STAR TREK

[Barrister]

Started rewatching Deep Space Nine alongside my rewatch of TNG and man, that DS9 intro music is easily one of my favorite of all time. Definitely my favorite Star Trek intro music.

DS9 might be my favourite Trek, but the opening music was too slow, and played for too long.

My dark horse candidate for best Star Trek intro music?  Lower Decks.

Discovery and TNG are pretty decent as well.

[celedhring]

No love for the original theme? It definitely wears its sixtiesness on its sleeve, but has lots of charm.

Anyway, TNG is my favorite, but a very big reason is because it's the Trek I grew up with.

[Barrister]

No love for the original theme?

Anyway, TNG is my favorite, but a very big reason is because it's the Trek I grew up with.

The first bit, the original spoken word, together with the first few notes, can bring chills.

But then it goes into this weird wordless vocal bit that goes all over the place.

Hard to separate what you grew up with, so maybe I'm trying to hard to do so by mentioning Lower Decks and Disco.  TNG is good too, but maybe too bright, too much fanfare?


And there's no contest for worst Trek theme song, right?

[celedhring]

And there's no contest for worst Trek theme song, right?

For reference:

https://youtu.be/pmQsrXLofMY

[viper37]

I like Cel's opening.

this one is good too, except the music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfbsZRbwbJ4

[Josquius]

Discovery has become a hate watch for me. We watch it just to make fun. Just saw the episode where tilly leads some cadets.
Man it seemed so sure it was a setup until the throwaway guy died. And even after that... Just.... Dumb dumb dumb.

The sad thing is some people out there are saying discovery sucks because of teh woke. Not just because it has gotten awful. I really did like series 1 but it has been quite a steep decline.

[Caliga]

I just finished getting current on Discovery the other day.

I guess I would say overall I liked it, but each season was worse than the one before it, IMO.  I really liked the Klingon focus on season 1.  Also, they kept killing off/removing the best actors, like Jason Isaacs and Michelle Yeoh.

I don't mind how woke Discovery is, and I kind of liked the Adira/Grey Tal characters.  Also, why does Burnham whisper like every other line?  My wife would not stop complaining about that 

[Caliga]

And there's no contest for worst Trek theme song, right?

For reference:

https://youtu.be/pmQsrXLofMY

I liked ENT's song 

The Rod Stewart version is way better than the one they recorded for the show, though.

[Tonitrus]

I like it too. 

But I will concede it feels a little out of place.

[Syt]

I just finished getting current on Discovery the other day.

I guess I would say overall I liked it, but each season was worse than the one before it, IMO.  I really liked the Klingon focus on season 1.  Also, they kept killing off/removing the best actors, like Jason Isaacs and Michelle Yeoh.

I don't mind how woke Discovery is, and I kind of liked the Adira/Grey Tal characters.  Also, why does Burnham whisper like every other line?  My wife would not stop complaining about that 

For all its flaws I actually like Discovery. I think it tends to be overly (melo)dramatic and tries to be heavy on emotional scenes, but rarely pulls it off really well. And its seasons are always built around a huge existential threat to either the Federation or all life in the galaxy which is a bit silly. I was glad about the reboot in S3, and giving Michael a year off screen to loosen up a lot before rejoining the crew. S3 started great, but had a weak second half. I thought S4 had a good second half after a weaker first half. S2 remains the best IMO, though.


SNW Ep. 6 was decent, but IMHO the weakest of the bunch so far. It does the trope of one has to suffer for all to prosper that you can see coming from a mile away, and while I liked that it ended darker than Trek often does (reminded me of the early Orville episode about Bortus's kid in that regard), it left me overall a bit "eh." I did like the La'an/Uhura stuff, though. Maybe that's why it felt weaker - in just a few episodes, I like the characters already a lot, and episodes that shift focus away from them then seem to lack some of that "magic", maybe?

Not many shows make you root for or get attached to most (all?) main characters quite so quickly. The cast seem to have incredible chemistry. In sci-fi Firefly comes to mind for me. I think even Farscape took longer for me to actually like all of the main cast, but it started from the premise of prisoners on the run and everyone being suspicious of each other. Aeryn was quite insufferable at the start (but that was kinda the point).

[Syt]

Oh, and one complaint about modern Trek that stood out again in some scenes for me on this episode: their overuse of camera cranes for "dynamic shots" - I mean all the times the scenes start at or go through Dutch or upside down angles and rotates around the characters, even where there's literally nothing going on that might warrant it.

Also, little detail - I watched this episode in 2160p and noticed a detail I hadn't seen before. The Starfleet uniforms feature tiny service symbols in the fabric of their shoulders. So Pike and #1 have the "star" command symbol, Uhura the operations symbol etc. It's silly and dumb, but I love it.

[Caliga]

For all its flaws I actually like Discovery. I think it tends to be overly (melo)dramatic and tries to be heavy on emotional scenes, but rarely pulls it off really well. And its seasons are always built around a huge existential threat to either the Federation or all life in the galaxy which is a bit silly. I was glad about the reboot in S3, and giving Michael a year off screen to loosen up a lot before rejoining the crew. S3 started great, but had a weak second half. I thought S4 had a good second half after a weaker first half. S2 remains the best IMO, though.

The 'huge existential threat' is something you see in most sci-fi/fantasy, so it doesn't bother me too much, but I prefer more episodic formats like TOS, TNG, etc. where obviously you can't do something like that.

I also discovered the other day that the old nerd psychologist guy in the future is David Cronenberg. I also liked Stacey Abram's cameo.

[Syt]

I also discovered the other day that the old nerd psychologist guy in the future is David Cronenberg. I also liked Stacey Abram's cameo.

Yeah, that was interesting. Cronenberg in Star Trek is almost as "out there" as Werner Herzog in Star Wars.

[Caliga]

Picard > Discovery.

That is all.

[Syt]

Ok, this episode of Strange New Worlds was ... something. I didn't hate it, but it had a lot of "WTF am I even watching?" moments after its pretty standard first act or so. Towards the end, though, I realized that the episode, its tone and antics, and its over the top scenery chewing antagonist would have fit in quite perfectly with the original series (or maybe even better with the animated show).

When they showed Pike at the helm of the pirate ship standing behind an old fashioned wheel like on a sailing ship I groaned and rolled my eyes and laughed because ... yeah, it was that seemed quite appropriate for the episode.

If this had been an episode with Kirk, Scotty, McCoy etc., it would not have been out of place a single bit. I guess that's praise? 

Plus there's the ending where I thought, "Whoa, we're *really* going there?"