It doesn’t not sound old and grumpy…
Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Starfleet Academy | 1x08 “The Life of the Stars”
Lemmchen@feddit.org 3 days ago
Maybe I’m just getting too old and grumpy for this teeny drama emotional crap, but for me this was the worst episode yet. I get that this was effectively trauma therapy after the Miyazaki incident, but boy was is not entertaining. It’s all just “oh, we are so damaged, nothing will ever be the same”. There’s nothing really at stake, no tension, no climax, just whining and speaking way too much in metaphors for my liking. I’m still watching Star Trek here after all and not some artsy independent movie.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 3 days ago
themoken@startrek.website 3 days ago
Yeah, I think this one didn’t really come together as well as it could have. Should have focused on the Sam story more and do more to make it feel like she was in real danger. When she was dead I involuntarily yelled “yeah right!”. Lo and behold it lasted like under a minute. The drama and Caleb/Tarima story could have more easily been cut short without losing anything.
Probably one of the worst eps, but I’m happy to say that’s actually a pretty high bar for this show so far and this is more meh than truly bad (here I’m flashing back to like 20 different Discovery episodes where the episode ended and I was tearing my hair out over how stupid they were - that’s the real trauma here)
Also happy to speculate that, with two episodes left, the pendulum seems likely to swing back to excitement next week and I’m here for it.
Klanky@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
Maybe it was because of Mary Wiseman, but for some reason this felt like a Discovery episode, and not in a good way. I liked Tilly on Discovery, but here she just annoyed me for some reason, felt very smug in all her dealings with the cadets.
Klanky@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
I agree that I felt this was the weakest. This felt like actors writing an episode for actors about the healing power of ACTING! Just…calm down and see a real mental health professional.
Cableb and Tarima have negative chemistry, and I wish the writers would stop trying to make that happen, but here we are.
The stuff with SAM was great and should have been the A-plot.
Overall I’m still liking the show but this was definitely one of the weakest so far.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 3 days ago
Just…calm down and see a real mental health professional.
I think it’s clear that, much like Nog in “It’s Only A Paper Moon”, the cadets (particularly Tarima) have not been receptive to conventional therapy, which is extremely predictive of whether said therapy will be effective.
Klanky@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
Fair point. I’m sure my thoughts on this episode will soften over time (they always do), but I think my dislike of both the character of Tarima and the way she is played are making it hard for me to be invested in her story lines.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 3 days ago
I didn’t expect this one to be quite as divisive as it seems to be!
But yeah, I can see why it would clang if you’re not feeling the characters involved. I’m sort of in the same space with Darem right now.
Tarima is messy, but it’s a very familiar kind of messy to me. Zoe Steiner is definitely taking a unique approach to the character, but it’s mostly working for me. I thought her scene with Caleb in the botanical lab was quite well done, and not an easy task.
minorkeys@lemmy.world 2 days ago
[deleted]ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 2 days ago
I would find some sort of magical “mental health technology” not only unrealistic, but rather insulting.
minorkeys@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Why?
That’s the perfect scenario for science-fiction. It’s theoretically possible to do so, trauma has a physiological footprint, it manifests in physical reality that can be altered by technologies. It’s entirely plausible for some effects of trauma to be healed medically instead of solely through something like talk therapy, or in this case, theatre therapy.
minorkeys@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s disappointing worldbuilding that there is no advanced mental/medical health services everpresent already that people just use whenever. Why isn’t trauma recovery a medical procedure? Why isn’t there a holodeck for use as a therapeutic tool? The hologram ‘experiencing a childhood’ is literally a version of that already. 1k years in the future and people need theatre to teach them to manage their mental health…
But such things would require the showrunners to give a shit about the science fiction part of startrek and not abuse the IP for a modern day teen character drama set in a generic tech fiction setting. The technology and the world in this show is not treated as a meaningful character itself, the science and technology is written for the convenience of the plot and does not form a cohesive of consistent world. This lack of object storytelling is a modern writing issue that makes the stories lack grounding in shared reality. Each episode of this show might as well just be a dream one of the characters had.
buerviper@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The way it is done is very much Trek, though. Geordi didn’t get his blindness “fixed”, even though Pulaski gave him options to do so. In contrast to the genre of cyberpunk (which you brought up in a different comment), Trek is not about overcoming what it means to be human, but fully embracing the full human nature. Disabilities are not meant to be overcome or erased (but to what degree this is true could of course be debated), but accepted.
Likewise, I guess the process overcoming trauma is considered as the goal, because you learn something from it. Of course everybody could just take a happy pill every day, but likewise, they could create genetically enhanced superhumans that try to take over the universe. But this is not what Star Trek is about, and it never was.
But I agree that the psychological treatment is a bit subpar in this episode, and it is weird that they did not introduce a trained psychiatrist/counselor, but instead a Lieutenant who bears her own share of trauma. Definitely educational, but solely from a therapeutic perspective, probably lacking.
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 1 day ago
Ake did say the cadets had been attending counselling sessions, and that they weren’t working (actually, I think she said that they “weren’t enough”).
Maybe they could have included a scene or a montage of those ineffective settings - IIRC, the most comparable “classic” episodes, “Family” and “It’s Only A Paper Moon” showed them, however briefly.
buerviper@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Yeah, I remember she said something to that effect, but it is a bit hard for me to believe that trained specialists in trauma therapy did not achieve anything, but Tilly with the power of drama did.
I am also not one of these specialists, but some methods used by Tilly seem… Counterproductive? Like cornering a traumatized young adult emotionally seems like it could backfire heavily.
minorkeys@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Geordi basically got super vision from his choice to integrate technology. He did not simply stay blind. What are you talking about?
If you could offer an effective, affordable and safe tech solution to people’s disabilities, the vast majority would use it. Nobody is out here ‘accepting myself’ if a fix exists. We know this because we already fix disabilities when able and nobody is choosing no. All of medicine is fixing disabilities or preventing them, from a broken finger to avoiding diabetes.
The modern process for overcoming trauma is the best we have right now. That it’s the same in 1000 years is bad science fiction, especially when medical science in the same world is lightyears more advanced. Why is mental health processes and treatment no better than 2025?
‘Taking a happy pill’ is, again, the modern equivalent of technology in mental health treatment. People in 3100 might, I don’t know, have advanced since now? The point of science in the fiction is to envision how it might have advanced. If you think mental health treatment is going to be talk therapy or CBT for the next thousand years, that seems pretty unlikely, particularly for severe trauma which has physiological affects on the brain that could potentially be modified.
buerviper@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Some stuff just does not advance that much, even in long timeframes. By that logic, you could criticize the series for not everyone linking to a supercomputer and share information immediately instead of “talking” which has been the way to share information for millenia now. Or you could criticize TNG for not having come up with a solution to this yet.
Geordi chose the equivalent of a wheelchair that constantly kicks you in the balls. His VISOR gives him actual pain. Polaski gave him alternatives, even curing his blindness, and he refused. There’s also that DS9 episode with the alien that comes from a low grav planet and has to rely on a wheelchair for anything. Bashir could have “fixed” her, she refused.
Also, I am not saying I agree on every view that is brought up in Star Trek. There are (even today) many ethical discussions on what constitutes as a disability, and whether it would be ethical to cure it or not (or at what stage of life). I am just saying that in the world of Trek, the process of things has always been evaluated more important than the solution. That’s the spirit of the series.