we saw Wesely grow dilithium as part of a high school science project.
Wow, what a significant development - which episode was that?
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hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I gave discovery a chance. I ended up quitting around the third season.
It wasn’t just that it was bad. It was how it was bad. 90s trek did an extremely good job at discussing important and relatable concepts through the lens of sci-fi. It also did a great job of introducing us to fairly whacky and diverse ideas that made space seem vast and unknowable.
Discovery seemed to abandon a lot of that. It’s kinda there on the surface, but under further inspection it falls apart. The discussion of serious topics was extremely shallow to the point where it felt low effort. The entire world seems to revolve around what the main characters are doing, which makes the entire setting feel small. A lot of the justification for this was spending that time on better character development, but when I stopped watching every character except Saru felt sort of underdeveloped.
Not to mention it does things that made me feel like that writers either didn’t know or didn’t care about previous star trek TV shows. Those Klingons neither looked nor acted like Klingons. Most of the discovery crew don’t act like Starfleet officers. I finally lost it at the Burn. I guess it’s technically canon, but it really doesn’t feel that way. We saw multiple different types of FTL methods in 90s trek, and we saw Wesely grow dilithium as part of a high school science project. Plus the idea of there being one element the entire galaxy uses for Warp travel, again, makes the entire setting feel extremely small.
Finally, I feel like Discovery was being reviewed by people who were more interested in propagating the culture war than watching Star Trek. I remember reading articles gushing about how Burnham was the first black captain. Or how Tilly breaks the mold because all other major female characters in Trek were more stereotypical women. Or how the negative reaction to Discovery was from bigoted fans too fragile to watch a show that doesn’t mostly consist of cis straight white men.
The last part was the most infuriating. It’s incredibly obvious they were toning down a lot of what I star trek to appeal to the mass market. Fine. I’ve watched a lot of mid sci-fi. I watched all three JJ Abrams Star Trek movies, the first two sequel star wars movies, Dark Matter before it got good, etc. However it’s infuriating being attacked for it.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 1 year ago
hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t know the number off the top of my head.
The plot revolves around a wargames scenario. There is for some reason an alien race that is really good at war strategies. There is an advisor from that race on the enterprise.
The advisor is a massive dick. However he’s also somewhat legit. He beats data at some strategy game.
The enterprise is set to fight a decommissioned federation ship. Half the crew comes over there. It’s led by Riker. Wesely is also over there. He snuck his dilithium science project aboard. He tells Riker about it. Riker is happy, because it’s enough dilithium to give him like a second of warp. He thinks he can use it in a surprise attack.
The science project itself isn’t super complex. LaForge was mildly impressed when Wesely told him about it, in a way that made it feel like he’s smart for his age. He started the entire project like two weeks ago.
Anyway in the middle of this the ferengi show up. This is one of the times they aren’t complete jokes. They start attacking Riker’s ship because they think it’s valuable or something. The enterprise can’t easily stop them because they are carrying dummy rounds. Riker ends up using the Dilithium is some sort of bluff to beat the ferengis.
The episode ends with Data and the alien strategist playing the game again. The strategist gets upset and rage quits. It’s revealed that Data realized that last time he was playing to win, so this time he was playing to not lose. He basically got the alien into a stalemate.
There are also a million other reasons why the Burn doesn’t make that much sense. The Klingons use Trilithium. The Romulans used a contained singularity. In Voyager we saw a number of potential non-dilithium alternatives. One of them was a glorified slingshot.
There’s also just the thematic implications. Star Trek has always been portrayed as this big diverse galaxy. There are a ton of alien races running around doing weird things that we only grasp the surface of. There are even more alien races we’ll never meet. There are races that have technology beyond our comprehension, and races that are effectively Gods.
I think the writers handwaved the entire thing away so that the Burn technically doesn’t break canon. Just like La’Rell winning the chancellorship is canon. However it feels almost antithetical to what we know about the setting.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 1 year ago
The plot revolves around a wargames scenario. There is for some reason an alien race that is really good at war strategies. There is an advisor from that race on the enterprise.
Ah, that would be “Peak Performance”, in which Wesley has an experiment that has something to do with high-energy plasma reaction with antimatter, and nothing whatsoever to do with growing dilithium. Swing and a miss.
The Klingons use Trilithium.
Strike two - trilithium is an unstable explosive that is used in the engines of exactly no one. The Klingons do use tritium as an intermix, but as you are aware, that simply replaced the role that deuterium plays in Starfleet designs - it has nothing to do with dilithium.
The Romulans used a contained singularity.
This is the closest you’ve come to having something. Of course, there’s exactly zero information on how those drives operate or are manufactured, along with the pesky fact that the Romulans have enslaved an entire race to mine dilithium for them, which is…not something you typically do to obtain a substance that you don’t need. We’ll call it a foul ball.
In Voyager we saw a number of potential non-dilithium alternatives. One of them was a glorified slingshot.
What did we learn about how these alternatives are powered, particularly considering that several of them were plugged into Voyager’s warp core without too much trouble? You get bonus points if you can identify the one that was specifically described as “not antimatter,” which is most likely (but not guaranteed) to exclude dilithium.
So far we’ve got two strikes and two fouls. You’re still at bat.
hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Look you’ve clearly made up your mind. I don’t think there’s anything anyone could do to convince you. You’re talking to me in a way that’s condescending and disrespectful, so I certainly don’t want to be the one to try.
qarbone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That bit about Burnham had me double-checking myself because I’m an affliate Trekkie at best but I remember a character named Sisko who was black and some kind of commanding officer. And I haven’t even watched 20% of available Star Trek content.
hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t know if you’re joking but yes. Benjamin Sisco was a black captain. Janeway was a female captain. You also had other women and minority bridge officers acting in a variety of different ways.
While some elements of the female characters were problematic, I’d argue every single female bridge officers was less of a stereotype than Tilly. I’ve seen some form of the “adorkable nerd who is written as a Mary Sue because she’s clearly a stand in for one of the writers” archetype just about everywhere these days.
qarbone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Nah, I honestly couldn’t remember. I’ve seen like random episodes from Picard and Kirk-era Trek and recently The Lower Decks. It’s absolute jokes when people pave over existing examples, so they can be close to the center of the class photo for the new “thing”.
“We’ve devised this new way of consuming bread: by cutting it into thinner layers!”
hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If you don’t have time to sit down and watch Star Trek go with Voyager. IMO it’s the weakest of 90s Trek, but is still pretty solid.
noobnarski@feddit.de 1 year ago
The older star trek also usually had one story in each episode, and just a little bit of an overarching plot, so much of the time of the episode was actually used to tell a story.
Discovery adopted this soap-like storytelling, where there is one long story broken up into episodes. Each episode has something interesting at the start, then just a lot of filler, and when it finally starts to get interesting again the episode is over and they spoil half of the next episode with the “coming next” segment.
So instead of making something people want to watch because its interesting, they just manipulate you to watch it because they string you along.
Picard does the same, but at least they have some interesting content in the middle of an episode sometimes.
hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah I think their insistence on a low episode serial format is a huge part of the problem. DS9 is a great example of how narrative storytelling can work in Star Trek, but it only came after they did years of character development and world building.
I think SNW S2 has done a good job taking a step back and just having individual episodes that let the setting and character grow. “Under the Cloak of War” was one of the best Trek episodes of all time.
noobnarski@feddit.de 8 months ago
Yes, Strange New Worlds is the best new Star Trek imo
JWBananas@startrek.website 1 year ago
we saw Wesely grow dilithium as part of a high school science project
We also saw Wesley mention that the Klingons had joined the federation.
Things change.
bi_tux@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I think it’s really nice how tng and ds9 fit so well together, they could be the same show
pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
They do fit well together, but they are very much not the same show. They are like two differently shaped puzzle pieces.
Closer to the end TNG did get more character development, though. I wonder how much of that is thanks to Babylon 5. I remember the end of TNG, beginning of DS9, and B5 all being very close together.