The Thread for discussing Star Trek Discovery, with spoilers to make it easier for people who can't avoid reading them to watch the show.
Spoiler: Episode 1&2 spoilers. I'm not sure how i feel about the immediately making the black woman a criminal via mutiny... I think it could have been conveyed better than it was.
And I like this review. It has Ep 2 spoilers though, it explains how I feel about the show so far well. I don't think there's quite enough to pass judgement on it yet.
just watched episode 1, i'm loving Michael and her vulcan sass mixed with Kirk-like enthusiasm! onto episode two.
Spoiler: a couple more specific comments on ep 1-2 man this show is pretty. i read they spent like 8 million dollars per episode, and damn, it shows. SO MUCH SPACE PORN, yes please. BABY MICHAEL'S VULCAN HAIRCUT. I LOVE. summoning all the klingon noble houses... i wonder if there's a house that was stricken with the horrible genetic mutation that leaves them with smooth heads and goatees. (probably not but i'd love that.) i love the design of the Shenzhou! and the Klingon ships look very cool too (although the beacon having those big wing-shaped things and a cloaking field made me think it was Romulan at first.) i'm less wild about the uniform designs-- the zipper looks like it's off-center by like. an inch. and the collar is weird. they are nowhere near the worst Star Trek uniforms, though, so i'll give them a pass there. :p anyway i do like the color scheme, although it's kind of subtle... it took me an episode and a half to figure out that gold, silver, and bronze/copper correspond to command, science, and operations respectively, and that rank is indicated by tiny pips on the starfleet insignia. i just confirmed that it's not Majel Barrett Roddenberry's voice as the computer. :| maybe the recordings they made of her voice aren't high enough quality for a modern show? she was the voice of the computer in the JJ Abrams films though! anyway it makes me sad that she's not in it. Spoiler: spoilers for unaired episodes i read that Rainn Wilson is playing a young Harry Mudd and OMG i'm excited, i think that was him all beardy in the teaser at the end. i love Mudd and i think Wilson's gonna do a great job with him. as far as the story goes, it's hard to say this early on. i liked the episodes as an extended pilot, but i'm curious to see where they go with it. anyway, in conclusion, i agree with this (non-spoilery) review.
if you're in the US or Canada, your legal options are pretty much limited to the CBS streaming service. outside the US, it's on netflix, i think it shows up a day after the episode aired. if you're in the US/Canada and you don't want/can't afford CBS's streaming service, you can use a proxy or something to make netflix think you're in another country. also i read that it is the like... the 10th most pirated show on thepiratebay right now.
thoughts on ST:D (god what a terrible initialism) now that we're almost halfway through the season: Spoiler this show, man. i am so torn about the show. on the one hand, i am enjoying it as a piece of sci-fi! i like most of the characters, i like the ship design, i like a lot of the individual episode stories. i love Tilly! i love Saru! i loved Stamets as a grumpy science curmudgeon, and i love Stamets as a weirdly-suddenly-hippie, and i hope they explore wtf the spore drive connection is doing to him more. i really really really love Mudd, and Rainn Wilson's take on him in particular. but. it doesn't feel like Star Trek to me. it's not the visuals or the aesthetic or even the fact that the tech seems way too advanced for a show taking place 10 years before TOS. i can forgive all that; going back to using mechanical buttons instead of touchscreens would probably feel clumsy and retro in a forced way to modern audiences. and there's definitely a balancing act that every Star Trek iteration has to go deal with-- wanting to make it fit with the wider ST universe while still putting your own stamp on the show. so the Kelvin-esque aesthetic is fine by me. it's the fact that this show is about Starfleet at war. Star Trek, to me, is about a future where we do everything we can to avoid war-- the Star Trek cliché about endless interminable scenes of diplomatic meetings in a boardroom are what i love about it. even after the pilot i figured the rest of the season would be diplomatic scramblings to maintain relations with the Klingon Empire in an uneasy truce, but nah, we're at WAR NOW. i know DS9 did a war plot... but that started i think at the end of season 5, with many seasons of buildup and negotiations and whatnot. Discovery starts the war in the pilot. and watching a show all about wartime just fundamentally doesn't feel Star Trek to me. honestly it feels a lot more like a Battlestar Galactica than a Trek. which is not an insult; i love BSG! but i love it for different reasons. and all the nods to the other Star Trek shows don't help-- they feel like set dressing, not anything that's actually being engaged with. Lorca having a pet tribble or namechecking Zephram Cochrane doesn't do anything to convince me when the whole tone of the show is fundamentally different. i'm willing to keep watching; like i said, i am enjoying it on its own merits as a sci-fi show, and i do want to see where they go with the story. the less episodic, more overarching plot structure makes it hard to judge halfway through. but right now, as it stands, nothing about the show needs to be Star Trek to me. you could ditch all the callbacks and references and it would feel like a completely original property, not Star Trek with the serial numbers filed off. and i think i would have preferred that. Spoiler: shipping talk also the Burnham/Tyler romance feels very forced to me. they don't seem to have any chemistry really. my ships for the show, in homestuck terms, are: -Burnham <3 Tilly. i like Tilly a lot; "socially awkward extrovert" is not a character trope we see too often, and i really like their relationship dynamic and the way they complement each other. -Burnham <3< Saru. i wanted to see them kiss from the first time they bickered in the pilot, and the rivalry and jealousy apparent between them makes for a great blackrom dynamic, imo. also XENO. -Lorca <3 Tyler. Tyler seems to hero-worship Lorca a bit, and Lorca absolutely strikes me as the type who would strike up a physical relationship with a subordinate, because he plays by HIS OWN RULES DAMMIT. plus i like morally gray and potentially unhealthy relationships. but naaah, gotta have that het. :/ don't get me wrong, i love Stamets and the fact that we have an open same-sex couple in the show. but it would be nice to see a same-sex courtship or will-they-won't-they happen.
