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I agree. I consider myself a big long time Trek fan but based on just the first two episodes, I would not be motivated to subscribe. They were good, but not that good. Luckily, here in Canada I don't have to make that choice. Otherwise, I would be content to wait till DVD release.
[font=Raleway, sans-serif]So do you think after the 13 episode run there will be enough fans or viewers to warrant a second season..also if you could compare it to other star trek which star trek does it resemble the most?[/font]
@"gazza" That is difficult to speculate at this point. I would say, based on what I have read and seen in the first two eps, that this is show you will not be able to fully judge until it completes it's entire 15 episode story arc. Will it be renewed? Only the CBS gods know.
In terms of visuals and stylings, it looks like the Kelvin movies.
The banter and relationships feel very TOS.
The serialized nature and war subject matter might suggest a DS9 vibe to some.
But honestly, it all felt very fresh and fun. As I said before, the first two episodes were really focused on the Michael Burnham character with no time spent on any of the other crew except Lt. Saru and their Captain. I believe in episode three we will meet the Discovery crew and captain, so it might gain a more traditional Trek tone. But I hope it maintains the Burnham point of view, as it injects a really enjoyable new dynamic and energizes the classic Trek storytelling.
An interesting side note, the story takes place in 2256 and is about the original war between the Federation and Klingons. The same time period and subject as the scandalized fan film AXANAR. And while it seems clear Axanar producer Alec Peters was misleading donors and misusing funds, one has to wonder if this was the main driving reason why CBS shut them down?
Only got to see the first episode, hopefully ctv will have more in the coming weeks. Hopefully nothing in this post is too spoiler-y, but it might be a little so don't read if you haven't seen the show yet.
It grinded my gears a lot, but I started to feel at home a bit towards the end of the episode.
Pros:
Main character
Science officer guy
uniforms for the most part (thought I wouldn't dig them but they're nice)
Characterizations of the klingons
social commentary
son of none
Cons:
opening teaser
the 'look' of the show (argh) and its superficial flash
the look of the klingons and their ship exteriors (interiors were actually beautiful)
the starship
Gonna be picky and self centered here but I want to see some starfleet officers that look like regular people you might see in your town, that you know, that you work with ect. and not like models, just so that they are a bit more relate-able, or I'm getting old. *cough* barkley *cough*
Signal jamming and they have a HOLO conversation with the starfleet boss? A HOLO conversation?
sand insignia and its execution: So a family of godzillas walk around in the desert and leave a track visible enough from a mile or two up and then an apparent 6 foot long starship flys past the camera. Oops. No really, that whole thing doesn't make sense.
I feel like there was a natural progression in quality from tos to tng to ds9 to voyager to enterprise and they just threw out everything they learned and made everything in this one look cheap and tried to fix it with lens flares.
It was an effort to try and enjoy it and give it a chance, but a lot of it just grinded my gears. But it may get better, who knows?
^ man, you read that grouchy junk I just wrote? I'll give it another chance, I think it could get good, but maybe this one just isn't for me.
It was fine. I think I need to wait until they've done some actual Treking to the Stars in order to Discover things before passing judgement.
Liked:
- Sonequa Martin-Green's performance. Interesting the way her Vulcan and Human teachers seem to have left her a bit messed up and conflicted mentally, in way we haven't seen before
- The new guy playing Sarek was perfect. Not sure we needed to see Sarek again but whatever.
- Great scoring.
- Looked dazzling for a TV show and not at all like the blandly lit TV set-based ST of old. Maybe a bit too dazzling and the bridge feels a bit too darkly lit and oppressive. JJ-Trek got it right with that optimistic bright clean white paneling.
Disliked:
- Choppily edited and incoherently directed fight scenes. The familiar fighting style of TNG and DS was often hokey but at least we knew who was hitting who and who was winning/losing.
- Oodles of technobabble but without any of the actual clever science-based plotting concepts that ST TV is usually famous for. Technobabble is what ST usually has to insert, in order to make the high-concept ideas understandable. Not just there to make the show sound intelligent.
- Not sold on the lasers sound or look. Phasers are a classic Trek thing. Take them away and it just looks and sounds like everything else. SoundFX really define a sci-fi show/film.
- The death of Yeoh had no impact for me because we all knew Jason Isaccs was waiting in the wings.... but who doesn't love Jason Isaccs, so looking forward to that.
- The Star Wars style holograms were irritating. I guess you can tell when a show isn't holding your attention when you instantly get annoyed when a hologram of Sarek leans on a table that doesn't exist in the same space as his physical form.
I'm very much intrigued to see where this goes, as long as this two part opener was a prologue of sorts and not how the whole season will be.
I haven't seen anything past the first episode, but here are my opinions so far.
Likes:
- Doug Jones' character is intriguing and well-played. The idea that his species was
raised in slavery as death-detectors
is fascinating, an opens up a lot of potential for him to be a sort of
death-sensing equivalent of Deanna Troi.
- It was neat to see Michelle Yeoh, although she wasn't given much to do.
- Some of the special effects were good, and the opening desert scene looked like something out of a big-budget movie.
- Jason Isaacs is an intriguing choice to play the captain, but I can't really give an opinion of his portrayal at this point (having not seen past the first episode).
Dislikes:
- It breaks continuity with the Prime universe by showing Starfleet as having more advanced technology than in the original series, introduces a bizarre and jarring new version of the Klingons (both in appearance and characterization), and otherwise reinvents the wheel in ways that I just don't think it needed reinventing.
- So far, I don't like how the Klingon plot is shaping up. It all seems very new and bizarre compared to what we've seen of the Klingons in the past. They're going for a "this isn't your grandfather's Star Trek" approach, which doesn't strongly appeal me, as I happen to be one of those that likes my grandfather's Star Trek just fine.
- The lead character, Michael Burnham. I find her to be mostly boring, and often downright unlikable. There's something about how she's portrayed that seems "off" to me. The best way that I can describe it is that the show seems very badly to want us to buy her as the best thing since sliced bread, but then gives us insufficient reason (in both writing and performance) to actually view her as anything other than dull, dangerously brash, and affected by an irritating condition that could best be described as "resting sulky glare face". It even goes so far as to reveal her to be semi-related to Spock (I don't consider this a spoiler since it was widely-advertised and mentioned earlier in this thread), in what comes across as a desperate last-ditch attempt to give the audience some reason to find her interesting.
Worst of all, her mutiny at the end makes her come across as arrogant and reckeless.
Maybe the following episodes make her more likable. I'm not sure.
- The music. It's typical 2000s television scoring, eminently forgettable (except when Alexander Courage's original theme kicks in now and then), functioning more as bland sound design than as actual music, and featuring a main theme that is replete with the typical endlessly-repeating "dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun" chord progressions that composers use ad nauseum these days. Normally, I'd just shrug it off as coming with the territory of a modern show, but it's now less easy to forgive after "The Orville" proved that great television scoring can still exist today.
- The visuals. I was actually impressed with how big-budget the opening desert scene looked, but became less and less impressed the more I got to see starships (interior and exterior) and outer space. It has a J. J. Abrams-inspired look (complete with lens flares and manic camera-work), but without the flair and prettiness that Abrams was able to bring to that look. The lighting and set design, in particular, are unpleasant. There's also the nagging feeling that some of the lighting and cinematography is designed to try to hide the deficiencies of the show's CGI effects. With the sole exception of "Star Trek Continues" (which comes as reasonably close to capturing the beauty of the original series as can be expected with its budget), each Star Trek show has looked less good than the last. "Star Trek" (1966) was downright gorgeous, with saturated colors, atmospheric lighting worthy of a Golden Age movie, and wonderfully minimalistic set design. "The Next Generation" (in its HD restored version) is beautiful, but with slightly bland lighting, and somewhat less aesthetically-pleasing (albeit still fairly pleasant) set design. After that, each new series was less visually-pleasing than the last, culminating with the utterly dull-looking "Enterprise". I'd say that "Discovery" falls somewhere near the level of "Enterprise" visually, probably a bit worse.
i enjoyed the premiere but the thing that kept distracting me was that michaels character(number 1) kept barking out orders and over ruling the captain (for a while at the beginning of the episode i thought she was the captain not michelle yeoh). another nitpick i had was the the "phasers" im not 100% swayed on the projectille shot instead if a beam shot i thought the flasback scene in the second half of the premiere would have been beter placed to explain michael in the first episode but thats just me
Only time will tell if the series will still keep my interests or if they will trail off.by the promo for the rest of the series it looks like the discovery ship is like a "second chance prison vessell" of sorts. so thats new.
i think the orville would be a better series if they removed 90% of the "i hate my ex j" jokes. its starting to feel like married with children in space.
I've only seen one episode of "The Orville" (the third episode), and I was surprised at how good it was. It felt like TNG-era Star Trek, complete with serious exploration of philosophical concepts, but with a little more humor. In fact, it felt a lot more like Star Trek to me than "Star Trek: Discovery" did. I think that it has a lot of potential. Refine the writing a bit and remove a few of the lowbrow jokes here and there, and it could grow into a great show. Even TNG took a while to hit its stride. Seth McFarlane has said that he's aiming for something similar in tone to "M.A.S.H." That's a pretty intriguing way to approach a space exploration series, and I'm hoping that it succeeds.
Season One trailer.... spoilers!!!!!!!
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UAM9haWrFE[/video]
After a second watch, I think I enjoyed the first two episodes even more. It is fun and still feels like Trek at its core.
I have come to terms that we may never get a proper Prime Universe prequel, at least not as long as it is being produced by Paramount instead of CBS due to rights issues. Though it is interesting that based on all the scuttlebutt Bryan Fuller was fighting for a more retro look in terms of technology and costumes but got vetoed by TPTB. We also know he had approached Michael Dorn to play an ancestor of Worf's, so his plan for the Klingons may have been quite different than what we ended up with.
But what we did end up with was very entertaining imo. I mean, I strongly dislike the Klingon new look. And I don't know why, but it really bugs me how they changed the Phasers lol. And there are probably a dozen more nitpicks I could list... sigh...Most of the changes seem to be changes for change sake, rather than improvements.
But in terms of story and characters, I thoroughly enjoyed the premiere.
Absolutely!
The first half was all set-up and awkward exposition, the second half was all pay off.
I think it was an idiot move by CBS to only air part one on Network TV. They should have broadcasted it as a 2 hour movie event. I am actually surprised how little promotion CBS did for this premiere. Even though it ends on a cliffhanger, part one was not engaging enough (to me at least) that I would not feel motivated to subscribe for more.
However, the twist ending of part two is another story. That definitely made me want to watch more!
It has a more formal pilot structure... a disgraced Starfleet Officer (Burnham) is recruited by the mysterious Captain of the newly commissioned starship Discovery for a secret mission to stop the war with the Klingons.
We see the new ship, meet many of the main crew and some mysteries are set into play. All the while the narrative is told in a fresh way, forgoing traditional Trek structure which I find to be very invigorating.
Episode 4 "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not For The Lamb's Cry"
Even though it's killing me, I will stay spoiler and detail free.... lol
This episode really divided and frustrated me.
The main plot of Burnham studying a seemingly dangerous life form and her discovery, it is Trek at its finest. It truly captures what Trek at its core is all about. Even if the ending has a tragic quality, it becomes clear, despite Burnham's past actions, she is the spirit, light and compass of the ideals of the Federation on this morally ambiguous starship. So yeah, this element of the show I am absolutely LOVING!
Now comes the rage/rant... the KLINGONS.
I have come to the conclusion I despise the redesign. While I have no issue with tweaking the Klingons, as their look has been evolving since TMP, this change is so radical it seems to serve no point other than change for change's sake. While this new look may make them seem even more alien (which I assume is the intent???), the make up prosthetics are so heavy that there is no individuality, no character expression, no complexity of emotion on any of the actor's face. Thus, the Klingon characters seemingly lack any uniqueness despite giving them different shades of skin and ridges. Also, while the new costume design is visually gorgeous, it seems completely impractical for a warrior culture since they don't seem to be able to move or have any flexibility in these new duds.
Further hampering the Klingon actor's performance is the decision to have them speak entirely in Klingon with subtitles (thanks Game of Thrones....ggrrrrrrrr!!!). Since the Klingon language seems to have no inflection, rhythm or nuances, it makes the scenes feel overly long and boring, but worse, it dampens any impact the dialogue or performance is suppose to have.
And then last night's fourth episode Klingon scenes was made even more frustrating due to the fact the subtitles could not keep up with the pages and pages of Klingon dialogue. I either was completely missing out on what was happening onscreen because I was too busy reading or the subtitles would change before I could finishing reading it, thus making following the conversation almost impossible! ARRGGGGG! What are the producers thinking? Why don't they just Red October it?
In the end, a potentially really great episode mired by poor production choices on how to use the Klingons.
Agreed. Only got round to watching this episode today, which speaks to my waning interest in this new show. MB aside (who is still interesting) all the characters are a**holes, of one sort, or another. One of the crew angrily tells MB to stop being "curious". Er hello, is this Star Trek? The Captain is the worst kind of leader, a bully. He is starting to remind me of...
...and...
Characters that in TNG would exist in one episode so Picard and Riker could give them impassioned rants about the principles of the Federation and how to be a good leader. If that's going to come into play in Discovery over the course of the season, with MB having him removed from command, then okay that could be interesting. Right now I don't trust this show enough to think that is going to happen. I'd be more inclined to think we are stuck with a horrible d*ck of a Captain.
bionicbob said:
I have come to the conclusion I despise the Klingon redesign.
the make up prosthetics are so heavy that there is no individuality, no character expression, no complexity of emotion on any of the actor's face. Thus, the Klingon characters seemingly lack any uniqueness despite giving them different shades of skin and ridges.
Further hampering the Klingon actor's performance is the decision to have them speak entirely in Klingon with subtitles
So true. The Klingon scenes dragged this episode down. 5-minute scenes of actors with no ability to act through heavy makeup, delivering lines in an alien language we don't understand (unless you are hardcore Trek!), with subtitles and characters I can hardly tell apart is the pits. I was groaning whenever a Klingon establishing shot came up.
I'll stick with the show for now because it still might be going somewhere I like (that somewhere needs to be towards the Star Trek franchise) but my patience is wearing thin.
Fan theory time! Is this show set in the Prime, or Kelvin timeline? Neither. It's set in...
I watched a little. It's funny, the Orville's production team obviously tried to distance the look of their Krill aliens from the traditional Klingon design for legal reasons. But since Discovery did the same thing for "creative" reasons, the Krill look just like the new albino Klingons. Whoops!
Convergent evolution isn't just an in-universe phenomena. It also happens behind the scenes.
I watched a little. It's funny, the Orville's production team obviously tried to distance the look of their Krill aliens from the traditional Klingon design for legal reasons. But since Discovery did the same thing for "creative" reasons, the Krill look just like the new albino Klingons. Whoops!
Convergent evolution isn't just an in-universe phenomena. It also happens behind the scenes.
The other annoying question about the last episode that really bugged me is....
Why would Starfleet leave the Klingon ship drifting for 6 MONTHS?!?! Especially since they know it has some sort of Cloaking Tech? I mean someone from Starfleet had to have returned or how else did Michael receive Captain Georgiou's telescope?
Or...
Why did the Klingons wait to return 6 Months for the cloaking tech???
On the flip side, I am really enjoying The Orville. It truly is a love letter to the Next Generation. I mean its not original or even hilarious, but it feels like Trek Comfort Food lol.
