Yea generally, AFAICT, it’s a problem with Discovery that the writers tried to be just a bit more “present”. Same with the Stacey Abrams cameo that was just a bit too “front and center” when it would have worked better in the background. I get it, it’s weird for TNG era starfleet to all be into classical music and jazz and Leonardo Da Vinci (Janeway), but you know, it prevents it from aging in the long run.
It’s difficult to even evaluate this level of complaint against Discovery when there are so many more fundamental issues with the writing . Like yeah okay this is fair criticism but I would care a lot more if it was well written to begin with.
It’s really a pile of garbage. And I’m angry at myself for watching so much of it. It’s clearly not written by anybody interested in the star trek universe.
My go-to example is also this one episode where one young character decides to from now on go by the pronouns “they/them”. I’m all for the inclusion of nonbinary characters - that’s what star trek always stood for - inclusion and the shared humanity that we all have. But that episode had basically nothing else going for it and the pronouns were the plot.
The new, great series “strange new worlds” on the other hand had a great episode with a very interesting non binary character (that BTW never was explicitly pointed out as one) who helped spock deal with his own problems of navigating his own two identities (human/vulcan). It was so clever and the nonbinaryness was integral, to the plot, but it wasn’t the plot. The actual plot was that the non binary character basically fooled everyone and turned out the villain. It’s such a great comparison between those two series. One makes a compelling show and the other one has nothing to say other than ticking a list of “woke” virtue signalling points.
well discovery criticism is well trodden by now and I didn’t want to trigger a dive into it (which I say as a Disco critic). This part though, however minor it might seem, I think goes beyond being a critique of the show and more of a strong lesson that writers should know and shouldn’t fuck around with, especially in sci-fi.
It may also highlight how Disco writers are maybe just not good trek writers and maybe didn’t get the show … where it’s not so much about the “right now” like social media but about the bigger questions of the present.
That also could potentially be justified by the fact that the US still has places named after Confederate generals though it’s harder to lock down as any sort of positive thing.
I’m thinking this is bad for Star Trek no matter what, because the first thing these entertainment companies do when they buy each other is cut budgets and cut projects.
Anyway, my opinion is firmly that if they’re going to make references, it needs to be about people who are already dead, whose negatives are known, and who can’t come back and fuck your reference up by becoming a horrible person as your life goes on.
Definitely. You save yourself a lot of trouble if you wait until they’re dead before you praise them, politics wise.
Because these living people keep revealing how Un-Star-Trek they are, imho.
Nothing breaks immersion more than something that is very un-Star Trek like being shown in Star Trek.
I still like the season, but some of the writing is just so weird.
Like having Tilly instead of Michael finish the race. I know its a throwback to when they practised running in the first season, but its a physical test and Michael is surely in better shape than Tilly. It would have been so easy to get around that by just making Michael drink the water because she can’t take it anymore.
And finally we see why the doc keeps talking about his abuela every second scene he is in this season. She is now a hologram. I am guessing this is setting something up, new tech that reads your mind and makes a convincing hologram of someone you know. Surely that won’t be abused.
The report comes as Paramount — owner of Paramount Pictures, CBS, Paramount+ and cable channels like MTV and Comedy Central — has been in exclusive M&A talks with David Ellison’s Skydance Media the past two weeks. Meanwhile, word emerged last week that Sony Pictures Entertainment was mulling a joint bid with private-equity firm Apollo Global Management, which had offered more than $27 billion for the entirety of the media company inclusive of its more than $14 billion in debt.
Skydance? Oh good, let’s flush main timeline Star Trek straight down the toilet and only do Kelvin Trek from now on because pew pew explosions!
Definitely, but I have more hope in Sony not ruining Star Trek than I do in Skydance. Never mind the fact that most of their movies are bigger on special effects than they are on plot, look at what they’ve offered the world in terms of television thus far:
Sony? Who the hell knows. They make good TV and terrible TV. They haven’t done much in terms of sci-fi TV, but they seem to at least be able to make a reasonable TV show that’s not just a small screen version of pew pew explosions.
That said, I think selling Star Trek to Skydance would still be a waste. I would rather see it go to Apple (which has been very good to science fiction from the start) or Universal (because I think they would also take good care of it, and because I love the irony of giving Trek back to NBC).
Apple (which has been very good to science fiction from the start)
I don’t have Apple TV, so I can’t speak for any of their other shows, but I have been told to avoid their Foundation TV show at all costs since I like the novels.
Foundation is really good, IMO. They added new characters to the story and changed some things up, so if you think the books are perfect you might have trouble accepting it. It’s one of the most visually-breathtaking shows ever.
But Apple TV’s crowning achievement is For All Mankind.
The story is Soviet Russia beats America to the moon, therefore the space race never ends and the USSR never falls. But the best description I’ve heard is that it “shows what happens between the moon landing and Star Trek.”
Their other scifi stuff ranges from okay to excellent. THERE’s a lot to choose from now. I just finished Constellation and really enjoyed it.
I just finished Constellation and really enjoyed it.
Just scrolling through some old trek conversations, literally 2 days after finishing constellation and I read this … woot!
Yea, I found myself really enjoying it too. One of those wonderful things where I had no idea what it was going in and finding a sort of lower-hype style sci-fi trying for a real attempt at something a bit more dramatic and even surreal and I was just like “yes!”. It certainly had its flaws IMO, but when it was working it was some of my fav TV in recent times!
spoilerI loved that scene in the “other”/liminal cabin (well all of the cabin stuff was brilliant for me TBH) where the two Alice’s and Jo have united and are just kinda processing their grief together. IMO, what a way to take a basic sci-fi idea, combine it with some surrealism in a fairly grounded mechanic (audio tapes and mirrors!) and make a statement about what tragedy is like.
I’m with you … I think Apple and Star Trek is a perfect fit in the current environment.
Apple don’t want anything to be too political about current affairs (see John Stewart) but clearly like the idea of doing sci-fi and stuff that’s generally idealistic or moralistic. I’d expect them to be pretty respectful of the franchise’s history and core ideals.
(Response is more about holodeck centric episodes in general).
I liked how Data would go all in on the roles he played. And Picard’s frustration at frequently getting called away from his fun time.
I didn’t like the Moriarty takes over the Enterprise ones, you’d figure they’d sandbox the holodeck environment and specifically set it up to prevent situations like that. Maybe even make them incapable of seeing through the 4th wall in fantasy/entertainment programs (though I can see the usefulness of being able to do that for engineering exploration and might have just talked myself into not hating that as much because I had forgotten about the practical uses of the holodeck).
I’ve also always found the focus on holodeck scenarios relevant to the 20th and 21st centuries culture made it harder to suspend disbelief. I don’t think our current entertainment is the peak that everyone would come back to all the time. Like you’d figure LaForge would have done the whole “help build and troubleshoot the first warp drive” on the holodeck before doing it for real in First Contact. Like I get why they focus on things we know rather than having to make up more lore, but they made up a lot of lore each time they visited a new planet.
I had a hard time buying Jean-Luc Picard as a hard boiled PI, but I suppose that’s the point of a holodeck program- you get to fantasize about being something you aren’t if you want to.
Picard being a fan of the Dixon Hill novels, on the other hand… that seems out of character.
Eh, I have to admit, I have a hard time buying it, too. This is a guy who reads Shakespeare in his spare time, not trashy, pulp detective novels from the early-mid 20th century. He even thought taking a trip on The Orient Express would be too indulgent. Picard liking Dixon Hill novels makes no sense. Just like off-roading in an ATV.
I know a guy who is a literature snob and is probably the last person I would have expected to really get into Raymond Chandler novels. Anyway, he was raving about those books so I read a few. It turns out that Chandler was a phenomenally weird wordsmith. Inventive, funny, and unexpected. If you're looking at midcentury American writers, Chandler is hugely underrated. Maybe in a few centuries he'll get his due.
Sure, it's detective pulp. But it's detective pulp that's been given a strong hallucinogen and whacked over the head a few times before waking up in the desert.
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