Star Trek (Dis): Context Is for Kings

[RobbyB1982]

I kind of hope Saru is a cow persists as a running gag for some time to come I don't know why, but it cracks me up.

[unknownsample]

So, if people declare themselves SJWs and then people call them SJWs that's bad? Is it only the context of whether or not they support or oppose the politics that matters because by your own statement just now says that Linkara's isn't worth listening to.

This is probably going to derail the conversation further into the identity politics angle here but this increasing tribalism is part of the problem that makes discussing modern sci-fi and fantasy online for the last 5 years so nasty.

Like it or not people are going to aggressively defend against every criticism made against a character or media solely because of identity politics as much as others rail against them for the same.

Your example is the Ghostbusters movie. Look at what happened, James Rolfe AVGN, made one video saying he thought the movie looked awful from the trailer. Instead of doing what his fans expected, he said that he wasn't going to watch it and then make a video talking about how bad it was. He was just not going to see it and explained why. After that he said hey it could even be good. In response he was labeled a sexist, misogynist woman hater that was just hiding his sexism.
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/ghostb ... to-review/

The Ghostbusters backlash was increased exponentially by a feedback loop of an overly hyperbolic defense which attacked the original movie's fanbase. To the point that you had to declare your support for a pretty awful looking movie or be declared a heretic by the end. To which a lot of people who would have been ambivilent for the movie were now actively wishing for it to fail.

If anything should have been learned by that whole ordeal, it should have been how not to make a trailer and how not to attack a fanbase or critics.

And just to add to that - what a horrible sign of the times that Chuck felt he had to give such an introduction. And, as he points out, when he criticized Janeway, even then people were jumping on him simply because the character he was criticizing was a woman, and in their minds this somehow meant he was sexist. Sad.

Anyway, thanks for another opinionated video, Chuck. I will say that while I don't always agree with you on things, you at least seem to be pretty fair, and if nothing else, you explain your reasoning for why your opinion is what it is.

Let's look at these poor Star Wars fans forced to abuse Kelly Marie Tran.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/kell ... 1621b6b2bb

[WhiteDragon25]

This is actually the first I've seen of the actual third episode, since CBS made the stupidly insipid decision to restrict STD to their shitty Netflix-knockoff CBS All Access, and I didn't want to waste money on a show that I had deemed garbage just from watching the first episode... good to see that decision be entirely justified by what I've seen in those clips shown in the video. It's just as dumb as it was described as over on the SB discussion thread. Really, it all looked incredibly... dumb. Hearing about the details is one thing, but seeing them is another, and only works to confirm those claims.

As for the whole "SJW" debate: I never really understood all the complaining about Star Trek being turned into a "SJW" show - I mean, Star Trek has always been about "Social Justice" and political commentary; it just tends to either be subtle and nuanced, or painfully on-the-nose... STD happens to fall into the latter category, plus the fact it doesn't even need all that "SJW"-oriented marketing crap. You don't need to wave around the fact that the main character is a black woman - just treat her as any other regular person, that's what makes more of an impact: not that such character is special because of those traits, but that such traits are irrelevant because they're just normal. Playing that up is just audience-pandering bordering on pretentious, and simply bad marketing.


Moving on from that powder-keg of a topic, something that's more of a concern for me about this show is how it's supposed to be a prequel, when it doesn't even need to be. Why box yourself in with all the continuity concerns the pre-TOS era will bring you if you aren't exactingly anal-retentive at adhering to established canon, when you can just have the pre-made sandbox of the TNG-era post-VOY/DS9/Nemesis? There's a buttload of potential plotlines to be made just exploring the aftermath of the Dominion War! Hell, let me cross-post something I've written over in the SB discussion thread:

Actually, it'd be pretty easy to retcon Voyager to remove all the bullshit status-quo-upsetting technobabble: they've been on the other side of the galaxy with virtually no contact with Starfleet for seven years; they had to do some pretty unsavory/completely fucked-up things to survive... so the VOY crew (but probably mostly Janeway) censored/fabricated their log records to hide their shenanigans. Starfleet Command would see right through it, but since the Federation is still rebuilding after the Dominion War and the public is desperate for some good news and heroes to rally around, they have to reluctantly bury the VOY scandal and shuffle the crew around into prestigious-but-harmless positions (most obviously, Janeway being booted upstairs to an Admiral behind a desk at Starfleet HQ).

With that taken care of, all you need to do is explore the post-Dominion War political situation: the new democratic government of the Cardassian Union and its attempts to rebuild and stabilize its shattered society while dealing with True Way hardliners; the Klingon Empire's peacetime government under Martok licking its wounds and trying to find new relevance in an era of Federation hegemony; and the complete meltdown of the Romulan Star Empire as various political factions vie for supremacy in the wake of the Shinzon Coup (which is another thing that should be retconned, preferably with Sela supplanting Shinzon as the ringleader of the coup).

Along with the Ferengi spotting an opportunity to fill the power vacuum left by the Cardassian Union, the Breen and whatever the fuck they're doing, the Dominion still alive-and-kicking on the other side of the wormhole, and the Borg still being the foreboding boogeyman in the shadows (even despite whatever damage they suffered at Voyager's hands), and you have a pretty damn good setting to explore in the lens of the Federation trying to keep its hard-won peace and prevent it all from going to pot.

Seriously, this is something that I came up with in just 10 minutes or so; it's not that hard to conceive... unless you're CBS, probably. Fucking morons.

There's a ton of useful material to build off of even with VOY's ridiculous bullshit to contend with. Time travel isn't even necessary to use as a way around the problem either: in both Endgame and the backstory to the Kelvin-verse, the only event that can be positively confirmed by all witnesses in-universe is "Big Giant Hole In Space opens pp, spits out/eats up a ship". In Endgame's case, it was a Borg Sphere popping into Earth orbit via Transwarp Conduit, before being promptly blown up from the inside by Voyager; and in nuTrek's case, it was a Red Matter-generated Black Hole that absorbed both the Narada and the Jellyfish, resulting in the unfortunate loss of Ambassador Spock.

That's it. Beyond that, nobody in-universe really knows what just happened. All Starfleet knows regarding Voyager, is that a starship presumed lost for seven years suddenly appears back home flying out of a fucking exploding Borg Sphere, and regarding the Hobus Disaster, that Ambassador Spock gave his life in a failed attempt to save the Romulan homeworld.

It'd be trivially easy to retcon all of VOY by keeping their Delta Quadrant misadventures vague and possibly-fabricated, and nuTrek can just be outright ignored given its irrelevance to the Prime Timeline aside from the Hobus Disaster - which also has the convenient (if incredibly callous-to-even-mention) excuse for writing Spock out of the picture, given that Leonard Nimoy is dead!

Oh, and one last thing, regarding the spores introduced in this episode:

I just happened to watch another video by this guy, explaining the so-called "Spore Drive", and something caught my eye about the fungal spores being discussed:

Apparently, the STD writers thought it'd be clever to name it Prototaxites stellaviatori... Prototaxites refers to an extinct form of prehistoric fungi, so that's not surprising; no, the real issue here is the name stellaviatori, which when translated from Latin means "Star Traveler" - or, more probably what the writers want to suggest, "Star Trekker".

...Seriously, writers? You named your fictional quantum-physics-abusing bullshit fungi after Star Trek? The fuck, were you high on shrooms when you came up with this stupid attempt to seem clever?

[Ikiry0]

The Sporp Drive is something that makes me wonder rather a lot how someone came up with that idea in the first place.

[WhiteDragon25]

The Spore Drive is something that makes me wonder rather a lot how someone came up with that idea in the first place.

As I said: shrooms. They were high on shrooms.

[J!!]

The Sporp Drive is something that makes me wonder rather a lot how someone came up with that idea in the first place.

FTL engine requiring the use of a psychoactive/mutagenic drug, to allow the navigator to see across time and space. Gee, I wonder where they might have possibly gotten that idea.



Am I seriously the only one who's read Dune? Forum, I am disappoint.

[GandALF]

Let's look at these poor Star Wars fans forced to abuse Kelly Marie Tran.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes. Disliking one extreme does not mean you subscribe every ideal of the opposite extreme, Chuck literally pointed it out in the review

There's also the fact her failed mutiny clashes with her somewhat smug sense of self-righteousness (which all of Starfleet has had at various points but this is full on Season 1 TNG)

THAT. That "smug sense of self-righteousness" is what "SJW" referred to before it was co-opted by kekistani frogposters. YES INDEED Star Trek has always been about social justice but it hasn't always been about Season 1 TNG smugness.

And my initial damn post was about how I don't think Discovery has an "SJW" problem.

[Ikiry0]

FTL engine requiring the use of a psychoactive/mutagenic drug, to allow the navigator to see across time and space. Gee, I wonder where they might have possibly gotten that idea.


Am I seriously the only one who's read Dune? Forum, I am disappoint.

No, I've read it. It's more the 'how it actually transports people through spores' part that makes me wonder what they were on (And yeah, shrooms is likely a good option).

[TGLS]

Like other people have mentioned though, I don't think Tilly is autistic. I mean, she might be, but nothing in the show confirms that. Rather than Wesley Crusher, she reminded me a lot more of Barclay- a socially awkward crew member who dreams of making it big. The way Tilly runs her mouth reminded me of when Barclay talked about never knowing how to stand and where to put his hands. I can see the Crusher comparison though.

So Tilly is Barclay in disguise, and Michael is Seven of Nine in disguise, and Barclay is the ideal partner for Seven, thus, Michael/Tilly is confirmed!

[CharlesPhipps]

There's plenty of reasons not to make a VOY/DS9 sequel.

* Klingons
* Spock
* No continuity lockout
* Mirror Universe with EVILLLLL Terrans

Mind you, they've misused the Klingons a great deal.