#star trek: discovery: the way to the stars

[planetlongjourney]

I find it incredibly funny when, in Star Trek, they change the look of a species, to make it stand out more, to generally make it look more alien because makeup and prosthetics are getting better or just because they decide the old one wasn’t good enough, but then pretend that nothing ever happened.

I’m not talking about the Klingons, as they actually do talk about their old designs (also their design change was fair enough) but I’m talking about the Trills, who randomly changed up their WHOLE look from that one tng episode, and it’s never mentioned. 😭

Like, are they different species or something??? Their newer design was literally taken from another species, so did they one from each race have a baby together and started a whole new race of people in the span of like, 5 years???

Also, the Bajorans. In tng, Ensign Ro has a weird nose/eyebrow ridge thing that makes her look like she’s really angry (honestly yeah go off) but that is taken away and never mentioned again.

Actually, pretty much every species from tng into ds9 had a design change, or a personality change, and eveyone is just kind of like “ah yes, the way things always were, nothing has ever changed”.

By the way, we don’t talk about discovery aliens here. That stuff was scary. 🫠

[awebca]

A star trek movie set mostly on earth? Oh boy! Politics! More grey/blue colour schemes and 'realistic' plots, here we come! Right before Enterprise, or even earlier? So few of the many existing or popular alien races to use, none of the existing characters. Or is enterprise just going to be ignored entirely?

Lower decks and SNW are what fans want, at least on tumblr. Fun but serious stories set in the existing star trek universe. It's a big goddamn universe. Pretend science! Most people are good!

Picard took a big steaming dump on the 'main' universe by showing starfleet failing its ideals completely, multiple times. The broad outline of that show did not require any of:

* Romulans mostly killed, starfleet not helping

*dead parents and kids everywhere (picard's mother, riker and troi's kid, the first android girl, ex-borgs).

*killing every android and everyone on Mars

*picard's an android, but don't worry nothing changes about him at all.

*attempted genocide revenge plot.

*more of the soong's...ugh.

*the borg being fully tamed in season 2 and then immediately untamed for 3.

Season 3 wasn't perfect but at least was closer to the nostalgia play fans of...fucking picard...probably wanted!

And Discovery, for all its ups and downs, I cannot forgive for making a canon plot point that almost every spaceship in the galaxy was eradicated at some point. Billions, perhaps trillions, dead (I know they refused to engage with this, but there's no fucking way the power source used for spaceships wasn't commonly used by many races for on-planet power).

As long as star trek continues to make some good content I will keep watching. Maybe origins will happen and be great. But who is this for?

Oh wow, this is closer than any Star Trek movie has gotten to existing in 8 years.

[motherofoompaloompas]

Please vote ❤️

[subbyfoxelf]

[book review] star trek: discovery: the way to the stars by una mccormack (2019)

in a lot of ways, tilly is the beating heart of star trek: discovery. you don’t notice it at first but by the end of season 1 it’s just super obvious, and it just gets more and more obvious as time goes on. what you do notice right away is that she is such a mood. like, she’s got to be one of the most immediately relatable characters on the show to the average star trek fan.

one of my favorite things about discovery, and i think one of a lot of people’s favorite things about discovery, is that the crew isn’t nearly as… stuffy as in the next generation?[1] everyone doesn’t always have to say the exact right thing at the exact right time, and we see that this isn’t incompatible with the “elevated” humanity that is so central to the franchise’s appeal. it’s okay to get excited about things in messy, awkward ways! and tilly is basically a human-shaped avatar of this approach. on top of that, she’s a genuinely great portrayal of someone who is clearly neurodiverse.[2] she’s just so damn refreshing in a world where a lot of popular entertainment uses “brilliant but rude, not empathetic, and has trouble talking to people” as shorthand for anyone who isn’t neurotypical. tilly is amazing at connecting with people, and i don’t think anyone is going to accuse her of an underabundance of empathy.

… so, uh, yeah! all of that is to say that i was, you know, maybe slightly excited to read a book that’s primarily about her! this book expands on a lot of what we already got from snippets about her–overbearing mother who sounds like a huge asshole (she is), brilliant, had a “rebellious phase.” i also really appreciate the continuity between this and the 2019 annual with her father’s ship!

the book is split into three parts which are extremely unequal in terms of length but nevertheless pretty equally important. part 1 covers tilly’s transition from living on earth to living at boarding school, and takes up almost half of the book, dwarfing the other two parts. part 2 follows tilly’s brief exploits as a teenage runaway, and part 3 finds her aboard her father’s ship and is the beginning of her path to starfleet. although the other two parts are equally important and are maybe slightly more effective as page turners, part 1 is the part that i found myself relating to the hardest.

one of the big obstacles tilly faces is her inability to stand up to her mother, and how she keeps getting bullied into going along with whatever her mother wants. this is what led her to boarding school, and while she’s there despite her teacher feeling she’s excelling, her mother just refuses to be satisfied.

tilly ends up internalizing her mother’s expectations and dropping things that are genuinely fun and important to her to try to do the best she can to meet her mother’s impossible standards. she ends up obsessing over a major project and overworking herself to the point of exhaustion, and when the time comes despite all her hard work she ends up bombing the presentation because of all the pressure she’s put on herself. worse, she realizes she’s alienated all her friends and is left all alone by the end of the term.

i… found this aspect way more relatable than i wanted to. i find that i often get so focused on what i’m working on or making progress with something… chasing the next dopamine release, as it were. and as a result i end up not doing enough to maintain the relationships in my life which are actually drastically more important to me than whatever i’m working on. and that’s without the pressure of a parent or other authority figure! just the ghost of one, in the form of lingering trauma from childhood. so it’s just extremely easy to empathize with tilly here.

i knew i would probably enjoy this book, i really love me some tilly, but i didn’t expect it to be so personally meaningful and genuinely useful. yeah, there’s a lot about tilly’s life that i can’t relate to, and a lot that i’m frankly pretty jealous of! but there are equally important parts that i very much can relate to, and that made this an incredibly satisfying read.

a-rank

notes

1. i hope it’s pretty obvious from my reviews of the series that i do love the next generation. this isn’t a dig against it.

2. i’m not going to put a specific diagnosis in the show’s mouth, but as someone who is autistic and has adhd, i frequently feel very seen by how her character is presented.

[spockskock]

They went straight to first base

(Even though there was nothing straight about it)

[fancy-a-dance-brigadier]

Guess who's been watching Discovery

(screencaps from Trek Core)

[poebrey]

Imagine getting adopted after your parents were brutally murdered through circumstances that were seemingly your fault, being told that it was so you could serve as both an experiment (for your foster father to prove humans could follow Vulcan teachings) and a tool (for your foster brother’s development), seemingly failing both of them, then later being told by your foster mother who you thought you had a healthy relationship with that the reason you were given as much love and affection as you were when you were a child was because it had to be denied to the child she really wanted to give it to, her real child. Oh and that she thought you were the reason your family was falling apart. Michael is a better person than me because I would’ve said fuck everyone and taken a nap.

[flownwrong]

5x05 Mirrors // 5x09 Lagrange Point

[eruptedinlight]

this is how it went, right?

[jasonisaacs]

Your life will be long, Gabriel. And every single moment of it will be spent in our agonisers. A fair price to pay for your vaulting ambition.

[t-rina]

Surely you know I would never allow personal considerations to interfere with my professional responsibilities.

[sha-ka-re]

me watching modern trek

[bisexualbailorgana]

the way dr culber goes from being murdered, to being trapped in a mycelial dimension that’s trying to kill him to being literally resurrected & given a new body and having to rebuild his identity and relationship with his husband after this unimaginable trauma to being discovery’s fun emotional support gay uncle is literally insane

[tinderbox210]

Captain Michael Burnham and Commander Rayner + that one-on-one connection

Star Trek: Discovery s05e10 - Life, Itself

[rhinexstone]

Reasons to watch Discovery

There’s a federation starship named after Nog