but it seemed desperate that they bought in the 1701.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
