MovieChat Forums > Star Trek: Discovery (2017) Discussion > It just does not feel like star Trek

It just does not feel like star Trek


I watched all the Trek show. As a kid my fav was Voyager. I enjoyed all of them, heck even Enterprise had it's moment. But Discovery...It just does not have the star trek feel to it, not even a bit. In all the star trek show within the middle of the season we would get extremely familiar with the crew, we would know their respective roles and each of their character (His the funny one, she's the badass etc..) but in Discovery I feel nothing about that crew. I tried to watch the show several times, thinking maybe I was just tiered when I tried watching it but every time I feel extremely underwhelmed by this crew. I genuinely do not care if they all die. Instead of having crew members I like the most, I have more crew members I hate the least. One character I absolutely cannot stand is the one played by Anthony Rapp, he has zero charisma and his love story comes out as flat and boring, I know they were trying to be progressive but these actors were not the right choice. In my opinion Discovery is a charmless mess and would attract a lot of people that does not like Star Trek in the first place as it does not feel like Trek at all.

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The Star Trek older folks like me grew up with is dead and gone. The original cast are either expired or ancient. Roddenberry is dead. TNG failed miserably at the box office. Enterprise got cancelled early. The execs realised it was exhausted and done so they decided to reboot Star Trek for a new generation. That gave us the Abrams films and Discovery is a consequence of that. To the youth that saw the Abrams' films that is what Star Trek is. There's more money in it for them to push the Star Trek/Star Wars hybrid that is Discovery.

They had to change it and freshen it up not least of all to appeal to a new generation. The only thing Discovery shares with original Trek is the name.

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Wrong

TNG didn't fail as much as you are making out it's just these studios have unrealistic targets a movie cost 10m yet they expect 60-80m back and can be way to involved with creative control destroying what the writer/director wanted

I think you need to go educate yourself on the truth this has nothing to do with original people it's licensed out with clear terms that it can not be the same which is why it's not canon and they used the whole alternative timeline to try trick people this has nothing to do with original content.

Money wise they are doing poor they can't even get deals for merchandise.

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The execs realised it was exhausted and done so they decided to reboot Star Trek for a new generation. That gave us the Abrams films and Discovery is a consequence of that.

It was exhausted two decades ago because of their own success. Only in the 90s there were more than 500 episodes along the franchise, including TNG, DS9 and Voyager, and several movies. That's a lot, and it's logical that people became saturated.

Modern iteration, with modern CGI, bigger budgets, got people saturated after... 3 movies and 30 episodes. Nice job, guys.

As usual, Abrams starts and then runs away when the shit hits the fan.

The old formula was able to handle HUNDREDS of episodes before people started to move on. And it left a fan base and several highly re-watchable series. Modern showrunners only had to continue. The franchise had rested, but hey, there's alway some genius that want to reinvent the wheel.

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That's because it isn't Star Trek. It was a bad idea born out of a drug-filled haze that was dreamed up by an arrogant, stupid member of the Velvet Mafia in Hollywood who had powerful friends and wanted to make money and cater to every SJW freak out there. He didn't give one whit about keeping it consistent with the other Star Trek shows.

I hope it gets canceled soon. It would be justice after unleashing this horror of a show on the world. My only consolation at the moment is, I don't have to watch it unless I pay for it, and I wouldn't give a dime to CBS after what they did.

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In Europe it's on Netflix, I could only watch 3 episodes and not all the way through.. I really do not get any sort of enjoyment from it. I feel the same way about it as I do about that "She Ra" reboot. They took the name of an established franchise but did not care about it's original fan base, they did their own show and used the name of Star Trek to get more views.

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Agreed. It's lost the Roddenberry's underlying philosophy and become just another space opera.

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I wonder how much that has to do with the way a story arc now covers the entire season, rather than each episode having it's own specific story.

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It's probably one of the reasons. I did love the pick up and watch aspect of the old shows.

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DS9 had a 5 season story arc with the Dominion war but with a bunch of stand alone stories mixed in.

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I am a ST fan too so my opinion is biased but I like all the shows for their own unique reasons. Even the JJ stuff.
I can respect others POV but for me it’s just fun entertainment. Otherwise we just have more NCIS shows anyway.

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Star Trek isn't supposed to be fun entertainment.

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Star Trek was never just fun entertainment.

It was a mix of drama, old school scifi, social-scifi and mystery-solving. Of course, it was entertaining and fun because it was well done, but it was never the usual Hollywood popcorn fun.

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Boy, that was well said.

I LOVE Star Trek with the original being my favorite.

I love stories with dynamic characters that work together. If there's witty dialogue, then I really enjoy it.

I believe in this show casting a black actress as lead was done to cast a black actress. The actress is bland and robotic. Her story as a murderer, or whatever, being the hero is odd. But even during a regular story she is very dry.

The gay guy Rapp character talking in a lispy voice and "acting gay" is again odd and not fitting. I saw some episode where he merged with the engine and that seemed to be some attempt to make him "special" in some way that was pretentious.

A neurotic lispy sarcastic gay character seems wrong in this world. People on Star Trek are supposed to have moved past stereotypes. on Enterprise there was a similarly bizarre character, Archie, or something, play by Dwight Schultz. He appeared to be a nervous wreck and borderline insane. Such a person would not exist in that universe.

The Klingons are disgusting looking to me. They look like CGI gorillas from 1990.

Anyway, what you said about the show being charmless is correct. It doesn't have a dynamic dramatic feel to it which is too bad.

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Thanks :) To me it just not at all in the same league as the other Trek Shows and I really tried, Now I watched the entire first season and the first couple of episodes of season two before giving up as it really did not connect with me and I did not feel like I was getting my Star Trek fix due to it not being like Star Trek in the first place.

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I don't know why the show doesn't "feel" like ST to you or why you hate Rapp's character the most but I can say this. Yes, the crew is different from EVERY OTHER ST crew in this IMPORTANT way. Unlike all the other ST crew, we meet DSC's crew BEFORE they are all fully matured. They are ALL imperfect and in the first two season's we see them grow into the well oiled , functioning machine we saw IMMEDIATELY in TOS, TNG, ENT and to some extent in VOY and DS9. Burnham is brash and impatient, Saru cowardly and uncomfortable in ST; Tilly is silly and annoyingly new, if ambitious; Stammets is sarcastic and a bit stuck up. A second way in which DSC's crew differs from all the other ST crews is that we know A LOT about the background of EACH of them. Much more than we knew of the TOS, TNG or ENT bridge crew. Once again, the VOY and DS9 crew were somewhat explained to us or we had ideas about them from other shows..

I have watched ST since I was 7 or 8 years old too and I find DSC the most beautifully shot, well scripted, acted and the most imaginative and realistic re-interpretation of Roddenberry's dream. Apparently, the actors they chose are not to your liking, if you could suspend that aspect of your disbelief, it should make it easier for you to notice the other parts of DSC that do not depend entirely on your notion of charisma, charm or beauty'.

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It doesn't feel like Star Trek to me because it is very much unlike the other trek shows in term of atmosphere. So a lot of fans of classic Star Trek turns to the Orville because although there is humor in it , it feels more Classic Star Trek than Discovery. Discovery feels like your typical generic Sci Fy show , it cares more about big action set piece than likable character. For Rapp character It's just I find him personally extremely unpleasant (That is my opinion about him, you have your own that is fine) as a character, a waste of potential considering how meaningful his story line could have been for LGBT representation. I actually like Rapp in Rent and when he was a kid in Adventures in Baby sitting but I just do not feel him in that role at all like most of the characters in the show, he has not grown on me. Also, I beg to differ , Star Trek Voyager and Enterprise also started with the crew getting together and getting to know each other just like Discovery and yet they felt very much like a Star Trek show. I mean a lot of people would like Discovery but I personally feel it was made in order to attract people who are not fans of the franchise to begin with by concentrating on visual effect and action set piece rather than slow burning character moments that a lot of old school Star Trek fans actually happens to like (The character moments was my favorite things about the other show). Sure, Discovery looks very pretty and it's beautifully shot, they spend like three times the budget on it than the 80s/90s shows but aesthetics was never a priority for me when watching a Treck show.

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"I personally feel it was made in order to attract people who are not fans of the franchise to begin with by concentrating on visual effect and action set "

I don't think we are disagreeing much. Discovery's bridge cast is not typical of ST therefore perhaps it does not "please" or "appeal" to the classic (your word) fans. DSC's crew exhibit human flaws which was NOT the case with any other ST series. Let's cut the bull right? White male heterosexuals are NOT the DSC leads and THAT is freaking out the white, male heterosexual fan base, right? While merely saying a character is not 'likable' is protected speech , it is hardly a useful basis for judging the QUALITY of a show. If your definition of what 'feels' like ST, is ALWAYS white male leads, then I think you are missing Roddenberry. He broke the mold by including an international bridge cast (at a time when it was arguably controversial thing to do, in the middle of the space race). Today, Roddenberry would have encouraged and endorsed a bridge crew reflecting the diversity of humanity. Besides, what is so wrong with reaching out to other segments of it's viewers? Not all fans of ST are white male and hetero!

The Orville is more fitting, I agree. So is the misogyny and humiliation of the 'other' in the Orville. Ever wonder why all the none white alien males in TO are the butt of almost ALL the jokes and exhibit the most debasing human qualities and physical characteristics, while the alien females look almost human; are white and have the more positive alien powers? Of course, your classic fanboy is going to love it!

Look, I don't like TO much because I can see right thru it and I don't like what I see. Yes, TO does remind me of the day when ST itself was sexist but I would like to think that we have moved on from that time. Perhaps it is time for ST to take it's place once again in the vanguard of Sci-fi . DSC is ALL that and much, much more!

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"If your definition of what 'feels' like ST, is ALWAYS white male leads, then I think you are missing Roddenberry." Interesting, you seem to always try to apply bigotry to the fact I do not like Discovery.... NO, by old classic Trek I include Deep Space Nine and the lead was an African American, Voyager is probably my favorite of them all, the Captain was a woman,Tuvok who was a black man was one of the most interesting and well written character on that show. Also the original show was probably the one I liked the least out of the classic shows so definitely not missing Roddenberry. All of the Trek shows before had a certain format that felt familiar and comfortable, Discovery is the only show that stepped out of that format and feels more action packed Sci fy. I like spending time with the crew and small intimate character interactions and I do not feel Discovery has enough of these more intimate moments that is all I mean and noting that you imply. The cast of discovery could all be as white as colonel Sanders from KFC, I would still feel the exact same way.

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" I like spending time with the crew and small intimate character interactions and I do not feel Discovery has enough of these more intimate moments that is all I mean and noting that you imply.",

When you made this statement I realized you are trying desperately to deny something even YOU suspect is TRUE because that statement completely without foundation. DSC is the most careful and complete ST series when it comes to small interactions between the ship's crew and presenting a complete picture of EVERY crew member. The thing that felt 'familiar' about all the other ST series was this white male dominance (despite all the facts you mentioned). DSC DID break the mold in that respect! There are NO heroic, strong, white, hetero males examples on the DSC bridge. THAT'S WHAT IT IS! THAT'S ALL IT IS!

"The cast of discovery could all be as white as colonel Sanders from KFC, I would still feel the exact same way."

I know you will say this isn't you but tell me, if this statement is true of MOST similarly disgruntled ST "fanboys," why are the foaming at the mouth for a Pike/Spock spin off? Yes, DSC is more action packed but it also has far better visuals. These are both things you would expect from from the most advanced production of ST, watch what we will see in the new PIC series!

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Thespear, could you be any more woke? Thanks for all the virtue signaling too.

And by the way, Captain Janeway in STV was a woman. So much for your obsession with white male dominance.

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Definitely not Star Trek. Maybe it's a good scifi show, maybe it isn't. Not for me to say. But I can definitely say it's just another scifi show that they crammed into a Star Trek mold. I find it very telling that a lot of fans and defenders of this show don't actually like the original Trek shows and feel this is finally Star Trek being "done right." All the evidence you need for how very different it is.

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Actually I see a very clear PROGRESSION in the ST series, each reflecting its time: TOS was groundbreaking with the idea that a 'cold war world' could come together and even work with other species for the good of the universe. It was however VERY flat, restrictive and had an exaggerated idea of man's place in said universe. In TNG the Captaincy was replaced by a more thoughtful, reflexive human who questioned 'orders' and mankind's place as only ONE in a group of good doing species was introduced. The characters in TNG were also just as FLAT as their TOS counterparts. In VOY, ST began to give depth and growth to SOME of the characters. Ironically, the greatest growth was demonstrated by least 'human' character: The Doctor; 7 of 9; Kes. The presence of the Maquis presented the show with an excellent opportunity to give ST a dimension it had lacked before this. Some attempt was made to exploit this but timidity caused the writers to make the show's heroine, Captain Janeway, a far less impressive character than Mulgrew's acting COULD have presented. Captain Janeway never really grew even though she had the kind of experiences that could have allowed her to. We see the same Captain who started her misgiving mission. In DS9 for the first time in ST we saw a Captain, who was not only more human but who also changed with grew BECAUSE his circumstances and experiences. Sisko started not wanting the job; not liking the stations inhabitants; not wishing to form alliances; not believing in Bajoran religion and ended up putting a fantastic alliance together with former enemies, fiercely defending the station and its inhabitants, becoming a favorite of all the stations inhabitants and even becoming a Bajoran deity. There was also a plethora of other species with other interests to consider. In short DS9 looked the MOST like humanity than any ST to date and is therefore my favorite ST. DSC is trying to show us more REALISTIC humans and aliens

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I agree, ST peaked with DS9.

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ST.DSC? Isn't it STD?

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"In short DS9 looked the MOST like humanity than any ST to date and is therefore my favorite ST."

" DSC is trying to show us more REALISTIC humans and aliens"

Learn how to READ!

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