Somehow I just discovered the existence of Lower Decks and what it looks like.
I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
Yeah the Rick and Morty artstyle was a bad choice
I kind of dig it. Different strokes, I guess -what would be your preference?
(I showed my tolerant, non-Trekkie, non-animation-watching spouse the Lower Decks trailer and she laughed several times and agreed to watch it if it ever escapes Crave; meanwhile a fellow Trek-fan came out virulently against it, which is not the split I was expecting)
Personally, should have gone for the hyper realistic style of the OS animated series then subvert it by having wacky hijinks.
Hobbes was done dirty. Roberts assassinated his character (literally) and cut his plotline from the previous games off at the knees so he could justify (near) genocide as 100% necessary and morally OK.
To be fair, it was basically a Death Star Mk. II moment. The Confederation was about to lose, destroying Kilrah was their only hope.
Hobbes was done dirty. Roberts assassinated his character (literally) and cut his plotline from the previous games off at the knees so he could justify (near) genocide as 100% necessary and morally OK.
To be fair, it was basically a Death Star Mk. II moment. The Confederation was about to lose, destroying Kilrah was their only hope.
IMO, closer to a Little Doctor Hail Mary play on the Formics than the spiking of the galactic football by the Empire that were the Death Stars.
Black lives matter.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
For me, it's not that it was desperate, or necessary, but that Roberts went the extra kilometer to remove all moral ambiguity from the act.
(Very Card of him, now that you mentioned that.)
Nah, nah, it's fine, there are actually no sympathetic Kilrathi, no other option, go ahead and blow 'em up with a clear conscience.
(Never mind the utter absurdity of a carnivore species with no word or concept for "surrender" being able to even form a society, let alone an industrial civilization and interstellar empire! Every conflict or quarrel would have to end in the death of all involved parties on one side.)
It's bad writing on par with - to bring it back - some of the worst, most heavy-handed moralizing Trek episodes.
If any species didn't have a concept of surrender it would be a prey animal like that dude on Discovery, not a predator. Predators (of same or different species) don't routinely kill each other in fights, one almost always yeilds to the other first, loss of territory or mates or a kill are worth survival.
Prey are adapted to escape/kill/die situations where yield means getting eaten. Of course many prey fight among themselves too and those are usually not fatal either but there are exceptions one could extrapolate from.
+8
Options
cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Was it really genocide, though? Kilrah killed a LOT of them, but I think the real goal was to obliterate their high command. I'm sure they have other worlds, at least one would think.
That's pretty much why I stopped watching Discovery: the series was trying to sell me on these impossibly huge stakes, but I didn't care, not the way I cared about Picard living a second life or O'Brien undergoing his weekly torture or any of the other very personal stakes. It's also why my favourite episodes of Discovery were the more stand-alone ones: they allowed the characters some breathing space. Discovery especially felt as if they'd done TNG and immediately started with "The Best of Both Worlds", without the context of three seasons worth of character development.
the short seasons did it a huge disservice, also.
you didn't even have time to get to know the characters so you could care bout them.
Disco has 2 seasons and 29 episodes. In these episodes the stakes were always FULL POWER, and you got no time to get to know anyone
TNG had 26 Episodes in season 1 alone. And it ended in the "cliffhanger" of
revealing TNG's romulans, in a great performance by Marc Alaimo, who would later go on to play a stellar Gul Dukat in DS9
Disco just never gives you time to breathe. How are you supposed to care about the universe, if you don't even know the bridge crew
I am cautiously optimistic about the Lower Decks trailer.
Things I liked:
- More “prime timeline” Trek from the people with the rights to do it is a welcome surprise. It’s some of my favorite design language, especially the later-days version where the Soothing Beige has given way to a colorway with a little more punch
- The banter and characterization of the junior crew feels good to me, like what would it really be like to be 23 and starting out on such a demanding and rewarding career - and on top of that being stuck with a peer group chosen by the Algorithm and very little ability to meet new people or get out and see the city on the weekends, etc.
- Clearly the ability to use animation to go bigger and wilder with sets, creatures, etc. is not lost on the showrunners, but it doesn’t seem to be Another Galaxy-Ending Threat of the Week every time
Things I suspect I won’t like:
- The senior staff feels off to me, like they’re just the lower decks kids but twenty years older. I’m not saying they should fall into the trope @Cambiata rightly called out of “all serious all the time because competent people can’t ever be silly” but I’m getting more Brannigan than I’d like and not enough Riker from this bridge crew
- The thrice-damned Borg. Only in one shot, but I feel like we have Had Enough Borg For Awhile and would have preferred to see literally any other antagonist in the “hey, Nerdlinger, you punch good!” bit
- For whatever reason, my stupid nerd brain won’t shut up about the navigational deflector pod only being attached to the hull by the nacelles - how do they get in there for maintenance and/or Heroic Treknobabble Deployment? Beam every time? Take a workbee? It’s going to bother me every time if I end up watching the show long-term
I think the borg punching thing might be a holodeck program
However, I'm loving the concept of the NA/EU dominated government we see in the show running the replicators overtime to make the entire Earth the climate of San Francisco. No need to thank us for freeing you from seasons, everyone.
hey you know what I could do without winter or summer in wisconsin
+4
Options
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
However, I'm loving the concept of the NA/EU dominated government we see in the show running the replicators overtime to make the entire Earth the climate of San Francisco. No need to thank us for freeing you from seasons, everyone.
hey you know what I could do without winter or summer in wisconsin
do you...do you not like having mosquitoes the size of dogs????
That's pretty much why I stopped watching Discovery: the series was trying to sell me on these impossibly huge stakes, but I didn't care, not the way I cared about Picard living a second life or O'Brien undergoing his weekly torture or any of the other very personal stakes. It's also why my favourite episodes of Discovery were the more stand-alone ones: they allowed the characters some breathing space. Discovery especially felt as if they'd done TNG and immediately started with "The Best of Both Worlds", without the context of three seasons worth of character development.
the short seasons did it a huge disservice, also.
you didn't even have time to get to know the characters so you could care bout them.
Disco has 2 seasons and 29 episodes. In these episodes the stakes were always FULL POWER, and you got no time to get to know anyone
TNG had 26 Episodes in season 1 alone. And it ended in the "cliffhanger" of
revealing TNG's romulans, in a great performance by Marc Alaimo, who would later go on to play a stellar Gul Dukat in DS9
Disco just never gives you time to breathe. How are you supposed to care about the universe, if you don't even know the bridge crew
The stakes always felt very asserted, not established. "If we fuck with the mycillium it'll destroy all life in every universe everywhere! And also we're at war with a genocidal Klingon warlord who so far only seems to want to kill one ship but he'll kill all the rest trust me!"
A lot of this, I think, is the way fights don't seem to mean shit either, lots of fire with no effect.
After my post last thread I rewatched a couple fights. There's one battle where Discovery fires eight pulses from each of four weapons plus six torpedoes at a bird of prey maybe a tenth its size if it's happy to see you. It does this in less than four seconds. And the bird of prey came around for another pass before being destroyed.
Discovery and it's opponents exchanged more fire in a 2 minute fight than Enterprise and Scimitar did in their whole hour and a half duel, and then spore jumped away directly to the next battle, because I'm apparently watching a Star Trek Online let's play instead of a Star Trek show.
And even that's not a fair comparison for either, because the STO player would be actively mitigating incoming fire and not just getting peppered with shit.
Hevach on
+4
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I really hated Wing Commander 3, which is a shame after 1 and 2 were so great. The plotting was all over the place and character arcs just went nowhere. The FMV that was the whole point of the exercise was really janky, too. Also the low-poly early-3D ship designs just didn't do anything for me.
BUT WC4 is one of my favorite games ever so as a whole the series comes out in the wash, more or less
+7
Options
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
I think the moment Picard lost me was when it was revealed that the
synths actually *were* an existential threat to the entire universe. We’ve got an openly racist president and stuff right now and man I just really wanted an uncomplicated story about how prejudice is bad. something kinda preachy and kinda cliche and kinda corny but in a good way
(Picard) Followed immediately by
a woman who believes in her cause with a literally religious fervor, who can accomplish her mission with a single word "Fire", just deciding to... not do it
Akiva Goldsman is a fucking hack and I can't believe people still give him money to do stuff.
Oh my god, I hadn't looked that up. How on earth did anyone think giving money to the writer of critical-and-financial-radioactive-sewage The Dark Tower was a good idea?!
That's pretty much why I stopped watching Discovery: the series was trying to sell me on these impossibly huge stakes, but I didn't care, not the way I cared about Picard living a second life or O'Brien undergoing his weekly torture or any of the other very personal stakes. It's also why my favourite episodes of Discovery were the more stand-alone ones: they allowed the characters some breathing space. Discovery especially felt as if they'd done TNG and immediately started with "The Best of Both Worlds", without the context of three seasons worth of character development.
the short seasons did it a huge disservice, also.
you didn't even have time to get to know the characters so you could care bout them.
Disco has 2 seasons and 29 episodes. In these episodes the stakes were always FULL POWER, and you got no time to get to know anyone
TNG had 26 Episodes in season 1 alone. And it ended in the "cliffhanger" of
revealing TNG's romulans, in a great performance by Marc Alaimo, who would later go on to play a stellar Gul Dukat in DS9
Disco just never gives you time to breathe. How are you supposed to care about the universe, if you don't even know the bridge crew
Yeah, I've always found the whole "short is better" thing to be silly. Short seasons work really well for some types of stories and not that well for others. Episodic storytelling can really give you time to flesh out characters and let a new normal settle in before you upend everything again with another big episode. A lot of prestige or cargo-cult-prestige or just couldn't-afford-more-episodes television feels like it's fucking upending the applecart every 20 minutes.
To go back to TNG, it's not random that the last shot of the series is the entire cast sitting around a table after-hours. That's what sold the show in the end I think. The characters you came to know. And that's the kind of thing where time really helps.
I think the moment Picard lost me was when it was revealed that the
synths actually *were* an existential threat to the entire universe. We’ve got an openly racist president and stuff right now and man I just really wanted an uncomplicated story about how prejudice is bad. something kinda preachy and kinda cliche and kinda corny but in a good way
(Picard) Followed immediately by
a woman who believes in her cause with a literally religious fervor, who can accomplish her mission with a single word "Fire", just deciding to... not do it
Akiva Goldsman is a fucking hack and I can't believe people still give him money to do stuff.
Oh my god, I hadn't looked that up. How on earth did anyone think giving money to the writer of critical-and-financial-radioactive-sewage The Dark Tower was a good idea?!
akiva goldsman is the poster child for mediocre middle-aged white guys who continually fail upwards
Was it really genocide, though? Kilrah killed a LOT of them, but I think the real goal was to obliterate their high command. I'm sure they have other worlds, at least one would think.
Yes, but it was specified (in the tie-in novel, and I think in the game too) that something like 99% of them lived on the homeworld. See also the Romulans and Hobus; yeah, they had other worlds, but none were very populated or important.
0
Options
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Huh, thinking about the way TNG and DS9 made me feel brought up a thought: I love those casts. I cared about them. But I never cared about the Enterprise-D or DS9 at all. And I have always considered the TOS Enterprise to be like one of my favorite crew members, and tend to get very emotional when she finally goes down. (Goddamn Beyond). Maybe it's the way Scotty and Kirk revere the ship throughout the show and movies (and Relics)? Maybe it's how it's framed as "The Enterprise" coming to the rescue instead of Jean-Luc Picard?
But yeah, All Good Things destroys 3 Enterprises, but I only feel the loss of the crews. Generations sees the crash of the Enterprise and I'm only worried about Spot. Beyond does its thing and I have to keep myself from walking out.
Okay, I started watching this and got pretty hooked until the last half an hour
and it takes a sudden hard right and it turns out that the antagonist is doing this because a girl dumped him? And she tried to "change everything about him that made him unique"? And he tells this to the admiral and says he did what anyone would do (killing 47 people and destroying a solar system) and the admiral is like maybe so??
The author is projecting onto this so hard. The rest of it was pretty good if I'm honest, a lot of passion went into it. But then it gets to that bit and I'm like, what???
Huh, thinking about the way TNG and DS9 made me feel brought up a thought: I love those casts. I cared about them. But I never cared about the Enterprise-D or DS9 at all. And I have always considered the TOS Enterprise to be like one of my favorite crew members, and tend to get very emotional when she finally goes down. (Goddamn Beyond). Maybe it's the way Scotty and Kirk revere the ship throughout the show and movies (and Relics)? Maybe it's how it's framed as "The Enterprise" coming to the rescue instead of Jean-Luc Picard?
But yeah, All Good Things destroys 3 Enterprises, but I only feel the loss of the crews. Generations sees the crash of the Enterprise and I'm only worried about Spot. Beyond does its thing and I have to keep myself from walking out.
Curious
Really? Seeing the D crash in generations really made me sad..
When I first saw Generations, losing the D was a pretty epic moment for me. It was my first Trek movie and TNG was my first Trek series, so watching the D die made me realize that era was Over, you know?
When I watch it now, I can't help but echo SF Debris' complaint that the D went out like a chump. They should've at least given the Duras sisters a Vor'cha or had their subterfuge directly damage the warp core.
Search for Spock and Beyond have the best Enterprise death scenes. Search used it to setup one of the best character moments in the series ("What you've always done--turned certain death into a fighting chance to live."), while Beyond had the ship fight to the very last. Both shared good tactical setups as well, so it made sense in-story that the Enterprise lost the fight.
+7
Options
ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
Nothing like the first time you see your precious D all banged up.
+7
Options
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Huh, thinking about the way TNG and DS9 made me feel brought up a thought: I love those casts. I cared about them. But I never cared about the Enterprise-D or DS9 at all. And I have always considered the TOS Enterprise to be like one of my favorite crew members, and tend to get very emotional when she finally goes down. (Goddamn Beyond). Maybe it's the way Scotty and Kirk revere the ship throughout the show and movies (and Relics)? Maybe it's how it's framed as "The Enterprise" coming to the rescue instead of Jean-Luc Picard?
But yeah, All Good Things destroys 3 Enterprises, but I only feel the loss of the crews. Generations sees the crash of the Enterprise and I'm only worried about Spot. Beyond does its thing and I have to keep myself from walking out.
Curious
Yeah same here, but I literally did grow up with TOS, and I was already a young adult when I first saw TNG, so that may have something to do with it.
I also spent some years of my life where there was no new Star Trek series at all, only TOS. I saw Wrath of Khan in theaters, though I'm pretty sure I was too young and fell asleep in the middle of it.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
0
Options
JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
When I first saw Generations, losing the D was a pretty epic moment for me. It was my first Trek movie and TNG was my first Trek series, so watching the D die made me realize that era was Over, you know?
When I watch it now, I can't help but echo SF Debris' complaint that the D went out like a chump. They should've at least given the Duras sisters a Vor'cha or had their subterfuge directly damage the warp core.
Search for Spock and Beyond have the best Enterprise death scenes. Search used it to setup one of the best character moments in the series ("What you've always done--turned certain death into a fighting chance to live."), while Beyond had the ship fight to the very last. Both shared good tactical setups as well, so it made sense in-story that the Enterprise lost the fight.
Generations chumped both the D and Kirk and as a result, despite it having other okay qualities as a movie, it's the one (next to Nemesis) I'm saltiest about.
The Jem'Hadar (DS9 season 2 finale) aired in June 94, Generations in November, while stardates put them less than a week apart. I actually saw them for the first time on the same day in early 1995 - Jem'Hadar on rerun after missing it, and Generations in a discount theater I could actually afford in middle school.
Anyway, that conjunction RUINED Generations for me, and for 26 years the association in my brain overrides all thoughts on either.
The Odyssey faced the same situation as the Enterprise, and it's solution would have worked for Enterprise, which wasn't facing some new exotic weapons system with no known defense, just the enemy knowing a couple numbers they had in their power to change.
And at worst, Odyssey went down guns afire and heads high. Nary a chump among her crew.
When I first saw Generations, losing the D was a pretty epic moment for me. It was my first Trek movie and TNG was my first Trek series, so watching the D die made me realize that era was Over, you know?
When I watch it now, I can't help but echo SF Debris' complaint that the D went out like a chump. They should've at least given the Duras sisters a Vor'cha or had their subterfuge directly damage the warp core.
Search for Spock and Beyond have the best Enterprise death scenes. Search used it to setup one of the best character moments in the series ("What you've always done--turned certain death into a fighting chance to live."), while Beyond had the ship fight to the very last. Both shared good tactical setups as well, so it made sense in-story that the Enterprise lost the fight.
Generations chumped both the D and Kirk and as a result, despite it having other okay qualities as a movie, it's the one (next to Nemesis) I'm saltiest about.
It's very much "you had one job."
It's sad too because the way Kirk and Picard meet is pretty great. But then the actual fight is terrible.
The Kirk/Picard scene on the horses is so goddamn good is what I'm saying.
+13
Options
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
When I first saw Generations, losing the D was a pretty epic moment for me. It was my first Trek movie and TNG was my first Trek series, so watching the D die made me realize that era was Over, you know?
When I watch it now, I can't help but echo SF Debris' complaint that the D went out like a chump. They should've at least given the Duras sisters a Vor'cha or had their subterfuge directly damage the warp core.
Search for Spock and Beyond have the best Enterprise death scenes. Search used it to setup one of the best character moments in the series ("What you've always done--turned certain death into a fighting chance to live."), while Beyond had the ship fight to the very last. Both shared good tactical setups as well, so it made sense in-story that the Enterprise lost the fight.
Generations chumped both the D and Kirk and as a result, despite it having other okay qualities as a movie, it's the one (next to Nemesis) I'm saltiest about.
It's very much "you had one job."
I still can't stand Generations because of the shitty Kirk sendoff. Blah blah blah subverting expectations, it's fucking Kirk. Dropping a walkway on him is about the most insulting, least interesting thing you could do with the character. At a minimum, there should've been a flying double-barrelled Kirk Kick involved in a lethal, probably suicidal, over-the-cliff sendoff of Soran. Alternatively, Kirk actually doing something with the Enterprise going down, like dropping it squarely on an incredibly surprised Soran.
Soran was pretty good, too, I though. Got a taste of heaven and went mad returning to mortality. A special irony choosing an El Aurian, nigh immortal as it is (he was already older than any Vulcan or Klingon but younger than grandchildren Guinan mentions having), to be the mortality obsessed villain.
Some nutpunch stuff for Picard, too, the twin shock of killing his family and then revealing the deep desire of his heart that I suspect he'd buried even from himself - his personal heaven was an idyllic life at home surrounded by his children.
The movie doesn't really unravel for me until the climax - a poorly done action fight between three senior citizens and Riker embarrassing the name Enterprise.
I suppose Kirk's sendoff in Generations is probably sadly normal in that business; one day you're the king of the world, the next you step in some goo and are dead before the shift change on the bridge. And in a more meta, youtube hot take way, you could even argue dying like that is some higher commentary on what it means to get old as a star fleet captain. I also always wondered if Kirk's ending was because of how annoying he was/is to work with.
Dark_Side on
+1
Options
cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I suppose Kirk's sendoff in Generations is probably sadly normal in that business; one day you're the king of the world, the next you step in some goo and are dead before the shift change on the bridge. And in a more meta, youtube hot take way, you could even argue dying like that is some higher commentary on what it means to get old as a star fleet captain.
Sadly, it's common in some media for massively important people to get very ignoble deaths, like in Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
The movie doesn't really unravel for me until the climax - a poorly done action fight between three senior citizens and Riker embarrassing the name Enterprise.
Yeah, same for me. It's actually pretty decent up until that point, and I always thought its cinematography was better than it had any right to be, arguably the best out of all the TNG movies. The failure of the weak climax and ending is rather inevitable though, as the plot just has nowhere else to go. I also always really hated the Picard fantasy family scenes in the nexus, they're this stuffy ass, Victorian hellscape that I just don't see Picard doing, when really what the fantasy would be is his brother's life in the Vineyard, with the beautiful wife and precocious child.
On the macro level Generations fails, but on an individual scene level it gives some truly unique and unforgettable performances, some of the best in Star Trek. Like the entire section in the Nexus with Kirk, or like the one below (the lighting alone is awesome).
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
aside from the fact that they lit the enterprise stupidly and everything is way too dark, I like Generations and who cares how Kirk died, what matters is how he lived!
edit 2 - I forgot, Shatner can't leave well enough alone and wrote a sequel trilogy to these books that start with Kirk and Picard digging on Bajor together for who knows what after the Dominion War is over to have some R&R
edit 3 - while I'm going here's another dumb book written around the same time! Captain Fraser after warping through time got to be the Captain to take the new Enterprise out on a shakedown cruise before Picard takes the ship, what bad thing could possibly happen?! why not!
what I'm saying is, STAR TREK BOOKS!
look at all this hot cover art! so hot
Hardtarget on
+6
Options
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I suppose Kirk's sendoff in Generations is probably sadly normal in that business; one day you're the king of the world, the next you step in some goo and are dead before the shift change on the bridge. And in a more meta, youtube hot take way, you could even argue dying like that is some higher commentary on what it means to get old as a star fleet captain. I also always wondered if Kirk's ending was because of how annoying he was/is to work with.
It wasn't the lack of spectacle, it was the total lock of character involvement. Kirk had fuck-all to do with how he died other than being their to stop Soran. Spock's death was him slowly cooking to death inside the reactor room with absolutely zero spectacle during the moment, but the results were entirely due to what he chose to do.
All they really needed was to have Kirk get killed in a way that resulted from him directly doing something to stop Soran while knowing it would kill him. Kirk wasn't the type to get caught up in whether or not his death would be glorious enough, just whether or not they stopped Soran.
Hell, keep the falling walkway bit, just make it so that Kirk sees the walkway coming down, fires off a quick look at Picard, and then grabs a surprised Soran in a bear hug to keep him trapped beneath the falling debris. Kirk goes down the same way as before, but now it's not some random pointless crap that feels more like the director forgot Kirk made it to the ending and they had to dump him somehow.
+12
Options
MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
aside from the fact that they lit the enterprise stupidly and everything is way too dark, I like Generations and who cares how Kirk died, what matters is how he lived!
edit 2 - I forgot, Shatner can't leave well enough alone and wrote a sequel trilogy to these books that start with Kirk and Picard digging on Bajor together for who knows what after the Dominion War is over to have some R&R
edit 3 - while I'm going here's another dumb book written around the same time! Captain Fraser after warping through time got to be the Captain to take the new Enterprise out on a shakedown cruise before Picard takes the ship, what bad thing could possibly happen?! why not!
what I'm saying is, STAR TREK BOOKS!
look at all this hot cover art! so hot
Yes, yes, yes. I can believe Romulan and cloning shenanigans, they are stupidly tacky like that. The important question IMO is whether there is a rift to a parallel dimension that allows intrepid detective Jake Cartigan to enter Starfleet and become the second awesomest Captain besides Kirk?
aside from the fact that they lit the enterprise stupidly and everything is way too dark, I like Generations and who cares how Kirk died, what matters is how he lived!
edit 2 - I forgot, Shatner can't leave well enough alone and wrote a sequel trilogy to these books that start with Kirk and Picard digging on Bajor together for who knows what after the Dominion War is over to have some R&R
edit 3 - while I'm going here's another dumb book written around the same time! Captain Fraser after warping through time got to be the Captain to take the new Enterprise out on a shakedown cruise before Picard takes the ship, what bad thing could possibly happen?! why not!
what I'm saying is, STAR TREK BOOKS!
look at all this hot cover art! so hot
"Mr. Shatner, we're out of nouns."
"Can we add... CAPTAIN'S to the front of them?"
"I... guess..."
I mean this neither as an insult or a compliment but I can't believe they didn't use the opportunity with Generations to answer the age old fan question, "who would win in a fight, Kirk or Picard?"
Watched the Lower Decks trailer, and laughed out loud a couple of times, as the coffee was kicking in. It looks...pretty funny, actually. I think they've managed to blend some of the stuff being talked about previously (the optimism and idealism of Starfleet, and its juniour members in particular), with showing off the less-glamorous side of things that we don't often see in the flagship shows, and the costs borne by the legion of redshirts while the XO rips their shirt off for the fifteenth time that episode.
I was worried it was going to run with a Rick & Morty vibe, but I didn't get that at all, so now more optimistic than I was!
It seems like it'll be having a lot of fun with Trek staples. Goofy rubber suit aliens, holodecks, heartfelt interpersonal relationships mixed with scifi pulp nonsense. Pat from SBF pointed out a view that I pretty much agree with, that Next Generation specifically is just work-sitcom with occasional intergalactic battles and weird drug fever dreams. I laughed at the trailer, it seems like it'll be a good time. Star Trek needs to get the pomp kicked out of it every once in a while and embrace how dumb it is.
Posts
Star Trek 2021 basically
As a call sign, yes.
Ralgha "Hobbes" nar Hhallas
To be fair, it was basically a Death Star Mk. II moment. The Confederation was about to lose, destroying Kilrah was their only hope.
IMO, closer to a Little Doctor Hail Mary play on the Formics than the spiking of the galactic football by the Empire that were the Death Stars.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
(Very Card of him, now that you mentioned that.)
Nah, nah, it's fine, there are actually no sympathetic Kilrathi, no other option, go ahead and blow 'em up with a clear conscience.
(Never mind the utter absurdity of a carnivore species with no word or concept for "surrender" being able to even form a society, let alone an industrial civilization and interstellar empire! Every conflict or quarrel would have to end in the death of all involved parties on one side.)
It's bad writing on par with - to bring it back - some of the worst, most heavy-handed moralizing Trek episodes.
Prey are adapted to escape/kill/die situations where yield means getting eaten. Of course many prey fight among themselves too and those are usually not fatal either but there are exceptions one could extrapolate from.
the short seasons did it a huge disservice, also.
you didn't even have time to get to know the characters so you could care bout them.
Disco has 2 seasons and 29 episodes. In these episodes the stakes were always FULL POWER, and you got no time to get to know anyone
TNG had 26 Episodes in season 1 alone. And it ended in the "cliffhanger" of
Disco just never gives you time to breathe. How are you supposed to care about the universe, if you don't even know the bridge crew
I think the borg punching thing might be a holodeck program
hey you know what I could do without winter or summer in wisconsin
oh ya, Mark Hamill calls him Hobbes constantly throughout the game, it's great.
do you...do you not like having mosquitoes the size of dogs????
The stakes always felt very asserted, not established. "If we fuck with the mycillium it'll destroy all life in every universe everywhere! And also we're at war with a genocidal Klingon warlord who so far only seems to want to kill one ship but he'll kill all the rest trust me!"
A lot of this, I think, is the way fights don't seem to mean shit either, lots of fire with no effect.
After my post last thread I rewatched a couple fights. There's one battle where Discovery fires eight pulses from each of four weapons plus six torpedoes at a bird of prey maybe a tenth its size if it's happy to see you. It does this in less than four seconds. And the bird of prey came around for another pass before being destroyed.
Discovery and it's opponents exchanged more fire in a 2 minute fight than Enterprise and Scimitar did in their whole hour and a half duel, and then spore jumped away directly to the next battle, because I'm apparently watching a Star Trek Online let's play instead of a Star Trek show.
And even that's not a fair comparison for either, because the STO player would be actively mitigating incoming fire and not just getting peppered with shit.
BUT WC4 is one of my favorite games ever so as a whole the series comes out in the wash, more or less
Oh my god, I hadn't looked that up. How on earth did anyone think giving money to the writer of critical-and-financial-radioactive-sewage The Dark Tower was a good idea?!
Yeah, I've always found the whole "short is better" thing to be silly. Short seasons work really well for some types of stories and not that well for others. Episodic storytelling can really give you time to flesh out characters and let a new normal settle in before you upend everything again with another big episode. A lot of prestige or cargo-cult-prestige or just couldn't-afford-more-episodes television feels like it's fucking upending the applecart every 20 minutes.
To go back to TNG, it's not random that the last shot of the series is the entire cast sitting around a table after-hours. That's what sold the show in the end I think. The characters you came to know. And that's the kind of thing where time really helps.
akiva goldsman is the poster child for mediocre middle-aged white guys who continually fail upwards
Yes, but it was specified (in the tie-in novel, and I think in the game too) that something like 99% of them lived on the homeworld. See also the Romulans and Hobus; yeah, they had other worlds, but none were very populated or important.
But yeah, All Good Things destroys 3 Enterprises, but I only feel the loss of the crews. Generations sees the crash of the Enterprise and I'm only worried about Spot. Beyond does its thing and I have to keep myself from walking out.
Curious
"My God, Bones. What have I done?"
Okay, I started watching this and got pretty hooked until the last half an hour
The author is projecting onto this so hard. The rest of it was pretty good if I'm honest, a lot of passion went into it. But then it gets to that bit and I'm like, what???
Really? Seeing the D crash in generations really made me sad..
When I watch it now, I can't help but echo SF Debris' complaint that the D went out like a chump. They should've at least given the Duras sisters a Vor'cha or had their subterfuge directly damage the warp core.
Search for Spock and Beyond have the best Enterprise death scenes. Search used it to setup one of the best character moments in the series ("What you've always done--turned certain death into a fighting chance to live."), while Beyond had the ship fight to the very last. Both shared good tactical setups as well, so it made sense in-story that the Enterprise lost the fight.
Yeah same here, but I literally did grow up with TOS, and I was already a young adult when I first saw TNG, so that may have something to do with it.
I also spent some years of my life where there was no new Star Trek series at all, only TOS. I saw Wrath of Khan in theaters, though I'm pretty sure I was too young and fell asleep in the middle of it.
Generations chumped both the D and Kirk and as a result, despite it having other okay qualities as a movie, it's the one (next to Nemesis) I'm saltiest about.
It's very much "you had one job."
Anyway, that conjunction RUINED Generations for me, and for 26 years the association in my brain overrides all thoughts on either.
The Odyssey faced the same situation as the Enterprise, and it's solution would have worked for Enterprise, which wasn't facing some new exotic weapons system with no known defense, just the enemy knowing a couple numbers they had in their power to change.
And at worst, Odyssey went down guns afire and heads high. Nary a chump among her crew.
It's sad too because the way Kirk and Picard meet is pretty great. But then the actual fight is terrible.
The Kirk/Picard scene on the horses is so goddamn good is what I'm saying.
I still can't stand Generations because of the shitty Kirk sendoff. Blah blah blah subverting expectations, it's fucking Kirk. Dropping a walkway on him is about the most insulting, least interesting thing you could do with the character. At a minimum, there should've been a flying double-barrelled Kirk Kick involved in a lethal, probably suicidal, over-the-cliff sendoff of Soran. Alternatively, Kirk actually doing something with the Enterprise going down, like dropping it squarely on an incredibly surprised Soran.
Some nutpunch stuff for Picard, too, the twin shock of killing his family and then revealing the deep desire of his heart that I suspect he'd buried even from himself - his personal heaven was an idyllic life at home surrounded by his children.
The movie doesn't really unravel for me until the climax - a poorly done action fight between three senior citizens and Riker embarrassing the name Enterprise.
Sadly, it's common in some media for massively important people to get very ignoble deaths, like in Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
Yeah, same for me. It's actually pretty decent up until that point, and I always thought its cinematography was better than it had any right to be, arguably the best out of all the TNG movies. The failure of the weak climax and ending is rather inevitable though, as the plot just has nowhere else to go. I also always really hated the Picard fantasy family scenes in the nexus, they're this stuffy ass, Victorian hellscape that I just don't see Picard doing, when really what the fantasy would be is his brother's life in the Vineyard, with the beautiful wife and precocious child.
On the macro level Generations fails, but on an individual scene level it gives some truly unique and unforgettable performances, some of the best in Star Trek. Like the entire section in the Nexus with Kirk, or like the one below (the lighting alone is awesome).
edit - if you are salty about it though just read these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_novels#Shatner_concept_series
what, you didn't know William Shatner wrote a series of books where the Romulans revive his dead body with some sort of cloning shenanigans? Where have you even been man.
edit 2 - I forgot, Shatner can't leave well enough alone and wrote a sequel trilogy to these books that start with Kirk and Picard digging on Bajor together for who knows what after the Dominion War is over to have some R&R
edit 3 - while I'm going here's another dumb book written around the same time! Captain Fraser after warping through time got to be the Captain to take the new Enterprise out on a shakedown cruise before Picard takes the ship, what bad thing could possibly happen?! why not!
what I'm saying is, STAR TREK BOOKS!
look at all this hot cover art! so hot
It wasn't the lack of spectacle, it was the total lock of character involvement. Kirk had fuck-all to do with how he died other than being their to stop Soran. Spock's death was him slowly cooking to death inside the reactor room with absolutely zero spectacle during the moment, but the results were entirely due to what he chose to do.
All they really needed was to have Kirk get killed in a way that resulted from him directly doing something to stop Soran while knowing it would kill him. Kirk wasn't the type to get caught up in whether or not his death would be glorious enough, just whether or not they stopped Soran.
Hell, keep the falling walkway bit, just make it so that Kirk sees the walkway coming down, fires off a quick look at Picard, and then grabs a surprised Soran in a bear hug to keep him trapped beneath the falling debris. Kirk goes down the same way as before, but now it's not some random pointless crap that feels more like the director forgot Kirk made it to the ending and they had to dump him somehow.
Yes, yes, yes. I can believe Romulan and cloning shenanigans, they are stupidly tacky like that. The important question IMO is whether there is a rift to a parallel dimension that allows intrepid detective Jake Cartigan to enter Starfleet and become the second awesomest Captain besides Kirk?
"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
"Mr. Shatner, we're out of nouns."
"Can we add... CAPTAIN'S to the front of them?"
"I... guess..."
It seems like it'll be having a lot of fun with Trek staples. Goofy rubber suit aliens, holodecks, heartfelt interpersonal relationships mixed with scifi pulp nonsense. Pat from SBF pointed out a view that I pretty much agree with, that Next Generation specifically is just work-sitcom with occasional intergalactic battles and weird drug fever dreams. I laughed at the trailer, it seems like it'll be a good time. Star Trek needs to get the pomp kicked out of it every once in a while and embrace how dumb it is.