Cersan wrote:Are you sure that you are Star Trek fans? I mean this is the most authentic trek experience i had in years. How can you not be excited?! Maybe our game is in not its best shape lately for a reason.
He's asking people on an obscure website for a dead 20-year old card game about a 50 year-old sci-fi show if they're
really fans of this franchise.... a little insulting, don't you think? -_-
Not that I really
need to give you my "nerd credentials" but one of my very first childhood memories is watching TOS... "The Corbomite Maneuver", to be specific (That Baalok puppet scared the crap out of me as a little kid.) I've been a fan of this universe since I was a little child. My best friend and I used to play "Star Trek" out in the woods behind his house... I would play Spock and he would be Kirk and we would pretend to explore alien planets and go on adventures. Our phasers were
sticks off the ground. Hell, I met my best friend talking about Star Trek in the cafeteria in junior high. I took up the trombone at the same time solely because Commander Riker played it. I daresay that our childhood version of Trek playing out in the woods, with twigs for phasers and handmade cardboard communicators, was a more authentic Trek experience that what I just watched last night.
This is clearly written to appeal to the crowd that loves shit like Game of Thrones not for the fantasy aspects, but the overblown soap opera-style "interpersonal drama".
>>> SPOILERS FOLLOW <<<
As much as they declare that this show "is totally canon, guys... seriously!" there is just no possible way that is the case. The ships are just insane. Everything is somehow an over-designed and over-engineered mess that hurts to look at and also too dark and grainy to even see well. There is no conceivable way that any of this technology evolves into the tech from TOS. It's just too futuristic. And you can't argue that the way the tech looks in TOS is "apocryphal" or an "abstract representation" beacuse Dax points out how much she loves the way it looks in "Trials and Tribble-ations". The effects are totally overblown. They're all the worst excesses of JJ-Trek and Nu-Wars combined. The show looks like someone threw Star Trek '09 and Mass Effect into a blender and ran it on high for hours. And that overly-shilled, award-bait, artsy-fartsy opening is awful... it makes Enterprise's opening credits look like TNG's credits (and I really, really despised ENT's opening because of that stupid song) but I'll take something dumb and schmaltzy like "Where My Heart Will Take Me" over this crap any day.
Burnham is just ridiculous. Her backstory is the most contrived thing I think I've
ever seen - and yes, I hated Sybok, too. Her character is straight out of the worst self-insert fanfics - "She's the secret human sister of Spock you've NEVER EVER heard of in 50 years, guys!" She's too coldly logical to sympathize with at certain points, and too emotional in others. She's ridiculously eager to make a show of force to what is in all likelihood a superior foe in both numbers and tactics. "What's the most logical course of action here? Well, it's not negotiation or diplomacy like the Federation
should be doing... that's stupid. Mutiny and fire phasers!
That's the most rational response!" And before anyone even brings up Spock and "The Menagerie" - yes, he took control of the ship and broke a serious protocol in the process, but he did that to give a dear friend the ability to live out his final days in peace and happiness, and didn't start a
fucking war in the process.
Saru is transparently the "anti-Spock"... an officer who is basically an inveterate coward who relies on his "death feefees" and emotions to make decisions. I like Doug Jones, but I think the make-up is bad and the character is weakly written.
The Klingons would have worked just as well if they had kept their standard design. They look more like Remans than Klingons to be honest. The worst part is that there is
literally no reason for the way they look... they're not an off-shoot, they're not mutants, they're not hybrids. They're just different
solely for the sake of being different. And this "isolationist" bullshit is just stupid. The Klingons were always an aggressive, expansionist empire in all prior media. It's the Romulans who are the isolationists. This plot point makes no sense at all. And that sarcophagus ship looks like it was ripped straight out of Warhammer 40k... something as over-the-top as corpses nailed to a ship's hull and lighting a fire
inside your ship is less "Klingon" and more "Chaos Space Marines."
And of course, for an extra dose of "edgy" and "this is not your daddy's Trek", we kill off the likable, rational, reasonable Captain Phillipou - the closest thing to a traditional Trek character in this farce of a series and whom I would have personally enjoyed as the main character of this show - at the end of the second episode. Why? Because "Game of Thrones"-style "Aha! You didn't expect us to kill off such a major character, did you?! NOBODY IS SAFE!!!" that's why. (Not to mention that between Star Trek Online and JJ Trek '09 the "captain gets killed and you're in charge now" plot is totally played out).
Are we going to have a "Women in Refrigerators" discussion about the Asian female being killed off to introduce a white male captain? No, because we have a black female, so that's okay.
Thankfully, at least, this show bears so much more of a resemblance to JJ-Trek that if necessary, it can be dismissed as non-canon. I've never canceled a free trial of something as fast as I did last night.
EDIT: Thank you! I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed how bad the audio mixing was! I'm partially deaf in one ear, and poor audio quality and mixing is one of the many reasons I stopped watching Nu-Who. The terrible audio is just one more reason I won't give this show another chance.
sexecutioner wrote:Loved it. Flawed, but at least it's not Encounter at Farpoint
Farpoint, for all its' flaws, introduced one of the most compelling and memorable characters in Trek history in the first episode. The Farpoint stuff was crap, sure, but the Q Continuum is an incredibly interesting concept, and Q himself was brilliant... so much so that he's one of the best characters in Trek. There is nothing of the sort to be found here, as the Klingon leader was killed off far too soon, and I don't think Mudd will be a comparable character to Q in any way.
BCSWowbagger wrote:It was hideously ugly to look at and listen to (the sound design just mish-mashed all sorts of sfx together from all over the timeline with no rhyme or reason -- just a complete garbage fire). It displayed the least TrekSense of any pilot besides "Broken Bow," which was a strangely similar episode if you ignore the aesthetic -- same basic conflict, same basic exposition load, same basic action-movie plot. Give me "Encounter at Farpoint" any day; at least it had some ideas beyond "shooty shooty boom boom." Or, for that matter, I'll take the third episode of The Orville.
Agreed on all counts. The sound design was awful...most likely due to the disjointed, confused, rushed nature of the show's production. You make a damn good point about Broken Bow, too... I hadn't realized that, but this entire premise was basically lifted straight from Broken Bow, 'dumb action movie" elements and everything! And I agree, the Q Continuum elements alone make Farpoint the superior first episode. And also agree that third Orville ep was damn good.