m_s0

Pretty much.

The end of season 2 of Discovery… wasn’t a pretty sight.

nl0428 said:

Whatever happens to Rian Johnson’s trilogy, would everyone here like the idea of him directing the trilogy that Benioff and Weiss are producing and working on?

I hope he does one or two more films that gross well over a billion, then goes on to do whatever the hell he wants to do - which will hopefully be something original. Ideally with a few smaller films between. Otherwise it’s a huge waste.

Plus, he’s an exceptional writer/director and he should continue to direct his own scripts exclusively (which he seems to be quite intent on doing).

SilverWook said:

Who wants to lay odds we get Turkish Star Wars on Blu-Ray first? 😛

Funny you should say that:

https://neonharbor.com/new-hd-scan-of-cult-film-turkish-star-wars-to-premiere-may-4/

We are this close. Even if it’d more involved in terms of dubbing and fixing/editing out the legally problematic bits than that Korkusuz/Rampage release from a decade ago…

Hal 9000 said:

SilverWook said:

a 55(!) hour marathon preceding Avengers Endgame

Crimoney, what’s the cost for such a privilege?

Your life, seems like.

rocknroll41 said:

Palpatine! All aboard the hype train!

Yeah, I have two words for JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio on that point. On that point, especially, I should probably say.

Is anyone else getting the impression DSC got a lot less… sociopathic and more coherent all of a sudden? Basically for the last two episodes? A lof of the issues I had with it are still there, but it really feels as though they’re trying to pull this mess together. If it’s the change in people in charge I did not expect results to be immediate.

…unless the previous showrunners got kicked out before the announcement and someone else has already been rejigging the season for a good long while when the announcement took place? I’ll take my tinfoil hat off now.

Anyway, those last two episodes are much, much, much better. Colour me surprised (though this is still not exactly great Trek).

They need to clean up after season 1 before they start making a new mess. Episode 2 was trekky, episode 3 is back to mopping up and is all the weaker for it… This what happens when you’re saddled with a bunch of mystery boxes as the foundation for your show, instead of an actual story arc. A retcon here, a handwave there, and season 3 should be semi-acceptable at this rate.

Episode 2 is a lot better in terms of trying to be Star Trek, though it does have that peculiar feeling about it as though they’re writing it this way, because they’re hoping it’ll stick and become second nature, not because they’re feeling it. If what I say makes sense.

Or maybe I’ve been burnt and they need to work twice as hard to make me like this show half as much as I would’ve otherwise. It was refreshing to see this kind of an episode considering what DSC had been like, honestly.

That said, the humour is insufferable, and I don’t know if I have the patience to give them another season to figure it out…

Tl;dr: better, though my expectations are low.

Execution is the issue, not tone in itself. And the way fundamental issues with season 1 are mostly ignored while the window dressing is re-arranged a bit makes it fairly obvious season 2 will be more of the same. If the creators aren’t seeing the real problems that prevent the series from being the best (or just better) version of what it’s intended to be, they won’t be fixing them.

I don’t want to say more so that I don’t spoil it for you, but I truly wish I enjoyed this trainwreck…

If that Section 31 show paves the way for a spin-off Pike show I’m down with it, but I have no faith for it to be any good with how current Trek’s going. A Section 31 show in the Berman era would’ve been a much more promising idea.

Anson Mount is the only saving grace of season 2 thus far - he gets it, even if the writers don’t, is my impression. And, yeah: the writers still don’t get it.

The season 2 pilot is marginally better than season 1 on a purely technical level just by virtue of haphazardly addressing some of the common criticisms and having the showrunners replaced in the later stages of development, as opposed to the early stage of season 1, but it still prefers overall dickishness, death and wanton destruction to meaninful drama or character development, and it still values explosions and macguffins over ideas - and the only difference from season 1 is they throw more jokes in this time around.

But Anson Mount really is great.

Considering they’re still announcing cast members and there’s only been rumours as to when principal photography is scheduled to begin, I highly doubt they’re even aiming to release this in 2019…

That Prelude short has always felt a bit off to me. It’s like bizarro Trek, something about it just doesn’t seem right, the writing isn’t great, the spirit isn’t there. The scene they released more recently was quite bad, I thought.

Not a fan of Axanar as its own thing, and definitely not a fan of its impact on the fan film as a whole. I’m pretty bitter about how it lead to cutting Continues short most of all.

Two Trek shows per year starting 2019:

http://www.treknews.net/2018/12/04/star-trek-picard-series-late-2019/

At the 46th Annual UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, David Nevins, the new chief creative officer at CBS, announced “In 2019, it’s not one ‘Star Trek,’ it’s two ‘Star Treks.’ ‘Discovery’ at the beginning of the year, and Picard will start at the end of the year,” on Tuesday.

Yay?

I was about to make a joke that Picard’s already started 30 years ago, but I lost interest halfway through thinking it.

skywalkerfan101 said:

Off topic, but I binge to binge watch the Orville. A lot of people say it’s more Star Trek than Discovery.

I’d recommend spreading it out a bit - it’s appropriately episodic.

snooker said:

Kylo Ren murdered Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Snoke, and nearly took over the entire Galaxy in two films.

Luke was indirect, I feel, but yeah, Kylo Ren is on a roll.

Back to the topic in question: no. Going back to Abrams for IX pretty much kills any anticipation I have for it, though. A nice clean slate setup from the end of TLJ will get dragged back kicking and screaming into Spreadsheet Wars territory again.

Sorry, had to get it out of my system.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Definitely an improvement on Season 1. It has its weak episodes (may I one day forget the mistake that is “Brown Betty”), but it certainly has less filler and more cohesion and momentum than its predecessor.

★★★★★★★★☆☆

I stopped watching Fringe a bit into season 2, and the only reason why I even got that far was the praise the show was getting, especially further on.

So, here’s a question: from what you’ve seen thus far, does the writing improve past about mid-season 2? For reference, up until that point I found the show to be a lobotomized X-Files knock-off, and a truly idiotic one at that, it being extremely high on explaining EVERYTHING to the cheap seats which infuriated me to no end. It’s as if they aimed for a cult show, but tailored it for the soap crowd. I liked the premise fine (love the X-Files etc), but that along with rote characters, lazy plotting etc. completely killed it for me. Couldn’t even force myself to skip through for Nimoy…

I’m thinking, if people stop enjoying it half-way through perhaps I’d like it past that point. I do want a decent X-Files knock-off…

ray_afraid said:

m_s0 said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

The Grinch

Why? Just … why?

Scott Mosier… stuck producing Kevin Smith movies, and then just stuck producing.

No.

Pretty well substantiated in their podcasts.

DuracellEnergizer said:

The Grinch

Why? Just … why?

The interesting part is that apparently it’s co-directed by Scott Mosier - long-time aspiring director stuck producing Kevin Smith movies, and then just stuck producing. Might explain the ‘why’.

So, a Rick and Morty writer (/the TNG s08 guy) is now doing the Star Trek animated show:

https://variety.com/2018/tv/news/star-trek-animated-series-cbs-all-access-lower-decks-1202993145/

Developed by “Rick and Morty” writer Mike McMahan, the series will focus on the support crew serving on one of Starfleet’s least important ships.

The animated show would’ve been lighter in tone regardless, but it still seems as if they’re quite desperate about chasing after The Orville.

SilverWook said:

Still waiting on the holographic displays Tv Guide said back in 1980 we’d all have in the the new century. 😛

Wait, you mean you don’t already have six of those?

Tech advancing this fast (assuming it’s not just marketing and wishful thinking, which I think it is to a degree at this stage) is a good thing - cost of 4k drops, adaptability increases, and we get a higher chance of some old masters getting dusted off for that reason.

Consumers will benefit (I highly doubt we’ll be seeing 8k BDs anytime soon), and insane people will get to buy some really nice, really expensive, and really useless TVs.

skywalkerfan101 said:

What universe is Discovery part of? The Prime Universe (Which I doubt). I know it may be just a creative decision, but if it were the Prime timeline, then the Enterprise would look exactly as it did in the original series, based off of canon (unless they’re going to retcon it by showing that the Enterprise was later refitted to what we see in TOS).

If you actually watch it, it’s a new, different entity that’s closer to the Kelvin timeline than to anything else Star Trek.

If you read the marketing crap, it’s totally Prime and if it doesn’t look it just give it some time to get there, honest, scout’s honor.

Handman said:

m_s0 said:
The push for 8k is about to begin, so it should happen any year now…

Huh?

There’s some 8k TV trade show buzz already:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/8k-tv-everything-you-need-to-know/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/samsungs-obscenely-expensive-85-inch-8k-tv-ships-later-this-month/
https://www.cnet.com/news/8k-tv-what-you-need-to-know/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/09/04/samsung-q900r-8k-tv-first-impressions-haters-gonna-hate-and-miss-out/

Hey, if it gets CBS to pay up they’re free to try selling 8k to me.

Just a bit longer until the costs go down, and they’re not able to peddle those ancient SD transfers to households with 4k TVs. The push for 8k is about to begin, so it should happen any year now…

As much as I hate to veer off the discussion about klingon manicure (I guess that’s the one aspect of klingon culture Ma Worf decided her kid wouldn’t honour?), here’s a DS9 film frame, courtesy of the soon-to-be-released documentary:

.jpg artifacting aside, it looks predictably gorgeous.

Tobar said:

They’ve slapped hair on the Klingons and are trying real hard to retcon it:

Spock’s more hairy too:

A bit unkempt for a Vulcan. Is it logical? Perhaps he was staying someplace cold and required additional protection?

That Klingon design isn’t meshing well with the hair. Maybe it’s just a matter of getting used to it after seeing everyone bald for a season (and that one movie). Hairless Klingons is a non-issue anyway in the grand scheme of Things That Don’t Work In DSC.