Star Trek Discovery ***Season 3*** [** SPOILERS WITHIN **]

breezy1985

Bobtheman wrote: »

I'm on episode 4 and so far I'm enjoying it. Burnham has thawed out. There is still a mawkish element to it all. A let's wrap up complex issues in 45 minutes etc. The episode where they returned to earth and just by a bit of chat sorted out the attacks on earth. Yes I know that was a feature of a lot of trek but time to dump it or tone it down a bit.
One of the things that's annoyed me about trek since the end of deep space 9 is this idea of escaping history. The trek universe did not really move forward.
You had the film's yes but we had two series in the past ? Enterprise and discovery.
Then discovery goes to the future to deal with continuity issues??
Why the hell just have a series that moves the timeline forward ?? I know we had Picard and that was relatively ok but we need a series that moves forward. Is an 80 year old actor the best they can do in this regard !?

They are afraid to do anything that doesnt involve a million call backs and Easter eggs and all that nonsense that generates memberberries and youtube traffic. All 3 current shows are about hey look its that guy from that thing from before wow but at least Lower Decks and PIC to a lesser extent are honest about it

Rawr

breezy1985 wrote: »

They are afraid to do anything that doesnt involve a million call backs and Easter eggs and all that nonsense that generates memberberries and youtube traffic. All 3 current shows are about hey look its that guy from that thing from before wow but at least Lower Decks and PIC to a lesser extent are honest about it

Indeed. To add, Lower Decks is the first time in a long while that a Trek show has picked up the story right after the end of the last contiguous installment, set right after ST: Nemsis.
Despite it being an animated comedy and I get the feeling of the show continuing the TNG universe where DSY & VOY left off.

pixelburp

My reckoning is simply that the story hasn't advanced because collectively, the social conscience isn't aligned to a franchise with a utopia as the status quo.

We're far removed from the heady optimism of Treks birth in the futuristic styling of 60s pop culture: open a newspaper; it's full of environmental collapse, political division, pandemics, while social media acts as ideological poison.

While the presence of a story set within a "perfect" futures seems like the obvious response to this as escapism, misery likes company. Fiction - especially sci-fi - often reflects the mood of the populous, hence we get all these post apocalyptic tales - and why Trek generally can't move forward with its timeline (at least, not without throwing a grease into the setting). Equally, this morose attitude leans into nostalgia for "better times", hence all the reverential callbacks, reboots, belated sequels etc.

It's not without reason The Walking Dead is/was the ratings smash it has been. Culturally we're wallowing.

Evade

pixelburp wrote: »

We're far removed from the heady optimism of Treks birth in the futuristic styling of 60s pop culture: open a newspaper; it's full of environmental collapse, political division, pandemics, while social media acts as ideological poison.

Yeah, papers in the 60's had none of that.

Goodshape

yeah, I'm not sure there was any shortage of horrifying and terrifying news stories and fears of social collapse in the 60s, 70s. The 90s were a bit more optimistic I suppose.

I think Gene Roddenberry was just a bit of a hippie socialist idealist. You can see it in TOS and TNG and I think it's sorely missing from everything since.

I'm sorry (not sorry), but I liked the ideal of no conflict within the crew. I enjoyed the utopian socialist fantasy of it all. The best possible future for humanity.

These days it's just another jingoistic military-based sci-fi spectacle. I don't think that's necessarily a sign of the times, it's just lack of vision.

pixelburp

Evade wrote: »

Yeah, papers in the 60's had none of that.

Never said they didn't, but the 50s & 60s (specifically in America) were seen as the zeneth of its status and technological superiority; and not without reason. IIRC the average American ate 50% more than the average European during the mid '50s - just to pull one point of comparison. After all, this is the time the MAGA crowd pine for. While in the zeitgeist and SciFi in general, it was forward-thinking and incredibly optimistic in nature. Not just Trek, but everything from penny dreadfuls, comics, to noted "proper" writers of the time. That was the era of the Space Race, and breathless editorials about how we were going to live on the moon in 20 years time. It's not without reason Khan was from the far-future of the 1990s - there was a lot of outward thinking in that respect that advances would accelerate. Can the same be said now?

IMO there's no way Trek could have been born from any other cultural era than 1960s America because that was when that country (or rather, a very niche demographic within) believed the future was bright; the occasional Cuban Crisis notwithstanding. Vietnam put an end to SciFi as broadly optimistic, when you started to see this grubbier, more pessimistic tone creep in (see books like The Forever War for instance)

Evade

Goodshape wrote: »

I don't think that's necessarily a sign of the times, it's just lack of vision.

I read something a little while ago that might contribute to this. Writers used to have careers outside the entertainment industry before becoming writers today it seems to go college>entry level position in film/TV production>writing so there's no real difference in their experiences.

pixelburp

Goodshape wrote: »

[...]
These days it's just another jingoistic military-based sci-fi spectacle. I don't think that's necessarily a sign of the times, it's just lack of vision.

I disagree; show me a popular SciFi franchise of the last 20 years that doesn't inherently plough the furrow that amounts to "humanity are their own worst enemy". Babylon 5 maybe? Andromeda perhaps, but that's going back to the 90s - and sure B5 was just a rebadged DS9 :pac: </troll>

Everything from the BSG reboot up to The Expanse, or smaller entries like Man in the High Castle, Altered Carbon etc. have had a deeply cynical heart. Now, I've loved those shows and will wax lyrical about BSG if given half a chance, but (and here comes the topicality again), post 9/11 American mainstream pop culture has looked inward, been often heavily introspective or self-critical - sometimes even nihilistic. Fiction isn't ever born in a vacuum, even disposable TV drama can be reflective of a mood within its audience. Or the mood within the broader fiction universe.

The only recent exception I can immediately think of here is the recent Lost in Space reboot: while not without its own problems the core tone of the show was very optimistic and "knowledge" led. Our lead characters consisting of scientists who tried to use their smarts and brains to get themselves out of the environmental problems the plots would throw at them. And even THEN, it didn't lack some of that cynical "humanity can be shady customers" styling. I suppose there's also Dr. Who of course, but I know some would quibble if that's even Science Fiction

Goodshape

Fair points pixelburp, although I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with there . That all/most sci-fi in the last 20 years has a "humanity are their own worst enemy" theme feeds into my point that Star Trek is (now) just another one of them.

You make a good case that it's a sign of the times but, without meaning to sound like too much of a "real Trek" gate-keeper, people still regard Star Trek as being part of that more optimistic narrative. Why bother bringing it back at all if they're not willing to continue that theme.

When's the last time you heard anyone on Star Trek cheerfully mention having no need for money, or poverty being eradicated, or literally any good news of our future at all. Everyone's too busy with their anxieties and PTSD from whatever recent war the Federation has been involved in.


Edit:: sorry actually, were you saying that most other shows are more cynical and "humanity are the enemy" than Star Trek is now? Eh. Maybe kinda but no. Lorca, Federation Romulan spy lady in Picard. Can't trust ourselves in Star Trek either. And the themes of any kind of bright future are gone.

Bobtheman

breezy1985 wrote: »

They are afraid to do anything that doesnt involve a million call backs and Easter eggs and all that nonsense that generates memberberries and youtube traffic. All 3 current shows are about hey look its that guy from that thing from before wow but at least Lower Decks and PIC to a lesser extent are honest about it

You lost me here. Could you explain? Call backs? Easter eggs??🙂

breezy1985

Bobtheman wrote: »

You lost me here. Could you explain? Call backs? Easter eggs??🙂

If you don't know what they are I imagine Discovery and all these super hero movies are not your thing.

A call back is simple enough it's just referencing previous Trek in the new show but can get annoying like having Spock in a show just for the sake of it instead of new characters so people get all fuzzy. Lower Decks is all callbacks basically but does it for laughs.

An Easter egg is a hidden call back like having ships cammed Voyager-J and the Big in the background. You usually have to pause and recheck scenes to see them or watch YouTube breakdown shows

Bobtheman

breezy1985 wrote: »

If you don't know what they are I imagine Discovery and all these super hero movies are not your thing.

A call back is simple enough it's just referencing previous Trek in the new show but can get annoying like having Spock in a show just for the sake of it instead of new characters so people get all fuzzy. Lower Decks is all callbacks basically but does it for laughs.

An Easter egg is a hidden call back like having ships cammed Voyager-J and the Big in the background. You usually have to pause and recheck scenes to see them or watch YouTube breakdown shows

I'm not a big superhero movie fan but I have watched all of Discovery. Thanks for the clarification.

Bobtheman

I think it's possible to have upbeat trek without it being too hippy. We need it. You are as well off switching off the " news" as it's designed to make you feel small and vulnerable. The only positive news stories put out seem to about celebrities.
The world has a lot of turmoil but also a lot of good and I hope trek shows that.

Nody

pixelburp wrote: »

I disagree; show me a popular SciFi franchise of the last 20 years that doesn't inherently plough the furrow that amounts to "humanity are their own worst enemy". Babylon 5 maybe? Andromeda perhaps, but that's going back to the 90s - and sure B5 was just a rebadged DS9 :pac: </troll>

*Notes down that Pixelburp is the first to be shot once the Vorlons come back*

pixelburp

Nody wrote: »

*Notes down that Pixelburp is the first to be shot once the Vorlons come back*

Heehee; hey never said that was a bad thing given to me DS9 is the pinnacle of Trek

It's a deep shame a remaster of Babylon 5 will never come to be; the CGI is amazing for its time/budget but desperately needs a lick of paint now (for those not in the know, the FX were composited directly on the source video footage - so unlike TNG there's no "clean" version with the blue or green screens to remaster over)

Nody

pixelburp wrote: »

Heehee; hey never said that was a bad thing given to me DS9 is the pinnacle of Trek

It's a deep shame a remaster of Babylon 5 will never come to be; the CGI is amazing for its time/budget but desperately needs a lick of paint now (for those not in the know, the FX were composited directly on the source video footage - so unlike TNG there's no "clean" version with the blue or green screens to remaster over)

It's more to do which is the source of which :P

Straczynski indicated that Paramount Television was aware of his concept as early as 1989,[117] when he attempted to sell the show to the studio, and provided them with the series bible, pilot script, artwork, lengthy character background histories, and plot synopses for 22 "or so planned episodes taken from the overall course of the planned series".[118][119]

Paramount declined to produce Babylon 5, but later announced Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was in development, two months after Warner Bros. announced its plans for Babylon 5. Unlike previous Star Trek shows, Deep Space Nine was based on a space station, and had themes similar to those of Babylon 5, which drew some to compare it with Babylon 5.

Straczynski stated that, even though he was confident that Deep Space Nine producer/creators Rick Berman and Michael Piller had not seen this material, he suspected that Paramount executives used his bible and scripts to steer development of Deep Space Nine.[120][121][122] Straczynski and Warner did not file suit against Paramount, largely because he believed it would negatively affect both TV series. He argued the same when confronted by claims that the lack of legal action was proof that his allegation was unfounded.[122]

According to a 2017 interview with Patricia Tallman, there was a legal case and an out-of-court settlement with Paramount.[123]

I've actually own the DVD copies of all five seasons and one of the movies for BS5 and I'm rewatching it atm though I will admit I'm skipping certain episodes that annoy me (looking at you Zathras...).

Banana Republic 1

pixelburp wrote: »

My reckoning is simply that the story hasn't advanced because collectively, the social conscience isn't aligned to a franchise with a utopia as the status quo.

We're far removed from the heady optimism of Treks birth in the futuristic styling of 60s pop culture: open a newspaper; it's full of environmental collapse, political division, pandemics, while social media acts as ideological poison.

While the presence of a story set within a "perfect" futures seems like the obvious response to this as escapism, misery likes company. Fiction - especially sci-fi - often reflects the mood of the populous, hence we get all these post apocalyptic tales - and why Trek generally can't move forward with its timeline (at least, not without throwing a grease into the setting). Equally, this morose attitude leans into nostalgia for "better times", hence all the reverential callbacks, reboots, belated sequels etc.

It's not without reason The Walking Dead is/was the ratings smash it has been. Culturally we're wallowing.

Wasn’t your one sinqua Martin Green in the walking dead

breezy1985

Banana Republic 1 wrote: »

Wasn’t your one sinqua Martin Green in the walking dead

Ya she a pretty good character from what I remember but it was just before I was zoning out so could be wrong

pixelburp

Nody wrote: »

It's more to do which is the source of which :P

I've actually own the DVD copies of all five seasons and one of the movies for BS5 and I'm rewatching it atm though I will admit I'm skipping certain episodes that annoy me (looking at you Zathras...).

Ah yes, I can never remember who inspired who when it comes to DS9 - Babylon 5. The coincidences always seem way too convenient.

Another good example of the whole "crap first season" rule common with SciFi. I think I've only seen one or two of the B5 "movies"; IIRC they fell off a cliff quality wise after the first couple?

Bobtheman

Never watched Babylon 5 ? Any good?. Too much TV is overtly dark now. Grim .

Bobtheman

I don't agree that sci fi has to reflect the times . As already pointed out the original trek background era was not all that positive.
I think it's more dynamic than that. Series creators can decide to be upbeat. To take a risk. Rather than reach for the dystopian bottle .
By and large the quality of life for humanity is getting better. Not in a straight line sort of way but it is getting better.
Look at the standard of living in Ireland compared to even 40 years ago.

GreeBo

If you have reached utopia, what other story/timeline advancement can you really do though?
It's always going to be either standalone episodes with some distant overall arc, or something about dealing with "the enemy" who haven't reached your enlightened state of utopia.

I really don't see what else they can do to further anything, know it's really just about stuff that happens in that universe, the universe had been built for decades.

Arguably the burn is a novel device to advance the universe by removing one of the things that gave them utopia. They could have done similar by removing transporters or replicators, but if everyone has everything they could ever need at their fingertips, well the world just won't be that interesting for an outsider to observe.

Nody

Bobtheman wrote: »

Never watched Babylon 5 ? Any good?. Too much TV is overtly dark now. Grim .

It's good to excellent as long as you don't mind old style CGI. It's ok, not horrible bad but low res stuff etc. Be warned it's a slow burner in the first season but it do pick up speed from the second season forward and as any series it has it's set of filler episodes. The over all arch runs nicely imo and once the arc kicks off properly it's excellent. The character development for everyone is not earth shattering but it does it's job to push the story forward and overall it's enjoyable.

In regards to the movies, yea, not something I'd recommend unless you're a hardcore BS5 fan honestly.

PirateShampoo

Nody wrote: »

I've actually own the DVD copies of all five seasons and one of the movies for BS5 and I'm rewatching it atm though I will admit I'm skipping certain episodes that annoy me (looking at you Zathras...).

Which Zathras are you talking about though? Zathras, Zathras or Zathras.

Personality I prefer Zathras, he had more personality than the others.

pixelburp

pixelburp wrote: »

Never said they didn't, but the 50s & 60s (specifically in America) were seen as the zeneth of its status and technological superiority; and not without reason. IIRC the average American ate 50% more than the average European during the mid '50s - just to pull one point of comparison. After all, this is the time the MAGA crowd pine for. While in the zeitgeist and SciFi in general, it was forward-thinking and incredibly optimistic in nature. Not just Trek, but everything from penny dreadfuls, comics, to noted "proper" writers of the time. That was the era of the Space Race, and breathless editorials about how we were going to live on the moon in 20 years time. It's not without reason Khan was from the far-future of the 1990s - there was a lot of outward thinking in that respect that advances would accelerate. Can the same be said now?

IMO there's no way Trek could have been born from any other cultural era than 1960s America because that was when that country (or rather, a very niche demographic within) believed the future was bright; the occasional Cuban Crisis notwithstanding. Vietnam put an end to SciFi as broadly optimistic, when you started to see this grubbier, more pessimistic tone creep in (see books like The Forever War for instance)

Thats a strong mis-reading of history. The future often looked bleak in the late 1960s to the mid 1980's although optimism had returned by the 90s. From city riots, increases in crime and drug use, to general Cold War paranoia the 70s and early 80s were a time of deep pessimism. Environmental pessimism too ( see the club of Rome) .

Although I dont like them Thatcher and Reagan did in fact seem to increase confidence and the rise of Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union accelerated it. So TNG reflected the zeitgeist, but TOS rebelled against it.

Bobtheman

So far discovery gets the pitch right. Between optimism and pessismism. I like the crew . I cant name them but the ex comedian works well. So does the red haired girl. Good to see somebody not the perfect shape on trek.

Bobtheman

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Thats a strong mis-reading of history. The future often looked bleak in the late 1960s to the mid 1980's although optimism had returned by the 90s. From city riots, increases in crime and drug use, to general Cold War paranoia the 70s and early 80s were a time of deep pessimism. Environmental pessimism too ( see the club of Rome) .

Although I dont like them Thatcher and Reagan did in fact seem to increase confidence and the rise of Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union accelerated it. So TNG reflected the zeitgeist, but TOS rebelled against it.

I think the klingon/ federation peace treaty was meant to reflect the easing of cold war tensions and the Borg the return of disruption in various places as that optimism faded

Rawr

GreeBo wrote: »

If you have reached utopia, what other story/timeline advancement can you really do though?
It's always going to be either standalone episodes with some distant overall arc, or something about dealing with "the enemy" who haven't reached your enlightened state of utopia.

I really don't see what else they can do to further anything, know it's really just about stuff that happens in that universe, the universe had been built for decades.

Arguably the burn is a novel device to advance the universe by removing one of the things that gave them utopia. They could have done similar by removing transporters or replicators, but if everyone has everything they could ever need at their fingertips, well the world just won't be that interesting for an outsider to observe.

The Earth / Federation Utopia of the TNG-era was something that was referenced a lot, but rarely explained too well. They painted a very warm picture of a society where racism, sexism, and other societal ills are mostly gone, and that the only failings of humanity were individual to each person. I had always wondered how this cash-less society worked and how ordinary civilians were motivated to work at all, given that almost all needs were given for free.

The main point though, is that TNG-era Federation worlds were wonderful & safe and that any conflict with the Borg or Dominion could have been seen as an effort to defend that way of life from a cold and unforgiving Galaxy. There was a slight sense of that being lost when Betazed fell to the Dominion. We never see anything of that occupation (beyond expanded universe novels) but the idea that the brutal oppression of Dominion control was brought close to "home" in that way, made the likes of the Dominion War felt like a despite fight to hold onto a brighter future.

As dark as DS9 got, I felt that Star Trek's usual optimism was still in the background and that much of the effort of the characters there was to try and bring that optimism to a war-torn part of the galaxy, while showing us how hard it can be to be optimistic in those kinds of situations.

I would agree that there are only so many different ways to do the TOS/TNG format before you end up repeating yourself. DS9 and VOY were interesting ways to re-imagine that and ENT was essentiually a re-skin of the older concept.

Discovery is a different concept too, as is Picard. Both on their own are actually pretty good ideas on paper, and may have actually made for excellent Trek if they hadn't been produced by talent-less hacks.

pah

Bobtheman wrote: »

So does the red haired girl. Good to see somebody not the perfect shape on trek.

Indeed, something to aspire to for the young female viewers.

pixelburp

Deleted User wrote: »

Thats a strong mis-reading of history. The future often looked bleak in the late 1960s to the mid 1980's although optimism had returned by the 90s. From city riots, increases in crime and drug use, to general Cold War paranoia the 70s and early 80s were a time of deep pessimism. Environmental pessimism too ( see the club of Rome) .

Although I dont like them Thatcher and Reagan did in fact seem to increase confidence and the rise of Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union accelerated it. So TNG reflected the zeitgeist, but TOS rebelled against it.

I never said the 70s into the 80s weren't bleak - I've watched more than enough American cinema from that period to be acutely aware of that (watching 70s films set in NY is eye opening in terms of what that city USED to be like), and heck in my own follow-up post I specifically say the Vietnam war informed Sci-Fi's increasingly fatalistic tone from the late 60s into the 70s (The Forever War was published in 1974).

I realise though I muddled my decades a little which doesn't help get my point across, but in terms of pure stature, America's peak sat during the 1950s; Cold War notwithstanding, it was the preeminent power in the world. As said, not without reason _that's_ the era MAGA yearn for. And while Science Fiction started telling paranoid parables with communism the great enemy, Sci-Fi still retained that inherently futuristic, optimistic ideal that humanity would strive into the cosmos (albeit now spreading "Freedom" to the Martians). Not exactly the Golden Age of the 30s and 40s, but still with that striding progress where people believed living on the moon was only a few years away.

Trek was born from that resting ... I dunno, I don't want to say optimism but that sense humanity was dominant and powerful. Although Roddenberry did have humanity nearly destroy itself from ww2, so I appreciate my speculation doesn't entirely track. Could the same be said now? Our zeitgeist is incredibly fatalistic - 2 global recessions in 10 years and environmental collapse will do that to folks I guess - and inherently idealistic Sci-Fi feels much rarer now.

The only exception I can think of would be something like Becky Chambers' "A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet", which was a rare, moden piece of (well written) Science Fiction that dared to say "hey, you know what? We'll be OK, love will out", and even THAT had humanity trash its own solar system before finding its place.