Star Trek (this can't be right)

[GUBU]

Yeah, they copped on half way through season 1 and are now frantically trying to get people to use "Disco".

The "Is This A Good Idea" light didn't go on, I take it.

Hasn't been working for years. How else do you explain the appointing of a crazy conspiracy theorist hobo as captain in Enterprise?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The "Is This A Good Idea" light didn't go on, I take it.

Hasn't been working for years.  How else do you explain the appointing of a crazy conspiracy theorist hobo as captain in Enterprise?

No idea, my brain doesn't work like that.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The "Is This A Good Idea" light didn't go on, I take it.

Hasn't been working for years.  How else do you explain the appointing of a crazy conspiracy theorist hobo as captain in Enterprise?

See, now this almost makes me want to watch 'Discovery'.  I'd actually like to see a conspiracy nut captaining a starship.  'Well, we could attack the Klingon outpost I suppose, but it wouldn't do a lot of good, since the outpost is merely a distraction from the bigger picture of the Romulan-Jewish industrial combine, backed by the Knights Templar.' 

There's a helluva lot could be done with a character like that, I think.

Boru

[GUBU]

Hasn't been working for years.  How else do you explain the appointing of a crazy conspiracy theorist hobo as captain in Enterprise?

See, now this almost makes me want to watch 'Discovery'.  I'd actually like to see a conspiracy nut captaining a starship.  'Well, we could attack the Klingon outpost I suppose, but it wouldn't do a lot of good, since the outpost is merely a distraction from the bigger picture of the Romulan-Jewish industrial combine, backed by the Knights Templar.' 

There's a helluva lot could be done with a character like that, I think.

Boru

The nut was Jonathan "Duchess" Archer of the first 2 1/2 seasons of Enterprise.

[KevinM1]

On STD I can't legally watch the show but from SFDebris reviews I'm confident that's no loss.  The crew display the arrogance and smugness of early TNG, the incompetence of early Voyager and the crazy of early "Duchess" Archer.  And then they decided to dump their original plot for a mirror universe plot which destroyed any attempts to then for world and character building.  Nothing about it tells me that it's worth watching.

Eh, not quite.

There's no 'the crew' in this show until the end. Instead, it's individuals with different agendas. And there's absolutely no TNG style "We solved all these petty problems you rubes are squabbling over centuries ago" arrogance at all.

The entire season is essentially about when following orders is justified, and when it's not. Michael made a bad choice in the premiere, literal mutiny, which rightfully cost her almost everything. She gets put onboard Discovery for what turns out to be nefarious reasons, and decides to act as the best possible by-the-book Starfleet officer she can be. And that backfires as well.

But, the show isn't just about Michael. Saru has a lot of character development, as does Tilly, as does Stamets, as does Ash. The Klingons' arc shows how they (re)gain cloaking technology, and how they went from squabbling, disparate houses essentially engaged in a long civil/cold war to the more unified force we see in TOS. The mirror universe plot was hinted at from the third episode, when we're introduced to Lorca, so it's not like it came out of nowhere. There's also a few Section 31 ties as well.

Don't trust the reviews. I have my issues with it (like I said, Michael's foster parentage, an uninspired/cringey pilot episode, and a really flat season ending), but the show is a lot better than I was expecting based on the pilot alone. There's a lot of conflict in it, but at its core, it's still optimistic. That people can learn from their mistakes, that they often do deserve a second chance, that principles matter more than cynicism or nihilism, that the galaxy can be a truly alien and remarkable place (seriously, some of it has the best aliens in the franchise, period... it's not just people with nose ridges), etc.

It admittedly takes a while to find its legs. It doesn't really hit its stride until episode 6 or 7, but I think it's worth sticking with. It's the best Trek series since DS9.

[Ravenshire]

It's the best Trek series since DS9.

Gotta disagree here. Had you said it's the best sci-fi since BSG, I would wholeheartedly agree. Discovery never really felt like a Trek show. It's got the place names, the species and even some of the plot points, but it just never feels like Trek.

That said, it's good sci-fi on it's own merits and maybe Paramount should have gone that direction instead of trying to shove even more ret-con into the already overly ret-conned Star Trek universe. Then again, they wouldn't have been able to build their pay-wall in front of something that didn't carry that well known trademark.

Maybe 50 years is enough. 6 series (7 if you count Discovery) and over a dozen feature feature films is one hell of a run. James Bond and Star Wars are the only other intellectual properties that even comes close although Marvel is getting there.

[Angrboda]

I can't decide whether Star Trek Discovery is worth $6 a month to watch. Maybe if I binge watched it every few months, but I'm not much for binge watching.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

See, now this almost makes me want to watch 'Discovery'.  I'd actually like to see a conspiracy nut captaining a starship.  'Well, we could attack the Klingon outpost I suppose, but it wouldn't do a lot of good, since the outpost is merely a distraction from the bigger picture of the Romulan-Jewish industrial combine, backed by the Knights Templar.' 

There's a helluva lot could be done with a character like that, I think.

Boru

The nut was Jonathan "Duchess" Archer of the first 2 1/2 seasons of Enterprise.

Ok, I misunderstood you.  I have watched 'Enterprise' - in an admittedly desultory fashion - and I don't seem to recall Archer being a conspiracy theorist.  Did I miss something?

Boru

[GUBU]

The nut was Jonathan "Duchess" Archer of the first 2 1/2 seasons of Enterprise.

Ok, I misunderstood you.  I have watched 'Enterprise' - in an admittedly desultory fashion - and I don't seem to recall Archer being a conspiracy theorist.  Did I miss something?

Boru

The way he talks about the Vulcans the first two seasons, it's almost like a Goebbels giving out about the Jews. Everything that goes wrong, the Vulcans are at fault. A Vulcan ship shows up in the locality, they're spying on him. T'pol makes a suggestion, "I'm not good enough, is that it?" The Vulcans don't get there quick enough when he needs their help, they're trying to make him fail. They offer help when he doesn't think he needs it, they're trying to show him up.

Watch the SFDebris Enterprise reviews (it's where the name Future Guy was invented for the temporal cold war enemy).

[KevinM1]

I can't decide whether Star Trek Discovery is worth $6 a month to watch.  Maybe if I binge watched it every few months, but I'm not much for binge watching.

To date, there's only around 20-something episodes (26?), with no release date yet for season 2. It can be binged in a couple weeks or less.

---

Ok, I misunderstood you.  I have watched 'Enterprise' - in an admittedly desultory fashion - and I don't seem to recall Archer being a conspiracy theorist.  Did I miss something?

Boru

The way he talks about the Vulcans the first two seasons, it's almost like a Goebbels giving out about the Jews.  Everything that goes wrong, the Vulcans are at fault. A Vulcan ship shows up in the locality, they're spying on him.  T'pol makes a suggestion, "I'm not good enough, is that it?"  The Vulcans don't get there quick enough when he needs their help, they're trying to make him fail.  They offer help when he doesn't think he needs it, they're trying to show him up.

Watch the SFDebris Enterprise reviews (it's where the name Future Guy was invented for the temporal cold war enemy).

Yeah, one of Enterprise's greatest failings is in its characters. For whatever reason, the writers thought that an inexperienced crew being the pathfinder vessel from earth meant that everyone should be a gibbering idiot (or worse).

Captain Archer, a young-ish and brash man with a chip on his shoulder to prove to the Vulcans that humans could hack it in space, dealing with his first command and all the pressures associated with everything is a pretty decent starting point. Captain Archer, the whiny, paranoid, incompetent, racist? Not so much. And all of the other characters have similar flaws.

Trip - casual racist and Archer's partner in stupidity
T'pol - treats whatever the Vulcan Science Institute says as dogma
Reed - is supposed to be a continuation of Britain's naval tradition, is actually a small, petty man who whines as much as Archer (so much for that stiff upper lip)
Mayweather - grew up in space and had more experience with alien species than anyone else, hardly ever offers advice or does anything more useful than being Archer's chauffeur
Hoshi - can speak a million languages, a skill that's useful maybe a handful of times in 4 seasons... Has no other discernible attributes
Phlox - alien doctor whose polygamous society is mostly played up for laughs

It's just a ship of fools. Mostly unlikable, utterly incompetent people who claim they're open-minded explorers, but at every turn demonstrate that they're just space rednecks gawkiing at and insulting everything that's different than them. The episode "A Night In Sickbay" is probably the best example of everything wrong with the series, but a lot of its flaws just permeate everything, in smaller doses.

*I'm using racist as in outright aggression towards anything not human.