Archive for April, 2019
It better be, because now that the entire Klingon Empire knows you tried to trick it, they’ll definitely try to kill you. :P
Just imagine how stupid it would have been, if Jon Snow would have fought and killed the Night King in Season 2 of Game of Thrones, kind of still in the beginning of the show. And then in the next Season, they would have done… what? The reason Game of Thrones used to be so satisfying to watch, is that they took years to build everything up and then tried to pay most of it off. For both characters and the story.
STD is nothing like that. They already had the ultimate threat right away, the death of everyone everywhere in the galaxy was at stake. So either they have the same basic premise in every Season from now on, or… At this point I wouldn’t even be surprised if they blew up a planet each episode, or something equally idiotic. They do treat this as a Star Wars show after all. A scene in Game of Thrones with nothing but 2 characters talking is a thousand times more interesting to watch.
btw: Remember how Season 1 of STD was darker (in the ship), because Lorca supposedly had this eye condition (although the real explanation was, of course, that he came from the mirror universe) and they dimmed the light to help him cope? And then in the second Season of STD, long after Lorca was dead, they still had the same dark lighting anyway? :D
The maybe saddest part of it all is, that I’m not even trying to point everything out that’s “wrong” with it. My entries would have to be much much longer to cover all that and I’m way too lazy to do any of that. No, this is the stuff that remains after already overlooking a lot. I also don’t make any notes while watching this. And I watch it once.
Now that the second Season is over, I’m sad to say that Season 2 was much worse than the first one. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Season 1 either, but if anything, Star Trek has somewhat trained me to expect first Seasons to be “terrible”, so it didn’t bother me much. Lots of shows have to find their footing first. STD however, didn’t improve at all and rather doubled down on most of its worst elements.
Was it original to bring the mirror universe back in Season 1? No, but at least those episodes were kinda fun. Season 2 however, was dedicated to “Control”, one of the worst villains ever. Despite having over 50 ships, Control never built more than one single body. Why not convert all the Section 31 personnel into parts of itself? Discovery tried to hide the database in the future… Why didn’t Control just go dormant and wait for… the future? Why didn’t Discovery try to hide it in the past, where it was actually unreachable without more time travel?
Control was sometimes fighting really well and other times it was barely keeping up with the Emperor, who is a completely normal person. STD never established what Control was capable of and what its limitations were. After watching the whole Season, I can only say they had to do it this way, since they changed Control from episode to episode, to whatever they needed at that point. This is a horrible way of setting up a story and a character. Other writers did a much better job 30 years ago with the Terminator. Everyone in the audience knew what this thing was capable of specifically.
All of this doesn’t even cover one of the most important parts of any character: Motivation. What was Control’s motivation to end all life everywhere? Why did it do anything really. Even after watching the whole season, I have no idea. At one point they said Control tried to become sentient (by gaining access to the data), but it clearly already was. It was evil without a cause. The Season just needed a villain and Control was the best they could do…
Characters really aren’t their strong suit. This is especially deadly here, because they completely said goodbye to the mystery of the week format, earlier Trek shows had. If drama between characters is supposed to completely replace such stories, it obviously becomes all the more important, to have good characters. But they just aren’t. Even Burnham, as the sole central character of this show doesn’t have much to offer. What are her characteristics, besides Spock, Sarek and Vulcan? I always thought it was a detriment to her character, that the STD writers felt she needed this “bump”. Kirk wasn’t anybodys relative. Nor was Sisko. They didn’t need to be.
Burnham was acting like a Vulcan in the beginning and now is hyper-emotional. Couldn’t they have done something in between? If the whole show is just about one single character really, shouldn’t then at least this character be especially likable?
Their inability to develop good characters led to their “tell, don’t show” approach throughout the series. They never show the audience why a character is likable or cool or anything. They tell. We need the audience to cry? No problem, we just tell the audience they have to like this random extra now… In the same episode we kill them of course. The audience will never catch on to that! How elegant and crafty we are!
Routinely swapping Captains every Season is yet another symptom here. Now obviously characters can die or move on somehow, but having it happen like this every Season, is the farthest from it feeling “organic”. The audience knows its coming and it’s just this thing they do, it’s not happening because of any cool explanation that makes sense within the story.
Maybe this second Season is what I needed to finally let go and not return for Season 3. At this point this is what STD is all about. Maybe the Picard series will be better, if they get different producers and writers. I hope it will be good, I’d really like to watch a Star Trek show again.
PS: The Orville actually bothered to give their evil killer robots/AI a backstory/motivation. The Kaylon were essentially a slave race to their creators and as a result were treated poorly. So they thought striking against organics was essentially self-defense. It’s not deep nor original either, but at least it makes sense and it works, it’s clearly better than STD’s “I’m an AI and therefore evil”.
v10.3 19.02.2019 (Release Candidate 1)
—–
+Made magic projectile of fatguys do aggravated damage like Ming’s.
+Corrected plus and basic Arthur lines and fixed Gimble phone bug.
+Added Unofficial Patch contributors to credits and restored basic.
+Fixed note in tattoo parlor and teleporting of Confession dancer.
+Removed Blood Purge on killer and Humanity if you kill him anyway.
+Swapped Colt Anaconda and Desert Eagle damage and added .38 kick.
Fixed Tommy fix and restored several weapons parameters for basic.
Erased Coffee Shop and Smoke Shop door handles from hub in basic.
Disabled plus lines of Bertram, Jack, Heather, Carson and LaCroix.
Removed seminude prostitute from SM again and from Chinatown too.
Restored beachhouse PC difficulty and locked Tung’s tank in basic.
Improved elevator display and climbing back in vent at SM clinic.
Fixed map holes outside Ocean House and lowered ghost music there.
Corrected overlapping music and several portals at the warehouse.
Covered trigger texture inside Ocean House and removed a laughter.
Fixed warrens door, restored whispers and removed rats for basic.
Moved Club Confession’s restroom and fixed cash register lighting.
Corrected Romero leaving and unlocked Red Spot backdoor in basic.
Fixed minor issue in hospital and removed cops on Dane screenshot.
Removed Larry’s floats in basic patch and made them less in plus.
Unlocked junkyard kennels and removed King’s Way meowing in basic.
Fixed LOD effect in Chinatown hub and improved the Giovanni well.
Restored visibly vanishing Gary and removed zombie fleeing sounds.
Swapped blade and thrower and restored two ghouls to Hallowbrook.
Removed King’s Way cat sounds and Blood Hunt heli sounds in basic.
Hid a wall hole during taxi ride and removed all special letters.
Corrected ModDev Guide detail and updated SDK, thanks to Psycho-A.
Restored basic dialogue popup and Ocean House Malkavian whispers.
Fixed a hitman problem and removed some unnecessary SM hub blocks.
Swapped pictures of restored Ocean House and Halloween newspaper.
Removed plus Hallowbrook sound and warehouse intro music in basic.
Fixed combat music on blood hunt map and Therese duplicated line.
Removed plus inspection in the Tattoo Shop and sound for clothing.
Corrected reel to reel at Grout’s mansion and stuck museum guard.
Updated changelog 15.3.2019 (Release Candidate 2):
+Improved Sabbat ending and choice dialogues, thanks burgermeister.
+Made Obfuscator appear after warehouse and adjusted maximal ammo.
Fixed distraction of Giovanni backdoor guard and minor map issues.
Restored three Heather lines, two Lily lines, and subtitle names.
Fixed hit blood spatters and thin bloods leaving beachhouse beach.
Repaired model, texture, sign and sound details, thanks Psycho-A.
Fixed wrong stalker voices and a dead NPC hearable at beach house.
Corrected payphone and Giovanni spirit models, thanks to DDLullu.
Repaired Venture Tower elevator, portals and Giovanni zombie trap.
Updated changelog 4.4.2019 (Release Candidate 3):
+Restored fridge model and Giovanni spirit texture, thanks DDLullu.
+Added some food plates and film can textures, thanks to Psycho-A.
+Fixed Gary’s blood packs, and dialogues of Boris, Phil and Slater.
+Restored Bloodlines name to main menu logo, thanks Candy Narwhal.
+Added Blood Malady effect for supernaturals immune to Blood Theft.
+Updated Ash, Copper and Serial quest states when you failed some.
+Changed medical emails conditions and guard sounds away from cops.
Swapped recompiled diner map with old one and copied bin to main.
Made Gangrel hands show their tattoos, thanks to MooCHa and Jenya.
Corrected some sounds and fixed internal issues, thanks Psycho-A.
Updated changelog 18.4.2019 (Final):
+Readded Bedlam and Mass Suicide disciplines, thanks EntenSchreck.
+Removed second CIS computer password and restored many new models.
+Restored full mission impossible, jewelry and Ming combat tracks.
+Reskinned Beckett’s wolf form to look more real, thanks Zer0morph.
Fixed breakable observatory stairs, and Dragon’s Breath max ammo.
Improved dialogues of Cal, Carson, Isaac, Lily, VV and of Malcolm.
Restored old diner map and improved vampire.exe, thanks Psycho-A.
https://forums.planetvampire.com/bloodlines-tech-support/unofficial-patch-10-3-released!/
Playing QB was a little bit of a “weird” experience. It reminded me of games from the 1990s, since FMV (with choices) isn’t usually something that current games still offer. And then there’s this thing that this is so clearly a Remedy game. During the ending Jack Joyce whispers to Beth “I’ll come back for you” and obviously I immediately yelled “No you won’t”. :D Because that’s just the thing they’ll never do. Whether it’s Max Payne (remember the “secret” ending in which Mona Sax lives? :D), Alan Wake (remember how this never had any explanation and just ended?) or Quantum Break (remember how their next game Control has nothing to do with QB?), they’ll never get back to it and never offer any kind of resolution/payoff. :P I understand that they got Beth’ actress back for Control, but that’s something else entirely.
Mentioning Beth, she was clearly the best character in the game, right? I only think so, because I read her diary. Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t the best choice to put one of the best story bits of the game inside an optional book most players won’t bother to read. This should have been a playable part of the game. It was truly heartbreaking how she gives this book of all the shitty future events to herself when she was still a child – and fucks up her own life due to the seemingly inescapable laws of QB time travel.
Although I enjoyed playing this, there wasn’t much else to root for. The worst part probably would be the enemies. Again, in terms of gameplay they were fine (which is why playing this is fun), but these mercs make no sense. They are boring as far as opponents go and it makes little sense that simple mercs would throw their lives away with such a zeal against someone who clearly has superpowers. Normal dudes with guns also aren’t very scary or threatening. In fact, at some point in the game, “shifters” are mentioned, beings that only pose a danger when time is frozen. So obviously I expected those to show up as new enemies, but they never did. I’m guessing they were cut from the game at some point and they forgot to also take out the references to them. I think Martin Hatch is a shifter, but there are no fights with/against him.
There is one single boss fight in the game and it kind of sucked. :D I had to play this at least 5 times, because it wasn’t obvious to me how to win. The boss is protected by a shield and the rectangular room is flooded with henchmen. Red dots show up every now and then, and being close to them ends in insta-death. So staying in constant movement while there’s anything red visible is a necessity. At some point the boss will trigger a big explosion and the only defense against it, is to run to the opposite side of the room as fast as possible. To survive this it’s necessary to instantly know where the explosion is coming from, there is no time for anything, because it insta-kills too. After this is survived, the boss won’t have a shield and can be shot at. Then the cycle repeats. After the second big explosion is survived (and the boss is shot again after loosing the shield again), the game is won. This is a fairly lengthy affair and any mistake will reset the whole thing. I felt so relieved when I was finally done with this. :D
Why does this feel like they are giving me the finger? :P
The game feels very ambitious and wants to be a big spectacle and due to crazy stuff like the mentioned live action TV show it kinda is, but such big and complex ideas also often come with a certain sense of disillusionment. Usually due to time/money constraints, it’s next to never possible to hit all the marks and audience members kind of end up seeing the wall such endeavors have to run into. Maybe I’m being unfair to this game, but it’s hard to see much more than a straight up action game with a story that isn’t nearly as deep as it wants to be. Maybe I’m just sad they couldn’t get more out of a science-fiction story about time travel. But then again, this IS better than STD. :P
PS: There are a few things I didn’t understand at all. Is Jack an idiot for telling Beth that he’d come back for her? Since nothing can ever be changed? And how is Martin Hatch still there at the very end? Wasn’t he killed? If he was, this might change the answer to my first question. :P
It really was… Good grief. It’s like Trump is a writer on this show (I have the best and biggest time travel, I’m a very stable writer…). Every time he is caught in a lie, he’ll just double down and keep repeating the lie, despite being completely aware that everyone already knows it’s a lie… They said last episode they can’t contact Starfleet for backup and they repeat it this episode. Although it already was so painfully obvious last week, that they could have jumped to Starfleet directly with their spore drive at any time. No comms needed… They even use the spore drive last episode, just not to get help… The fuck? And let’s not go into it again, how Sarek could contact them, no problem. He has Starfleet on something like Skype or Discord for sure.
They really rub it in too (typical Trump move). In the last episode they sent messages to their friends and relatives, in case they won’t make it. This week we learn these messages were received. So how can they radio everybody, except for Starfleet? This is so extremely idiotic. Although this makes no sense in the first place, they could have asked their relatives to tell Starfleet all about their situation, since they forgot Starfleet’s number and Starfleet seemingly isn’t on Twitter.
But if someone thought they couldn’t go dumber than this, they sure showed us. Ash Tyler leaves the ship supposedly in a shuttle, which obviously has no spore drive and yet it’s no problem for him either, to reach the Klingon homeworld Kronos and get back to Discovery just in time. He too obviously could have contacted Starfleet and just chose not to for no reason whatsoever.
This however, isn’t even the worst part. We learned before, that L’Rell’s power as chancellor is completely based on the lie, that she killed Ash Tyler. But by Ash Tyler showing up alive and well now, this entire ruse has been exposed. L’Rell would loose all her power and the entire Klingon empire would go nuts. Overall STD has been very prolific in ignoring and/or retconning Star Trek, but STD can’t even manage to uphold its own lore/story.
Automatic robot repair drones (which drive around on the hull like R2-D2 in Star Wars)? Is anyone still counting how many retcons this makes in total?
During the fight we learn that Enterprise and Discovery somehow hold 500 shuttles each. :D I don’t even…
I love it, when Saru is just as WTF at his sister (the primitive village priest), being a fighter pilot all of a sudden, as the audience is. :D Once again, everyone is available on comms except Starfleet. No matter how remote they are.
How did the Kelpiens get the advanced fighters from the Ba’ul btw? Have they murdered all of them since we last saw them and took all their stuff? :D
The torpedo that gets stuck in the hull looks nothing like any other torpedo, why? They couldn’t figure out what that would look like, right? All other torpedos are these glowing red thingies. Not grey rectangular objects.
Then the Admiral dies for nothing, because she has to pull a lever… No one thinks of using a rope to pull the lever from the other side. FIXED. Or they could have beamed her out, since they have a TRANSPORTER ROOM. There is also this embarrassing moment, when Number One says goodbye and the Admiral says nothing back, because Number One doesn’t have a name… THE PAIN. :D
During the confrontation between the emperor and the AI, the emperor gets the AI, a being that doesn’t feel pain, to scream on command… I don’t have words.
The best part of the episode is, when Burnham’s usage of the red angel suit looks like a scene straight out of Star Trek: The Motion Picture from 1979. :D Come to think of it, so does Discovery’s flight through the wormhole. Which probably means this is no coincidence. It’s too bad that ripping off other stuff doesn’t automatically mean your stuff will be at least as good. :P
I’ve always said they were going to do something really stupid to explain the spore drive out of existence (because it never existed) and they did… It was every bit as dumb as I expected. During the debrief at Starfleet, it is declared that everyone in the know is forbidden from speaking about the existence of the spore drive (!) because of time travel. The spore drive however, has nothing to do with all the time travel. All of that was the red angel/Iron Man suit. So why should they keep a thing secret, that had nothing to do with the time travel? Once more this show wants everyone to be a complete idiot, who won’t be able to notice anything.
There is no way in hell, Starfleet would develop such a technology and then never use it again. During the Star Trek movies, it’s been made clear, that Starfleet is trying to develop the so-called transwarp drive. Remember the USS Excelsior? So Starfleet is clearly trying to improve their drive systems. But why put so much effort into developing a worse drive system, than the one Discovery already has? Starfleet could have needed the spore drive countless times and never would have abandoned it. Other species could have developed it, leaving Starfleet at a fatal disadvantage.
Even if they are in the future now (where they should have been in the first place with this show), it’s still a poisoned well, since it won’t wash them clean of their shitty origin. It’ll just make it harder to overlook, that they were shitting on Star Trek all this time for nothing. They even personified this with Spock. He did nothing the entire season and was entirely superfluous as a character. His sole reason for being there, was so they could name drop him in ads. Pathetic.
During the ending credits, they play the Discovery music AND a remix of the Star Trek theme simultaneously, which sounds as shitty as you would imagine. I guess it’s just consistent with the rest of the episode, in that it is designed to piss people off. :D
Other than season 1, the season 2 end gives no clue as to what 3 will be about, which probably means they have no fucking clue themselves and want to keep all options as wide open as possible.
Only one piece of information, which is not in the show directly, hints that Discovery won’t stay in the future, since the emperor was confirmed to get her own Section 31 show and she was still on Discovery when they departed. So they would have to get back just for that reason. Unless the emperor starts running Section 31 in the far future. Nothing is too far-fetched for this show, so…
PS: Why did Discovery have to go into the future at the end at all? The only reason to do it, was because of Control and the AI was killed, thus removing the entire reason for this operation. *sigh*
PPS: I’ve seen Orville 2×13 by now and it was great. :P It was about time travel (what isn’t these days…) and it was way more engaging than…
I really liked the first game, so I was always interested in playing the second one too. I admit I sometimes miss the show when it’s not on (I sometimes think about how South Park might process something crazy that’s currently happening, if they would have made an ep about it) so being able to play this game during such a break is a NICE alternative.
The fact that it requires uplay didn’t really bother me. Some players felt like this game is too much like Stick of Truth, but for me this formula is still working. I still get a kick out of the fact that it is like watching an episode, but of course I’m playing it. There still isn’t anything else quite like it. They nailed that. South Park seems big enough to warrant more than one game in my opinion. A lot of the elements, that were already used in SoT, are therefore missing in this one. Even bigger characters like Terrance and Phillip aren’t in this, because they were already in the other one. I think there’s a shirt hanging somewhere, but no actual appearance. It’s appreciated, that they tried to be more than just a recurrence.
As I already mentioned Fractured But Whole requires uplay and it’s the first game I actually played on this store. It works well enough and is usually no trouble, there is just one thing that I found really creepy. After reaching certain “milestones” in the game, uplay will send emails to the player about it. “So you’ve just played this part of the game, HAVEN’T YOU?!?”. :| After finishing FBH I started another game, but stopped playing after a while, which prompted uplay to send me an email somewhere along the lines of “why have you stopped playing although you haven’t finished this game yet???”. Who over at Ubisoft thought it was a good idea to do this? Now Steam [1] stores every piece of information about its players as well, of course, but over at Valve they are smart enough not to rub everyone’s face in this fact. Seriously, what’s going on guy and or buddy – I mean friend?
btw: I played the DLCs too, except the combat focused one, because no one plays the South Park game for the combat. The DLCs are okay, I guess, but they ended a little bit too abrupt for my taste, but then again, so does the game. But then again this is a SP game, so you laugh for a while and then you stop. Right?
[1] former Valve developer Richard Geldreich chimed in to assert that claim that the Epic store is spyware are “insane,” saying that Valve gathers “huge amounts of data about virtually everything you do with the Steam client. Yet no one calls Steam spyware.”
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/340279/Epic_Games_Tim_Sweeney_addresses_Chinese_spyware_rumor.php
I absolutely loved it. :P Never read the books, never watched the mini series, so this game was my first time to experience this story. Really liked the characters, much more than I would have expected and it’s all rather effectively supported by the voice acting. Great cast.
Some people apparently believe it’s too boring, but I simply appreciated how believable it all comes across (for a fictional story). If someone expects at least as much violence as there is in Game of Thrones, then yeah, I can see how one would be “disappointed”, but to me this is no detriment. It’s probably true that the main bad guy in this doesn’t outdo the likes of Joffrey or Ramsay Bolton, which is perfectly fine to me. Characters here feel more like “real people” who actually lived at some point, they aren’t any type of bigger than life caricatures.
This game really made me want to watch the 2010 mini series. I’m curious to find out how different it is and if I’d like it as much as the game.
All throughout I was rooting hard for various characters (Aliena, Ellen and Philip burned themselves into my memory), even some I expected to dislike at first, kind of grew on me. As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t really anything more to expect from a game like this.
It’s yet another one of those games that I can see myself playing again, somewhere done the line. I’m sure the decisions, the player is constantly making, won’t have earth shattering consequences most of the time, but they are definitely reflected in some noticeable way. I never thought this type of game and story needed something different. It all came together nicely. I also appreciated it a lot, how the ending to this game for once gives closure and doesn’t leave it to the imagination of the player, to make up what actually happened or anything like that. It still makes me angry when games/stories go too far in that direction. There were a few minor things that were “forgotten”, but that’s all they were, minor things. That’s something I can easily live with.
Wow, Tilly is back and they used another one of the short treks. So are we supposed to believe Harry Mudd is coming back as well? He was in the short treks. And he did time travel stuff in season 1 and season 2 is about time travel stuff. Maybe he ends up selling control to Starfleet as THE ULTIMATE COMPUTER!!!
Basically all throughout my life I’ve preferred it, when series made proper use of their format by being more than a one off. Meaning, season (or even series) long arcs, episodes having a memory of earlier events in the series […]. I always thought that writers, who just want to tell one isolated story, should just go and do a movie instead. :P Of course there are good anthology shows like Black Mirror etc., but…
For the first time, STD makes me wonder if it wouldn’t have been better for this show, if it wasn’t just one story a season. I genuinely don’t care at all for what’s happening and I don’t remember a time travel story (of all things) that was so not engaging. I might have never seen a show, that was this well produced on the technical side, which still failed to take me along for the ride so significantly. I usually watch even the shittiest time travel movies and can get something out of it. Anyway, my point was supposed to be, that one bad episode here and there is easier to swallow, than an entirely bad season arc. Star Trek shows always had bad episodes, but then there was always this one episode, which made me glad I was watching this show. Discovery could really need this sense of wonder, an anthology show can create, when the viewer is curious to find out, what is going to happen this time.
The maybe worst part of this season arc, however, might be the “ultimate threat” they are facing. There is a lot to unpack here, so I’ll skip all the minor details. First of, all organic life everywhere is threatened. This is only the second season. Although those world saving stories are usually dumb/overused anyway, wouldn’t it have been much smarter to save the biggest threat imaginable for the last season? It’s much smarter to build up to certain events. Then they are much more satisfying. What are they supposed to do in season 3 now? Whether they are trying to stop smugglers from delivering Romulan ale to all the bars on Rigel or something more serious, it’s all still going to be silly in comparison.
Next, why is Discovery the only crew working on this? When faced with total annihilation, shouldn’t everyone everywhere work on this?!? As far as it is known, Starfleet isn’t currently facing any other threats, especially none that would be worse. So why would they even allow a single ship to solve this without any support? With everything at stake here, Starfleet should do everything in its power to ensure success here…
Without even wanting to fully dissect this (severe lack of motivation), there is so much wrong with it, just on the surface level. OBVIOUSLY. In this episode, Discovery “can’t” contact Starfleet, because control is messing with their communications. This is supposed to be the explanation for the lack of Starfleet support, when all the Section 31 ships are coming after them. But… Who gives a fuck if they have long-range communication?!? They have this magical spore drive system which can teleport them in the blink of an eye to any location! They can’t reach Starfleet on comms? Doesn’t matter, just speak to them directly! And this is supposed to be Starfleet’s finest crew… They should be able to figure this shit out.
Furthermore, also in this ep, Burnham’s adoptive parents contact her through Vulcan mysticism. Burnham could just use this opportunity to tell them to contact Starfleet for her. She doesn’t. All this stuff is so extremely hard to swallow. Spock’s biological (haha) parents also don’t ask about him, they don’t mention him with one word. Okay, Sarek says a sentence (he’ll be a distant dad because he loves Spock sooo much :D), but Spock is irrelevant to every aspect of this show. If quality was a goal here, the Star Trek license would prohibit such characters from being used, unless there was a good plan to use them well.
Everything is set up to force this confrontation between all the Section 31 ships and only Discovery and Enterprise, when there is no reason whatsoever preventing real Starfleet to show up with 10 times as many ships as Section 31 has. This just doesn’t do it for me. Since AGAIN Discovery can go anywhere anytime, they could just move the ship to a secure location, where the puny Section 31 ships can’t get to it. This isn’t nonsensical anymore, it’s outright idiotic.
They also contradict their own lore once again. The last ep claimed, that once a time crystal shows anything, you are committed to that future. In this ep however, the time crystal shows Burnham what’s going to happen if they fire on Discovery and for her it’s no problem to change this future. It’s like something that’s written after 3 days without sleep.
Once more they try to evoke emotions from the audience which just aren’t there. The show hasn’t earned this and never tried to. The audience is supposed to be sad, when Pike leaves the bridge, or when Burnham volunteers for yet another “suicide” mission. Once again: None of these characters are so beloved that people would be worried about them, or scared that they might die. It’s like this scene in Game of Thrones, when Joffrey starts angrily yelling that he is the king and Tywin Lannister then just sends him to bed. :D The lesson obviously is, that someone who has real power, doesn’t need to yell this around. If a person has real power, everyone knows it. Tywin Lannister never does anything of the sort and – people pee their pants just looking at that guy. And the moral is: No matter the situation, just don’t be Joffrey, okay? Their is no scenario where this pays off for anybody.
But back to STD, no one believes that Burnham is actually going to die. So why do they keep insisting on repeating this scenario?!? Do away with all the “tell, don’t show”, while you are at it. The last episode had it, it now feels as if they are relying more and more on this…
What’s also really funny, is that (during their science talk) Spock is the only one who doesn’t give any scientific advice/contribution. He barely speaks a word. I’ve been asking myself this question for the entire season, but hardly ever was it as appropriate as it is here: Why is Spock even in this?!? He never does anything remotely interesting. Pretty much all scenes with him, just have him standing around doing very little or outright nothing. Sometimes he gives one or two lines. It hardly ever exceeds this… Often one could forget Spock is even in a scene. What a poor use of a legend. It appears to be about nothing but milking the name for a show, whose makers apparently think their show needs this.
btw: Why does only Discovery have their own set of uniforms? Does every ship in Starfleet get to choose which uniform they want to wear? Yet another retcon?
PS: Orville 2×12 was fun, right? A serious topic and yet they managed to smuggle in a fun moment here and there… Orville might not be for everyone either, but at least it has an undeniable charm to it. :)
PPS: Was it really necessary to alert the audience once more to the holographic retcon? It’s the first thing Rebecca Romijn talks about, once they enter the Enterprise bridge. Why is Rebecca Romijn only referred to as “Number One“? This entire show is so superficial, in so many ways. They could have given her a real, proper name at the very least… They have no problems with retconning everything else… But names are their kryptonite apparently. I mean have you ever seen such a great cast of characters with only one name in any other show before? Saru, Airiam, L’Rell, Cornwell (I don’t remember her being named Katrina in the show), Sarek, Nhan, Spock, Linus, Leland, Kol, May, Terral, Shukar, Ujilli, Gorch, Landry, Dennas, T’Kuvma, Eling, Er’ Toom, Patar, Amin, Mann, Jacob, Ba’ul, Vina, Kovil, Rance, Barlow, Stone, Shavo, Siranna, V’Latak, Rejak, Straal, Connolly, Rose, Cold, Crepuscula, Drake, Nicola and, of course, Shava. Hell, even the actress who went from Airiam to Nilsson didn’t get more than one name the SECOND time! Come on! And here’s how great Discovery is, everyone who has read this, remembers each and every one of those names, right? :P Meanwhile you do remember all 75 names from Game of Thrones, where all characters have at least 2 names and are parts of larger families, which make sense within the world they exist in. It speaks volumes. Also, if they have such problems coming up with names, why don’t they at least use a random generator? If Harry Mudd wasn’t yet another character they only took from the original series, he now would also only have one name. Mark my words. :P Hudd?
They are really doubling down hard on this, aren’t they? :P
I know these days we are all very spoiled because of shows like Game of Thrones, but… it’s usually like STD writers aren’t even trying. Lots of their stuff seems to be so lazy and uninspired. Of course I don’t know how difficult their work place situation is, maybe they have to crank out all scripts for the entire season in like 2-3 weeks and that’s all the money CBS will spent on writers… In such a case it would be understandable, I guess. :|
This episode has more of this “tell, not show” approach, they have used before. Burnham encounters a character who apparently was briefly in the pilot episode, but no one (in the audience :P) remembers him and they (the writers) were aware of it as well, so they inserted a brief flashback to show his face, which… is useless, given that (again) no one remembers how he looked in the first place. :P
Also, what’s the point of it all? Since “no one” remembers him (I could only figure out his name “Kamran Gant” by looking it up), what does it matter, that he may have been an extra before on the show? They could have used anybody for this part. There was zero emotional connection to this character. It’s Airiam all over again. I’m just thinking about Lost again, trying to imagine how it would have been if they’d shown the man in the coffin and no one would have known it was Locke, because he just would have been an unknown extra. That would have been so weak. No effect whatsoever. All of their characters were so iconic (at the very least in comparison), that audience members just knew all their names. In fact, I can’t remember when I’ve last seen a show that was this clumsy in storytelling. Doing things like this might have been normal in the TNG era.
They also ruined phasers, haven’t they? And I’m not even talking about them no longer being beam weapons, but single-shot (pew pew) pistols now. On STD, shooting someone with a phaser, is as effective (or even less effective) than punching them with your hands… Hands are definitely the most powerful weapon in the STD universe; Saru too used nothing but his hands to destroy advanced future tech earlier this season. :D The last episode had this as well, when the emperor fought against control. Spock eventually managed to kill the nanobots with magnetism, but phasers are literally capable of dematerializing things. You’d think that would be slightly better. But no more. :D
Another thing that struck me as extremely odd, was how Spock simply claimed that Burnham was the only variable the AI could not predict. Sure, Spock is no longer a scientist (he only said he likes science and I like science too, but that doesn’t make me a physicist :P), so his words don’t mean much anymore, but still. Out of billions of people, every single one is 100% predictable, just Burnham isn’t… Why? Where’s the difference? This is more Midi-chlorians talk, isn’t it? :(
Without plot armor all the characters would be dead now, since the AI is vastly superior to all of them. Burnham should have known that the sole survivor was a trick. Burnham and Spock go on to openly discuss their plans aboard a ship, whose computer is controlled by the AI (although they are aware of it) and onboard Starfleet vessels the computer hears everything… It’s so insane. :D
What else? It seems Doc Brown was a total fool for inventing the flux capacitor, he should have just stumbled over a time crystal instead, saving himself all the work. :P Pike however does it “right” by just getting himself a time crystal so he can time travel. :D According to STD, knowing his future means it is now locked in and can’t be changed anymore. A good thing Burnham’s mom didn’t hear this in the last ep or she would have slit her own throat. :P If this were true, her entire mission would have been pointless, after all.
They even show Pike in the chair, which I found underwhelming. Some people said it’s problematic because this is a prequel show with established lore etc… but for the millionth time, this is obviously a self-inflicted wound. No one forced them to do this. 100% their very own fault. Come to think of it, it’s like naming a show STD and then complaining when people use the name STD. :D I would have ended the season without Pike getting hurt at all. :P
Don’t allow yourself to be fooled though, I liked the episode more than most others, since it had a lot of the elements which poll well with me. They leave the Discovery for once, they actually have a whole pack of extras in the mess hall and of course Jett Reno has a brief appearance.
btw: Has anyone noticed how they have cut Tilly from this? It’s like she’s been bumped down to Jett Reno level all of a sudden. Maybe the last eps this season will be very reliant on Tilly, so they are kind of preparing for that? It’ll be weird if there will be no obvious explanation for her absence.
PS: Kamran Gant is a total Star Wars name, isn’t it? Sounds like something the Knights of the Old Republic name generator would throw out, if you just reroll often enough. :P
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