General Star Trek thread

The tardigrades remained a thing just not the mutant ones to hunt down the crew which probably could have been an interesting limitation on the spore drive.

I remember that Discovery episode being the point where I started to smell a rat with regards the writing for Burnham. I was still pretty invested in Discovery in Season 1 up until Lorca started twirling his moustache and declaring that he was an Evil Terran! (Muu Ha! Ha! Ha!). But Michael was an issue pretty early, and it was the episode with the abandoned Crossfield-Class that started that off for me.

In an attempt to build character, they shoehorned in the idea of Michael liking “Alice in Wonderland”. Normally, not a bad idea. This adds a little depth to a character. However, I’m not certain if this was due to bad directing or Martin-Green herself having a crap range, but they had Michael quoting Alice in Wonderland while she crawled around the Jefferies tubes of the other Crossfield Class, all without any context or even emotion. She wasn’t doing it because she was scared or worried or needed to focus; she just suddenly starts quoting….because the script said so…I guess. It became this very odd and almost jarringly artificial attempt to make her character appear to have depth. This was a bit off-putting and ruined my suspension of disbelief a little, an issue that was amplified when it became apparent that the whole show would orbit around her.

So these episodes are usually quite good, but Discovery’s example has the distinction of being the one that showed me the first serious crack in the show’s format.

The first half of season 1 had much stronger legs than much of what happened afterwards. I suspect those early episodes was them using up material Bryan Fuller developed for the show before he broke ties with CBS. Once they had mined Fuller’s concepts for all they were worth they had to make up their own stuff with the less-than-great writers they had left and I suspect Stamets was a casualty of that.

The official story is that the mirror universe plot twist was always part of the story but I never believed that.

It's an awful pity that Discovery seems to have destroyed the idea of story arcs or darker Trek for a generation. No one will be brave enough to do a 21st century DS9 style show now.

I don't want to see another Fair Haven, thanks all the same.

Well bright Trek also has "nowhere to go" and is just "mining stripped out tropes" like SNW is doing and everyone is jizzing over that.

There is definitely room for serious arcs or dealing deeper issues without it being about the Federation being panto villain evil like Disco and Picard done.

I really liked early Stamets in Discovery. He had an edge to his character. Kind hearted and willing to do the right thing when called for (such as saving the Tardigrade) but also unwilling to suffer fools and the sort of bullshit Michael would offer up. They totally neutered him in subsequent seasons. I thought we would see original Stamets when it looked like he was going to throw up in his mouth upon hearing Tilly would be his superior officer but neutered Stamets quickly took over unfortunately.

The gay aspect of his character was also done really well in season one imo. After 50 years of Trek completely evading the fact of gay people's existence, they introduced Stamets and Culber just as seamlessly as they introduced Uhura or Sisko or Janeway. Just competent officers being who they were and doing their thing and leaving the audience wondering why was it ever a big deal in the first place. It's a pity they didn't do trans people as much justice, Gray was a bit of a **** pointless character. I do like Adira though, some seriously weird writing around the character (Stamets and Culber adopting them as their adult child) aside.

I think Mariner worded it perfectly in the latest episode of Lower Decks.

"Starfleet is supposed to be about puzzling together the mysteries of life, not fighting wars! I don't want to be a general, I don't-I don't wanna send my friends off to die!

Sub Starfleet for Star Trek and you get the idea.

Mariner, despite being a decade older than the rest of the lower deckers, is still the most childish and naive of the bunch. She will start fights that endanger others at the drop of a hat but can't own up to the responsibility of ordering others into dangerous situations.

The very Irish perspective of "if we're nice enough we'll never have to fight" doesn't work in Star Trek, or real life. Being neutral doesn't mean you have no enemies, it means you have no friends.

Season 1 of TNG had a character from a planet with rape gangs so the darkness on the frontiers has always been there. War has been a theme throughout the 90s Star Treks too but it wasn't until the later seasons of DS9 that there was budget to do the battle scenes justice and it seems subsequent writers saw how well the last few seasons of DS9 were received and took the wrong lesson from them. STD is a case in point they wanted to be season 5 of DS9 from the outset but hadn't laid the groundwork for it or had the talent to pull it off at all really.

I mean TNG season 1 had its fair share of ropey concepts. But also they didn’t spend a season long ark on the war effort to liberate the planet.

And I’m not really discounting that there are pockets of turmoil and hard times in the Star Trek universe, but that’s just not what Star Trek is, at it’s best, imo, about.

The last couple of seasons of DS9 were boring.

My dream is a miniseries on how all the DS9 aliens are getting on post war. Bajor 20+ years under the Federation, explore Cardassia's attempts to rebuild and find out what happened to the remaining Jem'Hadar and Vorta (if they didn't all off themselves)

Serious, tense and political without anyone actually shooting at each other.

Sorry if I'm repeating myself but having the non binary character date the trans one and get "adopted" by the gay couple was an absolutely pathetic attempt at being progressive. Way too 21st century looking.

Have the non binary or trans character date a heterosexual and do it with absolutely no fuss or mention like it's the most normal thing ever.

Or have some bisexual characters with no special episode or plot about it. Just have them be bi.

Just in my opinion. I've re-watched the show a couple of times in recent years and it always becomes a bit of a chore around season 6. The light goes out of it, and it's all subterfuge and turmoil and ends justifying the means.

They might have done it objectively well on DS9 but so what? Just another sci-fi show about a messed up future and the "fight" for humanity. I found it pretty boring. Writing an interesting show about humanity's brightest future with little or no conflict would have been much more impressive. But of course the DS9 writers were famously only too happy to drop that Roddenberry edict.