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Star Trek: Lower Decks trailer is out. SPOILERS in effect!

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  • JacobkoshJacobkosh Gamble a stamp. I can show you how to be a real man!Moderator mod
    I just read an essay by George Orwell from 1941 about HG Wells, and I feel like this passage also speaks to what I think lives at the core of Star Trek for a lot of us.
    Society was ruled by narrow-minded, profoundly incurious people, predatory business men, dull squires, bishops, politicians who could quote Horace but had never heard of algebra. Science was faintly disreputable and religious belief obligatory. Traditionalism, stupidity, snobbishness, patriotism, superstition and love of war seemed to be all on the same side; there was need of someone who could state the opposite point of view. Back in the nineteen-hundreds it was a wonderful experience for a boy to discover H. G. Wells. There you were, in a world of pedants, clergymen and golfers, with your future employers exhorting you to ‘get on or get out,’ your parents systematically warping your sexual life, and your dull-witted schoolmasters sniggering over their Latin tags; and here was this wonderful man who could tell you about the inhabitants of the planets and the bottom of the sea, and who knew that the future was not going to be what respectable people imagined.

  • Ninja Snarl PNinja Snarl P My helmet is my burden. Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered User regular
    It is simultaneously depressing to see someone describing the same fears and shortfalls we see in society today and goddamned uplifting to see such identifiable hopes and dreams described so succinctly.

    Yeah, progress isn't moving as fast as we would want, but it is happening despite the very best efforts of heel-digging knuckle-dragging self-involved self-important assholes desperate to keep the world of yesteryear where they have a deathgrip on power and control. Maybe we aren't taking shuttle rides to Moon yet, but we are at a point where all those various groups that the vultures of human power have always feared so much are getting to live like proper human beings and realizing they have the power to make the vultures fear for their own collective existence. Plus neat stuff like electric cars and cheap solar power and amazing developments in treating cancer and disease and whatnot.

  • LanlaornLanlaorn Registered User regular
    daveNYC wrote: »
    Lanlaorn wrote: »
    Yea, absolutely, I thought that went without saying, lol.

    I don't know why the showrunners thought the pajama look was more flattering for both of those characters.

    I wouldn't say flattering exactly, but I'm pretty sure we all know what the showrunners were thinking when it came to Jeri Ryan's outfit.

    A more flattering outfit makes you look hotter lol, I definitely think both Seven and Troi were sexier in the proper uniform.

    I lack the fashion vocabulary to properly describe my problems with the onesies, but despite being tighter they somehow just obfuscated their bodies and were terribly bland and unappealing. Heroines in a catsuit are typically incredibly alluring, but these things weren't catsuits.

  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
    edited February 2021
    If we're going to talk about the mechanics of sartorial allure, the catsuit in black generally works well, but I can't think of a version in another color that became truly iconic. Though I think white might also work.

    All that said, when I say that idea "works", I'm thinking in context of comic books, where fashion is particularly flamboyant and bare midriffs and skin-tight outfits are the norm. In Star Trek, outside of the pages of a comic book, it feels weird. Even Marvel, when the translate those characters to live action, rarely just makes a literal spandex bodysuit. Scarlet Witch would be harder to take seriously as a character with complex emotions in the films if she were wearing the red swimsuit of her comic version. Black Widow has one of the closer versions of a literal translation, and even for her the suit looks more like a utility jumpsuit than a spandex onesie. The materials and accoutrements (like the Liefield-maligned pouches) matter in making the character look like a person instead of just a sex-prop.

    I think "do they look like a sex prop?" Is probably the key question in trying to find out if your costume design is alluring or not. If the answer is "yes" to that question, then your character will not end up looking sexy, they end up looking like a joke instead.

    Edit: I just remembered an iconic jumpsuit in another color! The Bride's yellow leather in Kill Bill. That one again works because it's motorcycle armor, not just spandex. It has utility.

    Cambiata on
    "excuse my French
    But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
    - Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
  • TurksonTurkson Near the mountains of ColoradoRegistered User regular
    Any word on when we get Lower Decks season 2?

    oh h*ck
  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    No, but probably about the same time this year as it was last - most film and TV stuff has gotten over COVID delays and back(ish) on track, but Star Trek has three other shows to get made first (Strange New Worlds, Picard s2, and Prodigy).

  • AuralynxAuralynx Darkness is a perspective Watching the ego workRegistered User regular
    Cambiata wrote: »
    If we're going to talk about the mechanics of sartorial allure, the catsuit in black generally works well, but I can't think of a version in another color that became truly iconic. Though I think white might also work.

    All that said, when I say that idea "works", I'm thinking in context of comic books, where fashion is particularly flamboyant and bare midriffs and skin-tight outfits are the norm. In Star Trek, outside of the pages of a comic book, it feels weird. Even Marvel, when the translate those characters to live action, rarely just makes a literal spandex bodysuit. Scarlet Witch would be harder to take seriously as a character with complex emotions in the films if she were wearing the red swimsuit of her comic version. Black Widow has one of the closer versions of a literal translation, and even for her the suit looks more like a utility jumpsuit than a spandex onesie. The materials and accoutrements (like the Liefield-maligned pouches) matter in making the character look like a person instead of just a sex-prop.

    I think "do they look like a sex prop?" Is probably the key question in trying to find out if your costume design is alluring or not. If the answer is "yes" to that question, then your character will not end up looking sexy, they end up looking like a joke instead.

    Edit: I just remembered an iconic jumpsuit in another color! The Bride's yellow leather in Kill Bill. That one again works because it's motorcycle armor, not just spandex. It has utility.

    Not that The Bride isn't her own thing, but that's really Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon jumpsuit that's iconic.

  • HydropoloHydropolo Registered User regular
    Jacobkosh wrote: »
    I just read an essay by George Orwell from 1941 about HG Wells, and I feel like this passage also speaks to what I think lives at the core of Star Trek for a lot of us.
    Society was ruled by narrow-minded, profoundly incurious people, predatory business men, dull squires, bishops, politicians who could quote Horace but had never heard of algebra. Science was faintly disreputable and religious belief obligatory. Traditionalism, stupidity, snobbishness, patriotism, superstition and love of war seemed to be all on the same side; there was need of someone who could state the opposite point of view. Back in the nineteen-hundreds it was a wonderful experience for a boy to discover H. G. Wells. There you were, in a world of pedants, clergymen and golfers, with your future employers exhorting you to ‘get on or get out,’ your parents systematically warping your sexual life, and your dull-witted schoolmasters sniggering over their Latin tags; and here was this wonderful man who could tell you about the inhabitants of the planets and the bottom of the sea, and who knew that the future was not going to be what respectable people imagined.

    What no link?

  • CambiataCambiata Commander Shepard The likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered User regular
    Auralynx wrote: »
    Cambiata wrote: »
    If we're going to talk about the mechanics of sartorial allure, the catsuit in black generally works well, but I can't think of a version in another color that became truly iconic. Though I think white might also work.

    All that said, when I say that idea "works", I'm thinking in context of comic books, where fashion is particularly flamboyant and bare midriffs and skin-tight outfits are the norm. In Star Trek, outside of the pages of a comic book, it feels weird. Even Marvel, when the translate those characters to live action, rarely just makes a literal spandex bodysuit. Scarlet Witch would be harder to take seriously as a character with complex emotions in the films if she were wearing the red swimsuit of her comic version. Black Widow has one of the closer versions of a literal translation, and even for her the suit looks more like a utility jumpsuit than a spandex onesie. The materials and accoutrements (like the Liefield-maligned pouches) matter in making the character look like a person instead of just a sex-prop.

    I think "do they look like a sex prop?" Is probably the key question in trying to find out if your costume design is alluring or not. If the answer is "yes" to that question, then your character will not end up looking sexy, they end up looking like a joke instead.

    Edit: I just remembered an iconic jumpsuit in another color! The Bride's yellow leather in Kill Bill. That one again works because it's motorcycle armor, not just spandex. It has utility.

    Not that The Bride isn't her own thing, but that's really Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon jumpsuit that's iconic.

    Ha, truth. And his DOES work in regular jersey with zero utility because fucking Bruce Lee.

    I would call that the caveat: If you are genuinely skilled in a martial art, and you're wearing badass looking clothes that make it easy to perform your art (ease of movement over skin-tightness so restricting that you can't breathe), then the catsuit can be spandex and ain't nobody gonna say shit.

    "excuse my French
    But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
    - Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
  • HardtargetHardtarget There Are Four Lights VancouverRegistered User regular
    Lanlaorn wrote: »
    I don't know why the showrunners thought the pajama look was more flattering for both of those characters.

    Skin tight and showed off boobs for ratings? T'pol was the exact same with her uniforms.

    Literally nothing more than that.

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  • LJDouglasLJDouglas Registered User regular
    And much like Deanna and Seven looks far better when they actually let her wear people clothes.

  • chrono_travellerchrono_traveller Registered User regular
    I have to imagine Troi's internal dialogue is like "Yesss!!! Finally!"

    The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it. ~ Terry Pratchett
  • JacobkoshJacobkosh Gamble a stamp. I can show you how to be a real man!Moderator mod
    It's pretty shitty that when the producers finally acquiesced to Marina Sirtis's years-long campaign to wear a regular uniform, they chose not to frame it as a choice the character had made, but another character telling her to shape up.

    It's doubly shitty that 25 years of fans have then gone on and been like HAHA FUCK YEAH JELLICO PUT THAT SKANK IN HER WHORE PLACE

  • MsAnthropyMsAnthropy The Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm The City of FlowersRegistered User regular
    I will say that I appreciate that the only time a catsuit has shown up in our Star Trek RPG was when my character went to a sleazoid planet run by the Orion Syndicate and wire one to fit in whilst undercover.

    Luscious Sounds Spotify Playlist

    "The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
  • dlinfinitidlinfiniti Registered User regular
    MsAnthropy wrote: »
    I will say that I appreciate that the only time a catsuit has shown up in our Star Trek RPG was when my character went to a sleazoid planet run by the Orion Syndicate and wire one to fit in whilst undercover.

    Takes horga'hn out of backpack...

    AAAAA!!! PLAAAYGUUU!!!!
  • Mojo_JojoMojo_Jojo We are only now beginning to understand the full power and ramifications of sexual intercourse Registered User regular
    This catsuit discussion is really highlighting that Discovery missed a(nother) trick by not having the Space Londoner Love Interest Guy wearing into a catsuit when he was ever on the bridge

    Homogeneous distribution of your varieties of amuse-gueule
  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    Outrageous.

  • BogartBogart Streetwise Hercules Registered User, Moderator Mod Emeritus
    Campbell was, and probably still is, a handsome, handsome man. Retool the character to be less of a romantic pirate from the cover of a Mills & Boon novel and we'll see.

  • autono-wally, erotibot300autono-wally, erotibot300 love machine Registered User regular
    Let's be honest, it's probably a way to copy something from the mandalorian to cash in on that bounty hunter craze

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  • RichyRichy Registered User regular
    Hevach wrote: »

    Well... that's really not as bad as the title leads us to believe. He says he's coming back as a hilarious comedy character, and also fully acknowledges how bad ("beyond redemption") his first performance was. So it sounds like he's learned from it and will improve on it. There's nothing wrong with taking bad characters and fixing them up into something better.

    I mean, I'm sure people went "oh no no no no no" when it was announced that TNG's Ferengi would be major recurring characters in DS9. And we'd have been wrong.

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  • AuralynxAuralynx Darkness is a perspective Watching the ego workRegistered User regular
    Richy wrote: »
    Hevach wrote: »

    Well... that's really not as bad as the title leads us to believe. He says he's coming back as a hilarious comedy character, and also fully acknowledges how bad ("beyond redemption") his first performance was. So it sounds like he's learned from it and will improve on it. There's nothing wrong with taking bad characters and fixing them up into something better.

    I mean, I'm sure people went "oh no no no no no" when it was announced that TNG's Ferengi would be major recurring characters in DS9. And we'd have been wrong.

    In fairness, my recollection of that episode on re-watch is that while it's absolutely a groaner it's the fault of self-satisfied but limp writing, not Billy Campbell.

  • NorgothNorgoth cardiffRegistered User regular
    MsAnthropy wrote: »
    I will say that I appreciate that the only time a catsuit has shown up in our Star Trek RPG was when my character went to a sleazoid planet run by the Orion Syndicate and wire one to fit in whilst undercover.

    I will say watching disco season 4 and Lower Decks back to back was a bit weird because there's a whole thing in Lower Decks about how the stereotyping of races (as star trek is often doing) is silly and it's especially noticeable with Tendi in the movie spoof episode where there's a really uncomfortable undercurrent with how Mariner casts her that's obviously supposed to say that viewing all Orions as pirates is probably a pretty horrible thing to do.

    And then Disco is all in on "Haha green people evil" train.

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    I miss shows about exceptional people being exceptional. Competence porn is sorely lacking in TV today. I'm sick of shows about shitty people being shitty to each other. Discovery is a pretty perfect microcosm of my annoyance.

  • Inquisitor77Inquisitor77 2 x Penny Arcade Fight Club Champion A fixed point in space and timeRegistered User regular
    On a similar note, one thing Star Trek should never have, except as a funny gag, is people who have conflict precisely because they are unable to string together a coherent sentence that expresses their thoughts and feelings.

    It's infuriating in general, but particularly in Star Trek.

  • dlinfinitidlinfiniti Registered User regular
    edited February 2021
    I mean there's a reason why not many modern tv shows have 25+ episode seasons anymore

    Writing 25+ unique scripts in a season is a daunting task
    You're bound to have a few holodeck episodes and some darmok and jalads at the tanagras

    dlinfiniti on
    AAAAA!!! PLAAAYGUUU!!!!
  • DanHibikiDanHibiki Registered User regular
    dlinfiniti wrote: »
    I mean there's a reason why not many modern tv shows have 25+ episode seasons anymore

    Writing 25+ unique scripts in a season is a daunting task
    You're bound to have a few holodeck episodes and some darmok and jalads at the tanagras

    ok... sounds great?

  • HydropoloHydropolo Registered User regular
    dlinfiniti wrote: »
    I mean there's a reason why not many modern tv shows have 25+ episode seasons anymore

    Writing 25+ unique scripts in a season is a daunting task
    You're bound to have a few holodeck episodes and some darmok and jalads at the tanagras

    Prestige TV? The general abandonment of "episodic" tv has probably accounted for a LOT of it. Even Agents of Shield (broadcast, ABC) was doing sub seasonal arcs to combine a whole seasonal storyline. At 22-26 episodes that can get EXHAUSTING. Good or bad, there aren't many "breather" episodes of shows anymore.

  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited February 2021
    Yeah, those extra episodes built the universe.

    DS9 had a war that from the first shots fired, through a cold war and multiple ancillary conflicts, and up to the treaty spanned roughly 150 episodes. Maybe 50 of those episodes dealt directly with the war, and when you take away the two big 6-parters most of the rest were concentrated in mid-season two parters and end of season cliffhangers.

    Most of the aliens we know, and most of what we know about the mainstays like Klingons and Romulans, is all because of the season length and the fact that 60-80% of every season is distinctly NOT in pursuit of the great storyline. Enterprise, which rarely pushed the boundaries and never threatened to leave its comfort zone, introduced more new alien species in most of their individual seasons than Discovery has managed in three.


    Picard to an extent makes sense to have the shorter season. It's much more of a personal quest than a great odyssey, and even when portal of despair opens unto MechaCthulhu the stakes the show is focused on are also quite personal.

    Hevach on
  • StrikorStrikor Calibrations? Calibrations! Registered User regular


    Oh hey Twitter actually delivered something cool for once!

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    TV shows still regularly have 20-24 episode seasons. It's just that those are usually network shows. Cable networks cut back on their episode orders in large part as a cost-savings measure at first. It then became associated with "prestige television" to have shorter seasons which the people cutting the checks were fine with because it just gave them a different excuse for paying less money for a show.

  • MonwynMonwyn Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime. A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered User regular
    "Prestige" TV shows cut their seasons in half when it was discovered you could sell twice as many DVD box sets for the same cost per unit by having mid-season breaks

    The first "prestige" shows were The Wire and The Sopranos, both of which mostly feature actors talking at each other for an hour at a time with the occasional gun fight, and were not particularly hard on the budget in the first place.

    uH3IcEi.png
  • JacobkoshJacobkosh Gamble a stamp. I can show you how to be a real man!Moderator mod
    Shorter seasons are also to the benefit of tighter-knit, more auteur-ish productions that have just one or two main writers. Which is the case with The Wire, the Sopranos, Deadwood, etc and has long been the case over in the UK. One human being can and often does write 8-12 episodes of a show but nobody bar J. Michael Straczinski for 2 seasons can write every episode of a 22-episode season.

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited February 2021
    I finsihed Disco S3 and while a number of plot elements continue Discovery's trademark "kind of dumb", and I don't like the main character as much as the supporting characters, it's

    good now?

    It's the second best new star wars series

    override367 on
  • ThirithThirith Registered User regular
    edited February 2021
    I finsihed Disco S3 and while a number of plot elements continue Discovery's trademark "kind of dumb", and I don't like the main character as much as the supporting characters, it's

    good now?

    It's the second best new star wars series
    Which is the best new Star Wars series? Raised by Wolves?

    Thirith on
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    "Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    Thirith wrote: »
    Which is the best new Star Wars series? Raised by Wolves?

    Ah, I see you're familiar with Dave Filoni's work.

  • evilbobevilbob RADELAIDERegistered User regular
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  • DoodmannDoodmann Registered User regular
    A little late to the party, but I am loving Lower Deck. Seeing how no one is talking about it, I'm guessing I'm in the minority?

    It's exactly what I want in a "side story" star trek show.

    Whippy wrote: »
    nope nope nope nope abort abort talk about anime
    I like to ART
This discussion has been closed.