Starfleet Academy series

I think the easiest solve is the Founders didn't create the Jem'Hadar from scratch, and like Smurfs and Transformers before them, the women existed, but were in another village/planet.

My little pet theory about the Jem'Hadar in general is that they are heavily modified Tosks. It seems logical to assume the Hunters are Dominion members (they carry the same rifle as Jem'Hadar do). If we extrapolate from that, I think one of two things happened:
1) The Hunters already had Tosks, and the Founders took them and modified them for their own purposes.
2) The Hunters are loyal Dominion members and were rewarded for that with Tosks that were altered from the Jem'Hadar.

Which may be the episodes peak!

Newest trailer/clip just dropped:



I hate to say this, but, uh, I'm now less interested in seeing this series after watching the trailer.

Hmm...*wavey hand*....it felt Discovery-y until Giamatti showed up.
He's the only bit that made me slightly cringe.

Holly Hunter/Nahla Ake gives me Janeway vibes.
Except...has her lisp gotten worse?

EMH was fine. He's EMH.

For me that's the issue. I am going to give the show a chance, I always keep an open mind and I may find it to be a terrific series! BUT I really don't like the 32nd century setting at all. I also don't care for the "payback's a BITCH" line. It feels too Section 31 movie-ish, and I despised that film.

I think it has, I'm having a little more difficulty understanding her, but that also may just be the clip or sound mixing.

Always. Picardo is always solid.

Ok, so I needed subtitles to understand half of what was said. Holly Hunter sounds like she's reading from a teleprompter. Actually most of everyone sounds like they're reading from a teleprompter. The Doctor sounds like he hasn't changed at all. Paul Giamatti sounds like he based his acting by watching Paul Giamatti playing a bad guy on SNL. The bridge officers sound like they're the readers during Holly Hunter's audition for Captain Nahla.

Pretty accurate read, IMO.

they released a 4 minute clip today

Watch Four Minutes from STAR TREK: STARFLEET ACADEMY’s Premiere — and the Arrival of Paul Giamatti’s Villain Character! - TrekCore.com

I respect the talent in this cast but if I were to claim that my reaction to this sample was "meh" I would be WILDLY overstating the matter.

Woke up to Batman '66 being on.
That's what Giamatti is doing.
Batman '66.
But a new villain called The Incel.

The villain comes off as a guy who's trying very hard to be a more menacing Harry Mudd.

This. DSC lost me when they jumped so far forward.

I'll give it a watch, but I'm not sure how long I'll stay with it.

He has a tic-tac-toe shaved into the side of his head. I have no idea who decided that was a good idea, but... it's not working for me.
Then there was, like I said, "payback is a BITCH!" with more thrown ham and scene chewing than a Flying Elvis Convention.

It's really giving me Picard vibes, and I don't find that to be necessarily a good thing because while there was some good stuff in Picard, there was a shit ton of cringe.

I forget who said it, but someone said a long time ago that if you go too far ahead in your science fiction timeline, you lose people because the people of the future become unrelatable. You're not just looking at your great-great-grandchildren, you're seeing someone's kids long after your family line has vanished into the mist.

That's just my two bits on it, but to me they're way WAY too far outside of what I'd consider a relatable time period.

Star Trek and TNG were set roughly 300 years in the future.
300 years ago it was the early 1700s, and we had a young Colonial America.
We're still connected in many ways to our forefathers.

Discovery and Academy are set 1,100 years in the future.
1,100 years ago was 925 A.D. There's no connection there, no family lineage we can map.
It becomes ancient history.

There's no thread to connect us to a reachable human future where we survive, where we can have hope that a few centuries from now we've solved so many of our problems. Instead, it's kicked down the road a few thousand miles, and the connection is severed.

That's the core of friggin' Dune though.

Definitely Batman '66.
No one had the guts to rein in Giamatti.

I haven’t read this whole thread so I may have missed something but is there an explanation for why there is a female Jem’Hadar in Starfleet Academy?

I guess the most likely explanation is the writers of this show never actually watched DS9 and missed the part where it was explained that the Jem Hadar were bred to only be male?

Its like how they used the Founders in Picard season 3. They just plucked the species out of DS9 without understanding anything about them beyond some basic plot points.

For that matter, the Borg weren’t handled very well either. But that is for another thread. Or maybe not?

Maybe one of the new students will be a Jurati-Borg who fights with one of the other students over a girl they both like.

Like when Zach and and Slater competed for the affections of Kelly Kapowski in Saved By The Bell.

They've established tech that solves all their plots but then have to forget about it. Programable matter makes reality a holodeck/replicator. Instant teleportation. Uh, what's the point here? We're in the technology = magic phase again, unless the plot requires the technology to randomly fail or the protagonists to forget that the tech exists.

Every god damned one of you needs to turn in your nerd card (regardless of what you might think of that clip) because not one of you has mentioned the shit that they're practically hammering into your skulls in that clip.

Aside from sounding like she's having a stroke, does anybody else notice what Holly Hunter does early on in that scene? She puts on glasses. Then she takes them off, and hands them to the mumbling Jem Hadar. Y'all remember Cronenberg's character in Discovery saying that they were an affectation he liked to wear? Because nobody in the 31st century actually needs glasses anymore?* Next, they're in a nebula-like thingie (and there's mention of it being their first mission). Then weird shit starts happening, Hunter appears to have another stroke, orders the shields to be raised, beams Jabba Hadar out, and says to start shooting. We then get shit growing all over the hull of the ship, but are you listening to the goddamned music that's playing while this happens? Then there's panicked cadets running, only for some to stop and say, "What is that?" with awe in their voices. There's shit with them trying to get out of there, but not having working controls, and we see what looks like the Mitsubishi or Yamaha emblem forming in front of them. Holly mumbles for them to "fire a full spread" only to be told that they can't. There's explosions, chaos, Captain Cottonmouth tries to call Starfleet command. Next, she talks to an "old hand" on the ship for a status report.

Some cadet pops up, has troubling breathing and seems to have some ringing in the ears. There's damage reports being given on the bridge, when we're told that there's an incoming holo transmission, at which point Captain Mumbles says, "Patch it through."

What does Giamatti say when he appears? "Fifteen long years..." My god, if you haven't figured it out by now, you must have a skull made of adamantium, because they've been pounding away at it since the beginning. They are clearly not only echoing the Kobayashi Maru test from TWoK, but also the first time the Reliant and the Enterprise do battle, as well as the Mutara Nebula fight. Doubt me? Remember me talking about the music? That's clearly taking cues from the TWoK soundtrack. Then, when they're in the Genesis cave, what does Kirk say to Carol? "There's a man out there I haven't seen in fifteen years who's trying to kill me. And you show me a son who'd be happy to help him." Mumbles talking to the doctor is a nod to Kirk calling Scotty during the first fight, and the cadets stopping and staring at the shit growing on the ship is almost certainly a nod to Scotty's nephew staying at his post while the other trainees ran.

*Maybe Mumbles is allergic to Retinox 5 like Kirk, or maybe she uses them as an affectation like Cronenberg's character, but it's clearly a nod to Kirk in TWoK.

I ain't saying the show's gonna be good, I'm just saying y'alls some sorry ass motherfuckers if you didn't pick up on what they were trying to do.

Yeah, I picked up on some of that. They've tried to plagiarise TWoK many times now including in Nemesis and Into Darkness. Just the fact of the attempt shows they don't know what they're doing.

Oh, I noticed. This runs back to the issue of taking place in the 32nd century, though. They behave like the show is taking place only a hundred or so years after the events of TOS or TNG, where such homages and nods would make sense, but 800 years out from that? Nothing works, IMO.

That. I get transporters, warp drive, and all of that, but they've got technology so powerfully omnipotent that scenes stop making sense because of it. No one walks anywhere they instantly transport where they stand, until they walk somewhere in order to unload exposition. Our heroes in the 23rd and 24th century take a turbolift to the transporter room as the music plays an undercurrent of time being of the essence, and that's how we get interpersonal story time and unfolding the plot, but in the 32nd century people stand in the hallway while the music just kind of languishes, and then they go zip away via the transporter to do something. The effect is muted, removed entirely in some cases. That's just one example.

Even Qs can be de-powered and killed, and Qs can make Q-weapons to hurt each other, and Guinan got ahold of a Q amulet to fuck up Delancie-Q's shit.
So, yeah, 32nd century Starfleet is over-powered, but that can be handled.

Yet another reason why I like Le Guin's Hainish cycle better than Trek.
Every time humans get too powerful, they have an empire collapse.

Or, you know, the idiot showrunners decided to set this in the awful 32nd century Trek universe and and who the hell knows what happened in the last 900 years.

The 32nd century exists for the same reason the Kelvin-timeline exists.
The creatives desperately want a clean reboot, but they can't pull the trigger on it being a full wipe.
And without it being a full wipe, the prime canon creeps back in, and makes a mess.

Holodoc and Spock-prime serve the same function.
Dipping their hands in poster paint, and smearing it on the walls, and dirtying up the clean reboot.

But y'know what? Good. Fuck clean reboots.
They're cowardly to begin with.

Homages and nods are for the fucking AUDIENCE, you pillock.

Unless it's Lower Decks.

Oh. Another revenge plot.



Technically, it all looks superb. But otherwise I'm underwhelmed. Holly Hunter is giving it a good go, but she doesn't sell me as a captain. Paul Giamatti is eating the scenery like he's Mr. Creosote at Golden Corral. Twenty-somethings playing teens portends all sorts of uninteresting personal drama. More spectacle + relationship porn, less sci-fi and smart writing.

Probably won't watch, but if you all start raving about it I might try it.

Don't tachyons usually signify time travel too? Or am I thinking of something else?

Chronitons?

Yeah, maybe those.

Tachyons do everything.
So, yeah.