StillPaisleyCat

I agree Discovery over Enterprise.

It’s hard to hold up the show that showed our first hero captain in the franchise not only condoning but choosing torture as an alternative as being ‘more optimistic’ or ‘more in line with Star Trek’s aspirational vision.’

Then there’s its sharp retrograde to bro culture.

BTW I’m almost as longtime a fan as possible.

My first episode was TOS ‘Devil in the Dark’ on the day it first broadcast in Canada in early 1967.

Since then, I have seen every episode in first run the week it aired EXCEPT when Enterprise went off the rails after 9/11, trying to be an apologia for the appalling reaction of the US which suddenly condoned torture and violations of the international rules based order.

I really find this narrative offensive.

First there’s the mischaracterization of a very young and completely dependent who child completely abandoned with the death of the last adult who cared or supported him.

But more than that, Star Trek is littered with a trope about children with incredible powers to interact with the universe who nearly destroy the galaxy or civilizations or large swaths of them.

It started with Charlie X, and was taken up by every other series, sometimes more than once.

On all those other occasions, our hero ship and crew miraculously saved the day and prevented disaster by psychic or superpowered child who was incapable of adult decision-making.

Discovery called the bluff.

Discovery reversed the trope, had the child’s powers actually destroy civilization.

Instead of the hero crew stopping the disaster in the nick of time (again), Discovery finds the child and solves the problem.

And long time fans are offended by THAT?!!

Discovery is fine overall.

It may not be everyone’s favourite Trek but NO SINGLE SHOW IS EVERYONE’S FAVOURITE.

I’m stooping to yelling because, looking at it as someone who saw TOS in first run, it really can’t be stressed enough that there needs to be new Trek for every generation.

I didn’t expect that our GenZ kids would like Voyager best of the older shows.

And yes, for one of our GenZs, Discovery season one is ‘the best season of Trek’ ever. They have rewatched all the seasons of the show more than I have.

Discovery season 5 was fine in my view. I wasn’t fond of the series epilogue tacked on to the finale.

Season 4 of Discovery has a better premise and structure than Picard season 2 but both seem to suffer terribly from being shot under COVID restrictions. Other shows managed to write around the limitations without such stilted and drawn own scenes. I don’t know what Paramount instructed its writers teams be it’s boggling to see these seasons against the rest now.

Here’s a substack take from Janet Nance ‘Subspace Chatter’

I do like the idea of her being some kind of traveler better than being sacrificed as a fixed point guardian.

But then that commitment to be frozen as a perpetual guardian what makes her sacrifice meaningful.

My problem is that the episode was written from Pike’s perspective rather than Batel’s so that we heard her telling Pike what she was going to to and why rather than seeing that process of acceptance and noble sacrifice from her side.

Relative to the abysmal corporate communications Star Trek has received as a franchise since the ViacomCBS merger (while at the same time largely shutting down more informal social media outreach from anyone but the showrunners), this shows some promise.

It’s hard to imagine that the Skydance merged firm would be yet worse than Paramount for corporate managed communications.

I find that I need to do some other activity while listening to podcasts. Often it’s a puzzle game or other phone activity that doesn’t require unbroken concentration.

But the quality of the sound and voiceovers or voice acting is really crucial to holding my attention.

In this case, it’s really unfortunate that Sonja Cassidy was cast as Dr. Lear. Or, perhaps it’s just unfortunate that she was asked to use an American accent. While some actors can maintain the quality of their performances in another accent, there are British actors who end up with muddy enunciation or less credible performances even if the accent is fine.

Cassidy’s performance as Dr. Lear sounds more like reading than acting for much of the opening minutes. Alternately, her expression, when it does happen, seems artificial. The unpolished performance is all the more noticeable in contrast to the excellent performances by George Takei as Sulu, Tim Russ as Tuvok and Wrenn Schmidt as Marla McGiver, and even the brief interjections of chair of the review committee are more compelling.

Given how many lines she’s given in the opening minutes as the framing story sets the stage, it’s truly unfortunate.

Perhaps all Flint needed was to surround himself with a lot of genuine Earth artifacts (not replicated) to ensure that he had the necessary isotopes or quantum signatures or whatever that Lanthanites need to retain their longevity.

My headcanon is that this is an in-universe show that the kids on the Enterprise D enjoyed.

Boimler grew up with it and has ALL the nostalgic merch. Mariner also has the merch hidden in the ceiling panels but would never admit to it.

Will there be an episode by episode discussion thread?

I think you’re thinking about the 1979 novel Enemy Mine, and 1985 movie. Which itself was building off any number of shipwreck and wartime survival tales.

Enemy Mine has been repeatedly adapted to Trek shows from TNG’s early episode where Geordi and a Romulan survive together.

Using this trope again with a ‘curious demigods running experiments’ twist is novel enough. In fact, it’s harder to believe that Arena was the first time the Metrons put humanity and Gorn into one-on-one engagement.

As for the Martian, book or movie, they’re both pretty weak, derivative, middle school stuff. They’re overhyped and couldn’t hold the attention of the hard scientists in our household. If the middle school (sanitized) version of the book hadn’t been so hyped for our kids, we wouldn’t have made the effort to slog through it before they read it.

Glad that you’re getting to read Destiny.

The thing is that, being an avid TrekLit reader, I’d previously just thought your alias was a deep cut rather than your own creation. Either is very cool.