> @phoenixc#0738 said:
> At the end of season one they decided to quickly cancel the Klingon war with a near deus ex machina easy-button ending, then when they started up next season they did so with a large abrupt shift in story, highly significant changes in supporting cast (mainly Pike nearly stealing the show, and the heavy emphasis on Spock), and overall feel and style.
>
> Some argue that it was not a full classic shark jump because Burnham remained the main character despite all the changes around her, and there is definitely some merit to that view, but technically a shark jump in the sloppy way it is used nowadays does not necessarily require a change of main character, it can be a significant and unforeshadowed sudden shift in their circumstances coupled with other changes as long as there is a major shift in the way the story feels from one side of the jump to the other.
>
> Then at the second-to-third season join there is the even bigger sharkjump to the future.
>
> And yes, it is a sort of gray area between classic shark jump and anthology so it could be argued either way.
So “jumping the shark” is when a show’s rating lag and they decide to do some sort of event to drum up ratings. It gets its name from an episode of Happy Days where The Fonze jumps over a shark. It’s not about a main character change. Lots of things lead to a main character change. For Seaquest it was because Scheider didn’t want to do the type of show the producers and network wanted so he left. It’s also not adding characters and changing things. By your definition when Riker grew a beard was TNG jumping the shark, which it’s not.
Discovery’s season one ending wasn’t a “shark jump” or even a “Deus Ex Machina”. Deus Ex machina is when something comes out of left field and solves the problem. Burnham’s decision to not blow up the Klingon Homeworld is a mirror to her decision to fire on the Klingons first in the pilot episode. Had Q showed up and snapped his fingers and everything was solved that would be Deus Ex Machina.
Jumping the shark can actually be several different kinds of damage control. And the shark jump in Happy Days did indeed herald a change of focus, the show was about the Cunningham family up until then and it shifted to be about Fonzie as the main character after that. It isn't actually necessary to get rid of people and replace them with others, it can be all the same people if the rest of it happens.
Also, if you didn't notice I did mention that it was in the fuzzy area where a classic shark jump and season-sequelitis (which planning a show season by season instead of multi-season arcs sometimes causes) overlap. Whatever you prefer to call it the result is the same: a very choppy lack of flow where every season almost looks/feels like they belong to different shows. It is quite a bit like Blake's Seven in that regard (and a few others).
Also, I said "near deus ex machina". I am aware that it was not completely out of nowhere (though as plots go it was close), but the writing has a very heavy sense that they plotted themselves into a corner they could not get out of fast enough to suit them so they thought up a deus ex machina just far enough ahead of time to feather in slightly, but only slightly. And yes, they could have planned it well before hand, but it is irrelevant since if that is the case the bungled it to the point were it gave that impression anyway.
No matter how you look at it, pulling a Star Wars like planet killer bomb out of their hindquarters and planting it on the Klingon homeworld like they did is a form of deus ex machina, especially the way it forced peace between the nations at the absolute height of the hostilities AND unity for the Klingons in one fell swoop.
The Discovery make up team did really well on some of the races, while Klingons were a mixed bag, they did really well on the Andorians, Tellarites, Terrans, Kelpians, Saurian and Barzans I hope we get those DSC redesigned races as well as Kalpians added to the playable roster.
The Discovery make up team did really well on some of the races, while Klingons were a mixed bag, they did really well on the Andorians, Tellarites, Terrans, Kelpians, Saurian and Barzans I hope we get those DSC redesigned races as well as Kalpians added to the playable roster.
The DIS-Andorians and Tellarites not yet being playable is a missed opportunity. Yup, we barely see them on S1/S2 of the show, but they're still founding-races of the federation.
The DIS-klingons finally being playable is good.
Barzans... were originally throwaway-aliens of the week and seeing one as a major cast-member was a pleasant surprise.
Kelpien... Saru is of course the exception, given the timeframe of the federation DIS-start it sadly doesn't make sense as a playable race.
The Discovery make up team did really well on some of the races, while Klingons were a mixed bag, they did really well on the Andorians, Tellarites, Terrans, Kelpians, Saurian and Barzans I hope we get those DSC redesigned races as well as Kalpians added to the playable roster.
The DIS-Andorians and Tellarites not yet being playable is a missed opportunity. Yup, we barely see them on S1/S2 of the show, but they're still founding-races of the federation.
The DIS-klingons finally being playable is good.
Barzans... were originally throwaway-aliens of the week and seeing one as a major cast-member was a pleasant surprise.
Kelpien... Saru is of course the exception, given the timeframe of the federation DIS-start it sadly doesn't make sense as a playable race.
Yeah but with Kelpians you can add them to the main Starfleet roster instead of DSC since they joined the Federation in the 25th century and we should also have Discovery Aenar since all Aenar are basically albino and blind Andorians appearance wise aside from the skin tone and eyes you wouldn't have to change the model much.
At the end of season one they decided to quickly cancel the Klingon war with a near deus ex machina easy-button ending...
To be fair... it was clearly an act of desperation on the part of the Federation to even attempt that, and Discovery's unique capabilities allowed for it.
There's something similar in the game Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, where you pretty much do something similar to what the Federation threatened to do. Deploy a special bomb to take advantage of a planet's nature.
In WC3, its pretty much the tail end of the Terran-Kilrathi war, that had been raging for maybe 30 years by this point. Confed is losing. The player is assigned to TCS Victory, an older carrier, and ends up tapped for a desperate plan to win the war for the Confederation. First up was Admiral Tolwyn's TCS Behemoth, which is basically a mini Death Star. Kilrathi infiltrator ensured the incomplete dreadnought was destroyed. Then the player learns about his old friend Taggart's plan, which involves something called the Temblor Bomb, a weapon specifically designed for use on the geologically unstable planet Kilrah. The plan is for a starfighter to drop The Bomb into a designated fault, and let the planet literally shake itself apart. Plan works (canon ending), taking out not only Imperial leadership, but the majority of the fleet that was massing ahead of a major strike against Earth that would have been the death blow of the Confederation. The Kilrathi promptly surrender to the player character, Luke Skywa... I mean Col. Christopher Blair.
(Mark Hamil plays Blair in WC3, 4, and Prophecy.)
> @phoenixc#0738 said:
> At the end of season one they decided to quickly cancel the Klingon war with a near deus ex machina easy-button ending, then when they started up next season they did so with a large abrupt shift in story, highly significant changes in supporting cast (mainly Pike nearly stealing the show, and the heavy emphasis on Spock), and overall feel and style.
>
> Some argue that it was not a full classic shark jump because Burnham remained the main character despite all the changes around her, and there is definitely some merit to that view, but technically a shark jump in the sloppy way it is used nowadays does not necessarily require a change of main character, it can be a significant and unforeshadowed sudden shift in their circumstances coupled with other changes as long as there is a major shift in the way the story feels from one side of the jump to the other.
>
> Then at the second-to-third season join there is the even bigger sharkjump to the future.
>
> And yes, it is a sort of gray area between classic shark jump and anthology so it could be argued either way.
So “jumping the shark” is when a show’s rating lag and they decide to do some sort of event to drum up ratings. It gets its name from an episode of Happy Days where The Fonze jumps over a shark. It’s not about a main character change. Lots of things lead to a main character change. For Seaquest it was because Scheider didn’t want to do the type of show the producers and network wanted so he left. It’s also not adding characters and changing things. By your definition when Riker grew a beard was TNG jumping the shark, which it’s not.
Discovery’s season one ending wasn’t a “shark jump” or even a “Deus Ex Machina”. Deus Ex machina is when something comes out of left field and solves the problem. Burnham’s decision to not blow up the Klingon Homeworld is a mirror to her decision to fire on the Klingons first in the pilot episode. Had Q showed up and snapped his fingers and everything was solved that would be Deus Ex Machina.
Jumping the shark can actually be several different kinds of damage control. And the shark jump in Happy Days did indeed herald a change of focus, the show was about the Cunningham family up until then and it shifted to be about Fonzie as the main character after that. It isn't actually necessary to get rid of people and replace them with others, it can be all the same people if the rest of it happens.
Also, if you didn't notice I did mention that it was in the fuzzy area where a classic shark jump and season-sequelitis (which planning a show season by season instead of multi-season arcs sometimes causes) overlap. Whatever you prefer to call it the result is the same: a very choppy lack of flow where every season almost looks/feels like they belong to different shows. It is quite a bit like Blake's Seven in that regard (and a few others).
Also, I said "near deus ex machina". I am aware that it was not completely out of nowhere (though as plots go it was close), but the writing has a very heavy sense that they plotted themselves into a corner they could not get out of fast enough to suit them so they thought up a deus ex machina just far enough ahead of time to feather in slightly, but only slightly. And yes, they could have planned it well before hand, but it is irrelevant since if that is the case the bungled it to the point were it gave that impression anyway.
No matter how you look at it, pulling a Star Wars like planet killer bomb out of their hindquarters and planting it on the Klingon homeworld like they did is a form of deus ex machina, especially the way it forced peace between the nations at the absolute height of the hostilities AND unity for the Klingons in one fell swoop.
But it's not a Deus ex Machina or a near Deus ex Machina. It has to be impossible or improbable. Are you saying it's impossible or improbable that Star Fleet would have an explosive device? Are you saying it's impossible or improbable that Star Fleet would have a device capable of destroying a planet (especially in a Star Fleet that General Order 24: An order to destroy all life on an entire planet, given only if a commanding officer deems that a society poses a clear and present danger to the Federation.) exists? Did the bomb by itself forced peace or was it the decision to give it to L'rell what caused the peace?
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
> @phoenixc#0738 said:
> At the end of season one they decided to quickly cancel the Klingon war with a near deus ex machina easy-button ending, then when they started up next season they did so with a large abrupt shift in story, highly significant changes in supporting cast (mainly Pike nearly stealing the show, and the heavy emphasis on Spock), and overall feel and style.
>
> Some argue that it was not a full classic shark jump because Burnham remained the main character despite all the changes around her, and there is definitely some merit to that view, but technically a shark jump in the sloppy way it is used nowadays does not necessarily require a change of main character, it can be a significant and unforeshadowed sudden shift in their circumstances coupled with other changes as long as there is a major shift in the way the story feels from one side of the jump to the other.
>
> Then at the second-to-third season join there is the even bigger sharkjump to the future.
>
> And yes, it is a sort of gray area between classic shark jump and anthology so it could be argued either way.
So “jumping the shark” is when a show’s rating lag and they decide to do some sort of event to drum up ratings. It gets its name from an episode of Happy Days where The Fonze jumps over a shark. It’s not about a main character change. Lots of things lead to a main character change. For Seaquest it was because Scheider didn’t want to do the type of show the producers and network wanted so he left. It’s also not adding characters and changing things. By your definition when Riker grew a beard was TNG jumping the shark, which it’s not.
Discovery’s season one ending wasn’t a “shark jump” or even a “Deus Ex Machina”. Deus Ex machina is when something comes out of left field and solves the problem. Burnham’s decision to not blow up the Klingon Homeworld is a mirror to her decision to fire on the Klingons first in the pilot episode. Had Q showed up and snapped his fingers and everything was solved that would be Deus Ex Machina.
Jumping the shark can actually be several different kinds of damage control. And the shark jump in Happy Days did indeed herald a change of focus, the show was about the Cunningham family up until then and it shifted to be about Fonzie as the main character after that. It isn't actually necessary to get rid of people and replace them with others, it can be all the same people if the rest of it happens.
Also, if you didn't notice I did mention that it was in the fuzzy area where a classic shark jump and season-sequelitis (which planning a show season by season instead of multi-season arcs sometimes causes) overlap. Whatever you prefer to call it the result is the same: a very choppy lack of flow where every season almost looks/feels like they belong to different shows. It is quite a bit like Blake's Seven in that regard (and a few others).
Also, I said "near deus ex machina". I am aware that it was not completely out of nowhere (though as plots go it was close), but the writing has a very heavy sense that they plotted themselves into a corner they could not get out of fast enough to suit them so they thought up a deus ex machina just far enough ahead of time to feather in slightly, but only slightly. And yes, they could have planned it well before hand, but it is irrelevant since if that is the case the bungled it to the point were it gave that impression anyway.
No matter how you look at it, pulling a Star Wars like planet killer bomb out of their hindquarters and planting it on the Klingon homeworld like they did is a form of deus ex machina, especially the way it forced peace between the nations at the absolute height of the hostilities AND unity for the Klingons in one fell swoop.
But it's not a Deus ex Machina or a near Deus ex Machina. It has to be impossible or improbable. Are you saying it's impossible or improbable that Star Fleet would have an explosive device? Are you saying it's impossible or improbable that Star Fleet would have a device capable of destroying a planet (especially in a Star Fleet that General Order 24: An order to destroy all life on an entire planet, given only if a commanding officer deems that a society poses a clear and present danger to the Federation.) exists? Did the bomb by itself forced peace or was it the decision to give it to L'rell what caused the peace?
A Deus ex Machina is more about the writers than the characters in the story (though obviously it effects both), it is when the writers write themselves into a corner and cannot figure out how to pull the story out of it (or in this case how to pull the story out in only two segments plus a few minutes of addition to a third (at the end of 13). It is a plotting level issue, not really an in-setting issue.
All signs point to the season originally ending with episode 13, the standard half-season length "season" commonly used by cable-only series, most likely either at the point they went into the spore network (as a cliff-hanger) or just after they came out and were in the "where are we" phase and probably a short hook for the next season (in fact, they may not have even added anything to the end of 13, the next season may have been meant to start with Cornwall taking over but go in a different direction with the war going on for at least another season or more).
Then late in the production phase they announced that they were extending the season by two segments, and the idea that they were executing a damage control maneuver by doing that is further supported by the fact that while everything else was foreshadowed to a fair thee well nothing about segments 14 and 15 was.
As for the technological thing, sure they could do General Order 24 easily enough. According to Roddenberry, GO24 is a case of destroying all life (or at least intelligent life) on a planet over about twelve hours time. Considering they supposedly have dozens of photon torpedoes and each of those has a warhead strength greater than the Tsar Bomba the USSR detonated if their warhead tanks are filled all the way, along with phasers that can scan along and cause that creeping disintegration seen in a lot of the episodes, that order would be technically quite easy to carry out if the ship did not have to worry about enemy ships the whole time.
A planetary biosphere has some resilience but probably not enough to take that kind of punishment without triggering mass extinctions. A tectonic weapon on the other hand probably would not do what the writers thought it would do, and furthermore the threat is more likely to divide the Klingon houses more than unite them since if the capital world was destroyed or badly damaged it would not do anything much to all the great houses who were based offworld except break the current governmental framework and give them a better shot at landing on the top of the heap as the government reforms.
But as I said, a Deus ex Machina is a writer-side plotting issue reflected into the story. It does not matter if the Federation has the technology for a tectonic world-killer weapon or not any more than whether a Greek god had the ability to fix the stuck plot in ancient times, it is the fact that the writers had to suddenly resort to that literary ejector seat to get out of the corner they put themselves in (or get out in time to have the next season something completely different in the case of DSC).
what is good about discovery. the story, the characters, the sets, basicaly everything.
what is bad about discovery... Enterprise tried so hard to make the ships in it look at least a little like TOS ships with rounded edges and cylindrical nacelles so that it made sence for the style evolution and then Discovery craps all over that by having these weird hyper angular looking ships suddenly right before everything goes back to smooth lines again for TOS and TNG as well as the 29th Century ships we see.
like Enterprise to VOY the ships are all like sleek 1950s and 1960s fighter jets but Discovery it's like they went from sleek fighter jets in Enterprise to space Cybertrucks in Discovery, i'll give them credit where it's due their version of kirks enterprise is my favorite version of it because it is done in the style of the NX and i can imagine it looking like that in the timeline but next to every other ship in discovery it looks so out of place.
i just wish the guys making discovery had at least tried to make the ships look like they fit between ENT and TOS instead of making a new style that destroys all the effort that Enterprise did to make their ships look the way they did
I'm not a discovery fan. I've watched every season hoping for it to get better and it just doesn't. With that said I can see why STO is adding basically exclusively Discovery stuff. It's the active series at the moment so they are trying to capitalize on that. Additionally, there is no new content for the previous shows and they have already released the majority of the ships from past star trek series so it's basically discovery or in house stuff.
and they have already released the majority of the ships from past star trek series so it's basically discovery or in house stuff.
oh really? then where is my warp delta, 22nd century Intrepid and ENT shuttlepod? where are my 22nd century andorian uniforms and ground weapons? and i want the 22nd Century MACO pistol too? and the huge number of Vulcan ships that were in ENT that could be added also there are designs out there for a ENT Era version of the Daedalus class that i would love to have but NOOOOOOOOOO Enterprise never gets any love in this game
The 23rd century warp delta with the detachable saucer science lander section perched on its nose, the McQuarrie ship from Planet of Titans that appeared in the background several times (in TMP and TNG) would be great too.
The DSC Crossfield class was "inspired" by it but only to a fairly small degree and it would be good to have a finished form (the models were way in the background because they were crude proof of concept ones with no detailing or polish) of the original design.
what is good about discovery. the story, the characters, the sets, basicaly everything.
what is bad about discovery... Enterprise tried so hard to make the ships in it look at least a little like TOS ships with rounded edges and cylindrical nacelles so that it made sence for the style evolution and then Discovery craps all over that by having these weird hyper angular looking ships suddenly right before everything goes back to smooth lines again for TOS and TNG as well as the 29th Century ships we see.
like Enterprise to VOY the ships are all like sleek 1950s and 1960s fighter jets but Discovery it's like they went from sleek fighter jets in Enterprise to space Cybertrucks in Discovery, i'll give them credit where it's due their version of kirks enterprise is my favorite version of it because it is done in the style of the NX and i can imagine it looking like that in the timeline but next to every other ship in discovery it looks so out of place.
i just wish the guys making discovery had at least tried to make the ships look like they fit between ENT and TOS instead of making a new style that destroys all the effort that Enterprise did to make their ships look the way they did
I'll give you the sets, even though I think they could have been smarter with them, but the story and the characters? A Klingon rapist and the species becoming obsessed with dead bodies and changing radically between ENT and TNG. CGI for the sake of having CGI, which didn't add anything to the story. 21st Century issues, which would be fine to be addressed in a series set present day, but are quite redundant hundreds of years in the future. The whole "Burn" thing. Time travel deus ex machina. The ship the series was named after not even appearing until episodes in, which the Shinzou a more interesting one. The whole Spore Drive, which still gets to me in the franchise that created Warp Speed. Not using beam phasers, when they were the only franchise to ever, instead of bolts which everyone uses *cough* Star Wars predominantly, in actually everything *cough*. And the characters...I really don't want to make a Disco bashing thing here, but I couldn't disagree with you more, with numerous and many reasons.
what is good about discovery. the story, the characters, the sets, basicaly everything.
what is bad about discovery... Enterprise tried so hard to make the ships in it look at least a little like TOS ships with rounded edges and cylindrical nacelles so that it made sence for the style evolution and then Discovery craps all over that by having these weird hyper angular looking ships suddenly right before everything goes back to smooth lines again for TOS and TNG as well as the 29th Century ships we see.
like Enterprise to VOY the ships are all like sleek 1950s and 1960s fighter jets but Discovery it's like they went from sleek fighter jets in Enterprise to space Cybertrucks in Discovery, i'll give them credit where it's due their version of kirks enterprise is my favorite version of it because it is done in the style of the NX and i can imagine it looking like that in the timeline but next to every other ship in discovery it looks so out of place.
i just wish the guys making discovery had at least tried to make the ships look like they fit between ENT and TOS instead of making a new style that destroys all the effort that Enterprise did to make their ships look the way they did
> @yuki109 said: > what is good about discovery. the story, the characters, the sets, basicaly everything. > > what is bad about discovery... Enterprise tried so hard to make the ships in it look at least a little like TOS ships with rounded edges and cylindrical nacelles so that it made sence for the style evolution and then Discovery craps all over that by having these weird hyper angular looking ships suddenly right before everything goes back to smooth lines again for TOS and TNG as well as the 29th Century ships we see. > > like Enterprise to VOY the ships are all like sleek 1950s and 1960s fighter jets but Discovery it's like they went from sleek fighter jets in Enterprise to space Cybertrucks in Discovery, i'll give them credit where it's due their version of kirks enterprise is my favorite version of it because it is done in the style of the NX and i can imagine it looking like that in the timeline but next to every other ship in discovery it looks so out of place. > > i just wish the guys making discovery had at least tried to make the ships look like they fit between ENT and TOS instead of making a new style that destroys all the effort that Enterprise did to make their ships look the way they did
> @phoenixc#0738 said: > A Deus ex Machina is more about the writers than the characters in the story (though obviously it effects both), it is when the writers write themselves into a corner and cannot figure out how to pull the story out of it (or in this case how to pull the story out in only two segments plus a few minutes of addition to a third (at the end of 13). It is a plotting level issue, not really an in-setting issue. >warhead tanks are filled all the way, along with phasers that can scan along and cause that creeping disintegration seen in a lot of the episodes, that order would be technically quite easy to carry out if the ship did not have to worry about enemy ships the whole time. > > > But as I said, a Deus ex Machina is a writer-side plotting issue reflected into the story. It does not matter if the Federation has the technology for a tectonic world-killer weapon or not any more than whether a Greek god had the ability to fix the stuck plot in ancient times, it is the fact that the writers had to suddenly resort to that literary ejector seat to get out of the corner they put themselves in (or get out in time to have the next season something completely different in the case of DSC).
You are missing the most important part of the definition of Deus Ex Machina. Writers write themselves into a corner and so the most impossible and improbable thing happens to solve the problem. In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the movie is set during the Roman occupation of Judea. Brian falls out of a high window and an alien space craft catches him and puts him on the ground. That’s a Deus Ex Machina. It is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
A Klingon rapist and the species becoming obsessed with dead bodies and changing radically between ENT and TNG. .
Well
A. It wasn't REALLY TRIBBLE since Ash was really Voq, and they were dating.
B. Klingon mummification was mentioned both in ST4, and TNG. And DS9 introduced the Ak'voh ritual, where warriors would guard the body of a slain comrade for several days, so his soul could pass to Sto-vo-kor. Previous Trek had established that soe Klingons held respect for dead bodies, enough to mummify them.
and they have already released the majority of the ships from past star trek series so it's basically discovery or in house stuff.
oh really? then where is my warp delta, 22nd century Intrepid and ENT shuttlepod? where are my 22nd century andorian uniforms and ground weapons? and i want the 22nd Century MACO pistol too? and the huge number of Vulcan ships that were in ENT that could be added also there are designs out there for a ENT Era version of the Daedalus class that i would love to have but NOOOOOOOOOO Enterprise never gets any love in this game
He said majority. Majority =/= all of them. There's a good handful of obscure ships like the one nacelle Wolf 359 ships, and the ENT warp delta, Cryptic hasn't done. But compared to the DSC ships, those would be way back in the line, even further back then the 36 or so ships we have in-game that are playable, but don't have a T6 version.
And ENT got an expansion alongside TOS, its called Agents of Yesterday. Temporal Cold War, Battle of Procyon V, Daniels, Sphere Builders, Na'Khul, Kal Dano's time travel pod, etc. The Elachi are from ENT as well, and we have an array of Xindi, Andorian, Tellarite, and Vulcan, ships from that era.
I wouldn't call AoY much of an ENT expansion, it was firmly grounded in TOS (and did a good job with that) and only had an ENT cameo or two (and three Sphere builder ships along with a few other doodads in the lockbox). It really had more direct interaction with the Kelvin timeline than it did with the ENT series. And yes, they did have some of the temporal cold war, but only a trivial amount of it had anything to do with the ENT end of it even though the material was technically created in ENT.
I know a lot of people talk about how unrealistic it is to have ships from ENT appear in the 25th century, but except for the irradiated shipyard thing for DSC that is generally not what is happening, but rather some of the Federation states (like the Vulcans and Andorians) are still making a few ships using their traditional design aesthetics, (and the Romulans and Klingons have always tended to use the same hull designs for centuries too), so there is a precedent for other ENT-style ships (and there are a lot of good ones yet untouched) to be in the game.
For that matter, Starfleet itself does some of that, the Akira is obviously a modern descendent of the NX aesthetics (from an in-setting point of view of course) and they tend to use a lot of hullshapes like the Excelsior, Miranda, Oberth, etc. for centuries too. In fact, there is one of the inexplicably much hated-and-maligned Nova class ships at the battle of Procyon V in the 26th century in the segment shown on the screen in the episode Azati Prime.
> @yuki109 said:
> what is good about discovery. the story, the characters, the sets, basicaly everything.
>
> what is bad about discovery... Enterprise tried so hard to make the ships in it look at least a little like TOS ships with rounded edges and cylindrical nacelles so that it made sence for the style evolution and then Discovery craps all over that by having these weird hyper angular looking ships suddenly right before everything goes back to smooth lines again for TOS and TNG as well as the 29th Century ships we see.
>
> like Enterprise to VOY the ships are all like sleek 1950s and 1960s fighter jets but Discovery it's like they went from sleek fighter jets in Enterprise to space Cybertrucks in Discovery, i'll give them credit where it's due their version of kirks enterprise is my favorite version of it because it is done in the style of the NX and i can imagine it looking like that in the timeline but next to every other ship in discovery it looks so out of place.
>
> i just wish the guys making discovery had at least tried to make the ships look like they fit between ENT and TOS instead of making a new style that destroys all the effort that Enterprise did to make their ships look the way they did
> @phoenixc#0738 said:
> A Deus ex Machina is more about the writers than the characters in the story (though obviously it effects both), it is when the writers write themselves into a corner and cannot figure out how to pull the story out of it (or in this case how to pull the story out in only two segments plus a few minutes of addition to a third (at the end of 13). It is a plotting level issue, not really an in-setting issue.
>warhead tanks are filled all the way, along with phasers that can scan along and cause that creeping disintegration seen in a lot of the episodes, that order would be technically quite easy to carry out if the ship did not have to worry about enemy ships the whole time.
>
>
> But as I said, a Deus ex Machina is a writer-side plotting issue reflected into the story. It does not matter if the Federation has the technology for a tectonic world-killer weapon or not any more than whether a Greek god had the ability to fix the stuck plot in ancient times, it is the fact that the writers had to suddenly resort to that literary ejector seat to get out of the corner they put themselves in (or get out in time to have the next season something completely different in the case of DSC).
You are missing the most important part of the definition of Deus Ex Machina. Writers write themselves into a corner and so the most impossible and improbable thing happens to solve the problem. In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the movie is set during the Roman occupation of Judea. Brian falls out of a high window and an alien space craft catches him and puts him on the ground. That’s a Deus Ex Machina. It is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.
No, the Life of Brian thing is a SPOOF of Deus Ex Machina. The unlikely solution does not have to be anywhere near that extreme.
A classic example of that came from Heinlein's novel The Rolling Stones. A minor sidethread had one of the characters taking over writing a TV space opera serial where the previous writer was trying to get out of the contract by putting the characters in an impossible to get out of cliff-hanger at the end of the season, thus killing the show (or some similar reason, I read it a very long time ago).
The writer from the Stone family started the next season off with the characters in the messroom talking to some of the minor characters (who were not in the cliffhanger) about the situation they were in and just before the speaker reveals how they got out of it the battlestations alarm goes off and they never get around to revealing how the characters survived.
It does not take a god actually stepping into the story to resolve it or something equally ridiculous, it can be a fantastic stroke of luck or whatever just as easily as long as it gives the impression that it is something the writer just pulled out of their backside because they could not figure out how to get out of the hole they dug themselves any other way.
what is good about discovery. the story, the characters, the sets, basicaly everything.
what is bad about discovery... Enterprise tried so hard to make the ships in it look at least a little like TOS ships with rounded edges and cylindrical nacelles so that it made sence for the style evolution and then Discovery craps all over that by having these weird hyper angular looking ships suddenly right before everything goes back to smooth lines again for TOS and TNG as well as the 29th Century ships we see.
like Enterprise to VOY the ships are all like sleek 1950s and 1960s fighter jets but Discovery it's like they went from sleek fighter jets in Enterprise to space Cybertrucks in Discovery, i'll give them credit where it's due their version of kirks enterprise is my favorite version of it because it is done in the style of the NX and i can imagine it looking like that in the timeline but next to every other ship in discovery it looks so out of place.
i just wish the guys making discovery had at least tried to make the ships look like they fit between ENT and TOS instead of making a new style that destroys all the effort that Enterprise did to make their ships look the way they did
Just like how they wrote themselves into corner by introducing that stupid Time Travel ban that they couldn't enforce in the 32nd century due to the burn, Yeah good luck trying to stop me while I'll slingshot my ship around this sun.
I don't really care for a bias towards Discovery. It makes sense to use the fact that there's a show running on tv right now.
I'm more annoyed with the pretentious way that Disco stuff is added to the game. I'll give some examples.
1. There was an episode where T'Kuvma was named in one breath with Kahless.
Which is just dumb. T'Kuvma fell in his first battle, and he sought out enemies to unite his people whereas Kahless battled enemies that truly oppressed the Klingons. Suggesting their actions are comparable is just a cheap way of making Disco characters seem more important by using well-established characters from previous series to 'level up' the Disco ones. It's cheap because, as a writer, you're free-riding on character development done carefully by other writers through throwaway lines. It's also very unbelievable.
Compare this to the times when Janeway for example talked about the time of Kirk and Sulu.
2. J'ula, L'Rell and so on are all presented as the only ones that can save the Klingon Empire.
Which is lame. J'ula's story was already dumb enough. She had a handful of archaic ships and maybe one super weapon. No one ever heard from her before she was created in STO. The idea that this centuries-old Klingon with few initial resources at her disposal could tilt the balance in the entire Klingon Empire - despite all that has happened throughout the previous war with the Federation (which J'mpok also led, btw so why exactly is T'Kuvma that much more important or heroic than him again?) and the Iconian War and everything that happened afterwards... It's just not realistic and it negates much of STO's previous story.
And why? Only so that some very old Klingons could be forcibly added. Old Klingons of course, because they're from a series that for some reason had to be set before TOS - and then wasn't when the writers realised their mistake (or when adding Spock and the Enterprise to lure in older fans no longer served much purpose) and still have it take place in the future.
3. Same for L'Rell's story.
I just replayed the final episode. Most of the story is just endless repeating of the idea that L'Rell is needed because only she can save the empire. Actual arguments are absent. A believable story shouldn't just endlessly repeat statements or perceptions without adding anything of substance or proof. In the final battle, she isn't even needed (which is true for most allies in most battles in this game of course).
4. Rewriting the background story of characters like Gowron.
Which is similar to the first point: making Disco characters or even made-up ones more relevant by referencing and linking to well-established ones (from a series that is usually considered the one with the best character development).
Again, I don't mind that STO uses Disco content, or that STO's story builds on Disco's story. But if you're going to feel obliged to use Disco content, don't communicate that obligation so clearly. Cause that is one of the main problems here: STO's latest stories don't make it plausible that we actually need all these Disco(-inspired) characters. Instead, they seem added merely because the development team had to do something with them (points 2 and 3). That these characters aren't very interesting, is also supported by the other main problem (points 1 and 4) of needing to use well-established ones to make them seem more relevant.
[4:46] [Combat {self}] Your Haymaker deals 23337 (9049) Physical Damage(Critical) to Spawnmother
Just like how they wrote themselves into corner by introducing that stupid Time Travel ban that they couldn't enforce in the 32nd century due to the burn, Yeah good luck trying to stop me while I'll slingshot my ship around this sun.
That's... actually pretty easily enforceable. It's made fairly plain in various episodes that by the 24th century, all available data in Federation or either Empire is kept in accessible electronic-equivalent format in a centralized database. Part of the Ban would have involved deleting all data regarding the slingshot effect. Unless you're certifiably insane, it's unlikely you'll make the incredibly suicidal move of diving directly toward a star and then hitting almost warp 10 while deep in the gravity well (or get so close to the event horizon of a black hole that you'll need to use a warp slingshot to escape, which was how the Enterprise first discovered the effect in TOS:"Tomorrow Is Yesterday").
what is good about discovery. the story, the characters, the sets, basicaly everything.
what is bad about discovery... Enterprise tried so hard to make the ships in it look at least a little like TOS ships with rounded edges and cylindrical nacelles so that it made sence for the style evolution and then Discovery craps all over that by having these weird hyper angular looking ships suddenly right before everything goes back to smooth lines again for TOS and TNG as well as the 29th Century ships we see.
like Enterprise to VOY the ships are all like sleek 1950s and 1960s fighter jets but Discovery it's like they went from sleek fighter jets in Enterprise to space Cybertrucks in Discovery, i'll give them credit where it's due their version of kirks enterprise is my favorite version of it because it is done in the style of the NX and i can imagine it looking like that in the timeline but next to every other ship in discovery it looks so out of place.
i just wish the guys making discovery had at least tried to make the ships look like they fit between ENT and TOS instead of making a new style that destroys all the effort that Enterprise did to make their ships look the way they did
Just because they change things doesn’t mean they hate the original idea. Did Roddenberry hate TOS when he changed up almost everything for TMP?
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
> @paradox#7391 said: > Just like how they wrote themselves into corner by introducing that stupid Time Travel ban that they couldn't enforce in the 32nd century due to the burn, Yeah good luck trying to stop me while I'll slingshot my ship around this sun.
Writers write themselves into a corner all the time. I too am curious on how they enforce this ban. However it could be like the other band the Federation has (genetic manipulation and cloaking) that they trust people to do the right thing.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
> @phoenixc#0738 said: > I wouldn't call AoY much of an ENT expansion, it was firmly grounded in TOS (and did a good job with that) and only had an ENT cameo or two (and three Sphere builder ships along with a few other doodads in the lockbox). It really had more direct interaction with the Kelvin timeline than it did with the ENT series. And yes, they did have some of the temporal cold war, but only a trivial amount of it had anything to do with the ENT end of it even though the material was technically created in ENT. > > I know a lot of people talk about how unrealistic it is to have ships from ENT appear in the 25th century, but except for the irradiated shipyard thing for DSC that is generally not what is happening, but rather some of the Federation states (like the Vulcans and Andorians) are still making a few ships using their traditional design aesthetics, (and the Romulans and Klingons have always tended to use the same hull designs for centuries too), so there is a precedent for other ENT-style ships (and there are a lot of good ones yet untouched) to be in the game. > > For that matter, Starfleet itself does some of that, the Akira is obviously a modern descendent of the NX aesthetics (from an in-setting point of view of course) and they tend to use a lot of hullshapes like the Excelsior, Miranda, Oberth, etc. for centuries too. In fact, there is one of the inexplicably much hated-and-maligned Nova class ships at the battle of Procyon V in the 26th century in the segment shown on the screen in the episode Azati Prime. > > > No, the Life of Brian thing is a SPOOF of Deus Ex Machina. The unlikely solution does not have to be anywhere near that extreme. > > A classic example of that came from Heinlein's novel The Rolling Stones. A minor sidethread had one of the characters taking over writing a TV space opera serial where the previous writer was trying to get out of the contract by putting the characters in an impossible to get out of cliff-hanger at the end of the season, thus killing the show (or some similar reason, I read it a very long time ago). > > The writer from the Stone family started the next season off with the characters in the messroom talking to some of the minor characters (who were not in the cliffhanger) about the situation they were in and just before the speaker reveals how they got out of it the battlestations alarm goes off and they never get around to revealing how the characters survived. > > It does not take a god actually stepping into the story to resolve it or something equally ridiculous, it can be a fantastic stroke of luck or whatever just as easily as long as it gives the impression that it is something the writer just pulled out of their backside because they could not figure out how to get out of the hole they dug themselves any other way.
This is the definition: It is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
what is good about discovery. the story, the characters, the sets, basicaly everything.
what is bad about discovery... Enterprise tried so hard to make the ships in it look at least a little like TOS ships with rounded edges and cylindrical nacelles so that it made sence for the style evolution and then Discovery craps all over that by having these weird hyper angular looking ships suddenly right before everything goes back to smooth lines again for TOS and TNG as well as the 29th Century ships we see.
like Enterprise to VOY the ships are all like sleek 1950s and 1960s fighter jets but Discovery it's like they went from sleek fighter jets in Enterprise to space Cybertrucks in Discovery, i'll give them credit where it's due their version of kirks enterprise is my favorite version of it because it is done in the style of the NX and i can imagine it looking like that in the timeline but next to every other ship in discovery it looks so out of place.
i just wish the guys making discovery had at least tried to make the ships look like they fit between ENT and TOS instead of making a new style that destroys all the effort that Enterprise did to make their ships look the way they did
i dont like the characters, either.
It seems the disco staff LOATHE TOS, imo.
Your opinion is ill-informed.
As usual.
Watch some of the interviews with DSC execs, Smokebailey is right if you pay attention not only to what they say about TOS but also to how they say it. Body language and phrasing tell a lot about what a person thinks or feels about a subject when they are talking about it and little or any of Kurtzman's and the rest's body language says good things about TOS.
And things like the lead set designer referring to the TOS Enterprise as "the cardboard Enterprise" and saying the only Trek that was any good was The Undiscovered Country and other little slips and offhand comments from some of the others on production side of the show don't exactly paint a rosy picture of their attitudes towards TOS even without watching their body language, tone of voice, and phrasing.
Overall, "loathe" might be a bit too strong, but contempt for TOS is not hard to spot, and it is not surprising either considering that the series was put together with an eye towards Moonves greenlighting it, and he made no secret that he disliked Trek and especially detested TOS.
This is the definition: It is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.
As I said before, I do know the dictionary definition of Deus Ex Machina. I also know what the textbooks say about it which goes into a lot more depth than a dictionary definition. If you just want to draw your own conclusions from a one or two line definition that is fine for your opinion, but real concept is not as simple and extreme binary as you seem to think.
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The time travel ban thing ignores the genie factor, once people know about something even the most draconian measures cannot stuff that genie back into the bottle since some people will still know about it and some of those will pass it on even if they do it in secret (or even unknowingly). Then there is the matter of derelict ships, abandoned or dead colonies, and all sorts of other sources of records from before the ban laying around with reasonably intact data cores (and even partially or fully functional systems after centuries of laying around abandoned).
Plus, pure paranoia would make sure that copies are kept, and no matter how secret those are they always seem to get out somehow. The very technology that makes temporal shielding possible would probably even give a good idea of what to look for to any scientist who tries to recreate the time travel tech for that matter.
> @phoenixc#0738 said: > . > > Watch some of the interviews with DSC execs, Smokebailey is right if you pay attention not only to what they say about TOS but also to how they say it. Body language and phrasing tell a lot about what a person thinks or feels about a subject when they are talking about it and little or any of Kurtzman's and the rest's body language says good things about TOS. > > And things like the lead set designer referring to the TOS Enterprise as "the cardboard Enterprise" and saying the only Trek that was any good was The Undiscovered Country and other little slips and offhand comments from some of the others on production side of the show don't exactly paint a rosy picture of their attitudes towards TOS even without watching their body language, tone of voice, and phrasing. > > Overall, "loathe" might be a bit too strong, but contempt for TOS is not hard to spot, and it is not surprising either considering that the series was put together with an eye towards Moonves greenlighting it, and he made no secret that he disliked Trek and especially detested TOS. > >
I agree with Smokebailey and Phoenixc’s points. I have seen some of those interviews and talks and I clearly can see they have a contempt for TOS. It is the impression I get. Also the point about Moonves it something I gathered as well.
So I would say Smokebailey’s is well informed. I gather the same information and have same opinion based on what I have seen in interviews and such.
Just like how they wrote themselves into corner by introducing that stupid Time Travel ban that they couldn't enforce in the 32nd century due to the burn, Yeah good luck trying to stop me while I'll slingshot my ship around this sun.
That's... actually pretty easily enforceable. It's made fairly plain in various episodes that by the 24th century, all available data in Federation or either Empire is kept in accessible electronic-equivalent format in a centralized database. Part of the Ban would have involved deleting all data regarding the slingshot effect. Unless you're certifiably insane, it's unlikely you'll make the incredibly suicidal move of diving directly toward a star and then hitting almost warp 10 while deep in the gravity well (or get so close to the event horizon of a black hole that you'll need to use a warp slingshot to escape, which was how the Enterprise first discovered the effect in TOS:"Tomorrow Is Yesterday").
You were a teenager once. I'm sure you, like most of us, did some joyriding or other reckless/dumb things. In Star Trek, that just might be in a high warp capable ship.
It could also be someone just trying to test the limits of warp capabilities. "What happens if you go high warp around a star? Why is there no data for that in the Federation database? Lets do some experiments to find out, then!" And if that data is all deleted, then the reason why it was deleted is also lost to time.
If it is possible through the laws of physics, it will be rediscovered eventually, and by then no one will care why it was ever banned. Every law needs enforcement, or its just meaningless words on paper.
Frankly though, the idea of a centralized anything when you are operating an interplanetary union is ludicrous. Decentralization is the only way to scale upwards effectively, especially to prevent data loss. I don't care how advanced your library is, putting all your eggs in one basket remains a no-no.
Just like how they wrote themselves into corner by introducing that stupid Time Travel ban that they couldn't enforce in the 32nd century due to the burn, Yeah good luck trying to stop me while I'll slingshot my ship around this sun.
That's... actually pretty easily enforceable. It's made fairly plain in various episodes that by the 24th century, all available data in Federation or either Empire is kept in accessible electronic-equivalent format in a centralized database. Part of the Ban would have involved deleting all data regarding the slingshot effect. Unless you're certifiably insane, it's unlikely you'll make the incredibly suicidal move of diving directly toward a star and then hitting almost warp 10 while deep in the gravity well (or get so close to the event horizon of a black hole that you'll need to use a warp slingshot to escape, which was how the Enterprise first discovered the effect in TOS:"Tomorrow Is Yesterday").
It could also be someone just trying to test the limits of warp capabilities. "What happens if you go high warp around a star? Why is there no data for that in the Federation database? Lets do some experiments to find out, then!" And if that data is all deleted, then the reason why it was deleted is also lost to time.
Or someone who's just lost his girlfriend while racing through space, thinking 'why not' do something no one has done before?
Namang na gonya take my ship, mi gonya race it till I'm xush.
Namang na gonya beat my ship, ong gonya bek da fash da losh...
[4:46] [Combat {self}] Your Haymaker deals 23337 (9049) Physical Damage(Critical) to Spawnmother
The main issue though with a slingshot is the precise calculations needed. Unless you've planned ahead... there's no telling when you'd end up... if at all.
Frankly though, the idea of a centralized anything when you are operating an interplanetary union is ludicrous. Decentralization is the only way to scale upwards effectively, especially to prevent data loss. I don't care how advanced your library is, putting all your eggs in one basket remains a no-no.
These are people who designed starships with no circuit breakers or seat belts, and who (as shown in TNG:"Contagion") have forgotten the concept of "protected backups". I can easily see them using one central database - "we can keep it safe from invasion!"
Comments
Jumping the shark can actually be several different kinds of damage control. And the shark jump in Happy Days did indeed herald a change of focus, the show was about the Cunningham family up until then and it shifted to be about Fonzie as the main character after that. It isn't actually necessary to get rid of people and replace them with others, it can be all the same people if the rest of it happens.
Also, if you didn't notice I did mention that it was in the fuzzy area where a classic shark jump and season-sequelitis (which planning a show season by season instead of multi-season arcs sometimes causes) overlap. Whatever you prefer to call it the result is the same: a very choppy lack of flow where every season almost looks/feels like they belong to different shows. It is quite a bit like Blake's Seven in that regard (and a few others).
Also, I said "near deus ex machina". I am aware that it was not completely out of nowhere (though as plots go it was close), but the writing has a very heavy sense that they plotted themselves into a corner they could not get out of fast enough to suit them so they thought up a deus ex machina just far enough ahead of time to feather in slightly, but only slightly. And yes, they could have planned it well before hand, but it is irrelevant since if that is the case the bungled it to the point were it gave that impression anyway.
No matter how you look at it, pulling a Star Wars like planet killer bomb out of their hindquarters and planting it on the Klingon homeworld like they did is a form of deus ex machina, especially the way it forced peace between the nations at the absolute height of the hostilities AND unity for the Klingons in one fell swoop.
The DIS-Andorians and Tellarites not yet being playable is a missed opportunity. Yup, we barely see them on S1/S2 of the show, but they're still founding-races of the federation.
The DIS-klingons finally being playable is good.
Barzans... were originally throwaway-aliens of the week and seeing one as a major cast-member was a pleasant surprise.
Kelpien... Saru is of course the exception, given the timeframe of the federation DIS-start it sadly doesn't make sense as a playable race.
Yeah but with Kelpians you can add them to the main Starfleet roster instead of DSC since they joined the Federation in the 25th century and we should also have Discovery Aenar since all Aenar are basically albino and blind Andorians appearance wise aside from the skin tone and eyes you wouldn't have to change the model much.
To be fair... it was clearly an act of desperation on the part of the Federation to even attempt that, and Discovery's unique capabilities allowed for it.
There's something similar in the game Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, where you pretty much do something similar to what the Federation threatened to do. Deploy a special bomb to take advantage of a planet's nature.
In WC3, its pretty much the tail end of the Terran-Kilrathi war, that had been raging for maybe 30 years by this point. Confed is losing. The player is assigned to TCS Victory, an older carrier, and ends up tapped for a desperate plan to win the war for the Confederation. First up was Admiral Tolwyn's TCS Behemoth, which is basically a mini Death Star. Kilrathi infiltrator ensured the incomplete dreadnought was destroyed. Then the player learns about his old friend Taggart's plan, which involves something called the Temblor Bomb, a weapon specifically designed for use on the geologically unstable planet Kilrah. The plan is for a starfighter to drop The Bomb into a designated fault, and let the planet literally shake itself apart. Plan works (canon ending), taking out not only Imperial leadership, but the majority of the fleet that was massing ahead of a major strike against Earth that would have been the death blow of the Confederation. The Kilrathi promptly surrender to the player character, Luke Skywa... I mean Col. Christopher Blair.
(Mark Hamil plays Blair in WC3, 4, and Prophecy.)
But it's not a Deus ex Machina or a near Deus ex Machina. It has to be impossible or improbable. Are you saying it's impossible or improbable that Star Fleet would have an explosive device? Are you saying it's impossible or improbable that Star Fleet would have a device capable of destroying a planet (especially in a Star Fleet that General Order 24: An order to destroy all life on an entire planet, given only if a commanding officer deems that a society poses a clear and present danger to the Federation.) exists? Did the bomb by itself forced peace or was it the decision to give it to L'rell what caused the peace?
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
A Deus ex Machina is more about the writers than the characters in the story (though obviously it effects both), it is when the writers write themselves into a corner and cannot figure out how to pull the story out of it (or in this case how to pull the story out in only two segments plus a few minutes of addition to a third (at the end of 13). It is a plotting level issue, not really an in-setting issue.
All signs point to the season originally ending with episode 13, the standard half-season length "season" commonly used by cable-only series, most likely either at the point they went into the spore network (as a cliff-hanger) or just after they came out and were in the "where are we" phase and probably a short hook for the next season (in fact, they may not have even added anything to the end of 13, the next season may have been meant to start with Cornwall taking over but go in a different direction with the war going on for at least another season or more).
Then late in the production phase they announced that they were extending the season by two segments, and the idea that they were executing a damage control maneuver by doing that is further supported by the fact that while everything else was foreshadowed to a fair thee well nothing about segments 14 and 15 was.
As for the technological thing, sure they could do General Order 24 easily enough. According to Roddenberry, GO24 is a case of destroying all life (or at least intelligent life) on a planet over about twelve hours time. Considering they supposedly have dozens of photon torpedoes and each of those has a warhead strength greater than the Tsar Bomba the USSR detonated if their warhead tanks are filled all the way, along with phasers that can scan along and cause that creeping disintegration seen in a lot of the episodes, that order would be technically quite easy to carry out if the ship did not have to worry about enemy ships the whole time.
A planetary biosphere has some resilience but probably not enough to take that kind of punishment without triggering mass extinctions. A tectonic weapon on the other hand probably would not do what the writers thought it would do, and furthermore the threat is more likely to divide the Klingon houses more than unite them since if the capital world was destroyed or badly damaged it would not do anything much to all the great houses who were based offworld except break the current governmental framework and give them a better shot at landing on the top of the heap as the government reforms.
But as I said, a Deus ex Machina is a writer-side plotting issue reflected into the story. It does not matter if the Federation has the technology for a tectonic world-killer weapon or not any more than whether a Greek god had the ability to fix the stuck plot in ancient times, it is the fact that the writers had to suddenly resort to that literary ejector seat to get out of the corner they put themselves in (or get out in time to have the next season something completely different in the case of DSC).
what is bad about discovery... Enterprise tried so hard to make the ships in it look at least a little like TOS ships with rounded edges and cylindrical nacelles so that it made sence for the style evolution and then Discovery craps all over that by having these weird hyper angular looking ships suddenly right before everything goes back to smooth lines again for TOS and TNG as well as the 29th Century ships we see.
like Enterprise to VOY the ships are all like sleek 1950s and 1960s fighter jets but Discovery it's like they went from sleek fighter jets in Enterprise to space Cybertrucks in Discovery, i'll give them credit where it's due their version of kirks enterprise is my favorite version of it because it is done in the style of the NX and i can imagine it looking like that in the timeline but next to every other ship in discovery it looks so out of place.
i just wish the guys making discovery had at least tried to make the ships look like they fit between ENT and TOS instead of making a new style that destroys all the effort that Enterprise did to make their ships look the way they did
oh really? then where is my warp delta, 22nd century Intrepid and ENT shuttlepod? where are my 22nd century andorian uniforms and ground weapons? and i want the 22nd Century MACO pistol too? and the huge number of Vulcan ships that were in ENT that could be added also there are designs out there for a ENT Era version of the Daedalus class that i would love to have but NOOOOOOOOOO Enterprise never gets any love in this game
The DSC Crossfield class was "inspired" by it but only to a fairly small degree and it would be good to have a finished form (the models were way in the background because they were crude proof of concept ones with no detailing or polish) of the original design.
I'll give you the sets, even though I think they could have been smarter with them, but the story and the characters? A Klingon rapist and the species becoming obsessed with dead bodies and changing radically between ENT and TNG. CGI for the sake of having CGI, which didn't add anything to the story. 21st Century issues, which would be fine to be addressed in a series set present day, but are quite redundant hundreds of years in the future. The whole "Burn" thing. Time travel deus ex machina. The ship the series was named after not even appearing until episodes in, which the Shinzou a more interesting one. The whole Spore Drive, which still gets to me in the franchise that created Warp Speed. Not using beam phasers, when they were the only franchise to ever, instead of bolts which everyone uses *cough* Star Wars predominantly, in actually everything *cough*. And the characters...I really don't want to make a Disco bashing thing here, but I couldn't disagree with you more, with numerous and many reasons.
i dont like the characters, either.
It seems the disco staff LOATHE TOS, imo.
> what is good about discovery. the story, the characters, the sets, basicaly everything.
>
> what is bad about discovery... Enterprise tried so hard to make the ships in it look at least a little like TOS ships with rounded edges and cylindrical nacelles so that it made sence for the style evolution and then Discovery craps all over that by having these weird hyper angular looking ships suddenly right before everything goes back to smooth lines again for TOS and TNG as well as the 29th Century ships we see.
>
> like Enterprise to VOY the ships are all like sleek 1950s and 1960s fighter jets but Discovery it's like they went from sleek fighter jets in Enterprise to space Cybertrucks in Discovery, i'll give them credit where it's due their version of kirks enterprise is my favorite version of it because it is done in the style of the NX and i can imagine it looking like that in the timeline but next to every other ship in discovery it looks so out of place.
>
> i just wish the guys making discovery had at least tried to make the ships look like they fit between ENT and TOS instead of making a new style that destroys all the effort that Enterprise did to make their ships look the way they did
> @phoenixc#0738 said:
> A Deus ex Machina is more about the writers than the characters in the story (though obviously it effects both), it is when the writers write themselves into a corner and cannot figure out how to pull the story out of it (or in this case how to pull the story out in only two segments plus a few minutes of addition to a third (at the end of 13). It is a plotting level issue, not really an in-setting issue.
>warhead tanks are filled all the way, along with phasers that can scan along and cause that creeping disintegration seen in a lot of the episodes, that order would be technically quite easy to carry out if the ship did not have to worry about enemy ships the whole time.
>
>
> But as I said, a Deus ex Machina is a writer-side plotting issue reflected into the story. It does not matter if the Federation has the technology for a tectonic world-killer weapon or not any more than whether a Greek god had the ability to fix the stuck plot in ancient times, it is the fact that the writers had to suddenly resort to that literary ejector seat to get out of the corner they put themselves in (or get out in time to have the next season something completely different in the case of DSC).
You are missing the most important part of the definition of Deus Ex Machina. Writers write themselves into a corner and so the most impossible and improbable thing happens to solve the problem. In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the movie is set during the Roman occupation of Judea. Brian falls out of a high window and an alien space craft catches him and puts him on the ground. That’s a Deus Ex Machina. It is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
I wouldn't call AoY much of an ENT expansion, it was firmly grounded in TOS (and did a good job with that) and only had an ENT cameo or two (and three Sphere builder ships along with a few other doodads in the lockbox). It really had more direct interaction with the Kelvin timeline than it did with the ENT series. And yes, they did have some of the temporal cold war, but only a trivial amount of it had anything to do with the ENT end of it even though the material was technically created in ENT.
I know a lot of people talk about how unrealistic it is to have ships from ENT appear in the 25th century, but except for the irradiated shipyard thing for DSC that is generally not what is happening, but rather some of the Federation states (like the Vulcans and Andorians) are still making a few ships using their traditional design aesthetics, (and the Romulans and Klingons have always tended to use the same hull designs for centuries too), so there is a precedent for other ENT-style ships (and there are a lot of good ones yet untouched) to be in the game.
For that matter, Starfleet itself does some of that, the Akira is obviously a modern descendent of the NX aesthetics (from an in-setting point of view of course) and they tend to use a lot of hullshapes like the Excelsior, Miranda, Oberth, etc. for centuries too. In fact, there is one of the inexplicably much hated-and-maligned Nova class ships at the battle of Procyon V in the 26th century in the segment shown on the screen in the episode Azati Prime.
No, the Life of Brian thing is a SPOOF of Deus Ex Machina. The unlikely solution does not have to be anywhere near that extreme.
A classic example of that came from Heinlein's novel The Rolling Stones. A minor sidethread had one of the characters taking over writing a TV space opera serial where the previous writer was trying to get out of the contract by putting the characters in an impossible to get out of cliff-hanger at the end of the season, thus killing the show (or some similar reason, I read it a very long time ago).
The writer from the Stone family started the next season off with the characters in the messroom talking to some of the minor characters (who were not in the cliffhanger) about the situation they were in and just before the speaker reveals how they got out of it the battlestations alarm goes off and they never get around to revealing how the characters survived.
It does not take a god actually stepping into the story to resolve it or something equally ridiculous, it can be a fantastic stroke of luck or whatever just as easily as long as it gives the impression that it is something the writer just pulled out of their backside because they could not figure out how to get out of the hole they dug themselves any other way.
As usual.
I'm more annoyed with the pretentious way that Disco stuff is added to the game. I'll give some examples.
1. There was an episode where T'Kuvma was named in one breath with Kahless.
Which is just dumb. T'Kuvma fell in his first battle, and he sought out enemies to unite his people whereas Kahless battled enemies that truly oppressed the Klingons. Suggesting their actions are comparable is just a cheap way of making Disco characters seem more important by using well-established characters from previous series to 'level up' the Disco ones. It's cheap because, as a writer, you're free-riding on character development done carefully by other writers through throwaway lines. It's also very unbelievable.
Compare this to the times when Janeway for example talked about the time of Kirk and Sulu.
2. J'ula, L'Rell and so on are all presented as the only ones that can save the Klingon Empire.
Which is lame. J'ula's story was already dumb enough. She had a handful of archaic ships and maybe one super weapon. No one ever heard from her before she was created in STO. The idea that this centuries-old Klingon with few initial resources at her disposal could tilt the balance in the entire Klingon Empire - despite all that has happened throughout the previous war with the Federation (which J'mpok also led, btw so why exactly is T'Kuvma that much more important or heroic than him again?) and the Iconian War and everything that happened afterwards... It's just not realistic and it negates much of STO's previous story.
And why? Only so that some very old Klingons could be forcibly added. Old Klingons of course, because they're from a series that for some reason had to be set before TOS - and then wasn't when the writers realised their mistake (or when adding Spock and the Enterprise to lure in older fans no longer served much purpose) and still have it take place in the future.
3. Same for L'Rell's story.
I just replayed the final episode. Most of the story is just endless repeating of the idea that L'Rell is needed because only she can save the empire. Actual arguments are absent. A believable story shouldn't just endlessly repeat statements or perceptions without adding anything of substance or proof. In the final battle, she isn't even needed (which is true for most allies in most battles in this game of course).
4. Rewriting the background story of characters like Gowron.
Which is similar to the first point: making Disco characters or even made-up ones more relevant by referencing and linking to well-established ones (from a series that is usually considered the one with the best character development).
Again, I don't mind that STO uses Disco content, or that STO's story builds on Disco's story. But if you're going to feel obliged to use Disco content, don't communicate that obligation so clearly. Cause that is one of the main problems here: STO's latest stories don't make it plausible that we actually need all these Disco(-inspired) characters. Instead, they seem added merely because the development team had to do something with them (points 2 and 3). That these characters aren't very interesting, is also supported by the other main problem (points 1 and 4) of needing to use well-established ones to make them seem more relevant.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
Whatever ya say....
> Whatever ya say....
Just because they change things doesn’t mean they hate the original idea. Did Roddenberry hate TOS when he changed up almost everything for TMP?
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
> Just like how they wrote themselves into corner by introducing that stupid Time Travel ban that they couldn't enforce in the 32nd century due to the burn, Yeah good luck trying to stop me while I'll slingshot my ship around this sun.
Writers write themselves into a corner all the time. I too am curious on how they enforce this ban. However it could be like the other band the Federation has (genetic manipulation and cloaking) that they trust people to do the right thing.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
> I wouldn't call AoY much of an ENT expansion, it was firmly grounded in TOS (and did a good job with that) and only had an ENT cameo or two (and three Sphere builder ships along with a few other doodads in the lockbox). It really had more direct interaction with the Kelvin timeline than it did with the ENT series. And yes, they did have some of the temporal cold war, but only a trivial amount of it had anything to do with the ENT end of it even though the material was technically created in ENT.
>
> I know a lot of people talk about how unrealistic it is to have ships from ENT appear in the 25th century, but except for the irradiated shipyard thing for DSC that is generally not what is happening, but rather some of the Federation states (like the Vulcans and Andorians) are still making a few ships using their traditional design aesthetics, (and the Romulans and Klingons have always tended to use the same hull designs for centuries too), so there is a precedent for other ENT-style ships (and there are a lot of good ones yet untouched) to be in the game.
>
> For that matter, Starfleet itself does some of that, the Akira is obviously a modern descendent of the NX aesthetics (from an in-setting point of view of course) and they tend to use a lot of hullshapes like the Excelsior, Miranda, Oberth, etc. for centuries too. In fact, there is one of the inexplicably much hated-and-maligned Nova class ships at the battle of Procyon V in the 26th century in the segment shown on the screen in the episode Azati Prime.
>
>
> No, the Life of Brian thing is a SPOOF of Deus Ex Machina. The unlikely solution does not have to be anywhere near that extreme.
>
> A classic example of that came from Heinlein's novel The Rolling Stones. A minor sidethread had one of the characters taking over writing a TV space opera serial where the previous writer was trying to get out of the contract by putting the characters in an impossible to get out of cliff-hanger at the end of the season, thus killing the show (or some similar reason, I read it a very long time ago).
>
> The writer from the Stone family started the next season off with the characters in the messroom talking to some of the minor characters (who were not in the cliffhanger) about the situation they were in and just before the speaker reveals how they got out of it the battlestations alarm goes off and they never get around to revealing how the characters survived.
>
> It does not take a god actually stepping into the story to resolve it or something equally ridiculous, it can be a fantastic stroke of luck or whatever just as easily as long as it gives the impression that it is something the writer just pulled out of their backside because they could not figure out how to get out of the hole they dug themselves any other way.
This is the definition: It is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
Watch some of the interviews with DSC execs, Smokebailey is right if you pay attention not only to what they say about TOS but also to how they say it. Body language and phrasing tell a lot about what a person thinks or feels about a subject when they are talking about it and little or any of Kurtzman's and the rest's body language says good things about TOS.
And things like the lead set designer referring to the TOS Enterprise as "the cardboard Enterprise" and saying the only Trek that was any good was The Undiscovered Country and other little slips and offhand comments from some of the others on production side of the show don't exactly paint a rosy picture of their attitudes towards TOS even without watching their body language, tone of voice, and phrasing.
Overall, "loathe" might be a bit too strong, but contempt for TOS is not hard to spot, and it is not surprising either considering that the series was put together with an eye towards Moonves greenlighting it, and he made no secret that he disliked Trek and especially detested TOS.
As I said before, I do know the dictionary definition of Deus Ex Machina. I also know what the textbooks say about it which goes into a lot more depth than a dictionary definition. If you just want to draw your own conclusions from a one or two line definition that is fine for your opinion, but real concept is not as simple and extreme binary as you seem to think.
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The time travel ban thing ignores the genie factor, once people know about something even the most draconian measures cannot stuff that genie back into the bottle since some people will still know about it and some of those will pass it on even if they do it in secret (or even unknowingly). Then there is the matter of derelict ships, abandoned or dead colonies, and all sorts of other sources of records from before the ban laying around with reasonably intact data cores (and even partially or fully functional systems after centuries of laying around abandoned).
Plus, pure paranoia would make sure that copies are kept, and no matter how secret those are they always seem to get out somehow. The very technology that makes temporal shielding possible would probably even give a good idea of what to look for to any scientist who tries to recreate the time travel tech for that matter.
> .
>
> Watch some of the interviews with DSC execs, Smokebailey is right if you pay attention not only to what they say about TOS but also to how they say it. Body language and phrasing tell a lot about what a person thinks or feels about a subject when they are talking about it and little or any of Kurtzman's and the rest's body language says good things about TOS.
>
> And things like the lead set designer referring to the TOS Enterprise as "the cardboard Enterprise" and saying the only Trek that was any good was The Undiscovered Country and other little slips and offhand comments from some of the others on production side of the show don't exactly paint a rosy picture of their attitudes towards TOS even without watching their body language, tone of voice, and phrasing.
>
> Overall, "loathe" might be a bit too strong, but contempt for TOS is not hard to spot, and it is not surprising either considering that the series was put together with an eye towards Moonves greenlighting it, and he made no secret that he disliked Trek and especially detested TOS.
>
>
I agree with Smokebailey and Phoenixc’s points. I have seen some of those interviews and talks and I clearly can see they have a contempt for TOS. It is the impression I get. Also the point about Moonves it something I gathered as well.
So I would say Smokebailey’s is well informed. I gather the same information and have same opinion based on what I have seen in interviews and such.
You were a teenager once. I'm sure you, like most of us, did some joyriding or other reckless/dumb things. In Star Trek, that just might be in a high warp capable ship.
It could also be someone just trying to test the limits of warp capabilities. "What happens if you go high warp around a star? Why is there no data for that in the Federation database? Lets do some experiments to find out, then!" And if that data is all deleted, then the reason why it was deleted is also lost to time.
If it is possible through the laws of physics, it will be rediscovered eventually, and by then no one will care why it was ever banned. Every law needs enforcement, or its just meaningless words on paper.
Frankly though, the idea of a centralized anything when you are operating an interplanetary union is ludicrous. Decentralization is the only way to scale upwards effectively, especially to prevent data loss. I don't care how advanced your library is, putting all your eggs in one basket remains a no-no.
Or someone who's just lost his girlfriend while racing through space, thinking 'why not' do something no one has done before?
Namang na gonya take my ship, mi gonya race it till I'm xush.
Namang na gonya beat my ship, ong gonya bek da fash da losh...
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.