TV writers are under enormous pressure to get people’s attention and keep it. The quickest, easiest way to do that is MAX DRAMA ALL DAY ERR DAY, which can actually work depending on the story. But mold doesn’t fit everything.
We have fond memories of TNG, but I think we all know it would never survive its first season if it came out today.
It's also become the expectation of Premium TV Drama. That's what the industry and the audience have been taught to think serious prestige drama looks like.
Mass Effect 2 is one of the best stories I’ve ever experienced. It’s an action RPG about preventing a robot apocalypse.
The scene that hits the me the hardest out of the entire story?
Two characters quietly, passionately discussing a gradual genocide while they mourn someone who died trying to end it.
I hope fiction remembers soon that sometimes quiet is best.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
TV writers are under enormous pressure to get people’s attention and keep it. The quickest, easiest way to do that is MAX DRAMA ALL DAY ERR DAY, which can actually work depending on the story. But mold doesn’t fit everything.
We have fond memories of TNG, but I think we all know it would never survive its first season if it came out today.
Except we have Orville coming up on its third season of doing the same episodic approach as a million Star Trek episodes, with the only stylistic difference being additional humor (but still doing plenty of Trek "what if" scenarios). Cut down the filler episodes and tighten up the writing compared to something like the original TNG and you could absolutely have a modern actual Trek series instead of something wearing Trek clothing while clearly doing something else. We have direct evidence that it works, right there.
The orville does not exist in a vacuum. It is drawing upon years of trek. If it had to stand on it's own, it would have the same problems that a modern day TNG would have
The orville does not exist in a vacuum. It is drawing upon years of trek. If it had to stand on it's own, it would have the same problems that a modern day TNG would have
One would assume that an actual Trek series would more easily tap the reservoir of prior shows in its franchise than The Orville does though...
I think I'd be okay if Orville had a little more filler, if anything. Or at the very least relax on the Moclans a bit and give me more background on some of the other alien races besides the perpetual Kaylon-Moclan-Krill trifecta.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
The orville does not exist in a vacuum. It is drawing upon years of trek. If it had to stand on it's own, it would have the same problems that a modern day TNG would have
One would assume that an actual Trek series would more easily tap the reservoir of prior shows in its franchise than The Orville does though...
Exactly. A good Trek show should actively be drawing from the existing material, not trying to distance itself by being "edgy" and "fresh". But instead of trying to move to a recognizable future, Discovery pulled a double copout and skipped out on a rebooted past to go into a future so distant it's not even the same setting anymore. It's clear the show wants the attention from the Trek name without really doing a Trek show, to the point that it really seems like they should've just had it be it's own standalone thing entirely.
"Let's throw it all away because continuity takes effort" is a terrible approach to a setting like Star Trek.
I think I'd be okay if Orville had a little more filler, if anything. Or at the very least relax on the Moclans a bit and give me more background on some of the other alien races besides the perpetual Kaylon-Moclan-Krill trifecta.
Yeah, it's pretty impressive that the Orville has built such a solidly interesting setting in just two short seasons (compared to the size of old Trek series), but we really need to get away from the Moclans quite a bit and the Krill at least a little. Though my interest in the Krill perked up considerably once they stopped being so unswervably genocidally motivated and started to talk with the Union, even begrudgingly.
But the Moclans just suck as a society, outside their recreational activities.
I feel like the Discovery writers are honestly just not as smart as the TNG/DS9 writers were. Like they’re decent writers, the characters and their interactions are great (though honestly that might largely be just due to the actors being fantastic), but the plots aren’t ever brainy in a “Wow I’ve...I’ve honestly never thought about this before” kind of way.
The writers don’t have a story they want to tell, they have a story they have to tell in order to move the characters around and show action and be Star Trek. None of these writers care about the Kelpians the way that the DS9 writers cared about the Bajorans. Their struggle isn’t meant to say anything complex about the real world except in the sense of very broad emotional overtures about challenging the status quo. They don’t introduce an AI into the plot because they want you to think really hard about what an AI is or how what we have to say about it reflects on what we think it means to be human (like Data), they introduce an AI into the plot because they need a scary villain.
If Discovery ever wants to be a great show it’ll be when they start taking the fantastic characters that they already have and start putting them in situations where the drama isn’t just “how are they gonna get out of this one?” and starts being more “I don’t even know what the right thing to do in this situation is”.
I feel like the Discovery writers are honestly just not as smart as the TNG/DS9 writers were. Like they’re decent writers, the characters and their interactions are great (though honestly that might largely be just due to the actors being fantastic), but the plots aren’t ever brainy in a “Wow I’ve...I’ve honestly never thought about this before” kind of way.
The writers don’t have a story they want to tell, they have a story they have to tell in order to move the characters around and show action and be Star Trek. None of these writers care about the Kelpians the way that the DS9 writers cared about the Bajorans. Their struggle isn’t meant to say anything complex about the real world except in the sense of very broad emotional overtures about challenging the status quo. They don’t introduce an AI into the plot because they want you to think really hard about what an AI is or how what we have to say about it reflects on what we think it means to be human (like Data), they introduce an AI into the plot because they need a scary villain.
If Discovery ever wants to be a great show it’ll be when they start taking the fantastic characters that they already have and start putting them in situations where the drama isn’t just “how are they gonna get out of this one?” and starts being more “I don’t even know what the right thing to do in this situation is”.
If you want somewhere to put the blame, I'd go for two factors:
1) The prestige TV format not allowing for stand-alone episodes, so you only get one "plot" per season.
2) The use of a writer's room instead of a bunch of independent writers means you simply don't have as broad of a talent pool to draw from, or the ability to devote as much writing time per episode.
TNG had a lot more elbow room than Discovery, banging out 26 episodes a year rather than 13 or so, and it's more leisurely in its storytelling than Discovery, not trying to make every second of every episode important and meaningful or an emotional climax. That era of TV seems gone in a lot of respects.
I'm not saying Discovery shouldn't just calm the fuck down a lot more than it is doing presently, or that I would like it to be less chained to the remorseless engine of the season long arc. I think I'd like a lot more episodes where someone wasn't crying like their whole world fell apart, for example. Starfleet in Discovery seems less like a highly organised group of professionals who've trained for years and more like some nice, smart, well-intentioned people with poor impulse control were given a spaceship.
Yesterday I watched a YouTube video of someone reviewing a modern show I like. The reviewer was, I'd guess, in his teens. His greatest critique of that show was how many "boring, pointless filler" episodes there were. And it was strangely disappointing to me, because I wanted to say to this kid: that's not filler, it's not pointless, those quieter moments are explaining the characters to you, they're every bit as important as the frenetic action scenes. Hell, without the quieter moments, the action scenes would not be so powerful!
I know that's just that one kid, but I do feel like current TV has primed the younger audience to expect continuous action/drama and you break that formula at great risk.
It kinda reminds me of late 90s wrestling. Start doing the kinda crazy shit that used to happen maybe once or twice a year enough and suddenly you have to do it even more often. Then more often again. Then you're doing it every week on tv for free. In the end it's completely unsustainable (in the wrestling case also because holy fuck repeat concussions and chronic back/neck problems). Nothing stays special when it becomes the new normal.
I've been comfortable thinking of the new movies as taking place around a regular series starring them, which we don't get to see because we haven't signed up to their exclusive streaming service (only available in the mirror universe).
That's where they had the diplomatic mission episodes, the character-focus episodes, and the episode where they all get affected by plant spores or whatever.
Then we got the big action movie setpieces between them.
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
I've been comfortable thinking of the new movies as taking place around a regular series starring them, which we don't get to see because we haven't signed up to their exclusive streaming service (only available in the mirror universe).
That's where they had the diplomatic mission episodes, the character-focus episodes, and the episode where they all get affected by plant spores or whatever.
Then we got the big action movie setpieces between them.
I was always secretly hoping they would do a proper Trek show with that cast. Could have been good.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
edited September 2019
The movie cast and their chemistry is impeccable, I think only the most die-hard complainers really try to...pecca them. For me, they make the movies (except Into Darkness, anyway, which is just dreary) fun and watchable even though it's absolutely true that the plots are nonsense and the direction is too frenetic.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
The movie cast and their chemistry is impeccable, I think only the most die-hard complainers really try to...pecca them. For me, they make the movies (except Into Darkness, anyway, which is just dreary) fun and watchable even though it's aboslutely true that the plots are nonsense and the direction is too frenetic.
Pine’s Kirk in the 2009 movie was pretty bad, but that was all due to the writing. Beyond was pretty much perfect for the crew roles. The movie wasn’t perfect, but if it had been made instead of Into Darkness I think the whole Kelvin timeline movie series could have continued further than it did.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I dunno, I liked the 2009 take on Kirk. We know from Prime Kirk himself in TWoK that he looks back on who he was in these years with sympathy but also criticism; older, wiser Prime Kirk is only too aware of how much he still had to learn and to grow. For whatever reason, one of the conceits of the Kelvin timeline is that the Nerada incursion somehow sped up everything, not just the pace of technology - for example Into Darkness, narratively the events of TWoK, takes place roughly at the time that Space Seed “would have happened” on the Prime calendar.
Given that, I found Chris Pine’s take on Kirk was a really solid depiction of a gifted leader running about ten percent too rich and banging off the walls because he didn’t get any cadet tours or seasoning assignments before the winds of plot threw him into the Big Chair.
Same. I don't particularly like Pine in many of his roles, but the cockiness he brought to Kirk from the first really worked for me. I still didn't particularly like the character, but I didn't need to (as I didn't like Shatner's Kirk all that much either). He worked in the context of the team and the story.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
The biggest problem with the 3 new Trek movies (character-wise) imo is they are constantly try and lean on the Kirk/Spock dynamic but never see fit to, like, actually establish it as a thing that exists in the first place. Kirk/Bones works in part because they actually show it. Kirk/Spock feels like something we are supposed to assume in a meta-narrative sense because this is a reboot and the relationship is already famous.
I'm curious about the cast for the inevitable TNG remake. Will they find exact matches like the Kelvin movies, or riff on similar themes like Battlestar?
I'm curious about the cast for the inevitable TNG remake. Will they find exact matches like the Kelvin movies, or riff on similar themes like Battlestar?
I'm curious about the cast for the inevitable TNG remake. Will they find exact matches like the Kelvin movies, or riff on similar themes like Battlestar?
As much as I loved TNG (it's my second-favourite of the series, after DS9), I don't think there'd be a remake. The crew of TNG was great after the first couple of rocky seasons, but I don't consider them to be as iconic as Kirk, Spock et al. I doubt that people outside the Trek fan base are as aware of them as they were of the TOS gang. In addition, there's nothing about the premise that requires it to be filled with those particular characters, so all in all, I simply don't think there'd be the same kind of appeal.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Honestly, I'd want a series that was to TNG what TNG was to TOS; set a sizable amount of time in the future necessitating an entirely new set of players (with the occasional cameo), but still close enough to he current era that threads can be picked up and evolved. (I feel that Discovery season 3 will be too far into the future for that.)
Like, what happens a hundred years from the TNG era, when Picard and the like are now relegated to history and legends. What's the political landscape look like? Has warp travel grown to the point where the access to the whole galaxy is commonplace? Has the Federation cracked the secrets of Positronic brains, and does that mean there's an entire race of androids now? What has become of the Borg and the Dominion?
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
The biggest problem with the 3 new Trek movies (character-wise) imo is they are constantly try and lean on the Kirk/Spock dynamic but never see fit to, like, actually establish it as a thing that exists in the first place. Kirk/Bones works in part because they actually show it. Kirk/Spock feels like something we are supposed to assume in a meta-narrative sense because this is a reboot and the relationship is already famous.
I think it’s even worse than simply not working to establish the relationship. Kirk’s captaincy and the relationship between him and Spock only comes about because Future Spock tells them that this is the way it must be. It involves no character development and actually removes some of their agency since if your future self says you’re supposed to do something you’re kind of stuck as far as refusing to do it what with knowledge of the future and all that.
That type of really lazy writing would have been somewhat acceptable if it had just meant that Kirk forced himself to work with Spock and we ended up with Kirk as the First Officer, but they had to go whole hog on things.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Ugh, I'd hate a remake. Just push the time line forward.
I don’t especially want one, I just think it’s inevitable.
Trek never had more mainstream penetration than TNG at its height. Even TOS didn’t enjoy that level of success among non-SF fans. Combine that with nostalgia, and I’m surprised CBS has restrained itself this long.
When it happens, I just hope it’s good like BSG and not terrible like every other remake.
Honestly, I'd want a series that was to TNG what TNG was to TOS; set a sizable amount of time in the future necessitating an entirely new set of players (with the occasional cameo), but still close enough to he current era that threads can be picked up and evolved. (I feel that Discovery season 3 will be too far into the future for that.)
Like, what happens a hundred years from the TNG era, when Picard and the like are now relegated to history and legends. What's the political landscape look like? Has warp travel grown to the point where the access to the whole galaxy is commonplace? Has the Federation cracked the secrets of Positronic brains, and does that mean there's an entire race of androids now? What has become of the Borg and the Dominion?
This would be awesome. I’d also want a full ensemble political thriller about the destruction of Romulus and the aftermath—The West Wing meets DS9.
If they really want to stick with prequels, I think a generational epic would work better than what we have. Start the day Kirk “died” and end the day the D launches.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
Ultra faithful Babylon 5 remake when? There were about 26 years between the 2 Battlestar Galactica series. Babylon 5 premiered in 1994. I'd saw we're about due for someone who grew up with the series to become an adult and do a BG style remake.
Trek never had more mainstream penetration than TNG at its height. Even TOS didn’t enjoy that level of success among non-SF fans. Combine that with nostalgia, and I’m surprised CBS has restrained itself this long.
Is that true? I honestly think that people know Kirk and Spock, they know "Beam me up, Scottie!" (even if that was never actually said). Do they know Picard? I think they're more likely to know Patrick Stewart, and wasn't he some space captain a long time ago? I doubt they'd know Worf and Riker and Data, unless they're sci-fi/Trek fans. TOS may not have had the same level of success originally, but they're the ones who are iconic outside the broader fan base, not TNG, I'd wager.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Trek never had more mainstream penetration than TNG at its height. Even TOS didn’t enjoy that level of success among non-SF fans. Combine that with nostalgia, and I’m surprised CBS has restrained itself this long.
Is that true? I honestly think that people know Kirk and Spock, they know "Beam me up, Scottie!" (even if that was never actually said). Do they know Picard? I think they're more likely to know Patrick Stewart, and wasn't he some space captain a long time ago? I doubt they'd know Worf and Riker and Data, unless they're sci-fi/Trek fans. TOS may not have had the same level of success originally, but they're the ones who are iconic outside the broader fan base, not TNG, I'd wager.
TOS was a cult hit whose cultural penetration grew through endless syndicated reruns. TNG had better ratings and the kind of persistent media attention that any long-running series with two spin-offs gets across its life.
Just got back from the screening of TMP.
Verdict: with years of hindsight and without the zeitgeist howling in my ears how bad it is (and with the remove of decades making the fashion and costumes merely of their time instead of abrasively uncool): it is Good Trek™️.
My one demerit to the film is for the preposterous Lucite heels they gave the probe-Ilia to wear (even on the V’ger surface! Where all the dudes got boots and still had to watch their step!), but other than that, pretty damn good, holds up fine on the big screen.
_
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
edited September 2019
Yeah TNG is by far the most popular and definitive version of Trek when it comes to mainstream penetration. Per Wikipedia:
The Next Generation's average of 20 million viewers often exceeded both existing syndication successes such as Wheel of Fortune and network hits including Cheers and L.A. Law. Benefiting in part from many stations' decision to air each new episode twice in a week, it consistently ranked in the top ten among hour-long dramas, and networks could not prevent affiliates from preempting their shows with The Next Generation or other dramas that imitated its syndication strategy.
Some of this is due to recency - IIRC Voyager is also more popular than TOS, mostly because it was the Trek show that was on TV for more people who are alive today than how good it is.
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CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
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Mass Effect 2 is one of the best stories I’ve ever experienced. It’s an action RPG about preventing a robot apocalypse.
The scene that hits the me the hardest out of the entire story?
Two characters quietly, passionately discussing a gradual genocide while they mourn someone who died trying to end it.
I hope fiction remembers soon that sometimes quiet is best.
Except we have Orville coming up on its third season of doing the same episodic approach as a million Star Trek episodes, with the only stylistic difference being additional humor (but still doing plenty of Trek "what if" scenarios). Cut down the filler episodes and tighten up the writing compared to something like the original TNG and you could absolutely have a modern actual Trek series instead of something wearing Trek clothing while clearly doing something else. We have direct evidence that it works, right there.
One would assume that an actual Trek series would more easily tap the reservoir of prior shows in its franchise than The Orville does though...
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
Exactly. A good Trek show should actively be drawing from the existing material, not trying to distance itself by being "edgy" and "fresh". But instead of trying to move to a recognizable future, Discovery pulled a double copout and skipped out on a rebooted past to go into a future so distant it's not even the same setting anymore. It's clear the show wants the attention from the Trek name without really doing a Trek show, to the point that it really seems like they should've just had it be it's own standalone thing entirely.
"Let's throw it all away because continuity takes effort" is a terrible approach to a setting like Star Trek.
Yeah, it's pretty impressive that the Orville has built such a solidly interesting setting in just two short seasons (compared to the size of old Trek series), but we really need to get away from the Moclans quite a bit and the Krill at least a little. Though my interest in the Krill perked up considerably once they stopped being so unswervably genocidally motivated and started to talk with the Union, even begrudgingly.
But the Moclans just suck as a society, outside their recreational activities.
The writers don’t have a story they want to tell, they have a story they have to tell in order to move the characters around and show action and be Star Trek. None of these writers care about the Kelpians the way that the DS9 writers cared about the Bajorans. Their struggle isn’t meant to say anything complex about the real world except in the sense of very broad emotional overtures about challenging the status quo. They don’t introduce an AI into the plot because they want you to think really hard about what an AI is or how what we have to say about it reflects on what we think it means to be human (like Data), they introduce an AI into the plot because they need a scary villain.
If Discovery ever wants to be a great show it’ll be when they start taking the fantastic characters that they already have and start putting them in situations where the drama isn’t just “how are they gonna get out of this one?” and starts being more “I don’t even know what the right thing to do in this situation is”.
If you want somewhere to put the blame, I'd go for two factors:
1) The prestige TV format not allowing for stand-alone episodes, so you only get one "plot" per season.
2) The use of a writer's room instead of a bunch of independent writers means you simply don't have as broad of a talent pool to draw from, or the ability to devote as much writing time per episode.
Universe just hates Picard this season.
Turns out inserting a person from one ridiculous caricature-culture into another equally ridiculous caricature-culture is a recipe for fun!
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
It kinda reminds me of late 90s wrestling. Start doing the kinda crazy shit that used to happen maybe once or twice a year enough and suddenly you have to do it even more often. Then more often again. Then you're doing it every week on tv for free. In the end it's completely unsustainable (in the wrestling case also because holy fuck repeat concussions and chronic back/neck problems). Nothing stays special when it becomes the new normal.
That's where they had the diplomatic mission episodes, the character-focus episodes, and the episode where they all get affected by plant spores or whatever.
Then we got the big action movie setpieces between them.
I was always secretly hoping they would do a proper Trek show with that cast. Could have been good.
Pine’s Kirk in the 2009 movie was pretty bad, but that was all due to the writing. Beyond was pretty much perfect for the crew roles. The movie wasn’t perfect, but if it had been made instead of Into Darkness I think the whole Kelvin timeline movie series could have continued further than it did.
Given that, I found Chris Pine’s take on Kirk was a really solid depiction of a gifted leader running about ten percent too rich and banging off the walls because he didn’t get any cadet tours or seasoning assignments before the winds of plot threw him into the Big Chair.
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"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Tom Hardy as Picard?
I would crawl through glass.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Like, what happens a hundred years from the TNG era, when Picard and the like are now relegated to history and legends. What's the political landscape look like? Has warp travel grown to the point where the access to the whole galaxy is commonplace? Has the Federation cracked the secrets of Positronic brains, and does that mean there's an entire race of androids now? What has become of the Borg and the Dominion?
I think it’s even worse than simply not working to establish the relationship. Kirk’s captaincy and the relationship between him and Spock only comes about because Future Spock tells them that this is the way it must be. It involves no character development and actually removes some of their agency since if your future self says you’re supposed to do something you’re kind of stuck as far as refusing to do it what with knowledge of the future and all that.
That type of really lazy writing would have been somewhat acceptable if it had just meant that Kirk forced himself to work with Spock and we ended up with Kirk as the First Officer, but they had to go whole hog on things.
I don’t especially want one, I just think it’s inevitable.
Trek never had more mainstream penetration than TNG at its height. Even TOS didn’t enjoy that level of success among non-SF fans. Combine that with nostalgia, and I’m surprised CBS has restrained itself this long.
When it happens, I just hope it’s good like BSG and not terrible like every other remake.
This would be awesome. I’d also want a full ensemble political thriller about the destruction of Romulus and the aftermath—The West Wing meets DS9.
If they really want to stick with prequels, I think a generational epic would work better than what we have. Start the day Kirk “died” and end the day the D launches.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
TOS was a cult hit whose cultural penetration grew through endless syndicated reruns. TNG had better ratings and the kind of persistent media attention that any long-running series with two spin-offs gets across its life.
Verdict: with years of hindsight and without the zeitgeist howling in my ears how bad it is (and with the remove of decades making the fashion and costumes merely of their time instead of abrasively uncool): it is Good Trek™️.
My one demerit to the film is for the preposterous Lucite heels they gave the probe-Ilia to wear (even on the V’ger surface! Where all the dudes got boots and still had to watch their step!), but other than that, pretty damn good, holds up fine on the big screen.
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Some of this is due to recency - IIRC Voyager is also more popular than TOS, mostly because it was the Trek show that was on TV for more people who are alive today than how good it is.
This would make Moriarty the hologram equivalent of Blackadder, becoming cleverer as time passes, while his position in life becomes more subservient.