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

[Josh Dial]

But I understand it both as a storytelling choice and a reflection of our time. The original Trek came out at a time of great social turmoil and I think people needed to see what a future that worked out could look like. But today’s audience has perhaps become passive in accepting that one day everything will be just fine, and it seems the right choice to make the storytelling about how the future is never settled and how we can never be complacent about it, how we won’t get the future that we want by giving up on today and waiting for it to arrive. That feels as important a message for today’s viewer as TOS’s was for the 1960s viewer.

Perfectly stated.

 

[Nelson Au]

Josh, Tino, yeah, you said it better then I did.

A friend recently sent me a link to a YouTube video that is a time lapse video of the universe that transpires over millions and millions of years into the future. It’s done with CGI and depicts the changes to not only our solar system, but the universe as a whole. I stopped it halfway through as I didn’t like it. Basically everything we know will be gone. Of course nothing is forever and our sun will eventually die. So it makes sense an entity like the Federation could not survive.

I feel like watching Arena and Errand of Mercy now!

 

[Sam Favate]

I had this nagging pang of sadness throughout because I like to imagine a future where the Federation is a perfect entity as epitomized by TNG’s Enterprise, and I like to imagine a future where the conflicts of this lifetime have been resolved. The new adventure is exciting but I felt that sense of loss too. But I understand it both as a storytelling choice and a reflection of our time. The original Trek came out at a time of great social turmoil and I think people needed to see what a future that worked out could look like. But today’s audience has perhaps become passive in accepting that one day everything will be just fine, and it seems the right choice to make the storytelling about how the future is never settled and how we can never be complacent about it, how we won’t get the future that we want by giving up on today and waiting for it to arrive. That feels as important a message for today’s viewer as TOS’s was for the 1960s viewer.

I agree. I thought the point was that all great societies can fall, and it requires good people to keep them together and/or build them back.

FWIW, I noticed a similar theme in Picard. It works, and it’s relevant.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I thought the movie “Tomorrowland” made an interesting point that perhaps the reason our societies are such a mess is that we’ve been fed an increasingly doom and gloom diet of art, entertainment and media telling us the end is near, that all is lost, and that it becomes a self-reinforcing message, a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think there may be something to that.

But on the other hand, I think it’s equally concerning when we collectively escape to a pleasant fiction that absolves us of all responsibility in the matter, that allows us to be apathetic to the troubles around us because we’ve come to believe that while there’s nothing to be done now, that one day it’ll just work itself out on its own.

I thought this premiere did a really admirable job of bridging the gap between those two different points of view.

 

[joshEH]

Renewed for Season 4:

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Renewed for Season 4 at CBS All Access

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Renewed for Season 4 at CBS All Access

www.hollywoodreporter.com

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think someone let that slip during the interviews for this season, that work on the next one had already begun. Glad to hear it. They take so long to make these shows that the sooner they get started, the better.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I guess I just don’t get it. I suffered through season one and gave up about halfway through season two. I read about what happened at the end of season two so I could get up to speed but when I tried watching the season three premiere, I couldn’t make it to the fifteen minute mark without Sonequa Martin-Green flat out getting on my nerves. She’s like a rock in my shoe and has been since the very first episode. Looks like I can go ahead and for sure cancel my CBS sub until season two of Picard is out.

 

[Nelson Au]

There was some very fast dialogue between Burnham and Book just after they initially meet and stopped fighting. Book mentions how Burnham had to have created technology in order to form a wormhole. That tech no longer exists and then says it’s bad enough the Gorn destroyed two light years worth of subspace. So it wasn’t a good idea to be punching holes in space, Rocket Girl. Great name!

So that little bit of throw away dialogue is a nice Easter egg. But according to the Prime timeline, Burnham I would think would not know who the Gorn are. Because she says, “The Gorn did what?“ I initially read that dialogue as she’s aware of who the Gorn are. Or maybe she’s asking, who are the Gorn?

If the encounter Kirk has with the Gorn on Cestus III wouldn’t be the first time the Federation has had with the Gorn, then Burnham might know who the Gorn are. So I have to watch Arena again. . My recollection from dozens and dozens of viewings of this episode is the Federation don’t know who the Gorn are, yet.

 

[Greg.K]

The Gorn were known earlier in the mirror universe (Enterprise: In a Mirror Darkly pt 2) so maybe the Discovery received information on that race while in the MU that the rest of Starfleet is still unaware of.

Lorca also had a Gorn skeleton in his possession in season 1...

 

[Nelson Au]

Greg, that’s a very good point, I’d forgotten about that scene in Lorca’s lab with the Gorn skeleton. So Burnham learned about the Gorn from that situation. Thanks for the reminder. And then with the Discovery moving forward in time, maybe that information was never disseminated to the rest of Starfleet.

I did watch Arena last night. It never gets old! It’s message still works. It’s a great episode thats legendary now of how Kirk defeated the Gorn. Even though Mythbusters tried to make a primitive canon and gunpowder and proved it wasn’t possible, the episode is still so fun because it’s fueled by imagination. That alien bamboo could be much stronger and the materials just worked because the Metron allowed it to work. But I love the message at the end.

 

[joshEH]

Two other pertinent Gorn-mentions:

1. In the ENT episode "Bound," an Orion privateer mentions the Gorn in passing to Malcolm Reed (as well as a couple of facts about them, including the name of their government, the Gorn Hegemony); and also:

2. Dr. McCoy mentions having performed a "c-section" on a pregnant Gorn in the film Star Trek Into Darkness, which, while technically set in the Kelvin Timeline, could also perhaps be indicative of a similar contact on the UFP's part prior to 2258 (the original assumption by J.J. Abrams and his screenwriters being that certain events still occurred identically in both realities even despite the 2233 timeline-split).

Too, in the new DSC episode, it should be noted that when Book mentions the Gorn to Burnham, she appears to be more shocked and concerned about the news of the 2LY subspace-destruction, not the identity of the perpetrator-species -- her response in that scene is vague enough to allow for lots of different possibilities (note too that she never asks, "The Gorn? Who are the Gorn?," but rather, "Wait...the Gorn did what??").

And one more thought -- in TOS: "Arena," it's simply mentioned that the Gorn are using an "unidentified vessel," not that that Starfleet has never encountered them previously as a species. It could very well be that the Gorn captain was using a stolen ship to attack the Federation outpost on Cestus III, or that maybe it was a completely-new ship design unfamiliar to Starfleet databanks.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Burnham also grew up on Vulcan, meaning her frame of reference for species and phenomena will be a little different than someone raised on Earth by humans. Vulcans are snooty and secretive afterall.

 

[Nelson Au]

Yeah, there seems to be a lot messing with the new shows and the Kelvin universe about the Gorn. From my perspective, I only see the world from TOS as the origin point. . I agree that the way Burnham said that line, it can be interpreted based on ones own persuasion. So I saw it as if she possibly knew who and what the Gorn are. But yes, she could simply be reacting to the news that subspace is severely damaged.

 

[joshEH]

^ Although, again, even in TOS it’s never explicitly stated onscreen that the Federation had never encountered the Gorn previously — Kirk expresses some unfamiliarity with the species name, but it’s also mentioned that the starship Enterprise was new to that part of the galaxy, which could explain this, especially if prior Starfleet contact was limited to just a couple of encounters across the previous century.

 

[Nelson Au]

I rewatched the premiere last night. I didn’t really gleam anything new from it. Except that I was able to catch more of the dialogue. You guys are sharp. After Burnham and Book stopped fighting and Michael was stating her case to him, she does say she has only trust and needs to trust Book. And the lines when they meet the attaché at the outpost, he says he only had hope. And the hope was her. Good stuff. And without breaking forum rules, that leads to something that Josh wrote about that’s been in the back of my mind as this season feels like they stumbled onto something that reflects what’s going on in the world. So like before, Star Trek is addressing social issues.

JoshEH, about the Gorn, I see as it’s played in the scene, it works as it is. How she says the line about the Gorn doesn’t really matter if she knew about them or not. I didn’t mean to be nitpicking about canon and continuity, it just stuck out time.

Oh yeah, and I missed the line from Book when Michael points the phaser at his head, he called it an antique. That’s funny. Will be interesting to see what he thinks of Discovery. But to the crew, the Discovery is still a modern ship.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

You guys are sharp.

I just use the subtitles

 

[Nelson Au]

That helps of course Josh!

 

[Harry-N]

Speaking of subtitles, which I use often on DISCOVERY, I wonder why it's so necessary. I have a modest 3.0 sound setup. Most of our favorite movies sound great all the time, dialog clear and intelligible, but when it comes to DISCOVERY, I don't know why it sounds so muddy.

Part of the time I blame either the director or the actors who seem to speak in hushed tones - like Sonequa Martin-Green - her voice seems to have a lot of "breath" to it and not much vocal tone, and it makes what she's saying hard to understand.

Am I alone in this? I wonder. My wife, with superb hearing also has trouble with it and wants subtitles too.

I thought initially it was the CBS All Access service that was delivering LPCM sound to my receiver. But even on the S1 and S2 Blu-rays which have DTS sound, the dialog is still rather murky sounding - all midrangey and muffled. It's a little better on the Blu's than on the streaming services, but only slightly.

I've tried it through both a Roku and an Amazon Fire Stick. both are about the same.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

That felt more like a series premiere than a season premiere, but if it were it would be the best Trek series premiere since "Emissary".

If the first two seasons felt way too advanced for a pre-TOS story, the world of this premiere felt significantly more advanced than "Picard" while still feeling like an evolution of what came before. At the same time, there are new constraints: without a united federation of planets pooling resources and allocating them with maximum efficiency, having enough gas for your car is a real concern again.

I'm reading a book right now, and it included the following statement:

"Ideas are wilder than memories. And I can be wild. I can be stubborn as the weeds, and you will not root me out."​

The Federation, as a organizational entity, has effectively ceased to exist. Memories of what it was are fading. But ideas are wilder than memories, and the idea of the Federation -- what it stood for and what it aspired to -- still perseveres. I find that somehow really inspiring, that the stories we tell about ourselves can echo down through the generations, that even in times of great turmoil the idea of something better can light the way through the darkness.

Heading into this premiere, I had assumed that Burnham and the USS Discovery were separated by great distances. But I had forgotten about the 2009 Star Trek, and how Spock arrived in the Kelvin reality 25 years later despite less than a minute's difference in entering the temporal anomaly. Discovery was directly behind Burnham, so presumably it won't be 25 years, but it might well be half a dozen years.

The show really feels liberated no longer being trapped into such a tight space in the continuity. It even provided a nice explanation in a throwaway line that the temporal wars were so devastating that time travel technology was outlawed and destroyed, to take further time travel off the table.

liberated into feeling like very generic sci fi that borrows from so many sources with Andromeda being the most noticble

 

[Josh Dial]

liberated into feeling like very generic sci fi that borrows from so many sources with Andromeda being the most noticble

Gee, what a useful and constructive post! I'm sure you are totally open to discussion (you know, the purpose of this forum)! It's certainly not like you stroll from thread to thread posting about how much you hate a show or how you bailed on a show.

Just in case you got lost, this is the Home Theater Forum: not reddit.