Star Trek Discovery

and he looks different

hipster spock

Now that i watched the entrire 2nd season with the red angel it have to say that I really like what i have seen. The visual effects the story (sometimes a bit thin, but ok). But it did end a bit strange. Looked to me like a cliffhanger - an open ending which can be used as reference for the next season.

Anyway i loved the idea of the spore jumping - a new engine concept for traveling.

Looking forward to continue the story.

Can we agree to disagree?

Ive been trying to write a review for that season for the past week and tried to find the right words.

I think I stick with "urghh".

Lets start with with the 2 things I liked about the season.

1. Captain Pike. He was a refreshing character and almost a good captain.

2. The visuals were pretty good.

What I did not like:

1. The many monologues. Nearly every episode started with a phylosophical monologue about a topic the show writers actually did not understand.

2. The focus on Burnham and her mental instabilities. How many times did she had to cry over something?

3. Burnham again... or more precisely how often she openly question the captains decisions, how dishonest she was and how often she disobeyed orders. Lets face it... other officers would have ended infront of a tribunal if they acted like Burnham. Which actually is strange because... she was infront of a war tribunal at the beginning of season one and did learn absolutely nothing.

4. Which leads me to the next problem. There is no character development on this very specific character. There are slight character developments on other crew members which is ok... but unfortunatly thats not the focus.

5. Pike. Yes, I know I have him under the positive aspects... but the show takes every opportunity to cut his balls. His authority is constantly questioned.

6. Emotional triggers. The show desperately tries to trigger emotional reactions. The problem is that it does not translate well to the audience when the crew is crying over the loss of a crew member and you as viewer can not even relate to it because that crew member never had any importance (or noticable screentime) in these 2 seasons.

7. Science bullshit. It started with the dark matter crap which is total nonsense. It is so heavy that it instantly forms a moon around that one planet but Tilly easily lifts one piece of it on the Discovery. They can not beam it but Burnham can hold it in her hand (and even see it). Season 2 was so full of scientific inaccurecies and desperate tries to explain stuff with science without that the writers even understanding that science.

8. Deus ex machina. The entire season relied on so many unlikely events. When the disovery needed to capture and analize the dark matter they of course had all the technology and machines for that on board. Same can be said about literally everything they did. For some reason against all odds they always had the right tool lying on the desk nearby.

9. Ignoring the story of previous episodes. They discovered that the jumps with the spore drive would cause damages to other species and promised not to use the spore drive to their new friends. 3 episodes later they apparently forgot about this fact and jumped anyways. Its like the writers suffered dementia.

10. Plotholes. You get to know characters that you have never seen before in the series but crew acts like everybody should know that person. If you did not watch the short treks... you cant know how this person even fits in the story and why all of that is important. Many other story strings suffer major plotholes aswell. Stuff is not explained.... it happens and you wonder what the fuck did you just witness.

11. Logical errors. In my eyes every episode was full of these. They cant destroy the discovery with the first shot because of the shields... nobody even bothers to shut down the shields... to damage the computer core with a big hammer... or keep shooting until the shields are depleted. And despite the shields being up the crew just simply returns from the Enterprise back to the Discovery (through the shields?). Then 30 enemy ships cant destroy Enterprise and Discovery for dunno hours of concentrated fire? If thats how good the shields are then I would never want to witness a 1on1 battle between ships... that would potentially take weeks or even months.

In one episode they showed how to destroy a nanite infested guy via magnetizing the floor. What would have spoken against magnetizing all floors on the discovery to prevent that the bad guy beams aboard? I mean... I know about a 100% working way to kill these guy and then don't really use it (until the very final moment).

There are so many logical errors in this show... such a poor writing... so much stuff does not make any sense when you think about... arghh!!! Star Trek used to be much better in that.

12. Spock. They turned one of the coolest Star Trek characters into a little insecure boy with mential problems, emotional overreactions/outbreaks and dyslexia?

13. Stupid fan service. Fans of the show were not happy about the look of the Klingons... so in season 2 the Klingons grew hair. This was explained with Klingons shaving their hair in times of war. Cool... if there wouldnt be 2 problems about that. Discovery Klingons had bald heads even before there was war with the federation in season one. And of course Klingons in every other Star Trek show were at war but never shaved off their hair... not in TOS, not in TNG, not in DS9. The explanation for this stupid change is even worse than the bald season 1 Klingons. Oh... and then there was this stupid explanation why they wont communicate via hologram anymore which is supposed to fix the fact that on Kirks Enterprise they had communication via screens. I think they explicitly mentioned this decisions in 4 of the episodes just to make sure that everyone understands that they are no longer using holograms (eventhough I am still not sure why they stopped using them -> plothole). And... yeah... then there was this robot woman... almost a century before Data and the Exocomps were developed. Doesnt make sense... but... hey ... whatever.

14. Where the fuck did the 2 ships in the final battle get 200 shuttles from? Where to store all these shuttles on these 2 ships? None of them are carriers. And what about these stupid inflatable hallways between the ships? WTF?!?

15. The ending. The whole time travel crap is bs but what bothers me more is how they removed the Discovery from the timeline. Spock suggested now to talk about the Discovery anymore and that fixed all the problems, right? If you dont talk about it it wont harm you. Erased from history. Federation should thank the Klingons and all other species which had contact with Burnham and the Discovery in the past 2 seasons that they keep their mouth shut. Nobody will remember Burnham eventhough she was the first Federation traitor? The one which started the war with the Klingons and then later did speak infront of the Federation Counsil about what it means to be the Federation. Nobody will talk about the Discovery eventhough... it had revolutionary engines... was the reason why the Federation did not lose the war with the Klingons, liberated an entire species... etc. "If we dont talk about it it never happened". Billions of people all of a sudden lose their memory just because Spock suggested "lets not talk about it anymore". And whats the first thing Spock the dumbass does? He makes an entry in his logbook about his sister and the fate of the discovery. Is he even aware that a logbook is no diary? Its not private... literally every starfleet officer could access it and he mentions the biggest secrets of starfleet there.

*sigh*

Star Trek Discovery is a cool show... if you don't think about what just happened on the screen.

But once you start thinking about it you open pandoras box. The house of cards crumbles with a snap of Thanos finger.

The only hope I have for this show is that in the future timeline they cant damage the Star Trek we already know.

Wow! Now that is a review. 5 stars.

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

Can we agree to disagree?

Ive been trying to write a review for that season for the past week and tried to find the right words.

I think I stick with "urghh".

Lets start with with the 2 things I liked about the season.

1. Captain Pike. He was a refreshing character and almost a good captain.

2. The visuals were pretty good.

What I did not like:

1. The many monologues. Nearly every episode started with a phylosophical monologue about a topic the show writers actually did not understand.

2. The focus on Burnham and her mental instabilities. How many times did she had to cry over something?

3. Burnham again... or more precisely how often she openly question the captains decisions, how dishonest she was and how often she disobeyed orders. Lets face it... other officers would have ended infront of a tribunal if they acted like Burnham. Which actually is strange because... she was infront of a war tribunal at the beginning of season one and did learn absolutely nothing.

4. Which leads me to the next problem. There is no character development on this very specific character. There are slight character developments on other crew members which is ok... but unfortunatly thats not the focus.

5. Pike. Yes, I know I have him under the positive aspects... but the show takes every opportunity to cut his balls. His authority is constantly questioned.

6. Emotional triggers. The show desperately tries to trigger emotional reactions. The problem is that it does not translate well to the audience when the crew is crying over the loss of a crew member and you as viewer can not even relate to it because that crew member never had any importance (or noticable screentime) in these 2 seasons.

7. Science bullshit. It started with the dark matter crap which is total nonsense. It is so heavy that it instantly forms a moon around that one planet but Tilly easily lifts one piece of it on the Discovery. They can not beam it but Burnham can hold it in her hand (and even see it). Season 2 was so full of scientific inaccurecies and desperate tries to explain stuff with science without that the writers even understanding that science.

8. Deus ex machina. The entire season relied on so many unlikely events. When the disovery needed to capture and analize the dark matter they of course had all the technology and machines for that on board. Same can be said about literally everything they did. For some reason against all odds they always had the right tool lying on the desk nearby.

9. Ignoring the story of previous episodes. They discovered that the jumps with the spore drive would cause damages to other species and promised not to use the spore drive to their new friends. 3 episodes later they apparently forgot about this fact and jumped anyways. Its like the writers suffered dementia.

10. Plotholes. You get to know characters that you have never seen before in the series but crew acts like everybody should know that person. If you did not watch the short treks... you cant know how this person even fits in the story and why all of that is important. Many other story strings suffer major plotholes aswell. Stuff is not explained.... it happens and you wonder what the fuck did you just witness.

11. Logical errors. In my eyes every episode was full of these. They cant destroy the discovery with the first shot because of the shields... nobody even bothers to shut down the shields... to damage the computer core with a big hammer... or keep shooting until the shields are depleted. And despite the shields being up the crew just simply returns from the Enterprise back to the Discovery (through the shields?). Then 30 enemy ships cant destroy Enterprise and Discovery for dunno hours of concentrated fire? If thats how good the shields are then I would never want to witness a 1on1 battle between ships... that would potentially take weeks or even months.

In one episode they showed how to destroy a nanite infested guy via magnetizing the floor. What would have spoken against magnetizing all floors on the discovery to prevent that the bad guy beams aboard? I mean... I know about a 100% working way to kill these guy and then don't really use it (until the very final moment).

There are so many logical errors in this show... such a poor writing... so much stuff does not make any sense when you think about... arghh!!! Star Trek used to be much better in that.

12. Spock. They turned one of the coolest Star Trek characters into a little insecure boy with mential problems, emotional overreactions/outbreaks and dyslexia?

13. Stupid fan service. Fans of the show were not happy about the look of the Klingons... so in season 2 the Klingons grew hair. This was explained with Klingons shaving their hair in times of war. Cool... if there wouldnt be 2 problems about that. Discovery Klingons had bald heads even before there was war with the federation in season one. And of course Klingons in every other Star Trek show were at war but never shaved off their hair... not in TOS, not in TNG, not in DS9. The explanation for this stupid change is even worse than the bald season 1 Klingons. Oh... and then there was this stupid explanation why they wont communicate via hologram anymore which is supposed to fix the fact that on Kirks Enterprise they had communication via screens. I think they explicitly mentioned this decisions in 4 of the episodes just to make sure that everyone understands that they are no longer using holograms (eventhough I am still not sure why they stopped using them -> plothole). And... yeah... then there was this robot woman... almost a century before Data and the Exocomps were developed. Doesnt make sense... but... hey ... whatever.

14. Where the fuck did the 2 ships in the final battle get 200 shuttles from? Where to store all these shuttles on these 2 ships? None of them are carriers. And what about these stupid inflatable hallways between the ships? WTF?!?

15. The ending. The whole time travel crap is bs but what bothers me more is how they removed the Discovery from the timeline. Spock suggested now to talk about the Discovery anymore and that fixed all the problems, right? If you dont talk about it it wont harm you. Erased from history. Federation should thank the Klingons and all other species which had contact with Burnham and the Discovery in the past 2 seasons that they keep their mouth shut. Nobody will remember Burnham eventhough she was the first Federation traitor? The one which started the war with the Klingons and then later did speak infront of the Federation Counsil about what it means to be the Federation. Nobody will talk about the Discovery eventhough... it had revolutionary engines... was the reason why the Federation did not lose the war with the Klingons, liberated an entire species... etc. "If we dont talk about it it never happened". Billions of people all of a sudden lose their memory just because Spock suggested "lets not talk about it anymore". And whats the first thing Spock the dumbass does? He makes an entry in his logbook about his sister and the fate of the discovery. Is he even aware that a logbook is no diary? Its not private... literally every starfleet officer could access it and he mentions the biggest secrets of starfleet there.

*sigh*

Star Trek Discovery is a cool show... if you don't think about what just happened on the screen.

But once you start thinking about it you open pandoras box. The house of cards crumbles with a snap of Thanos finger.

The only hope I have for this show is that in the future timeline they cant damage the Star Trek we already know.

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I love Star Trek but Discovery is such a disappointment. Season 1 was so promising and then season 2 happened. OMG! I feel like they had touching speeches in every episode. No wonder that AI wanted to kill them.

Was is not supposed to be sci fi? Yeah a lot really did not much sense, especially the whole time crap. That the spores revived the doctor, the final battle, the nanite control guy, and many more...

Spok has been strange - the role and its character.

Anyway it was exciting and I always wanted to see the progress and really am a bit frustrated about how that all did end.

sure it is scifi

but there is good scifi and bad scifi

I dont think that the idea behind discovery is by default wrong but when you write stories which happen in a timeline that to a noticable degree is already known then you should have writers which know about the canon and lore. Also some background knowledge about the science you are going to use would not hurt.

Star Trek from the very beginning tried to portrait known science in the best possible way. The show writers of the other filled some gaps and explained stuff with "subspace" and "tetryon particles" etc. when they did really know how else to explain stuff. That were fillers to make stuff work. But what the other Star Trek series never did was to ignore already known scientific facts.

Best example is the dark matter rock. They could not beam it because it was dark matter. But it was visible.... so actually it could not be dark matter because dark matter does not appear to be reflective or able to absorb light. The writers used dark matter without even understanding its fundamental properties.

The writers did a terrible job.

Just alone the dementia... there even was an episode where Burnham made a suggestion at the end of that episode and right at the start of the next episode Burnham who came up with this idea started to argue against that idea. That is almost a schizophrenic story telling.

And then the strange enemy. An AI that wants to get information in order to develop consciousness while already acting like a conscious being. All that stuff did not really fit together. The AI already did its own decisions. It also appeared to have emotions. So what would the AI have gained?

And is the AI actually defeated? No other nanite drones out there? No backup server?

If so -> what a stupid AI.

And then there is Section 31.

Lets give the command of the super duper secret organization (which publicly wears the black com badges) to a half human, half klingon traitor which previously killed a Starfleet officer. Thats like allowing a russion double agent to run the CIA.

Sure they needed to find a job for Tylor but... wasnt there a federation ship that needed a new janitor?

The more I think about that season the more I see how flawed it is.

Btw. whats "Number One"s name?

Its so hilarious that they brought this character into the show and treated her like she has no name. Even when she was directly asked what her name was she replied "Number One". It is almost like the writers feared that giving her a real name would cause even more troubles with the canon. But the result of not giving her a name felt totally surreal, even awkward.

Maybe her real name should be kept secret - maybe she has a bad reputation, like so many others on the ship. Or she has an love affair with captain Pike, or fills the job as his bodyguard

I am not sure about that dark matter stuff - must have been fallen asleep. Have to watch it again. But dark matter is not visible - but somehow affects the weights as it has gravitational force. Maybe it was captured somehow - by some technology and formed like a rock...

You see how you even struggle to explain something simple like a name/title on that show.

Sure maybe the dark matter was part of a normal matter rock. It would have been visible then (maybe). But if so... the transporter beam that tried to beam Burnham would have beamed away the normal matter part of left behind the dark matter part in the same way that teleporter was able to beam Burnham while holding the rock in her hand. No matter how you try to explain it... it does not fit.

Meh, I loved the series... The final episode of S2 was epic, I watched it while holding my breath...

I am impressed by your breath holding capability

free (apnoe) diver

Second season was a big improvement over the first for me.. although that was probably more because of the excellent casting of Pike & Spock and all the Enteprise stuff but it was still filled with weird confusing moments (like the stupid watching torpedo in enteprise kill admiral through a glass door scene). There must have been a good 4 scenes across the second series where I was almost screaming at the TV "JUST USE THE F*CKING TRANSPORTER FFS!!!" lol.

Surprised this place doesn't have a dedicated Picard thread as I suspect many more people will like that show than Disco. I'll go make one lol...

Well, in my eyes the 2nd season was worse.

Why?

Because they did not have the balls to go with the decisions of season 1 and forcefully tried to correct stuff. While doing so they contradicted themselves.

e.g. their try to remove the holo-tech from the timeline again... or their decision to "correct" the klingon appearance once more by explaining the season 1 look in a lousy way (which contradicts canon even more).

Their try to correct stuff from season 1 always made it worse.

It also did not help to completely forget that the klingon war in season 1 was started by Burnham because she decided not to follow her orders.

In season 2 Burnham not following orders was pretty much the default state on that ship. She did not learn from her mistakes and actually everybody seemed to have accepted that. The chain of command was inexistent.

Pike, despite being played by a good actor was a captain without powers.

Overall the story of season 2 was made overly complicated and confusing. Nobody knows why the enterprise all of a sudden was able to launch hundreds of shuttles. Nobody really knows where certain new characters came from (unless you watched the short treks - which most people most likely didnt). Nobody the physics and the given explanations make absolutely no sense multiple times.

Consequences do not exist ->

"The Spore destroys a different world everytime it is used, lets stop using it."

2 episodes later: "lets use the spore drive again".

WTF?!?

My reason to say that season 1 was better.

The episodes in the mirror universe. They actually were not that bad... and no harm was done to the to the Star Trek lore during these episodes.

The writers of these episodes could freely do what they envisioned without breaking something connected to the known Star Trek world.

IF the entire show was located in the Mirror Universe the opinion about Star Trek Discovery would be much different.

Better good old Fanmade

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

"The Spore destroys a different world everytime it is used, lets stop using it."

2 episodes later: "lets use the spore drive again".

WTF?!?

Isnt that common sense? We know that using technology destroys the environment but unless other better ways are found, we knowingly tend to use it.

Quote from SWAT_OP-R8R

Nobody knows why the enterprise all of a sudden was able to launch hundreds of shuttles

Didnt the Odyssey (or how it was called) in the STO game had that feature too? It launched some little drones that kept it protected. At least that scene remembered me on that game

BZW I found season 1 also better than season 2, although season 2 had more eye candy stuff

Quote from Huor

Isnt that common sense? We know that using technology destroys the environment but unless other better ways are found, we knowingly tend to use it.

Didnt the Odyssey (or how it was called) in the STO game had that feature too? It launched some little drones that kept it protected. At least that scene remembered me on that game

BZW I found season 1 also better than season 2, although season 2 had more eye candy stuff

Well, we destroy OUR world currently... not the world of somebody else... and for sure not after telling these 'people' "dont worry we stop it"... especially after they proved to be able to attack us.

Odyssey Class -> Saucer seperation + ONE Aquarius frigate.