If this is what passes for new Star Trek along with Discovery and Picard, I'm done with Trek at this point. No wonder Amazon and Netflix both passed on this show. Everything post-Voyager has...
If this is what passes for new Star Trek along with Discovery and Picard, I'm done with Trek at this point. No wonder Amazon and Netflix both passed on this show. Everything post-Voyager has become a cringe-inducing parody of what made Trek worth watching.
Last night it had a whopping 2.6k likes out of 500k views. Today the ratio and comments are hidden. That says it all right there.
The abandonment of Federation principles and the constantly nonsensical (even for Trek) writing. I wasn't a fan of the revisionist history in Discovery either - though I admit I did love the...
The abandonment of Federation principles and the constantly nonsensical (even for Trek) writing. I wasn't a fan of the revisionist history in Discovery either - though I admit I did love the revisit to Talos 4.
Is that really new to the series, though? The earlier series were quite quick to question, or even outright ignore the Federation's principles. The best known example is the prime directive, which...
The abandonment of Federation principles
Is that really new to the series, though? The earlier series were quite quick to question, or even outright ignore the Federation's principles.
The best known example is the prime directive, which many have joked has become little more than a suggestion. Captains have come up with all sorts of justifications for ignoring or bending it.
Next, how often was the neutral zone entered? The risk of a Romulan conflict was great, but multiple episodes resulted in traversing this forbidden space.
The most idealistic captain, the great Jean-Luc Picard, has many examples of putting principles first. Decloaking the Pegasus is probably the biggest example. But even Picard insisted an exception be made in Justice, when Wesley's life was on the line. By the time we get to DS9's In the Pale Moonlight, many more lines have been crossed.
Trek is at its best when it's questioning what is and isn't right. The Federation ideals (what I think of as the "Roddenberry Utopia") serve as a great inspiration, and are largely what make the show so enjoyable. But they've never been afraid to explore the cracks in those ideals, either.
That's why I, personally, think 'In The Pale Moonlight' is one of the worst Star Trek episodes ever made - worse than 'Spock's Brain' or 'Sub Rosa' or 'Move Along Home' or 'Threshold'. Those...
By the time we get to DS9's In the Pale Moonlight, many more lines have been crossed.
That's why I, personally, think 'In The Pale Moonlight' is one of the worst Star Trek episodes ever made - worse than 'Spock's Brain' or 'Sub Rosa' or 'Move Along Home' or 'Threshold'. Those episodes just had bad writing or bad science. 'In The Pale Moonlight' threw away the very ideals that Star Trek is supposed to be about.
However, those examples were the exception, rather than the rule. And no Captain ever ignored the principles of Starfleet and the Federation for personal gain or to fight a war. If Picard or Janeway ignored the Prime Directive, it was to help people. If Sisko ignored ethical rules, it was to reduce violence. There were Starfleet rules in the show but, when they were broken, it was for good reasons, rather than bad reasons. The meta-principle which overrode the other principles was always the good of others.
I guess that's a matter of personal taste - I've always felt that previous incarnations of Trek were set in a world that was a little too perfect. To me, the Federation is what we should aspire to...
I guess that's a matter of personal taste - I've always felt that previous incarnations of Trek were set in a world that was a little too perfect.
To me, the Federation is what we should aspire to as humanity, but there's plenty of ways in which the Federation just wouldn't work in reality. I think the difference between those ideals and the realities of the world is a fun space for Star Trek to play in.
Obviously they would have to have something like Section 31 to help take care of things that need to be done but the Federation doesn't want to dirty its hands with sanctioning.
I do agree that Discovery is a bit nonsensical when it comes to plot. I like the characters but I really dislike the plot. I'm very excited to see what comes of the Pike series they greenlit, since he was far and away the best part of season 2 of Discovery.
Some of us like idealistic escapist fiction! There are so many shows that show what humanity is "really" like. But it's disappointing that everyone's vision of "real" humans always involves...
To me, the Federation is what we should aspire to as humanity, but there's plenty of ways in which the Federation just wouldn't work in reality.
Some of us like idealistic escapist fiction! There are so many shows that show what humanity is "really" like. But it's disappointing that everyone's vision of "real" humans always involves negative depictions of people. It's nice to have a show that isn't like that, a show that deliberately decides to be optimistic. It is fiction, after all. It doesn't have to show the gritty miserable aspects of humanity. As you rightly say, it shows something we can aspire to.
If I want to see reality, I can turn on the TV news. When I'm watching Star Trek, I don't want to see reality.
I totally get where you’re coming from, but the problem with that world (from a dramatic standpoint) is that there just isn’t a ton of tension outside of small scale, interpersonal relationships....
I totally get where you’re coming from, but the problem with that world (from a dramatic standpoint) is that there just isn’t a ton of tension outside of small scale, interpersonal relationships. If there is no conflict, how do you have drama?
I think there’s a balance to be had, and I do think that Discovery went a bit too far in one direction. Personally, I do like that Picard takes the character in a different direction than most of us thought Jean Luc Picard would end up.
There's large-scale conflict introduced by non-Starfleet non-Federation outsiders, ranging from the Borg to the Dominion. There's small-scale conflict due to the actions of various species...
the problem with that world (from a dramatic standpoint) is that there just isn’t a ton of tension outside of small scale, interpersonal relationships.
There's large-scale conflict introduced by non-Starfleet non-Federation outsiders, ranging from the Borg to the Dominion.
There's small-scale conflict due to the actions of various species Starfleet encounters, and local foreign problems they get involved in.
There's tension due to natural phenomena bringing danger to people - from spatial anomalies and planetquakes, to planet-eating organisms.
There's tension when technology goes wrong.
There's philosophical conflict when technology becomes sentient (exocomps, Professor Moriarity, Data, etc).
The elephant in the room for a future trek series is Force of Nature. The parallels to our current fossil fuel dependency and climate change with warp drive slowly rending the fabric of space-time...
The elephant in the room for a future trek series is Force of Nature.
The parallels to our current fossil fuel dependency and climate change with warp drive slowly rending the fabric of space-time are just too good to pass up. That sort of large scale disruption of space, restrictions on speed, and loss of shipping lanes would provide plenty of conflict and diplomatic challenges and humanitarian missions for the Federation to overcome.
It'd also spur on the trans-warp era, we know they get there eventually. Needing to find a better warp drive is a good motivation.
I loved the idea of this episode. I just wished it actually went somewhere. Despite a few nods that "the Warp limit may be exceeded" later that season, there was nary a mention of it again. There...
I loved the idea of this episode. I just wished it actually went somewhere. Despite a few nods that "the Warp limit may be exceeded" later that season, there was nary a mention of it again.
There also wasn't a clear point where new warp technology had apparently resolved the problem. Warp has always been a bit poorly explained and contradictory. Warp 10 was considered "infinite speed" in Voyager, yet Warp 13 is used in the TNG finale.
Some of the newer Treks have gone back and fixed up inconsistencies in the canon (eg. why Klingons are no longer bearded humans), so maybe there will be a proper canonical answer, eventually.
It was never resolved in canon but, according to the writers technical guide, apparently the warp pollution problem was resolved for Voyager with the warp bubble shaping nacelles, that's why they...
It was never resolved in canon but, according to the writers technical guide, apparently the warp pollution problem was resolved for Voyager with the warp bubble shaping nacelles, that's why they had multiple configurations, presumably they were able to do bubble shaping without mechanically adjusting the nacelles in newer ships since Voyager was a prototype and no other ships after seemed to have them.
Regarding the warp speeds, they likely redefined the speeds in the "All Good Things" future timeline, like they did for TNG from TOS. Saying Warp 9.9999[n] probably got tedious at some point.
It looks fun and quirky. I get the impression that it's just a generic science fiction comedy which has been dressed in a Starfleet uniform, but it might not be. I can't tell until I see it.
It looks fun and quirky. I get the impression that it's just a generic science fiction comedy which has been dressed in a Starfleet uniform, but it might not be. I can't tell until I see it.
That was my initial reaction too. It looks like someone had the idea and they said, "Hey, if we add the words Star Trek to the name of the series, we can double our audience!"
That was my initial reaction too. It looks like someone had the idea and they said, "Hey, if we add the words Star Trek to the name of the series, we can double our audience!"
I'm a little worried about it turning into Rick and Morty lite, but if it could be it's own thing that's not Rick and Morty or the Orville, it could be fun.
I'm a little worried about it turning into Rick and Morty lite, but if it could be it's own thing that's not Rick and Morty or the Orville, it could be fun.
Did you watch the last season of Dr Who? What I saw killed it dead forever. :( I was so excited for a female doctor and I didn't even mind Jodie in the role. Quality writing, however, went off a...
Did you watch the last season of Dr Who? What I saw killed it dead forever. :(
I was so excited for a female doctor and I didn't even mind Jodie in the role. Quality writing, however, went off a cliff into the abyss and hasn't been seen since. When you obliterate sixty years of canon just to preach cheap political lessons you lose your paying customers.
I realize it's off-topic to the main discussion, but can you elaborate on what "political lessons" were trying to be taught, to someone who fell off during Season 6? You've piqued my curiosity. I...
I realize it's off-topic to the main discussion, but can you elaborate on what "political lessons" were trying to be taught, to someone who fell off during Season 6? You've piqued my curiosity. I almost came back to see a female doctor, but really couldn't be bothered to catch up seasons 6-8.
Whitaker's second season takes big risks compared to the first one, which leads into revelations about the character of the Doctor. Doctor Who Series 12 Spoilers It was revealed in the series...
Whitaker's second season takes big risks compared to the first one, which leads into revelations about the character of the Doctor.
Doctor Who Series 12 Spoilers
It was revealed in the series finale that the Doctor is not a Gallifreyan by birth, but was discovered by one of their early explorers as a child. When the child died in an accident, they were able to regenerate into a new form, so the Gallifreyans reversed engineered that ability to make Time Lord culture into a thing, killing them who knows how many times in the process. They also wiped giant chunks of history from their mind, and sent previously unknown incarnations to do nebulous missions for Gallifrey secret service. So we end up with a lot of the Doctor's history unknown to her and she's left to unpack it at the end of the series. But as presented, the Master is the most reliable source of information, so they have an out if it's ruins the show.
And it's not going to ruin the show, because the writing is always slap-dash, the actors are always underserved, and the show runner is always the most disappointing part of the show until they bring in the next one. If Tinkerbell Jesus Doctor Power, or that time when 11 Kamehameha'd a Dalek ship didn't ruin the show forever, this is just as easy to shove in the plot corner if they need to do so in the future.
Except for the small issue that Hartnell is no longer the first doctor. Troughton is no longer the second doctor. Pertwee is no longer the third doctor. Tom Baker is no longer the fourth doctor....
Except for the small issue that Hartnell is no longer the first doctor. Troughton is no longer the second doctor. Pertwee is no longer the third doctor. Tom Baker is no longer the fourth doctor. Davidson is no longer the fifth doctor. Colin Baker is no longer the sixth doctor. McCoy is no longer the seventh doctor. McGann is no longer the eighth doctor. Eccleston is no longer the ninth doctor. Tennant is no longer the tenth doctor. Smith is no longer the eleventh doctor. Capaldi is no longer the twelfth doctor. Whittaker is no longer the thirteenth doctor.
They've obliterated the canon just to shoe-horn in one of the dumbest cringe-inducing backstories in cinematic history. But that wasn't the real reason. The real reason was to undo sixty years of 'white male' canon just because the idiot writing this show (and his bosses at the BBC) gave in to an illiterate twitter mob they mistakenly thought was going to bring them a giant new fanbase. The BBC isn't the first to fall for this, either.
These writers are not interested in building anything, nor are they talented enough to create anything on their own. If they were, they'd have built their own stories instead of riding on the coattails of franchises better than they will ever be. They are interested in one thing only - lecturing politics by taking away. They inherit a rich storied history and just aren't capable of taking it to the next level. Instead, they have to tear down and revise the history to fit whatever narratives they think the twitter mob wants.
Giving the doctor a backstory at all was a colossal blunder. Anyone who has read the books published knows how the fans were going to react to that, it was tried before and got a very cold reception that was decanonized. They wouldn't know that, though, because they never bothered to research the characters or universes they were writing for. What's the point when you're just going to wipe it out?
This has happened to Terminator - killing John Connor in the first five minutes of the last film.
This has happened to Star Trek, by turning Picard into a weak old man who spends most of his time being lectured to by women in this farce of a 'federation', then a robot so he can understand the plight of the synths in a painfully hamfisted allegory. I dare anyone to count the bodies in Picard - it's called murder-trek for a reason.
Discovery did it by revising an adopted sister into Spock's backstory. A good portion of the show was plagiarized from a video game to boot.
It was done to Star Wars with Mary-Sue Rey, who was apparently born with ten times the power of Luke or Vader and needs no training. Yes, that's why we all turned up at the theater... they couldn't even manage to get Carrie Fischer, Mark Hamill, and Harrison Ford together for a mere five minutes in the new trilogy. As wasted opportunities go, that's the stuff of legend.
I mean, what the hell? It's not as if scifi ever lacked strong female leads. Off the top of my head, Catherine Janeway, Lea Organa Skywalker, Susan Ivanova, Buffy Summers, Sarah Connor, Nyota Uhura, Samantha Carter, Aeryn Sun, any fan of this genre could go on for days. Scifi has always led the pack on social issues, that's it's core identity... and I've never seen it done so badly as in this current generation of shows.
Disney is now debating a retcon/reboot of Star Wars it's been such a disaster. They made Lucas' tepid prequels look like Shakespeare by comparison, and that's quite a feat.
I do what I always do when this happens. I change the channel, and I close my wallet. I've heard many of the new writers and actors saying, "if you don't like it, don't buy it" and that's fantastic advice I intend to follow. I'll even get the few things I do want on ebay to deny them any new revenue.
Let their 'new' fanbase pay for the hundreds of millions it takes to make these films and shows. Except that they don't, as the cratering viewership and sales and lack of merchandising for every single one of these franchises makes painfully obvious. Every franchise that goes this way ends up broke and cancelled - as they should be.
People forget this is a customer-service oriented industry. When you throw away and actively antagonize your old fan base, you'd better be sure your new one can still pay the bills. Whoops. Turns out these new fans all over twitter are conspicuously absent when it's time to buy or watch. They aren't numerous or invested - they are just loud.
The only silver lining here is that these blunders will undermine Hollywood as we know it (exacerbated greatly by the pandemic shutdown) to make room for someone with intelligence to craft new stories, new franchises, and new canon for a new generation. That's a very good thing in my book. I won't miss their monopoly, or their guilds, or their gatekeepers.
The Orville has taken over for Star Trek and is only outdone at present by TOS and TNG - and at the rate it's improving, it has a shot at surpassing them. Chalk that up to an eternity of CBS mismanagement.
The Mandalorian and Clone Wars holds out the possibility of a future for Star Wars, once the rest of the mess is cleaned up somehow.
Pretty sure Terminator is over, and without a major retcon, so is Doctor Who. It has had the lowest ratings and the highest backlash in its history. The failure is a fact borne out by the numbers, not a matter of opinion.
I'm glad Babylon 5's rights are locked safely away in licensing hell where this current generation of hack writers can't get their hands on it. How long until they trot out Stargate and Farscape to the chopping block?
I'm not impressed, and I honestly question the taste of anyone who finds the current crop of shows equal to or better than their predecessors. All of it seems like quite a setback to me. It also seems like any investors and shareholders have some legitimate lawsuits waiting for the people responsible for this mess.
I think the identity politics crowd is bearing the worst of it, too. They have legit grievances about representation and systemic stereotyping, and yet they didn't get good stories or good representation or portrayals that break the mold. They got raked over the coals by white men and white women presuming to write for them using cookie-cutter characters. Now they are taking heat for these failures.
Better writers could have made each and every one of these changes work out for the best, rather than the worst. The failure was servicing agenda over good stories, a lack of respect for generations of worldbuilding, and cheap generic characters rather than real character development.
Perhaps the writer's strike and ongoing issues there had some effect, perhaps it's related to distractions and mergers caused by the streaming wars. There are plenty of excuses out there... but in the end, I just don't care. I've got no shortage of better media to spend my money and my time with right now.
I'm glad I buy most of the things I love on physical media, too, with the recent trend to censor 'problematic' episodes of older shows and movies. They can't reach into my dvd collection and censor what's on my shelf.
I'm pretty disgusted with the whole affair. Since I can't enjoy the shows, I'll just have to enjoy making sport of them and ridiculing their creators and the behaviors of these companies. Either way I'll have my fun. It's just that one of these options is less profitable for the creatives than the other, but that's their problem, not mine.
Sorry if that was a bit of a rant, but this trend has been grating on me for well over a decade and with it crashing the comics book industry, messing up video game franchises, encroaching on roleplaying games, and derailing every. single. successful. scifi franchise, I'm just about ready to stop being tolerant or assuming good faith.
Hopefully the lack of revenue will kill the entire movement on its own soon enough. Then we can get back to arguing about which captain was the best, or which episode posed the best moral questions, or which storyline was the most inspiring... and which new franchise finally managed to top the old ones.
Minor nitpick: It's Katherine Janeway. As to your point about strong female leads... with only one exception, those female characters you name are all post-1990. And, that one exception was not a...
It's not as if scifi ever lacked strong female leads. Off the top of my head, Catherine Janeway, Lea Organa Skywalker, Susan Ivanova, Buffy Summers, Sarah Connor, Nyota Uhura, Samantha Carter, Aeryn Sun, any fan of this genre could go on for days.
Minor nitpick: It's Katherine Janeway.
As to your point about strong female leads... with only one exception, those female characters you name are all post-1990.
And, that one exception was not a lead, by any stretch of the imagination. Lieutenant Uhura was a member of the second-string ensemble, along with Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov. For most of the original series, she was just a telephonist who happened to be on the bridge. As you probably already know, Nichelle Nichols was so disillusioned with her character that she was planning to leave the series after the first season, but for a random encounter with Martin Luther King. We didn't get an Uhura-centric episode until the animated series, and they basically had to incapacitate the whole male crew before she got command of the Enterprise. Uhura wasn't a strong female lead.
Before 1990, strong female leads were thin on the ground. Women were, at best, sidekicks and, at worst, damsels in distress. I've just finished watching the 1980 series 'Buck Rogers' for the first time since I was a teenager. Colonel Wilma Deering started out as a strong character, but was pushed into the background so that Buck Rogers was free to have his adventures. Apart from her, the only other significant female character I can think of from before 1990 is Diana from 'V' (the 1980s TV series). She was fabulous. She was the villain you love to hate.
Giving the doctor a backstory at all was a colossal blunder.
I agree. And giving the Doctor this particular backstory was even worse. I could have lived with a backstory that showed the first Doctor (Hartnell) facing off against the Time Lord Council over a crucial issue, and then deciding to leave Gallifrey in disgust. But making the Doctor an alien, and the Time Lords into thieves of alien biology, was just wrong.
However, this trend started back with Steve Moffat's term as show-runner. The Eleventh Doctor became the most important person in the universe, the show became too self-referential, and it basically disappeared up its own arse. That changed somewhat with the Twelfth Doctor (thankfully), but seems to have returned under Chris Chibnall's leadership.
Discovery did it by revising an adopted sister into Spock's backstory.
Agreed. This was annoying and gratuitous. It added nothing to the story to have Burnham be Spock's foster sister, apart from allowing her to benefit from the spillover of fans' affection for Spock. If she's not a good enough character for us to like her for herself, then adding the halo effect from Spock was just lazy writing.
I haven't heard the term "murder-trek" before, but it feels right. :)
People forget this is a customer-service oriented industry. When you throw away and actively antagonize your old fan base, you'd better be sure your new one can still pay the bills.
A lot of these reboots and remakes aren't true to the originals. They just use name-recognition from the originals to bring in viewers - but the old fans don't like them because they're not what they expect, and the new fans like them for what they are, not what they're called. The name sets up false expectations in people's minds. Some of these new series should be made as original franchises, with no connection to old franchises. If you're not going to be faithful to the original series, then don't use the original series' name just to sell your new series.
And, in that, I include the reboot of 'Battlestar Galactica'. That's one of my favourite science fiction TV series, but it's barely true to the original. It has a totally different tone, style, and story. It should have been made as a new series, without borrowing the name-recognition of the older series. It would still be a modern classic of science fiction, just under a different name.
Man, I totally forgot about Diana and V. I'll add that to my rewatch list. Star Wars was from 1977/80/83, so Leia is solidly pre-1990. I can add Ellen Ripley as well, that's 1979/86 for Alien and...
Man, I totally forgot about Diana and V. I'll add that to my rewatch list.
Star Wars was from 1977/80/83, so Leia is solidly pre-1990. I can add Ellen Ripley as well, that's 1979/86 for Alien and Aliens. Terminator was 1984. It's worth noting that critics panned the hell out of films with female leads in the 80s, too. If you want strong female leads pre-1990 horror films are your best bet, 'scream queens' were a thing for a while there. I also seem to remember some cheesy fantasy 80s films with female leads, like Red Sonja and Legend and Labyrinth. If you switch to Comedy and Romance you can follow it back to the 50s and 60s.
Frankly I think they were doing it in the horror and fantasy genres just to get horny teenagers into movie theaters rather than out of some sense of social justice. Sex sold then, still sells now, and probably always will.
Uhura wasn't a strong female lead.
She did score the very first interracial on screen kiss - and back then, that wasn't just leading on social issues, it was dominating them. That's the Trek I miss. Bold, brave, epic.
It is pretty telling that modern female leads in these franchises can't hold a candle to those from the 90s or even the 80s and 70s, though. That's falling backwards. By now we should be seeing more progress, and that's what I was hoping for with Jodie. She's a fine actress, has a bit of Tom Baker's goofball quirkyness, but no actor can make up for shit storytelling. :/
the new fans like them for what they are
See, there's the problem. These new fans seem to be mythical pink unicorns. If they had real new fans, they'd have real new revenue, and active merchandising, and healthy franchises. Check the numbers on any 'woke' series you like and they go off a cliff in a hurry shortly after they change over.
The smart move was catering to the old fans and getting the new ones at the same time. Seems like that's just too much to ask for. They should have done a soft-reboot for Star Wars and mirrored the steps of the original trilogy, slotting Han, Luke, and Leia in place of Boba Fett, Yoda, and Obi Wan. Something along those lines would have killed with both groups of people and made Disney a mountain of money.
I just can't fathom their decision making. Even shows like Westworld and Game of Thrones ran into this trap. How many fathers can we kill on Father's Day?
You're right. However, I was misled by you spelling "Leia" as "Lea", and not referring to her as "Princess Leia". I assumed this "Lea Organa Skywalker" was a new character from the prequels or...
Star Wars was from 1977/80/83, so Leia is solidly pre-1990.
You're right. However, I was misled by you spelling "Leia" as "Lea", and not referring to her as "Princess Leia". I assumed this "Lea Organa Skywalker" was a new character from the prequels or sequels.
She did score the very first interracial on screen kiss - and back then, that wasn't just leading on social issues, it was dominating them.
True, but that still doesn't make Uhura a strong female lead.
Check the numbers on any 'woke' series you like and they go off a cliff in a hurry shortly after they change over.
I'm not sure that's because of their "wokeness", though. It is possible to tell a good story with non-white non-male characters. I liked 'Ex Machina', for instance. And even though the 'Wonder Woman' movie didn't become one of my personal favourites, a lot of other people liked it. And I'm loving the 'Supergirl' TV series. Also the British television series 'HUM∀NS' has a diverse cast and is a brilliant show.
I think part of the problem is rebooting old franchises into something new. If someone wants to make something new, they should start from scratch. If someone wants to work with an existing franchise, they should stay true to its existing canon and style.
Thanks for taking the time to type all this out. Admittedly, it did get a little ranty, but I think that helped give some needed context I've been missing, which was unfortunately causing me to...
Thanks for taking the time to type all this out. Admittedly, it did get a little ranty, but I think that helped give some needed context I've been missing, which was unfortunately causing me to lump people with your opinions in with "rah rah blacks are bad, only 2 genders" hater types. To be quite honest, I agree with your salient point, which I read as:
These writers are not interested in building anything, nor are they talented enough to create anything on their own. If they were, they'd have built their own stories instead of riding on the coattails of franchises better than they will ever be.
But I do disagree with your inherent assumption that "lecturing politics" is bad. While in these cases I feel like it does lead to terrible stories and corruption of well-established canon, this isn't something that should be demonized for being considered; rather, I hope you would join me in saying that the product of this type of thinking can be judged independently. I too wish that people who choose to write more politically-aware plotlines would be willing to risk the strength of those ideas on their own franchises, characters, and settings. But I think the fact that more people are willing to produce such content isn't bad in itself.
Either way, thanks again for sharing. I knew this was going to go off-topic, but figured nothing lost in asking. :)
We're in agreement. I honestly couldn't care less about the race or gender choices - that's all part of the character building and the drama, no choices are inherently better or worse than any other.
We're in agreement. I honestly couldn't care less about the race or gender choices - that's all part of the character building and the drama, no choices are inherently better or worse than any other.
https://www.cbs.com/shows/star-trek-lower-decks/video/02V4dGY1ylHxA59B7vEWX7Se8B8_tzDG/star-trek-lower-decks-second-contact/ First episode is out, is aight. If there's a YouTube link put out, I...
I'll watch it... eventually. Mythic Quest has been the only comedy lately to really scratch my geek-comedy itch, and I feel like it's raised the bar pretty high. ...plus I'm still working through...
I'll watch it... eventually. Mythic Quest has been the only comedy lately to really scratch my geek-comedy itch, and I feel like it's raised the bar pretty high.
...plus I'm still working through Deep Space Nine (two seasons left!) and have like... what, three more Trek show installments after that? So it'll take a while.
The only CBS All Access show I've given a shot was that Evil show and it was... meh.
So another Star Trek skin. It has the look and feel of Rick and Morty, are they using the same animators? (answer: yes they are). The similarity is uncanny. Looks mildly funny. I’m not the target...
So another Star Trek skin. It has the look and feel of Rick and Morty, are they using the same animators? (answer: yes they are). The similarity is uncanny.
If this is what passes for new Star Trek along with Discovery and Picard, I'm done with Trek at this point. No wonder Amazon and Netflix both passed on this show. Everything post-Voyager has become a cringe-inducing parody of what made Trek worth watching.
Last night it had a whopping 2.6k likes out of 500k views. Today the ratio and comments are hidden. That says it all right there.
What didn't you like about Discovery and Picard?
The abandonment of Federation principles and the constantly nonsensical (even for Trek) writing. I wasn't a fan of the revisionist history in Discovery either - though I admit I did love the revisit to Talos 4.
Is that really new to the series, though? The earlier series were quite quick to question, or even outright ignore the Federation's principles.
The best known example is the prime directive, which many have joked has become little more than a suggestion. Captains have come up with all sorts of justifications for ignoring or bending it.
Next, how often was the neutral zone entered? The risk of a Romulan conflict was great, but multiple episodes resulted in traversing this forbidden space.
The most idealistic captain, the great Jean-Luc Picard, has many examples of putting principles first. Decloaking the Pegasus is probably the biggest example. But even Picard insisted an exception be made in Justice, when Wesley's life was on the line. By the time we get to DS9's In the Pale Moonlight, many more lines have been crossed.
Trek is at its best when it's questioning what is and isn't right. The Federation ideals (what I think of as the "Roddenberry Utopia") serve as a great inspiration, and are largely what make the show so enjoyable. But they've never been afraid to explore the cracks in those ideals, either.
That's why I, personally, think 'In The Pale Moonlight' is one of the worst Star Trek episodes ever made - worse than 'Spock's Brain' or 'Sub Rosa' or 'Move Along Home' or 'Threshold'. Those episodes just had bad writing or bad science. 'In The Pale Moonlight' threw away the very ideals that Star Trek is supposed to be about.
However, those examples were the exception, rather than the rule. And no Captain ever ignored the principles of Starfleet and the Federation for personal gain or to fight a war. If Picard or Janeway ignored the Prime Directive, it was to help people. If Sisko ignored ethical rules, it was to reduce violence. There were Starfleet rules in the show but, when they were broken, it was for good reasons, rather than bad reasons. The meta-principle which overrode the other principles was always the good of others.
That's my sort of show.
I guess that's a matter of personal taste - I've always felt that previous incarnations of Trek were set in a world that was a little too perfect.
To me, the Federation is what we should aspire to as humanity, but there's plenty of ways in which the Federation just wouldn't work in reality. I think the difference between those ideals and the realities of the world is a fun space for Star Trek to play in.
Obviously they would have to have something like Section 31 to help take care of things that need to be done but the Federation doesn't want to dirty its hands with sanctioning.
I do agree that Discovery is a bit nonsensical when it comes to plot. I like the characters but I really dislike the plot. I'm very excited to see what comes of the Pike series they greenlit, since he was far and away the best part of season 2 of Discovery.
Some of us like idealistic escapist fiction! There are so many shows that show what humanity is "really" like. But it's disappointing that everyone's vision of "real" humans always involves negative depictions of people. It's nice to have a show that isn't like that, a show that deliberately decides to be optimistic. It is fiction, after all. It doesn't have to show the gritty miserable aspects of humanity. As you rightly say, it shows something we can aspire to.
If I want to see reality, I can turn on the TV news. When I'm watching Star Trek, I don't want to see reality.
I totally get where you’re coming from, but the problem with that world (from a dramatic standpoint) is that there just isn’t a ton of tension outside of small scale, interpersonal relationships. If there is no conflict, how do you have drama?
I think there’s a balance to be had, and I do think that Discovery went a bit too far in one direction. Personally, I do like that Picard takes the character in a different direction than most of us thought Jean Luc Picard would end up.
There's large-scale conflict introduced by non-Starfleet non-Federation outsiders, ranging from the Borg to the Dominion.
There's small-scale conflict due to the actions of various species Starfleet encounters, and local foreign problems they get involved in.
There's tension due to natural phenomena bringing danger to people - from spatial anomalies and planetquakes, to planet-eating organisms.
There's tension when technology goes wrong.
There's philosophical conflict when technology becomes sentient (exocomps, Professor Moriarity, Data, etc).
There's tension and conflict aplenty!
The elephant in the room for a future trek series is Force of Nature.
The parallels to our current fossil fuel dependency and climate change with warp drive slowly rending the fabric of space-time are just too good to pass up. That sort of large scale disruption of space, restrictions on speed, and loss of shipping lanes would provide plenty of conflict and diplomatic challenges and humanitarian missions for the Federation to overcome.
It'd also spur on the trans-warp era, we know they get there eventually. Needing to find a better warp drive is a good motivation.
I loved the idea of this episode. I just wished it actually went somewhere. Despite a few nods that "the Warp limit may be exceeded" later that season, there was nary a mention of it again.
There also wasn't a clear point where new warp technology had apparently resolved the problem. Warp has always been a bit poorly explained and contradictory. Warp 10 was considered "infinite speed" in Voyager, yet Warp 13 is used in the TNG finale.
Some of the newer Treks have gone back and fixed up inconsistencies in the canon (eg. why Klingons are no longer bearded humans), so maybe there will be a proper canonical answer, eventually.
It was never resolved in canon but, according to the writers technical guide, apparently the warp pollution problem was resolved for Voyager with the warp bubble shaping nacelles, that's why they had multiple configurations, presumably they were able to do bubble shaping without mechanically adjusting the nacelles in newer ships since Voyager was a prototype and no other ships after seemed to have them.
Regarding the warp speeds, they likely redefined the speeds in the "All Good Things" future timeline, like they did for TNG from TOS. Saying Warp 9.9999[n] probably got tedious at some point.
Normal interpersonal drama set in a science fiction world sounds good to me.
It looks fun and quirky. I get the impression that it's just a generic science fiction comedy which has been dressed in a Starfleet uniform, but it might not be. I can't tell until I see it.
That was my initial reaction too. It looks like someone had the idea and they said, "Hey, if we add the words Star Trek to the name of the series, we can double our audience!"
Even Picard feels that way too. Like how the holograms in Picard are significantly worse than holograms of the Star Trek universe before.
I'm a little worried about it turning into Rick and Morty lite, but if it could be it's own thing that's not Rick and Morty or the Orville, it could be fun.
Did you watch the last season of Dr Who? What I saw killed it dead forever. :(
I was so excited for a female doctor and I didn't even mind Jodie in the role. Quality writing, however, went off a cliff into the abyss and hasn't been seen since. When you obliterate sixty years of canon just to preach cheap political lessons you lose your paying customers.
I realize it's off-topic to the main discussion, but can you elaborate on what "political lessons" were trying to be taught, to someone who fell off during Season 6? You've piqued my curiosity. I almost came back to see a female doctor, but really couldn't be bothered to catch up seasons 6-8.
Whitaker's second season takes big risks compared to the first one, which leads into revelations about the character of the Doctor.
Doctor Who Series 12 Spoilers
It was revealed in the series finale that the Doctor is not a Gallifreyan by birth, but was discovered by one of their early explorers as a child. When the child died in an accident, they were able to regenerate into a new form, so the Gallifreyans reversed engineered that ability to make Time Lord culture into a thing, killing them who knows how many times in the process. They also wiped giant chunks of history from their mind, and sent previously unknown incarnations to do nebulous missions for Gallifrey secret service. So we end up with a lot of the Doctor's history unknown to her and she's left to unpack it at the end of the series. But as presented, the Master is the most reliable source of information, so they have an out if it's ruins the show.And it's not going to ruin the show, because the writing is always slap-dash, the actors are always underserved, and the show runner is always the most disappointing part of the show until they bring in the next one. If Tinkerbell Jesus Doctor Power, or that time when 11 Kamehameha'd a Dalek ship didn't ruin the show forever, this is just as easy to shove in the plot corner if they need to do so in the future.
Except for the small issue that Hartnell is no longer the first doctor. Troughton is no longer the second doctor. Pertwee is no longer the third doctor. Tom Baker is no longer the fourth doctor. Davidson is no longer the fifth doctor. Colin Baker is no longer the sixth doctor. McCoy is no longer the seventh doctor. McGann is no longer the eighth doctor. Eccleston is no longer the ninth doctor. Tennant is no longer the tenth doctor. Smith is no longer the eleventh doctor. Capaldi is no longer the twelfth doctor. Whittaker is no longer the thirteenth doctor.
They've obliterated the canon just to shoe-horn in one of the dumbest cringe-inducing backstories in cinematic history. But that wasn't the real reason. The real reason was to undo sixty years of 'white male' canon just because the idiot writing this show (and his bosses at the BBC) gave in to an illiterate twitter mob they mistakenly thought was going to bring them a giant new fanbase. The BBC isn't the first to fall for this, either.
These writers are not interested in building anything, nor are they talented enough to create anything on their own. If they were, they'd have built their own stories instead of riding on the coattails of franchises better than they will ever be. They are interested in one thing only - lecturing politics by taking away. They inherit a rich storied history and just aren't capable of taking it to the next level. Instead, they have to tear down and revise the history to fit whatever narratives they think the twitter mob wants.
Giving the doctor a backstory at all was a colossal blunder. Anyone who has read the books published knows how the fans were going to react to that, it was tried before and got a very cold reception that was decanonized. They wouldn't know that, though, because they never bothered to research the characters or universes they were writing for. What's the point when you're just going to wipe it out?
This has happened to Terminator - killing John Connor in the first five minutes of the last film.
This has happened to Star Trek, by turning Picard into a weak old man who spends most of his time being lectured to by women in this farce of a 'federation', then a robot so he can understand the plight of the synths in a painfully hamfisted allegory. I dare anyone to count the bodies in Picard - it's called murder-trek for a reason.
Discovery did it by revising an adopted sister into Spock's backstory. A good portion of the show was plagiarized from a video game to boot.
It was done to Star Wars with Mary-Sue Rey, who was apparently born with ten times the power of Luke or Vader and needs no training. Yes, that's why we all turned up at the theater... they couldn't even manage to get Carrie Fischer, Mark Hamill, and Harrison Ford together for a mere five minutes in the new trilogy. As wasted opportunities go, that's the stuff of legend.
I mean, what the hell? It's not as if scifi ever lacked strong female leads. Off the top of my head, Catherine Janeway, Lea Organa Skywalker, Susan Ivanova, Buffy Summers, Sarah Connor, Nyota Uhura, Samantha Carter, Aeryn Sun, any fan of this genre could go on for days. Scifi has always led the pack on social issues, that's it's core identity... and I've never seen it done so badly as in this current generation of shows.
Disney is now debating a retcon/reboot of Star Wars it's been such a disaster. They made Lucas' tepid prequels look like Shakespeare by comparison, and that's quite a feat.
I do what I always do when this happens. I change the channel, and I close my wallet. I've heard many of the new writers and actors saying, "if you don't like it, don't buy it" and that's fantastic advice I intend to follow. I'll even get the few things I do want on ebay to deny them any new revenue.
Let their 'new' fanbase pay for the hundreds of millions it takes to make these films and shows. Except that they don't, as the cratering viewership and sales and lack of merchandising for every single one of these franchises makes painfully obvious. Every franchise that goes this way ends up broke and cancelled - as they should be.
People forget this is a customer-service oriented industry. When you throw away and actively antagonize your old fan base, you'd better be sure your new one can still pay the bills. Whoops. Turns out these new fans all over twitter are conspicuously absent when it's time to buy or watch. They aren't numerous or invested - they are just loud.
The only silver lining here is that these blunders will undermine Hollywood as we know it (exacerbated greatly by the pandemic shutdown) to make room for someone with intelligence to craft new stories, new franchises, and new canon for a new generation. That's a very good thing in my book. I won't miss their monopoly, or their guilds, or their gatekeepers.
The Orville has taken over for Star Trek and is only outdone at present by TOS and TNG - and at the rate it's improving, it has a shot at surpassing them. Chalk that up to an eternity of CBS mismanagement.
The Mandalorian and Clone Wars holds out the possibility of a future for Star Wars, once the rest of the mess is cleaned up somehow.
Pretty sure Terminator is over, and without a major retcon, so is Doctor Who. It has had the lowest ratings and the highest backlash in its history. The failure is a fact borne out by the numbers, not a matter of opinion.
I'm glad Babylon 5's rights are locked safely away in licensing hell where this current generation of hack writers can't get their hands on it. How long until they trot out Stargate and Farscape to the chopping block?
I'm not impressed, and I honestly question the taste of anyone who finds the current crop of shows equal to or better than their predecessors. All of it seems like quite a setback to me. It also seems like any investors and shareholders have some legitimate lawsuits waiting for the people responsible for this mess.
I think the identity politics crowd is bearing the worst of it, too. They have legit grievances about representation and systemic stereotyping, and yet they didn't get good stories or good representation or portrayals that break the mold. They got raked over the coals by white men and white women presuming to write for them using cookie-cutter characters. Now they are taking heat for these failures.
Better writers could have made each and every one of these changes work out for the best, rather than the worst. The failure was servicing agenda over good stories, a lack of respect for generations of worldbuilding, and cheap generic characters rather than real character development.
Perhaps the writer's strike and ongoing issues there had some effect, perhaps it's related to distractions and mergers caused by the streaming wars. There are plenty of excuses out there... but in the end, I just don't care. I've got no shortage of better media to spend my money and my time with right now.
I'm glad I buy most of the things I love on physical media, too, with the recent trend to censor 'problematic' episodes of older shows and movies. They can't reach into my dvd collection and censor what's on my shelf.
I'm pretty disgusted with the whole affair. Since I can't enjoy the shows, I'll just have to enjoy making sport of them and ridiculing their creators and the behaviors of these companies. Either way I'll have my fun. It's just that one of these options is less profitable for the creatives than the other, but that's their problem, not mine.
Sorry if that was a bit of a rant, but this trend has been grating on me for well over a decade and with it crashing the comics book industry, messing up video game franchises, encroaching on roleplaying games, and derailing every. single. successful. scifi franchise, I'm just about ready to stop being tolerant or assuming good faith.
Hopefully the lack of revenue will kill the entire movement on its own soon enough. Then we can get back to arguing about which captain was the best, or which episode posed the best moral questions, or which storyline was the most inspiring... and which new franchise finally managed to top the old ones.
Minor nitpick: It's Katherine Janeway.
As to your point about strong female leads... with only one exception, those female characters you name are all post-1990.
And, that one exception was not a lead, by any stretch of the imagination. Lieutenant Uhura was a member of the second-string ensemble, along with Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov. For most of the original series, she was just a telephonist who happened to be on the bridge. As you probably already know, Nichelle Nichols was so disillusioned with her character that she was planning to leave the series after the first season, but for a random encounter with Martin Luther King. We didn't get an Uhura-centric episode until the animated series, and they basically had to incapacitate the whole male crew before she got command of the Enterprise. Uhura wasn't a strong female lead.
Before 1990, strong female leads were thin on the ground. Women were, at best, sidekicks and, at worst, damsels in distress. I've just finished watching the 1980 series 'Buck Rogers' for the first time since I was a teenager. Colonel Wilma Deering started out as a strong character, but was pushed into the background so that Buck Rogers was free to have his adventures. Apart from her, the only other significant female character I can think of from before 1990 is Diana from 'V' (the 1980s TV series). She was fabulous. She was the villain you love to hate.
I agree. And giving the Doctor this particular backstory was even worse. I could have lived with a backstory that showed the first Doctor (Hartnell) facing off against the Time Lord Council over a crucial issue, and then deciding to leave Gallifrey in disgust. But making the Doctor an alien, and the Time Lords into thieves of alien biology, was just wrong.
However, this trend started back with Steve Moffat's term as show-runner. The Eleventh Doctor became the most important person in the universe, the show became too self-referential, and it basically disappeared up its own arse. That changed somewhat with the Twelfth Doctor (thankfully), but seems to have returned under Chris Chibnall's leadership.
Agreed. This was annoying and gratuitous. It added nothing to the story to have Burnham be Spock's foster sister, apart from allowing her to benefit from the spillover of fans' affection for Spock. If she's not a good enough character for us to like her for herself, then adding the halo effect from Spock was just lazy writing.
I haven't heard the term "murder-trek" before, but it feels right. :)
A lot of these reboots and remakes aren't true to the originals. They just use name-recognition from the originals to bring in viewers - but the old fans don't like them because they're not what they expect, and the new fans like them for what they are, not what they're called. The name sets up false expectations in people's minds. Some of these new series should be made as original franchises, with no connection to old franchises. If you're not going to be faithful to the original series, then don't use the original series' name just to sell your new series.
And, in that, I include the reboot of 'Battlestar Galactica'. That's one of my favourite science fiction TV series, but it's barely true to the original. It has a totally different tone, style, and story. It should have been made as a new series, without borrowing the name-recognition of the older series. It would still be a modern classic of science fiction, just under a different name.
Man, I totally forgot about Diana and V. I'll add that to my rewatch list.
Star Wars was from 1977/80/83, so Leia is solidly pre-1990. I can add Ellen Ripley as well, that's 1979/86 for Alien and Aliens. Terminator was 1984. It's worth noting that critics panned the hell out of films with female leads in the 80s, too. If you want strong female leads pre-1990 horror films are your best bet, 'scream queens' were a thing for a while there. I also seem to remember some cheesy fantasy 80s films with female leads, like Red Sonja and Legend and Labyrinth. If you switch to Comedy and Romance you can follow it back to the 50s and 60s.
Frankly I think they were doing it in the horror and fantasy genres just to get horny teenagers into movie theaters rather than out of some sense of social justice. Sex sold then, still sells now, and probably always will.
She did score the very first interracial on screen kiss - and back then, that wasn't just leading on social issues, it was dominating them. That's the Trek I miss. Bold, brave, epic.
It is pretty telling that modern female leads in these franchises can't hold a candle to those from the 90s or even the 80s and 70s, though. That's falling backwards. By now we should be seeing more progress, and that's what I was hoping for with Jodie. She's a fine actress, has a bit of Tom Baker's goofball quirkyness, but no actor can make up for shit storytelling. :/
See, there's the problem. These new fans seem to be mythical pink unicorns. If they had real new fans, they'd have real new revenue, and active merchandising, and healthy franchises. Check the numbers on any 'woke' series you like and they go off a cliff in a hurry shortly after they change over.
The smart move was catering to the old fans and getting the new ones at the same time. Seems like that's just too much to ask for. They should have done a soft-reboot for Star Wars and mirrored the steps of the original trilogy, slotting Han, Luke, and Leia in place of Boba Fett, Yoda, and Obi Wan. Something along those lines would have killed with both groups of people and made Disney a mountain of money.
I just can't fathom their decision making. Even shows like Westworld and Game of Thrones ran into this trap. How many fathers can we kill on Father's Day?
You're right. However, I was misled by you spelling "Leia" as "Lea", and not referring to her as "Princess Leia". I assumed this "Lea Organa Skywalker" was a new character from the prequels or sequels.
True, but that still doesn't make Uhura a strong female lead.
I'm not sure that's because of their "wokeness", though. It is possible to tell a good story with non-white non-male characters. I liked 'Ex Machina', for instance. And even though the 'Wonder Woman' movie didn't become one of my personal favourites, a lot of other people liked it. And I'm loving the 'Supergirl' TV series. Also the British television series 'HUM∀NS' has a diverse cast and is a brilliant show.
I think part of the problem is rebooting old franchises into something new. If someone wants to make something new, they should start from scratch. If someone wants to work with an existing franchise, they should stay true to its existing canon and style.
Thanks for taking the time to type all this out. Admittedly, it did get a little ranty, but I think that helped give some needed context I've been missing, which was unfortunately causing me to lump people with your opinions in with "rah rah blacks are bad, only 2 genders" hater types. To be quite honest, I agree with your salient point, which I read as:
But I do disagree with your inherent assumption that "lecturing politics" is bad. While in these cases I feel like it does lead to terrible stories and corruption of well-established canon, this isn't something that should be demonized for being considered; rather, I hope you would join me in saying that the product of this type of thinking can be judged independently. I too wish that people who choose to write more politically-aware plotlines would be willing to risk the strength of those ideas on their own franchises, characters, and settings. But I think the fact that more people are willing to produce such content isn't bad in itself.
Either way, thanks again for sharing. I knew this was going to go off-topic, but figured nothing lost in asking. :)
We're in agreement. I honestly couldn't care less about the race or gender choices - that's all part of the character building and the drama, no choices are inherently better or worse than any other.
https://www.cbs.com/shows/star-trek-lower-decks/video/02V4dGY1ylHxA59B7vEWX7Se8B8_tzDG/star-trek-lower-decks-second-contact/
First episode is out, is aight. If there's a YouTube link put out, I can add it there too.
I'll watch it... eventually. Mythic Quest has been the only comedy lately to really scratch my geek-comedy itch, and I feel like it's raised the bar pretty high.
...plus I'm still working through Deep Space Nine (two seasons left!) and have like... what, three more Trek show installments after that? So it'll take a while.
The only CBS All Access show I've given a shot was that Evil show and it was... meh.
So another Star Trek skin. It has the look and feel of Rick and Morty, are they using the same animators? (answer: yes they are). The similarity is uncanny.
Looks mildly funny.
I’m not the target audience for this.
I'm a big fan of Mike McMahan's book and Twitter account. The guy is a huge Star Trek nerd, so I'm excited to see how this turns out.
It looks almost exactly like final space but worse.
Is Final Space any good?
The first season very much, the second season not so.
The video is unavailable for me.
Does this link work for you?
https://www.startrek.com/videos/the-star-trek-lower-decks-trailer-is-reporting-for-duty
Thanks! That one works!