Star Trek Discovery: The Vulcan Hello

[Durandal_1707]

Also I'm surprised that Chuck didn't point out how Georgiou and Michael say F the Prime Directed we're doing what's right insterad of just letting a entire race die simply because some rule says we should. It would be hilarious if the writes actually saw Chuck's reviews and went, "Huh, you know, he's got a point."

Actually this fits right well into how the PD was handled in TOS (as mentioned in "For the World is Hollow..." and the PD review). Saving these people from a natural disaster is fine even if it means minor contamination of their culture. If he ever feels the need to redo the PD video, this would make a great example for it.

I don't even think the PD applied there, judging from the dialogue in the episode it sounded like either a human or federation vessel caused the disaster in the first place, so they were fixing what another person broke, rather then fixing what the natives broke.

Does it matter? The spirit behind the PD is to allow alien civilizations to develop naturally without interference. They can't develop if they're all dead.

[DanteC]

The main concern I believe right off the bat with the show even before it aired is the CBS lock that people in the US have to get past, which I agree is ridiculous (I'm in Scotland so get STD as part of Netflix). But to me and others over here, is just how drastically different it is from the other shows.

'It should have the aesthetics of TOS!' Well, then most younger people who haven't watched TOS, or TNG for that matter would think it looks ridiculous. The future is meant to be glossy, and if anything, should fit with the aesthetics of the likes of the recent films (even if they're not linked). But think about it. My mobile phone is 6 years old and is considered a brick compared to newer models, but it's still more powerful than the rocket that put men on the moon. TOS is based on the views that people had of the future, in the 60's. STD's look is based on designers view who are able to print out miniatures in real-time and render a spaceship on a tablet computer they can fit into a bag.

'The Klingons look wrong!' Again, they look a lot like the JJ Abrams ones. They've got to stick with that aesthetic. And were the differences between TOS and TNG klingons' brought up in the shows? No, they were brought up in DS9, long afterwards. And even then, it took Enterprise to do something with them.

'Burnham doesn't act like a human!' Um, she's human but raised by Vulcans. She's raised in a culture very different from her own species. So was Worf.

'They're not following the prime directive!' They clearly state in the pilot that the disaster affecting the planet was caused by foreign technology. I'd like to think that someone at Starfleet has some brains and figured that if something they cause triggers genocide by accident, that the least they can do is clean up their own mess.

The main issue I see is certain viewers want more TOS or TNG. They want their own Star Trek, which isn't Discovery. Then they should watch the DVD's with rose-tinted glasses. Or watch The Orville (which I've seen some of, and to be fair, liked what I saw). But when you get people moaning about the first few episodes, and somehow forgetting how terrible TNG's first season was, or that Voyager was riddled with technobabble and continuity issues (within the same episode!), then people who like STD will just shrug their shoulders and carry on watching STD. And imagine the STD-bashers locked in a room with Neelix.

Is STD perfect? No. Is it an improvement of said first season TNG? Yes. But we've got to realise that times had changed. It would probably get the same kind of bashing if it was a TOS clone, aesthetics, storyline and all. I can't look at older Trek's fight scene's and cringe at Tasha Yar doing a judo-chop or Worf crudely fighting with swords when I can watch Into the Badlands and see a fantastically cooriographied fight scene in the first few minutes (and the STD's fight scenes are far better than anything in Trek. Though I did laugh at one DS9 episode when I saw Worf snap someone's neck). There's suspension of disbelief, and wondering why a chief security officer doesn't know at least some something resembling martial arts and tactics. Or if you spend a lot of time in space that you don't know at least the basics of first aid (I'm looking at you Voyager. Why do you only have 3 people (The Doctor, Kes, and Paris) who can, by all accounts, affix a plaster?

We're in a time when we're getting more space-based shows. TNG and the other Trek shows helped lay the path for Babylon 5, Space above and Beyond, Andromeda, Red Dwarf and Farscape. Ten years later we got BSG. We've now got Killjoys, The Expanse and Dark Matter (RIP), very different space based shows. Times have changed, shows have to accommodate that.

Should add, I like that STD is telling a continuous story rather than somewhat fractured, disjointed episodes from TNG and Voyager (don't know about DS9 but it was screwed around by the Scottish broadcasters up here). Main complaint is following Burnham as a main character, she's, OK, I find. I want to follow the other characters around more though, especially some of the bridge crew of the ship (the robot-headed woman for example, it's good so see a character on Trek that looks so, well, alien). Oh, and hardly any technobabble, always a bonus.

[RobbyB1982]

I'm a little perplexed by this video... It seemed to consist only of a synopsis, but no review. I was anticipating some commentary about the division among fans, perhaps something about the costuming and technology relative to the supposed setting... something, at least.

Perhaps this is going to appear in the second part?

It's basically a two part episode, so he'll probably talk about it more then.

I also assume he'll be leaving scores off this one since its a series in-progress.

[RobbyB1982]

'It should have the aesthetics of TOS!' Well, then most younger people who haven't watched TOS, or TNG for that matter would think it looks ridiculous. The future is meant to be glossy, and if anything, should fit with the aesthetics of the likes of the recent films (even if they're not linked). But think about it. My mobile phone is 6 years old and is considered a brick compared to newer models, but it's still more powerful than the rocket that put men on the moon. TOS is based on the views that people had of the future, in the 60's. STD's look is based on designers view who are able to print out miniatures in real-time and render a spaceship on a tablet computer they can fit into a bag.

'The Klingons look wrong!' Again, they look a lot like the JJ Abrams ones. They've got to stick with that aesthetic. And were the differences between TOS and TNG klingons' brought up in the shows? No, they were brought up in DS9, long afterwards. And even then, it took Enterprise to do something with them.

Sticking with the old low budget deisgns for the tech as based on the 60's would indeed be really stupid. The tech stuff and the uniforms needs to update and thats fine.

But the Klingons have had a basically consistent look for 40 years now. Yes,they changed between TOS and the first movie, but they've had the same basic look and armor design since 1979. Making them closer to the Abrams nonsense is... eh. Change up the armor if you need to, or give them different haircuts to show they're "different" klingons... but as radical as the changes were in design and culture, they just don't look like or feel like Klingons at all, they seem like a different species entirely.

If they'd just called these the Yuuzhan Vong you wouldn't know they were ever supposed to be Klignon.

Really the series should have just jumped another 50 or 100 years past Nemesis and put us in the 25th century, rather than backpeddling back to Kirk's era and all the baggage that entails, and that would have avoided all the big problems entirely... and let them grab "old person" cameos of whoever felt like guesting.

[Fianna]

It should have the aesthetics of TOS!' Well, then most younger people who haven't watched TOS, or TNG for that matter would think it looks ridiculous. The future is meant to be glossy, and if anything, should fit with the aesthetics of the likes of the recent films (even if they're not linked). But think about it. My mobile phone is 6 years old and is considered a brick compared to newer models, but it's still more powerful than the rocket that put men on the moon. TOS is based on the views that people had of the future, in the 60's. STD's look is based on designers view who are able to print out miniatures in real-time and render a spaceship on a tablet computer they can fit into a bag.

Except that current ideas about how the future will look, and the idea that "the future is meant to be glossy", are just as much of a contemporary fad as the 60's designs were, and will likely look equally hideous and/or ridiculous in the actual future. In terms of predicting what popular aesthetics will be several centuries down the line, the TOS palette of bright, primary colors, miniskirt dresses, and the like are equally as likely to pan out as modern ideas of sleek, glossy surfaces and a color palette mostly consisting of white, black, and occasionally muted blue.

I personally like that TOS embraced the idea that the future would have design sensibilities that would seem very bizarre to us, like food coming in the form of various brightly colored cubes, or purple hallways with green lighting, or pretty much any outfit worn by someone who wasn't in Starfleet (especially if they were supposed to be a sexy lady).

[Linkara]

Sticking with the old low budget deisgns for the tech as based on the 60's would indeed be really stupid. The tech stuff and the uniforms needs to update and thats fine.

But the Klingons have had a basically consistent look for 40 years now. Yes,they changed between TOS and the first movie, but they've had the same basic look and armor design since 1979. Making them closer to the Abrams nonsense is... eh. Change up the armor if you need to, or give them different haircuts to show they're "different" klingons... but as radical as the changes were in design and culture, they just don't look like or feel like Klingons at all, they seem like a different species entirely.

If they'd just called these the Yuuzhan Vong you wouldn't know they were ever supposed to be Klignon.

Really the series should have just jumped another 50 or 100 years past Nemesis and put us in the 25th century, rather than backpeddling back to Kirk's era and all the baggage that entails, and that would have avoided all the big problems entirely... and let them grab "old person" cameos of whoever felt like guesting.

Agreed, a lot of the problems of Discovery (to me, at least) come about because of the desire to make it a prequel instead of a sequel. I don't mind the uniforms, the general aesthetic matching the Kelvin timeline, or things LOOKING a little more advanced... but then there's stuff like Sarek's presence and seeming quite a bit out of character with how we saw him in his other appearances, the holographic communicators that were nowhere near the tech levels of TOS, or the VERY incongruous looks of the Klingons and their design aesthetic compared to how Klingons should be looking (even if not of TOS-era Klingons, than of every other Trek show).

You make this a sequel series, we'd already established the holographic communicators in DS9, you make Burnham's adopted father Tuvok or some new Vulcan, and these can be a mutation/new development of Klingon evolution or a new race entirely.

[Ikiry0]

Yeah. I think a sequel series would have salved a chunk of my general nerd rage issues (As opposed to what I think are some legitimate issues regardless of any show history like the lighting choices often making it a pain to see squat). However, at the same time I'm not entirely sure that they couldn't have kept some 60s futurism if they'd wanted to make it a prequel. Not the exact same sets as TOS but 60s futurism has its own style that could have made Discovery look rather distinctive as a modern update of what TOS was going for. Discovery's current look feels more than a bit bland, at least imo.

[Durandal_1707]

They... kinda did. The retro-style phasers and communicators. The retro sound effects when the ships' weapons are fired. The pinging (and on the Shenzhou, chirping) bridge noises.

[Madner Kami]

I don't mind visual upgrades, I wouldn't mind updating alien designs even for established races and I don't mind this being a prequel. What I do mind is design inconsistencies and continuity-breaks for no good reason.

Trekyards has a nice commentary on the klingon ship designs of Discovery, that is true to the core. They do not just not look like klingon ships as established by Enterprise, TOS, TNG and DS9, but they are also internally incoherent. For example you have one that looks like a school-bus in space, next to a ship that could be designed after a line-drawing from a romulan battlecruiser out of the Star Trek Battles board game's EU, next to a Goa'Uld Deathglider and all this while Starfleet ships still look distinctly federative even though updated and it gets even worse with the retrofitted mirrorverse Defiant-design that is decidely TOSish in every conceivable way. What's the point? It's a mess and I think it's very indicative of the series as a whole. I get why they choose that setting in time, but I do not get why they follow established facts so inconsistently and shoehorn Sarek in for no good reason.

[CharlesPhipps]

I like the new series but it's a little too dark and trying to be edgy when it should be, well, Star Trek.

The Orville is doing a better job at that.