/strek/ - Star Trek

I've just noticed the video hasn't embedded because I'm an amateur and clearly missed something. Here it is so the thread will hopefully look less lame.

>>33413

The reviews on The Dave Cullen Show and The Critical Drinker are usually my go-tos for this complete tripe. Yours isn't that bad either, mind you.

Dave Cullen - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDVb4m_5QHhZElT47E1oODg

Drinker - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSJPFQdZwrOutnmSFYtbstA

>>33417

>Yours isn't that bad either, mind you.

Cheers!

I've got a lot of respect for Dave Cullen, he seems like a good guy from everything I've seen. The Critical Drinker's not so much my bag; nothing against him at all, just isn't my kind of schtick I guess. I don't usually see other people's videos until my own's done (so my opinion's uninfluenced), so I usually see them later than when they come out, but RLM have had a nice lag on their reviews of this, and they're pretty entertaining still. In the last one when Rich Evans suggested the real outcome was going to be that the Romulans created a Borg, a real cloud came over me as I thought just how depressingly likely that sounds.

I've had a thought recently about Star Trek: Picard, that the fact it's so slow and nothing's happening means it's in effect non-committal and neither good nor bad. At the moment it's a mediocrity and won't move until it actually advances the plot some. I think we know which end of the quality scale it'll be when we find out, but I live in hope.

Anyway, the next episode's out in the US now and will be out here at midnight, so I'll be dodging forums for a couple of days until my next review's done.

Here's my latest one for Stardust City Rag! Includes such nerdiness as a brief history of gore in Star Trek and an analysis on Picard and Seven's differing ideas of justice. I have worked some jokes in as well though!

Any thoughts on it very welcome! :)

Here's my latest one! Features various joke attempts and nerdy Borg Queen theorising!

Here's my newest one, friends. Including how feminism would crash the Enterprise computer and predictions of a Morn cameo.

>>33473

solid enough effort, though your intro and outro are both pretty long. You could easily cut the spoiler warning, anyone clicking on a review & analysis would expect it to have spoilers.

You're reviewing Picard with a level-headedness that borderlines on monotone, but that's much more preferable to trying to force fake interest.

Here's my one for episode 8! Features a lot of theorising before the finale so if I get anything right I can be like 'omg I predicted it!'.

A thought's occurred to me just recently though, the worry that this whole thing's not going to resolve here but will end on a cliffhanger to lead in to the next season. Considering they've struggled with having enough story to fill the episodes so far, I wouldn't half feel cheated.

It's bound to happen, isn't it.

>>33480

Thank you!

>>33484

Yeah I think I'll try to come up with a new and shorter intro once this series is over; it's the best piece of free music I could find for the task initially so I've stuck with it for now, but I think the length of it is outweighing the hopefully distinctive nature of it. The spoiler warning I've used just in case it's embedding or something; you're right though, it is overkill probably. I'll keep these things now for stylistic consistency on this series, but I'll try to change these things up for future projects. I much appreciate the feedback!

You're right about the level-headedness, that's my style I guess (there's a lot of people yelling on YouTube which isn't my bag), but I try to work jokes in to mitigate it. Same reason I have music throughout, so hopefully it doesn't become dull.

>>33490

They're just ripping off Mass Effect at this point. There is no original idea in this Kurtzman era of Trek.

>Also, we're unconditionally believing a weird lightsabre fence, that causes people to kill themselves, why?

It's a Prothean beacon.

>>33490

We've always been led to think it's by the synths themselves, unless I've missed something. That it could be by the people trying to stop them might make it a self-fulfilling prophecy I suppose.

It seems to me that having happened already means the consequences must be far-reaching for it to be as hellish as described (just one planet going kaboom can't be it, the Romulans had that happen to themselves already within the past couple of decades and they didn't start clawing the skin off their faces then). The only thing that might fit is the earlier synth singularity being the Borg's origin I think, but who knows.

As for the lightsabre fence, I can only think it all out brainwashes those who withstand it. Just as Oh's mind meld with Jurati was effectively a full-on brainwashing. 'My thoughts ARE your thoughts' more like.

>>33491

Can I post Mass Effect Meme since there's giant synthetics at the edge of space that totally arn't the reapers.?

Here's the latest one, my friends. Not as much theorising, but a lot more nitpicking! There's been a temptation to hope that all the stupid things previously would be explained down the line, but then you get the whole Artifact business in this episode and you realise they really have just put first draft logic out there as the final product and we're not going to get anything better. Plus there's only one episode left, and they literally couldn't repair everything even if it was Picard breaking the fourth wall and explaining all the issues for a straight hour.

>>33490

I also specifically used the descriptive formulation 'lightsabre fence' in this one! In honour of you and all the chaps here.

>>33493

Having not played it I'm at a disadvantage on this it seems. I know even RLM said about it in their last vid and they're not up to episode 9 yet, so anyone familiar with ME3 sees the connection. Surely this whole thing, the first on-screen continuation of the venerable Star Trek universe in 15 years, is not just a rip-off from a video game…r-right?

>>33557

I haven't actually been watching Picard, so I can't say for sure, but if different alien races teaming up to stop an ancient race that wants to destroy all spacefaring civilizations so they don't create synthetic life that will rise up against their creators is where the plot seems to be going, then it might be a ripoff.

>>33559

Just finished watching the 10th episode.

This is how it ends.

Just kidding. Anyways I realized there is actually nothing else on CBS worth watching. So after I finished it. I canceled the channel on Amazon.

Good riddance.

>>33560

I really like how the really badass beyond space and time tentacles who were reacting to the distress beacon (and it being their entire reason for existance) just stopped caring when the beacon shut off.

Just imagine if 911, after getting your call and something happened that you disconnected just acted like nothing had happened.

It was a halfway decent episodes in parts unfortunately they have no sense of scale (lol 100 avenger class starships, sure whatever, Clone clone clone) and it was over before the 20 min mark so people could talk about feelings.

Finally got this review done lads. It's a long one. There's just so much to say about this episode, a little unexpectedly from when I initially watched it as it's basically 'and then nothing happened'. Hope you guys enjoy it!

>>33559

Would have been better tbh, though considering how lame the Federation fleet looked, to have anyone else show up would have probably looked like a Gameboy Colour cutscene.

>>33561

Absolutely right. I think it's that the transmitter also generates the portal which is why it slowly opens, though that's its own nonsense. Of course, as the super-synths told them how to build the bloody thing, surely they could nip over themselves. An absolute plotting calamity, though it might not even make the show's top 5 overall, so flawed is it.

There was a noble intent there, to reflect old Picard's diplomacy; it's stupid though, because he's acting out of emotion rather than rationality (rationality being not getting in the way of the Romulans destroying the transmitter that will annihilate the galaxy). Diplomatic Picard was about rationality over emotion, and he was a good commander because he could make the tough choices (which in this case is bye bye Soji and gold man group).

>>33587

I just keep watching Orville over and over again on Hulu. Then I watch the fan shows for star trek on youtube. Over and over. Eventually, they are going to figure out, that is what people want. The coming depression will force them to make better entertainment.

>>33588

Is there much known about how it's performed with audiences? I can imagine the luvvie clique of reviewers have been giving it full marks down the line, but I guess it'll be down to the profitability whether they'll take notice about what people who care about not ruining Star Trek think. Wikipedia's only bit about viewership references January; considering it's been slower than a Pakled since that first episode, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a big drop off along the way. Of course, remedying that will just resort in more ADHD Kelvinverse style stuff with these clowns in charge rather than an acceptable plot.

>>33589

>There's an interview/AMA with Chabon where he suggests the mega-super-a-million-times-infinity-plus-one-no-backsies synths may have devolved over the aeons and might well be thick as pig shit now.

Not unlike the idea that led Brannon Braga to write Threshold. I know this is an insubstantial handwave, but it's actually unusually stupid, as while you could imagine cataclysm befalling humans that could set things back as both information and technology are lost (as Einstein purportedly said 'I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones'), synths shouldn't have the issue of losing information or expertise as it's all stored within themselves with perfect recall. Someone getting to them first with a virus leaving them as angry lobotomised thrashing Matrix millipedes might make more sense I guess, but it shouldn't need headcanon leaps as big as this to fix their stupid plot anyway.

Do you have the link to that AMA at all? I've done a quick search but haven't found anything. I haven't actually seen much about this show from the creators at all, only a couple of clips in those Major Grin vids (I've carefully avoided outside material in general so I've been able to make my reviews while uninfluenced by anything else, and then by the time they've been done the next episode has quickly followed). I'd be interested to see how they present it.

>Been waiting for this. Worried you might have smashed your head in trying to make sense of the plot.

Heh. Maybe the reaction to the Admonition by the Zhat Vash coven was a meta realisation by the writers as to what anyone watching their show with their brains engaged would be driven to.

>How about reviewing some of the fan Treks, if you're after some content.

Any recommendations? I don't know all that many. I've seen a bit of Star Trek Continues and I loved that Axanar thing, but that's about it. I did think of maybe discussing a few of the movies (TWOK and Generations in particular).

>>33593

Thanks for that link! He doesn't seem like a particularly likeable guy there, does he. Of course, maybe I can't help being influenced in that perception by the fact he wrote Star Trek: Picard. One thing that catches my eye is the question ahout the lifting of the ban on synths, as though this is obviously a good thing to do and synths didn't genuinely come within a hair's breadth of galactic genocide.The story they came up with really strains against what it wants to portray as good or Orange Man, it seems to me.

I should give Continues a closer look I think; I've seen a bit but not the whole thing. I did like that transition into the Motion Picture era at the end of the last episode, with the old Enterprise arriving into the spacedock from then, and also the Enterprise mission patch being made that for all of Starfleet at that point. There's a lot more concern for fidelity to the source material there than in anything produced officially post-2005. I think that's why the Axanar thing appealed too, seeing these actors in the Cage-era uniforms. That's helped by just being stupendously good in its own right though, of course.

Awww shit! Plinkett's coming back.

>>33599

A bit strange that they're going after SPIC with Plinkett despite not doing so for STD and already having a full Re:View series for SPIC. But welcome nonetheless.

>>33599

I honestly can't wait.

>>33602

they only went up to episode 8

>>33602

because ultimately STD felt like a separate (ignorable) thing from the rest of the franchise. Meanwhile Picard is quasi direct sequel to TNG that shits on every about it and the star trek franchise as a whole that you can't just pretend doesn't exist.

>>33606

On top of this, there's the nostalgia factor. STD is almost all new characters and even the ones that are from TOS are played by different actors, so it's easier to treat it as a separate thing. Picard on the other hand, has more returning characters played by the same actors, so when it fucks up, it hurts more because they're fucking up with the same actors who made the characters who they were.