Star Trek: Lower Decks

For all topics regarding speculative fiction of every stripe. Otherwise known as the Geek Cave.
chaos42
Officer
Posts: 303
Joined: Sat Dec 16, 2017 2:49 am

Re: Star Trek: Lower Decks

Post by chaos42 »

im referring to the things like in season 1 she is almost always right, take the the klingons at the beginning she says they need to fire first and the klingons are shown to be hostile and plan to attack its made to look that her actions would have been the correct one because she is prevented from doing so and everything goes straight to hell after that, and yet both the klingons and the vulcans, who had the policy of fire first on the klingons, are not normally shown to behave like this shooting a klingon is a good way to get shot right back, and the vulcans typically wouldn't go around shooting every klingon they see.

and there are other situations, it just feels like the world bends around her. We have season 3 in the future im hoping that since she now is out of her element she will be able to grow the character and make her better.
User avatar
Link8909
Captain
Posts: 579
Joined: Thu May 21, 2020 6:39 pm
Location: Kent, England
Contact:

Re: Star Trek: Lower Decks

Post by Link8909 »

chaos42 wrote: Sat Jul 25, 2020 7:46 am im referring to the things like in season 1 she is almost always right, take the the klingons at the beginning she says they need to fire first and the klingons are shown to be hostile and plan to attack its made to look that her actions would have been the correct one because she is prevented from doing so and everything goes straight to hell after that, and yet both the klingons and the vulcans, who had the policy of fire first on the klingons, are not normally shown to behave like this shooting a klingon is a good way to get shot right back, and the vulcans typically wouldn't go around shooting every klingon they see.

and there are other situations, it just feels like the world bends around her. We have season 3 in the future im hoping that since she now is out of her element she will be able to grow the character and make her better.
While I see the other instances later in Season 1 of Michael Burnham always being right, and it hard to argue that the universe doesn't revolve around her because of the events in Season 2, I don't think her decision at the Battle at the Binary Stars was framed as the right one, it was understandable since she had lost her parents to the Klingons and was powerless to do anything, developing survivors guilt, and not wanting to repeat history again with her new family on the USS Shenzhou, however she was not rewarded for her actions and her crew couldn't trust her anymore, even Michael Burnham herself regretted her actions, she tried to stop history from repeating itself and all she did was let it happen again, she didn't defend herself at her court martial and even was ready to embrace death like in the Brig or Shuttle, the Battle at the Binary Stars was Michael Burnham's biggest mistake and one that she must carry with her and learn from.

But as you said I to would like to see her in more situations where she's out of her element and has to adapt to overcome obstacles.
"I think, when one has been angry for a very long time, one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable like…like old leather. And finally… it becomes so familiar that one can't remember feeling any other way."

- Jean-Luc Picard
User avatar
Link8909
Captain
Posts: 579
Joined: Thu May 21, 2020 6:39 pm
Location: Kent, England
Contact:

Re: Star Trek: Lower Decks

Post by Link8909 »

So now we have a bit more information about Star Trek Lower Decks, I really wanted to put out my thoughts about some of the characters, specifically Ensign Beckett Mariner and Ensign Brad Boimler, honestly, I think they’re ok and I can see what the creators are doing with them.

Firstly is Ensign Beckett Mariner, and the best way to describe her is how Kirk was in the Kelvin Timeline, that seems like damning with faint praise but I think it works with Beckett in this context than with Kirk, I was ok with Kirk starting out the way he did in Star Trek (2009) as it was the very start of his career and hadn’t learn responsibility like his Prime Timeline counterpart, the problem is that he really doesn’t learn anything at the end of the film and yet is rewarded the Captains Chair to the USS Enterprise; with Beckett however it looks like her attitude and lack of respect for authority will get her into more trouble and not be rewarded, she has already been demoted several times because of it, however much like Kirk there is potential for her to be a great Starfleet Officer, she is described to be already very good at all things Starfleet, she just doesn’t care, which seems like this is going to be her character arc for the series.

Then there’s Ensign Brad Boimler, he is the polar opposite to Beckett, he’s is the poster child for a model Starfleet Officer, has nothing but respect for the organization, wants to become a Captain, and follows the rules to the letter, however much like Blue Shirt Picard from “Tapestry” he follows the rules so much that he doesn’t take risks, doesn’t get noticed and plays it so safe that nobody would ever see him in the Captains Chair, he needs to learn how to improvise, rely on gut instinct and take risks if he’s to become a Captain one day, which also seems like this will be his arc for the series.

Which brings me to my point, both Beckett and Brad have potential to not just get promoted, but to even become Captains someday, however they both have huge character flaws that prevent them from going anywhere, and both clearly need to learn from one another, Beckett needs to learn to follow the rules from Brad, and Brad needs to learn to take risks from Beckett, this definitely seems like what the creators were thinking with these characters and I like that, now obviously at this point we don’t now how quickly they will learn to do this, I imagen this will be a slow prosses with maybe a shift in this direction at the end of the season, plus comedically this duo works very well, Beckett fiddling with the shuttles blast shields wouldn’t be as funny without Brad telling her to knock it off.

But my personal favourite character from just the trailer is Ensign Tendi, a fangirl of Starfleet that looks at any situation in a positive light and is just so nice, and is an Orion that doesn’t adhere to her cultures stereotype, right now she is best character, hands down.
Last edited by Link8909 on Sun Jul 26, 2020 11:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
"I think, when one has been angry for a very long time, one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable like…like old leather. And finally… it becomes so familiar that one can't remember feeling any other way."

- Jean-Luc Picard
chaos42
Officer
Posts: 303
Joined: Sat Dec 16, 2017 2:49 am

Re: Star Trek: Lower Decks

Post by chaos42 »

i do hope we see more about her and hopefully the screwed up stuff from enterprise can be binned as soon as possible, that was dumb, and made no sense. also i would like to see them show that the slave girl thing with the orions is something from the long past like a stero type they have that tourists and people with weird fetishes think goes on but its really just something from a long time ago people just fixate on, like samurais in japan, most orions are actually perfectly normal as a culture -having its own quirks but its not all slave girls and crime. they could use it as a way to dispel the old planet of hats tropes, were the entire species of a planet has some weird hat they were like the xenophobia hat, or in the orions case the sex slaves and criminals hat.
User avatar
Link8909
Captain
Posts: 579
Joined: Thu May 21, 2020 6:39 pm
Location: Kent, England
Contact:

Re: Star Trek: Lower Decks

Post by Link8909 »

chaos42 wrote: Sat Jul 25, 2020 11:37 pm i do hope we see more about her and hopefully the screwed up stuff from enterprise can be binned as soon as possible, that was dumb, and made no sense. also i would like to see them show that the slave girl thing with the orions is something from the long past like a stero type they have that tourists and people with weird fetishes think goes on but its really just something from a long time ago people just fixate on, like samurais in japan, most orions are actually perfectly normal as a culture -having its own quirks but its not all slave girls and crime. they could use it as a way to dispel the old planet of hats tropes, were the entire species of a planet has some weird hat they were like the xenophobia hat, or in the orions case the sex slaves and criminals hat.
Absolutely.
"I think, when one has been angry for a very long time, one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable like…like old leather. And finally… it becomes so familiar that one can't remember feeling any other way."

- Jean-Luc Picard
User avatar
clearspira
Overlord
Posts: 5671
Joined: Sat Apr 01, 2017 12:51 pm

Re: Star Trek: Lower Decks

Post by clearspira »

The more I see of this, the more I cry for the state of this franchise.

News reaches me that the STD sets have been disassembled, which is impacting the season 3 reshoots. So no STD season 4. PIC probably won't make it past season 2 when you account for Stewart's age and the delayed shoot due to Covid-19. Netflix and Amazon are refusing to renew their commitment to the international rights because they claim no one watches it. The Abramsverse is dead. And I sincerely doubt that the Pike series or Section 31 is ever going to be made.
So that leaves us with this Rick and Morty style cartoon as the future of Star Trek. Woo.
User avatar
Madner Kami
Captain
Posts: 4052
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 2:35 pm

Re: Star Trek: Lower Decks

Post by Madner Kami »

clearspira wrote: Sun Jul 26, 2020 11:44 amSo that leaves us with this Rick and Morty style cartoon as the future of Star Trek. Woo.
If it's as good as Rick and Morty, then I don't mind, because at least it would be a future.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
User avatar
BridgeConsoleMasher
Overlord
Posts: 11633
Joined: Tue Aug 28, 2018 6:18 am

Re: Star Trek: Lower Decks

Post by BridgeConsoleMasher »

I'm hoping it's more like Ren and Stimpy. If it's more like Darkwing Duck though I won't mind.
..What mirror universe?
User avatar
Link8909
Captain
Posts: 579
Joined: Thu May 21, 2020 6:39 pm
Location: Kent, England
Contact:

Re: Star Trek: Lower Decks

Post by Link8909 »

Personally I'm really looking forward to all the new Star Trek we are getting, from the interviews I've watched and read Alex Kurtzman and the rest of the creative team that work on these shows are fans and care about what they are doing, even in a recent interview on Space.com Heather Kadin and Alex Kurtzman talked about how important the Star Trek fans are to improving these new series, so I personally think Star Trek is in good hands.

The reason I don't get that bothered about certain changes or of the direction the franchise is because we have gone through this song and dance before with every other new thing added to Star Trek and I refuse to dance to this tune anymore.

When The Next Generation came out people didn't like it not just for the other numerous reasons but because it wasn't their Trek, yet after all this time it is still considered the gold standard of Star Trek, when Deep Space Nine came out people hated it for deviating so far from what people were used to, in the documentary What We Left Behind the cast even read out the unkind reviews of Deep Space Nine, and yet people celebrate it because it deviated so far, this isn't even unique for Star Trek, I know about "Truck not Monkey" from when Beast Wars was coming out.

And honestly Star Trek has the potential to expand into different areas and tell different styles of stories, as I said Deep Space Nine is a complete one-eighty compared to The Next Generation, the Star Trek Elite Force games are celebrated even though they're First Person Shooters and based on a commando squad, you know, the most un-Star Trek thing you could think of, and the Star Trek New Frontier books are to considered classics, even though they are extremely dark stories, the crew regularly face off agains these larger than life threats, and Captain Mackenzie Calhoun (the lead of the series) was a warlord who liberated his homeworld from an oppressive rule and is the most un-Star Trek Captain you could think of, not to mention all the individual episodes of Star Trek the branched out into different genres, we're had weird dream episodes, war stories, courtroom dramas, medical dramas, out there science to realistic science, action, adventure, romance, comedies and everything in-between.

Heck, I remember people complaining back in the day about Star Trek always playing it safe and wanted it to be more bolder, Chuck points out regularly that one of the issues of Season 1 of The Next Generation that it was trying to be like The Original Series and only got better when it was doing its own thing, that Voyager never took advantage of its own premise and was always playing it safe by telling stories that could have been told in The Next Generation, one of Star Trek Insurrections problems is that felt more like a lacklustre episode of The Next Generation, and by the time Enterprise was on, a show with a wonderful premise that was wasted in the first two seasons and only got better when they tried something new in the last 2 seasons, the damage was done and people stopped tuning in and it got cancelled by executives that didn't care about the franchise, going out on a whimper, and when Star Trek (2009) was first released the biggest thing people had to say about the film was that it was a breath of fresh air.

So yeah, the Star Trek universe doesn't have to be strictly one thing, so why aren't we allowed to explore that and take risks?
"I think, when one has been angry for a very long time, one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable like…like old leather. And finally… it becomes so familiar that one can't remember feeling any other way."

- Jean-Luc Picard
User avatar
Madner Kami
Captain
Posts: 4052
Joined: Sun Mar 05, 2017 2:35 pm

Re: Star Trek: Lower Decks

Post by Madner Kami »

Link8909 wrote: Sun Jul 26, 2020 2:48 pmfrom the interviews I've watched and read Alex Kurtzman and the rest of the creative team that work on these show are fans and care about what they are doing, even in a recent interview on Space.com Heather Kadin and Alex Kurtzman talked about how important the Star Trek fans are to improving these new series, so I personally think Star Trek is in good hands.
Congrats for eating the corporate bullshit and enjoying it.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
Post Reply