Star Trek: One More Time

[longknife]

I watched it and confirmed my decision not to pay one red cent to view another. It stunk and was expectedly anti-Trump.

 

[Desperado]

Not sure but it doesn't look good. Think they may have gone to the well once too many times, It would have been better if they remade FireFly or BattleStar.

 

[Synthaholic]

Will you watch?

I'll probably watch the opener out of curiosity but won't pay money to CBS to see the series. The premise is not fresh beyond the lady Captain and XO.

'Star Trek: Discovery' to Tackle Trump-Era Political Divide

I'd rather stab myself in the eye with a rusty icepick.

Yeah, I'd rather you do that, too.

 

[Synthaholic]

I watched it and I liked it.

 

[Synthaholic]

Did anyone notice that Sarek was played by the guy who played Mayor Theo Galavan on 'Gotham'?

 

[BulletProof]

The new series sucks. It's suppose to take place before ST:TOS, but the ship looks like a better fit for a much later time period. All in all, the show pays little attention to the Star Trek canon. Also, the show has too much visual flash and confusion, courtesy of cheap CGI.

There are no white males in major roles. There's a brief appearance of a white male high-ranking officer. He is a subtly dumb racist who gets killed. A white male also has a very minor role on the bridge.

I wonder who the homosexual will turn out to be. It's like a game of Where's Waldo.

 

[Harry Dresden]

the show kinda sucked for many reasons......the early federation crews did not have many non-humans on board in that era.....they did not have the holographic technology to communicate with HQ like they showed.......Kirk in his first 5 year mission had no idea what the Real Klingons looked like,but yet Archer and these people knew.....and speaking of the Klingons.. why the fuck did they butcher the Klingons like that?.....

 

[toobfreak]

The new series sucks. It's suppose to take place before ST:TOS, but the ship looks like a better fit for a much later time period. All in all, the show pays little attention to the Star Trek canon. Also, the show has too much visual flash and confusion, courtesy of cheap CGI.

There are no white males in major roles. There's a brief appearance of a white male high-ranking officer. He is a subtly dumb racist who gets killed. A white male also has a very minor role on the bridge.

I wonder who the homosexual will turn out to be. It's like a game of Where's Waldo.

Agreed.

It wasn’t any fix for me. I value quality over newness, and fell apart this episode for several obvious reasons:

A). It was boring as snot. There are no actors of any great quality or significance whatsoever. Not even a minor star. The Cage and all the other pilots for other series were 10X better! Better written, more interesting. Had Gene presented this in 1964, ST never would have even gotten off the ground. There was literally nothing of interest until the last 5 minutes! Before that, the scene where the Enterprise came down out of the clouds was pretty good. Not a great, but still a pretty interesting, militant starship design.

B). Watching the episode, unless I blinked, it never let on to the viewer where in time this was! In the past of ST:TOS, in the future, no star date or anything. The main but vague indicator was a young Sarek who doesn't look like Sarek talking to a child Spock who appeared black. What, were there even 3 or 4 white people in the entire story line? Some that were barely had a scene. The whole thing came off as anti-white, anti-male.

C). It seemed to present a very PC universe with a veiled political message aimed at a very young audience rather than those who grew up with Star Trek.

D). The starship now is some sort of Asian name, apparently suiting the Asian captain who isn't even the star of the show? The 1st office is the star? As such, not a whole lot of identifiers to attract ST’s main audience but to draw in a new one.

E). I don’t like being manipulated and the entire episode was obviously written as just a teaser to the greater TV audience to reel people in the last few minutes like little fish as a “to-be-continued-elsewhere” episode so that you would WANT to jump over and sign up to CBS Direct to see what happens next. Apparently CBS is after maximizing its profits by circumventing the entire TV network medium and go straight to the internet, the last way I want to watch TV.

F). Produced by Gene’s son, the kid that didn’t even like his father and was out getting stoned in the 60’s with zero interest in what his dad did or had created, he grew up a bit too late to value and understand Star Trek until his dad was gone. Now in part honor to his father and part opportunity to make a buck, he has lent his name to the show, unfortunately, ol’ Eugene isn’t much of a TV writer/producer and apparently missed what his dad’s vision really had been for the show, and completely misses all the things that his Father meant for Star Trek to be! Discovery has a lot of the FORM of Star Trek, but little of the SUBSTANCE. This never would have been produced under Gene.

G). If this is in the past, both the bridge and display consoles use an entirely unrealistic technology. This ship gives the impression of a bridge at least 4X the size of the original Enterprise’s!

H). In ST:TOS day, you were at least in your late 30’s or 40's before having the training and experience to run a star ship. Kirk, in his early 30's was the youngest Captain there had ever been. Now apparently they are doing it at the age of an ensign in their early 20’s barely out of high school.

All in all, not a whole lot to interest me. I actually thought of turning it off about a quarter / third of the way into it! The show was FAR LESS GOOD than I had thought it would be: dry, humorless, unimaginative. It was a failure at every level to little more than eye candy set in a sci-fi format with a few Star Trek themes. The most interesting aspects were plot vehicles dug up from the original series. No great sci-fi writers anymore, it was poor, shallow fiction mainly borrowing on old themes and ideas for structure. I would only watch it a few more times just to see what happens and to see if it ever actually develops to an interesting, better level. Sooner or later, it will eventually come out on TV or somewhere that I can see without being a ‘Direct’ member. I can wait for that. As it stands, I can only hope that the vast majority of potential viewers DO NOT sign up to Direct so that CBS can look at last night’s viewership and wonder where they all went! That and the general structure of the show are largely a failure, as is “Eugene Enterprises.” Star Trek is supposed to be about GOOD science fiction with a strong message; this was neither.

 

[Synthaholic]

There are no white males in major roles.

And this concerns you . . . why?

 

[Synthaholic]

Boy, what a bunch of whiny snowflakes.

 

[JoeB131]

I watched it and confirmed my decision not to pay one red cent to view another. It stunk and was expectedly anti-Trump.

I think it was kind of a stretch to see an "anti-Trump" message in there. So the Klingons wanted to unify their shattered empire. It wasn't like they were all wearing red hats that said, "Make Q'onoS Great Again"

Ah, remember the good old days when the Klingons were a clumsy metaphor for the USSR?

but you are right. Definitely not worth watching.

 

[JoeB131]

A). It was boring as snot.

Agreed

B). Watching the episode, unless I blinked, it never let on to the viewer where in time this was!

I think they made this clear it takes place around 2250, which is before TOS and after Enterprise.

C). It seemed to present a very PC universe with a veiled political message aimed at a very young audience rather than those who grew up with Star Trek.

Meh, I think this is a case of you seeing something you want to see there.

I should also point out that the purpose here would be to introduce Trek to a new audience. The original Trek Audience is old and we don't buy stuff.

E). I don’t like being manipulated and the entire episode was obviously written as just a teaser to the greater TV audience to reel people in the last few minutes like little fish as a “to-be-continued-elsewhere” episode so that you would WANT to jump over and sign up to CBS Direct to see what happens next.

Agreed, this was very slimy on the part of CBS/Viacom. They could have produced this show for CW and gotten a respectable audience, but they are trying to milk Trek fans for more money.

F). Produced by Gene’s son, the kid that didn’t even like his father and was out getting stoned in the 60’s with zero interest in what his dad did or had created

Meh, I can't blame Roddenberry's kid for that when Dad was just as bad about that sort of thing. This "Roddenberry as a visionary" crap was really a lot of self-promotion.

G). If this is in the past, both the bridge and display consoles use an entirely unrealistic technology.

Maybe, but I don't think folks would accept the cardboard sets of the OS today.

H). In ST:TOS day, you were at least in your late 30’s or 40's before having the training and experience to run a star ship.

except Michelle Yoeh is 55, so I don't have a problem with this. Good Lord, she's the same age I am?

Yeah, I know, it's really hard to tell how old Asian women are.

 

[toobfreak]

[I think they made this clear it takes place around 2250, which is before TOS and after Enterprise.

Yeah, I probably missed it squirming in my seat as I thought how I had looked forward to this show all week and it turned out to be unbelievably dull. I mean, they spent a quarter of the show wandering in the desert (I missed the reason why) scrawling out a PERFECT star trek logo in the sand while determining the arrival of a storm down to the second, which later turned out to be wrong? And why did the ship have to come down so low? No transporters, steamed up windows or what? I saved it on my DVR and will watch it again for the things I missed as I was mainly busy studying the production of the show (I have studied television production for decades) rather than listening to the lines.

C). It seemed to present a very PC universe with a veiled political message aimed at a very young audience rather than those who grew up with Star Trek.

Meh, I think this is a case of you seeing something you want to see there.

I'm not talking about any Trump parallels, I agree that I didn't see that, I was speaking more of the choices for gender and race; it seemed to closely parallel the world that schools teach these days, and this show just a reaffirmation of the same themes. There were hardly any whites! And few men in minor and fleeting roles. I guess CBS has forgotten that Sci-Fi is mainly a venue for guys.

I should also point out that the purpose here would be to introduce Trek to a new audience. The original Trek Audience is old and we don't buy stuff.

Are you kidding? I'm a master model builder and have over $400 invested in parts alone with more to buy just for a model of the Enterprise, and am looking at buying a couple hundred dollars more worth of books (mainly on the original series).

Meh, I can't blame Roddenberry's kid for that when Dad was just as bad about that sort of thing. This "Roddenberry as a visionary" crap was really a lot of self-promotion.

I don't think so. Gene was an LA cop who worked his way into TV writing and wrote and produced many episodes and shows before Star Trek, with Star Trek being a revolution in television and science fiction with a very special message for the future far ahead of its time that has endeared the show to fans for over half a century.

Maybe, but I don't think folks would accept the cardboard sets of the OS today.

No, but it makes the original Enterprise Bridge look a far step back in engineering. Part of the problem with them trying to go back in time. They would be better to continue the story forward in time, but that is a LOT harder to do on many levels.

except Michelle Yoeh is 55, so I don't have a problem with this. Good Lord, she's the same age I am? Yeah, I know, it's really hard to tell how old Asian women are.

You mean Tan Sri Dato' Seri Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng? ;^) I never heard of her, don't know where they found her and would have never guessed she was 55. She's from Malaysia and the set was too dark to make out much of her other than she was apparently "asian." I saw no endearing quality of anyone on the bridge that would make me want to continue watching the show.

 

[BulletProof]

I think it was kind of a stretch to see an "anti-Trump" message in there. So the Klingons wanted to unify their shattered empire. It wasn't like they were all wearing red hats that said, "Make Q'onoS Great Again"

You missed the whole speech by the Klingon cult leader about racial purity, etc.? In pre-Trump Trek, Klingons were only a warrior race, not a racist race (other than thinking other races were soft).

And, did you miss the theme about making Q'onoS Great Again, unifying the empire, even if there weren't red hats involved?

 

[JoeB131]

You mean Tan Sri Dato' Seri Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng? ;^) I never heard of her, don't know where they found her and would have never guessed she was 55. She's from Malaysia and the set was too dark to make out much of her other than she was apparently "asian." I saw no endearing quality of anyone on the bridge that would make me want to continue watching the show.

Neither did I.

Usually, they spend most of a first episode introducing the characters, which really wasn't done here. Later episodes are going to have gay character introduced, which I know will drive the wingnuts into a tizzy.

They aren't even going to get around to introducing the ship for a while.

 

[BulletProof]

I saw no endearing quality of anyone on the bridge that would make me want to continue watching the show.

That's a big problem with the show. I don't see many Trek fans being eager to follow the adventures of Michael Burnham (the main character, a woman with a man's name). Political Correctness aside, she's not very likable or compelling. I'm sure her character will be tweaked to make her more likable, but they'll never make her more compelling.

 

[toobfreak]

I saw no endearing quality of anyone on the bridge that would make me want to continue watching the show.

That's a big problem with the show. I don't see many Trek fans being eager to follow the adventures of Michael Burnham (the main character, a woman with a man's name). Political Correctness aside, she's not very likable or compelling. I'm sure her character will be tweaked to make her more likable, but they'll never make her more compelling.

The missing magic is Gene Roddenberry's keen talent for building chemistry and camaraderie between key characters. It makes the characters real. TOS and TNG had it in spades. Not so much for DS9, Voyager and Enterprise, far worse for Discovery.

 

[Montrovant]

I thought the show was pretty good. While the main character was too much a copy of Spock, that might work for a younger audience that isn't as familiar with Spock. She has the similar Vulcan-but-struggles-with-emotion vibe, but instead of actually being Vulcan she was raised by them.

Bryan Fuller has never made an action-packed show. Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, and Pushing Daisies were all quirky comedies, and Hannibal was a slow, tense drama/thriller. I wasn't expecting this show to be full of action, yet it had plenty. Calling it boring because of the pacing sounds like a person who should watch the reboot movies.

I hate how changeable the Klingon species has been over the course of the various series.

There was too much spoken Klingon with subtitles throughout. I'm not a big fan of subtitles, it forces a person to change and narrow focus from the entire show to the words, I think it was over used.

The court scene at the end was entirely overdone, with the lighting hiding the faces of the judges, and backlighting Burnham. I actually expected it to be a dream sequence.

Those phasers looked pretty old-school, I liked that. The out-of-date transporter was a nice touch. There are still problems with the way current visual technology makes the show look more hi-tech, but I think they did a decent job of trying to give it a time-period correct feel.

I'm not willing to pay the monthly fee for CBS All Access to watch this show. However, if I have an opportunity to watch it; if someone I know gets All Access, or if it comes out on Netflix or something like that eventually, or someone gets the DVD of the season, I will certainly watch it. This is the first time since TNG I've felt like a Trek show might be worth watching more than the first episode, but it didn't wow me so much I'd pay a monthly fee for it.

 

[Synthaholic]

I'm baffled by some of these responses. I didn't find it boring or slow.

Funny how in this thread is the opinion that the movie reboot is all space cowboy action with no contemplation, and there's also the opinion that the new show is all thought, no action.

 

[JoeB131]

I'm baffled by some of these responses. I didn't find it boring or slow.

Funny how in this thread is the opinion that the movie reboot is all space cowboy action with no contemplation, and there's also the opinion that the new show is all thought, no action.

I don't think the show had a lot of thought. My problem with it was the pacing.

Also, on principle, I really don't like what CBS is doing with this show. "Here's half a story. Pay us a bunch of money if you want to see the rest of it! "