Comment on Y'all can lose your mind over Kevin all you want. I'm just staring at this man...
TWeaK@lemm.ee 8 months agoSNeW Pike is literally THE redeeming factor of Discovery.
Comment on Y'all can lose your mind over Kevin all you want. I'm just staring at this man...
TWeaK@lemm.ee 8 months agoSNeW Pike is literally THE redeeming factor of Discovery.
Stamets@startrek.website 8 months ago
Doug Jones. Special effects. Visuals. Michelle Yeoh. Acting chops across the board. Bridge Officers getting more screentime. David fucking Cronenberg. Firmly establishing Kelvin timeline. Major LGBTQ+ representation for the first time in Trek (one off episodes don’t count). Una. Sharp increase in humor. The Enterprise. Culber returning. Tig Notaro! THAT Pike episode (You know the one. The big one.) USS Nog. Oded Fehr. Butterfly People (that’s just a personal favorite). Return of Space Cats.
I mean… there’s a lot of redeeming qualities of Discovery. It’s totally fine to not like Discovery but it’s a bit harsh to outright disregard the absolute slew of great things we’ve managed to get out of the show as well.
pimento64@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Suppose I cook you lobster ravioli as served at a Michelin-star restaurant. The filling is a perfect blend of lobster, salmon, egg white, basil, lemon zest, and seasoning. The poaching stock is expertly crafted from roasted lobster shell, carrots, celery, onions, tomato, and lemongrass, then deglazed with brandy, reduced, and strained till it’s perfect. Consider further that the pasta was made fresh by hand, and expertly stuffed, and served with lemon vinaigrette and tomato chutney, all prepared by an expert hand with fresh ingredients. It’s a perfect dish, one that has so many great things going on. It’s a balanced symphony of unique flavors interplaying perfectly.
Oh, except I used cheap, nasty, frozen lobster and it’s still raw. Oops. Are you still going to eat your ravioli anyway? No. It doesn’t matter how many great things are very much still actually happening, there’s no point in eating it now. It’s ruined. All of it.
Bad writing is the raw shellfish of media. It doesn’t matter how good everything else about the show is, because if it’s written badly, everything is ruined. It’s the one thing that can’t be forgiven and taints everything it touches at the source. Good intentions don’t make up for raw shellfish.
USSBurritoTruck@startrek.website 8 months ago
Could you give some examples of bad writing in the show? Feel free to skip the overwrought metaphor.
pimento64@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Well there goes 90% of the show, so no, you get the long version now.
We’re both standing in the middle of a soundstage (lit like a European discotheque), and you whisper-talk at me at a volume 0.01% louder than the score:
“I’d love to hear some of these examples of bad writing in the show! You can feel free to skip all of the overwrought metaphors.”
and I respond
“Well if I skip the ‘overwrought metaphors’, I seriously doubt I’ll have anything left to talk about!” then you say something about how hard this is on you emotionally, I quietly affirm that I’m here for you, then you bitterly reject it, and then I pinch off a pithy-sounding bon mot that’s actually nonsense, and walk off, leaving you standing stock-still in the grip of Powerful Emotions. Then we repeat all of this six more times, taking breaks for vomit-inducing scenes where 15,000 suicidally depressed animators shove every single item in the effects library onto the screen.
But seriously, I know you’re just sea lioning. It’s not possible to ask that question in good faith. Imagine if I snottily asked you to give me an example of bad writing in 1994’s It’s Pat, you would tell me “uh, fucking everything, piss off” and you’d be right to.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 8 months ago
It’s a good show overall, but in too many ways it doesn’t feel like Starfleet. I see it as more of a modern teeny sci-fi show with a Star Trek theme.
Stamets@startrek.website 8 months ago
Starfleet, and Star Trek, do not have an singular feeling or vibe and honestly this criticism doesn’t hold any legs once you start getting into it. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but every series (with the exception of TNG and VOY) all have their own individual themes and vibes. TOS is very campy while the TOS movies swing from campy to outright war, hostilities and loss. TNG (and VOY) are primarily explorative and philosophical while having their own episodes of strangeness. DS9’s entire theme is built around hostility and hatred between races that blows up into a full on war. Enterprise combines a variety of different themes from other shows while tackling the hardships of trying something for the first time. Not a single one of them share the exact same vibe across them all. They do share the same ideals, however, and Discovery is included in that. Just because the show focuses more on action/flashy scenes than others doesn’t mean that it isn’t Star Trek and it doesn’t diminish those traits which run integral to the entire show. The core concepts of sacrifice for the good of all, hope, the quest for peace, wanting a better future, trying to do what’s best for all and (arguably most importantly) personal growth.
As for ‘teeny sci-fi show’, why? The show outright tackles some pretty harsh subject matter and brutal decisions.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I have to strongly disagree with your premise there. Star Trek and Starfleet do have a singular underlying theme throughout, as defined by Gene Roddenberry. Yes, each series is different, but there is a thread throughout that binds them, a code of morals that someone in the crew always brings everyone back to every episode, even if a character strays. Even the other species have their traits that generally stay consistent. This maybe started to diminish with DS9 and Voyager, after Roddenberry passed, however others don’t quite grab a hold of that thread well at all - specifically Enterprise and Discovery. The J J Abrams films also somewhat, although they follow TOS closely enough that it still fits.
It’s not the action/flashy scenes (which were never what made Star Trek great, and frankly HDR and bloom are all too often overdone these days, like if Michael Bay did lens flare), it’s the interactions between the characters. And overall it’s a feeling, something that’s really hard to put into words, but recognisable when it’s there.
Again, the interactions between the characters. You’ll have to forgive me for not having it fresh in my memory, I haven’t seen Discovery for a while (dropped Sky TV and with that lost the only device logged into my mum’s Netflix) but generally to me it felt like most other CBS shows in the way characters interact, and how so many of them focus on hooking up with each other to the detriment of their duties. It’s cheap and lazy drama, in my eyes. SNW even still has a little of this around Spock, but in general it feels like CBS finally listened and relaxed on the reins a little bit, allowing it to be a “proper” Trek show.
You did bring up a bunch of things in your previous comment that make me want to go back and re-watch Discovery, though, so I’ll be doing that soon.
Because I was speaking in hyperbole.