Star Trek: Discovery (and the Orville, I guess)

Started by Gurok, Thu 12/10/2017 06:19:01

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Darth Mandarb

Quote from: Joseph DiPerla on Sun 12/11/2017 02:12:05Darth, you and me will be the only Orville watchers here. Now go make an Orville adventure game!!!! ;-)

I gotta finish that Firefly game first (laugh)

Snarky

One thing that's starting to bug me about Discovery is that it's so dark. (Dimly lit, I mean.) Early on there was an excuse in that the captain's eyes couldn't handle bright lights, but that doesn't seem to be an issue any more, yet the whole ship is still on dimmer. There's a not-so-fine line between moody and just underlit.

Quote from: Joseph DiPerla on Sun 12/11/2017 02:12:05
QuoteIf you enjoy it, good for you, but I hope it's canceled soon.

I can understand why you don't like it and why folks don't like Discovery. But I wouldn't wish cancellation on either as there are people who enjoy one or the other or even both.

Usually I'm happy to just ignore a show and be happy for the people who enjoy it. But I found The Orville so wretched that I was hoping it would fail utterly, to serve as an example and warning that there are limits to the sort of crap you can put on TV. No such luck, though â€" it's been renewed.

Quote from: Joseph DiPerla on Sun 12/11/2017 02:12:05
You have to learn to not be so critical and just enjoy something for what it is.

That's the interesting thing: no, you don't.

Joseph DiPerla

I really don't think Orville is Wretched. It literally, to me, feels like a Star Trek series that doesn't take itself to seriously. It also is a show that, though it exists in a future time line, lives in the past. And while I do not like Seth's raunchy stuff, I do get his sense of humor. And this show is a perfect blend of his sense of humor without going over the top. I think the show has 3 things working against people that do not like it: 1) It aims to be Star Trek but isn't. 2) You might not like Seth Meyer and just can not get over him being the star of the show and his production. 3) People think it is supposed to be a comedy, but it's not supposed to be.

I don't know. To each their own I suppose. But I hope it goes in for at least 3 seasons. It's entertaining, interesting on a light level and I enjoy it.
Joseph DiPerla--- http://www.adventurestockpile.com
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Lord Vetinari

#23
I have gripes with both shows, but I'm siding with The Orville.

I don't mind McFarlane's brand of humor, I enjoy the whole concept of Star Trek that doesn't take itself too seriously. Indeed it has been marketed in the worst possible way, trying to sell it as a pure comedy/gag show was a dumb move.
My main issue with it is that it seems to be lacking some worldbuilding episodes that give a bit of framework to understand how everything works, plus many episodes leave a lot of questions unanswered, and not in a "we'll let the audience form it's own opinion" kind of way, more in "it didn't even cross our minds that this situation could be interpreted this way too". There will be spoilers, you're warned.
Bortus' baby? The whole episode is very ambiguous about why Moclans are a single-gender species: it seems to swing between it being a natural occourrence to it being some kind of self-imposed alteration, and depending on which one is the topic of the episode turns itself upside-down. If The Stars Should Appear? Yeah, good luck changing two millennia of culture just by showing that their whole beliefe system is just trash. Real life belief systems are constantly debunked and shown to be trash, and the only result is that people cling to them even more fiercely; yet the episode goes for the very clichéed "they finally see that it was all bogus and everything changes overnight". Krill? Why the B-class crew is entrusted with this mission when there's a perfectly fine high class cruiser ready? At least they did not pretend that the kid wouldn't be upset by what they did on board the ship. Cupid's dagger? Darulio is basically a walking rape drug and no one even think to point that out (I'll accept that his culture does not see it as an issue, after all they all work like that, but how come that everyone else on the ship is so nonchalant about it when they find out?)
Despite all of this, the Orville managed to create a cast of characters that is likable and that I care about, that's why it wins.


Discovery, on the other hand, fails horribly both at creating a cast I care about and at telling a compelling story. Its writers seem to have forgotten the golden rule of "show, don't tell". They keep telling us a lot of reason why we should care or be interested, and they fail to show each single one of them which would, you know, actually make us start to care.
They keep telling us that Burnham is the best officer Starfleet has ever had, and they never show us any of her supposedly unmatchable skills except for the rare case when everyone else just gets dragged down to idiot level so that she can shine (no, the tardigrade thingy doesn't count: the guys on the sister ship figured it out before her). The horrible war? Never seen. They give us some casualties number that if you look too hard at them make you realize that actually not much has been happening except for the ships that were destroyed in the pilot and possibly just a couple more. 80000 deaths, they say. Compare it to 60 MILLIONS casualties in WW2 and you see that this is merely a petty border skirmish (that we never see anyway).
No one has yet bothered to explain why Burnam's mutiny is considered the cause of the war, when you had a klingon ship accepting a cease fire then immediatly breaking it and ramming through a ship during negotiations. Burnham roommate is annoying. Saru is The Alien Who Is Always Scared And The Writers Cannot Be Bothered To Come Up With A Second Personality Trait. Lorca is midly interesting, but his character arc suffers because the war is so poorly written.
The make-up is terrible. And not because of the continuty issues about the klingons' look, just because there's so much crap glued to these poor actor's face that they are phisically incapable of acting (same applies to Saru: mouth, eyes and brows are the key elements to convey emotion, one must be seriously mentlly challanged to consider hiding those bits on an actor. Extra weird faces are for side characters or CGI characters that can emote no matter what, not for rubber forhead aliens). Klingons are also halfway incapable of speaking due to the fake tooth inside their mout, even when they are speaking English. As to that the brilliant idea of making them actually speak in klingon with subtitles with scene direction that doesn't consider at all that you have your eyes fixed on the bottom part of the screen to read the subtitles for large chunk of those screen, and you have a nice trainwrek happening almost every time a Klingon appears on screen.
All these complaints apply even if you don't consider that there's "Star Trek" in the title. If you include that, I think that making it a prequel was a huge mistake as it causes more problem than it solves. Actually, let me repharese: it only causes problem, and it solves nothing. I can't see any reason why new fans that came with the JJ movies would care about it being a prequel or sequel (so it's an irrelevant move if the goal is to attract them), and all the inconsistencies are just going to anger long-term fans of the original series. Even if the parallel universe fan theories turn out to be true and they're going to merge it somehow with the prime timeline later, I can hardly find any reason that would improve such storyline by making it a prequel of the original series.

Overall, as I said before this whole rant, Orville wins.

Ali

The Iraq war was a pretty big deal, and fewer than 5,000 American soldiers died. Fewer than 200 British soldiers died, and over here it is widely viewed as having been a disaster. So in a more advanced world in which (we hope) war is less common, 80,000 deaths is enough. Surely?

I do think that the Klingon prosthetic are a problem, although I like the design. They should have ADRed all the Klingon dialogue. They seem to have solved the Buffy vampire teeth lisp, but nasal sounds come out weird. I love the idea of the Klingons speaking Klingon, but L'Rell seems to be the only one who gets near to it sounding natural. Most deliver dialogue as a series of meaningless barks.

Lord Vetinari

#25
Quote from: Ali on Sat 18/11/2017 01:50:21
The Iraq war was a pretty big deal, and fewer than 5,000 American soldiers died. Fewer than 200 British soldiers died, and over here it is widely viewed as having been a disaster. So in a more advanced world in which (we hope) war is less common, 80,000 deaths is enough. Surely?

The Iraq war (I guess you're talking about the most recent one, not the one in the 90s?) was and still is a big deal for the controversy on how it started (basically ignoring the whole international community), for being somewhat unprovoked (no Al Quaeda in Iraq, 9/11 originated in Afghanistan; this was just Bush Jr trying to do something that his father was too smart to do, that is removing Saddham Hussein who, as much as a despicable and cruel dictator he was, was a stabilizing factor in the region that kept extremists OUT of Iraq becase he was too paranoid about them), and for the long term consequences it had (everything we're dealing with now started right there: Daesh/Isis formed around the nucleus of the disbanded Hussein's army, plus the war attracted fighters from basically the whole arab world, plus Isis was - at least initially - backed/leveraged by other regional powers that took advantage of the chaotic situation Iraq ended in because none of the nations who went to war against Iraq had any plan for the post-Hussein as if they hoped that it would go straight to normal because magic, to bicker with each other in an effort to extend their influence).
The war with the klingons has nothing that comes close to this, or if it has, again they failed to show it.

Quote from: Ali on Sat 18/11/2017 01:50:21
I do think that the Klingon prosthetic are a problem, although I like the design. They should have ADRed all the Klingon dialogue. They seem to have solved the Buffy vampire teeth lisp, but nasal sounds come out weird. I love the idea of the Klingons speaking Klingon, but L'Rell seems to be the only one who gets near to it sounding natural. Most deliver dialogue as a series of meaningless barks.

The Klingon language was created purposefully to sound like angry people barking, there's very little that can be done with that. To be clear, I'm not blaming any of the actors for whatever is going on in the Klingon scenes, it's all a production/writing problem. I don't even care if any of the main cast members are Trek fans or not, that's entirely irrelevant for the sake of making a good show and even a good Trek show.
IMO they should've transitioned from Klingon to English, at most keeping klingon around when members of the Federation are listening. I'm sure most viewers can abstract the concept that they're talking in English just for convenience's sake.

I have one thing to praise: I'm happy that Stamets is not The Token Gay Character with everything about him revolving around his sexual oriantation and hamfisted commentary added to it. It's presented in the most natural way possible, and that deserves praise. Unfortunately not much else of his character seems interesting to me, for now.

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