williams_482 @ williams_482 @startrek.website

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Setlik III is never actually said to be one of the disputed territories, or to have been folded into the neutral zone. In fact there is some evidence that it never was: Setlik III was a relatively small outpost which the Cardassians wrongly believed to be the staging point for an invasion force, and which was in practice both full of civilians and inadequately defended. Staging for a surprise invasion within a disputed area during a hot war (where enemy attacks and accidental discovery both are much more likely) would have been an odd choice, as would neglecting the defense of that world. Further, no reference is made to the Cardassians attempting to reclaim it as a world they felt they should rightfully have owned, and Glinn Daro describes the attack as "a terrible mistake."

I think the implication here was and is that the Cardassians had snuck pretty deep into Federation territory, attacking an outpost which was thought far enough back to be safe but which could reasonably have been a staging ground for a large Federation fleet.

Touching on the actual character moments for a bit here: the events of this episode do not reflect well on Chapel.

She'd been hitting on Spock literally since the beginning of the show, and openly pining after him for most of that time. Four episodes ago, she winds up breaking down in tears explaining to an alien telephone receptionist how much she cares about him. Two episodes ago she is extremely distraught when Boimler accidentally lets slip that Spock is famous in the future, and her relationship with him almost certainly will not last. And now, she gets into a three month fellowship that she didn't think she had much of a chance at, doesn't say a word to Spock until she has no other choice, and then busts out a (involuntary, but reflective of genuine emotion) musical number about how "free" she feels. What the hell.

We already know Chapel has some problems with commitment, but this is a whole 'nother level. Throwing away a relationship she spent most of this show obsessively wishing for, without any apparent consideration for Spock's feelings or non-breakup solutions to spending a couple months apart, is just wild. I'm sure the finale will touch on this with a little more nuance than a musical number was likely to give, but whatever else is said this is not a good look.

Isn’t K’tinga the later type of Klingon ship?

The three Klingon vessels that got rekt by V'Ger at the beginning of TMP were K'Tinga class ships. That was less than 20 years after this episode was set. However, the K'Tingas did remain in service well into the 24th century, likely for the same in- and out-of-universe reasons that the Excelsior class did.

I was not optimistic; musicals are definitely not my favorite genre. I was pleasantly surprised.

This is such an incredibly well done show.

Hello /u/ozoned,

This is /c/Quarks, a space for non-Star Trek discussion. This post would be appropriate in /c/Risa, and I encourage you to post it there instead.

I think the easiest explanation is that it was extremely rare, the sol system just happened to have a useable deposit somewhere (probably an asteroid or two), and it was used up in the construction of the NX class ships (and perhaps their immediate successors).

Note that nobody is worried that the NX-01 component on the Enterprise might have been mysteriously de-horoniumed. They just knew they weren't going to find a fresh source anywhere.

Pike was an extremely well regarded captain (DIS Choose Your Pain) in a crucial period of Federation expansion and solidification, many years before he suffered a horrific fate saving a group of cadets. Plus whatever events of significance he may be involved in during SNW's run. I suspect the accident, heroics, and gruesome injuries beyond the capabilities of Federation medicine made for a pretty big story, elevating Pike's fame in the eyes of civilians not already familiar with his very impressive service record. Making his birthday a holiday is a believable honor for someone now widely regarded as a hero who essentially made the ultimate sacrifice, but is technically still around to appreciate the gesture.

Could someone explain the food replicator? I thought they weren’t invented yet? Or were they showing an early beta version that can’t get anything right?

That was a "food synthesizer", a precursor to the TNG era replicator which is more limited in capabilities.

M'Benga has compiled a hell of a list of justifications for getting demoted already, and (obviously) none of them have actually got him in trouble just yet. Secretly keeping his daughter in the transporter buffer, carrying super soldier serum about his person at all times, killing a Klingon ambassador... suffice to say he's a bit of a wildcard.

Excellent as always.

One quick correction:

DS9: “Acquisition” as a Ferengi

This was an Enterprise episode.

Well, the previously inexplicable "inject a bunch of drugs to fight Klingons" scene in the season opener has suddenly paid off.

I have little to say now except that this episode was a seriously heavy hitter. Just... wow. And ouch.

The real question is the hell did people downvote me? Looks like Lemmy turned into Reddit in a month’s time…

Next time lead with the why instead of a one word "no". This is a discussion forum, nobody knows who you are and certainly nobody is taking your word as truth if you don't provide evidence.

I wasn't referring to the remake being "so terrible they had to redo it", but the original.

Paramount has a financial incentive to get people interested in their products, including TOS. Any new Star Trek show is valuable both as a draw for people interested in it, and as an opportunity to get people interested in watching the older, already existent shows. An outright remake of one of those older shows tells a potential convert brought in by your remake that the original version is something they probably shouldn't bother with.

because apparently Star Trek, unlike every other fantasy and science fiction thing I like, is Forbidden from being treated like a secondary world that should have its own internal consistency.

How many other Science Fiction properties out there sprung out of a low budget TV show from the 60s but are still producing content in the same continuity without some kind of explicit reboot?

Star Wars is the classic comparison in all sorts of ways, and for better or worse Star Wars avoids this problem entirely by 1) having a much higher budget relative to the number of sets and costumes required for it's initial installment, 2) having picked an aesthetic that is crude, gritty, and seemingly practical which escapes looking dated many years after the fact, and 3) not being set in our future where the advances of modern tech make obviously retro elements look ridiculous.

For me, having them look like TNG Klingons doesn’t even solve the problem because ENT had implied that shouldn’t happen until the TOS movie era.

That Enterprise arc was clearly intended to apply a (totally unnecessary) in-universe explanation for why Kirk's adversaries were just guys in vaguely asian facial makeup, but there's no reason we have to extrapolate that the Augment virus was a widespread and incurable until the late 23rd century. It could easily have been a relative blip on the radar; aggressively quarantined and/or cured much earlier than anticipated.

The idea that they also needed to make an explicit reference to the augment virus being cured, or explicitly point out "hey, these guys would look less different if they weren't shaving their heads!" strikes me as absurd. These are not difficult conclusions to reach for someone motivated to find them, and there were people mentioning those possibilities pretty much immediately after the first Discovery trailer dropped.

I remain amazed that many people insist that T'Kuvma and company are irreconcilably different from the TNG era portrayals. These are big, carnivorous-looking aliens with prominent forehead ridges and significant individual variation in appearance. They're different in some small details, like the extra nostrils, but outside of the most extreme visually literalist stance, is it really that hard to square these guys against Chang, Martok, and Worf? Replace the shine and detail with a classic rubber mask, silicon makeup, and matte brown body paint in exactly the same head and body shape, stick them at a side table in Quarks circa S6 of DS9, and I challenge you to notice anything amiss.

What this rework did do was make them feel so much more alien, and so much more dangerous. They outright eat people, which was occasionally hinted at but is noted far more literally in Discovery, and very, very easy to believe looking at these guys. I wish they hadn't backpedalled so hard with a return to the 1980s makeup in SNW 2x01, because I would have loved to see these monsters chumming it up with Spock: that scene would immediately have been slightly more unsettling, bringing the audience closer to what Spock and his crew are likely feeling about their momentary drinking buddies, instead of the much more casual feel we got from Klingons who look just like our old friends from DS9. These guys are still dangerous aliens whose friendliness is tenuous and temporary; they would literally eat Spock if circumstances were slightly different. We shouldn't forget that.

What would be the incentive to outright remake episodes instead of creating new ones with the same set of characters? Old fans will mostly hate the remakes, with some begrudging (but far from universal) acceptance if they execute it extremely well. New fans who aren't familiar with TOS won't know the difference, and worse, will see even less reason to use these remakes as a jumping off point into the older series: why go watch something that Paramount obviously thought was so terrible they had to redo it? And people who aren't Star Trek fans but exist in the periphery where they could get hooked in will see this as an example of creative bankruptcy from a giant studio riding yet another huge IP into the ground for lack of any new ideas.

I don't think anyone would want this.

Contrast that with releasing a TOS "season 4" which uses these same characters and sets, and like all Star Trek leans on similar tropes, but isn't outright recreating anything. Those existing TOS fans who have been won over by SNW will be at least curious about seeing what more this cast and writing team can do with that time period, and are much more likely to give it a shot. Newer fans who haven't seen TOS will react largely the same as they would with outright remakes, plus the possibility of them being drawn towards TOS itself as well. And to potential fans on the periphery, this is at least less of a flagrant "we're all out of ideas" option than outright remakes would be.

Personally I'm extremely intrigued by this recast Kirk, and would like to see more of him (not at the expense of Pike and company). But I definitely don't want to stick Paul Wesley in exactly the same spots with more or less the same words and actions as William Shatner, just to revel in a sharper picture of a nicer set.

I have had the exact same problem with Jerboa. No idea what to make of it.

Poor Christine Chapel! Now she knows what the audience has always known: her relationship with Spock is ultimately doomed. Plus a delightful mix of guilt and fear that she could unwittingly cause Spock to never measure up to the vague but crucial future that Boimler mentioned to her in the turbolift, simply by trying to make the two of them happy.

That suuuuuucks.

This also struck me as being pretty strange, but I think everything here can be weaseled around:

'at the edge of the sector': The Vulcan system happens to be at the edge of the sector it is contained within, sectors being vaguely defined chunks of space laid out fairly arbitrarily.

Surveying the moon: The ruins are well known and well explored (our heroes seem familiar with them already, for instance) but this weird energy vortex is new, strange, and merits a starship crew to investigate it. It's not the first time they've sent Pike specifically to investigate a weird energy source popping up somewhere.