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Star Trek: Discovery 4x5 what was that
whistlerdavid
Member Posts: 420 Arc User
i just watched episode 5 at the very end they focused on the back of the guys neck it was ether a scar or a tattoo anyone have any idea what in means? i mean it must be important to the story since they zoomed in ot it before credits rolled
Post edited by wingedhussar#7584 on
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And then Book clearly not trusting him, throwing some good side eye during their talk.
But no, I didn't bother pausing to see what the branding was about.
The delegation from Ni'var wanted accountability for the Federation's actions, and the ability to withdraw freely if the Feds did things Ni'var disapproved. The president of the Federation said (rightly, IMO) that this would turn the Federation from a major interstellar power into a mere club, with no more authority over galactic matters than your local Lions Club. The impasse was about to prevent Ni'var from rejoining the Federation, and possibly withdrawing permission for Stamets to access their data on the DMA.
So Burnham and Saru had a discussion in private. Saru suggested that neither party wanted to withdraw, but were both being forced to be stubborn by political considerations. They came to the conclusion that since any compromise proposed by one party would be automatically rejected by the other (to avoid seeming to give in), the obvious move, an independent commission overseeing the Federation Council's interactions with member worlds, would have to come from someone seemingly free of both sides - say, a starship captain from 930 years in the past, who had been seen to publicly (albeit politely) disagree with the president. And for the head of the commission? Starfleet is an arm of the Federation, true - but Burnham is also a citizen of Ni'var, trained as much as any highly-emotional Human can be in the philosophies of Surak and familiar with the society of Vulcan-that-was. She was the logical choice, and thus most likely to be approved by the Ni'var council, while being the best choice for the Federation due to her Starfleet affiliation.
Then we find out in the end that the entire situation was engineered by President Rillak, because she's a consummate politician - she even had Vance fake a 24-hour bug (literally - the standard treatment for that infection is to permit the egg to gestate for 24 hours, then remove the larval form) so that she could order Burnham to replace him.
It's no longer science fiction, it's space fantasy opera
If there is one thing NuTrek does well it's being incredibly stupid...it's all falling apart and Kurtzman is in charge and refuses to change.
If you think about it, the verity of styles may be more appealing to a wider audience. And I doubt that if everything was "falling apart" that we'd have this much variety of Trek, or even this much Trek at all. Hell... we got a new video game coming out soon. Evidence seems to point at Trek doing pretty well based on all that.
If Trek is doing well, why don't we hear from the main holder of the IP showing any hard data, and yes, it may not be the main glowing star franchise upfront, but we the general public would like to hear anything outright positive about it.
As for the New Trek game, from the visual aspects seen, it looks to adhere to the timeline of post NGen and Voyager. That is the original license, not the alternate, so what does that say about NuTrek?
There has been no major vendors hawking the design of it, in fact...I would wager that has been a major factor on the lack of sale merchs for a long time. Now, if you are speaking of ratings, yes the curious would want to see what it is about, and yes there are folks out there that never saw trek at all, so yes, it would attract that curious gaze. But sometime it would nudge that same curiousity to seek out the older trek for comparsion. For those who would do that.
The only thing I do detest much, is the seperation to specific groups, instead attrating the general population...by going after smaller groups to be potential watchers down the road, does not grow the numbers, but lessen it, ignoring a past generation that is out there that can help sheperd in the next generation, but instead they are doing a cold start.
It is not productive... but that is my opinion.
Personally speaking, most Trek fans I know have no interest in merch outside of like ship models, T-shirts, and coffe mugs. All of which are available. Star Wars, and like MCU stuff, are the only really big franchise I can think of where things like action figures, and legos, still sell well. The rise of digital media has killed off most of the physical media sales for most of those sorts of things.
I think the problem is that the past generation of Trek fans aren't the general TV audience nowadays. Most of television has moved beyond the "episode of the week" format in favor of far more serialized shows like we see with DSC, or Picard. Playing to Trek fans isn't going to help widen the Trek audience because what the hardcore Trek fan wants isn't what the general audience wants. They aren't going to help grow the franchise, in all honestly, they would probably drive people away by trying to force a style of television the world has moved past.
Yet when they have been broadcast where the rating services can index them, they have done rather poorly. The bad blood from the split in the fanbase seems to be doing the show harm even now rather than being the free advertising boon that Moonves thought it would be when he stoked the flames of controversy so much.
From the Canadian ratings and other things I have heard I don't think that is the case, though you are probably right in that it is an audience targeting problem, just a different one.
Traditional Star Trek was soft sci-fi, which is science fiction where the main focus is on the soft sciences like sociology, philosophy, etc, rather than on the hard sciences, but it was still science based. Discovery and the other "NuTrek" isn't (so far at least anyway, while SNW might be if Goldsman can keep Kurtzman from influencing it too much, but I am not getting my hopes up), it is pure space opera where the focus is on the action and eyecandy and everything else takes a back seat.
The problem with that is that most sci-fi shows on TV are space operas so DSC has positioned itself in a relatively crowded field instead of the far less populated one of soft sci-fi shows. It is rather ironic that the original Lost in Space was a romp that was mostly space opera compared to TOS but nowadays they switched places and DSC is pure space opera while the new Lost in Space is a sort of soft-sci-fi-lite hybrid which would appeal more to the soft sci-fi fans that were the majority of the old Trek fans.
The soft sci-fi viewership demographic has not gone away, they have just moved on from the science-deaf Abrams-style Trek that CBS is cranking out with DSC and PIC. A lot of them seem to have gravitated to The Expanse, possibly because along with the hard sci-fi core it has a strong soft sci-fi element as well in the very intricate sociopolitical situation and the question of humanity's place in the universe.
The format has nothing to do with it, serial and episodic formats actually overlap in the middle.
People keep talking about Babylon5 and ENT "changing to serial" after the first season or so, but that is not what happened. What they did was called "arc episode" format, and when the mix of random and arc episodes gets more arc heavy it overlaps with the "wide format" end of the serial format. A "true serial" as some call it, where everything is just one storyline like a miniseries (like DSC does), is also known as the "narrow format" serial because of its laser-focus on that one storyline.
On top of that, DSC IS "episode of the week" in that they string out the pitifully short "seasons" by only showing one a week until they run out of new ones for the year, even though it is still only one long story for the entire season (which itself is only half-season length btw).
And I never saw anything about Moonves stoking any sort of controversy. I saw a handful of people saying "not my Trek" like they did for TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT, but nothing from CBS themselves deliberately trying to star controversy.
I don't know that I agree with this.
Traditional Star Trek was based around "morality of the week" messages, but the newer Trek shows, at least DSC and PIC, aren't any different besides that things aren't just fire-and-forget, one-off, episodes. Morality plays, and social/political commentary, are still the forefront of the stories of modern Trek. They just take place over the whole season arc instead of self contained episodes.
-Season 1 of Discovery was all about Burnham making a decision that goes against the ideals of the Federation for an easy/quick victory(her attempt to fire first on the Klingons to get them to stand down), and having to live with the consequences of that, to ultimately to avoid making the same mistake at the end of the season(not bomb Qo'nos to try to end the war).
-Season 2 was about how fear, and an obsession for security above all else, can be self destructive(the creation of Control, and its attempt to kill everyone).
-Season 3 dealt with the collapse of the Federation, and finding hope, and managing to rebuild after the Burn, when everything seems lost.
-Picard S1 dealt with refugee crisis, and how mutual mistrust, and the damage it brings, can be avoided by even one person standing up for the other.
All of these sorts of things are themes and ideas previous Treks explored in one off episodes, the newer shows just make them season long arcs. The newer shows do use advancements in CGI to tell stories with these themes in a way thats more palatable to audiences compared to the rather slow "stand around and talk for most of the episode" format older Treks used, which was always a large gripe a good portion of the general TV audience had with them. But to say they put CGI/action before anything else just doesn't ring true. If it was true they wouldn't bother creating these season long arcs with these messages weaved throughout. It would just be episodes of pew pew that have no meaning/message in the end beyond pew pew.
Being serialized doesn't mean you can't have some one off episodes thrown around in there. DS9, and ENT's later seasons, were serialized by all definitions of the word. And DSC only showing one episode per week has no bearing on it being "episode of the week" or not. Episode of the week doesn't refer to the release pattern of the episodes, it refers to how those episodes connect, or don't connect, to each other through the season. DSC could release one episode a month and still be serialized so long as the episodes were connected to each other in a larger narrative. Reversely TNG could have put out three episodes a week and still been "episode of the week" so long as they remained unconnected to each other as they were.
And, at least I know its true in anime, a season is typically 12-13 episodes in length. 13 weeks = 3 months. 12 months in a year, and 4 season a year, each season 3 months.
The whole science vs. religion thing involving Terralysium - that's philosophy.
And those are just a small scattering of examples - Discovery is LOADED with 'soft' sci-fi.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Judging by my own opinion and most of the reviews I read on Rotten Tomatos, what makes Discovery unpopular is not too much talking and political maneuvering, but too much whining and political correctness.
Especially Burnham makes an emotional drama out of everything, going back and forth between ecstasy and depression within moments. I find that very annoying, I don't enjoy a personal crisis over whether to go TRIBBLE or not taking 5 minutes of show time. Add to that the wokeness-club that is far too prevalent, and what little humor there is being childish Jar-Jar-Binks-like stuff, we get a show that I and apparently many others thoroughly detest. And I really tried to like it for three horrible seasons. Now I have given up.
Also kind of sad to see how The Expanse does everything, and especially the diversity inclusion that seems to be mandatory in all modern TV, so much better.
I am now rewatching ENT instead, and having more fun and laughs in the first half of S1 than in all of Disco.
> Translation: There's too much talking and political maneuvering, and not enough happy spaceship pew-pew.
Really Jon? Come on! TOS and TNG had almost no special effects. 90% of Star Trek has always been talking heads. I don’t think talking is the problem. It is the crying and interpersonal drama that feels less Star Trek, because the 80’s to 90’s Star Trek specifically avoided those plot threads as being cheap forms of drama compared to some stoic philosphic and existential drama, or external threat.
But you can find interviews, even for people writing for TOS, where they talk about how everyone hated it, and thought that was a horribly dumb idea because all it did was zap away avenues for character growth, and development. And we see in DS9, VOY, and ENT, shows made after Gene was dead, or had no real influence in, that they started adding it in because those kinds of things are relatable, and make the people on screen feel like people instead of just characters made up for a TV show.
It wasn't because they found it cheap, its because they weren't allowed to do it despite wanting to do it.
The action movie fans that DSC caters to most are also the most likely to bootleg it which does not help the ratings or the subscriptions either, nonetheless those broadcasts were mostly into areas which did not have access to the original streams (except for the already mentioned bootlegs) so it is still a valid point.
NuTrek just has nothing to differentiate it from the rest of the space operas out there besides the name, and the name only takes it so far since the substance of the new shows do not support that association with the soft-sci-fi traditional Trek very well.
As for Moonves fanning the flames, that has been talked to death in other threads here and in most other media forums that talk about Star Trek, so I am not going to argue it at length again here, it has long ago devolved into far too deep a rabbit hole to take the time for at the moment.
The things you list for the plot of those four stories are the action motivation triggers that lead into the main plot conflicts, not sociological, historical, political ideology, or philosophical examinations of the issues by way of (hopefully entertaining) story the way the soft sci-fi does. Those points drive the action but are not realistically explored any more than exploring the culture of illegal street racing is really the central theme of The Fast and the Furious movies (which it isn't, it is just a part of the setting) rather than the all-out action romp aspect.
It is true that the same elements are there in both traditional and NuTrek, but it is the role of those elements in the overall plot structure that determines whether it is soft-sci-fi or space-opera, and those roles are markedly different between the two.
You are confusing weather seasons where there are four full seasons in a year with TV seasons which only have two full along with two optional ones that overlap with the main two.
In TV the most important season (and the one that officially started a TV year) was the Fall/Winter season that ran from September to April (though it eventually expanded to May to include the spring sweeps). While at the longest it is 34 weeks long, production time issues made it difficult to produce more than 26 episodes of hour-long drama no matter how brutally fast they set the pace at the studios.
The Summer season was only three months long and the summer shows were mostly considered filler because the idea was that people would be outside more in the evening in warmer weather (and sometimes going to theaters in the evening) and therefore less likely to be watching TV. Usually, the summer shows were half season (13 week) comedies that people could watch casually on rainy days or whatever (so they tended to be standalone style episodes with few if any arc threads between them) with a few dramas sprinkled into the mix.
There is also the Spring Replacement slot where if a series was cancelled mid-season (or the fall start had a miniseries in that slot), they would put either a summer-style show, a miniseries that the execs thought was not worthy of a fall start, or a syndicated show. Occasionally they would fill it with another series that was cancelled during production that was considered not good enough for fall but good enough to try and recoup losses in the spring without the network taking too much of a drubbing in the ratings for the year (unfortunately some interesting sci-fi shows met this fate because the executives just didn't "get" the shows).
The other secondary slot was at the annual starting point in September and was meant for those rare miniseries (about eight weekly segments give or take one or two on average) that were considered good enough to lead with, and usually ended with filler content until the mid-season replacement time came around. Alternatively, they would show those miniseries several days of the week (usually in two-hour segments) and start a regular fall series or two (often ones that are a couple of episodes short of season length for some reason) afterwards.
So traditionally for hour-long dramas a full season is 26 weeks (though the often sneak it down to 22 or thereabouts), a half-season is 13 episodes, and a miniseries is 8 episodes give or take a few.
And again, boiled down to the basics the difference between serial and episodic shows is whether an episode (or segment in the case of serials) is a complete story (which may or may not have arc threads running through them) or not.
It is not the totally binary situation that some like to make it out to be, they do overlap. For instance, as I said earlier, Babylon5 and ENT (and DS9 as you brought up) used that strongly arc-episodic format as a sort of best-of-both-worlds form, (and the Marvel movies use the same thing on a movie arc scale) which, depending on how you look at it, can be thought of as a hybrid of the two since they are in that overlap zone, though those particular examples tend to have more episodic traits than serial ones.
Getting back to the point that kicked off all of this discussion, the issue with NuTrek that a lot of the traditional fans are disappointed by is less about the format change (and most of those objections are actually more about the pacing once you get down to it) and more about the genre change, and the palpable contempt NuTrek shows for the traditional (especially in the case of TOS).
To be fair, you wouldn't want to associate with the traditional Trek format in the modern day. That format was dying out even by the time DS9 started airing, and DS9 took a far more serialized action format as a response. The old format almost killed ENT in the first two seasons, and ENT is normally regarded to have gotten better in S3 and S4 when it stopped being that. Most people don't want that anymore.
How exactly does the new Trek shows not examine or explore them in the way of a hopefully entertaining story like old Trek does? I see far more actual examination of these themes and ideas in newer Trek shows that I ever saw in older Trek shows. Even if only because newer Trek shows are able to let them breathe in a 10-13 episode long season, instead of being forced to only cover the very surface level elements of it as old Trek did since it was all one-and-done episodes.
The only other substantive difference I see between the older and newer Trek shows is the removal of the very "and that's the moral of the story!" line Star Trek tended to include at the end of the episode. Which was generally considered poor writing in most shows that used it.
Traditionally yes, but TV isn't "traditional" anymore. Many full shows, marketed as full shows, with a full season, have been getting 13ish episodes. Because what defines a season has changed. And even back then many shows had seasons of varying length. So there was never hard length for a "season".
Having watched pretty much all of the old Trek shows, and been keeping current on the new Trek shows, I've seen nothing about the new Trek shows that indicates any sort of contempt for the older Trek shows, or even TOS specifically.
As far back as S1 of Discovery they put a lot of effort in incorporating various obscure elements of Klingon culture that other Trek shows had mentioned, but largely glossed over. Even putting the time to have the actors learn Klingon as Mark Okrand(sp?) designed it. Incorporating various ideas of concept art from cancelled projects, or that didn't end up making the cut, like the design of the Discovery itself, the Klingon uniforms used by T'kuvma's group, the pointed Ferengi ears, and even the future of the Federation taking in elements of the undeveloped show ideas proposed after Enterprise ended. Not to mention aspects from the extended universe like Control from the novels, Prodigy adding an alien race from an old comic, the recent STO reference in DSC S4.
After the big dump Disney took over Star Wars' universe, only to backtrack more recently, it was nice to see Discovery, Picard, and LD, put so much effort into respecting what came before. When they very easily could have not done any of it. I quite honestly don't understand how you see any sort of disrespect in them.
But at this point I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.
resistance is futile ;-)
Data and the Doctor both struggled for years to gain respect, and acceptance, in the larger universe because most people were hesitant to the idea of holograms and androids being considered alive. Even after earning their place, the laws really only applied to them as unique exceptions, and not a larger acceptance of androids/holograms as being alive. The synths in Picard were dumb androids, with no actual intelligence, who everyone believed went haywire, and destroyed Mars. Even then, once it was conclusively revealed it was actually the Romulans who did it, and that the Romulans were about to commit genocide on actually sapient androids, the Federation immediately sent a large fleet to protect them, and immediately after repealed the synth ban, with zero hesitation.
I see nothing different or conflicting about these scenarios.
As Lorca said "Universal law is for lackeys, context is for kings". The exact specifics of any situation are the most important, as they can competently change the meaning behind an action. You can kill someone out of the blue and thats murder, and you can kill someone who is trying to kill you and thats self defense. You can't just boil it down to "killing bad!" and say that someone in Discovery or Picard killing someone in self defense misses the point of an episode of TNG where they talk about pointless murder being bad.
The same is true of the Barclay/Larkin situation, and the Data+Doctor/Synth situation. they are completely different situations outside of some very very high level similarities. You can't honestly compare them because they aren't the same. The reactions being different are justified based on the context of each specific situation. There is no universal right answer to a kind of situation. You have to look at each of them objectively one at a time.
...THEN THE WINGED HUSSARS ARRIVED!