Star Trek: Discovery in trouble?

[nebagram]

The trailer's up. I'm going into this one with caution optimism, as I always do.

[MerelyAFan]

Kind of eh on the aesthetics (didn't have to be TOS esque, but a little more difference from the Kelvinverse would be nice) and I'm not overtly fond of being reminded of the Remans every time I see the Klingons, but the rest looked good. I'm intrigued by the conflict between the Captain and XO; its a dynamic that's typically produced enjoyable scenes on Trek (Enterprise notwithstanding).

Definitely curious to see how the engineered alien officer is like, especially given the Federation's stance on DNA re-sequencing.

[Redem]

I'm intrigue (an sorta suprise it feel like there's a bit of a negative reaction fom a lot of people) while I do admit the design feel more Mass Effect-y than Star Trek, I think it has potential

[lsgreg]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dxe_ugmIVM

Just released today. This is a first look trailer at the series.

[Nessus]

Good:
The cinematography. Aggressively flashy in places (in fairness, that's to be expected of a trailer), but Star Trek has been due for better cinematography for long time. It was OK back in the 90's, when it was hard to do better on a TV budget, but that didn't excuse Enterprise or later half of Voyager for looking more and more like soap operas as the rest of TV marched on past them. Even the movies had this problem, and it wasn't helped by some fans complaining every time they tried to improve by saying the shitty 90's style flat camerawork and lighting was "part of the Star Trek style". Lens flare jokes aside, this is definitely one of the good things thing the Abrams movies brought to the table, and it looks like the show is following their lead whole-hog there.

Could go either way:
Visual design. Starfleet looks, as Redem said, more Mass Effect than Starfleet, but lets be honest: as time and technology march on IRL, it gets harder and harder to make the TOS style look believably futuristic (though I have seen some good efforts, at least as far as the ship exteriors go). Klingons look weird, but I can swing that if they look good (still too early to tell for me). Don't forget: the Klingons went through a big design change like this already back when TMP and SFS came out. That was meant to be a straight retcon (not an in-universe change, as DS9 and Enterprise later re-retconned it), and I had zero problem embracing it as such, so I won't have a problem here either, if it looks good in the right ways (and there needs to be enough connecting thread to what's come before, as there was with the previous change).

Bad:
The focus on combat. I get that violence is one of the main spices that make things exciting, and that it's always been present in Trek, but the part that's raising red flags for me is how our main protagonist is the one arguing on the side of violence in a very modern action move/video game style. The dilemma of whether things should be solved with violence or diplomacy is IMO an important part of Star Trek, but the show has in past usually been very firmly on the side of "violence is nature's way of telling you to up your diplomacy game". In Trek, characters who talk like she does in that trailer are the General Ripper types, i.e. villains or obstacles rather than heroes.

I'm hoping it's more nuanced than that, and this is actually a green commander in the process of getting her rough corners knocked off by experience, but the way the trailer is playing it is more the conventional "people who say they have other solutions are fail; only shooting many things in the face ASAP is win" thing that's often used to justify the plots of video games. While such extreme situations do happen sometimes IRL, I've come to feel that it's a very bad moral for fictional works, as IRL the world is full of people who are very Dunning-Kruger about their own lack of people/diplomacy skills, and thus think if they couldn't make a non-violent solution work, then anyone claiming otherwise must be full of BS. That sort of outlook does not need reinforcement, as IRL it occurs naturally at the drop of a hat, regardless of accuracy, and thus encourages stagnation at best, regression at worst. The opposing moral does, because it actually encourages improvement.

[Fixer]

I'm going to reserve judgement until we see the series proper. Though the trailer didn't exactly inspire, it's not a sign it's going to be bad either.

The way I see it though, with all the reports of troubled production either we're going to get a decent new Trek series (after a couple of seasons probably, Trek always takes a while to warm up) or if it's a metaphorical dumpster fire with warp nacelles there's going to be more than enough meat on the bones for Chuck to chew in his reviews.

[Karha of Honor]

I'm intrigue (an sorta suprise it feel like there's a bit of a negative reaction fom a lot of people) while I do admit the design feel more Mass Effect-y than Star Trek, I think it has potential

Our world feels more Mass Effecty than TOS.

[excalibur]

What the trailer shows is a reliance in very obvious CGI backgrounds. I mean, look at other series showing space and other worlds that are 10 years old, and they seemed a lot better. That first desert planet was entirely CG compared to how Star Trek has done desert world being either studio backgrounds or in the surrounding nearby geographic of the studio but at least they LOOK real. That first background just seemed so fake, in fact, everything about the setting looks like it was crafted by Star Trek fan films but with less effort.


Ever since ST ENT, retroactively making prequel series look more advanced than the original design is just rebooting and connecting the continuity but at least with ST ENT, the tech seemed very grounded and the set designs looked less...shiny and lens flarey.

The lens flares look real bad and the bridge of the Discovery looked like they are actually standing on an entirely CG set. At least the reboot Enterprise bridge was actually there and looked real in its IPOD fashion, but here. Again, this feels like a fan film that spend all its budget on the CG to mask the fact that they couldn't afford real sets

I have no problem with them ret-conning the tech of Star Trek. As it was said before, our tech today is getting more and more advanced to the point where how we perceive the future will be very different visually to how they did when Trek was first aired. I mean, look at the PADD technology, having a guy with multiple tablet devices stacked on his desk like paper is...kinda stupid for us to see considering I am looking at my phone right now. Also, I assume they are ignoring the TOS Klingons in favor of the more modern Klingons but...now redesigning their look further so much that they look like a different species?

And then there's the uniforms. They say this takes place 10 years and we have uniforms that look nothing like the TOS era uniforms or even uniforms that would have evolved to look like that. To put this into perspective. uniforms today takes a LONG time to change. 10 years of the same uniform isn't a long time. The US military duty uniform is basically the same as it was 20 years ago. I assume the reason why the Discovery Uniforms look like this is because they didn't like how non uniforms the TOS era look like, which is understandable.


I also don't like the idea that they invented a somewhat emphatic species for a crew member that starts his dialogue with either "I sense" or "I feel", basically the Betazoid of this series.

And I do not care for the new look of the Klingons

[Nessus]

What the trailer shows is a reliance in very obvious CGI backgrounds. I mean, look at other series showing space and other worlds that are 10 years old, and they seemed a lot better. That first desert planet was entirely CG compared to how Star Trek has done desert world being either studio backgrounds or in the surrounding nearby geographic of the studio but at least they LOOK real. That first background just seemed so fake, in fact, everything about the setting looks like it was crafted by Star Trek fan films but with less effort.

The lens flares look real bad and the bridge of the Discovery looked like they are actually standing on an entirely CG set. At least the reboot Enterprise bridge was actually there and looked real in its IPOD fashion, but here. Again, this feels like a fan film that spend all its budget on the CG to mask the fact that they couldn't afford real sets

Actually it looks like a relatively traditional mix of practical and CG to my eyes. The desert is clearly a real desert, but with CG sky (dust clouds and such) and distant terrain, with a heavy color filter overall. The bridge appears to be a practical set, as does the Klingon set, though I wouldn't be surprised if there are CG elements filling in gaps certain areas (like holes in the ceiling for lighting).

Mostly it looks "too shiny" as a result of all the post production work, which I'd agree is waaaaay overboard. They've clearly done a lot of heavy handed color grading, contrast tweaking, fake DOF blurring, etc. And yeah, they went JJ stupid with the lens flares. I think it's all this heavy handed aftereffects squirrelfuckery that's making it look totally CG to you. If you look at it in freeze frames instead of in motion, it becomes pretty obvious that the bridge actually is a practical set. Not that that's a complete defense: if the post effects are so bad they're making everything feel like bad CG, then that's just as bad artistically as actual bad CG.

The CG bit that snagged me the worst was the space suit, which is obviously a CG space suit overlaid on the actor. I've got enough "sures" to accept CG distant backgrounds and the like (that stuff is basically just the modern version of matt paintings, and those rarely looked fully real either), but that kind of CG costuming still feels too Roger Rabbit/Revenge of the Sith to me.

As far as the uniform and set design go, it looks to me like they're taking cues from the opening Kelvin scenes of the first JJ movie. It is a little weird at first glance in that it looks like an evolution of the ENT designs, but not at all a precursor to the TOS ones. Though I think the JJ versions of the TOS uniforms are actually close enough to be considered a viable retcon res-up of the TOS ones, so if you can buy these as a precursor to those, I think that could be extended to the TOS ones as well.

But also, looking back at the Prime series, Starfleet seemed to change its drawers every decade or so, sometimes quite drastically. The difference between these and TOS doesn't feel more extreme to me than the difference between TOS and TMP or TWoK. The TNG uniforms are the only ones that really look like a direct evolution of the TOS uniforms (what with the colored shirts and all), but I still can accept the TWoK ones without trouble, so it would feel hypocritical not to extend these the same courtesy on credit, at least.

... And now that think of it, you could also see an alternative trend of jumpsuit-like uniforms going from ENT, to DISC, to TMP, to TNG, with TOS and TWoK actually being the odd ones.

Klingons are way more traditional, but it would still feel weird if they didn't change their clothes over literally centuries. With that in mind, their costumes mostly feel weird not because they're so different, but because in hindsight Enterprise makes it look like they changed a lot and then changed back later. But then again, TWoK Starfleet uniforms present the same thing. Without more to go on, It's easy for me to shrug it off as in-universe evolution over time, plus retcon, plus Klingons maybe not being a COMPLETE monoculture (something always kinda just assumed about Trek aliens in general).

[Nessus]

I'm intrigue (an sorta suprise it feel like there's a bit of a negative reaction fom a lot of people) while I do admit the design feel more Mass Effect-y than Star Trek, I think it has potential

Our world feels more Mass Effecty than TOS.

It's not a general statement of tech advancement. There's design elements in places there that look like they're influenced by Mass Effect specifically. The Discovery has an N7 racing stripe. The uniforms have a similar silhouette and accent scheme to human and asari clothing in Mass Effect, (particularly the uniforms worn by Anderson and Hackett, but also some of the common civilian outfits). The space suit looks like it could be straight out of Cerberus's armory.