Star Trek Discovery. [SPOILERS WITHIN]

You're not gonna be happy that you asked.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/star_trek_discovery/s04

Look at the score details. 13 critics vs 484 user reviews. When we treat all humans equally, which Rotten Tomatoes does not, the case for Discovery actually gets far worse.

A bigger number doesn't turn one side into "nobody".
That's not how math works.
So again I ask, are the people who liked it not human?
I'm not going to be tricked into not asking, so you'd just better save the trouble and answer.


EDIT- That's right, run, little man, run.

I've said it many times: Discovery completely lost its way in season three and then went into cuckoo bananas land in season four. I really want to like the show but the writing is fucking horrible. Every time I see a glimmer of how good the show could be, they shit all over it the next episode. Other than the very high-level themes of exploration and Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, season three is where the show stopped feeling like "Star Trek" (IMO).

Neither of these examples address my point. None of these people are politicians. Appearing as an alien in costume is not distracting; few in the pre-Internet age would even know unless they watched the credits carefully. Even today, few would recognize a Saudi prince.

So you agree that neither Obama nor any other politician ever appeared on Trek? If so, this fact supports my position, not yours.

100%. Between Season 2 and 3 is when Discovery went from a good-but-not-great show, to an unwatchable disaster.

And? You know what yanked me the fuck out of the first Iron Man movie? It's when Tony handles molten palladium wearing leather gloves and no other protective gear. I've handled molten metal at temps up to 4,000 F, you don't do that with just leather gloves. Even if the stuff is a relatively cool 2000F, you need more than that if you're going to handle it and not have to worry about getting burned by the shit, simply from the heat radiating off of it. What Stark did in that film is completely unrealistic if you're familar with the subject. Not too many people are going to notice that unless they've got experiences like I've had.

How many non-Americans are going to have a clue as to who Stacy Abrams is? If they don't know who she is, how are they going to react to seeing her onscreen?

And my bad, it wasn't a Saudi prince, but the then-future king of Jordan who appeared on Voyager. I learned about that story from a magazine article published before the episode aired. They said that they had a prince as an extra (they couldn't give him a speaking part as he wasn't a member of SAG). They weren't hiding it, they were bragging about it because they thought that it gave them coolness points.

I don't know if any other politician has appeared on Trek. I don't pay too much attention to who has been a guest on Trek. Melvin Belli was rather infamous as a lawyer when appeared on TOS in the 60s. I just remember my brother laughing hysterically at seeing Melvine Belli (my brother was ~18) on a repeat of Trek, and knowing exactly who he was.

In the 80s and 90s, it was a really huge fucking deal on shows like Miami Vice and The Simpsons when they had some big-name celebrity (regardless of if they were an actor or not) on as a guest, even if the appearance of said celebrity was just absolute shite (see Lee Ioccoca's appearance on Miami Vice, for example). Trek has done similar things since the beginning. (I remember eagerly watching TNG when there was going to be a basketball star on as a Klingon, not because I gave a shit about basketball, but because I wanted to see how they handled it.)

Why put Stacy Abrams on? WTF not? She says that Trek informed her values, and GA elections for the US Senate are what gave Democrats the slim majority in the Senate (in no small part thanks to Abrams). Abrams is running, again, for the governor's office and if she gets it, might very well prevent Republicans from rigging things to throw GA's Electoral College votes to Trump (or other GQP Presidential candidate in 2024). If the producers want to put Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney on an episode of Trek, I'm not going to object. Why? Because while I personally might think that Cheney and Romney aren't exactly stellar individuals, the fact that they're willing to stand up to Trumpism means that they're better than most of the members of their political party who are so craven that they have no qualms about toadying up to Trump and his ilk. I'd much rather have Republicans in Congress in the mold of Romney and Cheney than I would folks like Mo Brooks, even if I don't like 99% of the things that they stand for. After all, at least Romney and Cheney are willing to admit that Trumpism is still a threat to our democracy. YMMV.

This.

Gotta love the supposition that a major for-profit movie studio/streaming company is just going to stubbornly keep making 13 eps a season of a wildly expensive show that....no one likes.

Sounds like a thing that totally happens all the time.

STO added the ship FROM Discovery... it was in S3.

Now the ships in ep1 of PIC S2 are indeed genuine STO imports.

There are a great many reasons why that could be the case.

But hey, if you don't trust the Rotten Tomato numbers, feel free to supply your own.

Terminology aside, audiences haven't responded to Discovery as it has to other shows. Even the current incarnations. Per Rotten Tomatoes:

Prodigy, audience score of 72%
Lower Decks, 65%
Picard, 61%
Discovery, 36%

Then the older shows:
Enterprise, 78%
Voyager, 77%
DS9, 87%
TNG, 89%
TOS not included

Now I imagine that will come up over time. Hell, even TNG was controversial the first couple of years it was on. But by year 4 it was widely considered among the best Trek ever made.

Personally, my wife and I stopped watching it after a few eps in season 3. We'll definitely try it again at some point. Initially, I didn't care for Ent but came to like it quite a bit on later viewings.

But lots of people clearly aren't engaged in this one yet. It's had some good ideas and some bad ones, the FX are spectacular, but the writing is inconsistent IMO and the emo scenes continuously break me out of immersion. Professional women I know are not at all like that. It's far too Melrose place for my liking.

But if you like it, that's fine - IDIC, after all.

Honestly, and this is just one man's opinion, don't bother. It doesn't get any better -- in fact, I think it gets worse -- and there is a wealth of amazing shows out there that you would be better served spending time on.

Love. Loss. Destruction. Salvation. Redemption. Hope.

This is Star Trek.

Stacey's cameo was a bit of a surprise. I mean, not an unwelcome one, but it did take me out for a split second. It's a bit of an odd choice from the position of politics. I mean, she's running for Governor of Georgia, so it kind of feels like a bit of a showboat, some straight up politicking, but, and I have to stress this, she has long established herself as a Trekkie, and I will gladly applaud anyone who wants to involve themselves in pushing the edict that not only is a better world possible, but it is achievable. It's not enough to dream, we have to work toward it, and to do it together.

I honestly don't even agree with a number of her political choices, but I can agree with her on that, and I can celebrate that as it is.

10/10

Michael, is that you?

IIRC, the RottenTomatoes score is only based on the first couple of episodes. I noticed this is season 3.

They can't write. Look how they knew the universal translator wouldn't work before they had a shred of evidence it wouldn't.

As for 10-C, I can just imagine them after the dust has settled:

Okay then, well that happened.
Holy shit. I can't believe they bought it!
It's been a successful mining run; we have enough boronite to last a millennia. We will recommence operations in - shall we say - 500 years?
I knew bipedals were thick mate, but seriously? "We didn't recognise you as higher lifeforms" ... LMAO - yeah, we missed all the spaceships, starbases, colonies, warp and subspace signatures. WHOOPS!
I'm surprised we didn't have to bust out the "we're out of phase and didn't see you" line.
I think we should disguise ourselves with giant moustaches and dark rimmed glasses, call ourselves the 10-D and start up operations again.

I will give them this - their drawn out, tedious pacing works for the target audience. They might moan and groan a bit that nothing is happening and otherwise maintain a healthy weariness, but they are oh so grateful after 4 months of tedium when something finally happens with all the feels and whistles.

Season 5 request - writers: stop getting high off your own farts.

I'll keep screaming this:
The future jump destroyed the relevance of this show and removed it from the continuity that frankly, I wanted to see them shoehorn their way into. For all the canon complaints, fans are flexible if the cheat is well played.

If I'm interpreting this right, Season 5 is going to dip into even more TOS/TNG fan-service.

https://www.darkhorizons.com/discovery-s5-to-embrace-old-trek/

If their idea of "fan service" is having a Ferengi tend bar (see the season 4 finale), I'll pass.

Also, talking about the U.S.S. Enterprise (whether Kirk or Picard's) 900 years in the future doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense.

It's like us having problems with an iPhone 17 and then saying, "Yeah, I remember when Gutenberg invented the printing press and he had similar issues."

People do think about what a Jewish carpenter might have done 2000 years ago, or a British writer did 400 years ago. or philosophies of Aristotle, Sun Tsu, Machiavelli etc. People still talk about the voyages of Columbus, the military campaigns of Caesar and others. Just because Gutenberg is not a household name in the same way and doesn't get taught in history classes doesn't mean that 900 years into their future, Kirk, Picard etc would not be commonly discussed among Starfleet people, who all presumably had some basic grounding in Federation/Starfleet history.

A closer analogy would be whether it would be a publisher bringing up Gutenberg, naming things for him or being inspired by him. Which is not an uncommon thing

Or a West Point grad would bring up a campaign of Hannibal's during their work. They might, they might not.

Did you just compare James. T. Kirk to Jesus H. Christ?

Because I think William Shatner's ears are burning!

Sounds to me like more obvious SJW parables to freak out the deplorables.

Looks more like South America.

And for fuck's sakes, if you're going to complain about the show, complain about something meaningful. Not some dumbass nitpick.

As fictional characters go, I prefer Kirk.

It’s not meant to be that serious and the guy’s other channel is Nitpicking Nerd. Even if it is South America, bad news for you, South is not the biggest continent. Anyway, I haven’t seen the episode yet, I just thought it was funny.

Not a terrible episode, decent action. I liked the optimism. The end was pretty predictable, but I didn’t hate it. Stacy Abrahams at the end was no big deal, I assume she’s a fan. Too bad Book didn’t die. 7/10 for the episode. 3/10 for the overall season.

Huh.

What's all this then?



Something amiss

Yes, there is.

No fucking way should VOY or ENT be rated that high.

or we could go the other way... if we recognize subcontinents like Asia Minor and India by the same criteria as separates Europe from Asia, then Africa and Asia are very close in size.
Given that the concept of continents has evolved from four to seven in the past century alone, it's not unreasonable.

A graphic you made up?