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New Star Trek Series in 2017


Guest El Chalupacabra
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The Orville is better than I expected, but the most recent episode (the baby female Moclan one) just seemed off. Maybe they need more time to hit their stride. It at least isn't gloomy grimdark serious, which is good, and the comedic elements can work, but the popular culture references are more distracting than entertaining. I'm supposed to believe they'll still know Dora the Explorer in the 25th century? That the Kardashians and the Real Housewives will be famous centuries from now? It just breaks credibility for me.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Updates on both fronts:

Discovery - Now that they've settled into the overall story, the latest episodes have started to fit more into the Trek archetype and let the characters develop. The most recent one even had a bit of a self-contained plot, which was really encouraging. I'm not a fan of how cynical, dark and gritty it is, as that just feels counter-intuitive to the Trek ethos. I'm hopeful that once the "redemption" plotline develops, that should change.

Orville - I'm honestly starting to fall in love with it. It continues to tackle solid Sci Fi concepts and pose moral questions, and walks a tightrope of keeping a light and fun tone. The comedy stuff feels like a combination of The Office, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Galaxy Quest and it never really gets in the way of what are sometimes serious plot threads that are almost every bit as good as what Next Generation did in its prime. I really hope it gathers more of an audience and gets picked up for another season.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well that was... a show called Star Trek...

 

Which I think is my problem. My nerd brain trying to reconcile it-- even though I have disdain for fanboyisms and continuity snobs I just struggled with this being Star Trek and in the Prime timeline. I just couldn't buy it.

 

That said-- if this was just a TV show called OMG SPACE WAR and was exactly the same but wasn't Star Trek, I think it would be great. It really feels like a completely different thing ported into a Trek wrapper.

 

On the other hand, I LOVE Orville.

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It's good but it's not as great as it could be.

 

I've liked the Burnham storyline. I also like Tilly and the Engineer. I hate the stupid Klingons. I like the pace that they go at because they don't mess around but my main gripe is that the plot sometimes suffers because they have to add conveniences. Last two I've watched have been proper Star Trek episodes and that's been nice. They've kept it part of the story as well which is a nice touch.

 

If it bombs I'm blaming Kurtzman cos he's a bellend.

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I enjoyed it. It's never going to be possible to make a Star Trek show set before TOS that visually matches it. I've accepted that what we see on the screen is an interpretation of the "real" Star Trek universe. So that shuts up the fanboy nitpicking details. They drop in enough references to other series that I get the fanboy part of me watching for those instead.

 

I'm just trying to recall if this previous war with the Klingons has ever been alluded to before, much less mentioned. They put in a reference to the battle at Donatu V, though, so that's cool, I guess.

 

Will it be Slider Trek now, with the spore drive taking them further and further from home, until they get back to their universe but don't recognize it because someone finally eliminated the squeak in the front gate?

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Guest El Chalupacabra

I gave Star Trek Discovery a try the first episode. I knew going in it wasn't the star Trek I wanted or asked for, but tried giving a chance. I've only seen the first episode but monitored the feedback about the rest of the episodes thus far, and have been spoiled. Sounds like a total sh*t show to me. Spore Drives. WTF? Just plain f*ckery with a franchise that needs no f*cking with. If you like it, fine. Enjoy. Far be it from me to rain on your parade. But I effing hate it.

 

Orville on the other hand, is effing awesome. I expected to totally hate it because I am not that big a Seth MacFarlane fan, but I have to hand it to the dude. He has out Star Treked the latest Star Trek in every way. The guy just gets it. Correct balance of comedy and drama. It really is the successor to Star Trek in every way that Discovery is not.

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Orville is just basically beat for beat, 90s era Star Trek, which MacFarlane has always been up front about his love for. All they've done is remove the IP trappings and replace the scifi wonderment with satire. It's genius.

 

Last week's episode with Rob Lowe was hilarious.

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Yeah, The Orville is OK. I liked that planet-side episode "Majority Rules", with the social media-oriented democracy. It was an interesting concept, and felt like something TNG would've done if social media had been that prevalent in the 1990s. Unfortunately, the fact that they're just doing TNG/VOY style stories is disappointing to me. I can appreciate the need for some "brighter" future science fiction, but The Orville isn't really bringing anything new to the genre. It's a search-and-replace of Star Trek scripts ("quantum drive" instead of "warp drive", "Krill" instead of "Klingon" or "Kazon"). Where's the originality? If I want a weekly TNG episode, I can just fire up Netflix. I will continue to watch it with muted interest, in the hope that it will find its own voice rather than being just a Star Trek parody/homage. I think MacFarlane can do something with it eventually.

 

My biggest gripe is the near-constant references to 20th and 21st century popular culture. It's the 25th century. Did human arts and culture freeze in the 2020s or something?

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To your first point— agreed. It will get tired. Right now its riding on people having nostalgia for TNG. Honestly the JJ Trek and Discovery probably helped Orville. But it’ll get old eventually.

 

To your second point, the grounded satire requires them to make points based on our society. If you look at TOS the 60s sociopolitical scene is the cornerstone of most everything.

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One things for sure Discovery isn't going away. It's the flagship of their new digital platform and they will keep throwing money at it.

 

I'm not sure The Orville will get renewed though. Americans don't get it apparently. I am looking forward to watching it.

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Guest El Chalupacabra

Yeah Discovery's and Orville's renewals were both announced a couple weeks ago.

 

 

Orville is just basically beat for beat, 90s era Star Trek, which MacFarlane has always been up front about his love for. All they've done is remove the IP trappings and replace the scifi wonderment with satire. It's genius.

Last week's episode with Rob Lowe was hilarious.

You know I think what is surprising is CBS hasn't sued Fox over Orville due to the similarities. Calling it a parody may offer some protection. Or, maybe just different enough that CBS knows they wouldn't win. Or maybe it's that they are actually smart enough to know they have alienated enough long time Star Trek fans with the fan film lawsuit last year. Or, maybe, CBS realizes that Orville actually gives a medium to fans of the Berman era (like me! and proud to say it), and gets those fans off their backs!

 

Whatever the reason, I am glad for Orville. I hope season 2 sees some more Star Trek alum cameo on screen.

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Star Trek is big money, and I don't see why Paramount and CBS wouldn't readily attack a blatant infringement on their IP. The Orville is a ship-based science fiction story. How many differences can it have, inherently, from Star Trek, Lost in Space, and Battlestar Galactica? Are they (Discovery and TO) even competitors? It's not like they're airing in the same time slot and jockeying for viewers. Does "time slot" even have a meaning now, with DVRs and streaming services that allow for time-shifted viewing?

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They have gone after fan films, but that is a blatant use of the IP. I'm sure Fox did their homework. Branding it as a parody opens up a lot of fair use clauses,, and that's how it was marketed. Thing its, it's not actually a parody, which is what Fox would have to prove in court.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest El Chalupacabra

I disagree. A franchise that is robust enough can change without ceasing to be that franchise. Trek has been around for 50 years, and Wars has been around for 40 years. They're both established to the point that they can withstand quite a number of changes without being eroded. The problem is the fans. They aren't enough to grow a franchise, which is the entire point. Change things and see what is popular enough to attract new fans. There's a hard core population of fans that will stick to a franchise even if they have to hate watch it. That's fine. Fair-weather fans, though, will drop off if they don't like the new stuff, but be replaced by as many or more new fair-weather fans that do like the new stuff. For instance, my wife hated the PT (common enough) but she hated it to the point that she avoided the OT, too! But the sequels have abated her hate; she likes TFA and is even somewhat interested in seeing TLJ. That's the target the producers are aiming for.

 

It's not like any franchise, Trek in particular, hasn't had the exact same problems before (it's not Trek without Kirk! It's not Trek without the Enterprise! It's not Trek...except that it is, if the label says so).

Honestly, I tried watching the pilot of STD. I tried to view it both as a Star Trek show, as well as just a sci fi show. I didn't like what I saw. As a Trek show, I didn't like the changes made. It changed the tone so much to be unrecognizable as Star Trek to me. As a sci fi show and ignoring the Star Trek moniker, the show simply did not interest me, at all.

 

There is nothing that says a franchise must endure in perpetuity. If people think that Star Trek's previous incarnations are too old fashioned, dated, etc that for it to survive, that it must be changed as fundamentally as STD has done, then maybe it is time to retire Trek as a franchise. It wouldn't be the end of the world if that happened.

 

Until that happens, I am happy to ignore STDs existence, and re-watch the previous shows and movies. There are 10 movies and 28 seasons, after all. And if that day does come, I will still be rewatching the old shows from time to time.

 

Edit:

And to the point of "it's not Trek without Kirk, etc," STD went the other way in the extreme. An adopted sister of Spock we never heard of, or making it a prequel for that matter (which it is still up in the air what universe/timeline STD really is)? These "connections," come off as cheap, and unnecessary.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Saw these first nine episodes.



Well, short version, I really liked it!



Slightly longer version, written up because I now realize I will have to avoid much of the Internet until I see Force Awakens II : The Force Is Really Up And Out Of Bed For Good This Time, No Snooze Setting On Its Alarm Clock At All :



 


It exceeded my expectations. From the look of things, the previews and what-have-you, the general fan conversation, I assumed it'd basically be nothing more than Enterprise (2001-2005) with a budget but, guess what!? It's actually a lot closer to being Deep Space Nine (1992?-1999) with a budget. If you're reading this, and you liked DS9 (or even just parts of it), well, you'll probably like this'n too. It has all the elements of DS9 that made it stick out from the general Trek spin-off milieu : a darker colour palette (I mean that both in terms of casting and also the show itself, Star Trek (1965?-1968?) may have a luminous dayglow psychedelic look to it but Discovery (2017-20??) is v. dull comparatively, a lot of steely chromes and blurry blacks and browns), a relatively sustained narrative (although for this show that's way way way more the case than it was on DS9 for all but its final episodes), ongoing engagement with mysticism and the role of the numinous in our affairs (hey, a Messiah shows up in each of their respective pilots!), the exploration of an alien culture in detail (I don't just mean the Klingons; I assume a shoe is going to drop at some point about where the magic mushrooms come from and who built (and/or first navigated) the magic superhighway, and even if it never does the show is still pontificating about what it means to be an animal/alive through that area, combined w/Saru and also the Magic Singing Planet, in a way that I find kinda interesting, I think that in and of itself is cool), moral complexity, a large recurring cast, lots of people in rubber masks (I feel that both this show and DS9 had a high quota for that, the rubber masks were fairly subdued on Voyager (1995?-2001?) and Enterprise (2001-wait, didEnterpriseactuallyendin2006?)).



Well, it's not real good all of the time all of the place, y'know? I think the problem is they've sort of abandoned a tried'n'true formula but have only halfheartedly adopted a new one. They haven't fully committed, one hundred percent, to making this a heavy late-00s dramatic series, they haven't gone full Game of Thrones or whatever-you-want. It's still very Star Trek, but is intermittently not Star Trek, in ways that feel jarring. For example, I watched all nine episodes over the course of about two days and here's what I barely recollect happened in them :



Episode 1. We meet our main character and someone I assume is supposed to be the main antagonist and then everyone else kind of dies? Including the main antagonist!


Episode 2. Uh, no wait, this is the episode where everyone else dies! Including the main antagonist!


Episode 3. Our main character comes to her new home, and surprise surprise, some of the people you assumed had died didn't but then you find out that the ones who died definitely did, for sure, I assumed we'd be rescuing Michelle Yeoh on this show sometime soon from Klingon imprisonment but I think this is the episode where we find out her corpse got ate. BTW, I think this is also the episode where the back-up main antagonist gets abandoned.


Episode 4. They torture an animal? And the episode never ends w/our main characters hearing or giving a speech about how it is wrong to do that, in tried and true Star Trek fashion, I guess we as an audience have just gotta assume that the episode wasn't really about that but was instead about what they give the speeches, but the speeches are mostly absent from this series though, I thought I missed the speeches from the Abrams Trek movies (2008? and then 2011??? and then 2016?) but I really miss the speeches this time around. Give me my speeches about what's good and bad, Star Trek show, don't just cheap out and hand me a sentence-and-a-half every couple of episodes. End every episode with a speech! Have a little speech in the middle of the episode while the main character decides on the correct course of action! Have two opposing sides of an argument give speeches to each other! Speeches!!!!!!!


Episode 5. Is this the one where the evil Captain gets captured?


Episode 6. Or is it this one?


Episode 7. Groundhog Day!


Episode 8. Magic Planet Where All Of Nature Is In Harmony, But It Turn Out One Of The Crew Is Brainwashed By This Harmony And Abandons The Mission, So The Other Two Crewmembers Have To Outwit Him And Snap Him Out Of His Delusion, This Was The Closest To Feeling Like A Conventional Episode Of A Star Trek Spin-Off Show.


Episode 9. Cliffhanger finale.



It's all a blur, really. I can't really tell where anything begins or ends on this show, except unlike in your standard mid-to-late-00s show where that is often the case this is taking place in circumstances that trick my TV-watching brain to expect I should be able to. If characters are walking around in Star Trek clothes and talking in Star Trek talk (there is plenty of Star Trek talk on this show, in fact, even while characters are talking in a relatively non-Star Trek kind of way the show still makes sure to have someone on an intercom talking Star Trek while they do that, seriously, in all nine hours of this it's mostly either someone offscreen saying "Commander Houlihan, report to astrometrics" or weird off-model Klingons bellowing) then I expect to be getting my Star Trek stories, not merely in content but also in form. I don't know. Maybe it's me. I can't remember what year TV shows were on now that I've hit my thirties and my hindbrain has started to rot and decay, let alone the details of stories I've just absorbed.



But it's not just me, right? There are no episode titles appearing onscreen! Why no episode titles, Discovery? Give me my episode titles!



Also, there's swearing, but nearly no titties! Sorry to be crude, but, where are the titties, Discovery? Arguably, the titties are an aspect of mid-to-late-00s television far more in keeping with Star Trek's fifty-year long legacy of lewdness (both onscreen and off) than the swearing! I don't want to hear the F-word on Star Trek, buddy, that feels inappropriate to me, but nudity works. If you've committed to making Star Trek for adults (is that what this is? what kid is going to watch this show? Do ten year olds subscribe to CBS All Access?) then make some Star Trek for adults.



I feel that the rough disconnect between the show's differing formulae exacerbates a problem for the show as a concept. The previous Star Trek shows have been all about asking the following question : "What does it mean to be human?" and have used the trappings of Starfleet to answer that question, over and over, week by week, in different scenario after different scenario. And this Star Trek show seems to mostly be about asking the following question : "What does it mean to be captain of a starship?" and is using the trappings of humanity to answer that question in a large undifferentiated chunk of material where none of the scenarios really end, except all of a sudden when it does, this show answers that question rather decisively in its final episode. Its answer is the following : "To be a captain of a starship means to destroy the other starship where people onboard are asking this same question!" I assume that the show will go back to asking this question when it returns, assuming that we all get to see it, and I look forward to getting the chance to see this show answer this question of the meaning of being a starship captain, over and over, in approx. 9-hour-long intervals.

 


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  • 4 weeks later...

Tonight's new episode ...

 

* is good!

* was directed by Jonathan Frakes!

* seems like it could be watchable even if you haven't seen the other ones and probably makes a good introduction to the series as a whole so far

* is plotted around a piece of Star Trek lore familiar even to semi-casual audiences, but, also ...

* references THE LAST TIME a spin-off show did the above thing!

 

We also get to see Saru's threat ganglia (again), Mary Wiseman gets a li'l makeover, there's some stabbing, bright lights, it's a real fun time!

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It was fun! It was funny! "'Captain Killy?' That's not very clever." It went exactly the way I expected, save for one real twist (literally and metaphorically).

 

Looks like the Constitution-class ships are slightly different in this iteration of Trek. The outline of the Defiant was sporting some extra features on the nacelles and the deflector dish more closely resembled the movie version. That's sure to upset some fanboys (fanpeople?).

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Yeah, and it works. They have done so much to incorporate the TOS looks and sounds that they've earned the right to visually update pretty much anything they want. The phasers are dead-on accurate for the era, the captain's chair, the tricorders, the computer displays (at least the fonts), the sickbay set, all of it harkens back as much as possible to the original series that I'm actually a little surprised at how well it fits. I'm looking forward to the depiction of a Constitution-class vessel on the show (outside of a wire-frame graphic).

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Hardcore fans HAAAATE it, but the production design is the show's best quality. They aren't being beholden to the TOS aesthetic. Bold choice, but they are basically presenting the era's based on a 2017 vision of the future, not a 1960s one.

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