Star Trek General Discussion

[Fero McPigletron]

Totally agree with the 'lead character and his supporting cast' thing. I don't want another Burnham. What I enjoyed about Trek is everybody is a hero in their own right and there's no chosen one (um, except Sisko. Picard and Data were sorta chosen ones too. Um. Aaaaaanyway...).

I really, really hope they got the Caleb centered Ness out of they system for the while and the third episode is about someone else. Weird but I love Tendi but I'm annoyed with the similarly upbeat hologram. Don't like the jerk roommate. Other girl is boring at the moment. Birdwatcher is suppose to be a favorite but I'll wait and see.

Is that the Scooby-Doo group? The five man band? Main guy, Lancer jerk, weirdo awkward, weirdo cute, female. I really good not. Give the exocomp an ep, hehe

 

[Axaday]

My chum and I were confused about the "You only dated me to find your mum" line with the girl. It never seemed to me that was what he was doing (and even if he was, it didn't seem like some sort of clever ruse). It seemed to me to just come out of nowhere to create drama as a last minute addition to the 'plot'.

Yeah, he seemed to have no idea that she might be able to help him get more data until she offered to do it.

 

[Axaday]

Caleb is an annoying punk, but I can forgive that because he's A) 21 years old, B) been living on his own for 15 years, and C) the protagonist of a series that is largely built around the idea of improving oneself. He's really no worse than Dal.

I'm irritated by how they keep showing the guy knows about everything. Because he's been on his own with no one to take care of him since he was 6. I'm okay with transporters and warp drives. I know how to suspend disbelief, but this goes a little far. People who have been on their own with no one to take care of them since they were 6 are like Aladdin. They only know how to steal food. People that know everything about everything have been safe, cared for, and mentored.

My only concern is that it's still a "lead character and his supporting cast" rather than a true ensemble. I love the other characters, and I don't want Caleb to become the new Burnham.

This surprised me. I didn't pay tight attention to the leadup on this show, but I watched the trailers and I feel like Caleb was the character I was least aware of.

Totally agree with the 'lead character and his supporting cast' thing. I don't want another Burnham. What I enjoyed about Trek is everybody is a hero in their own right and there's no chosen one (um, except Sisko. Picard and Data were sorta chosen ones too. Um. Aaaaaanyway...).

I think we sometimes forget that the Captain has ALWAYS had the spotlight on every Star Trek show with the asterisk that Michael wasn't the Captain right off the bat. Beman-era we started getting maybe one episode per season where each of the other cast got the spotlight.

Burnham irritated me most of the time, but at least we had the explanation that she'd had the best of everything grooming her for her role.

 

[Axaday]

I hope we learn more about Pathway Drive in due course. This pilot felt all goofy about geography and time, but unless the producers are just swinging a chain in the continuity room (and that possibility is definitely on the table) and just slipshod, then Pathway Drive is significantly faster than we're used to. The Admiral recruits Ake on Bajor. We don't know where Toroth is (where she meets up with Caleb), but when she makes her speech to the crew aboard Athena, she never would have imagined YESTERDAY that she would do this job. I don't know where they were then but they head to Earth and I think they said it will take 16 hours to get to Earth and they go through the Badlands. At Berman-era warp, it takes a couple weeks to get from the Badlands to Earth.

But again, this is Kurtzman stuff and they may not even be aware of most of that.

 

[Fero McPigletron]

Saw the third ep.

This episode has parts of the reason why I dislike Mariner from Lower Decks. It's the mean immaturity.

The training is like the weeeeird TOS gym workout ep, haha. To be fair, it is nice to that cadets and officers are striving to be fit.

Jayle bait.

How are the 2000+ sci fi fans and young adults taking to this? It's been ok so far, since it's just the start.

 

[Axaday]

I liked episode 3 better as a TV show, but not as Star Trek. I'm probably too disinterested in teen drama to ever love this show, but I was less irritated than the first two, mostly because it was really low on the overbearing fan service that those seemed covered in.

A connection between Thot and Reno is very hard to buy. And Tig Notoro's acting is still what I like, but the writing for her is not as good.

I just don't care about any of those kids yet.

 

[PrimalxConvoy]

The show seems ok but that Kingon/Jem Hadar character is so two-dimensional and annoying. The writers seem to be really pushing one-liners in order to fast-forward character development, perhaps because they're worried this show will get cancelled soon?

I'll stick with it for a few more eps but at the moment, I'm not impressed.

And where's that ginger-bird, Tilly? Isn't she meant to teach there after Discovery?

 

[Fero McPigletron]

Hey, yeah, isn't Tilly suppose to be a teacher here? I want more teachers.

I rather like Ake as a head principal person. She's friendly and fun and isn't one of the students.

It's like I prefer it when the adults act silly but the kids act serious (and in mortal danger, so they can prove themselves).

So far, I like Kyle. Sam is too in your face. Jay Den is still an enigma.

 

[Dekafox]

I wonder what the timing is... Back in Discovery, Starfleet Academy was already running when Tilly joined up as she already had cadets for that shuttle episode, and the first episode makes it sound like THIS is the very first class of the new Starfleet Academy, so that Discovery retrofit could be when they were refitting the ship to it's 32-century state, rather than the post-series reversion. If they time it that way, then it'd be easy to explain why Discovery doesn't come to solve the problem of the day, because they'd be busy dealing with the Season 4 and Season 5 plots.

 

[Axaday]

And where's that ginger-bird, Tilly? Isn't she meant to teach there after Discovery?

Hey, yeah, isn't Tilly suppose to be a teacher here? I want more teachers.

They put out a while back that Tilly only makes one appearance in Season 1. I don't really care for Tilly, but it is weird because the show initially appeared to be a spinoff made to carry her along. I saw one thing (not official channel) that said that this is set during Discovery's last season, so it may be that Tilly will arrive on the finale and presumably go on a season 2. Maybe she just couldn't schedule season 1.

Who are the main characters is a struggle for me. It was easy on Berman shows, but Discovery made the main characters not be the senior staff and then pretended that I still knew who the bridge crew were and this show is playing the same game. The Captain and First Officer are obviously main characters. Reno and the EMH are getting about as much air time as Reno got in Discovery so far and have not been pivotal to any plot. War College Chancellor seems to be more like a recurring background character probably. Then Jayden, Mir, Genesis, and the Kionian. Betazoid girl is in the Paramount+ thumbnail even though she is War College. Maybe she will switch. Is her brother main cast?

I rather like Ake as a head principal person. She's friendly and fun and isn't one of the students.

It's like I prefer it when the adults act silly but the kids act serious (and in mortal danger, so they can prove themselves).

So far, I like Kyle. Sam is too in your face. Jay Den is still an enigma.

Kyle is a war college goon, but seems less goony than the Romulan and the Vulcan. Is he going to be a protagonist? I don't know who Sam is, but maybe one of the ones I already named above. Yes, Jay-Den is boring. But someone on Facebook told me he will have a spotlight episode this season.

This isn't my first TV show and I feel like I am generally good at learning who the characters are, but I will admit that when most Star Trek shows have come out in the past I knew the characters' bios from reading about them before the show ever premiered and I didn't do that this time.

When I first got into Star Trek in the early 90s, I was also watching 90210 and I liked both of them. I wouldn't watch 90210 now. But they are twisting my arm.

 

[Axaday]

I wonder what the timing is... Back in Discovery, Starfleet Academy was already running when Tilly joined up as she already had cadets for that shuttle episode, and the first episode makes it sound like THIS is the very first class of the new Starfleet Academy, so that Discovery retrofit could be when they were refitting the ship to it's 32-century state, rather than the post-series reversion. If they time it that way, then it'd be easy to explain why Discovery doesn't come to solve the problem of the day, because they'd be busy dealing with the Season 4 and Season 5 plots.

Right, I saw that somewhere. It may just be that the actress could not be scheduled for this season, but she will join next season. They say she has one appearance this season and it might be in the finale when she arrived.

Edit - Well, actually Reno messes that idea up. Reno probably wasn't on Discovery and at the Academy at the same time.

 

[Axaday]

There was an odd line in Episode 3. Ake tells Thot or maybe the War College Chancellor that "These kids grew up during the Burn". The way she uses it sounds like "These kids grew up in the pandemic" or "The kids grew up after 9/11". But whichever character she is talking to ALSO grew up during the Burn. She might be the only person in San Francisco that didn't grow up during the Burn. It's not this thing people need to be reminded of, except maybe the audience.

 

[Cybersnark]

I haven't seen Jay-Den's actor in anything else (he's been acting since 2017, according to IMDB), so I don't know yet what's an acting choice or a character-writing choice, but yeah, he seems very. . . stiff. Hopefully a spotlight episode will give him more depth.

It looks like Tarima will stay with the War College but also be part of the main cast, which is a convenient "in" with that side of the campus. I'm guessing Kyle will end up associating with her, since she's less terrible than his other friends (if anything, I can see Kyle switching to Starfleet, given his reaction to the plants).

As for Tilly's students, it's possible that they were a sort of "pilot project" (before the Athena was commissioned, and definitely before the Earth campus was available), given that the College has apparently been the standard source for new personnel.

To wit: at some point pre-Burn, Starfleet Academy fully transitioned into the Federation War College (the first episode alludes to Starfleet's mission changing from exploration to defense). This is a new Starfleet Academy, intended to return to the fleet's original nature. It's understandable then that the College students see them all as out-of-touch crybabies who can't cut it at "real" training. It's basically the age-old Jocks vs Nerds conflict.

 

[Fero McPigletron]

To wit: at some point pre-Burn, Starfleet Academy fully transitioned into the Federation War College (the first episode alludes to Starfleet's mission changing from exploration to defense). This is a new Starfleet Academy, intended to return to the fleet's original nature. It's understandable then that the College students see them all as out-of-touch crybabies who can't cut it at "real" training. It's basically the age-old Jocks vs Nerds conflict.

So the exploration Academy vs the defense College is really... Star Trek vs Star Wars?

 

[Cybersnark]

So the exploration Academy vs the defense College is really... Star Trek vs Star Wars?

I mean, basically?

(I've said before that one of my complaints about Discovery S3-5 is that the setting could've been more Star Wars; this was a thousand-year-old multi-species galactic-scale civilization that had collapsed, leaving a lawless "Outer Rim" united by ancient-to-them transwarp conduits and fuel-hungry slipstream drives that are nonetheless hundreds of years more advanced than old-fashioned warp drives. They could've played more with the imagery of "a Star Trek ship dropped into the Star Wars universe.")

 

[Axaday]

To wit: at some point pre-Burn, Starfleet Academy fully transitioned into the Federation War College (the first episode alludes to Starfleet's mission changing from exploration to defense).

I think they are pretty slipshod about all of that. I believe that the Academy turned to the War College after Earth dropped out of the Federation and that a lifetime of tradition was making it hard to just switch it back. From the first couple episodes I would never have thought that Starfleet officers came from the War College, but Lura Thok did. It is possible that he just got transferred over to Starfleet when she took this job. But in either case, I am baffled by why a Jem'Hadar/Klingon hybrid went to Earth's (it couldn't be anyone else's) War College during the Burn when dilithium was hard to come by and Earth was xenophobic.

 

[PrimalxConvoy]

The two sides in the campus just remind me of Starfleet vs MACO. In fact, I'm surprised that they didn't just re-use or integrate MACO into this show, considering the (semi?) canon idea that MACO was assimilated into Starfleet as a training/honour guard sort of sub-group (rather than being completely dismantled).

 

[ZacWilliam1]

Me and my wife finally got to watch the first episode of Academy yesterday and the 2nd and third today.

We liked it quite a bit. It's fun and it has a good feel for what Starfleet is supposed to be. It makes me happy how much fun my wife is having watching it.

-ZacWilliam, and I love seeing a exocomp and one of the rock species from Prodigy.

 

[Fero McPigletron]

Oh the Exocomp is supposedly named in the subtitles. I didn't see it tho but he or she is suppose to be named Almond Basket. Might be naming convention trend that Peanut Hamper started centuries ago, haha.

Gosh, if Tawny Newsome is on the writing team, I hope we get more Lower Decks callbacks.

 

[Fero McPigletron]

My friend watched the first episode (not ep2 or 3) and we posted a video. My friend was pretty positive about the ep. There was a negative comment all of a sudden, saying the show will fail.

Checking YouTube, there's a bunch of negative takes on it. Was it really taken that badly?