Star Trek Discovery season 2 megathread

[Yukaphile]

Just don't pair him up with Rick Berman.

[Worffan101]

Discovery's approach to science is a very Bad Robot Productions approach. Not just making up bullshit "science", but making up obviously bullshit "science" that keeps getting MORE bullshit the longer they keep spouting it.

As for Doomcock, all I know of his personal politics is that he likes throwing out alt-right buzzwords and goes on rant tantrums about stuff like things not perfectly meshing with all previous canon (which, let's be honest, TNG and DS9 had more than their share of inconsistencies even within themselves, but let's put a pin in this for later). That said, some of his points, like how Burnham is written as an indescribably perfect hypercompetent cipher, and how the scene with Kid Burnham and Kid Spock would've been much better if they'd taken cues from TAS, ARE on point.

I almost miss Berman and Braga.

Are you seriously still suggesting that cuck is an alt-right word? Or is alt-right your go-to insult for anyone not on the left? And yeah, you should miss Braga given how much better Orville is to this shit. Like Chuck himself says, Braga isn't a bad writer, he's a hack writer. He can deliver the goods on occasion.

Yes, "cuck" IS an alt-right word, as I explained upthread. It was coined by MRAs, who took to calling Republican politicians they didn't like "cuckservatives" (portmanteau of "cuckold" and "conservative", intended to imply foolishness, incompetence, and lack of masculinity) in the early 2010s. "Cuck" is the shortened all-purpose slur, and is one of the alt-right's favorite slurs for men (they prefer "femoid", "whore", and "slut" for women; men get "cuck", "beta" and for some reason "soyboy")

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Are you seriously still suggesting that cuck is an alt-right word?

Its usage to describe male characters who generally aren't competing for females when someone of another culture is is quite predominant in alt-right lensing.

[Yukaphile]

Well, I know one thing that defines the right is their belief in and strict adherence to gender roles. My three right-wing friends all subscribe to this. That would mean all that that implies. Men are territorial and fight, for women, for land, for food. Women are nurturing and supportive and need to let the boys do all the work. It's a way to describe someone who's being a "pussy," isn't it? That said, I hate that word, too. You wanna describe someone who isn't being manly through accusation/implication of cowardice or fear? Use a feminine-strong word which subtly implies "vagina fear." The Feminists are right to wanna correct this part of our language.

[MixedDrops]

If you don't believe "cuck" is a common alt-right snarl word then you either haven't been paying attention or you are just dishonest. Arguing that the word has always existed and has other uses is basically as exhaustive as saying someone offended by the use of the manji in a suburban US neighborhood is insensitive to East Asian cultures. Most of us can see context for what it is, and apparently some of the people here are either ignorant of that or are simply malicious. If multiple people have explained the context to you and you still don't see the problem, then it's easy to conclude you're the latter.

As for the second episode of Discovery (which somehow has barely been discussed in an 11-page thread in favor of multiple pages of praising massively nitpicky rants from youtubers), I found it largely forgettable. It's pretty much just a bog-standard Prime Directive episode, though a couple good performances buoy it up a bit, especially from the guest star. That and they don't discuss genociding the whole population out of convenience like Voyager or Enterprise would sometimes do, so there's that at least. Almost feels like a rite of passage for every Trek series to get a Prime Directive episode within the first few now, despite Pen Pals having pretty much perfected it 30 years ago.

[Yukaphile]

DELETED.

[MixedDrops]

Actually wasn't accusing you specifically, it was a more general "you", and I thought I made that rather clear in the post.

(Editing the rest of my post out since it's not as relevant now)

[Yukaphile]

Okay then, I misunderstood. My bad.

[MixedDrops]

Yeah, I apologize too, for the misunderstanding. Maybe I just didn't word things well enough. Basically I'm saying that if multiple people are explaining the modern etymology of some word, why it might be offensive/used by certain groups, and the reaction to that is basically some form of "lol whatev you're just oversensitive", I consider that malicious (or at the very least willfully ignorant to the point where there's no meaningful distinction).

[MissKittyFantastico]

Almost feels like a rite of passage for every Trek series to get a Prime Directive episode within the first few now, despite Pen Pals having pretty much perfected it 30 years ago.

I don't know that I'd agree with that, at least so far as 'Pen Pals' goes - the ep had strong merits, but I also felt it undercut what should've been a solid discussion of intervention/nonintervention by placing far too much weight on pretty weak reasons why the Prime Directive might be morally right in that situation despite it seeming like saving the planet is the obvious thing to do (some "cosmic plan" which requires the planet to asplode, and the assumption that the absolute lack of credible evidence for that is just that they're all too ignorant to know about it and thus have no business questioning it), and then making a decision not based on a mature assessment of the merits of each argument, but "Look at the little girl, she so cuuuute! How can we let her die?!?"

I felt 'New Eden' set itself up a better scenario for looking at the merits of telling the population the truth versus leaving them be - neither Burnham nor Pike were obviously right, nor completely unreasonable, and I felt like Pike's decision was made with due consideration to both arguments. There was a lot else going on in the episode, so it wasn't able to properly put General Order 1 under a microscope the way a more laser-focused story might have, but I thought it handled what it did well.