When the setting goes OOC

Subject: When the setting goes OOC
Author: Calista
Posted on: 2019-04-26 05:29:00 UTC

Crazy Minh has the right idea when they say: "From episode one, they set out to wreck as many of the tropes and themes of Star Trek as they can. They introduce a abrasive cast, who can never work together without rowing in the classic reality-TV style of angsty-drama that I absolutely hate."

And that is the problem in a couple of sentences. The setting itself has been fundamentally changed. We know a lot about how the Federation is run and how people are chosen to crew starships, and none of these people would have made it past Starfleet Academy, let alone become high-ranking officers, without either learning how to cooperate or dropping out to do something else.

This is true on a large scale, too. Star Trek is supposed to be a setting where we're better at running our world than we used to be; though people still make mistakes and mess up, they've learned how to compensate for the weaknesses of individual humans, and of humanity in general, to work out a system that supports basic rights, prefers diplomacy to hostility, embraces diverse viewpoints, and has as its chief goal not just the well-being of its own citizens but the well-being of the universe as a whole.

If you dump that, it's not Star Trek anymore; it's a character replacement for an entire universe.

Ask yourself this: If this were fan fiction, what would you think of it? It might not be quite as bad as "Cursed Child", but... it's in that neighborhood.

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So, a quick question by Crazy Minh on 2019-04-19 23:35:00 UTC Reply

How many people here have seen that abomination Star Trek: Discovery?

If so, did you like it (for whatever inconceivable reason)?

Alternatively, how many people have seen the Orville, and how many have enjoyed it so far?

When the setting goes OOC by Calista on 2019-04-26 05:29:00 UTC Reply

Crazy Minh has the right idea when they say: "From episode one, they set out to wreck as many of the tropes and themes of Star Trek as they can. They introduce a abrasive cast, who can never work together without rowing in the classic reality-TV style of angsty-drama that I absolutely hate."

And that is the problem in a couple of sentences. The setting itself has been fundamentally changed. We know a lot about how the Federation is run and how people are chosen to crew starships, and none of these people would have made it past Starfleet Academy, let alone become high-ranking officers, without either learning how to cooperate or dropping out to do something else.

This is true on a large scale, too. Star Trek is supposed to be a setting where we're better at running our world than we used to be; though people still make mistakes and mess up, they've learned how to compensate for the weaknesses of individual humans, and of humanity in general, to work out a system that supports basic rights, prefers diplomacy to hostility, embraces diverse viewpoints, and has as its chief goal not just the well-being of its own citizens but the well-being of the universe as a whole.

If you dump that, it's not Star Trek anymore; it's a character replacement for an entire universe.

Ask yourself this: If this were fan fiction, what would you think of it? It might not be quite as bad as "Cursed Child", but... it's in that neighborhood.

Oops...language by Crazy Minh on 2019-04-26 11:55:00 UTC Reply

If I could post a gif here, I'd post that one of Cap from Age of Ultron. Sorry for violating that rule there.
Holy shit, thank you by Crazy Minh on 2019-04-26 11:54:00 UTC Reply

Dear god, that's exactly the point I'm trying to convey here. It isn't Star Trek if it ain't Star Trek.

I haven't seen either, but... by Neshomeh on 2019-04-21 01:43:00 UTC Reply

So far I've heard mixed but trending positive reviews of Discovery, namely "it's great; haters gonna hate" and "it didn't grab me." The most negative thing I've heard is that it feels more like the new movies than classic Trek. As someone who liked the 2009 movie, despised Wrath of Khan for its cheating and lack of imagination, and was surprised not to hate Into Darkness because at least the characters got a few good moments where they felt like themselves, I'm not sure I'm willing to go out of my way for Discovery, but I haven't it written off yet, either.

So, besides the standard gripe that the new thing is not the same as the old thing(s)—because there's always a period where people hate the new thing just for not being the old thing, especially in the first season, while it's still figuring out its own identity—what don't you like about it? Why?

~Neshomeh

Oh no, I've seen it... by Crazy Minh on 2019-04-21 03:52:00 UTC Reply

It is FILTH.

I'm not exaggerating. It is somehow WORSE than the movie we do not talk about. It fraks with the canon without regard for continuity or even proper characterisation. It has some of the most dumbass and predictable plot twists on television. It completely disregards the whole theme of Star Trek, turning a optimistic utopia into a dystopian hellhole. Let me give you some (spoiler-ridden) examples:

* The main character- it's not a ensemble cast BTW- is a officer called Michael Burnham. She (yes, she does have the first name Michael) is a utter Mary Sue of the most unholy variety. She's a xenobiologist...who also can debug computer code for a experimental engine; has test-piloted a experimental hamster-ball small craft; is SPOCK'S FRAKKING SISTER; commits mutiny and is forgiven three episodes later despite having singlehandedly caused a war with the Klingons and thus killed thousands of people; can participate on away missions; is better at science than the science officer...I could go on. She's a Sue. And a bad one at that.

* The Discovery is powered by a experimental 'Spore Drive'. A engine that uses the dumbass idea that the universe is a giant frakking mushroom to jump anywhere in the universe in six seconds. It's a literal magic mushroom engine that could have gotten Janeway and Co. home in six seconds flat. Thus, canon-violation.

*The Klingons...*snerk*. Sorry, Kling-ORCS (given that STD Klingons look nothing like canon Klingons, and would look less out-of-place in LotR) are now Trump supporters.

* The Federation considers commiting genocide, and makes mentioning Burnham at the end of the second season a crime punishable by death.

* Holograms and replicators in the 23rd century despite Harry Kim stating otherwise in Star Trek: Voyager 'Flashbacks'. Oh, and Holographic Communicators - which replace viewscreens in STD- first canonically appeared as a brand-new technology in DS9.

* They. Messed. With. The. Original. USS Enterprise. It looks NOTHING like it should in the 23rd Century. Neither does the bridge.

* The showrunner admits he's too lazy to maintain continuity. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqDkkLF-yxA

Hmm. by Neshomeh on 2019-04-21 19:06:00 UTC Reply

I'm gonna play devil's advocate here. Disclaimer: I have no idea what the show is like, and I'm not looking anything up. I'm simply spinning from the details you've mentioned here, because it's fun. I could be extremely, wildly wrong, and expect to be told so. {= )

So like, without context, I can justify a lot of what you describe of Michael to myself. Who says a xenobiologist has to only do xenobiology and nothing else? It's not unheard of for someone to have more than one specialty. It also makes sense for a specialist to be sent on an away-mission where their specialty or specialties might be of use, and for a specialist to excel in their specialty/ies beyond even the designated bridge officer, which role might be better suited to a generalist with additional skills in command and leadership. I'm pretty sure even being a mutineer and starting a war is no more than other Trek characters have gotten away with before, though my knowledge of the franchise isn't thorough enough to recall an example. She sounds pretty much on par with Kirk to me, though, with the additional grace that a regular officer being a loose cannon is less of a problem than a captain being a loose cannon, because an officer is not responsible for representing the standards of the Federation to the same degree, nor for the lives of a whole shipload of people.

I would require a pretty damn good explanation for Spock having a sister we've never heard of before, I'll give you that. Is it, like, honorary or something?

Re. "space is a mushroom" ... er. Okay, I'm struggling with this one. It has to be a metaphor, right? Because space is curved, right? And maybe there's something about the gills of a mushroom that represent folded space... right? I COULD see the technology existing in an experimental form, though. It's not like the level of technology in Trek has never been retconned before. Kinda like how the franchise considers advanced androids basically unprecedented before the Soong type of Next Gen, even though we had some pretty dang advanced androids show up in TOS. For something as potentially game-changing as something like a tesseract, I'd just expect it to be so flawed as to be abandoned for reasons of impracticality by arc's end. Or it could be that Our Heroes decide it's too powerful for any faction to have, and takes it upon themselves to keep it secret and safe or destroy it, like another more recent space opera I won't name so as to avoid spoilers. ("Spore drive" is a dumb name any way you slice it, though.)

Now, I know you don't mean the Klingons are literally Trump supporters. {= P But it's not like their appearance has never radically changed before, either. If Discovery is roughly contemporary with TOS, I'd expect them to look more like TOS Klingons than later Klingons, though hopefully with less problematic racial coding, since it ain't the sixties anymore.

If Harry Kim's word is all we have to go one re. holograms and holodecks, I think we can safely give that one a pass?

Re. the Federation and its ideals and utopian-ness... eh, I can't say I was ever convinced that everything was always hunky-dory and peachy keen back on Earth. I think DS9 explores this a bit? Having the highest of ideals doesn't mean we always succeed at upholding them, and no society is without flaw, because it's all based on people, and no person is without flaw. Also, strict adherence to canon would be incredibly troublesome here. TOS was progressive for its time, but if we take the Terran culture on display on the original Enterprise literally, without sort of temporally localizing for progress in real-world society, hoo boy, is the Federation ever a scary place for women to be circa TOS!

I'm okay with the Federation being flawed and making mistakes, is what I'm saying, as long as they're also shown to learn from those mistakes and continue striving to do the best they can in the belief that it's worth it to always strive, even when we falter.

I'm cool with temporally localizing the appearance of the Enterprise, too, though I'd personally prefer a functional Android aesthetic over a lens-flare-ridden iPad one. {= P

... I think that's everything except for the video, which I may watch later. So, how wrong am I? {= )

~Neshomeh

Very, very wrong. by Crazy Minh on 2019-04-22 03:52:00 UTC Reply
- Michael is Spock's adopted human sister that we have never heard of before, and who is one of the most annoying, insufferable, douchebag sues I have ever seen on television. She's like Wesley Crusher, but times by cancer, and without the frequent mutters of 'Shut Up Wesley'. She is arrogant, is always right (as justified by the plot), and is the character who we're meant to feel affection for. We don't. None of the STD characters show even the remotest affaliable traits, with the possible exception of Tilly...whose enthusiasm is somehow just unbearably grating in a show which has made Star Trek a dystopia.
  
  - Space is in fact a mushroom in STD. The ship uses a 'Mycelial network' that webs the entire universe (i.e. the universe is now a mushroom') and the laughably stupid explanation that 'On a quantum level, physics is biology' (BTW, the two fields are nothing alike. Chemistry and physics; maybe. Chemistry and Biology; maybe. But physics and biology? F**k no.). Oh, and the engine is literally powered by inserting a tube full of magic space spores into the engine. This tech allows them to jump anywhere in the universe in six seconds flat, thus invalidating the entire premise of Star Trek: Voyager; making warp travel at any point after the 23rd century redundant and pointless; and making discovery non-canon (that tech is WAY outside anything they could do in the 23rd century. Maybe- on a massive stretch- the late, late 24th or mid 25th. But not the 23rd).
  
  - No, I mean that the writers have stated that their entire culture has been pointlessly and needlessly rewritten so that Klingons act like neo-nazis/trump supporters.). Also, Klingons now look like this:
  
  https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U7Nokw5i8aY/maxresdefault.jpg
  
  - They have holodecks on the discovery. Despite the fact that the tech for that only existed canonically in its most basic form on TAS, and in a much more limited form at that. They have replicators on the discovery. The most advanced ship in the fleet, the USS Enterprise, didn't have this stuff even ten years later. Not even the refit from the movies had that (they had a galley, as seen in the sixth movie) They had 3d chess and food dispensers. Oh, and even worse:
  
  MAJEL BARRET HAS BEEN REPLACED BY SOME VAPID-ASS MORON AS THE VOICE OF THE COMPUTER!!!!!
  
  The 'replicators' speak by the way. The USS Enterprise didn't even have that. Not until the 1701-D at the very least, and there's still ~100 years to go until that era.
  
  - The federation acts nothing like the Federation. At least DS9 had them act in character. All the characters who even SPEAK of utopian ideals get flushed out into space or killed off.
  
  - In TNG 'Relics', they took the time and effort to recreate the original bridge of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701. In DS9 'Trials and Tribble-ations' they took the time to replicate a large portion of the ship for a time-travel episode, and spliced in the bits they couldn't replicate. Even the fan-production Star Trek Continues was caring enough to replicate the classic bridge AND the entire set from TOS.
  
  But STD's writers obviously don't give a zark about continuity or paying homage. Instead, we got this:
  
  https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/1200x680/public/2019/04/ussenterprisediscovery.jpg
  
  and this
  
  <a href="https://assets1.ignimgs.com/2019/04/12/1280-discovery-enterprise-15550852668931280w.jpg">https://assets1.ignimgs.com/2019/04/12/1280-discovery-enterprise-1555085266893_1280w.jpg
  
  The original Enterprise is the ONE thing you never f**k with. Ever.

I pretty much agree with Nova. by Neshomeh on 2019-04-22 23:49:00 UTC Reply

Except for one thing: I looked up the spore drive and the mycelial network on Memory Alpha, and I have to agree with you: that whole thing is really super dumb.

What's really frustrating is that it didn't have to be, though, if only they hadn't made it a literal subatomic mushroom network accessed with literal mushroom spores. If the whole explanation were a metaphor to make the quantum physics concepts (real or fantastical) more accessible to a lay audience, I'd buy it, but they didn't do that. They went with literal mycelia. And literal mushroom spores. And magical space tardigrades.

And I facepalm.

Still, like Nova says, they've given it a pretty serious limitation, so it's not going to take over from the warp drive anytime soon. Or ever, probably.

And there's no need to be quite so vitriolic about any of this. Most of the stuff you've mentioned is cosmetic, IMO. Perhaps jarring at first, but not really that important when compared to storytelling. I know you've said you're not impressed with the writing, either, but that's something I think I'll have to see and judge for myself.

~Neshomeh

Oh I agree it's completely dumb by Novastorme on 2019-04-22 23:55:00 UTC Reply

I was never going to argue against that.

Mind if I jump in here? by Novastorme on 2019-04-22 22:10:00 UTC Reply

While I've never watched Discovery, I have been reading up on some things.

- Can't say about the character, but that sounds more like personal opinion for you rather than an 'everyone thinks this' based off of what I've read and what I've heard from friends and colleagues who have watched the show. However there is precedent for Spock having unmentioned siblings until they appear due to the plot. Think Sybok from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, funny how he wasn't mentioned before, huh? Star Trek has done it before so in some ways it shouldn't surprise people too much that they've done it again.

- So this Spore Drive that breaks everything, the Spore Drive that's only installed on two ships in the Federation full stop, one of which *SPOILER ALERT* while managing to jump to the Beta Quadrant and back in 1.3 seconds also had all it's crew wiped out, the ship itself was scuttled and it was only able to do this at all due to an alien creature 'improving' their jump capabilities. Losing all your crew seems like a fairly big downside to being able to jump to different quadrants in seconds. Oh and the reason why this tech is never mentioned again? Because all information on it, the Discovery (the sole remaining ship to use it at that point) and her crew was sealed away in 2258, the same year Kirk beat the Kobayashi Maru test. Probably a fairly good reason as to why it's never seen again.

- Eh I'll take the Klingons, although they could be a rogue faction or something like that. I believe the explanation used for their different looks in TOS to the rest of the Star Trek TV shows before Discovery was that the Klingons in TOS were bred with human DNA and became dominant, the later series is the more Klingon DNA taking dominance, but maybe Discovery's Klingons are from before they were bred with human DNA in the first place, I mean the distinctive face ridges are there and they are identifiable as Klingons because of it. Who knows? Maybe it'll be addressed at a later point.

- Holodeck. Yes, it's said that Federation ships don't have full holodecks before the late 24th Century, but they do have and have encountered holographic technology from way before that. From what I remember Discovery isn't equipped with a full holodeck as you are trying to make out it is, it is instead equipped with a holographic combat training suite, which I assume is a rather basic, smaller version of a holodeck that may run off the same technology but isn't as big or advanced or equipped to run as a full holodeck as in Voyager which, IIRC could run things from having the crew think they were in WW2 era France to the Adventures of Captain Proton.

- MAJEL BARRETT DIED IN 2008! I DON'T SEE HOW SHE COULD VOICE ANYTHING UNLESS YOU HAVE A FUNCTIONAL TIME TRAVEL MACHINE OR THE ABILITY TO RESURRECT THE DEAD!!!

- You're making it sound like adding a computerised voice to something is so advanced that they'd only have the ability to do it with technology from the 24th century. Despite the fact that we actually have the ability to do it now. Personally I'd chalk to down to Captains/Shipbuilders personal preference. It's not that groundbreaking or problematic.

- You seem to think of the Federation as many hands being controlled by one brain, when in fact you should view it as many brains trying to control one hand. Paraphrasing various people from The Lost Fleet series here, but I think it holds true. There are many faces of the Federation I believe and while the previous series' may have concentrated on one faction of them for lack of a better word, Discovery may simply be focusing on another, one that hasn't really been seen beforehand. I think in this case it's a YMMV moment.

- I think you're doing them a disservice with the bridge, yes it's been updated with the extra snazzy bits that being 50 years but look at the captain's seat, it's almost exactly the same, the railings are in the same place, and while they've changed the colours slightly, they're still the same colour everywhere the colour was the same on the original. The seat positions are almost exactly the same (from what I can see in the picture you put up). Even the legs at the bottom of the chair are the same as in the originals. Yes things have been updated, but is that a crime? No.

And again with the ship, have they changed it's shape? No. Have they changed it's number? No. Does it have the glowy red bits at the forward facing end of its wings? Yes. The only thing I could possibly fault it on is that the 'neck' of the ship is slightly shorter than it looks on the original Enterprise and that it's been updated with more flashy lights to be windows and things to glow for the engines. Is that second thing a fault? No.

Is everything very very wrong with this show? From my point of view? No, no it's not. Nostalgia can be a brilliant thing but "it sucks because its new" (which is how you are coming across to me, no offence meant if you're not) should not be used as a valid argument.

Novastorme.

Novastorme... by Crazy Minh on 2019-04-23 08:56:00 UTC Reply

Ok. I REALLY don't want to turn this into a flame war. And no, that's not a opener for a flaming post.

Discovery isn't bad because of the cosmetic differences. It's not 'bad because it's new'- I had absolutely no problem with Enterprise when it aired, even though it was cosmetically more advanced in a era set before TOS. I actually liked that aesthetic a bit...because it wasn't all that different. I would link to a excellent analysis of Discovery that takes apart the camera work, lighting and set design- and then compares it to Enterprise...but unfortunately CBS has apparently gotten that video copyright striked for a few clips taken from STD.

No. Discovery is bad because it takes the whole formula of Star Trek- its soul if you will- and rips it to shreds. Star Trek- yes, even DS9- felt like Star Trek for a handful of reasons. You had a setting that was inherently optimistic (in the very words of Gene Roddenberry himself 'In the 24th century there will be no hunger, there will be no greed, and all the children will know how to read'), even if the people living it were flawed beings, just like every person alive today. You had a distinct visual style that evolved with each era depicted on the show, with clear visual padigrams changing between the distinct eras, and others staying more-or-less the same. You had a formula for each cast: people who were paragons, who (as ruled by Gene himself) didn't fight with each other- but instead worked as a team- and were clearly professionals in their field (although some characters like Kirk are a little loose on the professionalism, and I'm not counting the various space-madness episodes); people who represented the best of humanity, not the worst; and above all, people who you could feel affinity with. One of my childhood heroes is Captain Jon Luc Picard, and the fact that CBS is now setting out to shred the best captain ever to captain the Enterprise is heartbreaking for me.

STD is having none of that shite. From episode one, they set out to wreck as many of the tropes and themes of Star Trek as they can. They introduce a abrasive cast, who can never work together without rowing in the classic reality-TV style of angsty-drama that I absolutely hate. The style of the ships is all wrong for the era in which STD is set, and the uniforms are nowhere close. There's obviously some bits that the writers have drawn from canon, but not much is right (I.e. the new Enterprise Bridge has the targeting scanner on a arm. That wasn't part of the helm console until a mid-season refit during Kirk's era. It shouldn't be there)

The writers obviously haven't fact-checked stuff. They say that Burnham is the first mutineer in Starfleet. I mean, Spock apparently says otherwise in a episode of the Original Series set at least ten years later, but hey! Who gives a crap about continuity, eh? Even their dumbass explanation for why no one will ever mention anything that happens on their show again (it's classified!) strongly smells of a need to patch the off-the-rails canon-defilement that happened all through season one, in a effort to get people to forgive them for their stupidity.

It blatantly tries to make something that would work for sure as a standalone work...but is in NO WAY Star Trek. No way.

I've been raving about this for nearly two years now, so forgive me if this was a little incoherent. I have so much repressed hatred for this bloody show. It came out two days after my birthday. Not the best present, I can tell you that.

What's worse? I was actually LOOKING FORWARDS TO THIS!!! It was so disappointing that I sobbed into a pillow for a hour after watching the first three episodes.

Flame Wars are things I don't want either. by Novastorme on 2019-04-23 18:26:00 UTC Reply

But I feel something should be said here.

For the majority of your post, I feel like it's part YMMV and partly that you may not be part of the audience the people behind Star Trek Discovery were aiming it at. I suspect that they didn't make it for the hard-core Trekkies, they made it for people who are new or newer to the series, maybe those who remember some episodes or some characters from some of the series' that came before but not the hard-core fans. Now I'm not saying that's the right move, but it is generally seen as a good move in the wider world because by making it more accessible to newer people they can attract a bigger audience and get more money, rather than having it become more of a cult classic that attracts Trekkies but perhaps alienates other people. This kind of thing happens.

Take Warhammer 40k for example, 7th edition had a load of rules that while simple still required a couple of hundred pages of rulebook to understand, which is understandably daunting to new players but the older, more regular players could take it in their stride, better a couple of hundred pages rulebook now than the close to a thousand pages from a few editions ago (I may be exaggerating slightly). 8th edition is now so laughably simple and easy that while more new people have started playing Warhammer 40k since it's release, a lot less regulars have because (this is in the words of a Games Workshop employee I'm friends with) "They find it too easy and too different to see as the same game that they used to love playing." It sucks, but it happens and I'm very annoyed that it's happened.

Anyway back to Star Trek. Can I just ask where you got that 'Burnham was the first mutineer in Starfleet'? Because I can't find a source that says that from about 15 minutes of research. Although, technically if all trace of someone is removed from the record books then that person would no longer be the first person to do something if they n longer exist (I'm aware this is me being pedantic, I'm sorry. But it also helps preserve canon and continuity and so is important to say). And yes, maybe the classification of the whole of Season 1 stuff is a patch over it, but at least they tried to apply one rather than leave it rampant and do nothing at all. If they didn't care for the continuity, they would of probably left it a lot more open than they did.

I can't change how you feel about it, so I'm not going to. To pretend to be able to do otherwise wouldn't be appropriate on my part. All I can do is look at what I can see and give my opinions as a counter argument for it. That being said, I am sorry to hear that you felt that way after looking forward to it for so long but unless you have that time travel machine I mentioned in my last post, I'm not entirely sure what, if anything could be done to change it.

Novastorme

Huh? by Crazy Minh on 2019-04-24 06:34:00 UTC Reply

YMMV? I mean, I've seen that label on TV Tropes, but I still don't get what it is meant to actually be. Same with WMG, which I assume means 'What May Go', although I'm unsure on that front.

Would you mind explaining the meaning of 'YMMV' please?

Right, Sorry. by Novastorme on 2019-04-24 08:27:00 UTC Reply

YMMV means Your Mileage May Vary. Your opinion may be different from mine because our perspectives etc. may differ. Just because one person holds one opinion about something doesn't mean that every person will hold that opinion on that one thing. Or at least, that's how I take it.

By the way, WMG is (I believe) Wild Mass Guessing

Meh. by Crazy Minh on 2019-04-23 04:02:00 UTC Reply

Honestly? The Orville is much better. Plus, it was actually written by a Trekkie, rather than the guy behind the Mummy 2016, most of the Bayformers movies, and Star Trek We forgot the Colon. (aka Into Derpness). Imagine Star Trek: The Next Generation, but more funny. Also, it was created by Seth Macfarlane, the creator of Family Guy and American Dad. Also the Ted movies and 'A Million Ways to die in the West'.