Star Trek: Thread Space 9

[Kotowboy]

It's also the case that nobody watched 2001 for the story. Hell, nobody even knows what the story is. People watched it because it was an impressive bit of eye candy (and still is). While Blade Runner had a story and some decent characterizations, much like 2001 it was still about bringing people into a fascinating world they hadn't seen before. Again, it was more about the what you were seeing than the story you were watching.

ST was different in that regard. We wanted a Star Trek story (and IMO, got one). I think they also wanted some 2001 in there, though (and accomplished that, as well). What I don't get is the characters being unrecognizable. They were a bit more serious, but to me they all seemed pretty much the same, save for Spock who got rebooted in the interim.

I'm gonna disagree about 2001. It's definitely not just eye candy. While the "plot" is quite....odd....and convoluted, I'd say the movie is more about an experience, rather than just something pretty to look at. I'd also add that they got kind of ST characters on sedatives.

2001 was the 1960s version of All CGI and no plot. It's basically Transformers

[soupytwist]

I'm only really watching Lower Decks because I'm a completist, but fair play the latest episode 'Wej Duj' was really, really good - less of the goofy comedy, more actual Trek storytelling.  More episodes like this please.

[Kotowboy]

I imagine they'll move more in that direction and the wacky first season was to be as Trek as possible.

Not every episode can be all easter eggs and flashbacks and callbacks and fan service the entire time it would get tiresome.

Anyway - i'm in no rush to see this ( not because I don't like it ) or Picard S2 so i can wait til both second seasons have finished then

sign up for 1 month of free Amazon Prime and binge watch both.

[DoctorAction]

That LD ep was great. Loving it.

Also watched the Discovery S4 trailer earlier. Other than it looking beautiful I'm not feeling encouraged. I want it to be great but nothing about it made me go "Ooo". But we'll see.

[Kotowboy]

Yeah it looked like S1-3 again.

We have to stop this threat! And its always the threat that would have killed everyone everywhere if Disco hadn't shown up at that exact moment.

It's a good job they went to the mirror universe in S1 to find out about evil Stamets plan to infect the mycelial network when they did !

Blah Blah fate Blah Blah we're a family and we're all in this together like a FAMILY. WHOS THE CAPTAIN AGAIN I FORGOT CAUSE I WAS UPDATING MY INSTAGRAM?

I do like Discovery honestly.

[soupytwist]

Also watched the Discovery S4 trailer earlier. Other than it looking beautiful I'm not feeling encouraged. I want it to be great but nothing about it made me go "Ooo". But we'll see.

At least Saru was back, I was worried he'd been written out the show at the end of series 3.

[DoctorAction]

I thought it looked like S3 again, rather than 1 or 2. But, yes. 

Good to see Saru.

[Kotowboy]

Also watched the Discovery S4 trailer earlier. Other than it looking beautiful I'm not feeling encouraged. I want it to be great but nothing about it made me go "Ooo". But we'll see.

At least Saru was back, I was worried he'd been written out the show at the end of series 3.

Don't worry they won't explain it


I know people won't agree but I thought Disco was better with each season. Half of S1 bored me as I am so tired of Klingons. They're just cavemen and

are way too boneheaded and angry to ever achieve warp travel. 

" I think warp drive can be achieved by mixing matter with anti matter !! "

" WELL I THINK YOU ARE WRONG !! "

" DO YOU DARE TO DISAGREE WITH ME ? YOU SHALL DIE WITH NO HONOUR !! "

" FINE !! "

" FINE !! "


I loved all the Mirror Universe stuff though and loved Jason Issacs as Gabriel Lorca - which I still think is an anagram of something.... I wish they found Prime Lorca

at the end of S1 and he was the regular captain. But I know they didn't want to just do White Guy Captain again. So far we've had a different Captain for every season.

Lorca, Pike, Saru and now Burnham. I'm assuming she will stay Captain even though i'd prefer Saru. We've never had an ALIEN captain before.

[Kotowboy]

Hopefully now they're in the 33rd Century they can get away from the Star Wars problem of - only seeing things you've seen before.

I wish they were in the 33rd Century AND the Omega Quadrant or something or a distant distant distant galaxy so there is NO CANON AT ALL

[DoctorAction]

Klingons are dull and dumb. I liked that they made them kinda scary in S1.

Also really liked Lorca.

[Kotowboy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oODegeP7yrU

Billy Shats answers WIRED Autocomplete Questions.

[ProfessorPeart]

Watching a clip on YouTube of Shatner giving his stream of consciousness to Bezos right after getting back from his trip. Can't deny that I teared up a bit. The genuine emotion and feeling from him is amazing. So happy for him.

[DoctorAction]

Watched the S2 Lower Decks finale last night. Excellent stuff. I can't fight this feeling anymore - this is the modern Trek series to measure all others by.

[Kotowboy]

Yes I definitely enjoyed S1 more than Disco and Picard S1.

Disco S1 was like two stories jammed together and Picard S1 was like WTF. I wasn't expecting TNG S8 but still... 

As others have said Disco S1 finale should have been that they were in the Mirror universe the whole time.

It would have been a great twist and also a way of gauging people's reaction to the overall tone they wanted to take Trek.

I'm guessing now that Discovery is in the 33rd Century then Prime Lorca will never show up.

They should have gone the whole hog and taken Disco to the 33rd Century AND some distant galaxy. Completely free of canon.

[soupytwist]

Both seasons of Lower Decks finished really strong In particular season 2, which proves the formula can work.  However the early and mid episodes have been a slog, often crap.  Also even though they've toned her Mariner is awful, probably second only to Neelix as the worst Trek character ever.

[Kotowboy]

Worst Trek character is probably Troi.

[DoctorAction]

Ooo, interesting. S2 entertained me consistently throughout and I have no problem with Mariner. I think I prefer her to half of the characters in Voyager and Enterprise.

Data has become my least favourite Trek character over time. It's not really fair as he's often very key to a lot of the plot ideas but there it is.

[ReaperKK]

Worst Trek character is probably Troi.

I disagree, Harry Kim is the worst IMO.

[jammindude]

Sisko

[Orbert]

Just jumping in for a minute to say that I'm still on my Deep Space Nine run-through.  Into Season 3 now, and shit is really getting good.  We know about The Dominion, and The Founders, and they know about us.  We also have The Defiant, which supposedly is the closet thing to a battleship that Starfleet has ever commissioned, but it still has some bugs to work out and got its ass handed to it the first (and thus far only) time going up against the Jem'Hadar.  Ouch.

[El Barto]

Worst Trek character is probably Troi.

I disagree, Harry Kim is the worst IMO.

Ship's councilor Deanna Troi was pretty week. As a random, regularly occurring bimbo, Troi was alright. We can all name decent Troi-centric episodes. She brought the ensemble down as a whole, but she wasn't without her moment's.

Harry Kim was a weak character, but there were several Kim-centric that were very good. Kim sucked, but he was good for story telling.

Wesley Crusher was amazingly annoying. Pretty easy to hate the guy. There were some Wesley-centric episodes that were good, though. Like Kim and Troi, he was able to be a part of a decent story, here and there.

Neelix was 100% awful. I'm having a hard time thinking of any Neelix-centric episodes that don't suck. As a secondary character he's awful, and as a main character he ruins otherwise good stories. A whole lot of good ideas would have worked had they been based on characters that weren't absolutely terrible, like Neelix. He wasn't just worthless. He was a net negative.

[DoctorAction]

Thinking about it, Voyager had a lot of bad/dull characters - Janeway being the elephant in the room. As much as I wanted to like her, Mulgrew was consistently annoying and unconvincing in the role. Harry, Tom, Chakotay, Neelix, Kes... That's some list of nothings. Belanna and Tuvok were good enough, but not stellar. The Doctor was fantastic. Seven was good, but the cynical deployment of her to save a dying series left a bad taste.

TNG was quite bad for it too. Wesley, Data, Troi, Geordie, Beverley. All not great.

TOS was clearly great in this regard.

DS9, amazingly, was all good characters, with the slight exception of Bashir.

Enterprise has T'Pol (more cynical Seven casting), Malcolm, Travis and Phlox on the naughty step, afaic. I liked Archer, Trip and Hoshi.

This is clearly a habit for Trek shows to create a big central character and pal and pad out the rest.

Discovery and Picard have kind of done the opposite. There are lots of really good characters/casting. Burnham, Stamets, Hugh, Tilly, Lorca, Pike, Georgiou - and Dahj, Rios, Agnes, Raffi. But the stories aren't there.

This hadn't occurred to me until now. Could be bollocks. Just flying a kite.

[Polarbear]

Voyager was better than that IMO!

Janeway was a good leader most of the time. Tuvok, Belanna, Seven and The Doctor were all great. Harry and Tom became a fine comedic duo. While Kes was a character that went nowhere, she was very important in The Doctors character arc. Kes teaches him what it means to be an individual, and later Doctor uses those same lessons he got from Kes to guide Seven.

Discovery could have an amazing ensemble cast, but they rarely give something to do to anyone else other than Burnham. Saru, Tilly, Stamets and the rest, almost always get pushed to the background.

[soupytwist]

Until Mariner popped up in Lower Decks - Neelix, Kes and Chakotay were 3 worst Trek characters.  Neelix is just annoying and creepy, Kes is a much worse version of Troi and Chakotay is a joke of a character.

[DoctorAction]

Maybe the casting is just better as they have more budget now. Or maybe the writing and direction was weak. But I feel the Voyager crew were bland.

Stamets, Tilly, Saru have all had exposure in Disco and are very vibrantly drawn. I don't feel I don't know them or that they are bland. (There are three or four other bridge crew that have been totally looked over, mind you.) The character work is good in Disco, imo, but they need some better stories to back it up.

[Kotowboy]

Yeah the bridge crew on Disco has mainly been Michael and Saru. Hardly know anything about Bryce or Owo or Detmer.


Funny that Disco was touted as being about the non-bridge crew rather than focusing on the captain very week. But it hardly ever did that

as it's always been the bridge crew and Burnham has been in every story and now she actually IS the Captain.

Lower Decks is actually doing the non-bridge crew stories.

[ReaperKK]

But I feel the Voyager crew were bland.

This is my feeling. The Voyager crew was so one-dimensional barely grew during the arc of the series. This is one area where DS9 shined really well. The characters grew and developed.

[Polarbear]

Speaking of Voyager...

I don't know if anybody else caught on to this, but Robert Beltran is returning as Chakotay in the new ST: Prodigy animated series. Hopefully they can expand his character in the show, as he got the raw deal during Voyager.

Kate Mulgrew is also confirmed to return as Janeway.

I don't know much about ST: Prodigy...

[Adami]

Speaking of Voyager...

I don't know if anybody else caught on to this, but Robert Beltran is returning as Chakotay in the new ST: Prodigy animated series. Hopefully they can expand his character in the show, as he got the raw deal during Voyager.

Kate Mulgrew is also confirmed to return as Janeway.

I don't know much about ST: Prodigy...

I saw a trailer. Looked like Janeway was a training hologram or something.

[soupytwist]

I think Prodigy is more aimed at a younger audience.

[ReaperKK]

Yea I thought it was going to be a kids show.

[El Barto]

Yea I thought it was going to be a kids show.

Definitely a kid's show. Produced for Nickelodeon, and it looks absolutely awful from an adult perspective. Seems Kurtzman is trying to flood the market with as much pseudo-Trek as he can dream up. In a few years there will probably be more Kurzman material than original.

[Progmetty]

I wanted to talk about The Drumhead, the positives and the negative of it. I had started watching the following episode but had not finished it, so I was gonna remark about how odd it is that an episode like The Drumhead was sandwiched between a Q and a Lwaxana episode, but now that I finished Half a Life, I feel like that remark would have been foolish; that episode is really good!

To be clear, I'm talking about Half A Life, Qpid was pure shit, the character is still shit, the episode plot was shit and the actor.. well let me take that back, the character might have been intriguing but the actor's portrayal is still godfuckinawful. I coincidentally saw the movie Multiplicity at work, the day after I saw Qpid, and the Q actor was playing a minor sideline character and I thought "This is it! this is the fullest potential of that actor! a forgettable character in a mid-90's Michael Keaton movie! This feels right!!", but we've had this discussion before and y'll disagree with me so I won't dwell.

Qpid had a couple of hilarious Worf moments though, that's worth something!

Half a Life works, it works so well, even though on paper I reckon it would have sounded like a season 3 episode. And I think the main reason it works is David Ogden Stiers, who I had to look up his name cause god damn he was good here. I kinda recognized him but didn't know from where and it turns out he was a main on MASH. Anyway, he miraculously prevented Lwaxana's presence from making the episode annoyingly unwatchable as she normally would. I was genuinely sad for his character, also a very emotionally engaging script, to give credit where it's due.

The episode follows an -at least- 10 episode run of season 4 where they've been doing this thing where you kinda think the episode is about one thing for the first act or two, then it goes to completely different direction for the third, forth and fifth acts of the episode. Which worked for most of these episodes.

So many things to talk about on the run of episodes I've watched since I last posted, I'll try my best to make time and come back to talk about some of them. I'm very much enjoying this journey

[Kotowboy]

John DeLancie a shit actor ?!

I love Q and JDL playing him - the only thing that's unfortunate - is JDL according to wiki is one of those "angry atheists" who 'actively' practices atheism.

Which seems like a complete waste of your own time. Going around telling people you DON'T believe something.

[El Barto]

Some of the Q episodes are pretty weak, but plenty are very good. I can't call him a shit actor or a chit character on the basis of his better episodes. Tapestry is one of my favorites of the series, and AGT was certainly the ultimate way to wrap things up. I don't like him in the comedy episodes, Q-Pid and Q and the Grey are terrible, but when he's being sinister he's very good. He also shows excellent development throughout the series (which they burn in the subsequent series).