Discovery S4 Continues One Of Abrams’ Star Wars Additions To Star Trek
Discovery season 4, episode 4 unleashed giant ice spiders, a callback to Kirk being chased by a CGI monster in J.J. Abrams Star Trek 2009 movie.
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Warning: SPOILERS for Star Trek: Discovery Season 4, Episode 4 – “All Is Possible”.
One of J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars-style additions continues in Star Trek: Discovery season 4 when Lt. Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) and some Starfleet Academy cadets crashland on an icy moon. Star Trek: Discovery, as well as the other live-action Star Trek series on Paramount+, is strongly influenced by Abrams’ Star Trek movie trilogy, which brought Star Wars-like state-of-the-art special effects and blockbuster-style filmmaking to the Star Trek franchise. Star Trek: Discovery season 4 is similarly epic as Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) and her crew valiantly try to unlock the mystery of a gravimetric anomaly called the DMA (Dark Matter Anomaly).
In Star Trek 2009, J.J. Abrams also borrowed from Cloverfield, the hit film he produced in 2008. Cloverfield was about a giant monster suddenly attacking New York City and the spidery creature was a terror the size of a skyscraper. During the sequence when James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) was marooned on the ice planet Delta Vega in Star Trek 2009, the future Captain of the Enterprise encountered a giant creature called a Hengrauggi, which was very similar to the Cloverfield monster (both beasts were created by concept designer Neville Page). Kirk was pursued by the Hengrauggi until he was saved by Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy). But the appearance of the Hengrauggi was jarring for longtime Trekkers since giant CGI monsters weren’t a staple of Star Trek before J.J. Abrams put his stamp on the franchise.
Star Trek: Discovery season 4, episode 4, “All is Possible,” introduced its own J.J. Abrams-style creatures when Lt. Tilly, Adira Tal (Blu del Barrio), and the group of Starfleet cadets they were overseeing were stranded on a Class-L moon. As Adira explained, Class-L means a breathable atmosphere but a hostile environment and that’s exactly what the Starfleet heroes encountered in the frozen landscape when they were chased by gigantic aliens that resembled ice spiders. Quick thinking by Adira and Tilly allowed the Lieutenant to distract the spiders so that everyone could be beamed to the safety of one of the 32nd century’s powerful Starfleet ships. But Tilly, Adira, and the cadets’ encounter with the ice spiders was obviously reminiscent of Kirk running from the Hengrauggi in the frozen tundra of Delta Vega.
Star Trek has certainly had its share of dangerous alien creatures throughout various TV series and movies but Star Trek’s creatures were usually limited to men-in-suits or more modest CGI creations because of budgetary concerns. For example, Star Trek: The Original Series had the lizard-like Gorn, the ape-luke Mugatu which returned in Star Trek: Lower Decks, as well as the salt vampire. Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced beings like the Crystalline Entity and Armus, the ‘skin of evil’ that murdered Lt. Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby). Otherwise, huge CGI monsters are a relatively new addition to Star Trek ushered in by J.J. Abrams, who was obviously inspired by the heroes of the original Star Wars trilogy’s encounters with the Wampa, the Rancor, and the Sarlacc.
Meanwhile, Star Trek: Discovery’s ice spiders attacking Tilly, Adira, and a handful of cadets is ironic because that’s a spectacle that Game of Thrones didn’t manage to deliver in 8 seasons. Fans of George R.R. Martin’s books always wanted to see giant ice spiders, which are among the creatures in the North that were believed to be mythological by the people of Westeros. Yet despite Game of Thrones’ massive budgets and epic-scaled battles, the giant ice spiders never materialized, not even in the Game of Thrones’ season 8’s climactic war with the Night King, “The Long Night.” Star Trek: Discovery season 4 simply followed J.J. Abrams’ example and delivered ice spiders, showing Game of Thrones how it’s done.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/star-trek-discovery-ice-spiders-abrams-star-wars/