#he's also a space captain I PROMISE HES NOT STAR TREK RELATED

[sirwormbell-the4st]

Only one other person in the world gaf about him but idc!!!!! This is cyro my alien oc who's been around for. over a year now. way before i got into star trek. isn't he such a creature?

[chnqin]

Ok, so I’m sure this has been done 100 times before, but my main is ostensibly a Star Trek blog so I am contractually obliged to do this.

STAR TREK AU!

WELCOME to the USS Shuoyue, a research and exploritative constitution-class starship captained by the young but promising Lan Xichen and his crew:

Captain Lan Xichen - Captain

Commander Lan Wangji - First Officer

Lieutenant Commander Wei Wuxian - Head of engineering

Lieutenant Commander Wen Qing - Chief Medical Officer

Lieutenant Commander Meng Yao - Quartermaster and second officer

Commander Nie Mingjue - Chief Security/tactical officer and third officer

Lieutenant Jiang Yanli - Head of Communications

Lieutenant Jiang Cheng - Chief Conn Officer (navigator & helmsman)

Lieutenant Nie Huaisang - Tactical & Operations officer

Lieutenant Luo Qingyang - Comms officer, works closely with Nie Mingjue in security and tactics

Lieutenant junior grade Wen Ning - Science officer, specialising in botanical pathology and exobotany

Jin Zixuan - a diplomat, like his father

Character backgrounds

Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen are half Vulcan (I know, I know, I am literally making Lan Wangji Spock but also tell me that he isn’t, you can’t. Also Lans and Vulcans share a lot of similarities), with a human mother and Vulcan father. Their parents are both dead now, but their uncle - a high ranking member of the Vulcan High Council - was not happy about them joining Starfleet. Both were raised on Vulcan. Although Lan Wangji and Lan Xichen’s appearance is similar on an aesthetic level (looking primarily Vulcan), Lan Xichen takes more after his human mother physiologically, and is therefore able to express more emotion without being worried about being overwhelmed by those emotions. Lan Wangji, on the other hand, has a more Vulcan genetic makeup and therefore has to more carefully control his emotions, which are strong and volatile under the surface. Freaky Lan arm strength is here being translated into superior Vulcan strength. The only person who can regularly spar with Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji is Nie Mingjue (although Wei Wuxian when he joins the ship can give them a run for their money).

Wei Wuxian’s father was human, but his mother was half Betazoid half Bajoran, so he has a very unusual mix, and doesn’t really feel like he quite fits in anywhere (I struggled to decide between making him half Betazoid or half Bajoran - the latter has the tragic backstory and the former has maybe a bit more of the personality, and the telepathic powers sort of mirror aspects of his demonic cultivation - so I made him both because it’s my universe and I can). His parents were killed in a freak space accident, and bby Wei Ying was left at a space port, where he lived by sneaking around and stealing things for a few years. The Jiang Family, like the Jins, were diplomats and were travelling through the space station one day and found him. When they found out who his parents were they decided to adopt him (in this AU I think they have a closer and less conflicted relationship than in canon.) Though he grew up on earth, Wei Wuxian’s most dominant genes are his betazoid ones (he has the cute Bajoran nose ridge though), and he struggles with the psionic abilities which are inherent to that species, but can manifest themselves in odd ways in hybrids. This has caused him a lot of problems, and his telepathic abilities had him accused of cheating at the academy, but that is all in the past now (or is it?).

I thought I would make the Wens Romulans, because I don’t want everyone to be human and I think it fits the sect, and also attitudes towards Romulans in general aimed at WN and WQ mirrors their persecution in canon. Wen Qing is actually the one who recommended Wei Wuxian as chief engineer. They studied at the academy together and she knows he’s the best at what he does. Wen Qing and Wen Ning have claimed a sort of asylum from the Federation, who still do not get on with the Romulans. Both of them are incredibly good at what they do and Starfleet is happy to have them, although they moved around a few ships before they found one which accepted them (that the Shuoyue’s Captain and XO are both Vulcans helps). The ship has orders that if they encounter Romulans WQ and WN are to be hidden for their own safety.

The Jins and Jiangs are human, and I was considering making the Nies Klingon, but I’m not 100% on that. If they are then Nie Huiasang’s mother was human, and he is viewed as extremely weak by all his relatives on his father’s side and ridiculously strong by those on his mother’s side, even though he tries to hide it.

Meng Yao’s mother was Orion, which is why everyone is a huge dick to him (Jin Guangshan continues to be as sleazy and awful as possible in every universe). Meng Yao is both quartermaster and 2nd officer because both those roles suit him perfectly. The description of a second officer: “The 2O is often the closest officer to the XO and the CO due to the three generally being the most senior officers aboard. As such, the 2O also often acts as the CO's second conscience and confidante. It is another primary duty of the Second Officer to spearhead secondary away teams. This is so that the CO can remain safe in the confines of the bridge. The 2O is the assistant chief administrative officer on the ship and frequently helps the XO act as liaison between department heads.” In this AU his acceptance into Starfleet replaced the acceptance he wanted from his father, and his talents were appreciated a lot more in Starfleet than with the Diplomatic Dicks Association (as Wei Wuxian coined the Jins). As such, he is less evil and murder-y, and more sneaky and silently ruthless to their enemies.

Nie Mingjue is the third officer, but also a commander, which seems odd, but the chief tactical officer is often combined with 3rd officer, and he prefers to stick to training the crew and ensuring the security and safe running of the ship, rather than focussing on more administrative tasks and matters of diplomacy. However, he has a lot of experience and has earned a high rank as an officer, so only Lan Xichen outranks him. He’s been asked to captain his own ship many times but doesn’t want to have to deal with the bureaucracy that goes along with it.

People say that Nie Huaisang only became a lieutenant because of his brother, but he actually does most of the tactical side of things in the background. He works closely with Jiang Yanli from the operations side of things, and with Luo Qingyang from the security side, as well as his brother, and his unofficial job is in intelligence. He often gets sent on diplomatic away missions.

Although it is unusual for the head of engineering to go on away missions, Wei Wuxian like to come along when possible - first, because it allows him to annoy Lan Wangji; secondly, because he’s a curious (“You mean nosy” “Shut up Jiang Cheng”) person and he likes to meet new civilisations; and thirdly, because things often go wrong and it has been his inventive ability which has often gotten the away team out of trouble.

Lan Xichen, Jiang Yanli, and Meng Yao are the ones sent for missions which involve diplomacy. They all have additional diplomatic training on top of their existing held ranks, and Jiang Yanli is an expert in xeno-relations.

Jiang Cheng is the helmsman and navigator, and is on the command track. One day he hopes to captain a ship of his own with his siblings next to him.

The story begins with a transfer of three new personnel to the ship

Though unusual to have a changeover involving three officers at one time, Wei Wuxian, Jiang Yanli, and Jiang Cheng are an effective team which should not be split up. They don’t have long to get used to their new ship and crew before they are given orders to transfer a team of diplomats to a new Federation planet - a team of diplomats including Jin Zixuan (the man Jiang Yanli joined Starfleet to get away from after their betrothal was broken) and Jin Guangshan (all around bastard; the man Meng Yao mosts hates in this world). As if the journey wasn’t tense enough, Jin Guangshan is promptly murdered upon arrival at the planet, and there are too many suspects to count.

These are the voyages of the Star Ship Shuoyue...

[weerd1]

Star Trek DS9 Rewatch Log, Stardate 1908.06: Missions Reviewed, “Indiscretion,” “Rejoined,” “Starship Down,” and “Little Green Men.”

“Indiscretion” gives us Maj. Kira hearing from a skeezy old contact that a missing Cardassian prisoner transport that disappeared may have been found, and she immediately plans to investigate. However, in the interest of furthering Bajoran and Cardassian relations, the new Cardassian government insists on sending a representative: Gul Dukat. 

Meanwhile, Kassidy Yates is talking about moving permanently onto DS9, which catches Sisko a little off guard. His reaction puts her off, and he has to figure out how to make this right, and if indeed this is the next step he wants to take. Kira and Dukat track the ship, and Kira realizes Dukat has a personal interest: his Bajoran mistress was on board with a daughter…his daughter. Kira is at first sympathetic but realizes he intends to kill the girl in order to preserve his status on Cardassia. She needs him though as the survivors are being used as slave labor by the Breen, and Kira can’t rescue them alone. When they have Tora Ziyal safe, Kira is prepared to shoot Dukat to save the girl, but he relents, promising to take her back to Cardassia and face the consequences.  

Written during the “We’re going to make you like Dukat” era of DS9, the writers effectively tease us with the fact he is still insufferable but slowly coming around.  Some comic relief even shows up as Kira removes a splinter from his posterior. 

Introducing the character of Ziyal does put Dukat on an interesting arc…though redemption won’t be the destination.  The Sisko/Yates scenes are amusing as well and bode well for those two characters continued development.  The Breen are introduced, and to me they always seemed to have some tie to Boushh, Leia’s disguise in “Return of the Jedi.” They will of course come into play when the Dominion War takes off, but will remain mysterious.

In “Rejoined,” a Trill science team comes to the station with the plan of creating an artificial wormhole.  The lead scientist has a symbiont who in a previous host was married to one of Dax’s previous hosts. 

 “Reassociation” is a severe taboo in Trill society, and could result in being banished from the homeworld, which would mean the symbiont could not be passed on to another host, effectively ending its life. Jadzia and Lenara are initially awkward together, but work together easily, and the attraction between them begins to grow.  Eventually, when there is an accident in the experiment, Dax realizes she never wants to lose Lenara again, and asks her to stay on DS9, accept the exile, and rekindle their love. 

 Lenara considers, but cannot bring herself to give her work and life up, and leaves when the experiments are over, leaving a broken hearted Dax in her wake.

For an episode from the mid 1990s, this is a remarkable way of dealing with homosexuality.  What’s truly brilliant is the way the story makes the Taboo the Trill reassociation, NOT the gender of the hosts, so NO ONE in the episode questions the two of them being married because they are women.  Kira even gives an impassioned speech about choice and love, and at no point is gender mentioned.  Very ahead of its time, and very heartbreaking when it doesn’t work out. Susanna Thompson who plays Lenara will of course go on to play the Borg Queen in a few episodes of Voyager, and Moira Queen on “Arrow.”  Sci Fi Royalty all around!

The Defiant becomes a “Starship Down” in the Gamma Quadrant! While negotiating with a partner there the Defiant is attacked by two Jem’Hadar fighters. 

 The trade ship and the Defiant descend into the atmosphere of a gas giant to evade their attackers. Blinded in the atmosphere the cat and mouse continues after Sisko is hurt with Worf taking over the combat. He pushes too hard, and O’Brien gives him advice on how to better work with the other officers. Kira meanwhile is trying to keep Sisko alive while dealing with the fact that he is The Emissary.  She admits her discomfort and wonders if they have not bonded more because of the unspoken issues that he is kind of her Messiah. Worf manages to defeat the Dominion Forces, and back on DS9, Sisko invites Kira to a holosuite baseball game.

Something seems off on this episode.  I applaud the adaptation of the old submarine warfare tropes, though I don’t think they do it as well as “Balance of Terror” did on the Original Series. It’s weird seeing Worf have  to practice how to deal with human officers; it’s not like he’s fresh, he’s been working with humans on the Enterprise for years. The Kira/Sisko stuff is kind of interesting, and I am always a sucker for dealing with the Bajoran religion and its ramificaitons.  Fun to see James Cromwell (Zephram Cochrane in “First Contact”) here as well as the alien negotiator. Otherwise, everyone else just seems…off.

“Little Green Men” Lightens the mood however. With Nog preparing to head off to Starfleet Academy, Quark offers to take him on the new ship he just inherited from the often mentioned cousin Gayla. On the way there though, Rom realizes Quark is actually smuggling some contraband, and that Gayla has sabotaged the shuttle.  Using the elicit merch to counter the sabotage, they are thrown back in time to 1947, where they have crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. 

 In the custody of the US Army, they have to reactivate their universal translators to even talk to the primitive Hew-Mons, who do things like light tobacco and fire and breathe it, and irradiate their own planet with nuclear fission.  Quark begins to scheme to ‘bargain’ the whole planet under his control, but the Army starts playing hardball.

  Luckily, knowing he was smuggling, it turns out Odo was stowed away and knows where they can find their ship.  As luck would have it there’s about to be another nuclear test, and they can use that explosion to make another temporal distortion…if there’s enough of the contraband “kemosite” on board. Luckily there is, and they return to the right year and get Nog safely to Starfleet. Meanwhile Quark has to scrap the ship to get money for passage home. Odo wants to arrest him, but he points out there is no proof: all the kemosite was used in the time warp!

Definitely a fun ep but one that the expanded universe of the novels used to great effect talking about the Ferengi tech studies from Area 51 being used to design the Botany Bay that Khan would later leave Earth in during the Eugenics Wars. Also neat to see Charles Napier guest star here, since he was a space hippy in the TOS episode “The Way to Eden;” now he is a Herbert as the Army General in charge. The best part of the whole episode though is Nog studying an Earth history program and asking his father if he thinks some guy named Gabriel Bell from the 2020s looks just like Captain Sisko.

NEXT VOYAGE: It’s Klingonpalooza on DS9 as Kor joins Worf and Jadzia as they search for the legendary “Sword of Kahless”!  tlhIngan maH! taHjaj!

[phantom-le6]

Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4 (1 of 6)

Ok, I’ve been procrastinating on this for a while, so without further ado, let’s renew our look into episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation by warping into the start of the show’s fourth season, beginning with the conclusion to the ground-breaking two-part story “The Best of Both Worlds”.

Episode 1: The Best of Both Worlds (Part 2)

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The discharge fired from the Enterprise’s deflector dish has no effect on the Borg cube; Locutus reveals that the Borg had prepared for the attack using Captain Picard's knowledge. The Borg cube continues at warp speed towards Earth, with the crippled Enterprise unable to follow. Upon reporting their failure to Admiral Hanson, Commander Riker is promoted to Captain and makes Commander Shelby his first officer. The crew learns that a fleet of starships is massing at Wolf 359 to stop the Borg. Guinan suggests to Riker that he "let go of Picard", since Picard's knowledge is being used to thwart Starfleet tactics, in order to defeat the Borg and possibly save Picard's life.

 The Enterprise arrives at Wolf 359 to find that Hanson has been killed and the fleet destroyed, including the starship Riker had been offered command of in Part 1. The Enterprise then follows the cube's warp trail to an intercept point and offers to negotiate with Locutus. The request is denied, but the communication reveals Locutus's location within the cube. The Enterprise then separates into saucer and stardrive sections. Although Shelby suggested attacking with the stardrive section, Riker does the reverse and orders the saucer section to fire an antimatter spread near the cube, disrupting its sensors and allowing a shuttlecraft piloted by Lt. Commander Data and Lt. Worf to pass the Borg shields and beam aboard the Borg cube. They kidnap Locutus, although the Borg ignore this and continue to Earth.

 Data and Dr Crusher create a neural link with Locutus to gain access to the Borg's collective consciousness. Data attempts to use the link to disable the Borg's weapons and defensive systems, but cannot, as they are protected by security protocols. Picard breaks free from Borg control and mutters, "sleep". Dr Crusher comments that Picard must be exhausted from this ordeal, however Data deduces that Picard is suggesting accessing the Borg regeneration subroutines, which are less protected than key systems like weapons or power. Data issues a command to the Borg to enter sleep mode, causing their weapons and shields to deactivate. A feedback loop builds in the Borg cube, which destroys the vessel. Dr Crusher and Data remove the Borg implants and augmentations from Picard.

 The Enterprise is awaiting repairs at an orbital shipyard, and Riker, although offered command of his own ship, insists on remaining as first officer. Shelby is reassigned to a task force dedicated to rebuilding the fleet. Picard physically recovers, but is still psychologically disturbed by his ordeal.

Review:

While Part 1 was great for the first season-bridging two-part cliff-hanger of TNG and of wider Trek lore ever to be done, the second part comes to drop the ball a little on delivering follow-through to part 1’s set-up.  Granted, we still get some decent character performances and a good plot with what little decent action the episode could afford, but it’s ultimately failing to deliver on the level of action that is at times promised.  Anyone coming into this from watching some later Trek productions like DS9’s story lines with fighting first the Klingons and then the Cardassian-Dominion alliance will see just how much this episode falls short on the action front; indeed, it’s not until DS9’s pilot episode that we get to see the infamous Battle of Wolf 359 in any real detail, as opposed to a DS9 episode like ‘Sacrifice of Angels’ which is almost wall-to-wall starship action at times.

 The solution also seems to come too quickly and is almost too convenient.  Part of this is because the first part was written without a solution ‘waiting in the wings’.  If Memory Alpha is to be believe, Michael Piller waited until he knew he would be staying on as TNG’s story editor before trying to write his way out the seemingly impossible-to-escape cliff-hanger he’d created in part 1.  Now while I can understand that desire not to tie yourself into a solution to something that might not be your problem, I think in any kind of continual story-telling, early parts should always be written to leave a few options open.  Even if you’re not writing the solution because you’re doing a form of writing like TV or film where you’re not guaranteed to write the next instalment, I think it’s just good manners to fellow writers and to your audience not to write a hard-to-solve cliff-hanger.

 As it is, I can’t help feeling TNG might have benefited from extending part 2 a bit more and potentially turning this into a trilogy, much as DS9 did with its season 2 opening episodes.  Still, I suppose it ends well enough, and I’m glad this episode and later ones gave us a sense that Picard remains affected by his assimilation experience.  Not only is this ground-work that later ex-Borg characters like Voyager’s Seven of Nine would rely on simply to exist, but it’s another move by the show away from being just an unending array of one-off adventures with little to no consequences for anyone involved.  That kind of overly simplistic and unrealistic story-telling just isn’t Trek-worthy, and I’m glad it was starting to die out here.  Overall score for this episode, 8 out of 10.

Episode 2: Family

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise is docked at Earth Station McKinley, undergoing repairs and refitting following its battle with the Borg. The episode follows the interactions of three members of the crew with their family members. Lt. Worf's adoptive human parents, Sergey and Helena Rozhenko visit the Enterprise, having learned about his discommendation some time ago, but also having been unable to support him as they would wish due to being lightyears apart. Worf, though embarrassed and uncomfortable with their doting behaviour at first, but in the end appreciates their concern. Dr Beverly Crusher retrieves a chest, kept in storage on Earth, containing her late husband Jack's mementos, including a holographic recording he made for Wesley when their child was only 10 weeks old. Beverly, though worried that the two of them have only recently truly come to terms with Jack's death, eventually gives the recording to Wesley. Wesley runs the recording and is given some degree of closure by the message.

 Captain Picard, recovering from his Borg assimilation, visits his family's vineyard in La Barre, France, which is run by his elder brother Robert along with his wife Marie and son René. Jean-Luc considers a position on Earth with an underwater research project called Atlantis. Robert has always been jealous of his brother's success and is concerned that Jean-Luc's presence will drive René to also join Starfleet. The two have a bitter argument and end up wrestling each other in a mud puddle, eventually culminating in an emotional reunion, with Jean-Luc breaking down and crying, admitting his sense of powerlessness and guilt at the things he was forced to do while under the influence of the Borg. Robert states that Jean-Luc will have to learn to live with what he did, regardless of where he goes. Jean-Luc decides to go back to the Enterprise. The two spend the night getting drunk as they resolve their differences. After Jean-Luc leaves, Robert decides to let René follow his dream to join Starfleet as René sits under a tree and looks up at space.

Review:

This episode really helps the previous one in terms of moving TNG away from being a series without consequence.  While Wesley’s storyline is little more than filler covering a bit more screen-time that the other plots could have made better use of, Worf’s part in the episode is our first real sense of follow-on from ‘Sins of the Father’.  At last, Worf’s discommendation gets its first notable repeat mention, and at the same time we get to see our first glimpse into the human family that raised Worf. Their part in this episode brings up some great little messages about good parenting, and as Guinnan points out, there are a lot of parents out there who could stand to learn something from the Rozhenkos.

 However, the real sign that TNG is starting to take the idea of multi-episode story-telling seriously in this episode is Picard’s story.  ‘Best of Both Worlds’ essentially hinted that Picard remained shaken by his experiences with the Borg, but that was as far as it went.  ‘Family’ brings Picard down to Earth, literally, by having him go home and be cajoled into dealing with those experiences by the only people who could do that; his family.  Ultimately, that’s the role that Picard’s family, or more accurately his brother, has to play in this episode; to be the spur that forces Picard to drop his outer reserve and let himself feel what he needs to in order to better deal with the mental trauma.

 In many ways, it’s not unlike the kind of mental cajoling and breaking through a therapist might use in helping a patient deal with mental trauma, and I think the only reason Troi doesn’t provide this is because she’s part of Picard’s crew, and there’s only so far Picard would ever go to open up around those under his command.  Ultimately, it has to be Robert that pushes his younger brother into opening up, and who points out that no matter what Picard does, the experience isn’t going to go away whether you avoid anything related to the source of that trauma or not.  It’s a great message that I imagine many people suffering with psychological traumas could identify with and take as advice themselves, which adds in what defines Trek at its best; issue exploration through metaphor. Discounting the wasted time on the Wesley plot, I’d give this episode 9 out of 10.

Episode 3: Brothers

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

A misguided prank between two young brothers exposes the younger of them to a toxic parasite that cannot be treated aboard the Enterprise, but Dr Crusher is able to stabilize his condition in a controlled environment in Sickbay while the ship sets out for a starbase that can cure the boy. As Lt. Commander Data escorts the older brother to visit his sibling, he suddenly stops and returns to the bridge where, unseen by the crew, he sets a new course for the ship and triggers a life support alarm, causing the evacuation of the bridge to be ordered. Captain Picard orders navigational control transferred the controls to Engineering while the rest of the bridge crew evacuates, but Data remains on the bridge, mimics Picard's voice and locks down control of the ship with a complex access code, preventing any interference with his actions. The crew discover Data's lock-down and manually disable the transporter's site-to-site function to prevent Data from easily moving about the ship. Once the Enterprise is in orbit about the planet Terlina III, Data creates a programmed sequence of force fields to allow him to move from the bridge to the nearest transporter room without being stopped by security, and then beams down to the planet, leaving the Enterprise still under his lock-down. Picard orders his crew to attempt to override Data's lock-down of the ship, while Dr Crusher attempts to keep the infected boy stabilized.

 Data finds himself in the home of his creator, Dr Noonien Soong. Soong states that he called Data to him using a form of automatic recall and makes a manual adjustment on Data to return him to normal. As they talk, they are joined by Lore, inadvertently also drawn by the same recall that Data received, since Soong assumed that Lore was still disassembled. Lore expresses resentment towards his creator and starts to leave, but stops when Soong tells both of his creations that he is dying and wishes to give Data an "emotion chip" he has created. Soong decides to rest before implanting the chip, leaving Data and Lore to talk. When he returns, he proceeds to implant the chip but discovers too late that Lore had managed to deactivate Data and switch clothing with him, so that he now possesses the emotion chip. Soong tries to warn Lore the chip is not meant for him, but Lore instead injures Soong and transports off the planet.

 The crew of the Enterprise find a way to beam down an away team to the planet, where they discover the dying Soong and the deactivated Data. After Data is reactivated, he cannot recall any of what he did on the Enterprise to arrive at this planet, until Soong reveals to him where he can find that information stored in his memory files. Data apologizes to Soong that he will not be able to grieve for his loss, but Soong tells him he will grieve in his own way. After Soong states that he wishes to die on the planet, the Enterprise leaves and returns to its course to the medical facility, where the sick boy is successfully treated. Data observes the brothers at play after forgiving each other for the accident, contemplating his own relationship with Lore.

Review:

This episode is the second in a trilogy that covers the concept of family, although this time we’re exploring it through Data being reunited with his creator, as well as fellow android Lore; in essence, the reunification of a somewhat dysfunctional father-and-sons dynamic that bears echoes of the Thor-Loki-Odin relationship of Marvel lore.  Not only is this a great little character piece for Data, but Brent Spiner actually plays all three members of this family.  It’s a remarkable enough technical feat to see one actor play two roles, such as when Lisa Kudrow would play Phoebe Buffay’s twin sister Ursula in episodes of Friends or the earlier TNG episode ‘Datalore’ where Spiner played Data and Lore.  Playing three characters in one episode, however, is all the more remarkable.

 The main plot is very good, albeit lacking any real issue exploration because it is ultimately just a character piece.  We also get to see some of Data’s more advanced abilities unleashed, such as his voice emulation and higher-level computer programming abilities.  For anything close to issue exploration, it’s the guest siblings, or rather the younger one, that makes the closest thing to a salient point about anything of note. When Dr Crusher is trying to convince the kid to forgive his older brother for the prank gone wrong, the lad claims he’s never played practical jokes on anyone, even for April Fools, because he feels “it’s not funny for the person being pranked.”

 As someone with autism who can’t generally separate practical jokes from bullying and sees the two of fundamentally synonymous except where the victim has behaved so poorly that a practical joke is equitable punishment, I totally agree with this kid’s assessment of practical joking.  Such pranks, outside of punishing truly horrendous people and the slapstick antics of something like Looney Toons, are little more than the cruellest, stupidest and generally most immature of all humour forms imaginable.  It’s not funny because it is essentially humour in weaponised form, laughter directed against a victim in mockery and shame, and in any truly enlightened society it simply has no place, save for an occasional punishment of necessity.  Likewise, anything that encourages practical jokes as a generally accepted form of humour like April Fools should be banned.

 Hell, April Fools only started because some idiots several centuries back refused to shift from an old model of calendars to a new one.  How the hell does that justify all the stupidity of April Fools all this time later?  The answer is simple; it never has, and the only true fools are the ones who still celebrate the custom instead of opting out. Frankly, the fact that pranks and April Fools haven’t been edited out of society by the time TNG is set is a flaw in the supposedly utopian world of Trek.  If humans are still using humour as a weapon like this by the 24th century, if we haven’t grown up properly by then, how the hell have we managed to establish the kind of world that Trek claims to be.  To say I am disappointed by this facet of this episode, and Trek as a whole, is to woefully understate things.  Because of this, what might have been a top-scoring episode despite an otherwise total lack of issue-depth becomes worth 8 out of 10.

Episode 4: Suddenly Human

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise responds to a distress call from a Talarian vessel. They rescue five teenaged crewmembers - four Talarian, and one human, Jono.

Jono keeps to himself, but shows strict obedience to Captain Picard, which together with some unexplained past injuries leads Dr Crusher to suggest Jono may have been physically abused. It is determined that Jono is Jeremiah Rossa, a long-lost Federation citizen. His grandmother is a Starfleet admiral, and he was orphaned ten years ago when his parents were killed in a skirmish with the Talarians.

 When the Captain introduces the topic of Jono's human family, Jono becomes angry. After persistent effort by Picard, Jono's memories of the attack begin to return and a friendship develops between Jono and Wesley Crusher.

 A Talarian ship arrives. Its Captain, Endar, asks for a status on his son, who happens to be Jono. Ten years ago, Endar claimed Jono after Jono's parents were killed. This is part of the Talarian custom of adopting the children of slain enemies to replace their own children who have died in battle. Endar explains Jono's injuries as the products of a boy trying to impress his father by participating in high-risk activities; Picard seems satisfied and observes that Endar seems to care for Jono. Picard allows Endar to see Jono, but when Jono says he wants to stay with Endar, Picard suspects the boy is afraid to say he wants to stay in the Federation. Endar insists that Jono will come back with him, even if the result is war between the Talarians and the Federation.

 Returning to his vessel, Endar calls for reinforcements, as Picard decides to try to convince Jono to stay. After Jono receives a message from his grandmother, Picard takes the boy to play a form of racquetball, where Jono breaks down and cries due to the sounds of the game triggering long-buried memories of his human parents being killed. The crew believes they are making progress with the boy, but that night, Jono stabs the Captain. The dagger is deflected by Picard's sternum, and the wound is minor. The problem of where Jono should live is now compounded as Jono has committed a crime.

 When Picard learns that Jono feels he cannot betray Endar by befriending Picard, the Captain realizes he has been trying to impose his wishes on the boy. Just as Endar's patience is about to run out, Picard contacts the Talarians and lets them know he will let Jono go back. Jono bids Picard farewell with a Talarian ritual that is normally reserved for family members.

Review:

This is the third episode on the trot that covers the theme of family, and again we get a different perspective.  The apparent intention behind it was to explore something the show normally looks at using Worf, namely if you raise a child of one culture in another culture, can they ever be of their birth culture or do they inevitably revert to the culture they were raised in.  However, exploration of this is partly muddled by the fact that the episode raises issues of child abuse regarding the Talarian-raised human teenager that the episode focuses on.  Some less observant and more reactionary viewers seem to think the conclusion of the episode effectively condones child abuse, since those the Enterprise crew suspect of abusing the child get custody in the end.  However, the episode clearly shows Jono’s injuries result from the physically harsh games of the world where he grows up, and as such are simply accidental injuries rather than intentional ones.

 I think if there is a message regarding child abuse and custody cases in this episode despite the intentions of the writers, it’s not to let your suspicions and the personal emotions that stem from those suspicions cloud your judgement.  While better safe than sorry is undoubtedly a wise policy for anyone to adhere to, I think that some people can be inclined to wrap their children up in cotton wool for fear that if their child gets injured even by accident, the state will use it as an excuse to label them as abusers to satisfy themselves.  Such fears are perfectly understandable, as this episode clearly shows how easy it can be even for the supposedly enlightened and more rational humanity of the 24th century to leap to the worst possible conclusions and act from those rather considering all the facts.  As soon as they see Jono is human, and once Dr Crusher finds broken bones and assumes abuse, the crew is hell-bent on winning Jono back to humanity, even when the broken bones are explained away as accidental, all because the Enterprise crew values its own assumptions over actual fact.

 I also think the episode is a victim of when it was made; the later TV franchise of CSI shows the medical examiners of their various shows identifying whether certain injuries could be accidentally or deliberately inflicted, and the earliest of those shows began about a decade after this episode.  This makes me wonder if forensic medicine had yet to develop this science far enough in 1990 that a show like TNG could capitalise on it in the same way.  After all, if early 21st century MEs can determine the difference between an accidental bone fracture and one caused by an act of abuse, you’d think a 24th century doctor like Beverley Crusher could make similar determinations.  As it is, this lack of diagnostic accuracy on Crusher’s part only adds to the error committed by Picard, and it’s only at the end when Jono is driven to violence that anyone realises ‘ok, we’ve messed up and mis-read the entire situation.’

 What makes the whole thing really stupid, however, is that Jono’s situation is something of a mirror to Worf’s, and yet Worf is among those seeking to insist upon Jono throwing off his adoptive culture for his birth one.  That seems very hypocritical coming from a Klingon who has gone into Star Fleet; if Worf were to live by the gospel of this episode, he’d have gone back to the Klingon empire as soon as he was old enough.  Has he done that?  No, he’s the tactical officer and chief of security for the Federation flagship, for crying out loud.  For someone from a race valuing honour so heavily, it’s just stupid and inconsistent to have Worf follow everyone else’s assumption and not argue in Jono’s corner. I won’t even start on the stupid howling ritual that had me muting the episode every time it came on.  Bottom line, this episode only gets 5 out of 10 from me.

Episode 5: Remember Me

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The USS Enterprise docks at Starbase 133, where Dr Beverly Crusher greets her elderly friend and mentor, Dr Dalen Quaice. After taking him to his quarters, discussing the loss of old friends, Dr Crusher visits her son Ensign Wesley Crusher in Engineering. Wesley attempts to create a static warp bubble, but the experiment appears to fail. As the Enterprise leaves Starbase, Dr Crusher finds that Dr Quaice is missing, with no record of him coming aboard the ship. As she performs a medical test on transporter chief O'Brien, she realizes that her medical staff is missing; further investigation and discussion with the crew show that she has always worked alone in sick bay.

 Dr Crusher continues to try to track down the disappearing people and finds more and more crew members that she remembers being completely unknown to the crew or the computer. At one point, a vortex appears near Dr Crusher and attempts to pull her in, but she is able to hold on to a fixture until it dissipates; the ship shows no record of the vortex's appearance when she investigates. Eventually, no one but Captain Picard and herself remain on the ship, but Picard believes that the situation is normal. Dr Crusher orders the computer to give Picard's vital signs over the ship's speakers so she knows he is still there, but shortly thereafter, even he disappears. Then, the vortex reappears, and once again tries to claim Beverly. She is blown across the bridge, but she manages to hang onto the chair for the Ops position until the vortex disappears.

 At this point, it is revealed that the actual Enterprise, where Wesley had successfully created the warp bubble and accidentally trapped his mother within it, is trying to rescue Dr Crusher. With the warp bubble collapsing rapidly, Wesley's fears lead the Traveller to appear and help Wesley attempt to stabilize the bubble. The Traveller recommends the Enterprise return to the Starbase, where the warp bubble was formed and may be more stable.

 Within the warp bubble, Dr Crusher attempts to direct the Enterprise to the home planet of the Traveller, but soon finds the ship is unable to set that destination, as it no longer exists. More of the universe she knows disappears, soon leaving only the Enterprise. She recognizes the shape as being that of Wesley's warp bubbles, and determines that she is trapped, the earlier vortex being the Enterprise crew's first attempt to save her. As the warp bubble shrinks, erasing parts of the Enterprise, she races for Engineering, the centre of the warp bubble, and finds a vortex waiting there. She jumps in at the last moment, finding herself back in Engineering along with Picard, Wesley, Geordi La Forge, and the Traveller. She embraces her son and obtains confirmation from Picard that the Enterprise's population is 1,014, including her guest Dr Quaice), which is the correct number.

Review:

Here we have another example of a cost-saving bottle episode made to save money where earlier episodes perhaps involved an over-spend.  It’s not up there with the like of ‘The Offspring’ for quality; it’s taking an item that was apparently intended for the earlier episode ‘Family’ and got for time, turning it into a stand-alone episode and then bringing back the Traveller, a guest character not seen since his only prior appearance in TNG’s first season. As a result, we get a re-hash of the ‘thoughts making reality’ premise from the Traveller’s one previous episode, albeit focused entirely around Beverley Crusher.  Gates McFadden does a wonderful job taking centre stage for this episode, but there’s only so much she can do to raise its quality; there’s simply not enough substance for her performance, and the performances of the other actors, to bring to life.  No character exploration, a recycled issue from a past episode.  The only reason I give it 6 out of 10 and not less is that we’re at least getting a break from the kind of stupid we got on the previous episode.

[aion-rsa]

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 2 Review: Far From Home

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This Star Trek: Discovery review contains spoilers.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3, Episode 2

Star Trek: Discovery season three continues to take its time in the second episode, which acts as a satisfying parallel to the season premiere. Last week, we followed Michael in her first day in this strange, new frontier. This week, we’re doing the same with the rest of the Discovery crew. Like Michael, their introduction to this new time begins with a traumatic, dizzying fall from space. Unlike Michael, they have one another to lean on, not to mention an entire starship to keep them safe. With sloppy writing, this kind of retread of the “stranger in a strange land” plot could have been redundant and boring, but Discovery nails it for the second week in a row, giving us further insight into how the values and the experiences of these 23rd century characters fit and don’t in this new world.

There’s something deeply unnatural about seeing a starship on the ground. Usually built in space and equipped with shuttlecrafts for away missions, a starship could conceivably live out its whole life without ever touching the surface of a planet. Because of this, if a starship is on the ground, something has probably gone terribly wrong, for example: the starship has jumped 930 years into the future and come out in the middle of an asteroid field with many of its systems straight-up not responding. Or something like that.

Like Michael in the premiere, Discovery’s first experience in this new time is crash landing onto a planet. A planet that the crew quickly realizes is not their intended destination of Terralysium (aka Burnham’s mom’s home base). Where are they? Doesn’t matter! Discovery can’t fly and can’t communicate, and Saru makes it clear to his crew that fixing these problems needs to be the priority, even if there is a shiny new future out there to explore. (Shiny new futures are like cat nip for these Federation types.) The crew goes about fixing the plasma manifold rupture, which means finding and fixing all of the EPS conduits that went boom.

But, really, where are they? OK, fine. The planet doesn’t really have a name; the few people who live in the man-made pockets of breathable atmosphere simply call their home “The Colony,” and that no-name status tells you pretty much everything you need to know about this place. It’s a backwater that no one cares about, especially, presumably, now that its mining colonies have been sabotaged. If this were a western, a genre the episode mades several explicit references to, then this would the mostly-abandoned frontier town way down on its luck.

The Colony may be a dusty frontier town, but it’s still 930 years ahead of the Discovery when it comes to tech, which is good news for the battered ship. While the crew works diligently to make the repairs necessary to get Discovery flying again before the planet’s parasitic ice crushes the hull and everyone in it (did I not mention there is parasitic, hull-crushing ice?), Saru and Tilly travel to one of the settlements in search of a repair for a broken transtator. As with any good western, they find a saloon filled with trigger-happy locals (well, two trigger happy locals). But even future folk can’t resist the one-two punch of Sar and Tilly’s earnest likability. They agree to help.

It helps that one of the miners, Kal, believes in the Federation. Like Mr. Sahil in last week’s episode, Kal is a true believer, someone who hopes for the Federation long after there is evidence to inspire or support that hope. Unlike Mr. Sahil, Kal has bigger problems than keeping his teeth clean and. his bird alarm clock set. The Colony is under the thumb of local bully Zareh, a violent courier who uses his position to exploit the remote community. When Zareh shows up on the saloon scene, the situation quickly takes a violent turn. Kal is killed, and Zareh plans to send Tilly out into the parasitic winter to retrieve the dilithium Saru has promised in exchange for their safe release.

But Saru and Tilly aren’t in the same situation as Michael: they have backup, even when they don’t ask for it. Emperor Georgiou, highly critical of Saru’s plans to simply ask the locals nicely for their help, has followed Tilly and Saru. She saunters in and turns the situation on its head, quickly taking Zareh and his henchmen out. The backup definitely saves Tilly’s life and probably saves Saru’s too, and presents an uncomfortable truth: Saru might not like Georgiou’s methods, but it’s hard to deny that she is a useful ally in this lawless future. Still, Saru won’t let Georgiou kill Zareh, after he has been safely apprehended, giving the choice of justice to the remaining miner instead. Georgiou goes along with it when Saru pulls rank, but it’s not clear how long that will work. Right now, Georgiou is of value to the crew and willing to, more or less, follow the rules of Discovery, but it’s not hard to imagine that there will come a day when this is not the case anymore. When that day comes, Saru will have some hard choices to make.

While Saru, Tilly, and Georgiou secure a messy victory on the planet, the crew of Discovery manages to secure a last-minute victory repairing the ship’s systems, with a huge assist from a very injured Stamets. (Yeah, his medically-induced coma has been cut short.) We often speak about Star Trek, at least in its initial incarnations, as a utopian show and, for me, I understand that utopia as directly related to workplace. Star Trek: The Next Generation especially is a show about the best office ever, one where everyone is excited to be there, is good at their jobs, and will show up for their colleagues’ poetry readings. It’s a depiction of a workplace that is so healthy and functional that the near non-existence of everyone’s domestic lives is depicted as not a problem. Past Season 1, the Discovery has had more of this happy workplace vibe—that being said, this ship has a serious problem with employees working while sick and/or wounded (a very American work culture flaw). In this episode, we see both Detmer and Stamets work through their serious injuries. While it works out for now, especially in Stamets’ instance, it’s a dangerous game and one that, at least in my workplace utopia, is sad to see. While this is a lesson I need to internalize myself, addressing any and all medical concerns and listening to your doctor’s advice (as is demonstrated in this episode by Reno) is necessary for a healthy and efficient workplace. (But, seriously, someone needs to check on Detmer.)

The episode ends with a hell of a plot twist that, while many viewers may have seen coming, still packs a punch. A mysterious ship shows up to help haul Discovery out of the ice. It’s Burnham, and she has finally found Discovery… after a year of searching. Frankly, she looks great, and is probably overjoyed that she didn’t have to wait longer for Discovery to appear in this time. (In last week’s episode, she and Mr. Sahil agreed that it could be days or it could be centuries.) We’ll have to wait until next week to see what Michael has been up to, but, now that the Discovery crew has been properly reunited, this future feels one step closer to restoring the Federation.

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Additional thoughts.

It’s a very broad title, but it makes me laugh that this episode has the same name as the last Spider-Man movie.

Is there anything scarier than having your helm yell “Brace!” because there is nothing else they can do?

Having the bridge crew cheer Detmer after that crash landing was a nice touch. I love this group.

The sickbay needs to step up its game. Dr. Pollard, right now I’m looking specifically at you. (But, again, Detmer, you got to speak up about those symptoms, friend!)

“Um, you have some Leland on your shoes.”

Stamets’ “Worse than me?” upon being awoken from his coma so that someone else can have his bed is a real metric of the situation. I am still unclear what the capacity of this medbay is. How many beds does it have? It always seem to have a skeleton crew of doctors.

“OK, what the f-?!” Tilly snaps at Georgiou in a highly relatable way.

Different incarnations of Trek have had different policies and patterns when it came to how often the captain would go on away missions. Thoughts on Saru, the captain, leaving the ship during this crucial moment?

“We are introducing ourselves to the future. You, Ensign Tilly, make a wonderful first impression.” I love that Saru (and this show) recognizes this quality as the skill that it is.

Beautiful Iceland!

We get some great Saru as captain moments in this episode. He is kind and clear-eyed, communicative and firm, smart and calm under pressure, and he also kicks some ass when it is called for.

“What an unbelievably shitty decision.” Georgiou’s thoughts on Nhan’s choice to ditch the Enterprise in favor of Discovery. I mean… I kind of get where she is coming from on this.

“Bureaucracy is where fun goes to die.” Emperor Georgiou, not a fan of Section 31 or, most likely, Starfleet.

“We’re odd and strange.” “Not to each other.”

Do you think we will see Zareh again? I kind of hope not.

Gene is credited as “Ensign Hazmat,” which is a nice touch. I hope we see him again.

Like the season premiere, this episode was also directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, and it was beautiful.

While I am excited to see Michael and the Discovery crew reunited, it would have been interesting to spend a good chunk of the season alternating episodes between these two groups, a la Farscape Season 3, and only having them reunite well into the season. But I am cool with this too.

What did you think of “Far From Home”? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 Episode 2 Review: Far From Home appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[anotheruserwithnoname]

Thoughts on Star Trek Discovery after 5 episodes

(Spoilers for Discovery S01E05 and Orville S01E06)

Episode 5 of Star Trek Discovery aired last night in Canada (up here the network Space airs it, so we don’t need to rely on streaming to view it). “Choose Your Pain” was its title and it’s ironic that it aired a few days after The Orville’s surprisingly hard-hitting “Krill” because it actually allows for something very close to an apples-to-apples comparison.

I’m going to go into spoilers, plus this will be a very long post (apologies; this is Exhibit A to show why I’m not on Twitter), so I’ll put a break here. The tl;dr is that, although I’m still willing to give it a chance, I’m still not “feeling” Discovery, which after 5 episodes is a concern; whereas, I find The Orville not only captures the classic spirit of Trek better, it managed in one single episode to make its Klingon analogue more interesting than the real Klingons in their current incarnation.

Before I begin, I wanted to set the scene to explain where I’m coming from. There is a lot of Discovery-bashing going on, and I don’t support that and this essay isn’t intended to be a bash. Although I am very critical of the show and not 100% certain that I’m going to stick with it much longer (though I’ll probably stick with it till its midseason break, at least), it’s not my intent to become a basher because then I’d be a hypocrite. I was a defender of Star Trek Enterprise throughout its entire run, and was upset to see it bashed mercilessly, to the point where I divorced myself from Star Trek and Star Trek fandom after it ended in 2005. Fortunately, Doctor Who had just come back on TV so I switched my allegiances to Who (which I’d been a fan of since the early 80s, but it became more intense). Fast-forward to 2017, and due to a mix of disappointment over what the series has delivered since Christmas 2015, combined with decisions regarding the show moving forward, I'm now divorcing from Doctor Who (as anyone who follows my blog knows). So with Star Trek back on TV the opportunity to move my allegiances back to Trek exists ... but Discovery isn’t doing it for me. Not yet. Instead, The Orville, Seth MacFarlane’s underrated (in more ways than one) homage is the show that is earning my affection. I know I’m not alone in that.

But here’s the thing, and why I don’t really see the need to “bash” Discovery: because The Orville is so much like “proper” Star Trek - the optimism, the crew-as-family dynamic, the introspective and “ripped from the headlines”-inspired stories, and general sense of fun - this actually allows Discovery to seek its own path (even if that means delivering “improper” Trek), allowing both shows to co-exist (which they could regardless - it’s not as if they’re in direct competition).

But Discovery has problems. Before I get into that, though, some positive thoughts.

This week’s episode introduced Rainn Wilson as Harry Mudd, a character immortalized by Roger C. Carmel in the original series. And I thought he did a good job. I don’t have the same issues with recasting characters as some others do (I liked the guy they had playing Sarek earlier, too). My only complaint is they made him darker than Carmel’s version, which felt a bit inconsistent. But then again this is 10 years before Kirk encountered him and people change (it could be argued that Carmel’s version is more insane than Wilson’s, and maybe we’re seeing why in Discovery). I loved the reference to Stella, his wife, which was a great call-forward to the TOS episode “I, Mudd”. Trivia: Carmel was supposed to reprise Mudd for an episode of TNG, but the actor died before it was filmed; I believe some aspects of what was planned for Mudd - including a scene where he was supposed to actually pay tribute to his frenemy, Captain Kirk - were later reused when they brought Scotty forward into the TNG era in “Relics”. So having Mudd appear in a modern-day Trek is an idea that’s been kicking around for 30 years.

Obviously, Mudd will be back and I’m looking forward to it. I’d rather he be the recurring baddie than the new Klingons. More on that in a moment.

I also liked the on-screen reference to Jonathan Archer, Christopher Pike and Robert April early in the episode. Robert April was established in the animated series as the very first captain of the Enterprise, predating Pike. Since TAS is not considered canon (or at least it wasn’t considered canon during the pre-2005 era; it might have changed since), this is the first “canonical” acknowledgement of April in live action. I appreciated that.

I also liked Capt. Lorca in this episode. After two weeks of being just “there”, Lorca came into his own with this episode. And his backstory is interesting.

But I have criticisms of this episode, and of the show itself as we hit week 5. Starting with a minor point, after four weeks of keeping a lid on language, the swearing in this episode was awkward and clearly put in there “because we can” - there was nothing charming or cool about the first use of the F-word (twice in the same scene, yet) in the Trek franchise. I’m not one to go “oooh, swearing, bad” (The Thick of It is one of my favourite TV shows, for god’s sake), but there’s a time and place, and it just didn’t work - it came across as vulgar and awkward. If they’re going to have people swear in Discovery, fine, but don’t make it feel like “hey, we can swear now!” Torchwood ran into this same issue - and the swearing during Series 1 felt unnatural as a result. If they want Lorca and his crew to turn the air blue, they should get Armando Iannucci in to show them how it’s done.

What will be the deal-breaker for me is if this show continues to be populated with characters I don’t give a damn about. I like Michael (who was for the first time not the focus of an episode) and Lorca has potential - all the characters have potential - but 5 weeks in they should be further along than they are in terms of establishing them, even taking into account the two-episode prologue and the fact a core character only debuted this week.

Five weeks in, and without cheating online, I still don't remember the names of most of the main characters because they’ve made so little impression on me. Michael is fine, Lorca is fine, and I know the new guy is named Tyler (mainly because I’m curious as to whether he’s related to Jose Tyler of Christopher Pike’s Enterprise in “The Cage”), but the rest - by now they should have made enough of an impression for me to at least remember their names, not just call them “Michael’s roommate”, “the jerk who runs the spore drive and who might or might not be the chief engineer but we can’t tell”, “Odo 2.0”, “the doctor who lives with the spore drive guy and who I thought was the ship’s doctor until he mentioned that he answers to a chief medical officer who we’ve yet to see”, “the incompetent who got herself killed by the spore monster last week in a scene Seth MacFarlane would have rejected as too silly”, “the roboty woman on the bridge who kinda looks like Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy,” and “the woman whose head is half shaved”. In fact I think this was the first episode in which those last two individuals were actually identified by names on screen.

By comparison, I had not just the Orville character names but their functions nailed down by Episode 2 of that show. And I had much more invested in them as characters, even early on (and by “Krill” I find I want to know more about what’s happening with Borus and Klyden and their child, Alara’s love life, and whether Ed and Kelly are going to get back together or not). With Discovery it’s almost as if they’re all being set up to be redshirts. (As it is, I really don’t expect to Michael’s roommate - I looked it up; her name is Tilly - to survive the season. Too much telegraphing about her being naive and having dreams for the future.) Maybe they are if the show is taking the Game of Thrones “anyone can die” approach and if there is a reason why we’ve never heard of Spock having an adopted human sister before now.

When I started writing this very long (sorry!) blog entry, I mentioned an apples-to-apples comparison between Discovery and Orville. This week, “Choose Your Pain” and “Krill” both involved captains boarding enemy vessels and learning more about the bad guys. And it really drove home the fact that the new Klingons are rather boring. Never mind the different make-up and all that - I’m sure they’ll come up with a workaround to explain that the same way Enterprise did back in 2005 with the Augments story arc (and I didn’t miss the fact they name-dropped eugenics this week) - they just don’t have the spark of the Klingons of old, or even the Abramsverse versions. Not saying there aren‘t promising signs - I kind of like the fact the show is shipping cult leader Voq with the female officer L’Rell. Every episode so far has included focus on the Klingons. But in only one episode, The Orville managed to develop a very well-rounded picture of the Krill, making them relevant, interesting, sympathetic, and “villains” we want to see more of. The Klingons on Discovery? I want more Harry Mudd, fewer Klingons. Of course, a big difference between Orville and Discovery is the use of humour. Discovery pretty much has none, while Orville is a dramedy. Which was driven home during the climax of the Discovery episode when we were actually treated to an unexpected piece of Orville-like comedy when the female Klingon captain, who has the hots for Tyler. Encountering him trying to escape, she let off with something like “After all we mean to each other, you’re leaving?” (not an exact quote). It was a funny moment, but poorly timed. Seriously, we’re supposed to see her as a threat (and an ongoing one seeing as Lorca doesn’t finish her off as opposed to every other Klingon he encounters), and she spouts dialogue more appropriate for a spoof? Compare to The Orville, which usually knows when to be funny and when not to be. Having Ed Mercer and Gordon Molloy facing the possibility of having to kill a bunch of Krill children in order to save a human colony, and Mercer saying “If we kill those kids ... we have no souls” was a far more hard-hitting and dramatic moment than anything “Choose Your Pain” offered. And once things got serious, they got serious. The ending of “Krill” was chilling as Mercer realized that instead of saving a bunch of kids, he created a bunch of future enemies instead, instantly giving the series a long-term aspect as the potential is there for it to revisit this fact years from now, if it survives that long. The Avis rent-a-car jokes were funny, and the opening sequence where Bortus does his best Matter-Eater Lad impersonation (Google it) was cute, and I loved the gag where Ed starts talking before Alara can open a channel, but it was the serious moments that made “Krill” stand out. The next episode looks serious as well as it casts a long-overdue spotlight on Lt. LaMarr.So to sum up: I’m not ready yet to say “Discovery sucks” as some have. I don’t think it does, despite all I’ve written here. It has issues, yes, but every Trek series has issues and teething pains. I am concerned that the characters aren’t gelling for me and that’s what’s going to make me decide to keep watching in the long term. On the other hand, The Orville is proving to be a great show that also has had its rough patches and its teething pains, but it managed to hit the ground running a lot faster in terms of establishing characters and stories and tone. I am in the market for a sci-fi show to replace Doctor Who, and so far The Orville is winning the battle against Star Trek Discovery. But I’m not willing to write Discovery off ... yet.

[ramajmedia]

Star Trek: Picard Is Answering TNG’s Most Frustrating Unanswered Question

Star Trek: Picard is poised to answer one of the biggest open questions from Star Trek: The Next Generation - the fate of Hugh and his collective of independent Borg drones. The CBS All Access series marks the return of Sir Patrick Stewart to the role of Jean-Luc Picard, which he first took on in 1987 on the small screen for the first-ever Star Trek spinoff. The new series is set to pick up roughly two decades after the events of 2002's Star Trek: Nemesis, the final film to feature Picard and the rest of the TNG crew.

A handful of major Star Trek players will be around for Star Trek: Picard. Stewart confirmed Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis will return as William Riker and Deanna Troi, respectively, late in the first season; Frakes will also direct a pair of episodes. The show's fantastic San Diego Comic-Con trailer also revealed that Brent Spiner will be reprising his role as the beloved (and deceased) android Data, and Star Trek: Voyager's Jeri Ryan is returning as former Borg drone Seven of Nine. Seven's participation is yet another indicator that Star Trek: Picard will once again be grappling with the Borg, the most vicious threat Picard ever faced in his days as the captain of the Enterprise.

Related: Every Next Generation (& Voyager) Character Returning In Star Trek: Picard

Along with those franchise heavyweights, however, was the announcement that Jonathan Del Arco will also be returning as Hugh, the liberated Borg drone who was the focal point of two of The Next Generation's best episodes. Hugh's return is loaded with philosophical and emotional resonance for Star Trek fans, as he was the one avenue through which TNG could ever find a way to empathize with the nightmarish Borg. But before we can understand what Hugh's return means for the future of Star Trek, we need to take a look back at how we got here.

The Borg are generally remembered as the biggest and baddest threat the Enterprise ever took on in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but the cybernetic space zombies actually only appeared in three episodes over the show's first four seasons. They were introduced in season two's "Q Who?," in which the omnipotent trickster Q threw the Enterprise thousands of light-years away into the Delta Quadrant to prove humanity wasn't ready for the dangers that awaited them in deep space. There they met the Borg, the impossibly powerful cyborg race bent on the assimilation of all life. After the Enterprise narrowly escaped destruction and Q had made his point, the Enterprise was returned to the Alpha Quadrant, but the damage was done - the Borg were now coming for Earth.

That confrontation would happen in the epic two-parter "The Best of Both Worlds," which bridged the third and fourth seasons. During a failed attempt to stop their march toward Earth, Picard was captured and assimilated into Locutus, a Borg drone that would be used to speak to humanity and utilize Picard's knowledge of Starfleet defenses. Earth and Picard would both be saved by some ingenious strategy by Commander Riker, but the cost was high; the Borg destroyed 40 Starfleet vessels and killed over 11,000 people at the Battle of Wolf 359 before they were finally stopped. Ostensible foes like the Ferengi and Romulans felt like speed bumps in the face of the Borg, and TNG would maintain the Borg's mystique by keeping them off the board for two years after "The Best of Both Worlds."

The next time the Borg would be featured was in season five's "I Borg," in which the Enterprise unwittingly uncovers a crashed Borg scout ship with one survivor, a young Borg drone classified as Third of Five. While Dr. Beverly Crusher and Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge attempt to heal, study, and understand the drone - eventually giving him the name Hugh - Picard plots to reinsert Hugh into the Borg Collective as a kind of computer virus that would potentially wipe out the entire race. Seeing Picard so overtly court what essentially boils down to genocide is disturbing, and it's supposed to be - Picard's assimilation was a deeply traumatic assault that left him with mental scars he'd spend the next decade of his life attempting to overcome. Once Picard realized Hugh was beginning to reassert his humanity, he abandoned his plans for destruction and offered Hugh the choice of staying with humanity or returning to the collective. Hugh chose to return the collective in hopes that his individuality would spread throughout the Borg and alter the race forever.

Related: Star Trek: Picard Trailer Breakdown - 18 Story Reveals & Easter Eggs

Hugh and the Borg would return in Star Trek: The Next Generation's two-part season six finale/season seven premiere "Descent," in which it's revealed many Borg drones were indeed affected by Hugh's individuality, but not necessarily in the same ways; many drones were unable to reconcile their programming with the return of their individual impulses, sometimes resulting in horrific malfunctions and even suicides. A group of affected Borg were taken in by Lore, Data's evil brother, so he could fashion them into his own personal army. Hugh and a group of liberated Borg aided Picard and his crew in defeating Lore, with the promise that he would help guide these vulnerable Borg drones toward their own independence and peace of mind.

However, this would be the last time Hugh was seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and when the Borg were next seen in the big screen TNG film Star Trek: First Contact, they were back to the lethal space zombies of old, with no mention of Hugh and his kind. And while Hugh was something of a test run for Seven of Nine, the nature of Voyager's story meant there really wasn't an opportunity to address the liberated Borg during that show's run. It has been one of Star Trek's most frustrating unanswered questions for over 25 years - and Star Trek: Picard is finally poised to give us some answers.

The Star Trek: Picard trailer dropped some pretty strong hints that the Borg played a role in the decimation of the Romulan Empire, and that there are many more unassimilated drones that exist in a Romulan-run prison. It's easy to imagine Hugh's collective have been attempting to quietly live their lives, but that galactic politics have made them a target of hatred and violence. Not only would this be a way to acknowledge the current real-world antagonization of refugees and immigrants - a welcome return to Star Trek's roots as a culturally progressive moral arbiter - it would also be thematically resonant for Jean-Luc Picard himself.

One of Starfleet's most decorated officers, and often held up both within the fiction and in real life as a paragon of virtue and intellectualism, Picard's one true personal failing was his inability to consistently empathize with the Borg. Despite the grace he showed Hugh, Picard was violently unhinged in Star Trek: First Contact, very nearly sacrificing his crew - and potentially the purity of the timeline - in his quest for vengeance against them. Picard spending his twilight years attempting to protect his most despised enemies feels like a fitting final chapter for one of the most towering figures in science fiction history.

It's more difficult to predict what exactly has become of Hugh so many years later. There have been hints that Hugh and his collective may not look as cybernetic as they once did, perhaps in an effort to not draw attention to themselves. If he's survived for 25 years with the face of the quadrant's most dreaded foe, it means Hugh is a survivor, and likely the leader Picard predicted he would become at the end of "Descent." No matter what life has been like for Hugh and his collective, when Star Trek: Picard releases, it will finally give an answer fans have been waiting for since 1993.

Next: Star Trek: Everything That Picard Is A Sequel To

source https://screenrant.com/star-trek-picard-tng-unanswered-question-hugh-borg/

[somefunnyshits]

Star Trek: Discovery shows us a side of the Federation we've never seen

Enlarge/ Welcome to Star Trek: Discovery.

CBS

The debut of Star Trek: Discovery last night was unlike any other TV series premiere. It was a cultural event that people have been analyzing and anticipating for years. There are now three generations of people who grew up with Star Trek in its various incarnations, and the franchise has come to represent what many of us consider a better tomorrow. Discovery arrived on the scene with no shortage of baggage, both good and bad.

There was absolutely no way that the first two episodes (available now on CBS’s All Access streaming service) could have met all our expectations. Plus, the odds were already stacked against Discovery. The production lost a showrunner midstream, and advance buzz has been tepid, to say the least. So it should come as no shock that the first two episodes were flawed, with moments that felt a little clunky. And yet I was genuinely surprised by the show at many points, in a positive way. It gave us a dramatic, original perspective on the Star Trek universe. Even though the series is set 10 years before the original Star Trek series, it had a weird, futuristic edge that has been sorely lacking in the recent J.J. Abrams movies.

And the best part? For the first time in decades, Star Trek feels dangerous again.

Spoilers ahead.

No more cozy spaceships

Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham.

CBS

Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham.

CBS

Chris Obi as T'Kuvma.

CBS

Mary Chieffo as L'Rell; Chris Obi as T'Kuvma.

The first two episodes of Discovery are definitely a slow burn. The acting feels oddly understated, and there are some awkward, info-dumpy conversations between First Officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) as we establish their characters and the mission of the USS Shenzhou. But by the time we’re deep into the final battle with the Klingons, I found myself yelling, “Holy $%&!!” a lot. Ships are on fire! Klingons are yelling about their new messiah! Major characters are dying! The series went from zero to warp speed in less than two hours, which is pretty damn hard to pull off.

We leave the cozy confines of a typical Trek series behind after the opening scene, in which Burnham and Georgiou are on a peaceful mission to help a pre-contact civilization survive drought. After vaporizing the blockage in a well, they exchange a little banter and return to the Shenzhou to check out a strange object in the debris field of a binary star system. Obscured by some kind of radiation field, the object could be related to damage suffered by a nearby Federation communications relay.

When Burnham goes to investigate the object wearing nothing but a spacesuit and jetpack, we get a moment that really nails the tone of this new series. Alone in a vast debris field, illuminated by the light of two stars, Burnham seems more vulnerable and audacious than Starfleet officers we’ve known before. There’s no beaming down with an away team here. There’s no shuttle enclosing her in a protective shell.

When she finally encounters the object, an ancient sacred beacon, she lands on it with her own two feet. She's alone in a vacuum, encountering something literally awesome. There’s something visceral about this scene, especially when she winds up in a deadly fight with a Klingon guarding the place. It’s as if they’re two knights battling in armor, except they’re in the middle of outer space.

Arresting scenes like this lift Discovery out of its slightly clunky plotting and suggest that it could become a truly breathtaking work of science fiction.

A troubled protagonist

Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Burnham.

CBS

Get a load of that Discovery!

CBS

Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham.

The space gladiator moment is also our first hint that Discovery won’t be returning us to the “everything is fine” baseline of previous Trek shows. Showrunners Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts had already hinted in interviews that this series would be an arc rather than episodic, and, as a result, there are no tidy endings.

Instead, there are dramatic consequences to the space fight, in which Burnham eventually manages to skewer the Klingon on his own bat’leth. She returns to the ship radiation-scarred and wrathful, begging Georgiou to reject Starfleet’s peaceful mandate so they can immediately destroy the Klingon ship lurking nearby. Unlike the tough-but-fair Sisko or the always-ethical Picard, Burnham is a disturbingly flawed hero who sometimes opts for realpolitik rather than idealism.

When Georgiou tries to use diplomacy with the Klingons, Burnham consults privately with her adoptive father Sarek (yes, this makes her Spock’s sister), who appears via some kind of holographic telepresence system that we’ve never seen on Trek before. He advises her to give the Klingons a “Vulcan hello,” referencing an event in Vulcan history that’s going to be news to fans of the franchise. Apparently when the Vulcans first met the Klingons, they fired on the warlike species before doing anything else to earn their respect. This doesn’t sound much like the rational Vulcans we know, but then again this series is all about revealing hidden and often dark complexities beneath the Federation’s peaceful facade.

Armed with this knowledge, Burnham mutinies and tries to get the crew to fire on the Klingons. Here, again, Discovery surprises us. When Kirk bent the rules, he was usually rewarded for it in the end with a good outcome. Fighting to save his crew is the right choice, even if it seems wrong at first. But when Burnham tries her desperate move to save her ship, it turns out to be the first bad move in a terrible plan that backfires. Her choices cost her the friendship she has forged with Georgiou and get her thrown in the brig. As more Klingon and Federation ships arrive and the Shenzhou is shot to ribbons, Burnham is trapped behind the failing force field of her prison cell. She's forced to witness the first melee in a war she helped start from a position of helpless shame.

Though Burnham does eventually escape (in a pretty cool scene), it’s not exactly a triumphant moment. She has to endure the death of everything she holds dear, including Georgiou and most of the crew. As the second episode ends, she’s facing life in prison for her crimes—and a hellish lifetime of guilt after striving to overcome the horror of her family’s death at the hands of Klingons.

These emotional beats feel like a real departure for the franchise, which typically celebrates hope, bravery, and fecklessness in its protagonists and rarely dwells on how they might also be motivated by frustration and agony. At worst, we would see Kirk feel old and bored or see Sisko’s loyalty being tested by his evolving relationship with the Bajorans. In Discovery, we see an unsettling parallel between Burnham and T’Kuvma, the messianic leader of the newly unified Klingon Empire: both are ruled by rage and seemingly fueled by a history of trauma.

The new Klingons

Enlarge/ Chris Obi as T'Kuvma.

CBS

Discovery pulls a fast one on us by introducing Captain Georgiou only to kill her off. The same goes for the Klingon leader T’Kuvma (Chris Obi), who perishes in the exact way that Burnham feared. He becomes a martyr while fighting the evil humans. As the series gets underway, our main protagonist will be Burnham, and our main antagonist will be T’Kuvma’s protege Kol (Kenneth Mitchell), a pale-skinned Klingon who is the “son of none,” an outcast among the Klingon elites.

The pilot episode actually begins with the Klingon point of view, which is an interesting choice. T’Kuvma gives a patriotic speech to his followers, laced with religious fundamentalism and myriad references to the mythic Klingon leader Kahless. One of the most talked-about parts of this series is the Klingons’ new look, which is sort of a cross between H.R. Geiger’s alien art and a goth take on the Afro-futurist styles of Black Panther homeland Wakanda. Their armor is all techno-spines and curves; their faces are masklike, with oddly doubled nostrils and exaggerated mouths turned deeply down at the corners. The Klingon language no longer sounds Slavic; as T’Kuvma speaks, it has the tenor of an east African tribal language (though Obi reads his lines so haltingly that it’s unintentionally comic, which is unfortunate).

T’Kuvma has whipped up the great Klingon houses into a frenzy of nationalism. He promises them that a war with the Federation will allow them to “stay Klingon” and resist the lure of the Federation’s soft, semi-democratic way of life. But he also has an odd democratic streak of his own, elevating the lowly Kol to his second-in-command. He’s a kind of Klingon populist—a terrifying mixture of authoritarian and religious zealot. When Burnham shoots T’Kuvma, he gets exactly what he wants: an honorable death and a chance to unify his people in what’s basically a holy war against the Federation.

Despite their new look, the Klingons are very much in line with the humanoids we knew in the Next Generation series. They’ve got a complicated history and are obsessed with honor, racial purity, and spiritual tradition. Of course, they hate the polyglot Federation, with its multi-species fleet that promises peace but still fires first with their “Vulcan hellos.” Though a lot of this series feels like it’s taking Star Trek in a new direction—both in terms of characters and storytelling—it’s nice to see the Klingons' motivations have remained unchanged. They’re still the Federation’s ultimate enemy, and yet their violent impulses are hardly alien. They represent the worst instincts of humanity. When humans fight Klingons, we also fight ourselves.

Yes, there are problems

Though Discovery has its great moments, the first episode is also bogged down by some bad dialogue and bland acting at moments when the action should have felt white-hot. As tensions heat up with the Klingons, it feels like we’re in one of those “let’s discuss this case” moments on NCSI rather than a looming space massacre.

One particularly awkward moment stood out, when we are getting to know series regular Lt. Saru (Doug Jones of Pan's Labyrinth), the science officer. He explains to Burnham that he’s from a planet where his species is the “cow,” hunted by predators and bred to live in constant fear of death. Basically, Saru admits that he was a compliant food slave on another world. Which is pretty damn creepy and makes him fascinating as a character. How did a cow become chief science officer in Starfleet? But instead of highlighting his alien, tragic history, he’s given a long, garbled speech about “food chains” that makes no sense—and ends with him suggesting that he somehow has a special, evolved ability to sense when death is imminent.

That's why Saru announces that he “senses death” when the Klingons show up. Which—duh. You don’t need to be a prey species to notice when Klingons are itching for a fight. His character’s whole disturbing backstory is wasted in this scene, plus it gave me an uneasy feeling that there will be a lot of junk science in this show about how biology and ecosystems work. That feeling did not go away when Burnham, supposedly a "xenoanthropologist," announces that war is part of the Klingon’s “nature,” which she later seems to suggest means it’s part of their “culture.” Huh?

Nature vs. culture nitpicks aside, the main problem with the pilot is the directing. Which isn’t surprising, given that the series’ original showrunner Bryan Fuller (of Hannibal and American Gods) has said that one of the reasons he parted ways with the show was CBS’ insistence that he use David Semel as a director on the pilot. Semel has mostly worked on NCIS and is perfectly competent. But he doesn’t seem able to draw out the tension in scenes or inspire taut performances in his excellent cast. By the second episode, however, the actors are owning their characters in a way that’s infinitely more compelling, so my hope is that we’ll see more intense performances as the series progresses.

The glimpse we got of upcoming episodes was intriguing, and it suggested that Discovery is going to continue taking Burnham in a disturbing direction. Jailed and outcast, she’s going to have to struggle hard if she wants back into Starfleet. As she fights to redeem herself, a war is brewing between the Klingons and the Federation, so her personal struggles will be complicated by the larger astropolitical conflicts raging around her.

Overall, an unexpectedly good start

Despite its problems, Discovery is packed with intriguing ideas and characters who are already changing my idea of what the Federation represents. I love that we got a peek at the Vulcans’ less-than-peaceful treatment of the Klingons, offering us a better understanding of why the Klingons think the Federation is run by hypocrites. And Burnham’s character has a terrifically complex backstory, as the survivor of a Klingon attack who was raised by Vulcans. Like her brother Spock, she has to find a middle way between Vulcan realpolitik and her passionate, human sense of justice.

For the first time, we’re starting a Trek series by focusing on a person, Burnham, instead of a ship and its crew. Eventually, Burnham will have a crew of her own, including Saru, but it was interesting to walk into this series by focusing on her character and personal history.

What sets Discovery apart from previous Trek series is that it takes for granted that the Federation is not some monolithic entity where everybody is making relatively good decisions. Its history is riddled with shady conflicts. Its officers are in conflict. This isn’t a new idea, of course—we’ve seen it a lot in Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but both those series always tried to reassure us that rationality and good will would ultimately rule the day. You won’t have that feeling as you watch Discovery. Things aren’t going to be alright, at least not for the characters we know.

It’s not so much that the future feels darker in Discovery. The future just feels more realistically complicated. We’re not trying to make the galaxy a better place anymore, kids. We’re in the real world. And I think I like it.

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Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 Review

Mobile Suit Gundam, a franchise with a multitude of sequels, prequels, spin offs and other related series bearing the name, it makes anybody wanting to get into the series confused as to where to start and with good reason since there’s just so much Gundam in the world however, just like any other franchise I strongly suggest starting off where series first began with Mobile Suit Gundam 0079. It came out during the era of great sci-fi space series such as, Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Glactica, and like all those series Mobile Suit Gundam would heavily influence science fiction, specifically the mecha genre of anime for decades to come. Now let’s see why this show is a classic.

A little background info as to what is happening before the start of the show, it’s the distant future where mankind has achieved the ability to live out in space in large cylindrical space colonies and has been for almost a hundred years. One space colony however decided to become independent from the rule of the Earth Federation, that colony was the Principality of Zeon, a fascist military dictatorship ruled by the Zabis family with Degwin Zabis being the head of the Zabis, and used a new type of weapon called mobile suits, which are large mechanical suits of armor used for warfare, to give them an early edge in what would be call the One Year War. After the Federation suffered countless losses to Zeon forces they decided to create a new mobile suit, one with whose capabilities vastly surpassed any Zaku II, the common grunt mobile suit of the Zeon military, and it was designed by Tem Ray which he gave it the designation of the RX-78-2 or as we know it Gundam.

The plot starts us off in space as we see two Zakus attempting to sneak into the space colony Side 7 to destroy a new prototype Federation mobile suit. The whole colony is on high alert and issued an evacuation order of all personal onboard. This is where we meet two of main cast Fraw Bow; a young caring optimistic and loving girl, who came to help her dorky aloof friend Amuro Ray who we find tinkering with some electronics despite the fact there’s loud sirens blaring out for people to leave the colony. They try to reach a bomb shelter of sorts but Amuro goes out to look for his father and conveniently stumbles upon the manual for Gundam after which he gets inside the mobile suit and manages to destroy the Zakus attacking the colony. Then Amuro with the aid of the Gundam helps everyone escape the colony in a top secret new military space ship known as the White Base, which would serve to be the new home of the people of Side 7 for pretty much the remainder of the One Year War.

After all that without going too much into spoilers, we meet what will be the White Base crew including; Bright Noa, a fresh young faced officer in the Federation army that gets promoted to the de facto captain of the White Base after the original captain died shortly after their escape from Side who is challenged with leading a bunch of civilians to fight and survive in a war that they were all just thrusted into without warning, Mirai Yashima, a navigations expert who is very motherly and caring and is often seen as the voice of reason in the ship, Sayla Mass, a medic who is a very kind sweet caring young woman but is clearly hiding something about her past, Kai Shiden, a vile disrespectful punk who always gets on people’s nerves but deep down is a good guy that cares about his friends and comrades and of course there is Fraw and Amuro.

The crew is one of the strong points of this anime as they all grow together in a natural way, at first they don’t know each other and would often be at each other’s throats, but by constantly fighting alongside one another they built a strong sense of trust and friendship. Like its contemporaries at the time like Star Wars or Star Trek, Mobile Suit Gundam is very character driven, you get invested in all these characters because they have depth to them and don’t act like one dimensional cardboard cutouts like characters in mecha series before Gundam. You feel the pain that the crew goes through and hope they find a place to live peacefully despite being under constant threat of attack from the forces of Zeon. You see the original Gundam had little to do with the machines but more about the adventure that all the characters go through, sure seeing giant robots fight is great but it was only to enhance an already great space opera. Mobile Suit Gundam uses mecha to show you a story and not to use a story just to show cool mecha doing things.

However if you’re not into seeing character development and want some mecha action then Gundam doesn’t disappoint in that field. The fight scenes have a feel to them like early tank warfare whenever they are fighting on land and by that I mean that in one or two hits the mobile suit usually get destroyed so the pilots have to be very careful and methodic in how they approach combat but in space the fights tend to feel like a mix of fighter jets and tank warfare as there are 360 degrees in which you can fight in space it really does make for great tense battles that are memorable and entertaining to watch. One fight I love personally is when Amuro has to fight a Zeon officer by the name of Ramba Ral, see before this Amuro had no problem dealing with rookies in Zakus so Amuro built an overconfidence thinking no Zeon pilot can beat him thanks to his experience and data collected from previous fights, but in comes Ramba who overpowers him in his Gouf mobile suit and it’s like nothing Amuro has dealt with before it takes him back and shows that overconfidence can in fact be a slow and insidious killer. That fight is great because there’s actual tension and stakes to lose because Amuro is fully aware that if he fails to fight off any Zeon mobile suit then everyone on board the White Base is as good as dead. That’s why a lot of the fights are so good in this series they aren’t just a mish mash of high speed action with laser beams fired everywhere, it doesn’t matter how well choreographed a fight is if there is no tension or purpose to the fight then it just serves to be nothing more than just eye candy. Of course, to be fair there are some fights in Gundam 0079 that are just nothing and are there just because they needed some action in the episode.

Now it would be foolish not to talk about one of the best villains in all of anime, Char Aznable. Char is cunning mysterious, ruthless to those in his way, yet has a soft side for his lost sister Artesia. It’s established very early on that Char and Amuro are rivals because Amuro, a virtually rookie pilot, managed to beat one of Zeon’s best pilots and elude him and the humiliation of being defeated by him ignites a fire in his eyes to beat Amuro. It should be mentioned that Char in essence laid the foundation for a new character archetype because after him in other Gundam series as well as other anime shows or in video games, now to understand what makes a character a Char is simple; having blonde or very light hair, wearing a mask or some kind of helmet to conceal their true identity, be associated with the color red, clearly has some kind of hidden agenda, tends to be a sympathetic villain, prefers skill and speed over brute strength, and stands as the main rival of the protagonist. Now you can find loads of examples of characters that are clearly inspired by Char such as; Zechs from Gundam Wing, Shin from Fist of the North Star, Griffith from Berserk, Protoman from Megaman, Sirius from Fire Emblem, Godot from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and Schwartzwald from The Big O.

There is a political side to Gundam and it stems from the ideology from the former head of Side 3, Zeon Zum Deikun, who wanted independence for all spacenoids (people who are born and live in space colonies) from the control of the Earth Federation and believed that spacenoids are the future of humanity are the next step in the evolution of humans a “new type” as it would be later called as. New types are humans who are believed to possess superhuman reflexes and a somewhat psychic ability making them unbelievably talented mobile suit pilots. Before Zeon Zum Deikun could enact his plan to make Side 3 an independent space colony, he mysteriously died and in comes Degwin Zabi who became the new leader of Side 3 and soon became a dictator and with him his family who would all serve in the One Year War as leaders of the Zeon military. Ghiren Zabi would act as Degwin’s second in command and he is about as evil as they get, I mean at one point he openly admits to being a follower of Adolf Hitler and has no problems killing anybody who doesn’t fit into his perfect world, Garma Zabi, the youngest of the Zabis, is a high ranking officer that has shown promise in being a military leader but is pompous and over confident, Kycillia Zabi, is the only daughter of Degwin but she is just as cold blooded and ruthless as her brothers, and finally there is Dozal Zabi, a giant scar covered proud general in the Zeon Military and out of all the Zabis Dozal seems to be possibly the least evil since he is just a general doing his job in trying to win the war he doesn’t have any evil ambitions he just seeks glory in combat and is a loving father and husband.

Despite the fact that the Zeons would basically become space Nazis, the Earth Federation aren’t the all around good guys, I mean they threaten the White Base crew with life in prison just because they don’t want to keep on fighting in the war and just want to leave and live normal lives again and keep in mind there were children on board so yes they actually threaten to imprison underage children for not wanting to fight in the war. Also a lot of Federation soldiers act like complete scumbags like getting drunk in Amuro’s mother’s house and wrecked the place and also treating an old woman like shit and refused to pay for fruit from her stand. This proves a very interesting point about war because in reality there are no good or bad when it comes to the sides of the war because they are fought with people and people are good but can also be complete jerks. War is not as clear cut as some movies make it out to be and Gundam shows a more human side to war. Not every soldier is a blind follower of their side’s beliefs in fact a lot serve because they have to or wants to help protect the ones they care about.

In conclusion I believe this series is easily one my favorite but also one of the most important animes in history. It built a legend and created a much beloved universe that led to an enormously popular franchise. Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 on its own is a very enjoyable series with 42 episodes it’s an easy watch but if you want a more condensed version of 0079 there are 3 movies that just show the most important segments of the series and with better animations which I would highly recommend if you want to get into Gundam but don’t want to see the entire episodic show then the movies do a great job giving you an more focused experience. How does it stand in comparison to later Gundam series, well I would still put this series in my top 5 favorite Gundam series but overall there are some that surpass it like its sequel Zeta Gundam or the movie F91. It’s a great start to an amazing franchise and stands the test of time as being one of the best mecha series and I would highly suggest to anyone that wants to either get into mecha, Gundam or just anime in general this is one series that you must watch.

[somefunnyshits]

Star Trek: Discovery shows us a side of the Federation we've never seen

Enlarge/ Welcome to Star Trek: Discovery.

CBS

The debut of Star Trek: Discovery last night was unlike any other TV series premiere. It was a cultural event that people have been analyzing and anticipating for years. There are now three generations of people who grew up with Star Trek in its various incarnations, and the franchise has come to represent what many of us consider a better tomorrow. Discovery arrived on the scene with no shortage of baggage, both good and bad.

There was absolutely no way that the first two episodes (available now on CBS’s All Access streaming service) could have met all our expectations. Plus, the odds were already stacked against Discovery. The production lost a showrunner midstream, and advance buzz has been tepid, to say the least. So it should come as no shock that the first two episodes were flawed, with moments that felt a little clunky. And yet I was genuinely surprised by the show at many points, in a positive way. It gave us a dramatic, original perspective on the Star Trek universe. Even though the series is set 10 years before the original Star Trek series, it had a weird, futuristic edge that’s been sorely lacking in the recent J.J. Abrams movies.

And the best part? For the first time in decades, Star Trek feels dangerous again.

Spoilers ahead.

No more cozy spaceships

Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham.

CBS

Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham.

CBS

Chris Obi as T'Kuvma.

CBS

Mary Chieffo as L'Rell; Chris Obi as T'Kuvma.

The first two episodes of Discovery are definitely a slow burn. The acting feels oddly understated, and there are some awkward, info-dumpy conversations between First Officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) as we establish their characters and the mission of the USS Shenzhou. But by the time we’re deep into the final battle with the Klingons, I found myself yelling, “Holy $%&!!” a lot. Ships are on fire! Klingons are yelling about their new messiah! Major characters are dying! The series went from zero to warp speed in less than two hours, which is pretty damn hard to pull off.

We leave the cozy confines of a typical Trek series behind after the opening scene, in which Burnham and Georgiou are on a peaceful mission to help a pre-contact civilization survive drought. After vaporizing the blockage in a well, they exchange a little banter and return to the Shenzhou to check out a strange object in the debris field of a binary star system. Obscured by some kind of radiation field, the object could be related to damage suffered by a nearby Federation communications relay.

When Burnham goes to investigate the object wearing nothing but a spacesuit and jetpack, we get a moment that really nails the tone of this new series. Alone in a vast debris field, illuminated by the light of two stars, Burnham seems more vulnerable and audacious than Starfleet officers we’ve known before. There’s no beaming down with an away team here. There’s no shuttle enclosing her in a protective shell.

When she finally encounters the object, an ancient sacred beacon, she lands on it with her own two feet. She's alone in vacuum, encountering something literally awesome. There’s something visceral about this scene, especially when she winds up in a deadly fight with a Klingon guarding the place. It’s as if they’re two knights battling in armor, except they’re in the middle of outer space.

Arresting scenes like this lift Discovery out of its slightly clunky plotting and suggest that it could become a truly breathtaking work of science fiction.

A troubled protagonist

Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Burnham.

CBS

Get a load of that Discovery!

CBS

Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham.

The space gladiator moment is also our first hint that Discovery won’t be returning us to the “everything is fine” baseline of previous Trek shows. Showrunners Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts had already hinted in interviews that this series would be an arc rather than episodic, and, as a result, there are no tidy endings.

Instead, there are dramatic consequences to the space fight, in which Burnham eventually manages to skewer the Klingon on his own bat’leth. She returns to the ship radiation-scarred and wrathful, begging Georgiou to reject Starfleet’s peaceful mandate so they can immediately destroy the Klingon ship lurking nearby. Unlike the tough-but-fair Sisko or the always-ethical Picard, Burnham is a disturbingly flawed hero who sometimes opts for realpolitik rather than idealism.

When Georgiou tries to use diplomacy with the Klingons, Burnham consults privately with her adoptive father Sarek (yes, this makes her Spock’s sister), who appears via some kind of holographic telepresence system that we’ve never seen on Trek before. He advises her to give the Klingons a “Vulcan hello,” referencing an event in Vulcan history that’s going to be news to fans of the franchise. Apparently when the Vulcans first met the Klingons, they fired on the warlike species before doing anything else, to earn their respect. This doesn’t sound much like the rational Vulcans we know, but then again this series is all about revealing hidden and often dark complexities beneath the Federation’s peaceful facade.

Armed with this knowledge, Burnham mutinies and tries to get the crew to fire on the Klingons. Here, again, Discovery surprises us. When Kirk bent the rules, he was usually rewarded for it in the end with a good outcome. Fighting to save his crew is the right choice, even if it seems wrong at first. But when Burnham tries her desperate move to save her ship, it turns out to be the first bad move in a terrible plan that backfires. Her choices cost her the friendship she’s forged with Georgiou and get her thrown in the brig. As more Klingon and Federation ships arrive, and the Shenzhou is shot to ribbons, Burnham is trapped behind the failing force field of her prison cell. She's forced to witness the first melee in a war she helped start from a position of helpless shame.

Though Burnham does eventually escape (in a pretty cool scene), it’s not exactly a triumphant moment. She has to endure the death of everything she holds dear, including Georgiou and most of the crew. As the second episode ends, she’s facing life in prison for her crimes—and a hellish lifetime of guilt after striving to overcome the horror of her family’s death at the hands of Klingons.

These emotional beats feel like a real departure for the franchise, which typically celebrates hope, bravery, and fecklessness in its protagonists and rarely dwells on how they might also be motivated by frustration and agony. At worst, we see Kirk feel old and bored, or we see Sisko’s loyalty being tested by his evolving relationship with the Bajorans. In Discovery, we see an unsettling parallel between Burnham and T’Kuvma, the messianic leader of the newly unified Klingon Empire: both are ruled by rage and seemingly fueled by a history of trauma.

The new Klingons

Enlarge/ Chris Obi as T'Kuvma.

CBS

Discovery pulls a fast one on us by introducing Captain Georgiou only to kill her off. The same goes for the Klingon leader T’Kuvma (Chris Obi), who perishes in the exact way that Burnham feared. He becomes a martyr while fighting the evil humans. As the series gets underway, our main protagonist will be Burnham and our main antagonist will be T’Kuvma’s protege Kol (Kenneth Mitchell), a pale-skinned Klingon who is the “son of none,” an outcast among the Klingon elites.

The pilot episode actually begins with the Klingon point of view, which is an interesting choice. T’Kuvma gives a patriotic speech to his followers, laced with religious fundamentalism and myriad references to the mythic Klingon leader Kahless. One of the most talked-about parts of this series is the Klingons’ new look, which is sort of a cross between H.R. Geiger’s alien art and a goth take on the Afro-futurist styles of Black Panther’s homeland Wakanda. Their armor is all techno-spines and curves; their faces are masklike, with oddly doubled nostrils and exaggerated mouths turned deeply down at the corners. The Klingon language no longer sounds Slavic; as T’Kuvma speaks, it has the tenor of an east African tribal language (though Obi reads his lines so haltingly that it’s unintentionally comic, which is unfortunate).

T’Kuvma has whipped up the great Klingon houses into a frenzy of nationalism. He promises them that a war with the Federation will allow them to “stay Klingon” and resist the lure of the Federation’s soft, semi-democratic way of life. But he also has an odd democratic streak of his own, elevating the lowly Kol to his second-in-command. He’s a kind of Klingon populist, a terrifying mixture of authoritarian and religious zealot. When Burnham shoots T’Kuvma, he gets exactly what he wants: an honorable death, and a chance to unify his people in what’s basically a holy war against the Federation.

Despite their new look, the Klingons are very much in line with the humanoids we knew in the Next Generation series. They’ve got a complicated history and are obsessed with honor, racial purity, and spiritual tradition. Of course, they hate the polyglot Federation, with its multi-species fleet that promises peace but still fires first with their “Vulcan hellos.” Though a lot of this series feels like it’s taking Star Trek in a new direction—both in terms of characters and storytelling—it’s nice to see the Klingons' motivations have remained unchanged. They’re still the Federation’s ultimate enemy, and yet their violent impulses are hardly alien. They represent the worst instincts of humanity. When humans fight Klingons, we also fight ourselves.

Yes, there are problems

Though Discovery has its great moments, the first episode is also bogged down by some bad dialogue and bland acting at moments when the action should have felt white hot. As tensions heat up with the Klingons, it feels like we’re in one of those “let’s discuss this case” moments on NCSI rather than a looming space massacre.

One particularly awkward moment stood out, when we are getting to know series regular Lt. Saru (Doug Jones of Pans Labyrinth), the science officer. He explains to Burnham that he’s from a planet where his species is the “cow,” hunted by predators and bred to live in constant fear of death. Basically, Saru admits that he was a compliant food slave on another world. Which is pretty damn creepy and makes him fascinating as a character. How did a cow become chief science officer in Starfleet? But instead of highlighting his alien, tragic history, he’s given a long, garbled speech about “food chains” that makes no sense—and ends with him suggesting that he somehow has a special, evolved ability to sense when death is imminent.</em></em>

That's why Saru announces that he “senses death” when the Klingons show up. Which—duh. You don’t need to be a prey species to notice when Klingons are itching for a fight. His character’s whole disturbing backstory is wasted in this scene, plus it gave me an uneasy feeling that there will be a lot of junk science in this show about how biology and ecosystems work. That feeling did not go away when Burnham, supposedly an "xenoanthropologist," announces that war is part of the Klingon’s “nature,” which she later seems to suggest means it’s part of their “culture.” Huh?

Nature vs. culture nitpicks aside, the main problem with the pilot is the directing. Which isn’t surprising, given that the series’ original showrunner Bryan Fuller (of Hannibal and American Gods) has said that one of the reasons he parted ways with the show was CBS’ insistence that he use David Semel as a director on the pilot. Semel has mostly worked on NCIS and is perfectly competent. But he doesn’t seem able to draw out the tension in scenes or inspire taut performances in his excellent cast. By the second episode, however, the actors are owning their characters in a way that’s infinitely more compelling, so my hope is that we’ll see more intense performances as the series progresses.

The glimpse we got of upcoming episodes was intriguing, and it suggested that Discovery is going to continue taking Burnham in a disturbing direction. Jailed and outcast, she’s going to have to struggle hard she wants back into Starfleet. As she fights to redeem herself, a war is brewing between the Klingons and the Federation, so her personal struggles will be complicated by the larger astropolitical conflicts raging around her.

Overall, an unexpectedly good start

Despite its problems, Discovery is packed with intriguing ideas and characters who are already changing my idea of what the Federation represents. I love that we got a peek at the Vulcans’ less-than-peaceful treatment of the Klingons, offering us a better understanding of why the Klingons think the Federation is run by hypocrites. And Burnham’s character has a terrifically complex backstory, as the survivor of a Klingon attack who was raised by Vulcans. Like her brother Spock, she has to find a middle way between Vulcan realpolitik and her passionate, human sense of justice.

For the first time, we’re starting a Trek series by focusing on a person, Burnham, instead of a ship and its crew. Eventually, Burnham will have a crew of her own, including Saru, but it was interesting to walk into this series by focusing on her character and personal history.

What sets Discovery apart from previous Trek series is that it takes for granted that the Federation is not some monolithic entity where everybody is making relatively good decisions. Its history is riddled with shady conflicts. Its officers are in conflict. This isn’t a new idea, of course—we’ve seen it a lot in Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but both those series always tried to reassure us that rationality and good will would ultimately rule the day. You won’t have that feeling as you watch Discovery. Things aren’t going to be alright, at least not for the characters we know.

It’s not so much that the future feels darker in Discovery. The future just feels more realistically complicated. We’re not trying to make the galaxy a better place anymore, kids. We’re in the real world. And I think I like it.

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[somefunnyshits]

Enlarge/ Welcome to Star Trek: Discovery.CBSThe debut of Star Trek: Discovery last night was unlike any other TV series premiere. It was a cultural event that people have been analyzing and anticipating for years. There are now three generations of people who grew up with Star Trek in its various incarnations, and the franchise has come to represent what many of us consider a better tomorrow. Discovery arrived on the scene with no shortage of baggage, both good and bad.There was absolutely no way that the first two episodes (available now on CBS’s All Access streaming service) could have met all our expectations. Plus, the odds were already stacked against Discovery. The production lost a showrunner midstream, and advance buzz has been tepid, to say the least. So it should come as no shock that the first two episodes were flawed, with moments that felt a little clunky. And yet I was genuinely surprised by the show at many points, in a positive way. It gave us a dramatic, original perspective on the Star Trek universe. Even though the series is set 10 years before the original Star Trek series, it had a weird, futuristic edge that has been sorely lacking in the recent J.J. Abrams movies.And the best part? For the first time in decades, Star Trek feels dangerous again.Spoilers ahead.No more cozy spaceships Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham. CBS Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham. CBS Chris Obi as T'Kuvma. CBS Mary Chieffo as L'Rell; Chris Obi as T'Kuvma. The first two episodes of Discovery are definitely a slow burn. The acting feels oddly understated, and there are some awkward, info-dumpy conversations between First Officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) as we establish their characters and the mission of the USS Shenzhou. But by the time we’re deep into the final battle with the Klingons, I found myself yelling, “Holy $%&!!” a lot. Ships are on fire! Klingons are yelling about their new messiah! Major characters are dying! The series went from zero to warp speed in less than two hours, which is pretty damn hard to pull off.We leave the cozy confines of a typical Trek series behind after the opening scene, in which Burnham and Georgiou are on a peaceful mission to help a pre-contact civilization survive drought. After vaporizing the blockage in a well, they exchange a little banter and return to the Shenzhou to check out a strange object in the debris field of a binary star system. Obscured by some kind of radiation field, the object could be related to damage suffered by a nearby Federation communications relay.When Burnham goes to investigate the object wearing nothing but a spacesuit and jetpack, we get a moment that really nails the tone of this new series. Alone in a vast debris field, illuminated by the light of two stars, Burnham seems more vulnerable and audacious than Starfleet officers we’ve known before. There’s no beaming down with an away team here. There’s no shuttle enclosing her in a protective shell.When she finally encounters the object, an ancient sacred beacon, she lands on it with her own two feet. She's alone in a vacuum, encountering something literally awesome. There’s something visceral about this scene, especially when she winds up in a deadly fight with a Klingon guarding the place. It’s as if they’re two knights battling in armor, except they’re in the middle of outer space.Arresting scenes like this lift Discovery out of its slightly clunky plotting and suggest that it could become a truly breathtaking work of science fiction.A troubled protagonist Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Burnham. CBS Get a load of that Discovery! CBS Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham. The space gladiator moment is also our first hint that Discovery won’t be returning us to the “everything is fine” baseline of previous Trek shows. Showrunners Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts had already hinted in interviews that this series would be an arc rather than episodic, and, as a result, there are no tidy endings.Instead, there are dramatic consequences to the space fight, in which Burnham eventually manages to skewer the Klingon on his own bat’leth. She returns to the ship radiation-scarred and wrathful, begging Georgiou to reject Starfleet’s peaceful mandate so they can immediately destroy the Klingon ship lurking nearby. Unlike the tough-but-fair Sisko or the always-ethical Picard, Burnham is a disturbingly flawed hero who sometimes opts for realpolitik rather than idealism.When Georgiou tries to use diplomacy with the Klingons, Burnham consults privately with her adoptive father Sarek (yes, this makes her Spock’s sister), who appears via some kind of holographic telepresence system that we’ve never seen on Trek before. He advises her to give the Klingons a “Vulcan hello,” referencing an event in Vulcan history that’s going to be news to fans of the franchise. Apparently when the Vulcans first met the Klingons, they fired on the warlike species before doing anything else to earn their respect. This doesn’t sound much like the rational Vulcans we know, but then again this series is all about revealing hidden and often dark complexities beneath the Federation’s peaceful facade.Armed with this knowledge, Burnham mutinies and tries to get the crew to fire on the Klingons. Here, again, Discovery surprises us. When Kirk bent the rules, he was usually rewarded for it in the end with a good outcome. Fighting to save his crew is the right choice, even if it seems wrong at first. But when Burnham tries her desperate move to save her ship, it turns out to be the first bad move in a terrible plan that backfires. Her choices cost her the friendship she has forged with Georgiou and get her thrown in the brig. As more Klingon and Federation ships arrive and the Shenzhou is shot to ribbons, Burnham is trapped behind the failing force field of her prison cell. She's forced to witness the first melee in a war she helped start from a position of helpless shame.Though Burnham does eventually escape (in a pretty cool scene), it’s not exactly a triumphant moment. She has to endure the death of everything she holds dear, including Georgiou and most of the crew. As the second episode ends, she’s facing life in prison for her crimes—and a hellish lifetime of guilt after striving to overcome the horror of her family’s death at the hands of Klingons.These emotional beats feel like a real departure for the franchise, which typically celebrates hope, bravery, and fecklessness in its protagonists and rarely dwells on how they might also be motivated by frustration and agony. At worst, we would see Kirk feel old and bored or see Sisko’s loyalty being tested by his evolving relationship with the Bajorans. In Discovery, we see an unsettling parallel between Burnham and T’Kuvma, the messianic leader of the newly unified Klingon Empire: both are ruled by rage and seemingly fueled by a history of trauma.The new KlingonsEnlarge/ Chris Obi as T'Kuvma.CBSDiscovery pulls a fast one on us by introducing Captain Georgiou only to kill her off. The same goes for the Klingon leader T’Kuvma (Chris Obi), who perishes in the exact way that Burnham feared. He becomes a martyr while fighting the evil humans. As the series gets underway, our main protagonist will be Burnham, and our main antagonist will be T’Kuvma’s protege Kol (Kenneth Mitchell), a pale-skinned Klingon who is the “son of none,” an outcast among the Klingon elites.The pilot episode actually begins with the Klingon point of view, which is an interesting choice. T’Kuvma gives a patriotic speech to his followers, laced with religious fundamentalism and myriad references to the mythic Klingon leader Kahless. One of the most talked-about parts of this series is the Klingons’ new look, which is sort of a cross between H.R. Geiger’s alien art and a goth take on the Afro-futurist styles of Black Panther homeland Wakanda. Their armor is all techno-spines and curves; their faces are masklike, with oddly doubled nostrils and exaggerated mouths turned deeply down at the corners. The Klingon language no longer sounds Slavic; as T’Kuvma speaks, it has the tenor of an east African tribal language (though Obi reads his lines so haltingly that it’s unintentionally comic, which is unfortunate).T’Kuvma has whipped up the great Klingon houses into a frenzy of nationalism. He promises them that a war with the Federation will allow them to “stay Klingon” and resist the lure of the Federation’s soft, semi-democratic way of life. But he also has an odd democratic streak of his own, elevating the lowly Kol to his second-in-command. He’s a kind of Klingon populist—a terrifying mixture of authoritarian and religious zealot. When Burnham shoots T’Kuvma, he gets exactly what he wants: an honorable death and a chance to unify his people in what’s basically a holy war against the Federation.Despite their new look, the Klingons are very much in line with the humanoids we knew in the Next Generation series. They’ve got a complicated history and are obsessed with honor, racial purity, and spiritual tradition. Of course, they hate the polyglot Federation, with its multi-species fleet that promises peace but still fires first with their “Vulcan hellos.” Though a lot of this series feels like it’s taking Star Trek in a new direction—both in terms of characters and storytelling—it’s nice to see the Klingons' motivations have remained unchanged. They’re still the Federation’s ultimate enemy, and yet their violent impulses are hardly alien. They represent the worst instincts of humanity. When humans fight Klingons, we also fight ourselves.Yes, there are problemsThough Discovery has its great moments, the first episode is also bogged down by some bad dialogue and bland acting at moments when the action should have felt white-hot. As tensions heat up with the Klingons, it feels like we’re in one of those “let’s discuss this case” moments on NCSI rather than a looming space massacre.One particularly awkward moment stood out, when we are getting to know series regular Lt. Saru (Doug Jones of Pan's Labyrinth), the science officer. He explains to Burnham that he’s from a planet where his species is the “cow,” hunted by predators and bred to live in constant fear of death. Basically, Saru admits that he was a compliant food slave on another world. Which is pretty damn creepy and makes him fascinating as a character. How did a cow become chief science officer in Starfleet? But instead of highlighting his alien, tragic history, he’s given a long, garbled speech about “food chains” that makes no sense—and ends with him suggesting that he somehow has a special, evolved ability to sense when death is imminent.That's why Saru announces that he “senses death” when the Klingons show up. Which—duh. You don’t need to be a prey species to notice when Klingons are itching for a fight. His character’s whole disturbing backstory is wasted in this scene, plus it gave me an uneasy feeling that there will be a lot of junk science in this show about how biology and ecosystems work. That feeling did not go away when Burnham, supposedly a "xenoanthropologist," announces that war is part of the Klingon’s “nature,” which she later seems to suggest means it’s part of their “culture.” Huh?Nature vs. culture nitpicks aside, the main problem with the pilot is the directing. Which isn’t surprising, given that the series’ original showrunner Bryan Fuller (of Hannibal and American Gods) has said that one of the reasons he parted ways with the show was CBS’ insistence that he use David Semel as a director on the pilot. Semel has mostly worked on NCIS and is perfectly competent. But he doesn’t seem able to draw out the tension in scenes or inspire taut performances in his excellent cast. By the second episode, however, the actors are owning their characters in a way that’s infinitely more compelling, so my hope is that we’ll see more intense performances as the series progresses.The glimpse we got of upcoming episodes was intriguing, and it suggested that Discovery is going to continue taking Burnham in a disturbing direction. Jailed and outcast, she’s going to have to struggle hard if she wants back into Starfleet. As she fights to redeem herself, a war is brewing between the Klingons and the Federation, so her personal struggles will be complicated by the larger astropolitical conflicts raging around her.Overall, an unexpectedly good startDespite its problems, Discovery is packed with intriguing ideas and characters who are already changing my idea of what the Federation represents. I love that we got a peek at the Vulcans’ less-than-peaceful treatment of the Klingons, offering us a better understanding of why the Klingons think the Federation is run by hypocrites. And Burnham’s character has a terrifically complex backstory, as the survivor of a Klingon attack who was raised by Vulcans. Like her brother Spock, she has to find a middle way between Vulcan realpolitik and her passionate, human sense of justice.For the first time, we’re starting a Trek series by focusing on a person, Burnham, instead of a ship and its crew. Eventually, Burnham will have a crew of her own, including Saru, but it was interesting to walk into this series by focusing on her character and personal history.What sets Discovery apart from previous Trek series is that it takes for granted that the Federation is not some monolithic entity where everybody is making relatively good decisions. Its history is riddled with shady conflicts. Its officers are in conflict. This isn’t a new idea, of course—we’ve seen it a lot in Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but both those series always tried to reassure us that rationality and good will would ultimately rule the day. You won’t have that feeling as you watch Discovery. Things aren’t going to be alright, at least not for the characters we know.It’s not so much that the future feels darker in Discovery. The future just feels more realistically complicated. We’re not trying to make the galaxy a better place anymore, kids. We’re in the real world. And I think I like it.Let's block ads! (Why?)Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Flow.

http://gooogleenews.blogspot.com/2017/09/star-trek-discovery-shows-us-side-of_25.html

[somefunnyshits]

Enlarge/ Welcome to Star Trek: Discovery.CBSThe debut of Star Trek: Discovery last night was unlike any other TV series premiere. It was a cultural event that people have been analyzing and anticipating for years. There are now three generations of people who grew up with Star Trek in its various incarnations, and the franchise has come to represent what many of us consider a better tomorrow. Discovery arrived on the scene with no shortage of baggage, both good and bad.There was absolutely no way that the first two episodes (available now on CBS’s All Access streaming service) could have met all our expectations. Plus, the odds were already stacked against Discovery. The production lost a showrunner midstream, and advance buzz has been tepid, to say the least. So it should come as no shock that the first two episodes were flawed, with moments that felt a little clunky. And yet I was genuinely surprised by the show at many points, in a positive way. It gave us a dramatic, original perspective on the Star Trek universe. Even though the series is set 10 years before the original Star Trek series, it had a weird, futuristic edge that’s been sorely lacking in the recent J.J. Abrams movies.And the best part? For the first time in decades, Star Trek feels dangerous again.Spoilers ahead.No more cozy spaceships Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham. CBS Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham. CBS Chris Obi as T'Kuvma. CBS Mary Chieffo as L'Rell; Chris Obi as T'Kuvma. The first two episodes of Discovery are definitely a slow burn. The acting feels oddly understated, and there are some awkward, info-dumpy conversations between First Officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Captain Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) as we establish their characters and the mission of the USS Shenzhou. But by the time we’re deep into the final battle with the Klingons, I found myself yelling, “Holy $%&!!” a lot. Ships are on fire! Klingons are yelling about their new messiah! Major characters are dying! The series went from zero to warp speed in less than two hours, which is pretty damn hard to pull off.We leave the cozy confines of a typical Trek series behind after the opening scene, in which Burnham and Georgiou are on a peaceful mission to help a pre-contact civilization survive drought. After vaporizing the blockage in a well, they exchange a little banter and return to the Shenzhou to check out a strange object in the debris field of a binary star system. Obscured by some kind of radiation field, the object could be related to damage suffered by a nearby Federation communications relay.When Burnham goes to investigate the object wearing nothing but a spacesuit and jetpack, we get a moment that really nails the tone of this new series. Alone in a vast debris field, illuminated by the light of two stars, Burnham seems more vulnerable and audacious than Starfleet officers we’ve known before. There’s no beaming down with an away team here. There’s no shuttle enclosing her in a protective shell.When she finally encounters the object, an ancient sacred beacon, she lands on it with her own two feet. She's alone in vacuum, encountering something literally awesome. There’s something visceral about this scene, especially when she winds up in a deadly fight with a Klingon guarding the place. It’s as if they’re two knights battling in armor, except they’re in the middle of outer space.Arresting scenes like this lift Discovery out of its slightly clunky plotting and suggest that it could become a truly breathtaking work of science fiction.A troubled protagonist Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Burnham. CBS Get a load of that Discovery! CBS Michelle Yeoh as Captain Philippa Georgiou; Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer Michael Burnham. The space gladiator moment is also our first hint that Discovery won’t be returning us to the “everything is fine” baseline of previous Trek shows. Showrunners Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts had already hinted in interviews that this series would be an arc rather than episodic, and, as a result, there are no tidy endings.Instead, there are dramatic consequences to the space fight, in which Burnham eventually manages to skewer the Klingon on his own bat’leth. She returns to the ship radiation-scarred and wrathful, begging Georgiou to reject Starfleet’s peaceful mandate so they can immediately destroy the Klingon ship lurking nearby. Unlike the tough-but-fair Sisko or the always-ethical Picard, Burnham is a disturbingly flawed hero who sometimes opts for realpolitik rather than idealism.When Georgiou tries to use diplomacy with the Klingons, Burnham consults privately with her adoptive father Sarek (yes, this makes her Spock’s sister), who appears via some kind of holographic telepresence system that we’ve never seen on Trek before. He advises her to give the Klingons a “Vulcan hello,” referencing an event in Vulcan history that’s going to be news to fans of the franchise. Apparently when the Vulcans first met the Klingons, they fired on the warlike species before doing anything else, to earn their respect. This doesn’t sound much like the rational Vulcans we know, but then again this series is all about revealing hidden and often dark complexities beneath the Federation’s peaceful facade.Armed with this knowledge, Burnham mutinies and tries to get the crew to fire on the Klingons. Here, again, Discovery surprises us. When Kirk bent the rules, he was usually rewarded for it in the end with a good outcome. Fighting to save his crew is the right choice, even if it seems wrong at first. But when Burnham tries her desperate move to save her ship, it turns out to be the first bad move in a terrible plan that backfires. Her choices cost her the friendship she’s forged with Georgiou and get her thrown in the brig. As more Klingon and Federation ships arrive, and the Shenzhou is shot to ribbons, Burnham is trapped behind the failing force field of her prison cell. She's forced to witness the first melee in a war she helped start from a position of helpless shame.Though Burnham does eventually escape (in a pretty cool scene), it’s not exactly a triumphant moment. She has to endure the death of everything she holds dear, including Georgiou and most of the crew. As the second episode ends, she’s facing life in prison for her crimes—and a hellish lifetime of guilt after striving to overcome the horror of her family’s death at the hands of Klingons.These emotional beats feel like a real departure for the franchise, which typically celebrates hope, bravery, and fecklessness in its protagonists and rarely dwells on how they might also be motivated by frustration and agony. At worst, we see Kirk feel old and bored, or we see Sisko’s loyalty being tested by his evolving relationship with the Bajorans. In Discovery, we see an unsettling parallel between Burnham and T’Kuvma, the messianic leader of the newly unified Klingon Empire: both are ruled by rage and seemingly fueled by a history of trauma.The new KlingonsEnlarge/ Chris Obi as T'Kuvma.CBSDiscovery pulls a fast one on us by introducing Captain Georgiou only to kill her off. The same goes for the Klingon leader T’Kuvma (Chris Obi), who perishes in the exact way that Burnham feared. He becomes a martyr while fighting the evil humans. As the series gets underway, our main protagonist will be Burnham and our main antagonist will be T’Kuvma’s protege Kol (Kenneth Mitchell), a pale-skinned Klingon who is the “son of none,” an outcast among the Klingon elites.The pilot episode actually begins with the Klingon point of view, which is an interesting choice. T’Kuvma gives a patriotic speech to his followers, laced with religious fundamentalism and myriad references to the mythic Klingon leader Kahless. One of the most talked-about parts of this series is the Klingons’ new look, which is sort of a cross between H.R. Geiger’s alien art and a goth take on the Afro-futurist styles of Black Panther’s homeland Wakanda. Their armor is all techno-spines and curves; their faces are masklike, with oddly doubled nostrils and exaggerated mouths turned deeply down at the corners. The Klingon language no longer sounds Slavic; as T’Kuvma speaks, it has the tenor of an east African tribal language (though Obi reads his lines so haltingly that it’s unintentionally comic, which is unfortunate).T’Kuvma has whipped up the great Klingon houses into a frenzy of nationalism. He promises them that a war with the Federation will allow them to “stay Klingon” and resist the lure of the Federation’s soft, semi-democratic way of life. But he also has an odd democratic streak of his own, elevating the lowly Kol to his second-in-command. He’s a kind of Klingon populist, a terrifying mixture of authoritarian and religious zealot. When Burnham shoots T’Kuvma, he gets exactly what he wants: an honorable death, and a chance to unify his people in what’s basically a holy war against the Federation.Despite their new look, the Klingons are very much in line with the humanoids we knew in the Next Generation series. They’ve got a complicated history and are obsessed with honor, racial purity, and spiritual tradition. Of course, they hate the polyglot Federation, with its multi-species fleet that promises peace but still fires first with their “Vulcan hellos.” Though a lot of this series feels like it’s taking Star Trek in a new direction—both in terms of characters and storytelling—it’s nice to see the Klingons' motivations have remained unchanged. They’re still the Federation’s ultimate enemy, and yet their violent impulses are hardly alien. They represent the worst instincts of humanity. When humans fight Klingons, we also fight ourselves.Yes, there are problemsThough Discovery has its great moments, the first episode is also bogged down by some bad dialogue and bland acting at moments when the action should have felt white hot. As tensions heat up with the Klingons, it feels like we’re in one of those “let’s discuss this case” moments on NCSI rather than a looming space massacre.One particularly awkward moment stood out, when we are getting to know series regular Lt. Saru (Doug Jones of Pans Labyrinth), the science officer. He explains to Burnham that he’s from a planet where his species is the “cow,” hunted by predators and bred to live in constant fear of death. Basically, Saru admits that he was a compliant food slave on another world. Which is pretty damn creepy and makes him fascinating as a character. How did a cow become chief science officer in Starfleet? But instead of highlighting his alien, tragic history, he’s given a long, garbled speech about “food chains” that makes no sense—and ends with him suggesting that he somehow has a special, evolved ability to sense when death is imminent.That's why Saru announces that he “senses death” when the Klingons show up. Which—duh. You don’t need to be a prey species to notice when Klingons are itching for a fight. His character’s whole disturbing backstory is wasted in this scene, plus it gave me an uneasy feeling that there will be a lot of junk science in this show about how biology and ecosystems work. That feeling did not go away when Burnham, supposedly an "xenoanthropologist," announces that war is part of the Klingon’s “nature,” which she later seems to suggest means it’s part of their “culture.” Huh?Nature vs. culture nitpicks aside, the main problem with the pilot is the directing. Which isn’t surprising, given that the series’ original showrunner Bryan Fuller (of Hannibal and American Gods) has said that one of the reasons he parted ways with the show was CBS’ insistence that he use David Semel as a director on the pilot. Semel has mostly worked on NCIS and is perfectly competent. But he doesn’t seem able to draw out the tension in scenes or inspire taut performances in his excellent cast. By the second episode, however, the actors are owning their characters in a way that’s infinitely more compelling, so my hope is that we’ll see more intense performances as the series progresses.The glimpse we got of upcoming episodes was intriguing, and it suggested that Discovery is going to continue taking Burnham in a disturbing direction. Jailed and outcast, she’s going to have to struggle hard she wants back into Starfleet. As she fights to redeem herself, a war is brewing between the Klingons and the Federation, so her personal struggles will be complicated by the larger astropolitical conflicts raging around her.Overall, an unexpectedly good startDespite its problems, Discovery is packed with intriguing ideas and characters who are already changing my idea of what the Federation represents. I love that we got a peek at the Vulcans’ less-than-peaceful treatment of the Klingons, offering us a better understanding of why the Klingons think the Federation is run by hypocrites. And Burnham’s character has a terrifically complex backstory, as the survivor of a Klingon attack who was raised by Vulcans. Like her brother Spock, she has to find a middle way between Vulcan realpolitik and her passionate, human sense of justice.For the first time, we’re starting a Trek series by focusing on a person, Burnham, instead of a ship and its crew. Eventually, Burnham will have a crew of her own, including Saru, but it was interesting to walk into this series by focusing on her character and personal history.What sets Discovery apart from previous Trek series is that it takes for granted that the Federation is not some monolithic entity where everybody is making relatively good decisions. Its history is riddled with shady conflicts. Its officers are in conflict. This isn’t a new idea, of course—we’ve seen it a lot in Deep Space Nine and Voyager, but both those series always tried to reassure us that rationality and good will would ultimately rule the day. You won’t have that feeling as you watch Discovery. Things aren’t going to be alright, at least not for the characters we know.It’s not so much that the future feels darker in Discovery. The future just feels more realistically complicated. We’re not trying to make the galaxy a better place anymore, kids. We’re in the real world. And I think I like it.Let's block ads! (Why?)Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Flow.

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