Jammer's Reviews

Re: TOS S3: That Which Survives

While the idea is cool, this is the absolutely one of the worst written TV shows of any type I have ever seen. Whoever did the writing had to have been like 12 years old. Everyone cuts off everyone and insults everyone's dialogue. "I suggest" is so ridiculously overused.

Re: TNG S5: A Matter of Time

@Del_Deuio and Peter Swinkels

They need Rasmussen's handprint to enter the time pod. If the Enterprise D couldn't enter it without him, you'd think it would be even more difficult for people of the 22nd century.

Re: TNG S4: In Theory

Regarding Data vs. the Doctor... Thinking back over TNG, i think The Measure of a Man is the only episode that really question's Data's right to existence and rights as an individual. The crew always treat him as an individual as deserving of rights as anyone. Outsiders sometimes question that, but never the people he considers friends. The Doctor, on the other hand, is constantly treated as an appliance. No one on the Enterprise would even consider comparing Data to a replicator like Janeway does the Doctor. The Doctor, unlike Data, has consistent trouble being respected as a unique individual. In part, this is because he's an EMH, and thus one of presumably hundreds of copies of a program. As we see in First Contact, EMH's are a standard feature on the latest generation of Starfleet ships, so it makes total sense that the crew would see him more as an appliance. After all, that's how Starfleet has treated "him." Data, on the other hand, is almost entirely unique. (The out of universe reason, of course, is that conflict within the crew was not allowed under Roddenbury.) While I really appreciate Data's journey towards personhood, I think that Voyager explores the oppression/dismissal of artificial lifeforms much more completely and poignantly with the Doctor.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

@ Dom

"There really is a lack of shows on TV now depicting an optimistic future and reminding audiences about the virtues of science and reason."

Issac, The Orville, Majority Rule: "I believe you are confusing opinion with knowledge."

That one line was biting social commentary on par with the best of TNG and DS9. It might even be better than them, TNG tended to be a bit heavy handed when it come to tackling modern day social/political issues, and I haven't (yet) gotten that vibe from The Orville.

I think that one line from Issac is where I fell in love with The Orville.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

@Dom

FWIW, The Orville is available OTA. Unlike CBS, Fox opted not to lock it behind a paywall. :D (cheap burn)

I think the whole run is available for free on the Fox app too, though they’re gonna make you sit through commercials for that.

If you watch it, it takes a few episodes to find its footing. My favorites:

“About a Girl”
“Krill”
“Majority Rule”
“Into the Fold”
“Mad Idolatry”

It’s not serialized, so watch the pilot, then feel free to watch however you want. :)

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

@Dom

“Its optimism is sorely lacking in the TV landscape. Seriously, name the last major sci-fi TV or movie that was remotely optimistic”

The Orville.

21% rating from the professionals on Rotten Tomatoes, 93% audience store. The pros don’t get it. Even Jammer doesn’t fully get it. He gives it a fair shake, fairer than any other reviewer, but says it’s going to live in Star Trek’s shadow so long as it keeps remaking/borrowing from Star Trek episodes.

To me, that’s a bit harsh, I didn’t view “Mad Idolatry" in the shadow of “Who Watches the Watchers,” but to the extent that The Orville does live in TNG’s shadow, well, that’s a feature, not a bug. :)

A buddy of mine and his wife travel the Star Trek convention circuit and have met the entire TNG cast. They were all aware of The Orville (most — especially Stewart — are friends with McFarlane) and to quote my friend, “Are more excited about it than Discovery, of which they sounded rather ambivalent.”

My sentiments exactly.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

@ Clark

"From what the writers are saying, it seems like it was always the plan for this season to be the journey that shapes this crew. As they move away from the mirror universe its going to automatically get less dark."

Are you sure about that? Because the headline I just saw today was "‘STAR TREK: DISCOVERY’ SEASON 2 WILL INCLUDE SECTION 31, THE FEDERATION’S EVIL CIA DEEP STATE" from: http://www.newsweek.com/star-trek-discovery-season-2-section-31-black-badge-federation-deep-state-cia-860825

Now, it's entirely possible that they learned their lesson, and this scene was deleted for a reason, but ask yourself if you really believe that this team of writers and producers intends to go in a classic "Trek" direction. I'm skeptical.

@ Other Robert

"Anyone notice how hyper-futuristic beige/tan ENT-D bridge is feeling these days? All the sweeping curves and warm neutrals--makes you feel like this post-scarcity society has created a space that is not only comfortable (in contrast to the bleakness of deep space) but almost a sacred space for sending its emissaries to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. In contrast, the stark gray utilitarian look of sf these days implies a paucity of imagination, human ambition, and feeling. It's funny, the beiges and tans now feel almost alien, like it should be an Iconian chamber."

This. Ten million times this.

"I had no idea about the HD remastered TNG, which is available on Blu-Ray and that popular streaming service. If you haven't seen it, it looks amazing!"

You can see all sorts of things (good and bad!) you could never see in the original run. I'm always struck by the remastered planets and the attention to detail that went into them. Take a look at Vulcan side-by-side from the original run and the remaster:

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/planet_mutations/vulcan-sarek.jpg
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/inconsistencies/planet_mutations/vulcan-sarek-r.jpg

That site has a whole list of these side-by-side shots: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/observations/tng-r-changes.htm

Re: DSC S1: The War Without, The War Within

@ Peter G:

"Another catastrophic fumble in story editing was in the episode on the Klingon ship when L'Rell was trying to get Admiral Cornwall off the ship. In that episode, too, it was almost impossible to parse what was happening one scene to the next."

Ah, yeah, I completely forgot about that. That was pretty damn bad now that you mention it. I have no idea what was going on in that scene. L'Rell was trying to escape, with Cornwall's help, but then gets caught so Cornwall (seemingly) sacrifices herself to save L'Rell because....... reasons??? That's how it came across to me at least. Then it was completely forgotten about until L'Rell jumps into the transporter beam in "Into the Forest I Go." Guess she was just chilling that whole time? Then our heroes make her a POW, not a defector, she dutifully fulfills the role of uncooperative prisoner, and we're just supposed to forget about the attempted defection a few episodes prior. TNG did the whole "reluctant defector" thing a lot better, in a single episode, with a fraction of Discovery's budget......

Ugh!

"I've only seen each episode once"

Same. I mean to sit down and binge them all in order but I keep finding better things to do on the weekend. To be honest, not sure if I've got ~10 straight hours of Discovery in me, and the stupid serialized plot means I have to watch them in fairly quick succession while devoting 100% of my attention to the screen.

By contrast, H&I airs all the "classic" Star Trek (TNG is "classic?" God I'm old....) shows, and even with DS9 you can watch while playing on your tablet, cooking dinner, etc., it's not this "Breaking Bad" thing where you have to pay EXACT ATTENTION to every second of every scene, or find yourself going "WTF?" five episodes later.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

@Clark

"People are being too hard on this show. I just recently rewatched TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise after being drawn back in by this show last fall and I think there is a lot of rose colored glasses going on here as this first season never hit the extreme lows that were present on all those shows, especially early on."

My problem with Discovery isn't the "extreme lows" -- you're certainly right that it's not as bad as Season 1 TNG -- but rather the set, setting, and tone. Discovery is dark and depressing. That's a deliberate choice on the part of the writers and producers. I doubt very much they're going to change and tack in the direction of TNG/DS9 style optimism. Mutiny, slave labor, murder, rape, more murder, cannibalism, more murder, attempted genocide..... WTF???

DS9 told a war story that ended with 700,000,000 dead civilians and never managed to fill me with the sense of dread I get watching Discovery.

I can (have) pick(ed) apart the story, if I want, there's certainly a lot of holes there, but the real problem is structural. It just doesn't feel like Star Trek, which is a crying shame, because if I was going on production values (the sets and sounds) it's the best show I've ever seen, way better than the JJVerse movies, but Trekkian sets don't make up for non-Trekkian writing.

Re: DSC S1: The War Without, The War Within

"L'Rell took Voq's body, crushed it into chopped liver to make it smaller and shorter, did DNA magic to make him read as Human, I guess, and then took Tyler's corpse and scanned his brain or whatever and downloaded his memories into Voq's mind, after (apparently) compartmentalizing Voq's consciousness like Sloan in DS9 seems to have suspected of Bashir. I mean, they don't say all of that verbatim and seemed to deliberately leave it all vague enough that there's virtually no point even asking what happened"

That is not at all what I saw watching that subplot. I'm not ruling it out, because it's enough of a muddled mess that it could go either way, but I saw it as Voq's personality being loaded into poor Tyler's brain, not all this DNA magic/chopped liver stuff. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I just read Aldernut's comment and viewed in the light that she's describing the subplot moves from "annoying af" into "offensive af" territory. It certainly did feel like a modern day relationship guilt trip that Tyler was laying on her, which made that whole scene unwatchable to me. The mess hall scene felt like "Star Trek" to me, the Stamets/Tyler scene was some hybrid between Trek and the real world, a good scene I thought, but the Tyler/Michael scene was painful. It felt like a Cops episode where the battered woman tells her handcuffed boyfriend that it's finally over. "No baby, I can change, I have changed!"

This whole subplot could be Exhibit A in what's wrong with Discovery. With the exception of Stamets, Tilly, and Saru, it's a cast of deeply damaged individuals, not at all Star Trek. Why do the writers/producers think this is what people want to see? Because it's "edgy" or some such? I will again come back to The Orville, which has 21% from the "professionals" on Rotten Tomatoes and 93% from the audience. The real world is depressing af already, why do the "professionals" assume that's what we want in entertainment?

For a non-Sci-Fi example, see NCIS. It's mostly episodic but still has long term plot lines, meaning no "reset button." The good guys usually but not always win. Even where the story gets dark it manages to remain true to its roots and never gets dark AND depressing. Is it the most realistic police procedural? Nope. Is it good escapism entertainment? Absolutely. Still a Top 10 show by ratings.....

Re: DSC S1: The War Without, The War Within

@Peter

Not sure where you drew those conclusions about the lobotomy/personality. It seemed like a ill convinced muddled mess of a story to me and I never got any definitive conclusions about which personality was “real.” Perhaps that’s an indictment of me, but meh, reading around the interwebs I’m not the only one...

Regardless, that whole scene, ugh. Just ugh. Probably the worst moment in the season for me. The whole subplot makes no sense, feels like Discovery in a nutshell, a bunch of twists in a supposed “novel” that make no sense in part or whole.

Re: DSC S1: The War Without, The War Within





"The show seems to believe that Burnham had some sort of obligation to someone who literally assaulted her. The reasons behind the assault were unusual, of course, but that's got nothing to do with a clearly traumatized woman being made to feel like 'it's ok' that this guy is now walking free."

How is what happened to Burnham any worse than what Miles did to Keiko in "Power Play" or what she did to him in "The Assignment?" For that matter, there's what Data did to Geordi in "Descent," Troi kicking Worf's ass in "Clues," Garek trying to kill Miles and Nog......

Star Trek is literally swimming in these stories and I can't recall anyone throwing anyone else under the bus the way Burnham did with Tyler. That said, I also can't recall a pathetic gaslighting "I can't do this alone" whine-fest either. The whole scene makes me groan. The scene in the mess with everyone joining him was good Star Trek at least.....

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

@Jimmy

"They could still have a faction of radical Klingons who are opposed to federation ideals. "

Discovery's Klingons should have been a new race. Very little about them had anything in common with the Klingons we've had 50+ years to get to know and love. If you're going to write a story about the best known alien race in Star Trek you don't get to completely re-invent the wheel. A few retcons are okay, for story purposes (DS9 Trivia: Vorta cloning was invented after the fact so they could bring Weyoun back from the dead) but you can't change the personality of the race and make them completely unrecognizable.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

"DS9 didn't re-invent the wheel in terms of the overall level of technology, but they used technological details to help the storytelling. For example the creation of the Defiant - and for the matter other warships - to combat the Borg threat is completely sensible and a great way to excite our imagination. "

I didn't care for the Defiant's concept or design, it felt like a bit of "me too!" in response to the White Star on Babylon 5, but I did REALLY appreciate the way they sold the concept within the story. She had teething problems and design issues, things that felt "real world," the Star Trek equivalent of the F-35. It annoys me in Voyager (and, to be fair, later TNG, Season 7 especially) when new technology is invented and implemented over a commercial break.

Geordi working on the Holodeck to come up with a solution to a pressing problem ("Booby Trap") that works within the confines of the Enterprise's systems makes sense. Voyager installing a Borg transwarp coil on the Delta Flyer over a commercial break is straining credibility, to put it mildly. Go back in time to World War II with your iPhone and give it to the folks working at Bletchley Park. They know what a computer is, they speak the same language, so can they make use of it? Nope. Not in the years they have to work on it before the war is over, never mind the day or so the Voyager crew had.....

Anyhow, I digress. As far as the "set and setting" of a post-TNG era story, why overthink it? TNG made the Klingons our friends, years before Star Trek VI was produced. "Future Trek" could do the same thing with the Romulans, Dominion, or whomever. As long as it's mostly consistent about and respectful towards what came before it, it would work.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

"Certainly we are seeing a renaissance of 1980s themed television and movies, I presume owing to my generation's coming of age and commercial influence"

Conversely, given the current trend in Hollywood, I'm kind of glad that my two favorite 80s shows HAVEN'T been rebooted: Magnum PI and TNG. My understanding is a Magnum reboot was in the works but didn't happen for whatever reason. I'm skeptical any reboot of those shows would meet expectations.

"A show post-Voyager would have required feats of imagination far more laborious than setting it pre-TOS where the bounds of the technology would be more or less fixed. That would theoretically make it much easier to avoid having to worry about what new tech to include."

Err, no offense, but you're making the worst mistake a would-be Trek writer can make, the mistake that Voyager writers made over and over and TNG started to do towards the end: Focusing too much on the tech. TNG did it right in Seasons 3 and 4, respect the rules of the universe and use the tech to tell a story, without it becoming the story. DS9 did the same throughout its run, with the exception of a few Season 1 clunkers.

You could write a post-Voyager story without reinventing the wheel. TNG didn't reinvent the tech wheel from TOS. If I were doing it, I would hand-wave away the Voyager finale, with regards to tech (not the characters/story), and just use the TNG vs. TOS model. Same tech, same rules of the road, just more advanced.

You don't have to talk about Transwarp this or Quantum Torpedo that, just make the new ship look more advanced than the old (it would anyway, thanks to improved production techniques) and don't overthink it.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

"Picard was literally the face of Trek years, and not because he was the star of the show, but because he embodied Star Trek."

One more reason why I just can't wrap my head around the logic that decided to base Discovery in the pre-Kirk era, or why the JJVerse movies sought to reboot the original series.

I liked TOS the TV show, as a campy 1960s Television Show, and I loved the movies, moreso than the TNG movies (even First Contact), but when I think about "Star Trek" it's the Picard era. There's a reason why the Enterprise-D studio model went for half a million bucks in the auction. Not the DS9 model, not any of the TOS models, the Enterprise-D model.....

TNG _is_ Star Trek for our generation.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

I don't remember BSG being this dark. Maybe the difference is that Discovery is dark AND depressing, while BSG still managed to keep some upbeat notes, even as humanity was literally fighting for survival, stakes that Discovery never had.

Maybe it's just been a long time (years) since I saw BSG, and I've viewing it with rosy retrospection, but my "gut" feeling is that it's really unfair to BSG to equate it to Discovery in any way.

If I was to rate the Sci-Fi shows I've followed simply on "darkness," from most to least, it would probably go: Discovery, Babylon 5, BSG, and DS9. TOS/TNG/The Orville don't qualify as dark, so no reason to list them here....

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

@Chrome

"They really captured lightning in a bottle with TNG’s take on the Trek formula."

"Similarly composed shows like Voyager or Enterprise certainly don’t hold a candle to TNG."

Basically agree. Like I said above, I've been re-considering my feelings towards Enterprise and Voyager. It's fair to say they don't hold to a candle to TNG, they've not aged nearly as well, but there are Sci-Fi series from the 1990s that are utterly unwatchable today (Seaquest DSV) and neither Voyager nor Enterprise are nearly that bad.

I'm developing a bit of a soft spot for Enterprise as I re-watch it; a fair bit about it greatly annoys me, like the decidedly non-IDIC Vulcans, but for set and setting, the sense of humanity just learning to walk and getting its space legs, it works. Same with Voyager, I've watched a few episodes I never caught before (most recently, "Flesh and Blood" and "Workforce") and I've actually enjoyed them. There are conceits, but they both feel like "Trek," much more than Discovery.

I find myself thinking that I judged Voyager and Enterprise too harshly when they were airing, having abandoned Voyager around Season 4 and never really giving Enterprise a chance. Not sure I'll bother to sit down and try to watch them in order, which I could easily do on Netflix, but I'll definitely keep DVR'ing the episodes I haven't seen, as they air on H&I and BBC America, and watching them as time allows.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

@Jason

"I used to disdain TNG's reset button formula and hold up DS9 as unambiguously superior. But you know what? I find myself coming back again and again to TNG while only occasionally watching DS9."

My whole point is there is no "reset button," not with the frequency that is implied here, and DS9 was equally guilty of the "reset button" at times.

Random (two-part) episode to consider: "Descent." Data betrays the Enterprise, without consequence or follow up. DS9 did the same thing, with Quark in "Invasive Procedures," without the excuse of being under alien influence. Sisko violates direct orders on multiple occasions (example: "The Die is Cast") and is never held accountable.

Is this bad writing or a necessary conceit of television? I tend to think a little bit of Column A and B. "The Die is Cast" didn't NEED the Defiant to go off on a rescue mission, that subplot was just there to give us a cool space battle, which is kind of silly since we already had a cool space battle with the Romulan/Cardassian fleet. That episode could just as easily have ended with Garek and Odo in a runabout, allowed to leave unmolested by the Jem Hadar, because, "No Changeling has ever harmed another." Instead, they had Sisko violate a direct order, Eddington commit sabotage to stop him, and no consequences for either character.....

I do concur wholeheartedly on re-watchability. I catch all five classic series on "Heroes & Icons" and "BBC America." I've found myself going through Enterprise and Voyager and reconsidering some of my criticism of them. I catch every TNG episode that airs, if I'm home, and DVR the better ones when I'm not. DS9? I've picked a few of the greats ("In the Pale Moonlight") to DVR, but I'm not making a point to go through it like I am with Enterprise and Voyager, and I don't always turn it on like I do TNG. I give TOS the same treatment, FWIW, so it's not some inherent hostility to DS9, it's more of a "Been there, done that."

Re: DSC S1: The War Without, The War Within

@KT

"Dukat was raving about how the Parwraiths were going to set the entire universe in flames, to burn for all eternity. So yeah I'd say the station was in danger ..."

This is my problem with the DS9 religious plot. It makes no sense even by its own rules. DS9 itself established that Prophets and Pah-wraiths can be killed, with off the shelf technology. They're not Gods or Demigods, they're just aliens, and they certainly can't "set the universe in flames," not when we can kill them with a few keystrokes.

It's one thing for the Bajorians to worship them, having built a religion around them from the earliest days of their civilization. It could have been an interesting story, they're "of Bajor," related to and invested in the Bajorian people, but to make them into literal Gods, with Sisko and Duket as the Archangel and Anti-Christ?

Ugh. It's the least watchable part of DS9.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

"Perhaps, but at least for TNG, VOY, and ENT they were just reusing an existing successful formula with a few tweaks. An episode boils down to: discover a strange spatial anomaly and/or disease, fix/cure strange anomaly and/or disease, lecture the Aliens of the Week about morality, warp off into the sunset, never look back. Only DS9 really tried something different, where the characters were forced to live with the consequences of each episode, which led to rich storytelling (Kira and Odo's relationship, for example) with no reset button."

Ugh. Why do people repeat this nonsense about TNG?

Yes, TNG had episodes that fit that mold. Guess what? So did DS9.

TNG told the story of Worf's discommendation, followed Picard through his experience as Locutus and subsequent recovery, told complex geopolitical stories with both the Romulans and Klingons, explored the ethics of self-defense, first contact, gave screen time to military veterans and explored how war changed them, and allowed every character (even Wesley!) to grow and mature over the course of the series run.

I really hate the sense of superiority I read in posts like this one, as if DS9 was this complicated drama on par with Citizen Kane while the rest of Star Trek is inferior.

Re: BSG S3: Occupation/Precipice

I don't understand why the suicide bombing went ahead. The guy who lost his wife (can't recall his name) could see that Baltar wasn't there, so why did he go ahead with it? The plan was to kill Baltar after all.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

Since I apparently have to spell it out, the notion that the best way to deal with the Klingons is to immediately fire on them is not supported by any previous canon. The Klingons were complex characters, not one dimensional Bad Guys. It’s contrived bullshit, to create an excuse for Michael’s mutiny, and a complete retcon.

Have the last word, because I’m not inclined to continue to engage you after you reduced my entire post to one sentence.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

@KT

"Klingons purposely and wilfully destroyed federation eqiupment in federation space and then lay in wait in order to start a war. When Burnham went to investigate she was attacked without cause."

I've had this discussion/debate many times, particularly vis-à-vis the DS9 episode "The Jem Hadar." It's not just about the "Starfleet way," although that's a part of it. It's very easy to find examples from the real world (e.g., the Pueblo Incident) where nation-states pragmatically turn the other cheek when confronted with Acts of War, rather than escalate the situation, even in cases where the aggrieved nation would be expected to win any resulting war. It's not so easy to send young men and women to their deaths....

I'm not a die hard fan of Babylon 5, but I absolutely love the tale of the First Contact with the Minbari. Jankowski panicked and started a war that nearly ended with the extinction of the human race. If there ever is an actual First Contact, the folks making it should be prepared to lay down and die, if that's what's necessary to avoid war, because what's one ship and crew compared to an entire civilization?

To me, that's why Picard -- and Georgiou, as portrayed in Discovery's pilot -- is the quintessential Starfleet Captain. Not because he was a capable diplomat, or a good solider (he was both, when needed), but rather because they always wrote him as someone who understood the gravity of the chair that he sat in. Put Picard in the Babylon 5 story and there's no war, even if you take away all of the Star Trek conceits (universal translator) that make it stupid easy to establish a dialogue with alien races.

So yeah, you can say with some justification that the Klingons were the clear aggressors here, ditto the Dominion in DS9, but that doesn't wash away Starfleet's stupidity in either story, nor does it excuse Michael's actions.

"The Klingons are a warrior race, they do have a thirst for battle, conquering and victories. I don't see this as a retcon. And they are similar to Jem Hader in this way, as acknowledged in ds9 'by infernos light'."

We're probably going to have to agree to disagree on this, because I don't feel that the Klingons were ever portrayed as the bloodthirsty animals that Discovery made them out to be. Not even Kruge came off that way. Ruthless? Yes. Bloodthirsty to the point that we're justified in firing at them on sight? No.

Discovery's viewpoint Klingons were portrayed as some sort of religious cult trying to Make Qo'noS Great Again. Yes, I went there. The one Klingon (Kol) that wasn't part of the cult was a complete asshole. There was no Remata'Klan character, the sympathetic bad guy. The Orville gave its bad guys -- the Krill -- more personality in one episode than Discovery's Klingons got in an entire season.

Re: DSC S1: Will You Take My Hand?

^^^^^ Yep.

Not really an in-character suggestion for a Vulcan either, unless we're going to retcon the Klingons into being mindless bloodthirsty animals, something worse than the Jem'Hadar. The Klingons of the TOS era got into barfights with our heroes. They didn't shoot at them on sight.....