[Official] Star Trek: Discovery Thread

[LOC Veteran]

Indeed. Glad they are shooting S2 now though. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll air before 2019.

[George P Global Moderator]

While the ending did feel a bit rushed to me, the way it ended is no different with how other Trek shows manage to end story arcs, they always find some non-lethal, unless it's the Borg, way to end whatever mess they're in towards the end.  Trek has been pulling rabbits out of hats since Kirk on TOS, so I had no issues with how season 1 and the war wrapped up.

 

I loved the fact they played the original TOS music at the end of the final episode when the enterprise showed up, very nice touch.

[George P Global Moderator]

Looks like they're already a good bit into Season 2.  

 

 

Notice that we're getting the original uniforms in season 2 it looks like, so they're making the transition from this midway enterprise-TOS uniform design in discovery.

[Dot Matrix]

7 hours ago, George P said:

Notice that we're getting the original uniforms in season 2 it looks like, so they're making the transition from this midway enterprise-TOS uniform design in discovery.

Discovery needed these uniforms from the start! They look sharp! Now they just need to ditch the awful look of the Klingons. 

[George P Global Moderator]

1 hour ago, Dot Matrix said:

Discovery needed these uniforms from the start! They look sharp! Now they just need to ditch the awful look of the Klingons. 

I'm still of the thinking that you needed to show something, a mid-point, between the older enterprise uniforms and the ones in TOS, Discovery tried to do that at least so I wasn't bothered by the choice to not use the TOS style uniforms.  Maybe now that the war is over and star fleet is more or less "starting over", they figured they'd change uniforms?   Viewers could use some explanation as to why trek likes to change it's uniforms so much.   

[shockz]

2 hours ago, Dot Matrix said:

Discovery needed these uniforms from the start! They look sharp! Now they just need to ditch the awful look of the Klingons. 

Ugh. Let it go already. They're not changing the klingons. 

[Steven P. Administrators]

10 minutes ago, shockz said:

Ugh. Let it go already. They're not changing the klingons. 

[George P Global Moderator]

Jonathan Frakes directing season 2 episode 2.

 

Looks like they're going at a good pace, filming started ~15 days ago the article says.  Season 2 will have 13 episodes only, compared to 15 for season 1.   Wonder if CBS will wait to film all the episodes before they start showing them or maybe start airing them when they're halfway through?

[FloatingFatMan]

On 4/24/2018 at 8:04 PM, George P said:

Never put it past Trek to use the time travel plot device to make things match up.   

I really REALLY wish they had just let Axanar go ahead than this complete tripe.  It would have been a far more true to the canon story than the random nonsense they pulled out of someone's rear end and called it a Discovery, was...

 

Hell, BUY the Axanar script from them and do it officially!

[FloatingFatMan]

2 hours ago, George P said:

Jonathan Frakes directing season 2 episode 2.

 

Looks like they're going at a good pace, filming started ~15 days ago the article says.  Season 2 will have 13 episodes only, compared to 15 for season 1.   Wonder if CBS will wait to film all the episodes before they start showing them or maybe start airing them when they're halfway through?

I remember the days when Trek (and most other shows), were 26 episodes to a season...

 

Aaaah, those were the days...

 

[George P Global Moderator]

2 hours ago, FloatingFatMan said:

I remember the days when Trek (and most other shows), were 26 episodes to a season...

 

Aaaah, those were the days...

 

If you want to have a much lower budget then you can do 26 episodes.  Once you double the budget the episode counts go down.  We can sit and debate the plot/story all we want, but discovery has very good vfx compared to past shows.

[FloatingFatMan]

42 minutes ago, George P said:

If you want to have a much lower budget then you can do 26 episodes.  Once you double the budget the episode counts go down.  We can sit and debate the plot/story all we want, but discovery has very good vfx compared to past shows.

It could have the best VFX in the world, and yet still flop because the story stinks...

[George P Global Moderator]

Just now, FloatingFatMan said:

It could have the best VFX in the world, and yet still flop because the story stinks...

True, yet in the context of ST:D, it did enough to get a season 2 going and CBS All Access is doing good as well.  For them, it's win win.

 

Besides, every trek series has weak to meh first seasons, doesn't help that you had to get a new show runner because he wanted to work on American Gods 100%.

[FloatingFatMan]

14 hours ago, George P said:

True, yet in the context of ST:D, it did enough to get a season 2 going and CBS All Access is doing good as well.  For them, it's win win.

 

Besides, every trek series has weak to meh first seasons, doesn't help that you had to get a new show runner because he wanted to work on American Gods 100%.

The last couple of episodes of season 1 were basically the same as what happened in the last few episodes of Enterprise. They finally hit their stride, then run out of ideas and have to end it quickly, resulting in a complete mess.

[George P Global Moderator]

2 hours ago, FloatingFatMan said:

The last couple of episodes of season 1 were basically the same as what happened in the last few episodes of Enterprise. They finally hit their stride, then run out of ideas and have to end it quickly, resulting in a complete mess.

I agree, and the issue goes back to losing the show runner and probably having to improvise on where the plot was going to go, I've heard stories that the writers room was a mess for a bit, and it shows.   Once they brought in the new people and got things back on track, it started to show more later on, but I believe they also wanted a clean break from what the original people set in motion.

 

Season 1 was suppose to have 13 episodes, they added on another 2 so they could end it and start fresh in Season 2.   I don't know why Bryan Fuller bailed, maybe the American Gods money was better?  

[FloatingFatMan]

2 hours ago, George P said:

Season 1 was suppose to have 13 episodes, they added on another 2 so they could end it and start fresh in Season 2.   I don't know why Bryan Fuller bailed, maybe the American Gods money was better?

This is why Trek needs to be made by people who love Trek, not just having a mild interest in it.

[DConnell Member]

3 hours ago, FloatingFatMan said:

This is why Trek needs to be made by people who love Trek, not just having a mild interest in it.

<Points to "Star Trek Continues"> Excellent series, now complete. True to the original, down to very authentic reproductions of the classic sets. Good casting - even if the actor wasn't a perfect match to the original the character was recognisable. And it had Chris Doohan playing his father's role of Scotty!

[George P Global Moderator]

32 minutes ago, DConnell said:

<Points to "Star Trek Continues"> Excellent series, now complete. True to the original, down to very authentic reproductions of the classic sets. Good casting - even if the actor wasn't a perfect match to the original the character was recognisable. And it had Chris Doohan playing his father's role of Scotty!

I'm not of the idea that we need to keep the classic era designed sets when we redo that time period.  It just doesn't make any sense to me, we're way past using punch cards and huge consoles full of flashing lights and big buttons.    For a show that's suppose to be in the future, even around the TOS time period, you have to take the tech of today, as a basis, and move it 3-4 steps ahead so it makes sense aesthetically at least.    That means touch screens and touch input based consoles ala TNG etc even in the TOS time period.

 

Our current idea of what the year 2230+ will be like isn't what it used to be in the 1960.    That's why when they started using holographs for communications in Discovery I didn't think it odd, it's an extension of our current step into AR/VR, to me it makes sense that it'd be used in the future to talk with people far away.  Why limit things to just a big video call/view screen? 

[shockz]

On 5/3/2018 at 11:20 AM, George P said:

If you want to have a much lower budget then you can do 26 episodes.  Once you double the budget the episode counts go down.  We can sit and debate the plot/story all we want, but discovery has very good vfx compared to past shows.

I actually don't agree with that. I feel that late Voyager from Season 4 on wards probably had the best VFX for exterior shots... even when watching it on Netflix now with a HDTV. Before Season 4, with the actual model being filmed vs a computer model, it looked like garbage... but once they started throwing money, their gfx team did an amazing job. Discovery shots always look like a video game and way over processed. They look good, and pretty, but yeah.

[FloatingFatMan]

1 hour ago, DConnell said:

<Points to "Star Trek Continues"> Excellent series, now complete. True to the original, down to very authentic reproductions of the classic sets. Good casting - even if the actor wasn't a perfect match to the original the character was recognisable. And it had Chris Doohan playing his father's role of Scotty!

Yep! Seen it. Loved it! Damn you Paramount for killing it!

[George P Global Moderator]

One bit of season 2 speculation, specially since the teaser we got shows new uniforms that better match TOS, since the war is over and most of star fleet got trashed,  the talk is that we're going to see reworked designs for ships, if you look at the teaser at the end where we see the enterprise, it's a mix of elements from TOS and the refit TMP ship, a good middle ground IMO.   I expect to see more ships started with season 2 that fit that style.    

 

I also wouldn't be surprised to see them refit the discovery as they ditch the spore drive tech, probably at some point in season 2 leading into season 3.

[Dot Matrix]

On 5/3/2018 at 11:20 AM, George P said:

but discovery has very good vfx compared to past shows.

I'll disagree. No one in this show really knows how to do proper phaser fire, and the external scenes are so dark, I have to turn up my brightness just to see what's going on.

[George P Global Moderator]

4 minutes ago, Dot Matrix said:

I'll disagree. No one in this show really knows how to do proper phaser fire, and the external scenes are so dark, I have to turn up my brightness just to see what's going on.

Like most of space is dark?    I mean that bit is subjective ofc, unless you're next to a planet giving off enough light and not out in the middle of space, the scenes will be dark.

[Dot Matrix]

On 5/5/2018 at 10:35 AM, George P said:

One bit of season 2 speculation, specially since the teaser we got shows new uniforms that better match TOS, since the war is over and most of star fleet got trashed,  the talk is that we're going to see reworked designs for ships, if you look at the teaser at the end where we see the enterprise, it's a mix of elements from TOS and the refit TMP ship, a good middle ground IMO.   I expect to see more ships started with season 2 that fit that style.    

 

I also wouldn't be surprised to see them refit the discovery as they ditch the spore drive tech, probably at some point in season 2 leading into season 3.

Would be nice to see Discovery ditch those awfully long nacelles, and maybe fill in the negative space in the saucer.

[Dot Matrix]

On 5/4/2018 at 12:33 PM, George P said:

I'm not of the idea that we need to keep the classic era designed sets when we redo that time period.  It just doesn't make any sense to me, we're way past using punch cards and huge consoles full of flashing lights and big buttons.    For a show that's suppose to be in the future, even around the TOS time period, you have to take the tech of today, as a basis, and move it 3-4 steps ahead so it makes sense aesthetically at least.    That means touch screens and touch input based consoles ala TNG etc even in the TOS time period.

You have to remember too, that Earth went through WWIII. Humanity was held back quite a number of years technologically speaking. I agree that big consoles of flashing buttons is a little antiquated, but I wouldn't mid seeing big panels with a nice mix of touchscreen and physical buttons.