Star Trek Thread: Nemesis 2: Nemeses, etc. (Part 1)

there is little doubt that the ds9 pilot is the best pilot any star trek series ever had

This is damning with faint praise

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:frowning:

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that was a surprisingly good read, thank you

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I think that’s partly a product of just the first season or two, it gets better later on, I’ve noticed that catching the reruns over the past year. Adding to the roughness is the alterations in some of the makeup over time, Odo and Quark in particular don’t look quite “right” when it cycles from the final seasons back to the start.

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At this point in this Discovery mirror universe arc I kind of feel like I will enjoy all these individual plot points as ideas looking back on it as a wiki article in the future but man it is excruciating to watch Michael get put through the ringer a dozen ways to facilitate a dozen “twists”. I said it before and I’ll say it again: this writing staff has all these cool ideas for “whoa moments” that I feel like they just don’t invest the time to actually earn. Instead of a chain of dominoes, it’s like they got 9 dominoes randomly scattered around poorly drew a bunch of the rest of them on a flat surface, then knocked them down with a gun. Okay this metaphor is getting out of hand.

Anyway the canon nerd in me can’t help but think about how if they ever manage to give an explanation for the Klingons now it has to match the mirror universe too for some reason. But everyone in the mirror universe existing long enough to get murdered/murder is also nonsense so that’s not really a big deal. Jammer’s reviews had an interesting point in that the comic booky mirror universe is honestly a lighter tone than the prime universe this time. And considering most of the darkest drama comes from Tyler and Stamets…yeah. Maybe that’s what’s making me feel weird.

Assuming that Culber and Stamets both come back next season the show has got to do way the fuck better by them. What a bad idea to cloister them both off in this miserable plot!

The Tellarite and Andorian makeup is such a straightforwardly good modern post-Enterprise interpretation that I’m kinda madder about the crazy Klingon stuff. Really hoping that they are not going in the direction of “TOS Klingons are surgically altered dudes”. I can’t believe there’s a choice goofier than the Augment Virus but uh…I hope they just keep the Augment Virus if they ever bother to explain it.

Turns out David Iqbal is actually Shazad Latif’s dad’s name so that’s kind of cute even if they set themselves up to fail a narrative in a franchise for obsessive nerds with “inventing a fake actor”. I will always respect the pure wild ambition of this wholly unnecessary move that could have been solved by hiring another actor for Voq.

I can’t be mad at Michelle Yeoh in a gold lame cape. Will never not be bitter that the show isn’t about her instead of Lorca but lemons out of lemonade I guess. Kind of hope they don’t do some weird “Asian women empress dynasty” thing by making her related to Hoshi?

Lorca’s American accent is really falling apart under the stress of the Agony Booth!

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It’s odd that we’re supposed to have a main character in Michael but she is always trailing the audience’s understanding. Makes for the lurching feeling of being frustrated with dramatic irony and then unsatisfied when we get five dominos in an episode. I think of TNG’s conference room scenes in contrast because they’re relentlessly utilitarian but also fun because they show the gears turning.

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Can I also just say

Like Star Trek has always barely skated by with modern interpretations showing the alien races as having different “cultural values” vs “this is in their blood” garbage or whatever but

Having Michael, a person who the rebels understand as being from a genocidal racist army, come down and be like how did you the willful race and you the warrior race and you the logical race get along, a black woman, doubling down on all the worst parts of it

yikes and barf

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Oh my god I thought you were exaggerating. Boy howdy, that moment when she gestures at each of the four major races and says, as scientific fact, their largest stereotypes and how baffled and amazed she is that any of them could work together without the humans there. It reminded me of this scene from near the end of Enterprise, when like, right as the Federation is just starting to become established, the Vulcan high command member goes up to Archer is has this whole bit about how “You know, the Vulcans could never create something like this. We’re too cold and reserved. The Andorians are too paranoid, the Tellarites are too boorish… only humans could be all things to all people. It is your species’ true gift.” It’s wild.

Anyways I liked this one quite a bit. I’m really glad we’re still in the mirror universe, and I hope we’re going to spend at least three or four more episodes here. I would love if the rumors about the captain’s relation to the mirror universe were true, so, the more time we spend here, the more likely that becomes. I just think there’s a ton of interesting stuff to get into on this side, and the idea that the entire ship has to hide its true nature is exciting in a way that shooting at klingon ships isn’t. It’s like some weird inter-universe heist.

The Emperor reveal was cool, I thought. Hoping she’s commanding some kind of decked-out post-apocalyptic Defiant. I would love if they continued to develop how the balance of power on Earth was fucked up by the introduction of the Defiant and its then-powerful weaponry.

Like you all said, the Andorian redesign is pretty underwhelming, but I like the Tellarite wild-boar look, mainly since no series has ever seemed to know what to do with them besides try to make them look like “those ugly angry TOS aliens.” Also kind of annoys me how the Andorians have this weird super-low voice. That’s going to be pretty annoying if it keeps up. I like the idea of making the Andorians more alien somehow, but just fucking with their voice is going to be dumb if we have to sit there and watch them talk to people for entire scenes in a modulated voice.

I had the Vok reveal spoiled into oblivion by the internet, so that sorta just hit like a dud. I agree that it feels like they’re more concerned with the next craaazy twist than they are about the pacing or the feel of the show, so now we’re stuck watching Michael go through yet another horrific stress-blasted gauntlet of sadness, with her only relief, and the only happy, healing element of the show, now turned into this ultimate betrayal as her lover turns into a horrible evil human-eating alien orc-demon. I guess I’m just glad we get to stop watching saw flashbacks every other scene.

It’s also weird seeing this alternate version of the klingons where they are exactly like the regular klingons, just not cartoonishly evil.

Well, I like the general direction they’re going in for this half-season. The Saru stuff is great, as always. I like where they’re stuck and their situation. There’s a lot of interesting elements they could develop before they skip back to our universe. I think a lot of this will pay off. It’s just, there’s just a ton of shit I don’t enjoy between major plot points that makes this show not entirely enjoyable to watch.

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Re Tonight’s: Discovery

YOOOOOOOOOOOO

Since this show is 90% wild twists I feel sorry for anyone trying to casually read or write descriptions on Memory Alpha lol

The Emperor mercing everyone with a magic ninja star beyblade drone was hilarious

Somehow the Lorca reveal almost (almost) redeems his shitty edgelord, death weapon, bone room ass with it’s context and I am excited to see Jason Issacs completely chew the scenery raw.

I also still gotta figure out what the fuck is the deal with the Buran and who knows about it

Like I forget at this point who all he told that he blew up the ship so the crew wouldn’t be tortured, was it just Tyler and Mudd?

Also I guess that’s why the admiral thought he was a different guy. I guess he’s also…a rapist so…okay

The sensitive eyes thing was real dumb…like I guess technically they actually did dramatically under-light every single other mirror episode (except Mirror Mirror?) so I mean narratively it’s absurd but canonically it’s mostly on solid footing

If that’s what the writers meant by Culber’s story not being over because of the magic mushrooms then fuck them I guess. Even if he came back to life in this ep, then fuck them for killing him cuz c’mon y’all fuckin do better

I am curious if they are going to actually show the Defiant again like they did on Enterprise although it now being “ten” years future advanced tech is again kind of goofy

I enjoy Discovery and it is a bad show with a ton of potential to be actually good next season if they stop trying to build hotwheels tracks plots. Like every first season of post TOS Star Trek is bad but this show found such new and innovative ways to be bad I’m just utterly transfixed. And also plenty of it is good

Star Trek Discovery is the edgy, twisted teen fanfic version of itself and I have to kind of do some soul searching about how I am or am not enjoying that

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this whole season being written so poorly while also being so aesthetically, transfixingly strange, in such a contemporary way, is why this franchise will never escape the spot inside my brain where i put my affection for Doctor Who

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sleazy i really appreciate your posts itt

this is amazing info, thnku

yeah, christ

also just as an interesting note at not even 37 minutes this was the shortest episode of (non-animated) star trek so if you are used to the regular rhythm of trek, functionally it was “missing” an act

have they done any jokes to suggest that Trek’s mirror universe is (and always has been) the actual future of our own universe, as opposed to the one in which Khan leads an army of genetic supersoldiers in WW3 in the 1990s or whatever, i.e. the “normal” Trek timeline

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How could they go down to 6 acts from the usual 7?!

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really ideally just want a seinfeld/lucky star/slice of life style trek with hundreds of acts

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really wondering what this show would have looked like just generally, and also from a budgetary standpoint, if they had gone with bryan fuller’s original idea of an anthology series where they theoretically weren’t gonna reuse sets/costumes every season.

i’m also curious if whatever’s happening now was the original “important event in starfleet history” they were referring to as a hook

the best bit of tng was these people playing poker in a post scarcity economy so they don’t even bet anything they just hang out forever

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Okay just saw the latest one and I’m pretty sure every single scene was some form of horrible torture, one after the other after the other, for like half an hour.

I like where the story’s going but god this is bleak

That episode where Mudd killed everyone repeatedly in a time loop was arguably the closest thing this show has had to a goofy breather episode isn’t it?

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Yeah that was like “oh they could do an episode of Star Trek if they wanted to” ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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