Pilot

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Bryan Moore
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Pilot

Post by Bryan Moore »

Very "Trek" through 2 commercials. Visually appealing, if you can accept artistic interpretation. Fantastic ARC and score.
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Re: Pilot

Post by stitch626 »

It just saddens me that they have this decent looking ship we know isn't gonna make it and we will have the monstrosity coming up.
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Re: Pilot

Post by Bryan Moore »

Ignoring the visual differences that sorta throw canon out the window, I enjoyed the pilot as much as I could have. There's some questionable writing in some of the dialogue, but I do appreciate some obvious throwbacks to past iterations of Trek.
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Re: Pilot

Post by DSG2k »

As I told someone who, even today, was blasting people for calling it a reboot:

"TUP, "there are times, sir, when men of good conscience cannot blindly follow orders" when it comes to accepting what you're told. That point comes when you simply cannot maintain any concept of continuity with what you're given, which nullifies the whole canon enterprise. If they showed a female alien James Kirk in the next episode and demanded we accept it as Prime, I get that you'd try to roll with it via whatever hoop-jumpings are needed, but out in the real world such a demand is just marketing nonsense and should be treated as such. I view the vastly different re-skulled quadri-nostrilled be-clawed hairless "Klingons", with their (cloaking devices and) century-long disappearing act coinciding with "seventy years of unremitting hostility", the Battle of Donatu V, et cetera, as being on par with that, as well as the obvious differences versus Pike's Enterprise. They could've updated without discarding, but they chose the latter yet still wanted to claim Prime status for marketing. It obviously doesn't work, and I, for one, am not going to spend mental resources fixing it for them in my headcanon if they're too lazy or too dishonest to make something that can *reasonably* be called Prime.

From the look of things, I am not alone."

That said, the production values are utterly insane, the writing and cast seem above average (given the plot holes like a subspace relay near a radiation-heavy binary and next to a debris field that they sent a manned flight into rather than a probe), and so if they'd have just called it a reboot from the get-go ("a lie is a very poor way to say hello") I might've given it a chance.
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Re: Pilot

Post by Graham Kennedy »

So that sucked. Hard.

Wooden acting, terrible dialogue. I guess Brunham is supposed to be 'acting Vulcan' because she was raised by Sarek, but it just comes across as her not being a very good actress. And she's not helped by the dialogue, which is terrible.

The visuals are both obviously expensive and obviously wrong in every respect. We've pretty much known that would be the case from the trailers, but it's as bad as it looked and more.

Plus, so many Jaybrams influences. From a bridge window (and how nice of them to demonstrate why that is such a bad idea!) to the "fly through the debris" sequence, to the overly designed ships... just bad.

Klingons. Those are not Klingons. Sorry, but they just aren't.

I hated it.
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Re: Pilot

Post by T'Pau »

There is so much to be said about this 'version' of what the folks behind it consider to be 'Trek':
A) The ships and technology seem very far advanced to be set in the time period between Enterprise and TOS.
B) Familiarity between officers while on the bridge seemed out of place on a military ship.
C) For a female driven main character/characters, the uniforms did not fit them properly, getting bunched and wrinkled, whereas on the male cast members, they were smooth.
D) Images of the various Star Fleet ships when facing off with the Klingons, was quite similar to the images from the JJ Abrams universe, with added camera flares of course.
E) Walking on sand dunes, in a pre-storm windy environment, would not leave footprints clearly defined for the period of time it took to make the complete image.
F) When planning for the Klingons to speak for extended periods of time, they really needed dental appliances that allowed for clearer speech, and not sound like a mouth full of hot gagh!
G) For the premiere 2 part episode, the audience is never shown the flagship of the series title.
H) Cloaking for Klingons? Not exactly in the timeline, unless there was a Romulan swap meet somewhere.
I) Human usage of the Vulcan 'night night' grip: When Bones was possessed by Spock, he was unable to make it work. Sure, Data was able to, but he had android strength.
J) The score: Musically, they used many thematic devices, but missed the mark completely in giving the viewer something to remember.
I could certainly go on and on..and on, but any further energy devoted to this crapfest of a show, would be entirely futile.
Even watching it free, seems a stretch. I have no real interest in seeing more, and really want those two hours back.
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Re: Pilot

Post by DonP »

Yeah, pretty much everything that's already been said. The biggest surprise to me was just how very BAD the lead was. I've never seen anything she was in, so judging by all the reams of praise being heaped on her, I expected we'd at least get a good performance, but, god, I've seen more interesting mannequins. Either it was a conscious choice to try to play uber-Vulcan and it just didn't work or all the praise was just so much "Yay, Diversity!" cheerleading.

And that monologue when she went on her little EVA... I thought it would never end. Quit telling me how the character feels or how I'm supposed to feel and show me. Do some damn acting!

Otherwise, T'Pau nailed it. The visuals were pure Abramsverse, as we expected; canon may not have been crapped on, exactly, but it was thoroughly disowned; and the Klingons sounded like they all just got back from the fang sharpeners and still had the cotton in.
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Re: Pilot

Post by Sonic Glitch »

If nothing else, it confirmed something for me that he suspected for a long time: No one hates new ideas in Trek more than Trekkies. I'm on mobile so I won't say too much now but I'll try to put up something cohesive about my initial reaction in a day or two.

Suffice it to say: I'm intrigued enough to keep watching. I am very curious to see where they go.
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Re: Pilot

Post by stitch626 »

Honestly, the first moment making it hard for me to keep watching was the intro theme. It starts decently, builds, then goes nowhere. It doesn't feel like a theme. Even weaker than the country music from ENT.
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Re: Pilot

Post by Graham Kennedy »

stitch626 wrote:Honestly, the first moment making it hard for me to keep watching was the intro theme. It starts decently, builds, then goes nowhere. It doesn't feel like a theme. Even weaker than the country music from ENT.
It steals a couple of bit from other Trek themes, at the start and end. In between it just kind of... happens.

T'Pau and I are friends, we chat on skype all the most days, and She pointed out that I've been humming the Orville theme off and on without even realising it lately. But right now I can't even remember what the Discovery theme sounds like outside the opening and closing.
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Re: Pilot

Post by DSG2k »

Sonic Glitch wrote:If nothing else, it confirmed something for me that he suspected for a long time: No one hates new ideas in Trek more than Trekkies. I'm on mobile so I won't say too much now but I'll try to put up something cohesive about my initial reaction in a day or two.


While you're not wrong, per se . . . one recalls the Aridas Sofia types who are still butthurt because TNG overwrote their FASAnties, for instance, or the ones who refused DS9 based on press misunderstandings that it was going to have all dark storylines (which turned out sorta true, but still) . . . this is a much different situation. Enterprise may have made some modifications to Trek history as we thought we knew it but, overall, it wasn't contradictory. STD is a different animal entirely, in that regard.
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Re: Pilot

Post by Teaos »

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Re: Pilot

Post by T'Pau »

Crazy, that until I saw the picture of the two uniforms side by side, I hadn't even noticed the similarities. The curved lines of the Orville certainly fit the female form better than the hard lines of STD. Oh yes, the anagram for Star Trek Discovery isn't lost on me one little bit. :laughroll:
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Re: Pilot

Post by Graham Kennedy »

The Tholian Web :

CHEKOV : Has there ever been a mutiny on a starship before?
SPOCK : Absolutely no record of such an occurrence, Ensign.

What they didn't say :

CHEKOV : Has there ever been a mutiny on a starship before?
SPOCK : Absolutely no record of such an occurrence, Ensign. Except for that one time that my half sister was convicted of mutiny and put in jail. But nothing apart from that.
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Re: Pilot

Post by IanKennedy »

Just seen it and oh god that was bad.

As for the Klingons there's no way it could be said that they're divergent from the rest, all the houses show up and they're all pretty much the same (apart from some stupid face jewellery on one of them). We also had what appeared to be a female leader of one of the houses. We know from DS9's "The House of Quark" that that requires special dispensation from the high council. One wonders how, then, one becomes a member of the council. Clearly the makers thought it too PC to have an all male council.

You've got to wonder if they decided to make them talk in Klingon all the time because they tried English and it was so unintelligible that they had no choice. It certainly was very off putting to have to read the huge text, rather than look at what was actually going on in the show.

Lens flare... WHY! Yes, I know Abrams, but really DON'T!

Bridge officer told to go to sick bay, instead goes to the brig! Not only one officer that disobeys orders but two!

The good bits... few and far between. However, I quite liked the ship (if only it was in a sensible timeline), shame it won't be the ship after this. I also quite liked the science officer, how he got through the academy is beyond me but still. Apart, that is, from his "I see dead people" bit.

Oh, and the music. Good start... nothing... Good end (but then it would be as they stole it from good shows).
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