I'm (re)watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, and after a few episodes I started to tune out every time they detail how some specific solution is possible. There's little care with consistency, everything is bent to fit the story. "Oh, I get it, if I reverse the trusters and focus the beams using a microwaved non-Euclidian logarithmic abstraction, we can get the shields back and fix the time distillation!".

I know Star Trek is soft sci-fi, but come on! If it's all meaningless, at least keep it to a minimum. Focus on the interesting bits: the politics, the culture, the philosophical exploration, the juicy paradoxes.

I still love Star Trek and I definitely don't want it to become hard sci-fi, but sometimes it feels like /r/VXJunkies/...

Spoilers for all seasons of both The Orville and Star Trek: Discovery.

The Orville isn't bad, but it's not the worthy successor to pre-Abrams Star Trek that a lot of people on /r/startrek—and increasingly on /r/DaystromInstitute—make it out to be, and honestly I struggle to understand how people are even reaching that conclusion.

I should start, I suppose, with what I like about this show. First, I like the characters—with two exceptions, I'll get to that later. Dr. Finn, in particular, is a delight: Penny Johnson Jerald is a very talented actress and it's really great to see her in a role where the rest of the cast draws on her character's wisdom. She plays it well. The rest of the bridge crew is great, too: Gordon, LaMarr, and Bortas are all lots of fun, and Jessica Szohr is a great addition for season 2: Halston Sage didn't quite have the skill to pull her character off.

The show looks great. Union vessels are distinct from Federation vessels and they're not just ISO Human Standard Spaceships either, which is commendable. Kaylon spheres are neat play on Borg cubes, and my only real complaint in this regard is that Moclan and Krill vessels look oddly similar. The engine effects, the depiction of celestial objects, the overall Union aesthetic, it's all very pleasing to the eye.

The worldbuilding is great. This is the one place that I think I would even go as far to say The Orville has a clear edge over Star Trek. Trek has built up loads of cruft over the years and sometimes struggles to keep it all together. For example, The Orville has swept away the inconsistent depiction of enlisted personnel that Trek fouls up seemingly very chance it gets by just depicting officers, which makes sense for a highly automated vessel. I fundamentally "buy" the Planetary Union as a human-centric interstellar polity in the same way I buy the UFP. (My one complaint in this department is that there does not appear to be any bureaucratic distinction between the Union government and the Union fleet, i.e. it lacks the distinction between The Federation and Starfleet. That seems like an oddity I hope they correct in season 3.) McFarlane is a nerd, he's fastidious about detail, and you just know he's has to have pages upon pages of worldbuilding details which helps him keep it consistent. It shows.

But the show falls flat on its face in two key ways which, unfortunately, appear to be baked into the concept.

Shortfall one: I just can't seem to warm up to either Mercer or Grayson, which for obvious reasons is a huge problem, because the show is now on record as indicating that their romantic relationship is The Key To Saving The Galaxy™. The Orville is an episodic throwback, but if it has a "main arc," that main arc is Ed & Kelly's relationship, and it just feels awkward and out of place.

I don't really dislike Grayson, but I can't find anything to really like about her either. She's just kinda there, and her story never diverges from Mercer's. Which brings me to Mercer... which... just... ugh. Never in my life have I seen a more egregious case of a show creator playing out his fantasy on camera. I cannot tell you the number of times I've seen someone make a statement which boils down to "I don't like Discovery because Burnham is a Mary Sue, and that's why I prefer The Orville" as if Mercer is not the most blatant case of a Marty Stu to ever grace network television and get renewed for a second season. I mean, come on. He's the perfect captain, he always makes the right call, yet for some reason the show keeps trying to sell us on the notion that he's damaged goods and out-of-favor with the Admiralty. It's not believable, and it irks me endlessly that anyone would lob this criticism at Discovery when The Orville is an order of magnitude more guilty of this conceit.

And that brings me to the elephant in the room: the direct Star Trek comparison. I seem to recall Season 1 having a novel episode here and there, even if they were snoozefests. Season 1 also bothered to draw from other sources of inspiration, even if those sources were Trek-adjacent shows like Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone. But on the other hand, some episodes from season 1 were straight rips from old Trek. "If the Stars Should Appear"? Straight remake of "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky." "Mad Idolatry"? Straight remake of "Blink of an Eye."

And Season 2? Season 2 doubled down on the Trek remake approach. No other sources, no novel concepts: almost every episode is a remake of a previous episode of Star Trek. Sometimes The Orville at least bothered to remix a pair of episodes, and sometimes a lot of the details got changed, but with one exception, every episode was a Trek episode remake.

The degree to which a given The Orville episode is a remake of the Trek episode I've listed varies. "Home" is only similar if you look at the broad strokes: the officer on loan from the scientifically advanced Earth ally goes home where her family disparages her for spending all that time with humans. The home invasion plot from that episode was original, but it was also kinda weird and contrived. The flipside of this constant borrowing from Trek is that when The Orville does go off the beaten path, it's inevitably flat out boring. "Ja'loja" was an utterly forgettable episode because it largely focused on Ed & Kelly relationship drama.

And even if we look at "Ja'loja," there's a bit of "Amok Time" in there with the whole "returning to the desert homeworld" for the Moclan urination ceremony. Sometimes it's bits and pieces into a blender, but other times it's a basically a straight rip, like it is with "All the World Is Birthday Cake" and "Blood of Patriots." Perhaps the most blatant "homage" was introducing a surgically altered Klingon Krill to infiltrate the hero ship, right down to the name and rank of the infiltrator!

I know, everything's a remix, and I know, it's a fine line between "ripoff" and "homage," but the problem with this level of "borrowing" is that when you've seen every episode of Star Trek as many times as I have, each episode of The Orville just becomes an exercise in "I wonder which Star Trek episode this will be," and once you figure it out, it just saps all the urgency and tension out of the viewing experience. It gets boring.

I didn't get bored with Discovery. I mean, sure, Discovery has its problems. In many ways its problems are the inverse of The Orville's strengths: I struggle to care all that much about any of the characters, the show is rife with dark sets and quick shots which just isn't that visually appealing, and the worldbuilding is at times really difficult to reconcile with established Trek lore. (The Spore drive is classified? That's why we never see it again? Ummm... OK, then.) And the story, while chaotic and poorly paced & planned due to constant showrunner turmoil, is at the very least interesting and novel.

The perfect Star Trek would be a synthesis of these two shows, but apart, each show pretty much breaks even when you take the strengths and weaknesses on the merits. Which brings me to my title: I cannot for the life of me get into the mindset of the fans who see this as the True Trek of our time. It's just remakes of old Trek, and while the visuals have been updated for 2019, the stories have not.

The bottom line is that while it's great that we have two Trek-style shows on the air at the same time for the first time since the 90's, neither show is great, or even good. They're both just OK, and the huge disparity between how they've been received doesn't make much sense to me.

OC from me when I was a college student. Also a good excuse to watch some cartoons and call it study ;-P Mods - feel free to move this if this isn't the appropriate sub. Thanks!

Who Has the Power? He-Man and the Masters of Marketing

Once upon a time the sole purpose of children’s television was to educate. But this changed in the 1980s when the Federal Communications Commission refused to enforce a ban on children’s programming tied to commercial products. Mattel took advantage of this to market a line of toys with their show He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. This was the crown jewel of the toy-based children’s programming in the 1980s and made Mattel over a billion dollars in revenue from toys and accessories. The program sparked controversy over marketing and violence in children’s programming.

The F.C.C. and Deregulation
In 1969 the F.C.C. found that the ABC children’s show Hot Wheels to be nothing more than an episode-length commercial for the Mattel product. The commission banned product-based programs saying that they are not designed to entertain or inform the public (New York Times, February 3, 1986). This regulation was enforced throughout most of the 1970s, but the F.C.C.’s position on children’s programming changed drastically during the 1980s to become market-driven. By 1986 this change was explicit when F.C.C. Chairman Mark Fowler told the New York Times that “‘The public’s interest determines the public interest.’”
Fowler had replaced Charles D. Ferris as chairman when President Reagan took office. Ferris had been a proponent for government-mandated children’s programming aimed at specific age groups (New York Times, July 25, 1982). Ferris said in the article:

We are well aware that it is not in the economic interest of the broadcasters to aim this kind of programming at an audience amounting to 16 to 18 percent of the population- age 12 and younger- but if the obligation falls evenly on all, then no one is particularly disadvantage.

For 27 years Captain Kangaroo served this function for CBS, but in July 1982 it went off the air leading New York Times reporter Holsendolph to ask “how could the situation reach a point where no children’s fair is regularly scheduled on weekdays on the commercial networks?” Like Ferris, Holsendolph did not realize that the door was being opened for commercialism. But Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo, had an idea of what was coming, “‘Frankly, I think the needs of our nation’s children are just too important to be left to the networks and their profit motives, or to Mark Fowler’s market concept.’” With Fowler’s F.C.C. backing off from enforcing bans and also calling for deregulation of the industry, the market was ripe for the picking and the toy-maker Mattel was ready and waiting.

Marketing to Children
Before the popular show He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ever existed, the toys were designed and sold starting in 1982. He-Man was not the creation of a lone artist at Mattel but rather the product of marketing research. According to a People Weekly article by Carl Arrington, the research began as a response to the highly profitable Kenner Star Wars action figures. Mattel conducted 17 studies on everything from boys’ play habits to the preferred hair color of the hero (blond). Mattel examined such classic works as Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces to develop archetypes for the characters. The characters were given a fantastic flair because the research indicated a preference for high-fantasy and made it easy to capitalize off of the success of the Star Wars toy line.

The first toys came with mini-comic books that explained some of the background behind the characters. Originally, He-Man was a wandering barbarian similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in Conan the Barbarian but this changed as the toy-line evolved. The toys were priced around $5 apiece and the accessories ranged between $20 and $40. Mattel eventually made 70 characters and urged kids to collect them all.

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe first aired in September 1983. Prior to that almost all children’s shows were on the networks (ABC, NBC and CBS), but with the number of independent TV stations tripling since 1972, a new market had opened up. He-Man took advantage of this by airing on 166 independent networks. The toy companies shared the cost of the programs with the producers. The producers then made a deal with a syndicator, who traded air time with the station managers for the use of the show. The syndicator then sold some of the air time to advertisers and funneled the cash back to the producer. Many independent TV stations also received a cut of the toy profits for airing a show, a practice the F.C.C. condoned (New York Times, February 3, 1986).

Many critics called the show “a program-length advertisement” for the toys. The Boston-based Action for Children’s Television, who lamented the end of Captain Kangaroo and advocated a government mandate to ensure children’s programming earlier in the decade, was infuriated that the F.C.C. had allowed the market to determine children’s programming. They said that programs based on toys constituted a commercial. Peggy Charren, the group’s president, said “‘What makes matters worse is that most of the products are being advertised on children’s television as well, making it hard to distinguish between product and programming.’” The president of the National Association of Broadcasters, Edward O. Fritts, said that the complaints were “‘an outrageously shortsighted and overly idealistic approach,’” and he added that the industry had made incredible progress in children’s programming (New York Times, October 12, 1983). Dr. William H. Dietz, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ task force on children and television, also opposed the programs. “‘They sell a product while claiming to be entertainment. And kids don’t know the difference. It is unfair and deceptive advertising. It is unethical to do that, in my opinion,’” said Dietz (New York Times, February 3, 1986).

The Success of the Show and the Toys
The show became the No. 1 children’s program in America and was aired five days a week, something that had never before happened with a children’s program. Besides the 166 U.S. stations that aired the show, 37 foreign countries were invaded by He-Man. It quickly became a favorite of boys age 4 to 8, but around 30 percent of the viewers were female, according to the show’s executive producer Lou Scheimer (New York Times, December 18, 1984). He-Man had 9 million viewers after only 15 months on the air, wrote Patricia Blake in a 1985 Time Magazine article.

The show was a cultural phenomenon and parents everywhere were berated with demands for the toys from their children. Paula Higgins recalled how her son wanted the toys so badly that she took him to five toy stores in search of the He-Man action figure. She noted in her New York Times column that “He-Man and company have an advantage over their Star Wars counterparts, [because] they are on a cartoon five afternoons a week, every week.” Although she approved of the cartoon she did not like the marketing. She wrote “I also know I do not like what is happening, but this is all new territory for us. Our son has never got caught up in this kind of advertising hype before” (New York Times, April 29, 1984).

In 1984, Mattel had sold $500 million in toys and another $500 million in other merchandise, such as He-Man toothbrushes, underwear, lunchboxes and bed sheets. That year the toys were so popular that Mattel had to hire freight airliners rather than ships to get the toys over from Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Mexico to meet demand (New York Times, December 18, 1984). This was just the beginning of a wave of toy-based cartoons such as G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, the Transformers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Violence and Morals
The 1980s was also a decade of concern about violence on television and most particularly violence in children’s programming. The National Coalition on Television Violence found that the new Walt Disney cable network was showing cartoons that contain violence unsuitable for children. They stated that 19.3 violent acts were shown in Disney cartoons each hour (New York Times, April 23, 1984). Disney’s cartoons paled in comparison to the violence in the military themed shows. Children’s shows like Rambo and G.I. Joe were at the center of the violence debate, but He-Man was not exempt. The He-Man show sparked debate among concerned parents who feared its extreme popularity spread violent play. At a viewing of He-Man at the Christ Church Day Care, Peggy Marble, a mother, said that she was concerned the show promoted violence and “unusually aggressive play” (New York Times, December 12, 1985).

Filmation, the studio that produced He-Man, hired Stanford University Communications Professor Donald Roberts as an educational consultant to ensure that the popular show kept the violence to a minimum. Roberts said that none of the characters get killed or seriously hurt, in a Time Magazine article by Patricia Blake. Furthermore, Roberts said that He-Man deplores violence and thus the battle scenes are “‘really anti-battle scenes.’” To combat the charges of violence that were occurring within the industry, the He-Man program also incorporated a moral message at the end of every show, much like another popular show of the time, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. Filmation President and He-Man Producer Lou Scheimer defended the show by saying that they have done episodes addressing drugs, child molestation and gun control (New York Times, December 12, 1985).

A 1982 National Institute of Mental Health study found that violence on TV was directly related to children’s violent behavior off-screen. Dr. Jerome L. Singer, professor of psychology at Yale University, said “‘It is true that some shows, like He-Man, have a kind of moral. But our observations of young children have been that they don’t get it. What we have noticed is that the play with toys like He-Man tends to be rather aggressive’” (New York Times, December 12, 1985).

Conclusion
The debate over toy-based programming continued longer than the popularity of Mattel’s He-Man, whose sales dropped $250 million in 1986 as kids lost interest. In 1990, Congress passed the Children’s Television Act that limited commercials to 12 minutes of every hour of programming. However, the F.C.C. declined to define shows based on toys as commercials. Instead, they ruled that a program is only a commercial if an advertisement for the related toys is run during the breaks. This provoked the ire of Peggy Charren, president of the Action for Children’s Television, who said “‘The problem is not with the four or five minutes of advertising time. The problem is the 26 minutes that the ad agency, the program producer and the toy company have prepared’” (New York Times, November 9, 1990).

He-Man’s catchphrase that he booms out at the beginning of every episode is “By the power of Grayskull, I have the Power.” And he does, or at least Mattel does along with the rest of the toy industry. By uttering the magic phrase, He-Man transforms himself from wimpy Prince Adam, his alter-ego, into a muscle-bound barbarian with flawless super powers. In much the same way, toy companies like Mattel transformed themselves from mere manufacturers of play-things to marketing giants with muscles that bulged five days a week.

Coverage of F.C.C. deregulation was prevalent but its impact on children’s programming received less coverage than other aspects such as the Fairness Doctrine. Controversy of toy-based children’s programming focused on violence and the extreme popularity of the toys and the shows. F.C.C. regulations were usually only mentioned as a backdrop for these stories.

While the debate over market-driven children’s programming began over 20 years ago it remains a concern in today’s society. Prepubescent cries of “buy me this toy” can be heard in any toy store in the country, no doubt inspired by a TV show that has followed the He-Man marketing strategy. Today, parents and doctors are more worried about the marketing of high-fat and high-sugar foods during children’s programs. The Institute of Medicine recommends legislation banning ads for such bad food during children’s shows. At a time when 31 percent of children are obese this message is one of “urgency,” according to J. Michael McGinnis, chairman of the IOM committee. ‘The prevailing pattern of food and beverage marketing to children in America represents, at best, a missed opportunity, and, at worst, a direct threat to the health of the next generation,” according the IOM report (USA Today, December 7, 2005).

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