Star Trek: Discovery - Season 4 (With Spoilers)

[Deledrius]

-Wait, how does putting chewing gum on two combadges turn it into a PADD/hologram?

She later explains that she was using it as a conductor, with the implication being this was a makeshift repair. I'm not sure why she needed to do that. She said she grabbed the communicator chip before she was ambushed, but that doesn't explain why she needed to add licorice. That wouldn't have helped her get through his security, and I'm not sure why it would have been non-functional otherwise.

-And the very alien species' language somehow can be converted into Latin alphabet, thank God they don't use pictographs like 1/4 of our human population does.

That's what I thought they were doing at first glance, but no, all he was doing was assigning them ordinal letters as symbols to stand in for arbitrary values. Nothing was Latin about it except those were the symbols Dr. Hirai chose to use in illustrating the logic translation.

Realistically he probably would have used something else, but the general audience is already going to have most of this going over their heads and I'm sure using something familiar was an intentional choice to not make the "turn off your brain" crowd have their eyes glaze. There's a lot of that kind of hand-waving in this show.

-"I love math" Everyone loves something they don't understand

I was amused that this time it was at least relevant to what was going on. They really like trying to make their team of scientists sound like scientists, but they're barely any better at it than the BBT writers.

-Wow... that is by far the laziest way of saving money... the hyperadvanced aliens decided to replicate the Discovery bridge... because I guess everyone will be comfortable and no one will ever be creeped out by that...

My immediate thought was "Aww, that's boring... oh, they had to save money I guess."

-How convenient for that pillar to materialize on the fake Discovery bridge so that Saru doesn't hold the orb in his arms and can button on it...

I think he somehow summoned it. Or perhaps it "extended" from the device? I was amused that the woman who delivered it to him before they left beamed in directly in front of him, and then just walked away like she had to wait for her transporter to charge back up.

[Frustration]

My immediate thought was "Aww, that's boring... oh, they had to save money I guess."

Green-screening is now quite cheap. They could have put them in a featureless white void quite easily.

[Deledrius]

My immediate thought was "Aww, that's boring... oh, they had to save money I guess."

Green-screening is now quite cheap. They could have put them in a featureless white void quite easily.

Indeed. And they also have that virtual set tech as well. Someone still has to build it though, provided it's anything more than a white void.

I think it would have been more interesting if it had been something like a waiting room, with a similar liquid metal look to the rest of the 10-C structures we saw this week. The bridge really doesn't tell us anything, and the "wanting us to be comfortable" line is clearly post-hoc. I would hope it wouldn't be too costly to represent that, but who knows what they were working with since CBS is stretching things so thin with twenty new Trek shows starting next month.

[Frustration]

Who's watching this junk?

[Mabus]

My immediate thought was "Aww, that's boring... oh, they had to save money I guess."

Green-screening is now quite cheap. They could have put them in a featureless white void quite easily.

Indeed. And they also have that virtual set tech as well. Someone still has to build it though, provided it's anything more than a white void.

I think it would have been more interesting if it had been something like a waiting room, with a similar liquid metal look to the rest of the 10-C structures we saw this week. The bridge really doesn't tell us anything, and the "wanting us to be comfortable" line is clearly post-hoc. I would hope it wouldn't be too costly to represent that, but who knows what they were working with since CBS is stretching things so thin with twenty new Trek shows starting next month.

I have noticed that the quality of NuTrek visuals is all over the place. You have scenes with excellent visuals and even great shooting locations, while at the same time the CGI in some scenes is just lazy. The infamous Copy-Paste fleet from S1 of Picard is the cherry on top, but in the prior episode, there was that great looking aerial shot of the Malibu cliffs I think (?), and right before that there was the desert where the ship crashed, which was just awful, it felt too grainy.

And the thing about the fog aliens is that, at least in Arrival you could still see their form through that fog and as the Heptapods began to communicate more and more, their form became cleared as time passed. While here in Dis the fog aliens remain just engulfed in fog, and you'd think that given how they communicate with light they'd need to remove the fog since fog interferes with light, but nah, gotta keep the budget low.

[Al-1701]

I think it's a cheap (speaking more mentally than financially) means to maintain the mystery. I can't imagine creating an alien model is that much more expensive than the fog effects (especially since we saw a rendition of their form on a HUD).

[Deledrius]

Fog is always cheaper.

[Al-1701]

Even computer generated fog that can somehow allow you to see distinct lights?

Anyway, can we shove the mad scientist out an airlock yet? Every time they seem to make headway, he has to sabotage it because of his narrow-minded vision which has officially reached star system wrecking proportions. I think even Ayn Rand would call him a selfish dick.

[Deledrius]

He doesn't care a single drop about a galaxy he's leaving and never coming back to. He's written everyone off already.

[Mabus]

Episode 13:
-That sped-up scene from the beginning was intended to be serious, but it's just so cheesy it's just hilarious xD
-Ah, Tillie is back... all is forgiven...
-I guess the 10-C forgot they don't have transporter technology to beam away Book's ship (like the Voth had), even though they clearly had it in the previous episode, instead now they rely on throwing balls at them, like Book's ship is some Pokemon;
-"Where's your presto chango button?" "We already used up most of our budget in the intro scene, try to wobble around when the camera is moving to save some money on SFX"
-"I can't let whoever did this keep walking around my ship" she says that while Ndoye is walking on her ship
-And of course The Burnham has to dress down Ndoye, what a shitty way to end this subplot
-Wait, they haven't considered telepathy until now? Sweet Jesus, I never thought that I'd say this, but this is situation where Deanna Troi would have been useful, and hell, the Federation was far competent 800 years earlier. Yes, it's dangerous to link telepathically to an unknown species, but, you know, Earth is about to be destroyed? Again?
-Vulcans can mind meld with the window now? And that was quite quick, I'd though it would have taken her a few minutes to prepare herself mentally.
-"They cannot stop Booker's ship" maybe try something else besides throwing Pokeballs at it?
-"They're linked? Like the Borg?" What, are hive-minds a rarity in Trek?
-"It's difficult to describe, but I believe they might not have any awareness of individual existence as we know it" Holy fuck, Leviathan Falls is not even 5 months old and Kurtzman already ripped off the origin of the Protomolecule/Ring builders, and they didn't even do it well!
-Wait, why can't you just use the spore drive to get out of the CGI budget-saving orb? I don't recall them ever giving a reason why they shouldn't, why do they have to overcomplicate the plot with this technobabble nonsense? Because the network that spreads throughout the universe and beyond suddenly doesn't exist outside the Galactic Barrier?
-Oh right, the WALL FLAMETHROWERS RETURN! THEY SHALL NEVER DIE!
-Oh no... the 200$ Home Depot Spore Drive set got blown up... anyway...
-Wow, I wasn't joking when I said that they already blew away their budget on CGI and instead they just ask the actors to wobble along with the camera, there's like 2 scenes of the DMA debris hitting Earth's defenses and instead most of the scenes near Earth just show the actors being surrounded by fireworks and wobbly camera. And flamethrowers! THEY'RE EVERYWHERE!
-Wait, the 10-C are incapable of sending anything near their own power source/technology to defend it? They don't even have an emergency stop button for it? Some protective forcefield? THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND THEIR OWN TECHNOLOGY? How can they just allow anything foreign near their most important piece of technology?
-You could put the shuttle on autopilot...? No need to do a bullshit sacrifice?
-"We'll need a great pilot" NO Detmer, Burnham was talking about herself, don't go or you'll die! And you're a sort of main character! You cannot steal her spotlight, haven't you noticed that everyone that tries to one-up The Burnham dies?
-Oh... so the Earth general will do it... I guess she isn't a main character, and she was a bad guy, she'll bite it.
-Everybody cries, even the bad guy...
-Welp, I was wrong, too bad, cause it would have been a fitting end for the general, even if a bit cheesy
-...OK, so..,. for some reason they can't use the tractor beam (which now exists apparently) to grab Booker's damaged ship, because I guess it's spinning like the station from the first episode I suppose, and instead the ship will somehow ram against the hyperfield wall, and then Tarka beams Booker away but then he can't, the ship explodes, Book is not materialized... what?
-OK, are the flamethrowers really necessary while Burnham is crying? Like really? I'm laughing. Burnham is crying her ass off and I'm laughing.
-So Tarka now gives whiskey to everyone? What a small world.
-How nice of the asteroids to not further hit the station so that Tillie and the Admiral talk about their lives.. they're such nice asteroids
-...that's not how gas giants work! Gas giants don't have a surface, they're a ball of gas that becomes more and more compressed the further you go down, until it slowly becomes a liquid, and then further down said liquid becomes solid. Their metallic or rocky "core" would be tens of thousands of km below the solidified gas layer, any hypothetical magic structure on the surface of the "rocky core" would be a cavern at best, not an open field surrounded by fog.
-Oh look, it's the ships from Transformers 3! Fuck you Kurtzman!
-Is this the reason why they saved up their budget for? Cause the CGI doesn't look that impressive. Due to the awful orange-red tinge, I can barely differentiate between the aliens, let alone see their texture, it doesn't look great, it looks so bland. I don't care if the aliens don't see each other as individuals, if you're going for grand visuals, do them right!
-And of course it's Burnham that again saves the day by managing to find the right words to convince the alien aliens that they're hurting people.
-"And there goes the debris field" WHAT! WHY? Are those asteroids made of magnets?
-OH COME THE FUCK ON! You're really gonna bring back Booker like this? REALLY?
-"Oil is bad stop extracting oil!"
-So Kweijan is now Pandorra? Really?
-Of course they were going to use their wormhole to send Discovery back, it was so obvious they weren't going to spend the next season redoing Voyager. NuTrek only rips off other works, but never older Trek shows.
-Oh God, Saru, just fuck already!
-"You've come a long way, you're still just as right as before. Only now I have realized the errors of my own way. I apologize my Lord and Savior Michael Burnham, please forgive me for doubting you!"
-"After nearly causing the death of more billions of people I'm being sentenced to help other people. Please forgive me Burnham, I was wrong like you said."
-"Hard to believe it's over" Yeah, longer season, same shitty writing
-"Captain, may we have a word?" Even in the coda, the show can't help but make Burnham the center of attention, Christ...

This was a plot that could have been over in like three episodes once you trimmed the fat. The Tarka/Booker subplot went nowhere, and the worst part is that at one point it seemed to turn into an interesting story, but instead it ended up a wet fart. What a waste.
And the whole Heptapod/Ring Builders-like aliens stuff could have been done a lot better, but I guess when you create aliens that require lots of CGI, you can only use them a few times, and even then, using a fucking orange tint for what is supposed to be some unique and great alien designs just ruins the moment. They aren't in Hollywood Mexico, just give them color FFS!