Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

sukik said:

Sounds dumb. How many failed series will they crap out before they stop?

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All this show needs to succeed is SPORE DRIVE and BLACK ALERT.

Cybsled said:

(outside of 7 of 9 or Doctor, did we really give a shit about anyone on that ship? lol)

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I mean Voyager's single biggest problem was that those were the only two characters who consistently got interesting stories. I think there was maybe one good Kim story, one sorta good Paris story, and that was it.

Dom said:

The last 5 minutes says it all

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Wait a second, people here were actually discussing this show on a weekly basis?

After watching the timestamp there and that montage-- I'm fucking embarrassed for everybody.

Gavinmad said:

I mean Voyager's single biggest problem was that those were the only two characters who consistently got interesting stories. I think there was maybe one good Kim story, one sorta good Paris story, and that was it.

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True. Ultimately the fault lies with the writers. DS9 was blessed by the fact it had good actors and good scripts through most of its run. 7 of 9 and Doctor were both easy to write stuff for I suppose: Both are trying to gain humanity/acceptance, be it in different ways. It's been forever since I've watched Voyager in any great amount, but it's hard to think of any standout development for the other characters. I mean the characters did develop, but then they sort of stagnated. Be'lana starts as a Maqui with a chip of shoulder/authority issues, but it always felt like they worked through that pretty fast and then they didn't seem to know what to do with her beyond Klingon loathing and her relationship with Paris. Paris is pretty much the same arc as Be'lana (authority issues, dad issues, gets better). Kim's defining feature is he was shy and could seemingly never get laid, they totally wasted his character. Chikotee was written pretty blandly...the Maqui stuff gets resolved and tried to force a 7 of 9 relationship that didn't feel natural. Tuvok didn't change a whole lot. Janeway even didn't seem to change all that much either.

It was a big change from DS9 where the characters were the main attraction most times to Voyager, where "problem of the week" was the main attraction.

If Voyager had been more serialized than episodic their starting premise should have worked better but they were mashing the reset button all the goddamn time. You got the pat television ending over and over when interpersonal conflicts between the merged crews of the logistical hurdles of maintaining the ship and its crew out 90 light years from home aren't solved by hand waving them away. Alright, the ship is fucked after a battle. It is in shambles. We know from the previous episodes that energy stores are low. What is going to happen next week?

The ship has been returned to perfect condition off camera and a new mostly self-contained story begins. This would go on basically for the duration of the series. At the very end of the show they were teasing Seven having the last of her implants removed and becoming fully human and never went through with it. No character growth for anyone! Back on DS9 damn near everyone had a story arc all the way down to Jake's friend and Jake's friend's dad. Nog is the centerpiece of a couple really good episodes with solid contributions to many others and he started out as barely anything. Harry Kim has a single episode where someone decided to do something with him and it's a time travel episode with no lasting changes to the character and he was a main character (ha) for all seven seasons. Gul Dukat's fucking henchman is given more shit to do.

It's subtle and I'm sure accidental but Voyager also his this downer thread running through it of Janeway being slowly crushed by the weight of her command and the decisions she has made.

From Friendship One, Season 7 episode 21 -

JANEWAY: I think about our ancestors. Thousands of years wondering if they were alone in the universe, finally discovering they weren't. You can't blame them for wanting to reach out, see how many other species were out there asking the same questions.
CHAKOTAY: The urge to explore is pretty powerful.
JANEWAY: But it can't justify the loss of lives, whether it's millions or just one.

You wonder what Q ever saw in her.

“If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home, and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here! It's wondrous...with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid.”

And it's not as though we haven't seen other captains pushed to their limit. Picard in Family or Sisko in The Emissary are both crushed by the truths they recognize about themselves. No, you were not strong enough to defend yourself against the Borg. They took everything you were and made you aid them and there was nothing you could do. Sisko couldn't move past the death of his wife. He returned over and over again to that time and that place to the puzzlement of The Prophets. Why do you exist here? Fuck, Picard was tortured to his breaking point and beyond. How many lights do you see?

Janeway never got those stories and in the stories that she did get she had to be right whatever the position she took even if she took the opposite position literally last episode. Rarely is she wrong and rarely are her dilemmas given serious weight. Tuvix springs to mind. She makes a command decision with no easy answers and we are not given some cheap ending where everything happens to still work out.

Ya, the "magically repairing Voyager" was pretty contrived. I understand you can only go so far without writing yourself into a corner. BSG was pretty good about having damage that lasted, but they did sort of handwave away the food issue the pilot brings up except for maybe a couple instances, like the algae planet. But even the Borg would be impressed by Voyager's regeneration capabilities. They had seemingly never ending shuttles, torpedoes, phaser cells, etc. I imagine budget played a role, but it would have been cool if by the end of Voyager's run, the ship is more alien than Federation...a frankenstein of mismatched parts needed to keep the thing running.

Cybsled said:

Ya, the "magically repairing Voyager" was pretty contrived. I understand you can only go so far without writing yourself into a corner. BSG was pretty good about having damage that lasted, but they did sort of handwave away the food issue the pilot brings up except for maybe a couple instances, like the algae planet. But even the Borg would be impressed by Voyager's regeneration capabilities. They had seemingly never ending shuttles, torpedoes, phaser cells, etc. I imagine budget played a role, but it would have been cool if by the end of Voyager's run, the ship is more alien than Federation...a frankenstein of mismatched parts needed to keep the thing running.

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They did have replicators, so they could have made new parts pretty easily, assuming they had access to the raw materials. Which, in a warp capable ship shouldn't be a problem. If I was going to build a ship that can wander around for 5 years out in space, I'd be sure to outfit it with at least a lathe and some spares.

The show was just meh outside of a few 7of9 eps, and it really went off the rails when future Janeway sent them the plans to futurize their ship so they could get hoooooooooooome at last.

Fucker said:

They did have replicators, so they could have made new parts pretty easily, assuming they had access to the raw materials. Which, in a warp capable ship shouldn't be a problem. If I was going to build a ship that can wander around for 5 years out in space, I'd be sure to outfit it with at least a lathe and some spares.

The show was just meh outside of a few 7of9 eps, and it really went off the rails when future Janeway sent them the plans to futurize their ship so they could get hoooooooooooome at last.

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One of the recurring themes in the first season is a lack of energy.

sukik said:

Sounds dumb. How many failed series will they crap out before they stop?

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As many as they can fit into Kurtzman's 5 year Star Trek management contract.

Although he keeps hitting problems with funding. This series was greenlit to drum up money where section 31 or whatever was completely stalled out.

It's a fanfare grab. They're going to try to appeal to what people liked about Discivery rather than push another spinoff based on less popular characters.

It's a shame that someone new can't take over and create a new series where everyone from Discovery and Picard are simultaneously vaporized for our viewing pleasure before moving on to the real show.

Cybsled said:

Ya, the "magically repairing Voyager" was pretty contrived. I understand you can only go so far without writing yourself into a corner. BSG was pretty good about having damage that lasted, but they did sort of handwave away the food issue the pilot brings up except for maybe a couple instances, like the algae planet. But even the Borg would be impressed by Voyager's regeneration capabilities. They had seemingly never ending shuttles, torpedoes, phaser cells, etc. I imagine budget played a role, but it would have been cool if by the end of Voyager's run, the ship is more alien than Federation...a frankenstein of mismatched parts needed to keep the thing running.

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At one point in the first season they make a comment about how many torpedos they have on board and we're very careful not to waste any. By season 7 they were pew-pewing them all over the place willy nilly, not to mention all the shuttles and delta-flyers they went through.

Why do all the new Star Trek series suck? I tried Discovery and it was just garbage. I thought Picard could be awesome but it was just boring. Now more dumb prequel shit. Goddamn corporate malfeasance, what CBS has done with this franchise.

Rewatching TNG on Netflix with my kids. Going to watch DS9 for the first time after. I never saw it, we didn't get UPN back in the day when it was on.

chaos said:

Why do all the new Star Trek series suck? I tried Discovery and it was just garbage. I thought Picard could be awesome but it was just boring. Now more dumb prequel shit. Goddamn corporate malfeasance, what CBS has done with this franchise.

Rewatching TNG on Netflix with my kids. Going to watch DS9 for the first time after. I never saw it, we didn't get UPN back in the day when it was on.

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Crap writers and show runners. I tried a handful of Discovery eps, and it was 100% shit. Not a single likable character there. SPORE DRIVE. Who in the fuck came up with that. They think their core audience are witless spergs and write to that idea.

Picard was numbingly stupid. Not a single good ep in the whole season. I still can't believe they had the great idea to kill him off and turn him into a fucking robot.

chaos said:

Why do all the new Star Trek series suck? I tried Discovery and it was just garbage. I thought Picard could be awesome but it was just boring. Now more dumb prequel shit. Goddamn corporate malfeasance, what CBS has done with this franchise.

Rewatching TNG on Netflix with my kids. Going to watch DS9 for the first time after. I never saw it, we didn't get UPN back in the day when it was on.

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DS9 is so damned good...one of the few Treks with actual character growth. Just got watching through the whole series again after not seeing it in probably a decade. Word of caution: Just like TNG season 1, DS9 season 1 is kind of painful (the one episode in the 1st season with Kira and the war criminal was pretty solid, though, and it is a major character moment for her going forward). Season 2 picks up more and it goes from there.

Wut? Go back to the memes thread lol

"Destroying the old" isn't always a bad thing. The Battlestar Galactica remake was seen as destroying the original 70s one by many, but it was overall a much superior product to a cheesy Star Wars wannabe cash grab. John Carpenter's 'The Thing' basically threw out everything from the original save for the fact it happened somewhere cold and involved a dethawed alien, but you won't find many saying the 80s thing is an inferior product to the old campy 50s one.

Reimaging and reinventing things is a natural process, but I do agree there is a big difference between doing it well and doing it poorly. You've never going to 100% satisfy the original fans, but you should at least try to bring them on board while at the same time bringing in new blood.