- News
- Reviews
- Bikes
- Accessories
- Accessories - misc
- Computer mounts
- Bags
- Bar ends
- Bike bags & cases
- Bottle cages
- Bottles
- Cameras
- Car racks
- Child seats
- Computers
- Glasses
- GPS units
- Helmets
- Lights - front
- Lights - rear
- Lights - sets
- Locks
- Mirrors
- Mudguards
- Racks
- Pumps & CO2 inflators
- Puncture kits
- Reflectives
- Smart watches
- Stands and racks
- Trailers
- Clothing
- Components
- Bar tape & grips
- Bottom brackets
- Brake & gear cables
- Brake & STI levers
- Brake pads & spares
- Brakes
- Cassettes & freewheels
- Chains
- Chainsets & chainrings
- Derailleurs - front
- Derailleurs - rear
- Forks
- Gear levers & shifters
- Groupsets
- Handlebars & extensions
- Headsets
- Hubs
- Inner tubes
- Pedals
- Quick releases & skewers
- Saddles
- Seatposts
- Stems
- Wheels
- Tyres
- Health, fitness and nutrition
- Tools and workshop
- Miscellaneous
- Tubeless valves
- Buyers Guides
- Features
- Forum
- Recommends
- Podcast
forum
Star Trek - Brave New Worlds
I remember a few months ago lots of positive discussions on here about this series and - I think Picard. We’ve finished seasons 1 and 2 of Picard and have watched 4 episodes of Brave New Worlds. A bit mixed so far, but we've paid our £17.99 so will plough on. .
We enjoyed Picard, even if the S2 titles were getting a bit Bond movie (Craig era, not silhouetted girls swinging on his PPK.) I never did figure out who the people at the slightly CGI’d chateau Picard were - servants, or what? Oh look, the chateau has been abandoned for decades, but there’s still somehow a working pistol and unopened bottle of wine to be had.
I guess those on the BNW production wanting to keep more of the look and feel of TOS lost the argument early on; at least a red jersey doesn’t quite mean getting zapped within 5 minutes of beaming down. The unspoken problem of the running any ship being a 24 hour concern hasn’t been solved yet either.
Generally, I like what they’ve done with most of the characters, sassy Cadet Uhura, a more active Nurse Chappell; I miss McCoy - no 1 and the doctor both seem wooden and under-powered. Where does No1 actually sit on the bridge? She had the Chekhov position IIRC in The Menagerie/ pilot show.
Good twist with Pike seeing his own death - my wife asks does that make him invulnerable ‘til then? Otherwise, he’s a Kirk/Picard blend. You need to get completely away from the TOS/TNG template, as they have with the engineer character.
Children of the Comet (episode 2 - Uhura episode) got my goat in a few ways. Keeping someone (the doctor’s daughter) in effectively an undead state via a transporter - to bring out whenever you feel like it is staggeringly unethical, not least for anyone in medicine and also made for a lousy reveal.
What I took from the episode was something about how we mostly act on our fears - oh no, the comet is going to destroy the planet - oh no, it isn’t. I just hope the slightly Star Wars/ Avatar looking people on the surface weren’t drowned.
A strange alien artefact that - oh gosh - responds to music; and there’s super-intelligent Spock on scene, basically saying “sorry, I got nothing”. Perhaps I have to face up to the fact that the writers may be too young (and I am too old) to know how unoriginal that idea was, but I’m glad Uhura gets more to do than “hailing frequencies open, Captain”.
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
Latest Forum Topics
Latest Comments
- David9694 11 min 8 sec ago
Someone, in the name of research, ought to place an order of some of this stuff. ...
- chrisonabike 41 min 41 sec ago
Just get them to walk a treadmill - or better, ride exercise bikes to power path lighting.
- AidanR 1 hour 17 min ago
So his advisers were trying to move funds around to cover losses, but in a way that needlessly created additional liabilities? It would have been...
- levestane 1 hour 18 min ago
Reading this and watching the GCN review has made me realise that, for me, it's not the bike being steel (narrow tubes) that is the critical...
- Rendel Harris 1 hour 26 min ago
Given that the property is private a more elegant and less vandalistic approach would be to lock the bikes away somewhere and contact Lime to...
- David9694 2 hours 52 min ago
Try https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/24739976.overturned-car-chat...
- chrisonabike 3 hours 16 min ago
Yes - or:...
- Bungle_52 3 hours 52 min ago
Tweak no 1 then. The tag would need to beep at around 15mph getting more frequent as it approaches 20. It would come with an advisory note to...
- mark1a 4 hours 42 min ago
That will be along in a week or so in the annual reboot of the "All I want for Christmas is... not this" article along with the Park Tool pizza...
Add new comment
41 comments
Star Trek - Discovery : Read the charges, please
The story’s main protagonist is rather flat, not very believable as a first officer and generally she lacks interest; the supporting cast are better
Prolonged scenes among Klingons with no subtitles; the Klingons all now look like something out of the reptile house; the BBC’s vogons were done on a fraction of the budget and tech
I’m no expert on this, but the writers need to understand how a warship operates - e.g. detection, navigation, weapons - the battle scenes play as though Discovery is a two-seat fighter; gonna say it again, you need a system of watches - a boat is a 24 hour thing and it’s rare for the commander / captain to leave the boat in times of crisis
Too much chasing around in dark corridors
Oh look, it’s the infinite improbability drive (with a giant dust-mite - its early victims looking like something out of The Thing)
Just a few minor concessions to TOS in terms of look and feel - phasers and triquarters; could you beam someone from location to location not via the transporter room in TOS? I don’t remember it if so. Where are the wall-mounted house ‘phones?
The opening titles “now, we’ve just mocked this up from some of our early concept drawings” - “I love it - use it”
Not suprised the original captain didn’t last long - she seemed to lack initiative as a leader
The first few episodes were high budget TV movie territory but it soon settled down. The magic drive was a better plot point than permanent fixture (and too much like Voyager).
Aprt from that it were ok. Haven't got any further than half way through Season 1 and am inclined to jump to the S4 Great Reset.
I stuck with Discovery until they decided try and force the UK to pay for another streaming service to watch it.
I don't miss it. I found it easier to watch if I didn't think of it as Star Trek and thought of it as some generic sci-fi show.
I've found the Star Wars series more enjoyable. Andor & The Mandalorian have both been good. I am looking forward to Ahsoka, but I've liked her character since The Clone Wars series. Ahsoka and Thrawn together are a dream come true for me!
Andor is the best Star Wars series in my opinion as it's a lot more grown up than the others. It's got some excellent performances from the cast - I'm a fan of Fiona Shaw and Andy Serkis was superb.
The Mandalorian is good fun and I enjoyed it, but it's probably aimed more for teens. Grogu was just too cute to be taken seriously.
I did the 30 day free Paramount+ trial, ticked off the Star Trek and found there was barely anything else of note on it.
I'm hoping that there will be a Great Merger and we can get back to a couple of services - at the moment I am just rotating between services as we consume anything that we are interested in in a month and then leave the service to refresh. Have Prime because of delivery (and one account shared legitimately across the family) but that would have been binned.
Genuinely close to binning the licence fee based on our watching.
Discovery became particularly useless with the chasing around after the Red Thing. Illogical plot. Add in really annoying conspiracy theory stuff (I have a real problem with the majority of plotting these days relying on betrayal by the powers that be because I firmly believe it has leaked over into the real world - see MAGA) and it was banal. The S4 reboot was probably a reflection of the total plotting dead end they'd driven themselves into - ST-SNW showed that you can plot with constraints.
I found seasons 1 & 2 of Picard a bit boring, but plowed through them anyway. Season 3 however was really good and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
However, I must give a shout out to Mrs Davis - one of the most surprising series that I've watched. Basic plot is that a nun (Sister Simone) is trying to defeat an all-knowing AI (Mrs Davis). Not really Star Trek though.
ohhh - Mrs Davis is going on my list
It's frustrating as giving any more information about it would be a spoiler
Which streaming service is showing it?
It's on Peacock which I think is carried by Sky and NOW. I might have obtained a copy from elsewhere.
I think Poker Face is now streaming in the UK - that's nothing to do with SciFi, but almost a hark back to a Columbo style detective series starring Natasha Lyonne (Russian Doll). It's a lot of fun and gives Natasha plenty of space to shrug a lot. Also features appearances by actors such as Ron Perlman, Adrien Brody, Nick Nolte, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Hong Chau, Chloë Sevigny, Luis Guzmán, Stephanie Hsu...
Yes, we put off watching P3* because Picard was trying to be all too clever. P3 found its feet, simple story well told, a bit too much down, down, down, down, up at the end plotting (things get worse and worse until rock bottom and then everything goes right in the last couple of episodes). There was a big hint of a Not-P4 at the end with {spoiler} being set up with {spoiler} to go off on a {spoiler) but it definitely had potential to reboot into yet another spin off.
*Compulsory use of initialisation when talking ST.
I thought Season 1 was quite good, if a bit slow at times. It was a bit different and stood up well enough by itself, without needing an encyclopedic knowledge of TNG.
S2 was just a bit ridiculous - tried to be clever but was just confusing, and frankly I've never got on with any plots that involve Q.
S3 started off great - a bit faster paced and with a plot that provided plenty of intrigue but without resorting to the more ridiculous tropes (cf. Q). But I did feel the last few episodes were let down by the in-your-face nostalgia bomb and the intergenerational conflict clearly scripted to appease ageing trekkies.
Not that there is anything wrong with being an ageing trekkie, but I just find it detracts from any TV show/movie where it is obvious that the producers have gone out of their way to cash in on a particular demographic/relying on nostalgia rather than doing something original (and Picard is far from the worst offender in this regard!)
I haven't watched Strange New World, but I did watch the nostalgia-fest that was Picard. I enjoyed seeing the TNG faces again.
There is an animated series called Lower Decks, that I believe will crossover into SNW season 2 - Lower Decks is a comedy, so that could be interesting!
With regards the writing - I guess they are trying to draw in the younger generation, so aren't too concerned about rehashing storylines. Perhaps the Lower Decks crossover will have tribbles in it...
I'm not super well-versed on TNG, but where the heck did this "I love you, Data" baloney come from? Picard besotted with his laptop; that's before becoming one himself, of course.
Mixed feelings about Data requesting to be deactivated as the ultimate human act and Picard pulling his USB sticks out one by one. Death isn't something you just dip into (and out of).
Lower Decks looked like a tweenager comedy from the trailer. Can only be an improvement on the 1970s TAS - who remembers?
It is a bit weird. Not sure if his quest to become human as left the others feeling like parents? They nutured him on his journey.
He has also "died" a couple of times now.
also "pulling his USB sticks out"
"I mean, these men died for us - frequently." ( replying to HoldingOn)
context - I'm not really old enough to have appreciated the religious controversy around the release of Monty Python's Life of Brian. Not the Nine O'Clock News did a sketch turning it on it's head, in which Python fans are outraged by the General Synod's new picture "The Life of Christ."
For example, "the lead character, this Jesus Christ, is clearly a lampoon of the comic messiah himself, Our Lord John Cleese - even the initials, JC, are exactly the same"
The interviewer asks Life of Christ's director if he had anticipated all the controversy and he smugly opens with this banger - "well, I certainly didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition"
I recently grabbed a copy of the 1970s TAS though I don't remember watching it at the time. It's not considered to be any good though - I was just trying to be completist with my Star Trek collection.
Lower Decks is worth a watch though it could well be described as a tweenager comedy.
Lower Decks has lots of callbacks to all the shows and series including items in the 1970's TAS (massive Spock Skeleton, Alien races only seen in that before). So for Trekkie super geeks and mostly a comedy although a couple of episodes have some depth.
You also finally see Cetacean Operations in action. (A throwback to a room apparently on the Enterprise according to the tech books).
Many years, nay decades, ago I discovered the exciting activity known as "cycling". Although this didn't make the sofa-attractor & brain-softener mechanism of the TV entirely redundant it certainly highlighted the full import of the term "idiot-box".
In all events, I suggest you spend that £17.99 on a new cycling cap to don when you go out and about in reality courtesy of the two wheels, pedals and the like, which will help to unshackle your mind and attention from US individualista propaganda-tripe, including the "solve eveything with some sixgun/raygun violence, car/spaceship chases and a series of drawling space-cowboy cliches of the utmost vacuity".
Oi! I will NOT have a word said against Firefly!
Well, my days of not taking him seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
There's a special hell for people who don't like Firefly
A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.
How do Reavers clean their spears?
Do they run them through the Wash?
it still hurts.
ohh - Resident Alien is worth a watch too. Comedy.
My wife sends you a like for this post.
But none of us cycles in the winter - a taxi driver told me - so we need something to distract us.
Pages