Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
Also worth noting is that is the same exact kind of motherfucker that lead to the horrors of the early 21st century. Imagine if you stumbled on some asshole robber baron from the gilded age frozen in a block of ice and then he got in your face about how there's no more child labor and shit. You'd be sassy too!
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I don't need a dark, grossly corrupt heart to everything. Just an acknowledgement that they're working to aspire to these things rather than they've already done it, haha, suck it primitives. The knowledge that they've come a long way, but they could always go back if they're not careful (The Drumhead, for example).
I mean people keep saying "oh I don't want grimdark" and then keep on writing things that suggest the exact opposite where Picard is a stupid hypocrite and the guy waiting tables at Sisko's dad's restaurant is only doing so because Sisko's dad is keeping him in his serial killer dungeon.
Man you you go way overboard on this topic. No one said anything like that, there's no grimdark in this thread at all.
I think one of the things that sticks in my mind as a sore point in TNG was specifically vis a vis the utopia topic is that frozen people episode where they're such complete knobs towards people from the 80s/90s. I don't know about other people, but what I want out of Star Trek are for scenes like that to have never existed because the writers thought for a minute that their characters were human and no human is likable pulling that shit. In short, don't write your Star Trek characters be complete knobs. There's nothing grimdark about that.
I rewatched season 1 not too long ago and I authentically feel that the horrifying smugness was super duper exaggerated and has just been amplified by constant repitition over the years. For instance, as I mentioned earlier on the page, Picard only commits the unspeakable offense of not being appropriately servile to a stockbroker after the guy literally asks to speak to his manager.
That guy was a knob too, sure, but he was also partially right. Specifically about why the comm system didn't have any sort of security measure to keep people from using it for malicious means. The Enterprise has gotten into severe danger on more than one occasion entirely due to voice commands. "We just expect people to control themselves!" was a shit weak answer from Picard, and explains why the ship has had so many security issues over the years. (and Worf gets blamed for it since he's head of security. It's not you, Worf, it's your captain!)
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I don't need a dark, grossly corrupt heart to everything. Just an acknowledgement that they're working to aspire to these things rather than they've already done it, haha, suck it primitives. The knowledge that they've come a long way, but they could always go back if they're not careful (The Drumhead, for example).
I mean people keep saying "oh I don't want grimdark" and then keep on writing things that suggest the exact opposite where Picard is a stupid hypocrite and the guy waiting tables at Sisko's dad's restaurant is only doing so because Sisko's dad is keeping him in his serial killer dungeon.
Man you you go way overboard on this topic. No one said anything like that, there's no grimdark in this thread at all.
People have literally in this thread said that the characters are arrogant and self-deluded, that this or that character has "blinders," the lady in the Drumhead shows that the Federation is secretly racist and corrupt, or argue that episodes where the characters just model good behavior "don't count" because they're not "serious" enough or Christ it's exhausting. How do you think I should feel about the fact that people are totally cool with cloaking devices and photon torpedoes and time paradoxes but when someone goes "we're no longer motivated by greed" suddenly it's a HUGE PROBLEM that demands the show be realigned entirely to justify it?
Like...walk me through that process, man!
I get that you've probably spent twenty years in nerd spaces where everyone just nods and agrees with sentiments like "Deep Space Nine is the best because it shows how it REALLY is." I think a lot of people have internalized that sentiment, and it goes down smooth because it's consonant with the other nerd media they consume and it also reflects some of the values of our larger culture. Like zombie media, which constantly asserts that people are one day away from murdering everyone they love, that no good deed goes unpunished, etc etc.
But I take issue with some of those values! It seems like when you ask people "how it really is," they sure do seem to circle right around saying that war and violence are the natural state of people and being nice to folks is just some stupid luxury that only exists when actual tough guys go out to defend it.
I think that's a weird, gross sentiment. I think we can do better.
(And I'm not blaming DS9 for any of this. I don't think it generally says the dumb things that some people read into it.)
I think one of the things that sticks in my mind as a sore point in TNG was specifically vis a vis the utopia topic is that frozen people episode where they're such complete knobs towards people from the 80s/90s. I don't know about other people, but what I want out of Star Trek are for scenes like that to have never existed because the writers thought for a minute that their characters were human and no human is likable pulling that shit. In short, don't write your Star Trek characters be complete knobs. There's nothing grimdark about that.
Troi helps a woman reunite with her distant relative and Data befriends a cowboy! Those are things that actually happen in the show. I watched the episode just a few months ago with two people who'd never seen Star Trek and, because I've been reading sentiments like this for years, I was braced for the worst. But instead they were just like "man that stockbroker was a dick." They weren't scandalized and didn't feel judged.
I rewatched season 1 not too long ago and I authentically feel that the horrifying smugness was super duper exaggerated and has just been amplified by constant repitition over the years. For instance, as I mentioned earlier on the page, Picard only commits the unspeakable offense of not being appropriately servile to a stockbroker after the guy literally asks to speak to his manager.
That guy was a knob too, sure, but he was also partially right. Specifically about why the comm system didn't have any sort of security measure to keep people from using it for malicious means. The Enterprise has gotten into severe danger on more than one occasion entirely due to voice commands. "We just expect people to control themselves!" was a shit weak answer from Picard, and explains why the ship has had so many security issues over the years. (and Worf gets blamed for it since he's head of security. It's not you, Worf, it's your captain!)
The writers fucked up future IT, yeah. I think they just thought the intercom worked like the intercoms on real ships at the time, which were analog and didn't have logins and two-factor authentication and all the things we might expect now. People also use the intercom without authorization in TOS! Because it was literally little switch that you flipped. I don't think that's worth carrying some grudge against the characters for 31 years over, though.
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
I don't need a dark, grossly corrupt heart to everything. Just an acknowledgement that they're working to aspire to these things rather than they've already done it, haha, suck it primitives. The knowledge that they've come a long way, but they could always go back if they're not careful (The Drumhead, for example).
I mean people keep saying "oh I don't want grimdark" and then keep on writing things that suggest the exact opposite where Picard is a stupid hypocrite and the guy waiting tables at Sisko's dad's restaurant is only doing so because Sisko's dad is keeping him in his serial killer dungeon.
Man you you go way overboard on this topic. No one said anything like that, there's no grimdark in this thread at all.
People have literally in this thread said that the characters are arrogant
The characters are arrogant sometimes. There's nothing grimdark about stating the obvious. When Riker says, "It's amazing we ever survived past the 20th century!" after talking with a few hicks from the 80s, that was incredibly arrogant, anti-intellectual, shallow thinking. That's the line that sticks out to me. That's why Riker never came across to me as the nice guy that everyone likes, because of that line I found it impossible to like him. Because he never apologized for it, and no one said, "whoa, that's a pretty arrogant thing to say based on meeting three randos. Maybe don't judge an entire generation of people based on aesthetics?"
and self-deluded, that this or that character has "blinders," the lady in the Drumhead shows that the Federation is secretly racist and corrupt,
This is what I mean by going too far. No one said that, but that's what you heard, because you're sensitive on this topic. So you don't read what people write, you just get mad and make something up that makes you madder, so you can be mad. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess, but don't pretend that we can see the exaggerated effigy that you can see.
or argue that episodes where the characters just model good behavior "don't count" because they're not "serious" enough or Christ it's exhausting. How do you think I should feel about the fact that people are totally cool with cloaking devices and photon torpedoes and time paradoxes but when someone goes "we're no longer motivated by greed" suddenly it's a HUGE PROBLEM that demands the show be realigned entirely to justify it?
Like...walk me through that process, man!
This is the thing I especially don't get about you getting twisted up about this; I've seen you analyze sci fi stories with great depth and understanding of how the writing process works, but when it comes to Star Trek you stamp your feet and say "NO. NO WRITING ANALYSIS HERE. ONLY LIKE. YOU CAN ONLY LIKE IT. NO. NO!" Like, ok, you like Star Trek. Me too! I don't think it's above criticism, though, and don't understand why you spend time in a place meant to discuss the finer points of the stories and are mad all the time that every word isn't "it's so good. It's great. It's beyond reproach. No story has ever been as good as this one."
The reason the denial of human emotions feels wrong when photon torpedoes and cloaking devices don't, is because we all live with human emotion every day, so we know what it looks like. But more importantly, the characters in the show betray these human emotions, too, so having them say, "we've evolved beyond pettiness!" followed by one of the cast performing a petty act towards a stranger, makes the line seem worse than naive; makes it seem arrogant.
It's the equivalent of Riker stating, "I've evolved beyond the need to have sexual intercourse" a few seconds before rolling around in bed with the sexy alien of the week. It doesn't work because the writers haven't thought it through as to how a character with trait X would behave in the day-to-day. I think what they were trying to achieve could have been communicated, but I don't think they managed to do it.
I get that you've probably spent twenty years in nerd spaces where everyone just nods and agrees with sentiments like "Deep Space Nine is the best because it shows how it REALLY is."
Ha ha ha ha. Oh wait, you're serious, allow me to laugh even harder. HA HA HA HA HA.
Every "nerd space" I've been in hates Deep Space Nine. Hates it. The consensus in "nerd space" is that Deep Space Nine was wrong in every conceivable way and doesn't count as "Star Trek." Look at our good podcasting boys, Ben and Adam of The Greatest Generation; neither had even watched DS9 all the way through when it first came out (they seem to be enjoying it now that forced to watch it for their podcast, though. Imagine that, it isn't terrible, despite all the fanboys hating it for not being TNG).
I think a lot of people have internalized that sentiment, and it goes down smooth because it's consonant with the other nerd media they consume and it also reflects some of the values of our larger culture. Like zombie media, which constantly asserts that people are one day away from murdering everyone they love, that no good deed goes unpunished, etc etc.
Dude what planet are you even on. Step away from the cork board and put down the string.
I watched the episode just a few months ago with two people who'd never seen Star Trek and, because I've been reading sentiments like this for years, I was braced for the worst. But instead they were just like "man that stockbroker was a dick." They weren't scandalized and didn't feel judged.
I wouldn't imagine someone who wasn't being directly spoken to to take umbrage, no. I probably wouldn't either if my first time seeing it was in the modern day. But what if Riker were speaking directly to today's folks, instead of 80s folks? Imagine him laughing at how pathetically unprepared for life millenials are. "Do they even know the meaning of hard work?" Riker says. Then see if anyone takes umbrage.
(God, can you imagine how many "OK, Boomer"-style tweets would be hurled at the writers of the show after an episode like that? The writers would have to put their accounts on private)
Edit: I'm starting to wonder, am I just like way older than everyone else in this thread? I remember stuff that was written about DS9 and TNG back when they were still on the air. I remember people saying that DS9 literally didn't count as Star Trek because they were on a station instead of a ship. I've never been in a nerd space where DS9 was somehow universally acknowledged as the best Trek, though usually when I met such a person I held them in esteem for having that rare opinion (for example: my husband). I don't want to speak for other people that prefer DS9 to other treks, but the thing that made it good to me was the way the writers thought about the actions of their characters, remembered what the character had done last week and allowed it to inform the character in a later episode (mostly. It was still pretty serialized so sometimes important character beats got forgotten). The rare times they tried to 'forget' what makes the characters who they are, they at least had the actors advocating for the characters and listened to them - like when Nana Vistor talked them out of writing a love affair between Kira and Ducat. Another great thing about the show: any time they had their characters interact with other Trek characters, they took those characters backgrounds into consideration, too. So Picard gets a rare moment of being faced with someone angry at him for his great shame, a human moment TNG never gave him.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
the admiral in the drumhead is racist, at least towards Romulans.
That is the entire point of that whole thing is that she's a McCarthyite who sees treason and sedition in anyone who has the vaguest connections to the Federation's current enemies. Your grandfather was apparently Romulan? Oh buddy you are a spy and that Admiral knows it, regardless of the fact that you are in no way an actual spy. Oh Picard you got horrifically traumatized and had your personality and agency ripped away from you, forcing all of your self unwillingly into a collective mind that then used your mortal shell as basically a personalized PA system to your friends and colleagues that it planned to also do all that to? Well, you're probably a spy too!
Like, yeah, Admiral Satie was corrupt, and there's good reason that Picard points out to Worf at the end that the cost of their way of life is vigilance against that shit, lest it take over and destroy the spirit of the Federation.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Holy shit! I wasn't expecting this. What fantastic news.
The Legion guy really knows his stuff, too. For those who haven't seen it, that show took its source material seriously but also did cool stuff with it. I hope he can work the same magic with this.
EDIT: my deep hope is that maybe this guy will do some like, space madness stuff, a mind-bending 2001 alien instead of another Just Some Guy villain.
Jacobkosh on
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
Edit: I'm starting to wonder, am I just like way older than everyone else in this thread? I remember stuff that was written about DS9 and TNG back when they were still on the air. I remember people saying that DS9 literally didn't count as Star Trek because they were on a station instead of a ship. I've never been in a nerd space where DS9 was somehow universally acknowledged as the best Trek, though usually when I met such a person I held them in esteem for having that rare opinion (for example: my husband). I don't want to speak for other people that prefer DS9 to other treks, but the thing that made it good to me was the way the writers thought about the actions of their characters, remembered what the character had done last week and allowed it to inform the character in a later episode (mostly. It was still pretty serialized so sometimes important character beats got forgotten). The rare times they tried to 'forget' what makes the characters who they are, they at least had the actors advocating for the characters and listened to them - like when Nana Vistor talked them out of writing a love affair between Kira and Ducat. Another great thing about the show: any time they had their characters interact with other Trek characters, they took those characters backgrounds into consideration, too. So Picard gets a rare moment of being faced with someone angry at him for his great shame, a human moment TNG never gave him.
So here's the thing, I remember all that too. But you know what else I remember? All the people posting these days "ya when I was a kid I used to think TNG was the best trek, but as I've gotten older and matured I've realized DS9 was actually the best"
people change over time dude
Some people are always going to prefer TNG and that's ok. I do take umbrage at people who say DS9 is "grimdark" though since.. it's not. There just felt like there are more consequences and that is fully due to how it was written as a more serialized story than TNG.
To a degree, there's also the fact that Gene's vision of a Utopian future where humanity has "evolved" beyond the problems of the present is kind of... a privileged one?
The thesis seems to be one that takes that state as a floor that humanity can no longer fall below, where humanity can only get better and better and all those problems are just ancient barbaric garbage. But it's also kind of a quintessentially 20th century American ideal that never really wrestled with why those problems existed in the first place. They were just bad things that humanity did because we were dumb, greedy and stupid, and then we got wise, giving and intelligent, so they weren't a problem anymore and never would be again.
The problem with that kind of view is that it never really interacts with why the things it recognizes were problems were such. It often times feels that it feels like it's enough to set the example of being better without getting into the why or how, or deconstructing what allowed the problems to persist in the first place. It gets better about this over time, but I think you can also probably track that with Gene becoming less hands on with the show as that happens.
And so I think that when folks talk about DS9 handling those things better, it's not because DS9 is some grim dark thing. It's because DS9 is more ready to get into the mess of it all. At worst, it's going into an engine room where all the systems are blowing out steam, sparks are flying everywhere and you gotta figure out why the system is about to blow itself to hell; you'll come out covered in soot and grease, but you come out of it having fixed the engines and now your ship flies again and lord this is a crappy analogy.
But at the end, it's a differentiation on how you view "Utopia." Someone like Roddenberry, from the way he depicts it, seems to think of it as sort of this endpoint of history, where society reaches that point and your golden forever that point on. But others view Utopia as a work, interconnected systems that have to be maintained and cared for, otherwise it can generate the old and new problems
Lanz on
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Edit: I'm starting to wonder, am I just like way older than everyone else in this thread? I remember stuff that was written about DS9 and TNG back when they were still on the air. I remember people saying that DS9 literally didn't count as Star Trek because they were on a station instead of a ship. I've never been in a nerd space where DS9 was somehow universally acknowledged as the best Trek, though usually when I met such a person I held them in esteem for having that rare opinion (for example: my husband). I don't want to speak for other people that prefer DS9 to other treks, but the thing that made it good to me was the way the writers thought about the actions of their characters, remembered what the character had done last week and allowed it to inform the character in a later episode (mostly. It was still pretty serialized so sometimes important character beats got forgotten). The rare times they tried to 'forget' what makes the characters who they are, they at least had the actors advocating for the characters and listened to them - like when Nana Vistor talked them out of writing a love affair between Kira and Ducat. Another great thing about the show: any time they had their characters interact with other Trek characters, they took those characters backgrounds into consideration, too. So Picard gets a rare moment of being faced with someone angry at him for his great shame, a human moment TNG never gave him.
So here's the thing, I remember all that too. But you know what else I remember? All the people posting these days "ya when I was a kid I used to think TNG was the best trek, but as I've gotten older and matured I've realized DS9 was actually the best"
people change over time dude
Some people are always going to prefer TNG and that's ok. I do take umbrage at people who say DS9 is "grimdark" though since.. it's not. There just felt like there are more consequences and that is fully due to how it was written as a more serialized story than TNG.
I mean I've seen the same sentiment of "DS9 is the hated trek" in the year of our lord 2019 as well. Example: a brother explaining in a short, funny little instagram vlog why he didn't like Captain Marvel. I was fine with his review right up until, "it's like that one bad Star Trek that everyone hates, what's it called? Oh yeah, Deep Space Nine." (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
When I was a lad, TOS and TAS were all there was. I saw TMP, WOK et al as a teenager, and TNG was on first-run TV while I was in college. I read and posted to rec.arts.startrek. I remember the flamewars about TNG not being as good as TOS, and then DS9 came out... (not to mention the whole "dueling shows" thing between it and B5).
Yeah, I'm old too.
Commander Zoom on
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
As has been pointed out, TOS and TNG do show people doing the work. That's what a ton of the episodes are about.
But here's the thing: I don't think feeding and clothing everyone and finding meaning in life beyond money is some outrageous fiction that needs to be continually apologized for and justified. Economics is what I have my degree in. I've written papers about alternate modes of value and exchange. So I have a limited amount of patience for hearing about how nobody would do anything if there wasn't money involved, because I know six different ways that that's factually untrue right now in the real world.
And if you want justification for that point of view, there's any number of science fiction books - as well as, you know, real-ass textbooks, but I'm not gonna expect anyone to read those - that go into these ideas and how they could work. Nothing in Star Trek was made up whole cloth by Roddenberry or his writers; it all comes from a whole tradition of science fiction writing. And frankly, prose is a way better medium for that kind of in-depth speculative sociology anyway, because you can go to any arbitrary level of depth. (There are entire science fiction novels based on some quirky property of orbital mechanics, which isn't my thing, but you know, god bless.)
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Man I didn't even know about usenet back then. My parents hadn't even bought their first PC back then. I think you win!
But I also think the reputation of DS9 as a dark horse remains, despite some people maturing and giving it a try and realizing they like it. I liked how in the documentary they pointed out some entertainment news show gushing about some police procedural where two black characters speak to each other and there are no white characters in the room, and it was amazing because "TV didn't do that back then!" Except that, of course, DS9 did that back then, and no one remembers because it was the "bad" Star Trek.
At least, I think the idea that it's universally lauded now will require some sort of proof for me to believe it. It's like saying Dragon Age 2 is the most praised Bioware game. Unless you mean on these forums specifically, then nope.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I don't think I disagree with you on the topic of finding life beyond money. I think the idea that people would just do nothing if they weren't given money to do things is a load of Republican crock, because I know myself that if I don't have something productive to do I make something to do because there's only so long I can play video games before I'm bored of them.
But I also don't think I've seen anyone else in this thread disagree with that point, either!
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
To a degree, there's also the fact that Gene's vision of a Utopian future where humanity has "evolved" beyond the problems of the present is kind of... a privileged one?
The thesis seems to be one that takes that state as a floor that humanity can no longer fall below, where humanity can only get better and better and all those problems are just ancient barbaric garbage. But it's also kind of a quintessentially 20th century American ideal that never really wrestled with why those problems existed in the first place. They were just bad things that humanity did because we were dumb, greedy and stupid, and then we got wise, giving and intelligent, so they weren't a problem anymore and never would be again.
The problem with that kind of view is that it never really interacts with why the things it recognizes were problems were such. It often times feels that it feels like it's enough to set the example of being better without getting into the why or how, or deconstructing what allowed the problems to persist in the first place. It gets better about this over time, but I think you can also probably track that with Gene becoming less hands on with the show as that happens.
And so I think that when folks talk about DS9 handling those things better, it's not because DS9 is some grim dark thing. It's because DS9 is more ready to get into the mess of it all. At worst, it's going into an engine room where all the systems are blowing out steam, sparks are flying everywhere and you gotta figure out why the system is about to blow itself to hell; you'll come out covered in soot and grease, but you come out of it having fixed the engines and now your ship flies again and lord this is a crappy analogy.
But at the end, it's a differentiation on how you view "Utopia." Someone like Roddenberry, from the way he depicts it, seems to think of it as sort of this endpoint of history, where society reaches that point and your golden forever that point on. But others view Utopia as a work, interconnected systems that have to be maintained and cared for, otherwise it can generate the old and new problems
This is what I was trying to say, thank you.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
My wish list for a Star Trek IV:
- A camera that stays still sometimes. Space battles that aren't frenetic. (Or maybe...no space battle at all?)
- A character beat for Uhura besides being horny for Spock. I didn't mind that aspect, and it was actually sourced from a couple of the original stories, but they forgot to give her anything beyond that. Which is a shame because I actually liked some of the shticks they devised for the secondary characters, like Chekov being a wunderkind.
- A mystery in space instead of some snarly guy who wants revenge on zzzzzzzzzz
- More Bones. Or at least as much as they had in Beyond. Into Darkness really underused him.
Honestly I feel like the new movies have all had the ingredients for greatness, and have gotten there in fits and starts and little individual moments. It would be so gratifying if this was the movie where it finally all came together.
I don't think I disagree with you on the topic of finding life beyond money. I think the idea that people would just do nothing if they weren't given money to do things is a load of Republican crock, because I know myself that if I don't have something productive to do I make something to do because there's only so long I can play video games before I'm bored of them.
But I also don't think I've seen anyone else in this thread disagree with that point, either!
That literally happened last page, or two pages ago.
But here's the thing: one of the things you learn when you study economics is how many things have their root in the fulfillment of basic human needs. Commander Zoom mentioned tribalism last page, and that he feels like it's just this thing that humans will always do forever.
I think that a lot of tribalism is about people's fear that someone else - someone with another skin color, someone from another country - will come take their stuff. I think it comes from seeing life as a zero-sum game where someone has to win and someone has to lose.
I don't know if solving our economic problems would solve all tribalism but I will bet real money right now that it would solve a lot of it.
And I think that applies to many other human ills that we commonly just attribute to human nature. I'm not a big believer in human nature, because if you read sociology and anthropology you can find real-world counterexamples for a lot of the things we're used to thinking of as like, laws of the universe. I think people are very flexible, especially early on, when we end up internalizing a lot of our values and worldview.
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
I liked how in the documentary they pointed out some entertainment news show gushing about some police procedural where two black characters speak to each other and there are no white characters in the room, and it was amazing because "TV didn't do that back then!" Except that, of course, DS9 did that back then, and no one remembers because it was the "bad" Star Trek.
I have some bad news for you, that's not why nobody remembered it.
Nobody remembers it Because ds9 was not mass market and nobody watched it at large compared to nypd blue or whatever. Nerd shows get a lot more larger play these days than they did in the 90s (although I'm sure less people have seen disco than ds9 simply because ds9 was network tv)
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I liked how in the documentary they pointed out some entertainment news show gushing about some police procedural where two black characters speak to each other and there are no white characters in the room, and it was amazing because "TV didn't do that back then!" Except that, of course, DS9 did that back then, and no one remembers because it was the "bad" Star Trek.
I have some bad news for you, that's not why nobody remembered it.
Nobody remembers it Because ds9 was not mass market and nobody watched it at large compared to nypd blue or whatever. Nerd shows get a lot more larger play these days than they did in the 90s (although I'm sure less people have seen disco than ds9 simply because ds9 was network tv)
TNG made the cover of TV Guide a bunch of times and beat network shows in the ratings frrequently. But I do think DS9 was coming into a different market. Lots more people had cable in 1996 versus 1989, so there was a lot more competition for viewers' attention.
And being serialized made things hard for audiences in the age before DVDs and DVR. Local syndicators also often didn't pay attention to episode numbers so would air part 2 of a story before part 1, etc. That never happened to me here in KC but I've heard horror stories from people in other markets where their station would screen the same episode two nights in a row, or just forget to air certain episodes, or whatever. This happened to Babylon 5 a lot, too.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I don't think I disagree with you on the topic of finding life beyond money. I think the idea that people would just do nothing if they weren't given money to do things is a load of Republican crock, because I know myself that if I don't have something productive to do I make something to do because there's only so long I can play video games before I'm bored of them.
But I also don't think I've seen anyone else in this thread disagree with that point, either!
That literally happened last page, or two pages ago.
See, here's where I have to take your post with a grain of salt, because for all I know my discussion of how cleaning tables might be done in a utopian society might be what you're talking about, and I don't think my post had anything to do with whether everyone would just mope all day if they weren't given money to do things. But because you want to be mad, maybe you read it that way, with a red haze over your eyes making it impossible to read the speculative fiction I was writing. So who knows! Maybe you read something like that, maybe you invented it. Any time you've given me a quoted example of this kind of thing in the Star Trek thread, it's required a huge leap to get from the quote to what you wanted the quote to mean.
But here's the thing: one of the things you learn when you study economics is how many things have their root in the fulfillment of basic human needs. Commander Zoom mentioned tribalism last page, and that he feels like it's just this thing that humans will always do forever.
I think that a lot of tribalism is about people's fear that someone else - someone with another skin color, someone from another country - will come take their stuff. I think it comes from seeing life as a zero-sum game where someone has to win and someone has to lose.
I don't know if solving our economic problems would solve all tribalism but I will bet real money right now that it would solve a lot of it.
And I think that applies to many other human ills that we commonly just attribute to human nature. I'm not a big believer in human nature, because if you read sociology and anthropology you can find real-world counterexamples for a lot of the things we're used to thinking of as like, laws of the universe. I think people are very flexible, especially early on, when we end up internalizing a lot of our values and worldview.
While I have not studied economics, this jives with the things that I have studied, and I agree with you.
Cambiata on
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
edited November 2019
TNG is not DS9, the popularity difference is INSANE. But network tv in 88 was a lot different than 96 and the mass market want of Star trek was already fulfilled.
What you said is all super accurate, DS9 is amazing but people didn't watch it and so nobody knows the cultural barriers it broke but this wasn't because it was the "bad trek", only dumb nerds said that
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I liked how in the documentary they pointed out some entertainment news show gushing about some police procedural where two black characters speak to each other and there are no white characters in the room, and it was amazing because "TV didn't do that back then!" Except that, of course, DS9 did that back then, and no one remembers because it was the "bad" Star Trek.
I have some bad news for you, that's not why nobody remembered it.
Nobody remembers it Because ds9 was not mass market and nobody watched it at large compared to nypd blue or whatever. Nerd shows get a lot more larger play these days than they did in the 90s (although I'm sure less people have seen disco than ds9 simply because ds9 was network tv)
I'm not sure I know what 'mass market' means. But I take it TNG was mass market? Because I'm pretty sure most people know who Picard is, even if they've never watched an episode of Star Trek in their lives. Similar to how most people know who Kirk and Spock are.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I liked how in the documentary they pointed out some entertainment news show gushing about some police procedural where two black characters speak to each other and there are no white characters in the room, and it was amazing because "TV didn't do that back then!" Except that, of course, DS9 did that back then, and no one remembers because it was the "bad" Star Trek.
I have some bad news for you, that's not why nobody remembered it.
Nobody remembers it Because ds9 was not mass market and nobody watched it at large compared to nypd blue or whatever. Nerd shows get a lot more larger play these days than they did in the 90s (although I'm sure less people have seen disco than ds9 simply because ds9 was network tv)
TNG made the cover of TV Guide a bunch of times and beat network shows in the ratings frrequently. But I do think DS9 was coming into a different market. Lots more people had cable in 1996 versus 1989, so there was a lot more competition for viewers' attention.
And being serialized made things hard for audiences in the age before DVDs and DVR. Local syndicators also often didn't pay attention to episode numbers so would air part 2 of a story before part 1, etc. That never happened to me here in KC but I've heard horror stories from people in other markets where their station would screen the same episode two nights in a row, or just forget to air certain episodes, or whatever. This happened to Babylon 5 a lot, too.
oh man and pre-empting
I'm sometimes nostalgic for the music of the 80s and 90s, or for Fruit by the Foot, but I super do not miss that media landscape and I especially do not miss programming a VCR
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
I liked how in the documentary they pointed out some entertainment news show gushing about some police procedural where two black characters speak to each other and there are no white characters in the room, and it was amazing because "TV didn't do that back then!" Except that, of course, DS9 did that back then, and no one remembers because it was the "bad" Star Trek.
I have some bad news for you, that's not why nobody remembered it.
Nobody remembers it Because ds9 was not mass market and nobody watched it at large compared to nypd blue or whatever. Nerd shows get a lot more larger play these days than they did in the 90s (although I'm sure less people have seen disco than ds9 simply because ds9 was network tv)
I'm not sure I know what 'mass market' means. But I take it TNG was mass market? Because I'm pretty sure most people know who Picard is, even if they've never watched an episode of Star Trek in their lives. Similar to how most people know who Kirk and Spock are.
I actually made a other post that you probably didn't see right on top of yours but I have faith that you can figure out what mass market is and why tos and tng have more cultural awareness than ds9
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I dunno, I started watching Legion because I heard all these amazing things about it, and honestly after a handful of episodes it became clear that the show was going to be about style over substance, and half of the scenes were just a magic mushroom ride fever dream while the plot itself seemed destined for Lost territory. So I stopped watching, and I don't think I'm the only one who got off the ride early, either...
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
I dunno, I started watching Legion because I heard all these amazing things about it, and honestly after a handful of episodes it became clear that the show was going to be about style over substance, and half of the scenes were just a magic mushroom ride fever dream while the plot itself seemed destined for Lost territory. So I stopped watching, and I don't think I'm the only one who got off the ride early, either...
I felt like the story went to some interesting places. The creator also did the Fargo TV show, which is more visually conventional but has done some really tight, impactful stories.
i mean at the very least, the prospect of a Star Trek that's style over substance but the style is cool trippy visuals instead of watching the camera do a bunch of 720s is something I'm up for.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I dunno, I started watching Legion because I heard all these amazing things about it, and honestly after a handful of episodes it became clear that the show was going to be about style over substance, and half of the scenes were just a magic mushroom ride fever dream while the plot itself seemed destined for Lost territory. So I stopped watching, and I don't think I'm the only one who got off the ride early, either...
I felt like the story went to some interesting places. The creator also did the Fargo TV show, which is more visually conventional but has done some really tight, impactful stories.
i mean at the very least, the prospect of a Star Trek that's style over substance but the style is cool trippy visuals instead of watching the camera do a bunch of 720s is something I'm up for.
My favorite is this one scene where the camera started upside-down for what turned out to be normal freaking dialogue in Burnham's quarters or something. It was hilarious.
But like everybody has mentioned, the chef or barber being there because they enjoy the experience is one thing. The janitor cleaning the clogged toilet is another.
In the intentional communities Gandhi founded, everyone took turns taking care of the toilets, and it seemed to work out OK
As I grew up in the Sewagram Ashram founded by Gandhiji in 1936, the picture that is etched in my mind is of our joyous participation in the collective cleaning drive in the Ashram [...] The time that we spent in cleaning the surroundings, especially the toilets, are one of the happiest memories of my life. [...] The habit of cleaning the toilets has continued even today and it is with great pride that my family gets involved in this task. [...] For centuries, perhaps from the feudal ages or even earlier, sanitation was considered to be a mean activity in India. The job used to be done by the members of a particular caste of people who were treated differently. Although every mother does the cleaning of the children and women sweep the household, cleaning of streets and latrines were left to the so called untouchables. [...] Even as a child, Gandhiji could not accept the idea of untouchability. [...] His tireless campaign against untouchability had undoubtedly shaken the very foundation of the system. [...] Cleaning of the toilets, which was considered to be the dirtiest of jobs was voluntarily taken up by Gandhiji himself until it became a natural part of the whole process of sanitation.
I dunno, I started watching Legion because I heard all these amazing things about it, and honestly after a handful of episodes it became clear that the show was going to be about style over substance, and half of the scenes were just a magic mushroom ride fever dream while the plot itself seemed destined for Lost territory. So I stopped watching, and I don't think I'm the only one who got off the ride early, either...
I felt like the story went to some interesting places. The creator also did the Fargo TV show, which is more visually conventional but has done some really tight, impactful stories.
i mean at the very least, the prospect of a Star Trek that's style over substance but the style is cool trippy visuals instead of watching the camera do a bunch of 720s is something I'm up for.
My favorite is this one scene where the camera started upside-down for what turned out to be normal freaking dialogue in Burnham's quarters or something. It was hilarious.
Holy geez, yeah. I heard about that scene before I saw it and I thought people were kidding. It sounded like parody!
Holy shit! I wasn't expecting this. What fantastic news.
The Legion guy really knows his stuff, too. For those who haven't seen it, that show took its source material seriously but also did cool stuff with it. I hope he can work the same magic with this.
EDIT: my deep hope is that maybe this guy will do some like, space madness stuff, a mind-bending 2001 alien instead of another Just Some Guy villain.
Well if it's going to be anything like Legion then I can safely predict that as Wrath of Khan was based on Space Seed this will be based on The Way to Eden.
To a degree, there's also the fact that Gene's vision of a Utopian future where humanity has "evolved" beyond the problems of the present is kind of... a privileged one?
The thesis seems to be one that takes that state as a floor that humanity can no longer fall below, where humanity can only get better and better and all those problems are just ancient barbaric garbage. But it's also kind of a quintessentially 20th century American ideal that never really wrestled with why those problems existed in the first place. They were just bad things that humanity did because we were dumb, greedy and stupid, and then we got wise, giving and intelligent, so they weren't a problem anymore and never would be again.
The problem with that kind of view is that it never really interacts with why the things it recognizes were problems were such. It often times feels that it feels like it's enough to set the example of being better without getting into the why or how, or deconstructing what allowed the problems to persist in the first place. It gets better about this over time, but I think you can also probably track that with Gene becoming less hands on with the show as that happens.
And so I think that when folks talk about DS9 handling those things better, it's not because DS9 is some grim dark thing. It's because DS9 is more ready to get into the mess of it all. At worst, it's going into an engine room where all the systems are blowing out steam, sparks are flying everywhere and you gotta figure out why the system is about to blow itself to hell; you'll come out covered in soot and grease, but you come out of it having fixed the engines and now your ship flies again and lord this is a crappy analogy.
But at the end, it's a differentiation on how you view "Utopia." Someone like Roddenberry, from the way he depicts it, seems to think of it as sort of this endpoint of history, where society reaches that point and your golden forever that point on. But others view Utopia as a work, interconnected systems that have to be maintained and cared for, otherwise it can generate the old and new problems
I really liked the short exchange in one of the recent Discovery shorts where Spocks asks his new XO whether she had ever considered whether the Prime Directive was immoral and indefensible, and she responded, "No, and you shouldn't either if you want to stay sane."
It's a great example of hinting at why Spock might have gone along with a lot of Kirk's rule bending, and it hints that some of these hard-earned moral precepts have evolved into dogma in a very human way.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
I don't think I disagree with you on the topic of finding life beyond money. I think the idea that people would just do nothing if they weren't given money to do things is a load of Republican crock, because I know myself that if I don't have something productive to do I make something to do because there's only so long I can play video games before I'm bored of them.
But I also don't think I've seen anyone else in this thread disagree with that point, either!
That literally happened last page, or two pages ago.
See, here's where I have to take your post with a grain of salt, because for all I know my discussion of how cleaning tables might be done in a utopian society might be what you're talking about
It's manifestly not. The posts in question are at the top of that page.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
I don't think I disagree with you on the topic of finding life beyond money. I think the idea that people would just do nothing if they weren't given money to do things is a load of Republican crock, because I know myself that if I don't have something productive to do I make something to do because there's only so long I can play video games before I'm bored of them.
But I also don't think I've seen anyone else in this thread disagree with that point, either!
That literally happened last page, or two pages ago.
See, here's where I have to take your post with a grain of salt, because for all I know my discussion of how cleaning tables might be done in a utopian society might be what you're talking about
It's manifestly not. The posts in question are at the top of that page.
Top of the page, ok.
This one?
Does that barber need to be the best in the quadrant? Maybe he just likes cutting hair and is living his best barber life.
Seems like a pretty anti-capitalist statement to me.
This one?
I think it would be befitting the ideals of the Federation that both barbers and starship captains be alike in dignity.
Yeah I'd consider that a utopian ideal, that a starfleet captain is not placed in a class above a barber. A fairly socialist ideal!
Wow what a grimdark thread we have here guys. Better start wearing dark clothes and black eyeliner, bunch of goth sadsacks in here.
"If you divide the whole world into just enemies and friends, you'll end up destroying everything" --Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
For some reason I've been thinking about Discovery the past couple of days, which I only binged through last month, and the more I dwell on it the more I dislike the show for how much it isn't Star Trek. It's basically Stargate SG-1 with a better visual effects budget and more overwrought drama. Which would be fine (I enjoyed the Stargate shows!) but it's just...not Star Trek.
People have literally in this thread said that the characters are arrogant and self-deluded, that this or that character has "blinders," the lady in the Drumhead shows that the Federation is secretly racist and corrupt, or argue that episodes where the characters just model good behavior "don't count" because they're not "serious" enough or Christ it's exhausting. How do you think I should feel about the fact that people are totally cool with cloaking devices and photon torpedoes and time paradoxes but when someone goes "we're no longer motivated by greed" suddenly it's a HUGE PROBLEM that demands the show be realigned entirely to justify it?
If you're going to rage against what I said, at least have the courtesy to get it right.
And I still stand by the sentiment - like Sisko said, it's easy to be a saint in paradise. Out of 178 episodes of TNG, how many are really about the characters dealing with something that makes them face some part of themselves or society that makes them grow or learn something about themselves or their place in the world? 10? 20?
TNG is absolutely a low stakes show.
And, no, sorry, people acting good in the face of no real conflict or threat to themselves or livelihood the vast majority of time isn't something I think should be considered praise worthy. When you're living in a space yacht surrounded by other motivated, capable, good people, it really doesn't take much effort to follow suit. If there's no impetus to act counter to the established culture, acting according to it isn't noteworthy. Moreover, from a real life perspective, this is how people should behave. Now, maybe it's important for children to have constant examples of good behavior as they grow as people, but as an adult watching a show about adults, again, I don't find it noteworthy. I mean, I know we're living in the darkest timeline, but are we so far gone that basic qualities of what a person should be - kind, thoughtful, with a solid work ethic, etc. - need to be held up as being extraordinary?
To me, basic competence and kindness and thoughtfulness is the baseline. It's not something worthy of praise because, again to me, it's the lowest bar. And that's where TNG sits the vast majority of time.
For some reason I've been thinking about Discovery the past couple of days, which I only binged through last month, and the more I dwell on it the more I dislike the show for how much it isn't Star Trek. It's basically Stargate SG-1 with a better visual effects budget and more overwrought drama. Which would be fine (I enjoyed the Stargate shows!) but it's just...not Star Trek.
yeessss, welcome! give in to your hate!
with that said, the short treks have been alright this season and have felt more like trek
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I think it's worth pointing out that one of the central conceits of Star Trek is that people have gotten better. They've learned how to be better, and behave accordingly. It's supposed to serve as a living example of how things could be in the future, rather than how things are for us right now.
If you want a show that explores how they get there, and what tools they use to achieve that status, then I think that'd be worth watching. But the status quo is supposed to be that they've already moved beyond the "shitty people do shitty things" phase of society.
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Man you you go way overboard on this topic. No one said anything like that, there's no grimdark in this thread at all.
I think one of the things that sticks in my mind as a sore point in TNG was specifically vis a vis the utopia topic is that frozen people episode where they're such complete knobs towards people from the 80s/90s. I don't know about other people, but what I want out of Star Trek are for scenes like that to have never existed because the writers thought for a minute that their characters were human and no human is likable pulling that shit. In short, don't write your Star Trek characters be complete knobs. There's nothing grimdark about that.
That guy was a knob too, sure, but he was also partially right. Specifically about why the comm system didn't have any sort of security measure to keep people from using it for malicious means. The Enterprise has gotten into severe danger on more than one occasion entirely due to voice commands. "We just expect people to control themselves!" was a shit weak answer from Picard, and explains why the ship has had so many security issues over the years. (and Worf gets blamed for it since he's head of security. It's not you, Worf, it's your captain!)
People have literally in this thread said that the characters are arrogant and self-deluded, that this or that character has "blinders," the lady in the Drumhead shows that the Federation is secretly racist and corrupt, or argue that episodes where the characters just model good behavior "don't count" because they're not "serious" enough or Christ it's exhausting. How do you think I should feel about the fact that people are totally cool with cloaking devices and photon torpedoes and time paradoxes but when someone goes "we're no longer motivated by greed" suddenly it's a HUGE PROBLEM that demands the show be realigned entirely to justify it?
Like...walk me through that process, man!
I get that you've probably spent twenty years in nerd spaces where everyone just nods and agrees with sentiments like "Deep Space Nine is the best because it shows how it REALLY is." I think a lot of people have internalized that sentiment, and it goes down smooth because it's consonant with the other nerd media they consume and it also reflects some of the values of our larger culture. Like zombie media, which constantly asserts that people are one day away from murdering everyone they love, that no good deed goes unpunished, etc etc.
But I take issue with some of those values! It seems like when you ask people "how it really is," they sure do seem to circle right around saying that war and violence are the natural state of people and being nice to folks is just some stupid luxury that only exists when actual tough guys go out to defend it.
I think that's a weird, gross sentiment. I think we can do better.
(And I'm not blaming DS9 for any of this. I don't think it generally says the dumb things that some people read into it.)
Troi helps a woman reunite with her distant relative and Data befriends a cowboy! Those are things that actually happen in the show. I watched the episode just a few months ago with two people who'd never seen Star Trek and, because I've been reading sentiments like this for years, I was braced for the worst. But instead they were just like "man that stockbroker was a dick." They weren't scandalized and didn't feel judged.
The writers fucked up future IT, yeah. I think they just thought the intercom worked like the intercoms on real ships at the time, which were analog and didn't have logins and two-factor authentication and all the things we might expect now. People also use the intercom without authorization in TOS! Because it was literally little switch that you flipped. I don't think that's worth carrying some grudge against the characters for 31 years over, though.
yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees love this cast
The characters are arrogant sometimes. There's nothing grimdark about stating the obvious. When Riker says, "It's amazing we ever survived past the 20th century!" after talking with a few hicks from the 80s, that was incredibly arrogant, anti-intellectual, shallow thinking. That's the line that sticks out to me. That's why Riker never came across to me as the nice guy that everyone likes, because of that line I found it impossible to like him. Because he never apologized for it, and no one said, "whoa, that's a pretty arrogant thing to say based on meeting three randos. Maybe don't judge an entire generation of people based on aesthetics?"
This is what I mean by going too far. No one said that, but that's what you heard, because you're sensitive on this topic. So you don't read what people write, you just get mad and make something up that makes you madder, so you can be mad. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess, but don't pretend that we can see the exaggerated effigy that you can see.
This is the thing I especially don't get about you getting twisted up about this; I've seen you analyze sci fi stories with great depth and understanding of how the writing process works, but when it comes to Star Trek you stamp your feet and say "NO. NO WRITING ANALYSIS HERE. ONLY LIKE. YOU CAN ONLY LIKE IT. NO. NO!" Like, ok, you like Star Trek. Me too! I don't think it's above criticism, though, and don't understand why you spend time in a place meant to discuss the finer points of the stories and are mad all the time that every word isn't "it's so good. It's great. It's beyond reproach. No story has ever been as good as this one."
The reason the denial of human emotions feels wrong when photon torpedoes and cloaking devices don't, is because we all live with human emotion every day, so we know what it looks like. But more importantly, the characters in the show betray these human emotions, too, so having them say, "we've evolved beyond pettiness!" followed by one of the cast performing a petty act towards a stranger, makes the line seem worse than naive; makes it seem arrogant.
It's the equivalent of Riker stating, "I've evolved beyond the need to have sexual intercourse" a few seconds before rolling around in bed with the sexy alien of the week. It doesn't work because the writers haven't thought it through as to how a character with trait X would behave in the day-to-day. I think what they were trying to achieve could have been communicated, but I don't think they managed to do it.
Ha ha ha ha. Oh wait, you're serious, allow me to laugh even harder. HA HA HA HA HA.
Every "nerd space" I've been in hates Deep Space Nine. Hates it. The consensus in "nerd space" is that Deep Space Nine was wrong in every conceivable way and doesn't count as "Star Trek." Look at our good podcasting boys, Ben and Adam of The Greatest Generation; neither had even watched DS9 all the way through when it first came out (they seem to be enjoying it now that forced to watch it for their podcast, though. Imagine that, it isn't terrible, despite all the fanboys hating it for not being TNG).
Dude what planet are you even on. Step away from the cork board and put down the string.
I wouldn't imagine someone who wasn't being directly spoken to to take umbrage, no. I probably wouldn't either if my first time seeing it was in the modern day. But what if Riker were speaking directly to today's folks, instead of 80s folks? Imagine him laughing at how pathetically unprepared for life millenials are. "Do they even know the meaning of hard work?" Riker says. Then see if anyone takes umbrage.
(God, can you imagine how many "OK, Boomer"-style tweets would be hurled at the writers of the show after an episode like that? The writers would have to put their accounts on private)
Edit: I'm starting to wonder, am I just like way older than everyone else in this thread? I remember stuff that was written about DS9 and TNG back when they were still on the air. I remember people saying that DS9 literally didn't count as Star Trek because they were on a station instead of a ship. I've never been in a nerd space where DS9 was somehow universally acknowledged as the best Trek, though usually when I met such a person I held them in esteem for having that rare opinion (for example: my husband). I don't want to speak for other people that prefer DS9 to other treks, but the thing that made it good to me was the way the writers thought about the actions of their characters, remembered what the character had done last week and allowed it to inform the character in a later episode (mostly. It was still pretty serialized so sometimes important character beats got forgotten). The rare times they tried to 'forget' what makes the characters who they are, they at least had the actors advocating for the characters and listened to them - like when Nana Vistor talked them out of writing a love affair between Kira and Ducat. Another great thing about the show: any time they had their characters interact with other Trek characters, they took those characters backgrounds into consideration, too. So Picard gets a rare moment of being faced with someone angry at him for his great shame, a human moment TNG never gave him.
the admiral in the drumhead is racist, at least towards Romulans.
That is the entire point of that whole thing is that she's a McCarthyite who sees treason and sedition in anyone who has the vaguest connections to the Federation's current enemies. Your grandfather was apparently Romulan? Oh buddy you are a spy and that Admiral knows it, regardless of the fact that you are in no way an actual spy. Oh Picard you got horrifically traumatized and had your personality and agency ripped away from you, forcing all of your self unwillingly into a collective mind that then used your mortal shell as basically a personalized PA system to your friends and colleagues that it planned to also do all that to? Well, you're probably a spy too!
Like, yeah, Admiral Satie was corrupt, and there's good reason that Picard points out to Worf at the end that the cost of their way of life is vigilance against that shit, lest it take over and destroy the spirit of the Federation.
Holy shit! I wasn't expecting this. What fantastic news.
The Legion guy really knows his stuff, too. For those who haven't seen it, that show took its source material seriously but also did cool stuff with it. I hope he can work the same magic with this.
EDIT: my deep hope is that maybe this guy will do some like, space madness stuff, a mind-bending 2001 alien instead of another Just Some Guy villain.
people change over time dude
Some people are always going to prefer TNG and that's ok. I do take umbrage at people who say DS9 is "grimdark" though since.. it's not. There just felt like there are more consequences and that is fully due to how it was written as a more serialized story than TNG.
The thesis seems to be one that takes that state as a floor that humanity can no longer fall below, where humanity can only get better and better and all those problems are just ancient barbaric garbage. But it's also kind of a quintessentially 20th century American ideal that never really wrestled with why those problems existed in the first place. They were just bad things that humanity did because we were dumb, greedy and stupid, and then we got wise, giving and intelligent, so they weren't a problem anymore and never would be again.
The problem with that kind of view is that it never really interacts with why the things it recognizes were problems were such. It often times feels that it feels like it's enough to set the example of being better without getting into the why or how, or deconstructing what allowed the problems to persist in the first place. It gets better about this over time, but I think you can also probably track that with Gene becoming less hands on with the show as that happens.
And so I think that when folks talk about DS9 handling those things better, it's not because DS9 is some grim dark thing. It's because DS9 is more ready to get into the mess of it all. At worst, it's going into an engine room where all the systems are blowing out steam, sparks are flying everywhere and you gotta figure out why the system is about to blow itself to hell; you'll come out covered in soot and grease, but you come out of it having fixed the engines and now your ship flies again and lord this is a crappy analogy.
But at the end, it's a differentiation on how you view "Utopia." Someone like Roddenberry, from the way he depicts it, seems to think of it as sort of this endpoint of history, where society reaches that point and your golden forever that point on. But others view Utopia as a work, interconnected systems that have to be maintained and cared for, otherwise it can generate the old and new problems
I mean I've seen the same sentiment of "DS9 is the hated trek" in the year of our lord 2019 as well. Example: a brother explaining in a short, funny little instagram vlog why he didn't like Captain Marvel. I was fine with his review right up until, "it's like that one bad Star Trek that everyone hates, what's it called? Oh yeah, Deep Space Nine." (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Yeah, I'm old too.
But here's the thing: I don't think feeding and clothing everyone and finding meaning in life beyond money is some outrageous fiction that needs to be continually apologized for and justified. Economics is what I have my degree in. I've written papers about alternate modes of value and exchange. So I have a limited amount of patience for hearing about how nobody would do anything if there wasn't money involved, because I know six different ways that that's factually untrue right now in the real world.
And if you want justification for that point of view, there's any number of science fiction books - as well as, you know, real-ass textbooks, but I'm not gonna expect anyone to read those - that go into these ideas and how they could work. Nothing in Star Trek was made up whole cloth by Roddenberry or his writers; it all comes from a whole tradition of science fiction writing. And frankly, prose is a way better medium for that kind of in-depth speculative sociology anyway, because you can go to any arbitrary level of depth. (There are entire science fiction novels based on some quirky property of orbital mechanics, which isn't my thing, but you know, god bless.)
But I also think the reputation of DS9 as a dark horse remains, despite some people maturing and giving it a try and realizing they like it. I liked how in the documentary they pointed out some entertainment news show gushing about some police procedural where two black characters speak to each other and there are no white characters in the room, and it was amazing because "TV didn't do that back then!" Except that, of course, DS9 did that back then, and no one remembers because it was the "bad" Star Trek.
At least, I think the idea that it's universally lauded now will require some sort of proof for me to believe it. It's like saying Dragon Age 2 is the most praised Bioware game. Unless you mean on these forums specifically, then nope.
But I also don't think I've seen anyone else in this thread disagree with that point, either!
This is what I was trying to say, thank you.
- A camera that stays still sometimes. Space battles that aren't frenetic. (Or maybe...no space battle at all?)
- A character beat for Uhura besides being horny for Spock. I didn't mind that aspect, and it was actually sourced from a couple of the original stories, but they forgot to give her anything beyond that. Which is a shame because I actually liked some of the shticks they devised for the secondary characters, like Chekov being a wunderkind.
- A mystery in space instead of some snarly guy who wants revenge on zzzzzzzzzz
- More Bones. Or at least as much as they had in Beyond. Into Darkness really underused him.
Honestly I feel like the new movies have all had the ingredients for greatness, and have gotten there in fits and starts and little individual moments. It would be so gratifying if this was the movie where it finally all came together.
That literally happened last page, or two pages ago.
But here's the thing: one of the things you learn when you study economics is how many things have their root in the fulfillment of basic human needs. Commander Zoom mentioned tribalism last page, and that he feels like it's just this thing that humans will always do forever.
I think that a lot of tribalism is about people's fear that someone else - someone with another skin color, someone from another country - will come take their stuff. I think it comes from seeing life as a zero-sum game where someone has to win and someone has to lose.
I don't know if solving our economic problems would solve all tribalism but I will bet real money right now that it would solve a lot of it.
And I think that applies to many other human ills that we commonly just attribute to human nature. I'm not a big believer in human nature, because if you read sociology and anthropology you can find real-world counterexamples for a lot of the things we're used to thinking of as like, laws of the universe. I think people are very flexible, especially early on, when we end up internalizing a lot of our values and worldview.
Nobody remembers it Because ds9 was not mass market and nobody watched it at large compared to nypd blue or whatever. Nerd shows get a lot more larger play these days than they did in the 90s (although I'm sure less people have seen disco than ds9 simply because ds9 was network tv)
TNG made the cover of TV Guide a bunch of times and beat network shows in the ratings frrequently. But I do think DS9 was coming into a different market. Lots more people had cable in 1996 versus 1989, so there was a lot more competition for viewers' attention.
And being serialized made things hard for audiences in the age before DVDs and DVR. Local syndicators also often didn't pay attention to episode numbers so would air part 2 of a story before part 1, etc. That never happened to me here in KC but I've heard horror stories from people in other markets where their station would screen the same episode two nights in a row, or just forget to air certain episodes, or whatever. This happened to Babylon 5 a lot, too.
See, here's where I have to take your post with a grain of salt, because for all I know my discussion of how cleaning tables might be done in a utopian society might be what you're talking about, and I don't think my post had anything to do with whether everyone would just mope all day if they weren't given money to do things. But because you want to be mad, maybe you read it that way, with a red haze over your eyes making it impossible to read the speculative fiction I was writing. So who knows! Maybe you read something like that, maybe you invented it. Any time you've given me a quoted example of this kind of thing in the Star Trek thread, it's required a huge leap to get from the quote to what you wanted the quote to mean.
While I have not studied economics, this jives with the things that I have studied, and I agree with you.
What you said is all super accurate, DS9 is amazing but people didn't watch it and so nobody knows the cultural barriers it broke but this wasn't because it was the "bad trek", only dumb nerds said that
I'm not sure I know what 'mass market' means. But I take it TNG was mass market? Because I'm pretty sure most people know who Picard is, even if they've never watched an episode of Star Trek in their lives. Similar to how most people know who Kirk and Spock are.
oh man and pre-empting
I'm sometimes nostalgic for the music of the 80s and 90s, or for Fruit by the Foot, but I super do not miss that media landscape and I especially do not miss programming a VCR
I felt like the story went to some interesting places. The creator also did the Fargo TV show, which is more visually conventional but has done some really tight, impactful stories.
i mean at the very least, the prospect of a Star Trek that's style over substance but the style is cool trippy visuals instead of watching the camera do a bunch of 720s is something I'm up for.
My favorite is this one scene where the camera started upside-down for what turned out to be normal freaking dialogue in Burnham's quarters or something. It was hilarious.
https://sanitation.indiawaterportal.org/english/node/2911
Holy geez, yeah. I heard about that scene before I saw it and I thought people were kidding. It sounded like parody!
Well if it's going to be anything like Legion then I can safely predict that as Wrath of Khan was based on Space Seed this will be based on The Way to Eden.
I really liked the short exchange in one of the recent Discovery shorts where Spocks asks his new XO whether she had ever considered whether the Prime Directive was immoral and indefensible, and she responded, "No, and you shouldn't either if you want to stay sane."
It's a great example of hinting at why Spock might have gone along with a lot of Kirk's rule bending, and it hints that some of these hard-earned moral precepts have evolved into dogma in a very human way.
It's manifestly not. The posts in question are at the top of that page.
Top of the page, ok.
This one?
Seems like a pretty anti-capitalist statement to me.
This one?
Yeah I'd consider that a utopian ideal, that a starfleet captain is not placed in a class above a barber. A fairly socialist ideal!
Wow what a grimdark thread we have here guys. Better start wearing dark clothes and black eyeliner, bunch of goth sadsacks in here.
If you're going to rage against what I said, at least have the courtesy to get it right.
And I still stand by the sentiment - like Sisko said, it's easy to be a saint in paradise. Out of 178 episodes of TNG, how many are really about the characters dealing with something that makes them face some part of themselves or society that makes them grow or learn something about themselves or their place in the world? 10? 20?
TNG is absolutely a low stakes show.
And, no, sorry, people acting good in the face of no real conflict or threat to themselves or livelihood the vast majority of time isn't something I think should be considered praise worthy. When you're living in a space yacht surrounded by other motivated, capable, good people, it really doesn't take much effort to follow suit. If there's no impetus to act counter to the established culture, acting according to it isn't noteworthy. Moreover, from a real life perspective, this is how people should behave. Now, maybe it's important for children to have constant examples of good behavior as they grow as people, but as an adult watching a show about adults, again, I don't find it noteworthy. I mean, I know we're living in the darkest timeline, but are we so far gone that basic qualities of what a person should be - kind, thoughtful, with a solid work ethic, etc. - need to be held up as being extraordinary?
To me, basic competence and kindness and thoughtfulness is the baseline. It's not something worthy of praise because, again to me, it's the lowest bar. And that's where TNG sits the vast majority of time.
yeessss, welcome! give in to your hate!
with that said, the short treks have been alright this season and have felt more like trek
If you want a show that explores how they get there, and what tools they use to achieve that status, then I think that'd be worth watching. But the status quo is supposed to be that they've already moved beyond the "shitty people do shitty things" phase of society.