hopesdead
Star Trek Social ClubKate Mulgrew is awesome.
It's part of a general problem where old trek is basically competence porn (everyone is ridiculously competent at their jobs) while in new Trek everyone kinda acts like a teenager. Maybe it's a desperate attempt to appeal to a younger audience (I don't think that actually works tho), but it certainly doesn't appeal to fans of older Trek.
It definitely breaks immersion to have characters that have serious jobs acting like teenagers.
This is literally about people who don’t know how to do the job, being taught how to do the job.
I thought the captain was the one that supposed to teach them how to do the job? Why is she acting like a teenager? How are they supposed to learn how to stop acting like teenagers and take their jobs seriously if the captain is acting this way too?
Yeah it's just a show, but characters in a show should be acting as if the world they're in is real. It breaks immersion when they don't.
There's a general fear of being genuine with characters in a lot of shows and movies, and it's gotten really old. It's really cringey at this point.
It would be nice to have a show about people on a spaceship acting like people that are really on a spaceship that have serious jobs. It's boring to have yet another show where it's just people acting like youtube influencers on some spaceship sets. People that actually like vapid youtube influencers will only just watch clips from these shows, so what's the point of trying to appeal to that crowd?
I like the captain. The show is alright; I think I'm too old to be the target audience but that's ok. Seems to be directed at teens.
Every scene is so busy and glossy. The robots going around bear an uncanny resemblence to the Star Wars prequels ("it's so dense; every single frame has so many things going on"). The teen angst and romance doesn't exactly fit into what star trek means to me, but we did get a bit of that here and there. Like in Discovery, IMO there's too much focus on exceptional individuals and less on teamwork. To me it seems like it's trying to be many things at once. Star Wars, Marvel, and Harry Potter mixed up in a Star Trek setting. I'm a bit sad we aren't pretending Discovery was a bad dream, but I can live with it.
... but, there is some star trek here, and I like those parts.
My thoughts exactly… I don’t think this show is for me, TBH…
Amazing
This begs for a response by Robert Ricardo, offering an analgesic cream for those burns. 😂
Even a dermal regenerator is going to leave scars with that burn
The fact that this is happening is a disgrace to those who behave this way: you don’t embody IDIC.
Online attacks against an actor on a Star Trek show is not very Star Trek philosophy. World needs more Spock’s and less Kahn’s.
For the record, if anyone reading this is that sort of person, you can save us a lot of time and just go away now.
A lot of deleted posts in this thread. Wonder what that was all about.
I feel like calling Captain Ake "mumbles" is right up there with calling Picard "baldy". I get the feeling we're dealing with the kind of people who think one of those things is okay and the other isn't.
It's pretty stupid to pick on Holly Hunter for her trademark.
If I can understand her almost 100% not being myself a native English speaker, the problem is not her.
And if you don't, that's what subtitles are for. Hardly much to complain about.
I like star trek starfleet academy for the most part. What I don't like about the show is that I can't watch it with my kids yet.
Discovery lacked much needed love for the franchise, with lot of nonsensical, lore breaking episodes. The same is true for Picard sadly. But I am finding STSA boasting some of the best episodes for a Star Trek season 1 series so far. Star Trek was always woke, and that is why it was so loved. STSA is no more woke than Voyager was. I see lot of respect from the writers to the previous series. STSA makes me think of TNG much more often than any other nutrek series (except lower deck, but that is nearly fanservice). Being into the future you have a lot of flexibility to do something new, and I like that a lot. Nahla Ake is a different character than Picard or Janeway, and that is fine. A great character nonetheless in my opinion.
STSA
Noo don't tell we chose this acronym (no corrections please) over SFA, which is 3 letters and much better
No no, we did not! I simply were not sure what to use! I saw STSA, SA, SFA, STA. I wanted to be unambiguous 🤣
SA sound good to me if we use LD to be honest.
What bugged me about Discovery was their need, especially in the later seasons, to have like an affirmation circle in the middle of a mission--frequently when there was a ticking clock of some kind. My wife and I would be yelling at the screen "this is what the debrief is for!". SNW does this sort of thing really well. As has Starfleet Academy. I'm really digging it.
I haven't watched STSF yet but yeah there's ton of stuff in Trek that would quality as "woke" right back to ToS, as well as a bunch of stuff that "broke" from an intellectual level.
I think my biggest issue with Picard is the latter... with the "fireworks in space" celebration (complete with sound of course) just making me want to bury my head in my hands.
It's never been perfect, but it's still entertaining.
The irony is that honestly, Academy feels way less "woke" than any of the other new Trek stuff. Its way less "in your face" about everything these annoying jokers call woke about Discovery or even Strange New Worlds.
I haven't seen STA yet, but it seems like, with a few exceptions, the most recent Star Trek has always been controversial, since The Next Generation. I feel like Enterprise deserved it the most, and SNW escaped most of it. Discovery probably got it the worst? Though TNG was by far the least deserving of it.
Discovery definitely feels like it, especially since you have people still arguing quite animatedly about how it's not Star Trek, and might have Ruined Star Trek Forever, though I would rather imagine much of it to be recency and accessibility more so than much else.
The other shows are a bit less accessible, even if they are newer, since CBS moved it onto their streaming service, and off of Netflix, whereas Discovery aired on Netflix around a time when Netflix was one of the bigger streaming platforms out there, and more people who aren't as into Star Trek or other CBS properties might encounter it incidentally.
But for the most part, every single successor to Star Trek has always been controversial, and deemed to have ruined it forever, though most of it abates when the next show comes around, and is then deemed to have ruined Star Trek forever.
Though TNG was by far the least deserving of it.
I actually wonder about that. Most of the complaints, like the ones about Stewart being a shakespearean actor who wouldn't be able to handle the rigours of serious television, or being bald were nonsense, but there was a lot of good reasons to complain about early TNG. A fair chunk of the early episodes weren't very consistently good.
We know it to be better in hindsight, but if The Next Generation had started today, and not only is the second episode a rehash of a Star Trek (1966) episode, but the fourth was Code of Honour? I would also be inclined to criticise it for being quite bad. There's a good reason why a lot of the advice for people watching TNG is to stick around until Season 3, or start from Season 3, since that's when it gets better.
I think the series with the worst long lasting impact is Voyager. VOY Borg are really bad compared to TNG Borg. PRO uses TNG Borg, which is great, but LDS suffers for its VOY Borg and I heard PIC stinks because it makes VOY Borg the main villains.
I don't know, TNG could be up there, but it was also generally influential as a whole, so both its good and bad ended up getting carried over.
The entire exploding bridge trope came from it, as did evil admirals. It also set up the Enterprise as the flagship, with the best and brightest of Starfleet. Which also meant that people generally assumed it to be the norm when it was the exception, and that the hero ship was some special ship, when it was a normal ship of the line in TOS.
VOY Borg are really bad compared to TNG Borg.
They are, but more due to issues with overuse more so than anything. In TNG, we saw the Borg for all of 4 times. In Voyager, they were shown much more frequently.
But as far as the timeline goes, it also wouldn't make sense to show an earlier iteration of the Borg, not when they were severely affected by the actions of the Borg.
I heard PIC stinks because it makes VOY Borg the main villains
I'd honestly argue that which version of the Borg to be a minor issue in Picard. Picard's bigger problem was that it didn't seem to know what it wanted to be, and kept leaping between multiple different plots and story lines, which confuses it a bit.
It arguably have been better if it has taken one of those plots, and run with it for the entire show. Like the matter with Synths and former Borg drones being treated as subhuman, vindicating the concerns Guinan and Picard had in the Measure of a Man, or visiting the TNG crew and seeing where they are now. As it actually was, it seems like the writers/producers felt that now they had Patrick Stewart, they wanted to do everything before it was too late, and the result was a bit of a mishmash.
The issue with the Borg tends to be more that they really aren't very much of a threat by the end of Voyager, and were dealt such a blow that it would be almost impossible to ignore.
Their greatest threat, assimilation, is trivially curable, and it's now known that their assimilation abilities are one of their greater weaknesses. The Federation might have issues with infecting someone with a pathogen to make the Borg assimilate them and self-destruct, but others have no such qualms, and we know of at least one species that did use such methods (Icheb's parents).
Their adaptation is a greater issue, but even older Federation ships, like the galaxy-class saw good effect just cycling their weapons frequencies. The Voyager's ablative armour would be well-studied after they returned to Starfleet, and dedicated anti-Borg weapons would have both been in active development, and also use.
As of the events of First Contact, it's also known that not only are there Borg ruins on Earth that may still be intact and active, but that Borg ships are not as truly uniform as they seem, with Picard pointing out a weakness in a Borg cube that dealt catastrophic damage to it. Local signals, what he felt, scans of what remains of the area, and everything would have been thoroughly studied to determine how to both find and exploit those weaknesses on other Borg cubes, without a former privileged Borg unit at the helm.
It would be difficult for them to retain much of the mystique and terror of their TNG appearance, with all of that now.
Which I find kinda surprising, since I would call SNW fairly "woke" if you actually pay attention to the show. Maybe it's just because it's a male captain set in the TOS era, and it's a more traditional trek show?
IMO "woke" is a red herring when it comes to criticism of newer star trek. Some people hate things for this reason, but it obscues a more interesting discussion.
The real dimensions of value are the writing, the vision, what each series considers "action", etc. I think it's a distinction between what you'd expect from a Star Trek movie and a Star Trek TV show. They're for different audiences, and I think Discovery, STA are going for a much wider market appeal (in varying degrees) and it changes the narrative structure, pacing, etc. I think they're exploring the audience space with variations on Star Trek themes to grow the francise, and sometimes it's to the detriment of what some people like about Star Trek - and sometimes it brings in new people.
I like Star Trek to be ethics porn about IDIC being more powerful than raw power. About the value of an education, team work, structure, and trust. I like it when the most tense action scene is a walk down a hallway - but I also like a bit of space pew pew sometimes. The new shows alienate me when they focus too much on physical action, individual exceptionalism, and a grimdark future.
SNW is a good balance. Discovery on the other hand, was way too emotional for me. Where is STSA on the crying-every-other-scene scale?
My main problem with DIS has a name: Michael Burnham. Not the actress, the script.
And about your question: no, the crying is only in scenes that work (traumatic or sentimental enough) unlike DIS.
Yeah, Burnham could have been better and she was the center too much. I like Discovery as a show, but I hate it as Star Trek because it actively goes out of its way eschew so many baseline Trek Tropes, the biggest and most obvious being the Spore Drive. It feels like the writers were like "We don't want to deal with the time issues of Warp travel.". Then they extended this to the personal transports, which at least made sense as it was the 32nd century.
it was pretty much a push"woman can have masculine names too" kind of preachy attitude from Kurtzman, and not just ambigious name that be either gender. it still an awful name to begin with.
I don't mean the name itself. I mean the way Michael behaves. Even more when you think that she was adopted by a Vulcan family.
I found Discovery the same way, it's the only trek series I couldn't make it through.
Picard suffered from bad writing unfortunately. Season 3 cashed in on nostalgia and I appreciate it for that, but the first 2 seasons were very meh.
Starfleet academy is great though, IF you're ok with a show targeted to young adults. If you're not ok with that, the episodes will be very hit and miss. The most recent episode was fantastic, once you get through the 3 minute long sex scene it opened with. Even that does serve a purpose though to show the bond that's developed between two chars.
Oh, I don't talk about Picard. Too much WTF.
STA is another "SGU-like" i only see it will end quickly.
Yeah you're wrong. I could barely make it through a few episodes of SGU, but STA is much better.
S2 of SGU was great
STSA feels like a blend of Lower Decks and Discovery to me. I also had issues with Discovery (though it got better after the time jump) but have been enjoying Academy each week.
The SAM episode was a little meh, personally, but I like that they're dealing with the shorter season format and still doing episodes based around each character.
I dont like DIS because it does not feel very trek to me with the ugly klingons and the overall dark stories and characters. Also (like PIC) its very storyline so i cant really just jump into an episode and be happy (or unhappy, whatever story the episode is)
On the other side i think SNW is what should have been the first series after the pause after ENT. Its hopeful, most episodes can be watched alone and it still has a background story like VOY. And like every trek its woke.
I think that PIC would have gotten a similar (smaller?) shitstorm compared to DIS if that was the first after the pause. LD maybe too but less for the quality and more because its animated. And PRO for feeling more nicelodeon than trek (or rather a mix)
If DIS came just later than others it would have probably been either more liked or at least ignored like a lot ignore PIC or Short Treks
its also all the discontinuity of the series too. Klingon appearance, cloaking tech, ADVANCED TELEPORTATION tech that is never mentioned in any of the old series at all even if just referenced without showing.
snw is actually quite less "woke" than STD, std has all no-men crew by season 4, it was pretty obvious, and the lgbtq+ people have largely been marginalized by that time too, after they served a purpose in season 1.
i think by SNW they realized how bad some of the characthers and how they are overly pushed as the leads.
Personally, of the new Star Trek that's come along since the Kelvin timeline was started the only thing I'm taking into my personal canon is Lower Decks. The rest has been completely meh at best, downright awful at worst. Most of it I've simply let pass out of mind and memory.
There’s just no objectivity anymore. Everything is subjective so if you don’t like it you’re just a hater. Despite the fact the actual writing has been god awful for most of the revival era since Disco
Discovery probably "got it the worst" because it came out during peak gamergate-era politics. Online fandoms were weaponized and radicalized into right-wing culture warriors. Discovery is easily the least preachy of any Star Trek series but because it had a black woman in a leading role it became an obvious target for ragebaiters to make stuff up about.
it is also the series that had to define what Trek was in current times. It took it a few seasons and the later shows used a lot of that lessons. it might had a lot of problems, but I dont think it was for a lack of trying.
Trying too much (and all at once) in my opinion!
Ironically my biggest issue with Discovery is that it's pretty right-wing with its CIA stand-in apologia and blatantly militaristic style in Seasons 1 and 2 at least.
That and the sheer degree of melodrama. Every episode needs to have scenes of at least one or two characters in total anguish. It just wears me down compared to other Treks. For a streaming-era show, it's not all that bingeable
If you didn't finish it, I highly recommend the last two seasons. I almost gave up on it for the reasons you cite, but the last two are a large tonal shift (positively in my opinion).
I didn't like that they fridged Georgiou, who I felt was the strongest character they had thus far introduced. After that it became really really clear Burnham was the main character, which is a concept I don't think belongs in Star Trek. The only other series that gets close to having a main character is TOS, which I dislike for the same reason. Kirk and Burnham both become boring when they're the only point of view character for an entire episode.
She’s the captain and chairman, she does whatever the fuck she wants. Those losers probably won’t even make it to Starfleet pre-selection.
Also, when you love Trek, you love all of them and are happy to have something new in the IP.
Also, when you love Trek, you love all of them
Mmm, it's a bit like saying if you love gourmet food, than we'll love pig slop.
No, you can dislike some, like recently I did not like the Section 31 film.
But was I bitching about it on the internet ? No Was I happy to have another piece of the Trek universe to watch even if it was a bad one ? Yes
You give me Trek I’m happy to be able to consume Trek, end of story.
But was I bitching about it on the internet? No
My goodness what an absolutely crazy concept
I think the key message is about letting other people enjoy things even if you personally don’t. I like Star Trek but if there are no good new stories to be told, I’m ok with there not being any more new Star Trek. We’ll always have the old stuff.
Communities that are just build around vocally disliking something (based on taste) are usually not the greatest places.
Well said. The sidebar says the #1 rule in this community is "be constructive". I think most of us here enjoy a spirited debate with a like minded crewmate, but jumping into someone else's thread to tell them how much you didn't like something because of reasons is... well not constructive.
Indeed, communities like the ones from Star Trek or Star Wars are sometimes very vocal and some people starts insulting actors behind the cover of anonymity. That’s the fracking twitter effect.
What i mean is just if you don’t like it just move on with your life and don’t insult or attack people on internet. Maybe the next serie/film will be better (we went from DIS and Picard to SNW. SNW would not have existed without DIS so I’m glad for that overpowered Crossfield-class and its captains)
I haven't watched STA. Is the captain really lounging in the chair and going barefoot?
I have an autistic friend who likes to go barefoot because it helps her sensory stuff. Chancellor Ake is good representation - she does a damn fine job with no shoes on!
She's a Lanthanite https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Lanthanite They tend to have certain eccentricities for obvious reasons.
Yes, but in context it's not a big deal. A lot of it is contrasting her with her peer, the chancellor of the war college, who is uptight. Ultimately, she's less military commander, or even explorer, and more chancellor of a school full of students and in that capacity it makes more sense to generate a relaxed atmosphere. When the situation calls for it, she can be serious as well.
She just has her own style, but people want to be negative because she's not Picard-ing hard enough or some dumb shit.
On the contrary it is a big deal, it makes Ake extremely endearing and likeable.
She reminds me of a few of my professors in both my undergraduate English program and my graduate religious studies program, all of them wonderful and safe-feeling people. She's the first school chancellor we've really seen in Star Trek and she feels very much like a university-level educator to me--with the whole starship command piece being additional to her main job.
"It's a school but also they go on starship adventures" sounds so dumb to me I can't believe it works so supremely well.
I was fully prepared to dislike this show (Disco was on shaky ground with me, but I was more or less on board, then they went to the 32nd Century; I was not a fan of that jump at the time and worried that SNW was going to be the only outlier in regards to Disco spin-offs that would be any good), and I felt affirmed in that feeling during the first few minutes of the first episode. But once the tone changed a bit I was happy to watch the second episode. Then we met Tamira and I just kind of fell in love with the show. Then they managed to take something sacred (the Sisko), pair it with my least favorite character (the SAM), and somehow making it a truly great episode AND making me come around on said character (thus proving that Tawny Newsome is an absolute treasure to this franchise--give me a LD/STSA crossover now!).
Creepy how close this is to my exact experience... I did really enjoy Disco 4+5 however, even though I also thought the whole "jump to the future" idea was a little contrived.
I don't even know the premise for the show... If the captain of a flagship was lounging in the chair, I would lose lock pretty fast. Apparently this is an academy and she is more like a professor?
I encourage you to watch it and form your own opinion (just make sure to get past the first ten minutes of the pilot, the tone shifts dramatically).
Captain Ake runs the Academy and commands the Academy ship, the Athena, which is used to do more hands on training but isn't the flagship by any stretch. She's more like a principal than a professor. The other main characters are cadets, with some strong supporting characters too.
IMO it's the first live action Trek show in the new era to come out firing on all cylinders and it's great to see.
The Academy is a fully-functional starship, so she's both the captain and the chancellor. She's 500 years old, is a bit of a hippy, and is happy to lounge around when they're not facing a crisis.
Jimmmy Kirk lounged around when there was a crisis so I don't know what these people are upset about
Riker happily slapped his ass down in the weapons console so he could chat up the prettiest subordinate on duty. Not sure why we’re suddenly supposed to be pretending Trek ever maintained a stern and solemn work environment.
Data's face here is like "Commander, you have targeted the warp nacelles on the Reliant and are preparing to fire."
😂
It's so odd how these criticisms are only directed at women...
There you go, accusing people of being sexiest and racist just because they have a meltdown every time some piece of media prominently features a woman or person of colour. I’m sure it’s just a highly predictable coincidence.
Just remember, Star Trek ships don’t have seat belts. Gonna be fun when someone slams on the brakes and Captain slouchy goes flying out of her chair, across the freshly waxed floor, and into the viewscreen. At least the nextgen crew knew to put carpet on the floors.
The Athena has inertial dampeners. The only reason she'd get hurt from curling up on the captain's chair with a book is in a combat situation. And we saw her put the book down when things got serious.
These ships all had inertial dampers, otherwise the crew would be paste during most maneuvers. Seatbelts would just cause a different kind of mess. And even if they didn't, are you suggesting Picard's grip is sufficient to combat those forces? Because he didn't have a seat belt, either. Maybe it was the force of his presence that you think was going to keep him seated?
I suppose if they'd been in a more relaxed pose they would have flown farther?
I love this one because it looks like Rikers got Bohemian Rhapsody blasting over the sound system and everyone’s just headbanging along.
Beeeeelzebub has a devil put aside for meeeeee!
And where are the seat belts?
wouldnt matter if you are crashing into something at several km/s, YOUR seatbelt might even slice you in half if you suddenly stop due to inertia and momentum.
Whoosh.
Is that the sound of the warp drive in space? It certainly isn't the sound effect the explosions in space use.
If it wasn't for artistic license, they could have gone with what happens when the inertial dampers fail in the spaceships in David Weber's books, which is a more realistic outcome (assuming realism is what you're looking for in a setting with warp drives and inertial dampers), but writing off the crews of ships that don't matter to the storyline in a red paste probably wouldn't go over well in a family drama. About as well as people sitting around in a pitched battle with the occasional hum or shudder.
It's also been 800 years since then. It's the third millennium, the seat probably is the belt itself at that point.
oh hey its the guy from the article
More than one person dislikes the show.
woah wow its like they dont even realize theyre doing it wow
to be fair prodigy would be better than the current Nutrek series, shouldnt have let Kurtzman or whoever is a predecessor take over it.
Prodigy is great!
When I say that I don't like how she lounges in her chair as a Starfleet captain, that's not disrespectful, it's just my opinion. Otherwise, the series is okay; it deserves a chance.
It was a long warp, she needed a book to keep her mind busy. I'd hate to have a boring dumb captain who just sits there all warp.
Isn't that what the ready room is for? Captain chills out reads a book or whatever in a room next to the bridge, but they are ready to go out to the bridge and conduct themself formally when they get out there.
That's what a captain does. Captains going on away missions weekly is what's totally unrealistic. But that's the engineered drama.
Oh, really? Which other captains do that? Did Picard or Janeway lounge in their seats like 13-year-old schoolgirls? I don't remember that.
Sisko sure did....
Did Picard or Janeway outlive all their friends family and comrades.
I personally have several issues with the show; but Ake's posture is certainly not one of them -- In fact I kinda like it. She's giving me Guinan or Dr Who vibes portraying an outward silliness that hides an inner sadness and seriousness.
Guinan and Dr Who weren't captains. I don't think anyone would take issue if it were the bartender portraying a laid back vibe, but you kind of want the captain to give the crew confidence that they're alert and on top of things. Of course that's not possible at all times, but that's why the captain has quarters and a ready room. Some other officer should be sitting the the chair keeping an ey on things if the captain wants to read a book or whatever.
It breaks immersion to have characters that are supposed to be ding serious jobs acting like teenagers.
Damn, what has you so aggressive here? The other comment wasn't venomous. Hell, it wasn't even a little snarky.
Something going on you want/need to vent about? Legit asking, I've had days where I got shitty to people that weren't doing anything, and having a quick vent would have helped.
Lol. Aggressive, huh?
I chill in chairs like that all the time. It’s comfy. Don’t be so self conscious you let schoolgirls have all the fun.
Sure, but you're not a Starfleet captain. It just doesn't work for me for that role. That's all.
If she does that in her quarters, great. But it just looks unprofessional to me in the captain's chair.
But it just looks unprofessional to me in the captain’s chair.
That's what I love, though. A boss today might feel the need to cultivate a "professional" work environment to maintain discipline among their underlings, or to appear trustworthy to their clients.
Ake doesn't doesn't need to worry about discipline among her officers. They aren't working for a paycheck, they're there because they feel a calling and a duty to be there. She trusts them implicitly, and is confident enough in having their respect that she can enjoy her time on her bridge. And her "clients" are university age kids, who generally don't respond to the pomposity of performative professionalism.
