Star Trek: Discovery in trouble?

[MissKittyFantastico]

And they find the literal Bible Devil.

Was it? It's been a while since I watched 5, but I thought the Big Giant Head was just some random malevolent entity. Surely the 'why a starship?' problem holds either way - if it is the Devil, imprisoned there by God, how come God's made a prison that can be jailbroke by a bunch of apes with a warp drive? ("Uh, God, your creations have invented FTL." "Oh for Me's sake, didn't I specifically make that impossible?" "We did warn You we hadn't finished beta-testing tacyhons." "Fine. Gotta change all the locks now." "Well since they're doing warp, did You want to take a look at that bug in superluminal velocity where 'infinite' keeps redirecting to 'catfish'-" "I'm busy!") Amid all the mess, I do like that one bit, "What does God need with a starship?"

That and Captain Klaa, he's adorable - I like imagining him as the Klingon Empire's version of Lego Batman, cruising around in his Bird of Prey singing death metal songs he wrote himself about how awesome he is. (Although as TMP taught us, leaving old space probes to drift around by themselves can lead to trouble, so props to Klaa for possibly averting another incident there.)

[MithrandirOlorin]

The "why a Sapceship" line onyl implies to God is a Monothestic sense. The Hindu gods constantly used ships.

[ScreamingDoom]

And they find the literal Bible Devil.

Was it? It's been a while since I watched 5, but I thought the Big Giant Head was just some random malevolent entity.

Yup, it's true. It's such an insane thing that it's perfectly understandable that anyone would think that Yosemite Sam Demon is just some random godlike malevolent entity that Trek crews constantly encounter. But no... according to Shatner himself, this is supposed to be the literal Bible devil. Not an imposter. Chuck mentions the lunacy of this in his review.

[MissKittyFantastico]

according to Shatner himself, this is supposed to be the literal Bible devil. Not an imposter.

I think Kirk would back me up on wanting some solid evidence, so as far as the film's internal canon is concerned, that's one issue I don't think needs to be taken with it.

...although that raises an interesting point - if that was ol' Beeb in person (although why anyone would decide to look like a cut-price Zordon when Emmanuelle Seigner's an option is beyond me), did Kirk realise it, or did he just go through the whole thing thinking it was just another godlike alien? I suppose we can at least assume he didn't write it up as authentic in his report, or Picard could've cited it to take the wind out of Ardra's sails when she tried the same bit.

Props to Sybok though, if that's true he was in a mental fistfight with an entity one step short of the literal creator of everything, and he seemed to be holding his own for a couple of minutes at least. I'd have been a bit resentful of the Bird of Prey at that stage, I feel like if you're throwing down with an archangel and not obliterated in the first split second, you're in with a slim chance of pulling off an upset, and that's worth seeing how it plays out.

[Durandal_1707]

Wasn't the "actual bible devil" thing part of Shatner's original concept, before the studio rewrote huge swaths of it? That's what I seem to remember, but Memory Alpha doesn't seem to say anything on the subject and I'm too lazy to look for the original quote.

Regardless, it doesn't really matter what Shatner says, since there's nothing in the actual film to suggest that this is anything other than another evil Q/Trelane type entity.

[Draco Dracul]

They seem to have made some unnecessary changes to the original Ralph McQuarrie design

Ralph McQuarrie was an incredibly talented artist, but no one bats a thousand. I don't like it on it's own and it doesn't really fit federation aesthetics.

[Admiral X]

I rather like a fan take on that design I saw a few years back that smoothed out the hard edges and made the basic design fit in better with the Starfleet aesthetic.

[Fixer]

Part of me wonders if the Trek showrunners saw how successful The Force Awakens was by using all the original Ralph McQuarrie concept art in their new movie and thought "Hey, we have some McQuarrie concept art too!" and figured they would get in on that action.

The ship looks weird. As a wargamer and model-maker what comes to mind is a kit-bash. Someone took pieces of two or three completely different model kits, glued them together and gave them some airbrushing. Ralph's original concept has the "used future" aesthetic and looks like it was built from spare parts in a federation scrapyard.

The final discovery design has the saucer section with negative space and a spherical bridge section stolen from a Trade Federation ship, a star destroyer for an engineering section and crazy long nacelles extending way behind the ship, presumably so the ship can be picked up by the hand of Apollo and used as a pizza cutter.

[FakeGeekGirl]

And they find the literal Bible Devil.

Was it? It's been a while since I watched 5, but I thought the Big Giant Head was just some random malevolent entity. Surely the 'why a starship?' problem holds either way - if it is the Devil, imprisoned there by God, how come God's made a prison that can be jailbroke by a bunch of apes with a warp drive? ("Uh, God, your creations have invented FTL." "Oh for Me's sake, didn't I specifically make that impossible?" "We did warn You we hadn't finished beta-testing tacyhons." "Fine. Gotta change all the locks now." "Well since they're doing warp, did You want to take a look at that bug in superluminal velocity where 'infinite' keeps redirecting to 'catfish'-" "I'm busy!") Amid all the mess, I do like that one bit, "What does God need with a starship?"

That and Captain Klaa, he's adorable - I like imagining him as the Klingon Empire's version of Lego Batman, cruising around in his Bird of Prey singing death metal songs he wrote himself about how awesome he is. (Although as TMP taught us, leaving old space probes to drift around by themselves can lead to trouble, so props to Klaa for possibly averting another incident there.)

This entire post made my entire day. I laughed so hard.

[Admiral X]

I'm thinking the ships were designed by John Eaves. All the designs I've seen have his halmarks - the spikes, for example. Also, the doughnut saucers were something he designed for Star Trek Online. Not bashing him - he is a pretty cool guy, but I recognize his work and wouldn't be surprised if his name were attached to these designs. Actually I'd be way more surprised if he hadn't designed these ships.