I have long held that Season 5, Episode 2 of The Next Generation is the best episode to "test" if you'll like Star Trek or not. It is a generally well-liked and well-reviewed episode, but more than that, from both a story and a character standpoint it is representative of what your average Star Trek episode is generally about.
So, my recommendation is to watch that one episode and report back.
After four seasons, Discovery still can’t figure out how to pace a full season arc. The A-plot was a miniature Humanity on Trial story which Trek has done to death, and the rest was filler.
Jinaal was a fun character and Wilson Cruz did a great job with him. “This guy really works out” made me laugh. Beyond that, sheesh, what a snooze.
Thank you for looking into it!
It’s extremely easy, you just install AdGuard.
In the US you either had unlimited SMS or no SMS plan at all, in which case you got charged for every single message, sent or received. But I remember having unlimited SMS as early as 2003.
If you had no SMS at all then you certainly didn't have a data plan, which ruled out WhatsApp entirely.
That’s easy: unlimited SMS was common on most mobile plans in the US as early as the mid-2000s. Unlike the rest of the world, Americans had no financial incentive to use WhatsApp.
Well, that was certainly an episode of Star Trek: Discovery. Actually, it might be one of Discovery’s most representative episodes.
Discovery at its worst: geez that warp chase scene was awful. It wasn’t a great use of How We Got Here because there wasn’t enough time between the flashback and the redux to make the flashback seem justified—the bulk of the episode happened after the redux anyways. It wasn’t a great use of Once More With Clarity, either. I guess they were going for some sort of dramatic Rayner reveal? But, the “revelation” that the Antares was shadowing Burnham that whole time wasn’t particularly interesting. Nothing was gained by temporally displacing that scene other than frontloading the action, which makes it seem like Discovery is scared to lead with a character moment or a story beat, as if their mentality is “we gotta get to the pew pew ASAP because that’s why the audience is here.”
It felt unearned, and was just another instance of Discovery borrowing things from better shows without adding anything or seemingly even understanding why what they borrowed worked in a different context. And of course, this teed up one of Discovery’s most obnoxious long-running tropes: Burnham knows she’s right and spends a few minutes exasperatedly explaining to an unwelcome guest with equivalent or higher authority than her to no avail. The thing that’s always weird about these scenes is the way Burnham keeps going even after it’s become very clear that the person she’s trying to convince isn’t having it. At that point, focus on getting into the ship, don’t continue the argument! These scenes always feel like Burnham is trying to make sure that the viewer knows she’s right rather than the other character.
I know she’s right. She’s always right.
Discovery at its best: The scene where Discovery and Antares save the settlement on Q’mau. This had all the bits and pieces of a classic Trek triumph: the heroes put the mission, their ships, and themselves at risk to save innocent lives because it’s the right thing to do and ultimately save the day thanks to quick thinking, creativity, and Starfleet's engineering prowess. This was actually the only sequence in the episode where the Burnham-Rayner interaction worked: Rayner’s calculated risk paid off but introduced a new complication, but Rayner was also pretty quick to concede that “ok yeah, to hell with this ‘Red Directive’ nonsense, innocent lives are at stake” and ceded authority to Burnham.
Visually, seeing Discovery and Antares literally shield the settlement was fantastic. The detail on the shields stopping the rockslide was great fun to watch. These have always been my favorite Discovery moments: classic Trek formula with modern effects and pacing.
Why I'm worried: Rayner. One of Discovery's quirks has always been what I call "the interloper," an external authority figured foisted onto the cast to either foil or assist Burnham depending on which direction the story needs to turn. Lorca and Pike were more pronounced instances of this quirk than Vance and Rilliak were, but all four seasons have done it.
Our season 5 interloper looks to be Rayner, and it looks like Rayner is going to be as prominent as Lorca and Pike were. And boy, I didn't find Rayner to be interesting or compelling at all. I've worked with far too many "I'm allowed to be a jerk because I'm right" types to be entertained by them, particularly when played straight. I really hope they do something more novel with Rayner, and quickly.
Yes, shields normally let transporters pass right through and definitely need to be specifically configured to block transporter beams. That’s why no away team has ever been stranded because their ship had to raise shields.
Thank you. It’s not a proper Trek vs. Wars thread until someone busts out the canon card. I can’t believe it took 5 hours!
Well now we've just arrived at MAD, in space. Both sides deploy their Star Killers and both galaxies are rendered uninhabitable.
The instances hosting active Star Trek communities didn’t exist during the previous season of Discovery, so Lemmy isn’t a great way to gauge relative interest.
On Reddit, the /r/startrek discussion thread for 4x02 has 1.1k comments and 4x03 has 600 comments while the thread for 5x03 only has about 400 comments. This seems to support your hypothesis.