Its The End, But... Star Trek Discovery season 1

(SPOILERS, very obviously...)

I didn't think Cadet Tilly could be more endearing than when she said “Fuck” on screen but then she opened a conversation with “I'm really high...” having inhaled groovy volcanic ash with an Orion.

On a more serious note there was something about this episode that made it feel we were getting back to Star Trek being Star Trek. They ended a very action heavy and shooty season with an unconventional negotiated peace and a speech about facing fear and second chances. Between this and booting Evil Lorca into an artificial sun a couple of episodes ago it feels like the production team were very consciously bending the format up to breaking point before jettisoning the very things that were breaking it.

Not that I hated the series before now, far from it, I adored this run (DS9 is my favourite Star Trek so that probably tells you why).

And just to push the point home, in the final moments of the episode, the Enterprise turns up. This was either a very good idea or a very bad idea depending on how (or if) this plays out at the start of the next season.

On the one hand this series has spent so much time establishing its own style and soul that I'd hate for it to open its second season with fanservice. Yes, even if it gets us Michael and Spock interacting at last, though I admit I'm not clear on whether Spock would be on Enterprise at this stage. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see an extended take on the character of Captain Pike beyond the stern father figure the reboot movies had Kirk projecting all his sudden daddy issues onto.

Eh, we'll see.

As a last note, I am obscurely glad that Michael is reinstated as a science officer instead of just returning to the command track. I don't doubt part of the logic is that no way is Starfleet so forgiving as to put the woman who started a war anywhere near the centre seat but it is also probably meant to speak to development on Michael's part. I like the idea that she's returning to science and exploring the wonder of the universe after all this slaughter.

Also it means Saru still has a job since for some reason they decided not to make him captain, which is a pity. I absolutely think Doug Jones could carry the role and the way Saru has developed over the last few episodes into a more confident leader.

Also, just to place my bets now, I fully expect the Prime Universe version of Lorca (or the Mirror Universe version of Tilly) to make an appearance around about the mid-season break in the next run. 

I hope Captain Lorca isn't evil (non-spoiler)

The most recent episode of Star Trek: Discovery has completely changed my mind on Captain Lorca. The whole season up until now I have been waiting for the moment when he rips off the mask, as it were, and we find out this was all a plot by Section 31 or something.

Then that conversation with Stamets happened. I won't go into details to avoid spoilers but in that moment I changed my mind. I still think Lorca is a deeply damaged man and dangerous to his ctew in ways that not even the needs of war should excuse but I no longer think he's pursuing any sort of secret agenda. I think, and I hope I'm right, that he's just what he's been revealed to be: a captain who lost a crew under tragic circumstances who hasn't properly dealt with those feelings and is using the war as a way to get closure. Its not healthy and its not admirable but I want it to turn out that underneath it all he's being honest all those times he tells Stamets and Michael that once the war's won he wants to use the spore drive to explore the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

I just think that there's too much cynicism in science fiction these days and that it would do some good to have Lorca be, beneath all the trauma, exactly what he claims to be: a true believer Starfleet captain. 

Sarek of Vulcan is Batman (Discovery spoilers)

Think about it, especially in reference to the most recent episode of Discovery: he's a member of his people's aristocracy; he's a lot better at martial arts than you'd expect a man of his profession to be; and, most importantly, he keeps gaining new children.

Honestly, though, Michael: if you think you're Sarek's greatest disappointment I question how well you observed hims interactions with his biological children. (Yes, plural, I acknowledge Sybok's existence even if Paramount never will).

Though, seriously, it is probably for the best that no canonical or spin-off media will ever revisit the disaster that was Star Trek V. It was not a good moment.

It introduced rocket boots to the franchise. That's the only legacy that film deserves.

Jason Isaacs' mean, alt-right trolling machine

(Spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery in general and Monday's episode Choose Your Pain in particular. Also trigger warning for discussion of sexual abuse survival).

I am rapidly coming to adore Star Trek: Discovery. I love the look of the show; the plot is interesting; there are some great actors and fantastic character interactions; and, to be petty about it, the show is doing things that annoy people I hate.

Also, there are gay people in the show now and they aren't there for one episode epic tragedy storylines. They're an actual couple who both have names and speaking roles jjust living their lives and being in space. Up to now the best representation of LGBTQ+ people in Star Trek was Sulu's silent husband in Beyond and before that we only existed to facilitate the aforementioned epic tragedies about how we faced ostracism and horrible consequences.

Which, don't get me wrong, were important stories to tell but there comes a point where it just wears you down only seeing yourself in terms of your oppression.

And let's also address some other interesting aspects of representation: we have a male sexual abuse survivor in Lt. Ash Tyler. I know we're all meant to crow about how subversive Cadet Tilly saying “fuck” was but this is so important. Hopefully it will be dealt with sensitively but even where we are now, with the huge cathartic moment of Tyler getting to beat on his abuser in what he thinks is the last moments of his life, has some significance.

Also, not going to lie, the f-bomb moment was actually pretty funny and shocked me and both my housemates into silence. 

The elevated estrogen levels of Star Trek: Discovery

An unnatural number of women types, yesterday.

You ever enter a conversation and you get to a stage where you're desperately praying “don't disappoint me, don't disappoint me, don't disappoint me”? Well, I keep having that when Star Trek: Discovery comes up. I swear, 90% of the conversations I have about this show with any guy ends up with “Aren't there are a lot of women in it, though?”

No. No no no no no.

There's five. There's Michael Burnham herself, Captain Phillipa Georgiou, Commander Landry, Cadet Tilly and the ginger flight controller whose name escapes me at the moment. So far only four out of this list have appeared in a single episode together. That's not a lot. Four women in any given episode (so far, in the UK we have episodes one to three). That's not actually a lot, especially considering one of them has so few lines I can't remember her name.

I'm reminded of Terry Pratchett's Men-At-Arms where one of the central jokes is that the Watch is being required to recruit “minorities” and they recruit a troll, a dwarf and a werewolf except no one says that Angua is a werewolf until she finally transforms so for more than hundred pages you think the minorities are a troll, a dwarf and a woman and laugh at these male characters who are so uncomfortable about (you think) having a woman in their space.

And then you get to a point in real life where people continuously act like having four women sharing screentime in a given episode of Star Trek is somehow an unnaturally inflated figure.

Spot on, Sir Terry, spot on. 

Two ways to be wrong about Star Trek: Discovery

I loved the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery (which is what British Netflix has right now, I believe more was made instantly available in the US) and I have so many thoughts that its taking me a whole to hammer them into something publishable even by my low, low standards.

(I mean, what was yesterday's post even about?)

That having been said, there's something I want to pick apart on its own because it has wider implications. Be warned, we're getting into “people are wrong on the internet” territory so enjoy me screaming into the void.

There are two ways in which people in comment sections are getting angry about Discovery. The first, and most obvious, is the anger that Star Trek has gone all SJW and is pandering to liberals with its casting of not one but two women of colour as the U.S.S. Shenzhou (take note, Star Wars, there are more women in the world than white ones with brown hair) as if the series hasn't been a utopian liberal power fantasy since 1966.

Now that's just dicks being dicks, this is the world we live in now. The right wing have become so immune to subtext that they can look at the original Star Trek with its female black officer (an engineering officer, no less), two Jewish leads, Russian and Japanese characters, constant civil rights allegories and end of episode homilies about the message of the week and still think “This is on our side, there's guns!”.

So that's how people who aren't that engaged with Star Trek are being Wrong On The Internet. But what about people who are engaged with Star Trek? Is there a way for them to be Wrong On The Internet?

Why, yes there is, I'm glad you asked.

For the dedicated Star Trek fan who wants to be Wrong On The Internet there is the very simple method of obsessing over the ways in which Discovery “breaks” the continuity of the overall franchise. The main point that seems to keep coming up (and I've only read a couple of comment threads, I'm not dedicated enough to this post to put myself through that) is the use of the holographic communicator.

You see, in previous canon the holographic communicator was invented during Deep Space Nine and quickly forgotten because the production team realised it just looked like two people standing in a room together because that was exactly what it was. So, in a way, its a bit odd to see the technology in use over a century previous in the canon.

Except, here's the thing, the future isn't what it used to be. I am writing this post on a laptop smaller, thinner and with a higher definition screen than the one that sat on the desk of Captain Janeway's ridiculously spacious ready room. My phone has so many more functions than the Starfleet communicators that inspired it that I don't even know most of them.

So the 2250s now have interstellar full 3D holographic communicators for calling up Thomas Cromwell and the Klingons are not just guys in yellow face and reflective green shirts, they've even moved beyond the whole “smushed Mars Bar on the forehead” look to a more complicated full-face prosthetic. Your mileage may vary on how effective the design is (personally, I like the facial look but I'm not too sold on the ribbed battle corsets) but hating them because they contradict the canon explanation from Enterprise about how the Klingons started off with crests and then lost them and then got them back in time for the movies is, to be frank, rather nitpicky.

Maybe its just because my favourite show is Doctor Who, where the canon's made up and the plot points don't matter, but I've always been more interested in the details of the individual story than the overarching continuity.

To be honest, if we're talking about inconsistencies with the Klingons never mind their foreheads because somewhere between the original series and The Next Generations the entire species carries out some sort of personality swap with the Romulans. In the original series you'd never, ever turn your back on a Klingon but the Romulans had an honour code that could be relied upon even if it wasn't terribly nice. Fast forward eighty-odd years and suddenly Romulans are the sneakiest, most backstabby dicks in the entire Alpha Quadrant whereas Klingon honour is at least culturally consistent even if individual dickery persists (looking at you, the House of Duras).

And its just sad, guys. Its the sort of argument that stereotype nerds in bad comedy sketches make and perhaps that's why I react so strongly against it. 

New Star Trek Today!

Today the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery drops on Netflix and I am so damn ready for it. I have done my best to keep myself spoiler free. I know the point at which the series is set, I know some of the casting details and I've seen the new Klingon designs. I know nothing else.

Its been too long. I loved Star Trek Beyond, felt it was a return to form for the franchise after two pretty empty action movies, but this is a series that belongs on the small screen. There are too many messages, too many issues in the world to be dealt with one at a time once every couple of years especially as ineptly as the non-Simon Pegg written films did. That's what I think is important about Star Trek, especially now, that it is science fiction's conscience in the mainstream space.

There are things I'd like to see, of course. I'd like to see some sort of LGBTQ+ storyline not end in epic tragedy (a real failing of the series up to now, Sulu's reboot family notwithstanding). I'd like to see the series do more with the exploration aspect without getting bogged down in endless prequels concerning established races.

I'd like to see less concern with continuity than Enterprise felt was necessary. I'm not a fan of slavish continuity for its own sake, it tends to bog down stories far more than it allows for interesting explorations of established characters and races.

I mean, The Next Generation and original cast movies basically flipped the characterisations of the Klingons and Romulans and now we accept that Klingons are honourable if dicky whilst the Romulans are completely untrustworthy. Go back and watch The Original Series: you'd never turn your back on one of those Klingons whilst the Romulans had their own sense of honour that could be relied on.

So, if these strangely Orc-like Klingons turn out to not be very much like Klingons as I understand them... I won't mind if it makes for better stories.

Just so long as we don't have to sit through a multi-episode story arc explaining how their foreheads have changed shape.