My excitement at having Paul Giamatti in Trek is significantly tempered by the idea that he’s going to be the season villain for “Starfleet Academy”. Unless he’s going to be the hard ass dean of the Academy that doesn’t want to put up Tilly’s students putting Orion pheromones in the environmental system, and kidnapping the Klingon Military Academy’s targ mascot before the big game, I’m not interested in a villain.
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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I’m 100% here for your vision of the Academy series.
I was fully expecting a villain (possibly because every press release has referred to a threat), but I hope it's a unique flavour of villain.
It sounds like he's going to play one of the kids' dad or something - given the 32nd century status quo, a more political antagonist could be fun.
Maybe a Terra Prime type or New Essentialist type?
Not impossible. Freeman was effectively the villain for S1 of Lower Decks, despite clearly being one of the good guys.
And Prodigy demonstrates how a personal vendetta can net some kids a nemesis, despite largely minding their own business.
I hope not but it feels like sci-fi hogwarts
I wish they had left the 32nd century as a "Discovery - only". After the jump to the future it felt like the show had no stakes. Everything felt disconnected.
It feels like an easy excuse for the writers to pull just about anything out of their asses, "because it has been so long" and "tech has evolved exponentially".
SNW proved that there was a lot more to explore even in the 23rd century. So much could have been done with the fallout of the Dominion War in the 24th.
But it's all up to the writers. If they're good the show can be good.
I couldn't agree less re: the 32nd century. They've created an interesting setting, and I'm glad they're going to keep it alive.
The Burn being caused by a magic baby having a tantrum kinda ruined the whole setting for me. There's a lot of potential with moving to the 32nd century, but if that's the quality of storytelling we're gonna get, it doesn't seem worth it. I'd much rather see a 24th century setting that follows up on the galaxy post Dominion War and the return of Voyager. There's a lot of untold story there that would be great to see... Although I'd hope it's not more magic baby style stuff.
The Burn being caused by a magic baby having a tantrum kinda ruined the whole setting for me
The Burn has one of the most classic Star Trek explanations ever—normal human(oid) gains magic powers after being exposed to strange energies. The Burn was several classic Star Trek stories woven together to tell a new tale. It's basically a retelling of the TOS episode Charlie X.
Trauma acting as the trigger for those powers is the most believable part of the Burn. Emotions causing people to react is nothing new. It's how humans operate in real life. Entire wars have been started over the death of a loved one. Emotions acting as a trigger is not new to Star Trek either. It's been used a motivation for dozens of stories.
Star Trek has used the trope dozens of times and several in an almost identical scenario. Such as when Kevin wiped out the Husnock in response to them murdering his wife. Or Riker breaking his promise not to use his Q powers after Wesley was killed. It's a realistic human(oid) response—trauma like the loss of a loved one can trigger a reaction with no bounds.
tantrum
It's really disgusting anyone would refer to the grief and trauma one experiences over the loss of a parent as a "tantrum." Your comment is the very definition of hyperbole.
I think the cause of the Burn is a nearly-perfect example of Star Trek's humanist values, and find it interesting when people feel the need to go out of their way to misrepresent it with words like "magic" in an effort to justify their dislike of it.
We can replace the words "magic" with "strongly telepathic" and it's basically the same problem.
It's a great idea to fuck warp travel right on its head as a concept, but the execution was majorly lacking for me. I would have much rather had a continuation of the plot from Force of Nature where warp had significantly damaged subspace gradually (like a climate change allegory), rather than a universe-wide explosion that happened all at once in a flash.
I don't know that I agree that "telepathic" is quite the right word - Su'Kal was a polyploidal mutant whose genes were affected by the dilithium in the environment - a sci-fi extension of a real genetic phenomenon that can occur when extreme environmental stresses are present. The explanation they gave was more scientific that many of those that we've had across the history of the franchise.
At the end of the day, if it doesn't work for everyone, that's fine - I personally think it's a very TOS/TNG idea, sort of a "Charlie X" by way of "The Survivors", and I think it's pretty obvious that the producers wanted the source to have a "human face" if you'll forgive the expression.
I think putting the face onto the source is what made it lose the value, unfortunately.
My comparison is what they did with the Borg and the Queen. Wolf 359 is a terrifying, tragic ordeal, made all the more serious by the fact that it was done by one cube that could not be negotiated or reasoned with. As soon as the Borg had a way to negotiate and reason, they became less scary because they had understandable motives and goals that could be bargained with, as excellently demonstrated by Janeway.
Ultimately, I agree with you that it's kind of more of a TOS-y sort of plot device. I do feel like back then they really followed the science being indistinguishable from magic logic, and we've progressed over time to wanting more hard and serious technobabble. I think that's kind of a disconnect for me, personally, is that they had to dip into a serious explanation for something that effectively functions like magic.
Oh boy, one day we should probably have the Great Borg Queen Debate - it would be a thread for the ages...
we’ve progressed over time to wanting more hard and serious technobabble.
That's the thing, I think the technobabble surrounding Su'Kal is actually pretty good. I will grant that the episode has a lot going on, and it's easy to miss, but it's solid enough that it's had me doing some light genetics research on more than one occasion.
I'm rewatching season 3 now, and the themes of trauma and mental health are so pervasive that I think it was really appropriate that the burn would be the result of a mental health crisis in one way or another. In that context, I think putting a face to it works. The "Force of Nature" or old-school Borg route could work great, but for a different show/season.
I find it interesting when people who are confronted with disagreement about a plot point they like resort to making implications about the other person's character instead of discussing anything in the post they're responding to.
I believe I did responf directly to your misrepresentation of the facts, but do go on.
(please don't go on)
I gave my opinion on a key plot point, which you took so much offense to, you ignored everything else in the post. Please, keep living up to your username as you find a place on my block list.
If you have to make things up that weren't in the episode, I'm going to respectfully suggest that your point is pretty bad.
I'm also going to suggest that you know that it's pretty bad, which is why you chose to employ such a weak rhetorical device to begin with.
But sure, I'm the one that's offended! 
Agreed. For me, the only “magic” Star Trek needed was stories about relationships that took their time unfolding, with competency. There occasionally were unexplained encounters, but the focus was always on something that could be solvable when the crew worked together. There was resolution. Plus, I really liked the episodic structure of TNG and DS9, where I could get onboard with any episode almost. Within the self contained episodes there could be “twists of fate” that exist today. No more giant fantastic leaps than we already make by believing everything is in the future with their tech.
The “new” trek is too focused on being cinematic. Discovery was interesting at the beginning but it was overly precious and predictable, and overly representative. Designed to keep people hooked. I think the quality suffered greatly. I think representation is super important, having characters with diverse identities, but doing it for diversity’s sake isn’t the way. If we’re really in the future, then people just are.
Agreed, Discovery has really only scratched the surface of what can be done with the Federation’s rebuilding itself, Earth’s new isolationist tendencies, and the unified Vulcan/Romulan society. It’d be a shame to leave all that behind. Plus, we still need to learn what’s become of the Klingons!
I hope that, at some point in the series, they reference his prized bottle of Chateau Picard that he's been saving for a special occasion.
If it goes missing, he could just have a Merlot.
Give it up. He's not drinking any fucking merlot.
Lower Decks died for this
And he's not going to drink any goddamned Raktajino!
Holly Hunter and now Paul Giamatti. They must have some major money for this project. I can’t wait!!
Between this and the Hostel Tv series announcement... Did Paulie G get divorced recently or something? Is he hard up for cash?
Today is your cake day, @valuesubtracted