posted
Watched the premiere this morning. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very Trek, but at the same time, exaggerated for comedic effect.
I love the opening credits. Kind of a funny cross between the TNG intro and Voyager intro. The best part is where the Cerritos runs into a battle between Borg cubes and Romulan warbirds... and then promptly gets the heck out of there.
I think my favorite character so far is Tendi, probably because she's the most traditionally Trek out of the four. She wants to get out and see it all. Odd, though, that she apparently had never been in a holodeck before. Or even know what sand is.
Also, the Orion homeworld as seen on the holodeck looked way different than I imagined.
Rutherford's only recently been made a cyborg, and since the cybernetics are Vulcan, they have a habit of making him go logical/unemotional at times.
Mariner is Captain Freeman's daughter. Freeman does not want Mariner on the ship, and is looking for an excuse to get rid of her.
The plot was decent enough: Trek does zombie apocalypse. While I think you could have done that in a live-action show, it's probably much easier to do animated.
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Overall, I liked it. Although the four ensigns seem a bit too cookie-cutter in their obvious archetypes, there’s a lot of potential for stories to explore—and have fun in—the Star Trek universe. I even have a little sympathy for Ensign Mariner, who I didn’t expect to like after watching her first scene.
The credits were perfect. The first note screamed “TNG” but all the scenes were hilariously un-heroic. Like Krenim, the scene with the Romulan-Borg battle was a standout, I could just hear someone saying “Nnnnnoooope!” But my favorite was the ship at warp, looking deceptively normal as it flies past, until you see the alien creature hanging on to the nacelle.
The premise of the show is a bit of a risky balance... it’s trying to have fun in Star Trek, not make fun of Star Trek. So far I think it’s doing a pretty good job, although the deep-cut references (sword-wielding Sulu and Gary Mitchell) won’t sustain themselves long-term.
I wasn’t expecting to actively dislike the Captain. Obviously the protagonists are the ensigns, but I figured that the senior staff would be portrayed like in previous shows, where they tend to stay in their clique but don’t have active disrespect for the lower ranks. It’s one thing for the lieutenant in the shuttlebay to be rude—his “Keep moving, Lower Decks...” comment bothered me, but that’s different from the captain not respecting her crew. And I’m not talking about Freeman’s attitude towards Mariner, which obviously has family baggage. I’m talking about Freeman’s scenes with Boimler.
Still, I like where the show is going. I look forward to next week!
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
This was...SO hard to watch. Everything that might've been good was just run over roughshod by the annoying.
I hate this modern trend of voice actors having to SCREAM their fucking dialogue, & having the verbal pacing at the same rate as a methhead. If I need captions to decipher 80% of your dialogue, SLOW THE FUCK DOWN. The "comedy" is dumb, the gags aren't funny. Trying to be funny detracts from it severely.
The concepts, designs (other than the ship itself), & evident connections are pretty good. If they'd made the attempts at commedy far less over-the-top & made it a subtle cloak rather than putting it front & center & smashing it in your face, I'd enjoy it more.
Mariner needs a punch in the mouth. Just SHUT UP for once. It seems like she's supposed to be a Burnham analogue, all rebellious & shit, I know best & all that. Like, dude...if you have so many problems with how things are done, maybe Starfleet isn't for you? Go be a privateer or some shit.
Anyway, still not including it in my project.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Just finished watching it, and simply put, I liked it. I feel like the humor was inspired by the Orville, where Trek realized they need to pull the sticks out of their butts and have fun with it.
The junior officer living situation makes total sense. As I recall the TNG episode "Lower Decks" established that the ensigns had to share a room. In the Navy, on my ship I shared a berthing room with like 80 dudes in bunks like in this episode. Even officers had to share staterooms. IIRC only the CO and XO got their private stateroom. Even as small as an Arleigh-Burke destroyer is, the captain's room is huge.
-------------------- I'm slightly annoyed at Hobbes' rather rude decision to be much more attractive than me though. That's just rude. - PsyLiam, Oct 27, 2005.
Registered: May 1999
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posted
USS Quito... if my records are correct, then the first canon ship to ever begin with a letter 'q.' So now there's just the letter 'x' left! Sesame Street is brought to you by...
posted
So, as someone who hasn't liked any of the new Trek so far and who didn't laugh at anything in either the trailer for this show or the one scene that they released ahead of time... should I bother checking it out?
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Many have noted thematic similarities to John Scalzi’s Redshirts - which he himself has shrugged off, pointing out that after all Redshirts is a Star Trek parody.
But one thing bothers me. In the original “Lower Decks” it wasn’t that the LDers weren’t important, it’s just that they were merely a few of the crew among many. They still mattered. On the Cerritos, though, there is this clear hierarchy where not just the senior crew but even mid-level officers look down on the LDers. Ignore their accomplishments, even take credit for them. Ask them to betray each other.* You have a mother who’s not concerned for the way her child lives her life, but actively regarding her as an embarrassment and wanting to be rid of her by fair means or foul - and she’s not even the highest-flier in the parental unit! Bernd has said he’ll review it when he can watch it legally, but I think I can guess what he’ll say...
So in that, it is more like Redshirts than Star Trek. But they’re not meant to be the same thing, their world views are not compatible in the same universe.
* Come to think of it, it was a bit like “The First Duty” with loyalty to seniors being touted as trumping loyalty to team-mates...
posted
I think there’s a subtle difference, though... the SHOW is about how the lower decks crew matters, while the senior staff characters are ignoring their importance.
The only in-universe explanation I can muster is that we repeatedly heard how the Enterprise was the best of the best, so maybe some other ships aren’t run quite as tightly. Not ever Starfleet officer is the paragon that our TNG crew was.
Exhibit A: Barclay’s back story. He was transferred from his last ship just to get rid of him rather than relate to him properly.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
It’s almost the ultimate repudiation of later-years Roddenberry’s (unrealistic?) utopian ideals, then - not that they haven’t been constantly chipped away at since he died. Humanity remains as imperfect in the future as we are today. I wonder whether it’s better to be honest to ourselves about that, or to believe (delude ourselves?) that we can be better...
posted
I guess I would say that the difference between Roddenberry-era Trek and post-Roddenberry Trek (not counting the recent stuff) is that Roddenberry seems to have wanted his future humans to (for the most part) actually be perfect. But when you get to something like DS9, the approach was to show how the people on the show were flawed, but they were striving to be the sort of people that Roddenberry wanted to show.
But it sounds like you're saying the crew on Lower Decks are mostly just unrepentant assholes.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I don't think they're assholes at all. All the ensigns are quite nice, though Mariner is a little jaded and Boimler is rather uptight. The issue is that the senior staff are... well, apparently ignorant of or deliberately ignoring the contributions of the junior officers.
The captain basically claimed that the Doctor was the sole person who saved the day, without giving any credit to Boimler who (unwittingly) brought back the substance that saved the crew. I think that's the main issue that Lee and I are bothered by.
We only have one episode to go by, but it seems like they're definitely going to be exploring a different command style than what we've seen on all the other hero ships. (Of course, the whole premise is that this isn't a "hero" ship, either in-universe or out.)
I remember reading one interview where one of the writers said, "The senior staff don't realize the show's not about them." There's no breaking of the fourth wall, of course, but I think that best describes the tone... not that the senior staff are assholes, but that they're oblivious.
And let's consider the opposite angle: how many times in TOS did we have anonymous, expendable redshirts? How many times did McCoy learn something from some bit-character's misfortune to save the day? It's not that different a story... it's just told from another point of view.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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