The TV and Streaming thread Series 3

[Zoraptor]

Come now, Michael didn't single handedly win the logic dance battle- she got help from her very conveniently on notVulkan, very conveniently in a Romulan sect despite not being Romulan, very conveniently staying on notVulkan Lieutenant Kima mother too.

The really funny thing about Tilly being promoted is that she ran through a perfectly valid list of reasons why it was moronic when Saru suggested it- a in episode plot criticism role that Georgiou has filled for most of the season. It's a new and bold approach to point out how... odd your plot is, in episode*. A far better appointment would have been the Federation liason lady from the last couple of episodes, or maybe the blonde bridge officer who doesn't seem to have a job otherwise. They're still going to use Burnham for away missions anyway, and as a Commander she'll be ranking officer unless Saru goes so it's not like they'd have to give them (m)any extra lines. Overall though, they would have been far better off developing a character to take the role multiple episodes ago, same as if they wanted to kill off cyborg girl last season they should have spent time developing her instead of just telling everyone how bad they should feel.

*similar was done far better for the debate with the Vululans though, since it set out how and why they would not be really be approaching it logically but from a position of their and the Fed's culpability being an underlying tenet of their politics. There have been plenty of other Star Treks in which the rigidity of the Vulkan mindset has caused similar problems, after all.

[majestic]

37 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

Come now, Michael didn't single handedly win the logic dance battle- she got help from her very conveniently on notVulkan, very conveniently in a Romulan sect despite not being Romulan, very conveniently staying on notVulkan Lieutenant Kima mother too.

Oh, yes, because her mother explained to her that this is just going to be about politics and then set her up for this heartfelt speech that convinced the Vulcan president while the Romulans were immediately on board based on pure logic and science and the political "convenience" of no longer carrying the burden of potentially messing up the galaxy  or the entire universe maybe. I mean, what range had The Burn exactly?

43 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

*similar was done far better for the debate with the Vululans though, since it set out how and why they would not be really be approaching it logically but from a position of their and the Fed's culpability being an underlying tenet of their politics. There have been plenty of other Star Treks in which the rigidity of the Vulkan mindset has caused similar problems, after all.

That was the part that would have made perfect sense if they had addressed it in a similar way the Trill symbiote commission was shown to withhold knowledge from the general public to not cause societal unrest in DS9. The set up was not bad, the execution was. The Vululans should have told Michael that they know that they weren't the cause of the burn but that the political quagmire they're in forces them to let everyone else believe in their guilt.

Which would have made the president's decision to unilaterally (probably, right?) part with the secret knowledge and risk its exposure to the public all the more poignant. Or Michael could have rightly argued that the truth will come out eventually anyway now that she has proof of the burn's origin, and it not being Ni'Var or SB-19. Cold "logic" would dictate that they start preparing for that eventuality.

This being Discovery though we'll probably never see Ni'Var again, let alone any problems from the inevitable finding of the burn's point of origin.

Well on the other hand, given that every planet is so far away from each other in this version of the galaxy that you can't even scan from Earth to Saturn perhaps that knowledge will take centuries to arrive at Vulululand?

[213374U]

Hey guys, just peeking around the corner real quick to see if nu Trek is still garbage that makes zero sense. 

 

9 hours ago, Raithe said:

On 11/28/2020 at 4:43 PM, kirottu said:

Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano was epic in the latest episode of Mandalorian.

What is weirdly entertaining is seeing the various discussions on the length of Ahsoka's lekku in live-action as opposed to animation that promptly started springing up online after the episode.

I don't know about the animation because I haven't watched any of the shows, but wasn't there a togruta jedi in the films whose appendages were larger? In any case, the prosthetics looked bad. Stiff, creasing... cheap. Which is odd because production values otherwise are fantastic.

I'm also kinda digging how they are stuffing the show with EU references all the time.

[Zoraptor]

Shaak Ti was the Togruta in the films- very briefly, I think either of the two deleted death scenes would have doubled her screen time. Lekku are, apparently, very difficult to get right even with a film budget.

4 hours ago, majestic said:

The Vululans should have told Michael that they know that they weren't the cause of the burn but that the political quagmire they're in forces them to let everyone else believe in their guilt.

I thought it was strongly implied that they knew or suspected that they were wrong anyway. If I were writing it I'd outright have them refusing to hand the data over.

[majestic]

7 hours ago, 213374U said:

Hey guys, just peeking around the corner real quick to see if nu Trek is still garbage that makes zero sense. 

Nah, it's all good. We're just the same bunch of old white cis men who also caused the new Ghost Busters so much trouble because we can't git with the times, 'n all.

7 hours ago, 213374U said:

I don't know about the animation because I haven't watched any of the shows, but wasn't there a togruta jedi in the films whose appendages were larger? In any case, the prosthetics looked bad. Stiff, creasing... cheap. Which is odd because production values otherwise are fantastic.

At least she looked better than the poor Twi'Leks last season. I've seen better Twi'Leks than that from amateur cosplayers.

7 hours ago, 213374U said:

I'm also kinda digging how they are stuffing the show with EU references all the time.

I'm not sure what you mean to be honest. Can you be somewhat specific? Because most of the things that appear have some sort of canon counterpart (except for the Dark Troopers so far and the wet noodle HK-series here, but even HK droids have shown up in the new canon as well).

It's possible I missed something and I wouldn't put it past Dave Filloni to do that, so I'm geniuinely curious.

The duel at the end was strange. Ahsoka is - in theory - powerful enough to make the fight against the Magistrate a non-issue. I don't mind tuning the Jedi down a bit from the flashy Bladesingers they were turned into by Lucas with the prequel trilogy but it's weird.

Baby Yoda can arrest the momentum of a charging Mudhorn all right, but fully trained Ahsoka Tano can't splash some water into Elsbeth's eyes? Or push her down, choke her or anything else that could be done? How is that fight this even when she's not Sith (or any other form of force user at least)? Do people have really high saving throws in 9 ABY?

[213374U]

5 hours ago, majestic said:

I'm not sure what you mean to be honest. Can you be somewhat specific? Because most of the things that appear have some sort of canon counterpart (except for the Dark Troopers so far and the wet noodle HK-series here, but even HK droids have shown up in the new canon as well).

Well, I guess they maybe aren't EU references per se, because they may be references to post-reset Disney EU content. But for example, Mando's rifle is a throwback to the Holiday Special. Mando's next destination as of now is also something I don't think has ever been mentioned outside of EU content. That lawman character is a somewhat important EU character as well. And basically all of the Mandalorian characters, outside of Mando himself, and subplots are borrowed from either EU (such as Beskar and the Mandalorian wars) or other stuff Filoni has done, though I'm not sure to what extent that would be considered "EU". Guess one needs a degree these days to make sense of the canon, which is funny if you think about it because the reset was supposed to make it simpler.

Personally, I'm hoping that Space Chuck Norris will make an appearance or at least get mentioned.

Regarding Jedi selectively not using the Force when they could immediately end an encounter literally with the flick of a wrist, drama. Obi Wan could have simply slammed Jango against the landing pad as he was jetting off and it would have been an instant game over right there, epic fail. Mace could have Force pushed Jango's flames back to his face, etc. I guess that's another reason why Sith are just better -- they seem to have no compunctions about (ab)using the Force to crush your windpipe or drop a cave ceiling on you if they feel it'll save them some time.

[Malcador]

On 11/28/2020 at 6:50 AM, majestic said:

Oh, and this is by no means a dig on Babylon 5. I loved the show. I find I enjoy it less with every time I rewatch it, so I stopped doing that, but this really is because once the mystery's stripped away and the pretty painting peels off there's some rust shining through. Was still a remarkable show and a boon to all of television, paving the way for serialized sci-fi drama.

Yeah, I tried rewatching it and didn't catch me the same way.  Will just leave that with the nostalgia of my youth.

[majestic]

17 hours ago, 213374U said:

Well, I guess they maybe aren't EU references per se, because they may be references to post-reset Disney EU content. But for example, Mando's rifle is a throwback to the Holiday Special. Mando's next destination as of now is also something I don't think has ever been mentioned outside of EU content. That lawman character is a somewhat important EU character as well. And basically all of the Mandalorian characters, outside of Mando himself, and subplots are borrowed from either EU (such as Beskar and the Mandalorian wars) or other stuff Filoni has done, though I'm not sure to what extent that would be considered "EU". Guess one needs a degree these days to make sense of the canon, which is funny if you think about it because the reset was supposed to make it simpler.

Mando's next destination for instance is also already mentioned in a canon comic book. I don't read these, nor have I read of the any new canon books so far. You don't really need a degree though, just the time and inclincation to see if there's a "Canon" entry for any given thing on Wookieepedia. There are enough Star Wars enthusiats around to keep that pretty up to date and accurate.

The movies, Clone Wars and Rebels are considered canon. 

Was the reset really about making Star Wars lore simpler? I always thought Disney made that just because they otherwise would have to set the new trilogy inside the old EU canon - so with the given timeframe somewhere around the Yuuzhan Vong invasion (or significantly worse, the Dark Nest trilogy), and they'd have to kill Chewie off*, which is worse for toy sales than killing off Han - and with Harrison Ford not giving a rat's butt any longer it would be somewhat difficult to get him to properly act his moping around for a couple of books scenes.

All issues aside I can also get why you wouldn't want to make a post-Empire era Star Wars movie in the old EU. Those books at some point really took a dark turn. Lovecraftian Force Horrors incinerating half the surface of Coruscant, Yuuzhan Vong loading refugees into ships to crash into planetary shields to collapse them, the Jedi Order getting desperate enough to send a bunch of teenagers on a suicide mission that killed Han's younger son and even more civil war...

* Have to being a somewhat strong term, one could easily retcon Chewie's death. The supremely dark disposition of the franchise near the end there, less so.

[Amentep]

I never got the Yuuzhan Vong.  I'm not sure force-immune sadistic aliens, who seemed to be a cross between the Githyanki and Cenobites, was really what Star Wars was crying out for.

And force-immunity seemed like a gimmick that existed only to make their threat credible, but didn't really fit the Star Wars universe, IMO.

[213374U]

4 hours ago, majestic said:

The movies, Clone Wars and Rebels are considered canon. 

Right. So all of that canon, outside of movies, is not considered "expanded" universe then? What about books? The eleventy script and ad blockers I run don't play well with Wookieepedia and cba to disable them so I haven't visited that site in a while. I'd have imagined that if it doesn't show up in a movie, it's expanded universe by definition. Perhaps that's old thinking with Disney now producing live-action shows and all.

I never saw the need to nuke all of the old EU. They could have simply contradicted whatever bits stood in the way of the story they wanted to tell, ignore the rest, and use anything they wanted if it fit. It's what GL's stance was -- basically ignore it but let people have their fun. The whole reset thing felt like Disney wanting to show fans who's boss now and nothing more. And that's from someone who agrees that the old EU was full of dumb, edgy ****.

[Malcador]

EU was edgy ? Dumb for sure. I did like the superweapon creep of the Sun Crusher

[Zoraptor]

A lot of people hated the tonal shift in the later EU, from the Vong war on, which was definitely a darker more 'mature' tone than earlier. There was a decent amount of stuff that could certainly be considered edgy, though I wouldn't personally consider it so except in the context of previous SW. I'd compare it to something like 'The 100' on TV, there's a lot of things happening that fit a description of edgy but... it's a CW show, so the cannibalism, mass murder, biological warfare, organ harvesting etc are a lot 'lighter' than they sound if you write them down and the overall reaction more of a 'what will those crazy kids get up to next?'.

While I don't have any sympathy for Disney at all, the old EU was unwieldy, and in theory they can re-canonise whatever they want. So Malachor exists again, because Rebels used it. Not explicitly the Trayus Academy, but certainly something that looks suspiciously like it. There were four (?) conflicting stories of how the Rebels got the plans to the Death Star in EU and some genuinely convoluted attempts to reconcile them. The old post ROTJ EU was largely incompatible with the story they wanted to tell in the sequels (and Dark Empire and Heir to the Empire were functionally incompatible with each other, plus the returning Emperor in Dark Empire would be outright lol funny given sequel context). They simply didn't want to be bound by the old stories, which would be eminently forgivable, if their new content was good. For their high profile entries the only ones which are generally well regarded are Rogue One- the first product- and The Mandalorian. The others have been badly run projects received at best equivocally.

[majestic]

5 hours ago, 213374U said:

Right. So all of that canon, outside of movies, is not considered "expanded" universe then? What about books? The eleventy script and ad blockers I run don't play well with Wookieepedia and cba to disable them so I haven't visited that site in a while. I'd have imagined that if it doesn't show up in a movie, it's expanded universe by definition. Perhaps that's old thinking with Disney now producing live-action shows and all.

So... bear with me. Everything that wasn't made by Lucas was originally considered expanded universe - EU for short. It was a sort of extended canon or pretty much regarded as canon as long as the works and story layout was cleared with contacts at Lucas Arts. Lucas Arts nowadays has the Lucasfilm Story Group for exactly that (so ever since 2012) but always had people to help coordinate with the publishers (most notably of those Del Rey and Bantam, but both are part of Random House anyway). As Zoraptor noted already a good deal of the old EU had continuity problems.

Many of which were created by Lucas himself, because while Lucas Arts more or less expected licensed works to be beholden to a coordinated story outline he himself didn't bother with the prequels. That's why Heir to the Empire was written from a perspective that assumed the clones were the aggressors of the Clone Wars, not separatists.

When Disney bough the rights to Star Wars, they threw out the entire EU by renaming it to Legends (imagine Legends as the Kevin timeline of Star Wars, or vice versa if you want the new canon to be Kelvin ) and created a new canon that at the time only consisted of the prequels, the original trilogy and the Clone Wars tv show. Everything released from Disney from then on is also canon, i.e. Rebels, the new trilogy, Rogue One and Solo, as well as any novels, comics and whatnot coordinated by the Lucasfilm Story Group.

That means there's a good deal of books now that explain - or try to, at least - whatever the hell Jar Jar Abrams was smoking when he came up with the New Republic as a single star system with no military, the First Order instead of the Imperial Remant (or simply the Empire as they continued to call themselves). I'd also call the Starkiller base a silly idea but it's hyperspace laser isn't all that different from the EU's Centerpoint Station that literally was able to make suns go supernova or blast planets and ships with giant laser beams across the known galaxy in an instant.

Okay at least Centerpoint Station didn't suck up the mass of an entire star into a planet. Sure a lot of sci-fi writers and, quite frankly, most people have no idea of the dimensions invovled in space and that's mostly okay, but Jar Jar is REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY bad with that. Cue Spock seeing Vulcan sucked up into a pinhead sized black hole. Le sigh.

Content creators liberally help themselves and borrow from Legends all the time. Tython now exists in both legends and canon, as does Ilum for instance. In fact... Starkiller base WAS Ilum. The same Ilum from SWTOR. Obviously some form of Darth Bane must be canon too, because the Rule of Two is. So it is more confusing than ever and the stories told are worse than ever before because they need to work with what Kathleen Kennedy, Jar Jar Abrams and Captain Looper came up with.

Plus the one thing they keep doing and the thing that bothers me most about the sequel trilogy is changing the way hyperspace jumps work. I hate that with a passion. Gah!

TL;DR:

Disney threw out the old EU and renamed it to Legends. Canon in Star Wars terms is everything that came out post-Disney (except the 2013 novel Crucible the final EU/Legends entry), Clone Wars, the prequel and the original trilogy. Star Wars: The Old Republic is in a sort of hybrid mode that is techinically Expanded Universe but also canon-y for the sake of Bioware being allowed to write new content for it. 

 

 

[Zoraptor]

I think Darth Bane got mentioned in Rebels. It's kind of 50/50 whether he was ever not canon anyway, since he was a Lucas created character for the prequels' backstory.

[Raithe]

I half recall that due to TOR, Disney did do that a lot of the EU set before A New Hope was still legit canon, it was more everything post-RotJ that they wanted to ignore.

[InsaneCommander]

It seems people are dissastified with ST Discovery. Pretty heated discussion in the thread below. I wonder why.

I don't like how saccharine Discovery is

"Every ten minutes there is some ponderously emotional moment. Someone looks at someone else with glistening eyes and we as viewers are supposed to feel how momentous it is.

The problem is that when there are 5-10 such moments in each episode, they very quickly completely lose their effect. At this point, it just feels tiresome and cheesy.

When you add the almost equally frequent comedic banter and quips, it makes the needle swing around the emotional compass like crazy. The constant and inconsistent emotional overload makes the whole show messy and unaffecting."

[Zoraptor]

Wow, that's really surprising...

...that anyone could make it through 2.5 seasons of Discovery without noticing how cheap the 'emotional' hits were. The writers' idea of a huge emotional hit can best be summed up by that cyborg girl who got killed off last season. You don't feel anything for her death because she's had about 4 lines in the previous season and a half, you haven't seen her interacting with the crew or anything else, you don't even know her name; you're just told that you should feel bad about her dying and how everyone loved her.

The complete lack of secondary character development is one thing wrong with Discovery that could be fixed very easily, but instead we have to have Wesley v3. Ironically, the season guest stars like Captains Pike/ Malfoy and Admiral Beardyman are the one consistent bright spot they've consistently done well with.

[majestic]

33 minutes ago, Zoraptor said:

The writers' idea of a huge emotional hit can best be summed up by that cyborg girl who got killed off last season. You don't feel anything for her death because she's had about 4 lines in the previous season and a half, you haven't seen her interacting with the crew or anything else, you don't even know her name; you're just told that you should feel bad about her dying and how everyone loved her.

It's so painfully obvious when you watch this tripe back to back with DS9. DS9 has its fair share of problems and episodes where you can facepalm to your hearts content, people acting out of character every now and then, not to mention ludicrous episodes like Move Along Home or Let He Who Is Without Sin... (which ranks very highly amongst the worst pieces of TV ever, not just 'Trek) and a whole host of plot holes and people forgiving each other really quickly (Garak mostly, or that episode where O'Brien goes directly against Bashir's orders and lets suffering Jem'Hadar die) but the interactions between the characters are so great that it barely matters.

Now imagine doing an episode like Hard Time with someone from the Discovery crew. You'd sit there at the end and when Michael (because who else could be off to save someone) goes to whatever character is trying to off themselves you'd start yelling DO IT, DO IT, DO IT! at the screen.

[Raithe]

When trying to decide just which threat this deserves to be in...  eh, since it's Mandalorian inspired, I'll let it lurk here:

[Gfted1]

Is that also the shifter knob floating in his hand?

[Zoraptor]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Now imagine doing an episode like Hard Time with someone from the Discovery crew. You'd sit there at the end and when Michael (because who else could be off to save someone) goes to whatever character is trying to off themselves you'd start yelling DO IT, DO IT, DO IT! at the screen.

The DS9 episode I used to compare Picard (show's) handling of characters and DS9 was 'In the Pale Moonlight' and it applies to Discovery as well. Sisko's behaviour there is in theory out of character, certainly with how his character started out/ a starfleet captain is meant to behave, but the set up and context is such that it's completely believable for him to cover up a false flag murder of diplomats. A lot of people didn't seem to like Avery Brooks' performance in DS9 as being too 'wooden', but it meant when he showed emotion it counted and had actual impact; the complete opposite of Discovery's current approach. The Discovery equivalent would not be pretty, with the possible exception of Georgiou being a passable Garak equivalent. Burnham would be wandering around looking like a stunned mullet with an existential crisis and having stilted emotional chats with everyone about how terrible it all is (and probably forgetting what happened in S1E1), then Saru would turn around and be fine with it, because that's what the plot needed and who cares that he wouldn't be fine with it having not had the context Sisko had. And Saru would probably go back to being a model Starfleet captain very next episode just to ram it home.

 

Edited December 3, 2020 by Zoraptor

[kirottu]

9 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Wow, that's really surprising...

...that anyone could make it through 2.5 seasons of Discovery without noticing how cheap the 'emotional' hits were. The writers' idea of a huge emotional hit can best be summed up by that cyborg girl who got killed off last season. You don't feel anything for her death because she's had about 4 lines in the previous season and a half, you haven't seen her interacting with the crew or anything else, you don't even know her name; you're just told that you should feel bad about her dying and how everyone loved her.

I think that is the worst episode of Discovery. The funeral scene just goes on and on with every character telling us what a great character the cyborg girl was and all the stuff they did together, but none of it had ever happened, because none of it was ever shown. ****ing none of it. It was just the writers trying shove an emotional connection down down your throat the episode.  

[LadyCrimson]

I saw a review for this movie (they said it was ok/decent, for its genre) but all I saw was the distinctive face of the lead actor ... MR DEATH!  (he played Death on Supernatural).  Therefore, I must watch it. But it's only on Shudder. Therefore I had to get the 7-day trial, at least.  There's apparently a couple bad Nic Cage movies on there that I haven't seen, too!  Score!  I'll be up late tonight.

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by LadyCrimson

[Gfted1]

Ah, the rabbit holes my mind can fall into. A picture Raithe posted in another thread got me thinking...so in The Mandalorian, Din Djarin is a human with a presumably human lifespan. Grogu is 50yo in human years but still an infant to his species. Even if Din lives to old age before dying, Grogu will still be a baby when that happens, so Din will need to find another long lived species to pass Grogu's care onto.

Anywho, time for my third cup of coffee.

[kanisatha]

9 hours ago, kirottu said:

I think that is the worst episode of Discovery. The funeral scene just goes on and on with every character telling us what a great character the cyborg girl was and all the stuff they did together, but none of it had ever happened, because none of it was ever shown. ****ing none of it. It was just the writers trying shove an emotional connection down down your throat the episode.  

Thanks to all of you commenting on ST:Discovery. I'm currently watching the first season, as it is airing on the regular CBS channel, and indeed can already see what you all are talking about. Makes me wonder if it is worth my valuable time to invest it in this show if nothing improves in later episodes.