Star Trek: Discovery V4.0 (Premieres Sept. 24, 2017)

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Nah, he's right. You two are likely too engrossed in the politics of your own time to see what an incident of Roddenberry slapping his progressive balls on the table the original series was. This new show has *nothing* on the ham fisted politically charged phenomenon that was ToS. There were episodes about genocide, Nazis, multiple heavy religious overtone episodes, commentaries on unions and various labour issues, women's rights, racial mixing, you name it. Star Trek had countless people *furious* when it got big and this new show isn't going to even come close to pushing buttons like the original did.

The moment two gay crew-members start swapping spit, you're going to have a lot of nauseated heterosexual viewers. The other political issues are mostly taboo. This reaction will be fueled by biology though.
 
Why they keep going back in time? First it is ENT, then reboot OS movies, and now this. They need to conclude DS9 better and build off Voyager.
It is 10 years before Kirk got command of the Enterprise. So Captain Pike is out there with the new Ncc 1701 with commander Spock
 
DS9 has best story, but I cannot see how VOY is worse than TNG.
VOY had interesting ideas and premises, but would never follow through and commit. Just having a mixed federation/maqui crew should have provided tons of drama and contrast to other series, but they basically abandoned that element after a few episodes. VOY had some great story arcs, and some great episodes, but VOY had by far the worst filler episodes of any trek series.
 
You two are so full of shit. Really? Having a race of aliens where half of them are at war with the other half, because different sides of their faces are black, isn't overt or on the nose? Maybe to you. But to everyone else, it is very on the nose.
And shows always use prominent media figures to inspire their characters. What gets me is they didn't even mention anything negative about the Klingons or Trump. But you are all ready to decry this as some kind of slam against him. Why? Because you know that everyone else thinks he's a fucking moron. And you can't figure out why for much the same reason you think the original series episodes were somehow subtle about their social commentary. Connect the dots on that yourselves.
Very true, we don't know what the show will be about, but that blogger has used the headline that its about trump supporters. What if he's referring to Jason Isscs character or a possible section 31 connection, trying to change the federation ideals, to confront the Klingon threat?

Star Trek has always been political. It has always taken the social issues of the day, and presented them in a way that shows how we will over come them, or how we need to change.
 
A Few Gene Roddenberry quotes, that I think we could all remember. That's try to keep the political and personal beliefs to a minimum. It bums me out people trying to bash a show, or demand changes to said show, before ANYONE has even seen it. Bash it after it airs, or don't watch if you don't agree with it. Re watching the first season of TTNG reminded me, we need to give the new series a chance to grow and develop. I was shocked how bad some of season 1 of TNG was, but it developed into one of the greatest shows of all time.


1. "Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms."

2. "To be different is not necessarily to be ugly; to have a different idea is not necessarily to be wrong. The worst possible thing is for all of us to begin to look and talk and act and think alike."

3. "If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there."

4. "If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear."

5. "Science knows still practically nothing about the real nature of matter, energy, dimension, or time; and even less about those remarkable things called life and thought. But whatever the meaning and purpose of this universe, you are a legitimate part of it."

6. "I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We're still just a child creature, we're still being nasty to each other. And all children go through those phases. We're growing up, we're moving into adolescence now. When we grow up - man, we're going to be something!"
 
The Orville is getting annihilated in reviews btw. Still will watch.
 
Re watching the first season of TTNG reminded me, we need to give the new series a chance to grow and develop. I was shocked how bad some of season 1 of TNG was, but it developed into one of the greatest shows of all time.
Yes, it was so bad I didn't watch past the first half dozen shows for about 4 years after. Then I had a ton of catching up to do.
 
Yes, Voyager has many filler episodes and got good at season 4.
But there are few gems in the early seasons.

I liked the one where they encounter the two Ferengi,
that cornered the market on some planet, after arriving there
through the Barzan wormhole from TNG

Or the the double ep 'Future's End' where the Doc gets his mobile emitter
 
There's Jean-Luc Picard, Benjamin Sisko, Kathryn Janeway, Jonathan Archer and now, for a brief moment, me.

I grew up watching Starfleet captains ponder deep thoughts from their personal offices, which is why it's amazing to find myself in the ready room of Gabriel Lorca, captain of the latest ship in the Star Trek universe, the USS Discovery.(Before you go getting worked up about my leaving out James T. Kirk, did you know he was the only Starfleet captain who didn't have a ready room?) In front of me is a glass desk propped up to standing height by a triangular bronze and black base. The gunmetal hull slopes down toward me, a not-so-subtle reminder that this room and the bridge directly outside sit atop the saucer section of a Federation starship.

I'm trying hard not to geek out.

Along the right wall of the ready room is a bank of flat-panel monitors. One in particular catches my eye. It's a map of several planets with a red line dividing United Federation of Planets and Klingon Empire territories. Aaron Harberts, one of the showrunners of "Star Trek: Discovery" and our tour guide for the day, says the line will change from episode to episode — a detail most viewers may not even catch.

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At left, Capt. Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) of the USS Shenzhou prepares to leave the ship with First Officer Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green). Burnham spent seven years on the Shenzhou before transferring to the USS Discovery.

Jan Thijs/CBS Interactive
The screen is a visual cue that "Discovery ," which is set to premiere Sept. 24 on CBS before moving to the CBS All Access streaming service, is set amid a war between the Federation and Klingon Empire in the mid-23rd century, a decade before the original series. (Editors' note: CNET is owned by CBS.)

But talking to the cast and people behind the show, it's obvious they're looking to fight a far more important battle: one for acceptance.

"Discovery" arrives at a time when the US is more divided than ever. From the tragic protests last month in Charlottesville, Virginia, to claims by a Google engineer that women aren't suited to work in technology, the nation is wrestling with racism, sexism and questions about its identity.



Meet the crew of 'Star Trek: Discovery'
(James Dimmock/CBS Interactive)
Enter Star Trek, based on a future universe envisioned by Gene Roddenberry where such issues were resolved long ago. "Discovery" picks up the original show's mantle of diversity and social commentary, which Roddenberry conceived of and aired during the civil rights battles of the 1960s. It focused on different peoples and races (human and alien) working together for the greater good.

The new show boasts a darker, more modern take on Star Trek, complete with complex characters who disagree, change and potentially die throughout an evolving serialized arc. But it preserves Roddenberry's core principle.

To many involved with "Discovery," that's exactly what we need right now.

"I'm excited for what this show represents and for what I truly hope it will do," says Sonequa Martin-Green, who plays First Officer Michael Burnham, the first black woman to headline a Star Trek series. "I just hope that we can incite change."

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It's not easy being food. Starfleet Lt. Saru is a Kelpien whose species must constantly dodge being eaten on his home planet.

Jan Thijs/CBS Interactive
Legacy of diversity
The casting of Martin-Green as the lead character in "Discovery" sparked a reaction of a different sort after the announcement was made in December.

Critics from across the internet derided "Discovery" as too diverse, even tossing around the concept of "white genocide."

"It surprised me — but it didn't," Martin-Green says in an interview at the Shangri La Hotel in Toronto, Canada, where the show is being filmed at Pinewood Studios. "In those first few encounters, I realized that the hypocrisy is real. You can be a part of something that has been a champion of diversity and still have naysayers."

As she points out, if you're criticizing the show's efforts to present a more diverse future, you've missed one of the central points of Star Trek. The original series, after all, cast a black woman, Nichelle Nichols, as Lt. Nyota Uhura, the Enterprise's communications officer, and a Japanese-American man, George Takei, as Lt. Hikaru Sulu, the ship's helmsman.

We may take such a diverse cast for granted now, but it was a wild concept when the show premiered in 1966.

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Why are the Klingons bald? That and other mysteries will be explained in future episodes. The Klingon on the right, known as T'Kuvma (Chris Obi), just wants Klingons to be Klingons.

Jan Thijs/CBS Interactive
"To have people of color out in space is quite revolutionary," says Miki Turner, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Southern California. Roddenberry "did it during a time when it was not expected and wasn't accepted in some quarters of the world."

Star Trek also featured its first black commanding officer, Benjamin Sisko, in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" in 1993 and its first female captain, Kathryn Janeway, in "Star Trek: Voyager" in 1995.

"Discovery" goes further. The decision to revolve the series around Martin-Green's character, First Officer Burnham, gives it a different point of view than the typical captain-centric focus.

Michelle Yeoh, is another pivotal figure. Commander of the USS Shenzhou, Georgiou's ready room features shadow puppets called wayang kulit, a nod to Yeoh's Malaysian heritage.

And we haven't even gotten to the aliens yet.



Who's the biggest Trekkie in the 'Star Trek: Discovery' cast?
Klingon controversy
Co-showrunners Harberts and Gretchen J. Berg began production and casting for "Discovery" before the 2016 US presidential election and shot the pilot less than a week after President Donald Trump's inauguration in January. So don't be surprised to see some political influences bleed into the scripts. That's particularly the case with the Klingons.

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The communicator is powered by an Apple iPod Nano display.

Christine Cain/CNET
Here's how Harberts describes Klingon leader and chief antagonist T'Kuvma: He comes to power under the creed "Remain Klingon," promotes isolationism and rails against the Federation because its multicultural approach will erase what makes Klingons, Klingons. Mary Chieffo, who plays T'Kuvma's battle deck commander, L'Rell, describes the Klingon leader as someone who does a lot of talking.

That may sound familiar.

Harberts never mentions Trump by name but alludes to finding inspiration in real life.

"When you're distressed about things and you're a writer, you get to write about it," he says. "You try to create the reality you hope to happen.

"It's so important that we are dealing with some of these issues," Harberts adds, a reference to the recent events in Charlottesville.

If there's another controversy surrounding "Discovery," it's with the look of the Klingons themselves. The characters have different ridges on their foreheads and lack the long mane of hair seen in prior series, the kind of tweaks that drive minutia-obsessed Trekkies mad.

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"Discovery" will have separate badge insignias for different fields such as in command, medical and operations.

Christine Cain/CNET
The people behind the show promise the different look will somehow fit in with Star Trek's established canon, which, admittedly, is already pretty inconsistent when it comes to Klingons.

"It's not arbitrary," says Chieffo, who enjoys the hairless look. "So much can happen in 10 years."

Different, but familiar
The decision to create a prequel to the original series presents a unique challenge for the showrunners, who must balance an aesthetic that matches that of the 1960s series while adding modern flourishes.

I see their handiwork firsthand on the bridge of the Discovery, nicknamed the "Disco." Burnham's console has physical knobs and buttons next to touchscreens. Thin, see-through displays are placed around the outer ring of the room, providing splashes of colorful, high-definition technobabble amid a predominantly gray backdrop. These transparent displays also lend a sleek, futuristic look to the bridge, even though the screens will actually become commercially available in the coming months, Harberts says.

Creating props like the communicator was particularly tricky, especially when you consider the original communicator inspired flip phones decades later. The new version takes some of design cues from those early products without looking, well, cheesy.

The Discovery crew opted for a subtle update to the communicator using bits of gold and gray. They make it work by jamming Apple iPod Nanos inside of the flip-style communicators, says Sang Maier, who's in charge of props for the show. He says the screen allows for the playback of images or video appropriate to any scene.

Is he concerned Apple discontinued the iPod Nano this summer? "A little worried, yeah," Maier says. "There are only so many small screens we can use."

The uniform colors are consistent with those in the first series, although the red uniform that previously signified operations, engineering and security is now copper. "Watch out if you're a copper shirt," Harberts quips, a nod to the on-screen death toll of crew members wearing red uniforms.

The characters also have connections to the original version. Spoiler alert: Burnham is the adopted daughter of Sarek and Amanda , Spock's parents. Yes, that means Spock had a sister who wasn't previously mentioned. (We already knew about his secret half-brother, Sybok, who showed up in "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.")

"This is everything you love, but everything you didn't know you were looking for," Martin-Green tells this nervous fan when asked to sum up the connections.

Harberts promises to answer why you've never heard of Burnham or the Discovery before, but he declines to elaborate. Trust me, I tried.

Then there's Lt. Saru, a never-before-seen Kelpien who fills the character role analogous to Spock or to Lt. Commander Data from "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Unlike Data and Spock, Saru is in touch with his emotions, especially fear since his species is considered prey on his home planet. He's the first to rise up and become a Starfleet officer, according to actor Doug Jones, best known for playing Abe Sapien in "Hellboy" and the Silver Surfer in "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer."

Although the series deals with war, Harberts describes Discovery as a family show and promises it will deliver the same moments of comedy the previous series are known for.

So "Game of Thrones" this is not.

Ray of hope
There's been a lot of talk about the varied cast ethnicities and sexual orientations, but it's worth noting that's not the point the show is trying to make — just like in the original series.

"Diversity is inherent," Martin-Green says. "It's not something that needs to be discussed or something that has to be fought for."

Back in the ready room, I wonder how long it will take for First Officer Burnham to take over as captain.

"It's certainly a journey," Martin-Green says cryptically, before slapping her knees and letting out a laugh.

Where she ends up on the show is less important than the impact "Discovery" could have on society, like the Star Treks that came before it.

"Our iteration of Star Trek has come specifically, expertly and wholeheartedly for a time such as this," she says. "It's not just important, it's vital."



Some New info, and a good over of discovery from cnet
 
The Orville is getting annihilated in reviews btw. Still will watch.
Huh. I thought that pilot was decent. Not amazing, but it had a lot of stuff to setup and it got a few good laughs while making me interested to see more of some characters.
 
Is Michelle Yeoh going to be a regular cast member or will she be killed off in the pilot?
 
Is Michelle Yeoh going to be a regular cast member or will she be killed off in the pilot?
We don't know yet. I think she will be around, but won't be actively on Discovery. It sounds like some time pasts between the scenes on the Shen Zhou, and when it switches over to Discovery
 
The Orville is getting annihilated in reviews btw. Still will watch.
I enjoyed it. I thought of it as a mix between early TNG and MASH. Looks to primarily be a fun sci fi show, but will have some slapstick elements to lighten it up.
 
@JBSchroeds @sverre054 Thanks for your opinions. I will try to find a download source tonight and hopefully find the time to watch it sometime this week.
 
Went to the 35th anniversary screening of the new remastered, Wrath of Khan. They played a 15 minute new interview with Shatner, that was actually pretty funny. There were no other previews and then Wrath of Khan started. It looked and sounded great, and the film was edited and some stuff was cut, and a few new scenes were added. It seemed to help the pacing early on, and nothing felt out of place. The theater was probably 80% filled, and even drew applause at the end. Fathom events put on some cool trek events, so if out have a chance to go to one, check it out.

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New info on the Discovery Klingons


[The] Klingon ‘sarcophagus ship’ — an enormous vessel (three times the size of its Federation counterparts — [belongs] to a 25th Klingon house that we hadn’t previously heard of.

[…]

Its stepped control deck [is] devoid of the usual consoles, because these Klingons intervace with their computers directly via ornate silver masks.


The Sarcaphagus ship, landed on a planet. (CBS)
Sullivan explains where this huge ship fits into the story:

It’s a 200-year-old ship. This is a group of Klingons who’ve gone back to a puritan way of life. They look very different: they wear armor that’s 200 years old and they don’t have any hair.

Their commander [T’Kuvma, played by Chris Obi] runs his Klingon house – the house of T’Kuvma – by the rules of Kahless, the Klingon messiah. And he calls himself the second coming of the Klingon messiah.

In the past, Klingons have not really cared about their dead – they’re not like marines. But these Klingons are. The outside of the ship is covered in thousands of coffins. Some are 300 years old, some are just two days old.

Downstairs is the death room, where they prepare their dead; then the coffins get raised up and put on the outside.
In the preview trailers for Star Trek: Discovery, we’ve seen that same ancient ritual performed by members of the House of T’Kuvma; screaming to the heavens over a fallen comrade.


A deceased warrior, ready for burial. (CBS)

Warriors of the House of T’Kuvma cry out to the afterlife. (CBS)
However, unlike the warriors of the Next Generation era, their coffin raises through the ceremonial chamber to be mounted on the outside of the sarcophagus ship.


The casket raises from its position. (CBS)

Up, up, and away. (CBS)
That certainly clears up some of the confusion that’s come from those early snippets of life aboard the Klingon sarcophagus ship; the floating casket seems to have no relation to the Torchbearer armor-wearing warrior we see fighting Burnham – and the editing of such video clips was simple misdirection.

…we think.

 


I'm pretty impressed at the quality, they are putting towards all the small details
 
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