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Paramount+ Star Trek: Discovery - Official Thread (1 Viewer)

Carabimero

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When it started and didn't say "Previously on Star Trek Discovery," but instead, "Previously on Star Trek," and then showed scenes from The Cage, my wife went ape shit.

So did I.

We had so much fun last night watching DSC. I think the last time we had so much fun watching Star Trek was DS9's tribble episode. What a treat. Pike remains in the running to become an all-time great ST captain.
 
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TJPC

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When it started and didn't say "Previously on Star Trek Discovery," but instead, "Previously on Star Trek," and then showed scenes from The Cage, my wife when ape shit.

So did I.

We had so much fun last night watching DSC. I think the last time we had so much fun watching Star Trek was DS9's tribble episode. What a treat. Pike remains in the running to become an all-time great ST captain.
We had that kind of laughter that you have when you laugh with delight. :dancing-banana-04:
 

Carabimero

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I hope we haven't left Talos IV for good this season, but something tells me we may have.

I would have been livid if the season one show runners had presumed to play in the Talos IV sandbox. But the season two team is so respectful. And their imagination doesn't lead to ill-conceived shock-and-awe gimmicks that eventually prove untenable and have to be corrected because they weren't thought through.

I can't wait to watch this episode again tonight when the world is dark and I'm the only one in it. Just me and my Bose headphones.
 

Sam Favate

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When it started and didn't say "Previously on Star Trek Discovery," but instead, "Previously on Star Trek," and then showed scenes from The Cage, my wife went ape shit.

Has there ever been a sequel to a TV episode that's more than 50 years old? (Of course, The Cage was never a TV episode, it was a pilot that wasn't picked up!)

Pike remains in the running to become an all-time great ST captain.

Amen. Hope this isn't Mount's only season.
 

David Weicker

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Has there ever been a sequel to a TV episode that's more than 50 years old? (Of course, The Cage was never a TV episode, it was a pilot that wasn't picked up!)


Well, Doctor Who:
“Gridlock” (Apr ‘07) was forty years after “The Macra Terror” (Mar-Apr ‘67).

And “Twice Upon A Time” (Dec ‘17) took place in the final minutes of “The Tenth Planet” (Oct ‘66)
- a fifty-one year gap

Menargie part 2 was Nov ‘66, so that’s 52.
 

Greg.K

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I hope we haven't left Talos IV for good this season, but something tells me we may have.

I would have been livid if the season one show runners had presumed to play in the Talos IV sandbox. But the season two team is so respectful. And their imagination doesn't lead to ill-conceived shock-and-awe gimmicks that eventually prove untenable and have to be corrected because they weren't thought through.

I can't wait to watch this episode again tonight when the world is dark and I'm the only one in it. Just me and my Bose headphones.

As it is some of the dark & techno look and feel of Discovery is still kind of jarring when contrasted with the retro Talos IV look. I think it's cool that they went there but one episode was likely enough.

I don't think I'd want to live on Talos IV. Those singing flowers would drive me bonkers.
 

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If the recap using "The Cage" footage solidifies anything, it's that this show is firmly set in the Prime Universe, with the only difference being that it was made in 2019 instead of 1964. So that's an even stronger indication that we will not be getting an episode that tries to explain why Discovery looks so different from the 1960s show. I know there's staunch fans who have had great trouble reconciling that, because the visuals are as canon as the stories as far as they're concerned (despite this being an incorrect assumption). We just only need to handwave it in the same manner as how we deal with the recasting of characters like Saavik, Sarek, and Amanda, or how the technology of Starfleet changed so drastically for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
 
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Carabimero

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None of that changes the fact of my original argument: the season one creators of DSC intentionally designed the look of the show to more closely resemble the Kelvin timeline than the TOS Prime timeline out of business concerns. They wanted young people who only knew Star Trek from from the Kelvin movies to turn on DSC and feel at home. If young viewers had turned on DSC and it looked quaint, the execs believed they would tune out. That reasoning was well and fine until the show runners tried to tell us what we were looking at took place ten years before Kirk in Prime.

They wanted their cake and eat it too. So for me there will always be a disingenuous vibe to DSC.

I don't blame the season two show runners; they were left with a schizophrenic turd, which over the course of eight episodes they have done everything in their power to transform into something respectable and credibly entertaining. Each week it seems they expunge or transform a ridiculous short-sighted vestige from season one into something imaginative and tenable over the long term. The sad thing for me (and this probably holds for the Section 31 show, as well) is that they can make all the changes possible to take the hard edge off their wannabe Kelvin designs (new uniforms, etc.), but the visual disconnect is deeply rooted. And while the show is starting to taste a lot like TOS to me, my eyes still tell me it's Kelvin-like. Because that's what the original production designers were told to emulate.

Thank the Great Bird of the Galaxy that the season two show runners are doing everything they can to gain the trust and respect of previously disillusioned viewers like me. That they are trying to change virtually everything I loathed about season one tells me I was not in error for seeing that sad season for what it truly was.

or how the technology of Starfleet changed so drastically for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The difference is we jumped forward in time, not backwards. The jump in tech in TMP was an easy sell. Telling fans you are jumping backwards when everything about your show smacks of being set decades in the future is a near-impossible sell, as the majority of fans made clear. That kind of disconnect takes more than hand waving. It's like going against type with a well-loved character. You can't just do it (at least successfully) with hand waving.
 
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joshEH

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None of that changes the fact of my original argument: the season one creators of DSC intentionally designed the look of the show to more closely resemble the Kelvin timeline than the TOS Prime timeline out of business concerns. They wanted young people who only knew Star Trek from from the Kelvin movies to turn on DSC and feel at home. If young viewers had turned on DSC and it looked quaint, the execs believed they would tune out. That reasoning was well and fine until the show runners tried to tell us what we were looking at took place ten years before Kirk in Prime.

They wanted their cake and eat it too. So for me there will always be a disingenuous vibe to DSC.

I don't blame the season two show runners; they were left with a schizophrenic turd, which over the course of eight episodes they have done everything in their power to transform into something respectable and credibly entertaining. Each week it seems they expunge or transform a ridiculous short-sighted vestige from season one into something imaginative and tenable over the long term. The sad thing for me (and this probably holds for the Section 31 show, as well) is that they can make all the changes possible to take the hard edge off their wannabe Kelvin designs (new uniforms, etc.), but the visual disconnect is deeply rooted. And while the show is starting to taste a lot like TOS to me, my eyes still tell me it's Kelvin-like. Because that's what the original production designers were told to emulate.

Thank the Great Bird of the Galaxy that the season two show runners are doing everything they can to gain the trust and respect of previously disillusioned viewers like me. That they are trying to change virtually everything I loathed about season one tells me I was not in error for seeing that sad season for what it truly was.

The difference is we jumped forward in time, not backwards. The jump in tech in TMP was an easy sell. Telling fans you are jumping backwards when everything about your show smacks of being set decades in the future is a near-impossible sell, as the majority of fans made clear. That kind of disconnect takes more than hand waving. It's like going against type with a well-loved character. You can't just do it (at least successfully) with hand waving.
Except TOS was never meant to look "primitive." It was meant to be super-futuristic; it's simply that they were limited in how well they could portray that with '60s resources. The famous book The Making of Star Trek (written by David Gerrold at the same time the original TV show was still in production) asserted that the Enterprise did, in fact, have holographic entertainment and communications systems (very similar to what we've seen on Discovery), even if we never saw them. The tech was always supposed to be much more advanced than what we were shown.

So updating the way it looks, making it more futuristic, is actually being true to the spirit of the original work, if not the letter. The creators of TOS (including Gene Roddenberry himself) would've been the very first to state that its look should always be updated to appear more futuristic to its viewers on a regular, rolling basis, because that's the exact impression they wanted to create. That's why Star Trek: The Motion Picture later abruptly changed the starship's entire look wholesale to something far, far beyond what the 1960s TV production resources were previously capable of depicting.

I mean, I don't get why people get more upset about reinterpreting a ship design than they do about recasting a character. If Harry Mudd can look like Rainn Wilson, why the hell can't a starship look different too?
 
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Carabimero

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I mean, I don't get why people get more upset about reinterpreting a ship design than they do about recasting a character. If Harry Mudd can look like Rainn Wilson, why the hell can't a starship look different too?
That's not, and never has been, something I disagree with. I've never been upset about any re-interpretation of any Star Trek series until DISCOVERY. It's not that they did it. It's why they did it and the way they did it. It's one hand telling them to go Kelvin-like and the other hand thinking it's of no consequence, ten years before TOS in Prime still works. It's the willful disregard of sensibility. They could have had everything they wanted: a new look and congruence with the timeline, but their house was falling down around them because rationality was in short supply, as was an integrated vision for this show. It was a bunch of half-baked ill-conceived ideas held together by arrogance.

That's my gripe. It was my gripe from day one and, with respect to season one, it still is. The changes in season two bear it out.
 

joshEH

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That's not, and never has been, something I disagree with. I've never been upset about any re-interpretation of any Star Trek series until DISCOVERY. It's not that they did it. It's why they did it and the way they did it. It's one hand telling them to go Kelvin-like and the other hand thinking it's of no consequence, ten years before TOS in Prime still works. It's the willful disregard of sensibility. They could have had everything they wanted: a new look and congruence with the timeline, but their house was falling down around them because rationality was in short supply, as was an integrated vision for this show. It was a bunch of half-baked ill-conceived ideas held together by arrogance.

That's my gripe. It was my gripe from day one and, with respect to season one, it still is. The changes in season two bear it out.
I agree with you -- in certain areas of the show, I wish they hadn't changed quite so much. But Roddenberry himself would have preferred the onscreen designs and technology to look as “current” as possible, and I'm not going to pretend it's the first time in Trek history that any such changes have been made, and I'm not going to gripe that it's impossible to reconcile and demands an alternate universe. Some people have said that about the changes in every previous new Trek incarnation, and it's never stuck. Fandom has always found a way to live with the inconsistencies, suspend disbelief, and continue to accept the storytellers' premise that the overall universe still fits together.

For instance, one more example that just occurred to me on top of all the others that have been discussed in this thread -- in TOS episodes like "Wolf in the Fold," they used a computerized sensor that could accurately determine whether a witness was lying. Plus they had psychotricorders that could, supposedly, infallibly read people's memories. So where did those profoundly-powerful technologies go in the TNG era?

We've *always* been bugged by continuity conflicts between different generations/eras of Trek. It's nothing new. Star Trek is an imperfect creation. It always has been. But we choose to forgive its imperfections for the sake of the stuff we do like, and in the service of the particular stories its creators want to tell in that particular moment.
 
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Carabimero

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I appreciate what you're saying if I read you correctly: there has NEVER been any continuity, technically, so pick your poison. And you're right. In that sense it's all forgivable.

But I'm talking about it from the other side of the curtain. From a production standpoint. And I'm calling out the season one show runners not because I disagree with the way the DSC universe looks in relation to its alleged time and place (although I do). I'm calling out the season one show runners for hubris and bullying.

I can forgive discontinuity from Gene Roddenberry or Rick Berman or Brannon Braga because I believe they acted in good faith, that their hearts were in the right place. But I do not forgive the season one show runners for thinking it was okay to willfully recreate the Kelvin look and pass it off for Prime ten years before Kirk. I don't forgive them because when certain voices objected, they were bullied into silence. So I resent the fact that irrational decision making, which later ended with the perpetrators fired for cause, more or less wove fundamentally unbelievable elements in this series that any future show runners have to re-invent or live with.

Sadly season two carries the brunt of that burden. Bless the season two folks for cleaning house as much as they can. But make no mistake: the look of this show was willfully designed in bad faith to make young people believe it was congruent with the newest Star Trek movies.

Just as our actions make hypocrites of us all, images speak louder than words ever will.
 
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Greg.K

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I don't think Discovery riffs the Kelvin look much. If anything the "Kelvin look" is closer to what TOS was (brightly lit interiors, the uniforms) than Discovery's first season. Both are decidedly more futuristic looking than TOS/TNG but I think they tried too hard to avoid making Discovery look too much like the current movie continuity.
 

Sam Favate

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By the way, as much as I enjoyed the last episode, the lens flares are killing me. Turn them off! Don't starships have curtains? They need 'em.
 

Nelson Au

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I rewatched The Menagerie part 1 before and 2 after watching If Memory Serves. I’ve watched If Memory Serves twice plus a partial third. I have two new theories on what the Red Angel is now. The Red Angel we saw when Saru saw it has a female forum though so it narrows it a bit, unless there are more then one Angels. I don’t usually try to figure these things out and just enjoy the journey to see where this mystery is going. But I’m finding myself now theorizing possibilities based on what we are seeing.

Additionally, I have a theory the actions the Discovery is taking and have taken has been fulfilling its role as part of the cause and resolution of the threat we now see that Spock saw. I’ll see how this plays out if my theory has any footing.

More thoughts on If Memory Serves; on my second viewing, a few things I’ve noticed and observed. The Talosian illusion sound effect from TOS is used when Vina turns into her true appearance. The newly created disfigured Vina is not as extreme as Susan Oliver’s make-up effects. I wondered why, maybe they felt the original design was too much, the hunchback might not have been working on the new Melissa George. In addition to the singing plants, its great the producers included the original Talosian sound effects. Same with the transporter effect sounds as Burnham and Spock are beamed abound the 31 ship. ( I guess Tyler likes to call them 31 rather then Section 31. :) )

In looking at the new Spock, his complexion is red, not green. They appear to be dropping the greenish make-up used on Leonard Nimoy in TOS. It was subtle and it wasn’t until the remastered blu rays came out that you could really see it clearly. So I wondered where this started. Perhaps during the TOS films, I think the first film, Nimoy does wear the greenish make-up. Perhaps along the course of those films, his color went slowly back to a more human color. Definitely the Quinto Spock seemed less green. Amazing though is the new appliance make-up work. Spock’s ears are longer, but the new translucent component in the materials used these days on the ears and the Talosians head appliances look so real now. And so well applied, you can’t see the seams.

As for the story beats, it’s great to see how they have brought back the Talosians and connected the story with Pike. It’s the emotional fall-out of The Cage that has been very satisfying to see. Since we never saw any more of Pike’s adventures after the series started, seeing how the events on Talos left scares on Pike and Vina was something we’ve never seen before. It makes sense that these two people would be forever connected now. I really appreciated seeing that. This episode has really been solidly in the Original Series world. I fear what will happen from here on out. Both Spock and Pike will return to The Enterprise. From the dialogue from The Menagerie, Kirk does say he took command over from Pike. So how much longer will Pike command the Discovery? Presumably until the Red Angel crisis is resolved, or the Enterprise is repaired. So I have no idea what will happen to this series next season. Does it end? Do they continue with another captain? Will they end the series and rework it as Star Trek Enterprise with Pike in command? That would be cool. But then Burnham will have to move on, or perhaps the Burnham journey goes to one of the theories floating around. I don’t 100 percent agree with the theories and the theory I’m thinking of might be more viable. Right now I am feeling that I really like how the series is going with Pike in command and how Anson Mount is playing the role. I don’t want to see it end.
 
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Nelson Au

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Alan, Sorry you are so disillusioned from the first season. Since you are an insider, I am guessing you are more privileged to hear things that went on during the production of the first season. You’ve mentioned the hubris and arrogance of the new show runners. I’ve never heard anything about the bullying of the writers until the show runners were fired. The only hint I heard of that was before the series even streamed when Josh reported his experiences at a New York convention where the show runners were shutting down audience questions about the show that seemed to challenge the showrunners and telling the audience to just trust them and wait to see the series. Of course we now know what happened in the writers room and the show runners are out now. As you’ve said, I think the show has made a great stride to fix the wrongs of the first season and it’s great you’re liking that. I think they’ve been doing a great job this season.

I know you’ve said you worked with Gene Roddenberry and so you know the man. I’ve never met him of course, other then seeing him him talk at conventions and once during the pre-TOS film era when he was doing his tour and talks. But over the course of the years of fandom, I have listened to radio interviews he’s given and read things and seen filmed interviews. I’ve said this before and I’ll repeat it here, the one thing he said that’s stuck with me is he hopes that a new generation of people will make new Star Trek and make it better then his efforts. I think it’s happening now. But what’s interesting is that most new Star Trek is compared to TOS and is measured against it. (and now TNG era too) Elements that are always measured is how the new series will do those things TOS did so well. Social commentary, and a crew of mixed races and species that works together to solve a problem. So it seems a new show or film can end up being an homage rather then new. I think this second season of Discovery so far has been a little of both. The Kelvin films in general fail in my opinion. Star Trek does better as a series, be it TV or now streaming.
 

Nelson Au

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I forgot to mention, the way the episode started with the excerpts from The Cage to give the audience the background needed. I loved it like you guys did. It is cool they just showed actual footage, non remastered with CGI. My only criticism of it was the cheesy cartoonish way the shots were transitioned with goofy sound effects and it only heighten the contrast between the old and the new. It lacked any respect. But thats just me.

For no other reason then I was so taken by the episode's call back to The Cage, I felt compelled to post these screen caps.

Pike and Vina Cage.jpg
Pike and Vina.jpg
Longer hair, different dress...
Talosians Cage.jpg
Talosians.jpg
I liked that the original Talosians has tiny ears. They probably didn't need them anymore since they are telepathic. The new Talosians has regular ears, no eyebrow ridge but a new cranial ridge. I liked how the original head has the two brain lobes separated, emphasizing how much more advanced they are. Thats not to say the new Talosians are bad, they are nicely updated.
 

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