Star Trek: Discovery Is Returning For a Second Season (engadget.com)

Engaget reports that CBS' Star Trek: Discovery series is being renewed for a second season. The show has reportedly been enough of a success to justify a second season of episodes. From the report: The move comes as a vote of confidence for both the show and its platform, since it has recently aired the sixth of its fifteen-episode first season. Now, a second run of Discovery will air, presumably at some point toward the back-half of 2018. Discovery has certainly benefited from plenty of hype, since it's the first Trek show to air as a TV show since 2005. The pull of the Star Trek name was always going to be a draw, but it wasn't clear how much of a draw given the saga's lackluster popularity at the box office. CBS refused to offer numbers, but did boast that Discovery's debut lead to the highest number of sign-ups in the history of its All Access service.

Comments

whatever

[ourlovecanlastforeve]

I don't give a shit I'm not signing up for their stupid pointless streaming service just to watch one show. 0% chance the show will remain exclusive forever. I can wait.

Re:whatever

[TheCarp]

A solid show maybe but, there was less Star Trek in the free episode I saw than in the first five minutes of the average Orville episode.

I can't say anything redeemable about the free episode other than "nice graphics" but, Star Trek used to be the show that proved special effects were not all Sci Fi had to offer; so that was kind of a step backwards.

Then I can't even really complement the special effects because of all the lens flare someone shat all over perfectly good video.

They failed to sell me, and up to this point, I watched every single live action Trek show in existence.

Re:whatever

[TheCarp]

> Everyone outside the US gets a better deal.

Not true; all people in the US have to do is tune in when its broadcast at 9/8 central on Fox thursdays.

The spirit of Trek is alive and well, and CBS has nothing to do with it.

Re:whatever

[thomst]

TheCarp opined:

A solid show maybe but, there was less Star Trek in the free episode I saw than in the first five minutes of the average Orville episode.

Agreed. And you're far from alone in that assessment ...

Re:whatever

[CohibaVancouver]

there was less Star Trek in the free episode I saw than in the first five minutes of the average Orville episode.

Not really fair to judge it on the pilot. I remember 30 years ago watching the pilot to TNG and thinking "This is crap." Many season 1 episodes of TNG are unwatchable -

http://entertain-o-rama.com/wp...

Now that we're into a few episodes, Discovery's got tons of classic Trek - Long, protracted scenes with Klingons talking about honour and war and the Klingon houses, all in the Klingon language (with subtitles). It's got Vulcans going on about their Katra and struggling with the influence of 'illogical' humans on their culture. It's got a starfleet struggling to define themselves as a fleet of 'peace and exploration' or a collection of warships. It's got a Kirk-esque captain who flaunts the rules in favour of 'getting her done' and who is fiercely loyal to his people.

Sure, it's got 2017-era special effects, editing and pace, and frequently dodges canon, but it's a solid entry.

Re:whatever

[hey!]

Well, this is the problem/holy grail of popular entertainment: people want the same old thing, only different.

People crave repeatability, but are thwarted by neuroscience: you get habituated to anything. So you can't recapture the feeling you had watching TOS or TNG (depending on your generation) because you've already had that experience and you will never be able to recapture the sensation of novelty with that exact experience again.

Discovery and Orville are both takes on the "same thing, only different." And that's fine. There isn't a right way to do it, because what people want is basically impossible. You have to use the old to springboard to something new, and that new thing has to stand on its own.

Now specifically addressing the shortcomings of Discovery: the pilot had severe George-Lucas-itis: an inability to refrain from rubbing your eyeballs in their giant budget. It got in the way of the storytelling, which makes it the director's fault. By the time you get to the fourth episode the show gets past that and improves considerably. But it's not like Star Trek in any of its past incarnations. I think that's a non-starter anyway.

It kinda sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't imagine many of those subscriptions will be around for season 2.

The show itself kinda sucks. A lot of the technology bullshit is so far out there it's not even something you can remotely imagine as being real. There was a certain charm to the older series because you'd see stuff on the show and think "well, OK, maybe we'll see that in 50-100 years if we're lucky". Discovery is packed full of so much random crap you kinda look at it and go "uhhhh no, not gonna happen". It's like they decided to transition from futuristic-but-almost-plausible to outright space magic because that was easier to write.

Everything else feels like a bog standard Hollywood action movie with tons of CG. It's almost well done enough that it's generally watchable, but again, it isn't Star Trek. I don't find myself thinking about the implications of what's going in the show, in fact, I don't find myself thinking very much at all when I'm watching it. It's just kinda senseless action with the Star Trek name bolted on because OMG recognizable franchise.

I'm pretty sure it's going to get really old really fast (I'm already starting to get bored with it). Once they run out of inertia from the hype and name alone, the show is doomed.

Re:It kinda sucks.

[Rockoon]

I 100% agree with the science issue.

All of a sudden 20 years before Kirk and the Enterprise (reboot or not) they have a drive that teleports the ship to any known sector, and the technology is based on a network of mushroom spores that permeates the entire universe, and they first were using a GIANT TARDIGRADE as a supercomputer to control the drive, and the main character is SPOCKS ADOPTED SISTER THAT YOU NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE? AND SHE HAS A BOYS NAME?

On top of that... its another SOAP OPERA. Instead of producing stand-alone shows every show is a continuation of a long assed story?

The only "good" thing about the show seems to be that its not as overwhelmingly SJW as we were led to believe (we were led to believe it was like that one "fan" produced show with gratuitous 5 minute homosexual make-out scenes in half the episodes!)

Re:It kinda sucks.

[Opportunist]

With the difference being that TNG is set way, way after TOS. Discovery is supposedly set before.

TOS is set in 2200. 200 years ago, in 1800, we were still busy exploring our planet, but we had most of it mapped out. The steam engines are a new technology that boosted our progress considerably and we were progressing technologically at a speed never experienced before. People from that time would probably consider ours an utopia, mostly concerning our social achievements and the fact that we basically eliminated hunger at least in our "civilized" areas of the planet, a problem that was really huge back then, with worker famines being a constant problem. They would probably also be amazed at the way greater equality (note: We're talking about a world where a royal could still beat peasants with impunity in many "civilized" areas of the planet, and where owning people was maybe no longer considered decent and normal by some, but definitely legal in many areas). I think that would astound them more than our technical advances, like I said, they live in the age of the steam engine which was propelling advances forward faster than ever before, things were changing rapidly in that time.

So they would probably accept that we mastered flight, even though it seems impossible to them, much like FTL-travel seems to us now. But we can consider it possible. Likewise, traveling to the moon has been though about in that time, too, with the first sci-fi novels being written, and of course traveling beyond the confines of our planets is a topic. They would be amazed that it's possible and that we did it, but they wouldn't deem it impossible or completely outlandish.

Scroll back another 200 years to 1600 and it becomes impossible. Not only our technology, but our social advances. To a person from the 1600s, the idea of social equality of races, genders and especially religions is an alien concept they would reject on principle, as impossible. Likewise, travelling beyond the speed of wind is a concept that is absolutely alien, we are talking about a world where the fastest form of locomotion is riding on horseback, and crossing oceans is still a huge endeavor, with most of the planet still being unknown to "civilized" countries, and the idea of simply occupying and owning places you "discover", including the people on it, is considered the norm.

TNG is what we are to the guy from the 1600s. TOS is what we are to the one from the 1800s.

This is the difference.

So yes, TNG gets away with space magic, because they should actually have concepts that we don't even remotely grasp. Actually, they are way, way too "mundane" in many areas.

It’s a matter of perspective

[93 Escort Wagon]

”CBS refused to offer numbers, but did boast that Discovery's debut lead to the highest number of sign-ups in the history of its All Access service.”

So that means at least 10 people signed up because of Discovery, I’m guessing?

Positive here

[cerberusss]

I'm seeing some negativity here, but I very much enjoy this season. It's Star Trek, but for once its crew is not infallible and almost-perfect. Nope, these people are damaged goods. Captain Lorca has been trapped, tortured, had to abandon his crew, etc. So he is VERY focused, to the point where you not only think "wow, this is a tough S.O.B." and then continues into the territory of eye-for-an-eye.

I don't much like their Spore Drive, but the dark and serious atmosphere makes it worth it, IMHO.

Re:Positive here

[Anonymous Coward]

For me what made star trek be star trek was not having that constant source of conflict. Every scifi show these days has crew conflict. It's refreshing to watch star trek(not discovery, obviously) and see a set of competent, professional people working together for a common good. They may have philosophical disagreements from time to time, but they respect each other and work it out. That's the utopian star trek universe and I miss it. If i want inner conflict between main characters, ostensibly on the same side, i'll go watch battlestar galactica, dark matter, or one of umpteen other "dark future" scifi shows.

Re:I don't care. Me neither

[petes_PoV]

I didn't really like the new show. Not sure why

Here's my reasons - see if any strike a chord.

First of all, none of the characters are likeable. I wouldn't care if any or all of them got eaten by their monster-cum-computer.
Second, the show lacks the "lightness" and humanity of previous incarnations. (Although Voyager comes close, in terms of grinding tedium and unnecessary earnestness).
Finally, the Klingons. Really? The show simply doesn't need all that pseudo-religious claptrap. In TOS and others, they were a bit-part, just another baddie. I have no desire to bond with them and don't need any of their back story, culture or infighting. Just shoot the suckers!

7.3 on iMDB

[hcs_$reboot]

Uh... 7.3 on iMDB for a TV show, that's not good. No need to wait.

Spore Drive is a one season story at most

[iTrawl]

Given that the show is supposedly set about a decade before TOS, and that nobody in the whole Star Trek universe heard of Spore Drive until Discovery, should mean that Spore Drive technology will fail so spectacularly that nobody ever mentions it again and they just settle for "slow" Warp Drive for the rest of the future. Even the Borg have only Trans-Warp conduits to help them move faster.

If they still have Spore Drive in season 2 they're mad - otherwise they'll have to declare it an "alternate universe" story, and then watch how everybody suddenly understands why the Klingons look like a totally different species.

Alcubierre drives and relativity physics)

[DrYak]

The problem with deflector dishes is that the ship is travelling at (say, warp 2, which is four times the speed of light) and the deflector dish puts out a beam which travels faster than that forward of the ship to sweep away all that pesky interstellar dust.

Two things :
- Alcubierre drives, the theoretical physics concept around which the fictional warp drives are based do not actually move the ship.
At all. The ship stays completely immobile in its own frame of reference. (There wouldn't be a way to move it past speed of light anyway).
What you move it the frame of reference it self. You bend the space time it self. You contract it in front of the ship, and expand it behind.
And unlike speed of things which is limited (at C, the speed of light), space-time bending isn't limited
(How the hell to you think our real-world astronomers can observe the distant past by looking at far away points in the space ? if our solar system was just a moving object, it would obligatory move slower than speed of light, and the light emitted in the distant past would have "over-taken" us and would not be observable anymore. The trick is that the space time of our actual universe did expand it self. More space was "created" between the objects, so that now they are further apart, and we can still catch "glimpse" of the beginning of the universe - some of these past images haven't reach us yet, because these image suddenly have way more space to travel to reach us because of that space-time expansion)
The only difference is that Alcubiere drive is a completely theoretical concept. It might not even be doable in the real world : it might happen that distorting the space time this way could require more energy than contain in the universe that you're trying to distort (it took a whole bigbang to expand our universe).
Whereas in Star Trek they just use dilithium crystals or some other fictional stuff in their warp core and can warp around freely.

- Speed of light.
You're reasoning "the deflector dish puts out a beam which travels faster than that forward of the ship" is based on old classical physics (the speed of some launched from a moving something is the sum of both speeds : a photon launched from a ship travelling near the light speed would it self be launched at nearly twice the lights speed). Classical physics at that speed don't work and give wrong results (there's no such thing as an object moving at twice the light speed).
You're entering the realm of relativist physics :
No matter what, the light speed (in vacuum) is constant and the same same every where in all referential. When an object is moving, from the point of view of the object the radiation it's shining forward will travel at exactly 1 C. From your point of view as an observer, the radiation of the deflector will travel at exactly 1 C *too*.
The thing that will change is the time and space. The scales will seems squished and time will seem running slow, so at the end, both the ship and observer will see the same distance/time = speed of light for the radion. The speed of light doesn't change, is the distance and time which end up being different.

There's a bunch of math to compute all this, but then ... (appropriate citation, in Bone's voice) I'm a doctor, Jim ! Not an astrophysicist)

---

(Also not mentioned in your post, but also relevant to the discussion of Star Trek technology : artificial gravity and inertial dampeners.
General relativity.
Which basically states that gravity actually works by playing around with space time too. Except this time, it isn't by expanding or contracting space, but by curving it. Objects aren't actually "attracted" to each other. They simply travel on straight lines (imagine a point travelling on grid on a sheet of paper), but the "straight lines" them selves are curved by the presence of mass (if you draw a sun in the middle of your sheet of paper, the grid suddenly isn't squares anymore but spirals that head towa