Star Trek: Discovery

[Imperial Overlord]

Saru will probably remain captain.

It has occurred to me that Lorca's story about blowing up to Buran to prevent Klingons from taking the crew prisoner isn't all that credible. It's more likely that he blew up the ship and cooked up the story to cover up his origin. He probably gave away too many clues that he wasn't the main universe's Lorca by acting like a Mirror Universe dick and that had to be taken care of before Starfleet brass starting reading reports of him acting in an unacceptable manner. It would explain how he conveniently is the only survivor.

[CetaMan]

Saru would probably be interesting from the dynamic of having an alien captain, but I doubt they would be able to present an alien mindset that doesn't do the usual "all Klingons are warriors and act the same" thing.

[tezunegari]

And Saru is not the Captain...

Discovery is on a mission to visit Q'onos... after Archer and the NX-01 100 years earlier.

Officially they are going to go sightseeing. Mapping targets of interest for an all-out attack to push back the klingon forces.
(Starbase One, 150 AU away from Earth is occupied by 274 klingons)

They'll spore-jump into a cave to scan the surface.

Inofficially... the new Captain has other plans, and the agreement of the Federation Council.


SPOILER: Spoiler

Captain Philippa Georgiou
(formerly her most Imperial Majesty, Mother of the Fatherland, Overlord of Vulcan, Dominus of Kronos, Regina Andor, Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius)

[Batman]

I thought Discovery was supposed to predate TOS by a decade or so?
'On stardate 4789.6 klingon vessels launched hypothermic charges'
That's in between s2/3 to early s3. The starting stardate for 'Where no man has gone before' is 1312.4

[Elheru Aran]

At this point, you expect them to care about continuity and consistency with prior incarnations?

[Batman]

No, I just didn't expect them to be this blatant about it, what with all the 'this is totally the Prime Timeline'

[Batman]

Though I wouldn't be particularly surprised if this happened because nobody noticed.

[Grand Moff Yenchin]

Saru's entry in the previous episode: Stardate 1834.2
"Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum" where they arrive at Pahvo the stardate is 1308.9
In "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad" the stardate is 2136.8 (by Burnham at the beginning) and then 2137.2 when Mudd boasts on closing his deal.
The first episode happens at 1207.3

Not sure why such detail that can be easily maintained is done like this.

[Batman]

Did anybody working on this pay attention to anything that happened in Stark Trek before?

[ray245]

Did anybody working on this pay attention to anything that happened in Stark Trek before?

I'm not sure if anyone in the production team cared about pesky little things like continuities. They quite clearly don't.

[Prometheus Unbound]

I thought Discovery was supposed to predate TOS by a decade or so?
'On stardate 4789.6 klingon vessels launched hypothermic charges'
That's in between s2/3 to early s3. The starting stardate for 'Where no man has gone before' is 1312.4

At this point, you expect them to care about continuity and consistency with prior incarnations?

Lol you guise.

http://startreklist.blogspot.co.uk/2011 ... ed_05.html

TOS couldn't even keep track.

[Elheru Aran]

I thought Discovery was supposed to predate TOS by a decade or so?
'On stardate 4789.6 klingon vessels launched hypothermic charges'
That's in between s2/3 to early s3. The starting stardate for 'Where no man has gone before' is 1312.4

At this point, you expect them to care about continuity and consistency with prior incarnations?

Lol you guise.

http://startreklist.blogspot.co.uk/2011 ... ed_05.html

TOS couldn't even keep track.

If nothing else though it shows that the newer generation of Trek shows tried to be reasonably consistent with their use of stardates. So either this new show is incapable of keeping up with the continuity, they're doing it as a deliberate nod to TOS' randomness, or they simply don't care. Pick one...

[J Ryan]

I thought Discovery was supposed to predate TOS by a decade or so?
'On stardate 4789.6 klingon vessels launched hypothermic charges'
That's in between s2/3 to early s3. The starting stardate for 'Where no man has gone before' is 1312.4

At this point, you expect them to care about continuity and consistency with prior incarnations?

Lol you guise.

http://startreklist.blogspot.co.uk/2011 ... ed_05.html

TOS couldn't even keep track.

If nothing else though it shows that the newer generation of Trek shows tried to be reasonably consistent with their use of stardates. So either this new show is incapable of keeping up with the continuity, they're doing it as a deliberate nod to TOS' randomness, or they simply don't care. Pick one...

Of course they care about numbers and dates! Didn't you hear Starbase 1 was 100 AU from Earth. Now that they've taken it over their almost practically at Earth's backyard! Discovery flew almost a light year to get there!

(For reference 100 AU would put that starbase at 2.5x the distance from the sun as Pluto so well within the Sol system. Guess they found planet x and weirdly enough it has an atmosphere and it appears oceans.)

[Q99]

I really don't get why people making a show famous for using continuity-people before don't seem to have one.

Some creatives act like being tied down by continuity is a really bad thing, but what shows do we remember decades later? Those that built a world and where people stuck to it (at least most of the time).

It's really hard to say how Discovery will be remembered in 10-20 years, but I bet even if it's liked, it'll be a peg that sticks out from the rest- unless someone fully adopts it as a separate continuity and builds on just-it.

[Elheru Aran]

It's really hard to say how Discovery will be remembered in 10-20 years, but I bet even if it's liked, it'll be a peg that sticks out from the rest- unless someone fully adopts it as a separate continuity and builds on just-it.

Frankly this is probably the best thing they could do. "What a surprise guys, it's really NOT the Prime Timeline after all, things got flaky for a while there huh, this is Timeline X, we're starting a Next Generation Deep in Space Voyaging Series, come along for the ride..." It'd be stupid as fuck but honestly it'd help. Just a little, but it'd help.

[bilateralrope]

It seems that the writers want to tell a story that would be a better story if it wasn't connected to Star Trek. My guess is that someone higher up decided that launching a new sci-fi series was too risky*, so slapped on the Star Trek label for marketing reasons.

*Didn't Discovery get some major overhaul at some point during production ?
It could be that when they dropped the original plan, they then grabbed plans for an original series and banged them into Star Trek rather than wasting what they had already spent on marketing.

[Q99]

It got an overhaul, but from a more anthology-ish Trek series to what we have, it was always going to be Trek.

Plus, well, one of the main characters is tightly tied to Spock in a way that comes up a lot, and stuff like the Mirror Universe is very Trek. That's not the type of thing that comes from simply slapping on, it's more like they wanted to use *part* of Trek, but with a rather laissez faire attitude about it.


And the advertising it as main-timeline really highlights they don't get what that means to people *without* a laissez faire attitude, which seems to be a high source of the clashing. I've seen that happen a lot in a number of things, "I know, I'll use the old thing, but do it my own way to make it fresh," can be a serious problem if they don't consider the original enough.

[FaxModem1]

Watching the finale, and what do you know, Orion slave boys are canon.

[applejack]

NCC 1701 under Pike shows up in the last couple of minutes.

[Lord Revan]

other then the size that does look like an update to modern standards of the connie should look like.

[tezunegari]

She has been resized or at least the view implies that and she does have the bridge-window the new designers are so fond of...



beside that: I like her.

Now I want to see her insides.

edit: added image

[Knife]

Dear god, they gave her her lines back. I want to watch THAT show please, not what ever the fuck Discovery is.

[Q99]

So, season over, final thoughts? Worth of the name Trek, still feel like an AU, good, bad, indifferent...?

[houser2112]

I like the serial nature of the show. The episodic format is stale.

I like the reboot of the external aesthetics of the non-Discovery UFP ships, all of the UFP and Klingon interiors, and the UFP uniforms and equipment (although a slightly easier way to distinguish branch would be nice, just not the garish TOS/Kelvin uniforms). The Discovery and especially the Klingon ships and Klingons themselves are hideous. I like the updated Constitution class; it conforms to the updated visual style, but is still undoubtedly Connie.

I liked Lorca better when he was an unhinged Prime U character. Making him a Mirror U character diminishes him. Having him be the one to advocate genocide to end the war would have been much better. This would allow the UFP to double down on their principles when they take steps to prevent the plot instead of the sudden switch by the admiralty that actually happened. Why were there no consequences for Cornwell and Sarek for their part in it?

The season finale should have been a two-parter, because it happened too fast. I feel like there was a lot left on the cutting room floor. Give a WMD to a religious fanatic, and the Klingon ships just pull out? Even though they're in visual range of the home planet of the species they hate? At least have them attempt a half-hearted raid like they've been doing all along before they pull out to go squash this L'Rell bug that has resurfaced.

Burnham getting reinstated all the way from Specialist (What is this rank, anyway? Is it like a Warrant Officer, an enlisted rank, or even sub-enlisted?) to Commander? Putting her back in the officer ranks (even though she pretty much enjoyed officer status de facto if not de jure) at Ensign or Lieutenant would have been plenty to show their appreciation. She's still a mutineer, and that should have consequences.

<tangent>
I've been discussing the series with someone who's only watched the show, and he was confused about the timeline. It wasn't obvious to him that it was set before TOS, he thought it was much later. I haven't rewatched the early episodes, and it's hard for me to separate what I already knew about the series before it started. Does the show make clear when it occurs?
</tangent>

[Iroscato]

Overall...it's a hard show to love. It had excellent moments, some engaging stories and interesting characters - but it kept on making these truly baffling decisions out of seemingly nowhere (making Sarek Michael's adoptive father to name the first of many that irked me).
I'm going to be optimistic and chalk up the haphazard nature of the first season as a result of too many cooks and a troubled production. I've definitely seen worse, and as time went on it started to more closely resemble Trek but with heavy updates.

A rather odd beast of a show, but one I'm happy to give another shot.