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Come on Yori, all the guy’s asking for is a little beheading, is that so much?

So Joe caved in and subscribed to CBS All Access to watch his precious Star Trek, allowing me to reap the benefits of his lack of willpower! We watched the first three episodes of STD (that’s Star Trek Discovery‘s unfortunate acronym), and my feelings are decidedly mixed. On the positive side, it looks great, with plenty of slick, high budget effects that feel right in line with the new Abram films.

Thankfully, STD is a bit more smartly written than those films, but it’s also not THAT smartly written. The acting is strong, the directing and cinematography are top notch, but the plot is all over the place and is working overtime to be ‘not just another Star Trek show’. It’s the Stargate Universe of Star Treks, trying to be darker and edgier in an attempt to appeal to a larger potential fanbase; the kind that love raw, violent dramas like Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad. Certainly STD isn’t that level of grim, but you’ll see far more explicit gore in its first three episodes than you’d ever expect in Star Trek. The contradiction here is that CBS has made it far more difficult for those potential new viewers to watch the show by locking it behind its subscription streaming service. Likely the only people ready to fork over money to see STD are hardcore Trek fans, who will then be dismayed to find that the show is not a true return to form but a major formula mix up.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

In terms of how it fits into the canon, well, it really doesn’t. The technology seems significantly more advanced than what we’ve seen in any of the Prime Universe shows and yet it takes place 15 (?) years prior to The Original Series. It’s really more of a Star Trek soft reboot than any sort of continuation. The main character is Sarek’s adopted daughter (geez, Spock, how many siblings did you have??), and her apparent struggle to control her emotions in the face of almost certain death at the hands of a monster-like Klingon Empire.

The Klingons in STD are less cultured and individually diverse than what we’ve seen in the TNG era. The old shows had Klingon characters with many different personalities, grappling with a warrior culture that expected them to fill a roll. They felt nuanced. Not that I expected to get that same nuance from STD’s two episode premiere, but this new version of Klingons definitely come off more animalistic and bloodthirsty, with relatively simplistic internal politics (someone shined a bright light and they all went to war). I’m hoping/guessing that will change as the show goes on, but right I’m willing to give the new Klingons a pass. I honestly don’t care much about canon as long as the story is well structured with satisfying character arcs, and I do have some issues with those aspects of STD.

Specifically, the first two episodes are bloated with a massive amount of drama and action, and yet only have two characters, maybe three, we’re supposed to care for (the science officer has some endearingly quirky dialog but is mostly observing the conflict between the captain and first officer). By the end of the two part opener, the captain is dead, and the first officer is labeled a mutineer and sentenced to space prison. The lead up to that outcome is a confusing mess involving an away mission of ONLY the captain and first officer. They beam over to a Klingon flagship to capture their leader in the hopes of turning him into a symbol of failure, as opposed to killing him and turning him into a martyr for the Klingons to rally around. Why only these two go on this mission is a big fat mystery, the only reasonable answer being that they’re kind dumb. The captain gets stabbed by the klingon leader and then the first officer kills him with her phaser. I don’t know why she didn’t use stun and complete her mission, maybe she couldn’t control her anger. Either way, it seems to be the catalyst to the show’s main ‘redemption’ plotline for first officer Michael (her first name is Micheal, they acknowledge that’s an odd name for a woman so maybe we’ll get an explanation for it).

I almost wish the first two episodes had been completely skipped in favor of revealing those backstory elements in flashbacks. It might have been a more clever way to dramatically reveal Michael’s story while jumping straight into the show’s actual premise. The third episode sees Michael transferred from prison detention to the advanced science ship Discovery, where she’s put to work assisting with some very shady science projects to potentially help win the war against the Klingons. This leads me to believe the show’s structure will be episodic ‘science projects of the week’ where Michael works to figure out how whatever she’s working on will be used in war, and then grapples with the shady morality of the crew and their ultimate goals, and whether she should sabotage Discovery’s efforts in the name of moral principle, or work toward a fast end to the war they she feels personally responsible for starting (which, honestly, would’ve started even without her).

Many of the old Trek shows have had some very weak pilot episodes, if not all of them, and  I don’t even think STD’s is the worst of the lot. The setup has a lot of potential for great television. I’m specifically reminded of Fringe, which also had an episodic ‘science project gone horribly wrong’ structure to it for the first couple of seasons, and they were great.

So STD has potential, and yet I can’t help but feel this is not what Star Trek’s themes have always been about. The Trek Universe has always favored political allegory, and asked us to question the normalcy of our modern world when compared with the idealism on display in its vision of the future. From the originals series’ commentary on race with “ Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” to TNG’s questioning of gender norms in “The Outcast”, this has always been Star Trek’s greatest strength. And, considering the world we live in today, where injustices have become so nakedly visible that they’re no longer shocking, don’t we need that Star Trek commentary more than ever? But who knows, maybe STD is revving up to blow us away with insight.

PS. I also saw Blade Runner 2049 and loved it, but maybe I’ll talk about that next time.

 

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  • Jordan Hiller

    This makes me feel unreasonably sad. Tadashi seems like a character who would rather break than bend, die instead of change, but despite his unyielding adherence to a very strict and harsh interpretation of the code of bushido, I still really liked him as a character. Hopefully the next time that Yori wants to save someone, he’ll be able to do so.

    Even if what he’s saving them from is themselves.

  • Sunwu

    Sad feelings straight ahead….

  • LordBolanderFace

    I feel ya, dude. “Oh, of FRIGGIN’ course this is where I come into things!”

    • LordBolanderFace

      Also, I love Yori’s reaction. “No, you can’t!” Uh, dude, he’s stabbed himself in the stomach. Kinda past the point of no return there, ya know?

      • Turul

        “You can’t!”
        “Watch me.”

  • cu

    If you are a Demon of Sorrow you have to go sorrowing around one way or another, it is in the job description. Think the Suicide Squad in Life of Brian.

  • charles81
    • Insane Disciple

      Inappros

  • clogboy

    Discovery is on Netflix, and I watched it too.
    Old Trekkies are going wild that ‘this isn’t Star-Trek’, but tbh the show you described with social commentary etc was Star Trek: Enterprise, and that show didn’t do too hot. This is a new Star Trek for a new era and a new generation of fans (millennials). If they’re enjoying it and you don’t, then I think that’s a generation gap that’s visible from outer space. It isn’t episodic, and so wasn’t DS9 which did quite well.
    Honestly though, I find that visually it borrows heavily from Mass Effect. The show had horrible CGI in the first two episodes, The 3rd episode characters were almost theatric, and the red head who ‘would one day be captain’ is about as cringe worthy as Neelix. The captain is almost machiavelian and I can see it coming from a dozen parsecs away that Michael has yet some more mutineering to do.
    Ship designs looks almost pre-original show in broad outlines and interior design, however I will admit that some ships seem inspired by the later franchises (for instance both top and bottom nacelles). And while the technology is more advanced, the controls look more clunky, and I think it matches well on a sliding scale of what we today feel technology will be like around that time, vs how we predicted it back in the 70’s (and much of that has come true because of that show and TNG). The vision has to progress or it will stop appealing to the audience, unless it is Jules Vernian enough to be revived into a new form of Steampunk.
    But that’s me reacting and defending, and not knowing or judging from a neutral viepoint. The show has its flaws but kids today will (hopefully) love it. And they will probably also like the re-envisioned, more raw Klingons that they were able to conjur with today’s tech vs 80’s/90’s make-up.

    • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

      “Discovery is on Netflix, and I watched it too.”

      Discovery is not on Netflix in the US, but it is in other countries.

      “The show had horrible CGI in the first two episodes”

      I don’t know what you consider “horrible CGI”? The effects looked really good to me. Unless you just mean there was an over-reliance on CG.

      “Old Trekkies are going wild that ‘this isn’t Star-Trek’, but tbh the show you described with social commentary etc was Star Trek: Enterprise, and that show didn’t do too hot. This is a new Star Trek for a new era and a new generation of fans (millennials).”

      I cringe at the term ‘millenials’, which is basically just used to stereotype young people. Not all young people love game of thrones and not all older people hate Star Trek Discovery. I was also born in ’83, which, technically, still makes me a millenial, according to the rich blokes who coined the term (specifically so they could get rich off of it). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials

      Enterprise was the fourth show in a 16 year run of Star Trek continuity with diminishing returns. When you have a continuous run of anything, without breaks, people will lose interest. Since we’ve had over a decade since Enterprise was cancelled, coming back with a similarly formatted show could very much appeal to the nostalgia of the millions of Star Trek fans who would be happy to see a show like that again, as well as younger, new fans who have come to love Star Trek through binge watching the old shows on Netflix.

      “If they’re enjoying it and you don’t, then I think that’s a generation gap that’s visible from outer space. It isn’t episodic, and so wasn’t DS9 which did quite well.”

      I didn’t say I did not enjoy it, just that I had mixed feelings on it. I intend to keep watching because I’m curious to see where the setup goes. Also, DS9 did do well, but not nearly as well as TNG. And DS9 had an over arching plot that slowly developed over time, but it was generally still a very episodic format, telling complete story arcs each episode that often contained political and social commentary/allegory.

      I want to get gut punched like old Star Treks used to do. I want that real bad. The set up Discovery can still definitely lend itself to that, and my hope is that there will still be dramatic/emotional/powerful political and social allegory in STD, but the first three episodes definitely had none. And will we still get messages of hope for the future, or is this show going to have an overall pessimistic outlook on humanity? I guess that’s what I’m curious to see.

      • charles81

        I’m thinking it’s leaning towards an overall pessimistic outlook on humanity.

        I almost feel like the show should have been called “Star Trek: Noir”

        • Arkone Axon

          Exactly. The OPPOSITE of Star Trek. “Hey, remember the whole “positive look of a brighter tomorrow? Screw that – what the fans want is big loud explosions and slow motion action sequences and special effects! Because they’re stupid and we are smart!”

          (I was briefly employed as a writer for a TV show that you won’t have heard of… it didn’t make it past the pilot. Largely because of the people in charge having the same arrogant attitude regarding both the audience and the actors, and without the huge budget for special effects and marketing)

      • clogboy

        Netflix in The Netherlands, should’ve mentioned that (although there are ways around the region restrictions).

    • Arkone Axon

      i TRIED to like Discovery. I watched it and told myself I had to give it a chance… and to be fair, it would be better received if it weren’t called Star Trek. As space opera, it’s not too bad. But it is NOT Star Trek. Star Trek is a glorious vision of a better tomorrow, a brighter future (even if there are still problems and challenges to overcome – just as the old problems had been overcome) where fans can watch and ask themselves, “why can’t that be real?” Star Trek is a fiction meant to inspire people to make it a reality – inventing the technology (Think of every single tricorder and handheld scanner and device in the shows. There’s an app for that), working to establish the social climate (When Kirk kissed Uhuru, that was a huge deal. In 2015 more than 17% of couples in the U.S. were interracial).

      This? This was… ugh. There were only four members of the crew in the first episode with speaking roles. The captain, the first officer (who was THOROUGHLY unlikable and unpleasant, even before her mutiny), the science officer (who seemed to exist solely to be a cowardly male to make the first officer look better), and the medical officer (Who was completely incapable of keeping a badly injured crew member in sickbay. McCoy, Crusher, Polaski, Bashir… hell, even the holographic doctor from Voyager, would have had her back under treatment and under sedation before she reached the door). The Klingons were all angsty and angry and religiously fanatical, with twice as much makeup to hide the fact that they’ve been turned into blatant Jihadist expies. And even the technology was a step back in some ways. I like the idea of actual exosuits (though they should really have had them on planets, not just in space), but… windows on the bridge? The viewscreen of a classic Federation vessel meant that 1: you were safe against blindingly bright lights, and 2: you weren’t a hairline fracture away from explosive decompression.

      I wanted to like it. But this… this was “Let’s make everything grim and gritty and then throw in lots of special effects and STYLE over substance, remember the fans are idiots – style over substance!” (Which is insulting… and no, millenials will not find it cute and awesome. Young people can still tell when someone is full of it… and they don’t like being patronized or condescended to)

      • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

        yeah, I wish it wasn’t Star Trek. I also wished the reboot movies weren’t Star Trek. Anything in the scifi/fantasy genre that requires a modicum of thought to watch tends to fail to bring in the amount of money spent to make it, because making effects laden movies and television is just so damn expensive now. Part of that is the over-reliance on effects for story telling and part of that is because there’s less time to film and write stuff, and less emphasis put on the writing, because the post production effects take the majority of the time now and studios put a lot of value on the effects to draw in an audience.

  • charles81

    Trek: I like where ST Discovery is going. They seem to have settled on their 6 primary characters and I feel like it’s going to be primarily focused on the ship and inter-crew relations rather than a lot of external influences. Many opportunities for cat and mouse subterfuge play.

    The technology discrepancies I can put aside with the idea that this is an experimental ship thats dealing with the very limits of star trek technology and the likelihood that there’s a very good explanation (yet to be discovered) on why some of it is so advanced it isn’t even used in the future (Voyager would have been a VERY short show if it had lol).

    However, with so many differences from what is leading to the original series timeline, together with a much different story style and atmosphere, I feel like this series might have benefited from claiming to be part of the Kelvin timeline.

    On a side note: I love how the show has created an excuse for the room going dark and gloomy every time the Captain of the Discovery enters the room. Great cinematic effect for his presence.

    • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

      Too bad they didn’t give an excuse for the entire ship being dark and gloomy! Even if it does make everything more cinematic.

      The biggest tech discrepancy is easily the holographic communication stuff eveywhere. It doesn’t actually make sense in Star Wars, and since Trek used to tout itself as the more plausible scifi universe, it makes even less sense here. I mean, where is the person on the other end standing, now it their hologram being transmitted? What do they see on their end? Deep Space Nine, which takes place a hundred plus years in the future from the TOS time period was just beginning to experiment with that sort of holographic communication, and you had to stand in very specific locations to make it work. Obviously the holographic doctor in Voyager could get around, but only after acquiring a piece of future tech called the holo-emitter from a time hundreds of years further in the future.

      • Arkone Axon

        We’re actually starting to develop similar holographic technology right now. Go on Youtube and check out Isaac Arthur’s channel, and his video on “little known technologies that will change the world.”

        What I find annoying is that they removed important and useful safety features (the viewscreen meant that you had sensors recording, analyzing, interpreting, and displaying on a screen, with a nice thick hull between you and the void of space. Here we see windows that do nothing to protect against extremely bright lights, and that can be broken and lead to explosive decompression (and on the BRIDGE? They took a vital target spot of the ship and made it more vulnerable). If they were going to reinvent the technology and show off better stuff, they should have gone all out and impressed us. Protective suits for not only space walks but also planetfall, so that the ensigns don’t get instakilled in the first five minutes. Robotic assistants – like a quadraped that can be easily modified to look like a local life form. Things we’re already developing in RL.

        • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

          They took ‘speculative science fiction’ and chucked out the speculative part.

  • Turul

    A life for a life is only fair. Tadashii spared Genchu’s life when he wanted to live, so Genchu ends Tadashii’s when he’s ready to die.

  • AGV
  • Kid Chaos

    GENCHU!!! Old buddy, old pal, how’ve you been? What, this? Oh, I’m just bleeding to death from an extremely painful self-inflicted wound. I don’t suppose you could put me out of my misery? Thanks, man, I really appreciate– 💀

  • foducool

    damn these samurais and their bullshitto

    • Kid Chaos

      They’re a real pain in the gut. 👿

      • tyersome

        Yeah, with this kind of crappy attitude they be headed for extinction …

    • Nos Rin aka CTCO

      ya like, oh no, spilled my drink gotta kill myself.
      like bitch you can get your honor back or get new honor.
      especially silly if honor is so easily lost. weakass cowards.

  • Yasmin Mazur

    you should see the After Trek show – they interview the showrunner and some of the actors, and said – basically the opposite of what you wrote – that they considered doing the pilot as flashbacks but wanted to give the audience a better understanding of Michael; that they want to differentiate the klingons from the different families; that they’re doing an arc story throwout the season.
    I’m giving them a chance to show they can pull it off.
    BTW – Netflix also airs the show – so you don’t have to have CBS.

    • Yasmin Mazur

      BTW – I don’t know this since I’m not that big a fan, but I got the impression that this incident was mentioned before on cannon – so Michael would have been a guy name originally, but they decided to go with a female character – so the name is more unique (there’s a hebrew song from about 30 years ago about a girl named Michael, who complains that everybody calls her Michaela instead – so it’s not the 1st time I see a girl Michael around).

      • spas

        who’s the artist? upon aliya, they wanted me to put Michaela on my te’udat zehut. i told them Mem-yud-shin-lamed, but the post office et al keep calling me Michaela. there’s enough other more important crap to complain about, so i can let it go, but i’d check that song out.

        • Yasmin Mazur
        • Yasmin Mazur

          אתי אנקרי – מיכאל

          btw – you should see that article about the internal home office in israel – appearantly there’s rules for translating foreign names, and parents complain that the clerks don’t spell them right – like Amy spelled Eimee and other weird things that sound different.

    • Kid Chaos

      Um, no, Netflix doesn’t air it; is there a “premium” level that I’m not getting? Inquiring minds want to know! 😜

      • Yasmin Mazur

        I guess Netfilx global is really different than the US one – considering the missing content here, I’m glad we get some things.

    • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

      Discovery is not on Netflix in the US, but it is in other countries. Every time I hear it’s on Netflix, I pull up Netflix to double check, and it is definitely not there.

      It’s funny the showrunners said those things. I can see that’s what they were trying to do, but my little blog post would postulate they didn’t do it very well. There are certainly twelve Klingon houses, and at least a few of them seem a little wary about jumping into war just because one particular religious zealot says they should. But as soon as the zealot leader takes a pot shot at the federation, they other houses all jump in without another thought. It’s also kind of silly how he literally lights a beacon and then suddenly all twelve house leaders show up simultaneously, as if they were specifically waiting around for the signal. Earlier in the scene the zealot leader was questioned as to whether the houses would even give a damn, much less show up immediately and simultaneously of their own free will. And did they see the light from the ship, or was a corresponding signal sent out? It’s a weird and rushed set up, that, if told through flashbacks, could have felt less cartoonish and condensed.

      And I don’t believe any of the older shows were specific in how the klingon federation war started, or at least not specific in the exact person or persons involved, so I’m pretty sure Michael is her own character, and not an expansion on previous canon. Michael herself is weirdly all over the place. She puts on the airs of being highly logical, but her actions are consistently hot headed and impulsive. Why take a single space suit out to a radiation zone? Why not take a shuttle? Why go alone when it’s clearly dangerous? The captain says “she’s having fun”, but it seems wildly irresponsible. There’s this awkward scene where the captain decides to do a suicide mission by flying a shuttle with a bomb into the klingon flagship. Michael then explains that it would create a martyr for the Klingons, and then says they need to capture the Klingon leader. BUT THEN Michael insists she should fly the suicide mission. Wait, what? Didn’t she JUST say they should capture the Klingon and not kill him?

      And then there’s the weird bit where Michael impales a klingon with his own blade. It’s an awkward scene to begin with, and confusing why she let such a seemingly hostile figure get so close to her to begin with, or why she foolishly got so close to the alien ship. Michael is clearly a very reckless character, and she’s egged on by her captain.

      When she mutinees with a lie that CLEARLY wasn’t going to work since the whole bridge crew just saw her arguing with the captain, it shows how irrational she is. But the captain basically forgives her for her mutinee. It’s amusing to me that the mutinee is what she becomes famous for, even though all of her actions that actually contributed to the start the war were done while she was not mutinous. Having not known her back story, if I saw the third episode I would’ve gotten the sense that Michael is a by-the-books exceptional starfleet officer who, at some point, either made a very bad decision, or made the least bad decision when only bad decisions where available to her, and got labelled a mutineer, perhaps unjustly, but she carries the burden anywway. I would not be questioning her logic or sanity the entire time. So I do think skipping the first two episodes would’ve been a better choice.

      • Yasmin Mazur

        didn’t say they succeeded in what they wanted – just that they tried to do it… The jury’s still out on this.
        as for Michael – I got the vibe that she’s human trying to pretend she’s vulcan, and only half-successful under pressure. The captain was trying to encourage her to act more human, she even said so – right before saying she was disapointed that Michael still wanted to fire the 1st shot – a vulcan attitude. I find that Michael is not as logical as she wants to be.
        Regarding flying a shuttle to the artifact – if it’s disrupting technology – and in the middle of an astroid field – a shuttle wouldn’t necessarily be better than a smaller more manuverable suit – but who knows – Michael was the one pushing to do it.
        regarding the lie – 1st officer is arguing with the captain, then they go and talk privately, and then the 1st officer (who is known for being level-headed and also honest) – comes back and says the captain changed her mind. The crew would have respected her if it wasn’t for Saru – and he would have backed down if she insisted – until the captain returned and proved her a lier… Clearly? not sure about that.
        I think that we’re supposed to question Michael’s judgement and emotional level – although I don’t think she’s insane – reckless – yes, but not crazy – more like she has too much self confidence that she can handle whatever pops up – while not actually able to do so.

        • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

          I can see that. I do still think the scene where she suggests they capture the Klingon leader and then immediately says she wants to do the suicide mission is almost bipolar of her. Also, they were able to beam an inanimate object, the explosive, into a dead Klingon body, but they were not able to beam the dead captain off of the Klingon bridge because she wasn’t alive anymore? Kind of a plot hole. Beaming in the other shows involves locking on to badge signatures anyway.

          Out of curiosity, does your Netflix have the entire season of Star Trek Discovery, or just the episodes they’ve released on CBS All Access so far?

          • spas

            >the scene where she suggests they capture the Klingon leader and then
            immediately says she wants to do the suicide mission is almost bipolar
            of her

            agreed, but it’s not just that one instance. she’s either bi-polar (multiple personality disorder) or one of the writers is. she tells her new/dead captain philippa georgiou that she wanted to work for the vulcan science institute, and that this ship was her safety school, but later she testifies, in her own defense, that she dreamed of joining starfleet since she was a girl.

          • Yasmin Mazur

            starfleet has a lot of places to work in – not just the starships.
            anyway – not being 100% logical doesn’t mean she has multipul personality disorder – she wants to be logical, but she fails – that’s not 2 personalities, that’s just not living up to her own ideals. Bi-polar? she doesn’t actually have mood swings – I dare you to stay perky and optimistic when on the brink of an interspecies war.
            She does take things very hard, and she is reckless – but I doubt she has any mental disorders. She’s a human trying to be a vulcan – that can mess her up on its own.

          • Yasmin Mazur

            netflix here has only the episodes aired so far. I saw ep 4 yesterday – I like how the show stays optimistic after everything is said and done.

            regarding beaming technology – I’m not an expert – but I thought they have to know the shape of the object they’re sending – scanning it properly or something like that. The bombs are there next to the scanning device, and the decoy body. The bodies on the ship aren’t. If there’s a badge, they can use that to do the scanning – but not indefinitely. Still – she should have taken at least the Captain’s body with her when she left the ship. Seriously – what they did with the body – yuck.
            Anyway – plot holes are to be expected – I think they left the bodies behind to get the story moving – yuck again.

            I don’t know if trying to redeam herself after the mutinee is bipolar – she would be a bit extra suicidal after disapointing her captain like that – probably thought she could either repair the damage or die trying.

      • Kid Chaos

        Speaking of Discovery on Netflix in the USA…I think it’s coming soon, because it keeps showing up on my iPhone. I can’t play the episodes, though, and it doesn’t show up on any other platform–yet. Stay tuned… 😎

  • Hfar

    Only your best friend can cut off your head. Wait…

    • Arkone Axon

      That was literally true. Think about what kind of agony Tadashi must be in. You want someone you TRUST to end your suffering with a single clean slice.

      • Wanderer

        Of course, Genchu might not be up to making the best quality cut given the state of his arm. Anyone want to bet that, like it or not, Yori may have to finish off poor Tadashii?

        • Leandro Toniut

          I can imagine him missing the slash and getting his sword stuck on Tadashi’s shoulder. Yori still can’t bring himself to deal the finishing blow and Tadashi is in so much pain.

  • Wanderer

    Oh, Tadashii… there you go fulfilling the oldest samurai tradition of them all: dying to carry out bad orders, or the orders of bad men.

    And now with Tadashii and Atsumori dead, by far the two most decent and honorable members of the Wataro clan are gone right when the clan needs men who are either honorable or reasonable or both in the upper echelons. I wonder what disasters will befall the clan due to their absence

    *Goes off to listen to that sad background music from Ghost Dog for a minute to mourn the passing of a samurai* (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvqzJTvp3AA)

  • reynard61

    Either way, it seems to be the catalyst to the show’s main ‘redemption’ plotline for first officer Michael (her first name is Micheal, they acknowledge that’s an odd name for a woman so maybe we’ll get an explanation for it).

    There’s at least one contemporary example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Learned

  • http://kiwidayn.comicgenesis.com ColdFusion

    I don’t know if I’d so much say “nakedly visible” as “overly complained about, and either completely solved or completely ignored despite the complaints remaining in either case” but yeah basically

  • Leandro Toniut

    “Fancy seeing a corpse around here. Nope. Don’t mind me. You are dead to me and as a matter of fact I killed you. Go away. Shoo.”

  • Kid Chaos

    “You’re not my Daimyo yet…” So the final boss will be Dear Old Dad? *sigh* I had a feeling that it would come to this… 👿

  • Xinef

    Yori, Yori… still such a kiddo.

    How many teachers does it take to make him into a grown man?

    … maybe he’s a lightbulb from one of those jokes?

    _____________
    Also, what a wonderful situation for Yori and Genchu to meet again, after so many years. While Yori certainly didn’t make a good “first impression” about what he’s become after all those years, I wonder what these two will do and say after they’re done dealing with the current situation.

    • Kid Chaos

      “My girlfriend is a Senshin Princess. Oh, and just wait until you meet Lord Masuhiro, and talk to Cho; has he got some stories! Oh, and Ken’s here, too, but fuck that guy…” 😜

    • clogboy

      “How many heads must a grown man chop, before you can call him a man?
      The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind…”
      – “Go home, Cho, you’re drunk.”

    • clogboy

      It’s interesting how Tadashii kicked Genchu out of town first, gave him a
      notice to stay away, and now not only calls him master, but also grants
      him the honor of assisting him.
      Genchu will have words with Yori. That much should be certain.

  • Eric

    Obviously good interdepartmental communication is important for a Daimyo, and it’s good that Tadashii is trying to get that point across to Yori.

    Still, I think he’s going a bit overboard in his protest about not receiving the memo that there’s No Need for Bushido.

  • Nos Rin aka CTCO

    I heard the comedy knock off with that one guy was actually half decent and that the biggest issue with STD (lol forever) is the time placement. if it was legit reboot or a further down the line story people would be more accepting of it but wow, seriously a pay wall? pathetic.

  • Nos Rin aka CTCO

    In other news. I found season one of Andromeda at wally. I hope they get in the other seasons I will buy them all ON SIGHT.

  • Nos Rin aka CTCO

    My biggest issue I can say at the moment with star trek, has to be Q.
    It’s just, silly and ridiculous and overly OP to have a character THAT powerful. “reality as our feeble minds know it because he is so smart and advanced” is still dumb.

  • JadedDragoon

    In response to your commentary… well…

    First, I’ll say I felt the Klingons were far more nuanced than they have ever been. In the old shows I kinda glaze over when “Klingon stuff” happens cause it’s all so over-the-top and silly. Worf didn’t really have much in the way of nuanced character development till he appeared on DS9… and that just made the other Klingons like Martog seem even sillier.

    As for the “lights a torch and klingons go to war” it was _slightly_ more complex than that, what with prophecy and culture playing into it… but that’s exactly the kind of not-nuanced weirdness I remember from TNG and DS9.

    And as to political allegory, I can only assume you’ve gone out of your way to turn the TV/internet off every time the subject of Trump has come up (I wish I felt safe doing so myself). T’Kuvma isn’t Trump… but his rhetoric and the behavior of his followers is strikingly similar. And that’s _quite_ intentional on the part of the writers. They’ve even said so in interviews.

    To be fair, they don’t portray the T’Kuvma followers’ “Klingon for Klingons” movement as inherently evil. They show it’s unifying power in the way it pushes acceptance of Klingons who have previously been outcasts and in how it brings together the empire to face a common foe. But it also shows the dangers in how it allows one man to manufacture that foe from his people’s anxieties and then use that newly legitimized fear to empower himself and those who would use his new-found status among the populous for their own agendas.

    I dunno… frankly I’ve come to the conclusion that ST:D has too _much_ depth. It seems to be going over most people’s heads. Facebook is overflowing with people saying Micheal Burnham is irredeemable… but it’s like they turned the screen off every time the Klingons show up cause they all seem to think the war wouldn’t have happened if not for Burnham… when, in truth, Burnham came very very close to preventing the war T’Kuvma was _very_ intentionally trying to start and if she had been a “good” Starfleet officer things would have played out the same as far as the war starting goes. It’s only because the Federation and Burnham herself aren’t privy to what T’Kuvma was saying and doing on his own ship that any of them think Burnham is to blame for this war. And even that is perfectly in line with typical real-life human behavior… as people’s fear leads them to look for a scapegoat and Burnham’s self-inflicted angst is leading her to welcome their fear-induced hatred.

    While you at least seem to have understood that much… you still make the statement that Klingons are less politically nuanced. Compared to what? Arbitrary “WAARRRGGG! I AM BARBARIC WARRIOR CULTURE!” and arbitrary “Federation makes us weak”? That’s all the political nuance the TNG-DS9 Klingons had. Again, the only nuance to be found among TNG-DS9 Klingons was Worf and then only when Alexander is around or on DS9.

    And that the new ST:D has no political allegory? Between the Klingons demonstrating the best and worst of extreme conservatism, Captain Lorca’s “security before liberty” behavioral problems, and the repeated references to the Federation’s not-quite-as-perfect-as-it-claims utopic future-society (specifically how it manages to put the people just trying to live their lives in harms way with it’s morally high-minded wars… Operation Iraqi Freedom anyone?)… this show is _dripping_ with political allegory. If you squeeze it you’ll need a mop to clean up all the political allegory that comes out.

    And continuity? Remember the House of Duras with it’s repetitive “The Federation makes us weak” bs? That’s the lingering ideology of T’Kuvma right there… with his claim that “We come in peace” is nothing more than a deception to make unique cultures like those of the Klingons allow themselves to be overtaken and “tainted” by _weak_ Federation ideology. Now “frederation makes us weak” isn’t arbitrary any more… we now know how that got started. And the guys in the prison shuttle grousing about “the little people” being under foot in yet another Federation war? There’s your proto-genesis for the Marquis movement. And Lt. Stamets’ little “bio-chemisty _as_ quantum-physics” speech? Hello Project Genesis a la “KHAAAAAAAANNNNN!” Not that what he’s saying is fiction, mind you. (Bio-)chemistry as (quantum-)physics really is how it works IRL. One thing I did find a bit jarring was how a Vulcan trained scientist didn’t instantly get that… but… well… that might just be me over-estimating the average persons’ abilities again.

    So I dunno. Like I said, you seem to be getting a lot more of the nuance of this show than most of the people on Facebook, at least… but you still miss a lot. And… well… I don’t think that’s cause you or the people on Facebook are “dumb”. Not to put too fine a point on it but I was reading on a college level when I was in elementary school. So if it takes someone with far above average comprehension skills like me to even be able to follow the plot of the new Trek… then maybe perhaps the writers on this new series could use a little reminder that not even all die-hard Trek fans eat, breath, and sleep Trek plot lines they way they do.

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