Did I miss something? What planet did USS Athena pickup cadets?

Welcome back! I enjoyed both these episodes. I don’t like this time period, the post burn Federation. The rebuilding could interesting but it’s not really aspirational and I really could use some aspirational content in my life, vaguely waves at every thing.

I had some concerns going in, but enjoyed them a lot more than I expected. Good to see some familiar faces, especially Vance as he was one of the better Disco s3 additions.

Ep 2 thoughts …

So, in present day history, we’ve got the US Space Force, newly created, with a logo that looks an awful lot like the Star Trek arrowhead. But Trek has gone back many times to remind people that Starfleet is not the military. There’s a lot to unpack here because actually exploring means that you are potentially wandering off into dangerous places, where you need either semblance of order and discipline (think civilian ships where the skipper tells you to do something) or the ability to defend yourself against someone who might not be friendly.

Thus, Lura’s drill sergeant act fits this model. She doesn’t want to turn you into a killer so much as making sure that you can stare death in the face and not loose your shit.

Likewise, if they write the whole plot with the War College and the Academy next door to each other right, there’s the potential to restate the original base idea behind Star Trek TOS but adjusted for the present day. There was a lot of back and forth about the rank braids on people’s sleeves because they wanted something that shows authority but isn’t too military. Kirk’s stripes were two solid stripes and a broken stripe, whereas the navy would have him wearing four solid stripes because emotionally Gene thought that was the right combination of Authority but not Military.

The Vulcan xenomythology class was perfect, for me. You’ve got one of the many great Vulcan deadpan moments as well as keeping to the very Starfleet ideal of understanding.

Given that they did not know what the heck to do with Troi’s powers as an empath and if they had Luxana Troi there the whole time, the episodes would have been boring a.f. as she’d mind-read powers out of everybody, I guess I respect the choice to play with betazeding. I’m interested in the potential for Tarima in the War College with everything just because I like the never-explored idea that Troi as Counselor was supposed to be Counsel and not Therapist.

Tarima’s cinematography is almost cloying? Science fiction, coming from its roots as boy’s magazine fodder, is always a little bit about that eternal quest to find exotic, sometimes alien, women … and bang them. And the camera lingers, kinda obviously. We have had a bunch of scenes with Caleb shirtless in Ep 1 where the colored lights gave him some amazing muscle definition so it’s equal opportunity. It was far better than Alice Eve’s somewhat notorious underwear scene in Into Darkness.

The Namibia instead of Paris for the Federation HQ was a nice throwaway line.

The … international dialogue in front of the Academy was … something. I really like the 1988 play “A Walk in the Woods” by Lee Blessing and they way they showed the process was two diplomats going for a series of casual walks where they do not at all talk about the negotiations over the course of a year. You could have written almost the same story between Caleb and Tarima and migrated a decent percentage of the story beats over as-is but also I think you’d loose the audience. So having the speeches with an audience where leaders make their demands and then following up most of the time with something else got the idea across while keeping things moving. And I do think that Tarima’s primary goal was to be a member of the diplomatic staff where actually liking Caleb was more accidental. Who better to get the real story than the person who is the least Starfleet out of the entire cadet corps?

Also, diplomacy was always one of the things that Starfleet did, not so much being a diplomat at an embassy but understanding how to avoid conflict and make a good first impression on the species you made first contact with.

Caleb keeps chafing at the order of things and that’s good. I’m assuming that Nahla intentionally put Caleb and Darem in the same room. And so there’s his quest for his mother (however they are going to resolve that) and disrespect but at the same time he’s able to put himself second, albeit with effort. One bit I really like is the reference to his mother studying physics. An oft-ignored thread of Trek was the waste of people’s lives in the 20th century on account of them not having access to that which they need to grow on account of today’s capitalist system. And then also Nahla cutting him off with “It’s not about you”

I knew that there was a Red Dwarf reference coming in Ep2 and it still caught me unawares.

I am curious if they are going to reveal anything about Gideon S. Turner. I can’t entirely tell if Caleb is making stuff up and Tarima is playing along or if Gideon S. Turner has a very strange history. It would be cool if it was a brick joke.

Caleb, Ocam, and Darem all in a room has some serious potential to show … 31st century bros, charmingly?

It really got me towards the end, the idea that rebuilding does not mean rebuilding it exactly as it once was.

So, yeah, it’s landing well for me. Nahla keeps serving as my surrogate in the story because … I watched TNG when it was new and I do think about the world we’re handing the kids of new generation. Uniting the galaxy in peace and understanding is what the Federation was supposed to be out and if they can keep the story moving well enough people won’t be yearning for a big battle scene that kills off a bunch of characters?

Episode 1: with expectations at the bottom of the Mariana Trench (because I watched Discovery), I was not too disappointed by this episode. Was it good? Also no. I think the story is fine in principle, it doesn’t unfold in a believable way, but not the worst we’ve seen in Star Trek. Other than that I was irked by what the captain says at 41:55:

make eh(?) your speed maximum impolt

Really, impolt, you couldn’t do a second take on that?

Episode 2: quite a bit worse, the plot progressed for like 3 minutes in total, and there was a lot of that teen drama that wasn’t interesting or amusing.

Overall felt like these were written by people who know a lot about Star Trek at a very surface level, and have a very TV-idea of what college life is like. I’ll keep watching, for now. Out of franchise loyalty more than actual interest.

Is anyone else concerned that they might making the same decision they did with Discovery and making the series into “Star Trek: Caleb Mir”? At this point, everyone else already feel like background singers to me.

This show is one part Lower Decks, one part Prodigy, one part Discovery, and a dash of SNW… I dig it. Excited to see where it goes.

So far I’ve just watched episode one, but I think we’re off to a great start. I don’t know Holly Hunter from anything except Batman v Superman, so I didn’t know why everyone seemed so happy to have her on board, but I get it now. Nahla isn’t much on paper, but Hunter really makes me love the character. She sells the comfort and confidence without feeling at all silly or non-genuine.

I thought Caleb would be a harder character to like, but he won me over pretty quickly too. His introduction definitely started on the right foot. His mode of escape reminded me of Jason Todd stealing the tires off the Batmobile. Good stuff.

The other cadets are a mixed bag so far. Jay-Den and Sam seem fun, the others seems like boring cliches, but none of them have been given a lot of time yet so it’s still a wait and see situation.

The episode itself was a little messy, especially the action at the end, but I get that it was the first episode and they felt they had to give everyone something to do. Still one of Trek’s better premiers.

So far I have only watched episode one. First impression: God, why does everything have to be a dystopian nightmare with these people? Second impression: mediocre plot, mostly uninteresting characters, full of Kurtzman-isms. Gotta give it a chance though.

Going into it I wasn’t sure about a school-based Star Trek, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the first two episodes. It helps that the characters are a little older than I thought they were going to be (university instead of high school), but there was also some enjoyable writing in there that kept me interested and made me laugh a few times. Shout out to SAM, I was concerned at first because these fish-out-of-water characters are easy to make annoying but I ended up quite liking her.

I did have a few issues (I still don’t love the burn as a plot device), but overall I’m interested to see what happens in the next episode.

Also, yay Prodigy references!

I thought the overall story has an interesting concept, with some cheesy writing in some bits, and some comedy littered in so they aren’t taking themselves too seriously. Something that bothered me was the use of a current day wheelchair…

This is set 1000+ years in the future where they can solve people being blind but you’re telling me they can’t even have an professor-X style floating chair at a minimum?!

For now, I’ll just share the thoughts I posted to Mastodon while this instance was still on the Genesis Planet…

Overall, a very strong couple of episodes. The cadets are all interesting enough, though Jay-Den and SAM are outstanding. Caleb is the sort of Rebellious Young Person that can grate on people, but I think the show compensates for that by making him a bit of a punchline. His backstory is also compelling enough (I actually thought his separation from his mother seemed very real), and his motivations are clear.

Nahla Ake is fantastic, and Holly Hunter brings a lot to the role. The character is quirky, but grounded, and you can see that she carries multiple lifetimes of experience.

Paul Giamatti is clearly having the time of his life as Braka. Time will tell whether he remains a cartoonish pirate (which I’d be fine with TBH), or if they’ll give him more to do.

I’ve always loved the post-Burn setting, and I’m looking forward to exploring that status quo. The Betazed stuff is intriguing, and I hope we learn more about this “psionic wall” of theirs.

Also, “Discovery is unavailable because X” is the new “the transporters don’t work because X”.

I am overall positively surprised. First of all. I like the setting. The Burn was one of the greatest ideas in Star Trek history (at least its implications, not its reason. I hope we’ll forget about that lol), as it shows how fragile the Federation truly was. So raising a new generation, based on values from centuries ago but that has lived a very different life, is a very intriguing setup. There’s still some stuff I don’t like about the era (like instant teleportation and that memory nano stuff), but let’s see how it works out. I like that Starfleet continued with a “War Academy” which was super fitting, and I can already smell all the conflicts between the two institutions.

The first episode was kind of so so. I understand that you need all that setup and background info, but I think flashbacks would have worked better. Don’t start with showing us the injustice, but leave us a bit in the dark. I pretty much like all the characters, but again, the first episode was a bit too much exposition on “everybody gets one small scene to show what they got”, only for most of them to blend in the background in the second episode.

The second episode left me a bit confused, as the Betazoids were a bit different from what I remember, but ah well. I found it weird that these official negotiations were fully made in front of a school class, with only one person of each faction involved? Imagine on earth, two leaders in a conflict met, each gave a short speech in front of a school, declared their demands, and then ends the meeting? Feels a bit weird. Also, while I enjoy the shift away from a Earth-centric Starfleet, are Betazoids really so vain that the shift of Starfleet HQ is enough to mitigate all their concerns?

Overall, I like what I see. I hope not every episode will be about Caleb’s mom, or his search, and I really hope we’ll also get a bit of everyday school fun. Weird comparison, but in Harry Potter, I enjoyed the everyday school stuff always more than the actual plot. And give me more of that Klingon (even though his voice modulation sounds really bad).

There was many a memberberry.

At one point I thought that it didn’t look very Trek-y, somehow. Which can be explained of course by the fact that an entire millennium of progress has happened. It should be more surprising that anything does still look familiar. The thing is though that I watch Star Trek for the Trek-iness. The visual familiarity is part of it. I don’t know yet.

Let’s hope episode 3 starts being about more than Caleb’s mum. And science.

At least there was some diplomacy. Although it was weird that they’d negotiate while standing at lecterns surrounded by hundreds of people. Sit down, have a cuppa together, have a conversation, not a debate.

Also, I’m supposed to ship Caleb and his roommate whose name I have forgotten, yes? The way they interact is textbook shipping material. Not to mention They Are Roommates.

I enjoyed these more than I thought I would! Most of my own thoughts after watching have been broached here already, but there was one thing that interested me in SAM’s interactions with the EMH Doctor:

Didn’t he seem visibly shaken when asked about the Protostar crew, like he knew something SAM didn’t? I don’t recall the conversation exactly, but could this be a backdoor to giving the Prodigy storyline some closure down the line on Academy?

I’m theorising in part because after “Those old scientists” I could definitely imagine a similar animation-to-live-action crossover. We already had a Brikar walking around on campus, and I’m fairly sure Ella Purnell could pull off Gwyn on camera 🙂