Star Trek Discovery Now Streaming!

Arts & Media Anime, Movies, Video, & TV
21

a couple things i dislike about it.

Ok, the main character is supposed to be very smart and not only do they tell you she is super smart, but there are a ton of situations they invent that seem like the sole point of making those situations was to show how she’s smart, but her deductions and reactions are like common sense, and it seems like in the first 4 episodes all these scenarios are more destroying starfleet’s image of being comprised of the best and brightest and instead full of fucking retards that lack any common sense. A better way to establish intelligence would of been the character comes up with clever deductions that in reverse we could of come up with maybe even something that if we spent long enough we could easily come up with, but the character does it in a fraction of the time it would take us to, but this actually requires clever writers.

The main character was also raised on Vulcan and yet is completely and utterly controlled by her emotion. Ever since the first Klingon engagement i don’t think i’ve seen her not pissed off. And like, it would of been so easy for her to communicate to tell her captain that the Vulcan’s developed a peaceful relationship with the Klingons by firing on them first. But I guess Starfleet officers, and not just ordinary starfleet officers, but like some of the most promising in Starfleet easily get flustered before even combat breaks out and can’t articulate ideas well. Not to mention Vulcans are obviously on good terms with Starfleet and you would think the Vulcans would share how to peacefully maintain a relationship with Klingons to Starfleet and that a Starfleet captain on a vessel going near the border to Klingon space would be aware of this. Not to mention that when the main character did give her recommendation to the admiral (granted it was incredibly poorly done) the Admiral jumps to the conclusion of her being a bigot. What the fuck kind of place is Starfleet where that is the first conclusion you reach when a first officer tells you about an alien race they encountered?

I’m not annoyed by the appearance of the Klingon themselves, but of the appearance of Klingon equipment. There was always an elegance to Klingon weapons and ships in TNG and DS9. It was always a beautiful marriage of form and function. Their ships always seemed smaller, streamlined. Their blade weapons looked very simple. And in this one, the ships looked bulky and completely ornate and not highly functional as well as the bat’leth we see.

Finally, if we differentiate sci fi and science fiction as the former being problems of today in a different setting with the latter being new problems created by a new setting, then this Star Trek is clearly sci fi so far. I would describe Star Trek as traditionally being the hallmark of science fiction. This show doesn’t feel like Star Trek to me. It feels more like a liberal propaganda piece where the Klingons represent conservatives, overly religious and violent. And how a smart and competent female is oppressed even in Utopian Starfleet.

22

Ooookay there. Consertavatives (US politics) ARE often overly religious and often aggressively violent… but that is not what this thread is about. You draw parallels because it is true, not necessarily because the writers intended it. (where was the f*cking protagonist oppressed? Like WTF?)

Starfleet would never fire offensively on a ship unless it could be established that the ship posed an eminent threat. The second officer would know this, so just telling the captain a story about the Vulcan’s relationship with the K’lingons would probably not do the trick, and she knew that. She attempted to use the state of their relationship, in a weighted manner that was slowly being established to the viewer, to convince the captain to fire.

I don’t think she was pissed off when they were walking in the desert during the opening scene. After the opening, the situations she is involved just might cause a half-human to be a little “pissed off”. Why would you think it is nonsensical… because Vulcan?

23

I’ve watched some episodes and I think it is decent. I like that the main characters seem to have flaws, that makes them interesting. Perfect people tend to be very flat and boring.

1 Like
24

The Klingons are portrayed differently than they have historically, and how they are now portrayed strongly resembles american conservatives. They also appear to be the bad guys. The writers are american as well. Its possible its purely a coincidence, but along with the general american liberal story line portrayed in the show so far, it seems unlikely. Also, this isn’t some conservative complaining about it. I’m a liberal, feminist (in the traditional meaning) and its blatantly obvious to even me.

Also where is the protagonist oppressed? Are you serious? She was stripped of her rank and sentenced to life in prison. She is clearly more competent than the entire senior staff of the Discovery and is outranked by them all. The Admiral that dismissed her advice on the Klingons as bigotry was a man, the person that stripped her of rank and sentenced her prison for life was a man, and the captain using her talent without helping her position is a man. Every leader that has been female, her original captain and the head of security on the discovery, died following the orders of men. It clearly is portraying a theme of women being oppressed by the patriarchy.

yes, i said she was pissed off since the beginning of the Klingon engagement, which was after the desert scene.

25

Scary assertion. You offer no explanation to substantiate your thought process.

Moar scary.

Did you just feel like throwing this in for everyone to pretend it means something?

Moar scary is the conclusion.

Oh really, thanks for that.

I don’t know why I am trying but:

An officer physically assaulted their captain and commandeered the ship in an attempt to fire on a foreign entity. Yeah, she got in trouble.

As for the rest… you('re) scary dude… I call confirmation bias on your buttocks… or cognitive dissonance; take your pick. You only see what you want to.

If the protagonist were a male half-ling, would your assessment change? If the answer is yes, then you lose your platform as an objective critic and “moar scary” would well summarize the depiction of events that you describe. One could easily switch the female with a male in this show and not change any other aspect of the writing.

Get a grip. At no point in the show has the protagonist’s gender played a role in the outcome of any event… so far.

Yes, culturally (real world), there are many instances that involve the mistreatment of individuals simply because of an arbitrary difference from that of the offender. Culture affects art, science and just about everything else in between. My problem is your broad stroke seems awfully disingenuous, as does your proclamation of being a “liberal feminist, in the traditional sense”. Sorry. You are piecing together loose, cherry picked, evidence (some of it is not even evidence) to form a narrative that you have concluded is true beforehand. You are telling us about your world view more than you are telling us about this show.

I am not particularly taken with this show so far. I enjoy it; I enjoy the Star Trek spoof, The Orville, more. This is not an attempt, on my part, to defend the show.

Again, I apologize for my aggressive stance on your argument.

2 Likes
26

you agreed in your previous post that the current Klingons resembled conservatives, did you not? Clearly religion is more prominent in the Klingons of this series. The tombs on the hull of the ship, the bat’leth being very ornate.

no. you argued that just because they resembled conservatives doesn’t mean its intentional. Well, its not like the writers are from a foreign culture where they might not be familiar with american conservatives and the similarities be coincidence. The writers are very familiar with american conservatives and would be aware of making Klingons resemble them more strongly. Them not noticing those similarities is about as likely as an american artist making a character look like a hooded KKK member and not intending to. If an artist from south america made a character look like a hooded KKK member, maybe its coincidence.

The captain of the Discovery talks about how well she behaved in that scenario, furthering the concept of her wrongly being oppressed. And she didn’t just get “in trouble” she was sentenced to life in prison. There are plenty of times in other star treks where the protagonist did something similar and didn’t even get a slap on the wrist. Cisco ignored orders, invaded the dominion and destroyed dominion ships initiated federal hostilities with the dominion and the admiral hinted that if he did it again he might get a promotion. Data in one of the Star Trek movies was a captain of a ship and ignored orders to withdraw from an area and instead fired a tachyon beam to detect a cloaked Romulan ship to show him as a competent captain. Kirk and Picard have done similar things as well. Its a common theme in star trek.

do you even know what those terms mean? You should be able to provide examples that counter my hypothesis that i ignored if its confirmation bias. You haven’t been able to. And if its cognitive dissonance you should be able to show a me contradicting myself, which you haven’t.

that is bs logic. Every story that doesn’t involve sex or child birth you can easily just change the gender of a character and nothing else. You’re asking if my assessment that the women are being portrayed by a patriarchy in this show change if the female characters weren’t female? And if so, then i’m not being objective? How does that make sense?

Thats the point. If any of the characters had to be their gender for the story to make sense, then you could chalk it up as well, the story demanded that to be the case. But none of the men or women i listed that portrayed a narrative of women oppressed by a patriarchy had to be their gender. There is a lot of talk over the last couple years over the casting of women and minorities in shows and movies and you know for a fact that the writers and whoever was in charge of casting was very aware of how they were casting the sexes, especially in a IP such as star trek which is historically largely about diversity. So to assume that its pure coincidence seems unlikely.

what do you think i’m saying about my world view?

27

Actually, I only need to provide evidence that your assertions are not based on any objective reality. You hand me that with your loose assertions and misunderstandings. I never said the Klingons represent the Conservative in the USA, you did. There are many fundamentalist movements throughout the world that one could draw K’lingon parallels from. You pick one, because you subjectively wish for it to be the truth and claim the “american writers” are using “liberal propaganda” for some purpose… whether or not they are aware of it.

Yeah, I know what those terms mean and you are displaying some of the effects that those terms can have on an individual’s assessment of a situation. The punishment of an officer is NOT an example of oppressive actions taken against women, but one could draw parallels because the protagonist is a woman and she is being punished… now that is a shitty argument.

I will address each point you made above tomorrow, including any response you make to this.

28

wow ep5 has a gay scene…

30

You can just as easily make the argument that the writers are intentionally making the K’lingons represent a muslim fundamentalist authority. Those are still prominent in modern conversations here in North America. Your drawing parallels and concluding without any real evidence. Have you talked to the writers yourself? Maybe you have seen some interviews where one (or more) of the writers stated the K’lingons are representative of any particular group? No, you have not.

You are comparing Captains to a 1st officer. Captains do have quite a bit more wiggle in regard to decision making, as they are the ones in charge “on the ground” in most situations. The 1st officer’s job is not to be in charge. It is not really the same thing, but I understand your point of view.

It seems, through your writing, that feminist fundamentalism in today’s world is playing a role that you do not appreciate. I can get behind some of it, but that is based on a case by case basis. Unfortunately, I don’t see this show as being any front to launch an “anti-liberal” assault. Yes, writers depict men and women to be on a level playing field in many shows… it is a good thing. I would rather them make the effort, especially in fiction.

I see them making this effort often, but you seem to think they should not and that the purpose of the show is political in nature? That is ridiculous.

Real conclusion (personal): I don’t like the spore drive idea at all. I don’t mind this protagonist, but they could have clearly done a better job to depict her Vulcan training as more of a benefit to her, and those around her(I agree with you here Atatax).

Previous ST shows are full of wonderful instances to branch out from. As I watched yesterday I thought maybe they could have done something like:

The Federation, with the help of the protagonist, develops cloaking tech and eventually improves it to the point that they can fire while cloaked in a limited capacity (with complications). This would lead to a peace deal between the K’lingons and the Feds and the Feds would ultimately stop using the cloaking tech as part of the peace deal with the K’lingons. I believe something like that would reinforce the established ST lore better.

I don’t think they are doing a good job so far, but I will watch it of course. =/

A kidnapping of the captain in Ep 5? Really? That is a big deal, they could have done the season finale based on that; in comes Michael (with help from the crew) to save the day and all.

31

I like the show so far. Hopefully it will grow and evolve into something great.

But putting all arguments about plot and canon aside,
Who else thinks (Sonequa Martin-Green) Michael Burnham is hot !?
She’s no Seven of Nine, but she is just my type of space woman.

32

But does it have frogs?

33

no clue what you mean there, its subtle yet on 1st plane action… quite odd way of throwing that like that. It will certainly spark controversy - especially if kids are watching that show.

34

I saw two people that seem to care about each-other. It was kinda cute.

35

I thought episode five was quite good, Michael Burnham needs to fall in line though. At least there was a happy ending for Ripper.

36

the so called ‘care’ was given too much time on screen, y not make it short in terms of just words. People would know they are gay. But director had to bring it up, and wiggle like a dildo that fact in your face.

37

Would you have found a hetero care scene of that length bothersome (I assume that this is what you mean when you say “like wiggling a dildo in your face”?)? I don’t think that this was much longer / more attention than such scenes take in other series, even if ST usually didn’t involve romance at all. Yes, non-hetero relationship scenes of any type are still mostly absent from TV and film, so this is still ‘novel’. But that says much more about the state of the industry and its reliance on money/focus-groups than anything else.

38

How gay was it? Compared to the Game of Thrones gay scene.

39

Klingons looking different was adressed in DS-9 when they went back in time to “The trouble with Tribbles"
Dax and Worf’s romance was like 50 shades of Klingon Grey with broken bones.
I would expect to see Q show up during sweeps week. He saved one with Janeway
"How was the new ST”…"Terrible! They have some bald guy who surrendered in the first 15 minutes"
Enterprise was saved by the Xindi, and the “bad federation” episodes were fun, and the only ST that actually had a real NASA guy as an extra on the last episode.

The JJ Abrams films were ok once you realized your actually watching StarFleet 90210 :slight_smile:

1 Like
40

Not very. No kissing, no making out. If you expect GoT level you’ll be disappointed.

1 Like
41

They said “fucking” twice in Ep 5… that was… weird.

Oh, and that “gay” scene, was hardly a “gay” scene at all. Tame AF. The guy just got a peak into the entire universe or some shit, THAT was the focus of the scene.

1 Like