Star Trek: Discovery

Likewise (though I imagine it's entirely just initial budget for fx) it never made sense to me that even given how they're in recovery mode from the occupation at the start of the series the Bajorans never gave the station's militia contingent even the dinkiest of shuttles on a permanent assignment. Later on we even see that there are still hidden resistance ships in a couple places, why not dig up one of those and take it to the station for the Militia crew to fix up at least? Especially after the wormhole is discovered and suddenly DS9 is mega important land there's not even an independent little warp one vessel. Every time Kira has to beg Sisko for a Runabout is really glaringly odd to me as a result.

From what I remember about Learning Curve, the Maquis trainees were portrayed as  a bunch of seriously unprofessional screwups who only joined the group because they had no where else to go, not because they believed in anything. I mean, sure, learning to love a scrappy buncha ragamuffins is one thing but isn't the same as giving a fair argument for the cause of the underdog. IIRC, in that episode they tried to illustrate the difference between Starfleet and Maquis discipline with Chakotay and Tuvok who are experts in both, but the idea that those two accomplished officers so easily abandoned so much of their training for something so obviously less effective doesn't exactly inspire confidence in Maquis talent and personnel. And I know Tuvok was a double agent, but still, that is illogical.


Besides Roddeberry and Doohan, how many members of the cast and crew had any military experience? I bet it would explain a lot about why the command system seems to get wonkier as the franchise ages.

UnarmedAndDangerousVorta Yeah we get no ideological context for Voyager's Maquis, I just mean sympathetic in the sense of 'these guys aren't so bad.'

And if memory serves the original show had the most people with military experience - it was mere decades after World War II, after all and a number of writers, directors and so on had served. There are a number of people after that who also did (a director of one episode based the tension of a fight scene on his Vietnam experiences; a flight veteran offered tips on the Sacrifice of Angels tactics, etc.) but they usually seem to be like one or two guys. Add this to Roddenberry's TNG-era insistence on de-militarising the idea of what Starfleet is and we get what we have.

Baron von Costume Who needs a set? They could just redress the runabout cockpit, which is what they did for the Terran ships in the Mirror Universe and the Maquis fighters on both DS9 and Voyager (but not TNG, which redressed their standard alien shuttle set.) I actually forget what they did for the interior of the old Bajoran fighter we did see, come to think of it.

It's fun to track this set stuff - late DS9 relies on Voyager sets a fair bit for Generic Starfleet Interiors (at one point it's using the Voyager brig set slightly more often than Voyager is!)

Speaking of set design and general appearance, I kind of liked Enterprise's decision to make a starship look like a nuclear sub.

Also, whatever happened to the Defiant's Romulan liaison? You know, the one that was supposed to keep an eye on the cloaking device they licensed to the Federation? Actually, why didn't Starfleet just get one from their Klingon allies instead of the rival power they're in a cold war with?

She became a Cardassian spy called Seska over on Voyager.


But seriously the writers couldn't figure out what to do with her, so the character was dropped - and when they did, they assumed the cloaking device was also gone, it was a while before they decided the Defiant could still cloak. DS9 is full of dropped would-be recurring characters actually - it took them until season four (and really, season five) to settle on a recurring Vorta that would stick.

As to why she's Romulan, well, that has to do with why the Federation doesn't have cloaking devices: It is expressly forbid by the Treaty of Algernon, an accord they have with the Romulan Empire. To give the Defiant a cloaking device without violating the treaty would presumably need the Romulans' permission, so might as well be one of their cloaks.

Jean-Luc Lemur DSC. Like DS9 but with a C. In other words anyone ever hoping we'd get a show called Deep Space Cardassia can give up now.

Anwyay interesting you hone in on the importance of the uniforms matching the colours of the ship, because a Fuller brings that up in his latest interview, where he also confirms that the uniforms will not look like the ones seen in "The Cage."

The essential new details are these:
* The main character is a first officer. For some length of time she is addressed simply as 'Number One,' without her name being revealed, a tribute to the character Majel Barrett played in the original pilot. As Fuller has previously implied this character may be POC, I wouldn't put credence in the rumours that this woman is Majel Barrett's Number One.
* There will be no time travel in the first season. Almost all Trek seasons have had at least one time travel story, so that's not nothing.
* Casting news is likely in October.


Majel Barrett's Number One: Too canonically white to be our lead.

Ben Grimm The Discovery logo is basically a variation on the Enterprise's Arrowhead so you are probably right.

I can think of no better environment for graphic designers than an economy that doesn’t run on money!

Douay-Rheims-Challoner Wasn’t No. 1 supposed to be of ambiguous ethnicity, vaguely Mediterranean or something? I don’t think it’s necessarily her, either (after all no one’s mistaking Riker for young Majel Barrett), but I’d say there’s some probability.

Random thread joining, hello folks. Why, I'm asking myself, am I not more excited about Discovery? I mean, one of my favourite shows is coming back, it's being run by someone who even if his Star Trek history is spotty has grown into a brilliant showrunner, and all the signs are very positive. But I'm just not feeling it yet.

Weird.

It also has Joe Menosky, who wrote many excellent episodes of The Next Generation and Voyager - on the latter show he and Fuller collaborated on some of its best hours, like "Living Witness." I'd have figured you more than most people here might have been excited by that. (There's also a staffer who used to write Voyager novels and Fuller calls Janeway his favourite captain. - you couldn't dream up a more pro-Voyager team here.)

But if I had to guess, and just extrapolating my own frustrations a bit, the show is another prequel. Like the Kelvin Timeline films and Enterprise, it's another project set before the original show. There are dozens of species and technologies that will likely not be featured as a result* - the Gorn, the Borg, Holodecks, Replicators, and on and on, nor could any of the cast of the old shows reprise older versions of their characters, which we know more than a few would be willing to do (if J.G. Hertzler is willing to appear in a fan film chances are he could be persuaded to play Chancellor Martok) with the exception of course of the Enterprise cast; I maintain my belief Scott Bakula will be in this show's pilot.

But ultimately to me what's important is what Discovery does with its premise. If it can tell great 23rd century Star Trek, then I'm here for that.

*Not that it makes their appearances more likely, but it's worth noting there are a number of species introduced in the 24th century shows who were either said to be in contact with the Federation in the 23rd century, like the Trill and the Nausicaans, or most likely were, like the Ktarians (Kirk ate Ktarian eggs in Generations) or the Betazoids (DS9 establishes Betazed as near Tellar and Andor); or, of course, species whose precise moment of first contact is unknown and could even be on this show (Cardassians and Bajorans, who were both well known to the Federation decades before TNG, though fans usually assume they were contacted sometime between the end of the TOS films and TNG's start, but Uhura ordered a drink named after the Cardassians in the 2009 Star Trek so who knows.)

Of course probably none of those distinctions will matter but figured I'd make them.

sarapen Jake Sisko was accepted to but ultimately deferred joining a prestigious writer education thing in New Zealand, and later as a journalist wrote for what was apparently the official Federation news service. Publishing companies also still exist, like the one that stole the rights to the Doctor's holonovel on Voyager (on the other hand, the James Bond and Rat Pack programs on Deep Space Nine were both said to be made by Bashir's friend, suggesting hobbyists of the form may exist.)

Go for it. I'm closing in on it in my full franchise rewatch (currently in season seven of DS9, five of Voyager) so it'd be a good read.

Oh yeah, that New Zealand thing sounds familiar. I wonder if the Federation actually is the promised land of the citizen journalist that blogging was supposed to provide or whether the average citizen's source of news amounts to official press releases from the state-sanctioned services, which are the only outfits able to send reporters into war zones and whatnot (barring the odd submission from military dependents).

Also, I wonder what publishing companies do in this universe besides provide publicity for their stable of writers. I suppose their circle of historical enthusiasts could manually publish paper books for consumption? Though that does bring up the problem of dissemination - how do they decide who to give the limited number of published books to among the citizens of the manifold worlds of the Federation and beyond? Perhaps they have a Kickstarter of labour - so many hours of cranking the press gets you so many copies of the latest Scott Turow, plus assorted stickers and a thank you tweet.

Although I suppose we're getting rather far afield from Discovery. Well, my understanding is that in Kirk's time they still had money, but by Wesley Crusher's generation money was a thing for backwards primitives. If this is a prequel set in between Enterprise and Kirk Trek then it'll be smack in the middle of the age of interstellar market economics. It would probably make things easier on the writers, for as Zizek observed, it's easier for Hollywood to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

Prole Hole Hey, Enterprise had some good shit in there. It's too bad they never really figured out what it was supposed to be about, or I suppose kept arguing behind the scenes about what it was supposed to be about. But there still emerged interesting things from this flawed experiment.

Yeah, since that announcement I've been betting that's the season 1 finale or something.