Excluding the obvious choice of Jeffrey Combs as... well anyone really, I'm rather fond of Andreas Katsulas, though I may be partial to him for his phenomenal role as G'Kar on Babylon 5.
No, they liked it, but only at the barest surface level. They were too media illiterate to pick up on the deeper themes. It doesn't require media literacy to like cool-looking starships going pew pew at each other or Kirk chatting up a hot alien chick.
As Mariner in Crisis Point 2: it's a starfleet story so it's worth telling.
However, I really feel like they wanted to have the "it's BEFORE almost everything else" cake and also wanting to eat it by having more advanced tech.
Then they realized their error, shot into the future, but in my opinion EXTREMELY underestimated technological advancement across NEARLY 1000 YEARS. Everything basically looks the same.
And then a man child had a temper tantrum and destroyed galactic civilization single-handedly. Sure. Okay. Have fun with the rest of the show, but that's where I turn in for the night.
It just really seems like they had a premise for a good show, then someone came in and demanded this and that HAS to be in the show, and instead of rewriting to make it good, they just kind of crammed things in to please the higher ups.
I enjoyed large parts of Disco so far, and pretty much agree with you. The show feels like a decent Brian Fuller setup that was corrupted during the production of season 1, and continued to take course correction notes for each new season.
[They] EXTREMELY underestimated technological advancement across NEARLY 1000 YEARS. Everything basically looks the same.
Let me one-up you here: it looked like a step back. Not only in terms of in-universe development, but also just... uninventive production design. Trek gave us sliding automatic doors, flip phones and touchscreen tablet computers before they existed in the real world. Its conceptualisation of 32nd century tech and design on the other hand is swiped from actual 21c industry pipe dreams.
If this sounds very negative, I'll add that I've really enjoyed the highs of Discovery, and there have been a good few throughout the show. I like that they've leaned into the emotional and therapeutic work that would go into an accepting, peaceful society — even on a daily workplace and social basis.
And hell yeah, will I binge rewatch all seasons as a warmup to the final outing!
Really? For me, Season 3 was when it finally stopped sucking (as much), and S4 was good. The only thing that made S2 bearable was Pike, and them buddying up with Space Hitler put me off until S4.
A good article that I unfortunately can’t read much of due to a pay wall.
I think my main question would be: so I wasn’t around in the 1960s… but I can’t imagine the average Star Trek viewer was sitting around thinking “yep, that’s what real life is going to be like” in the future, even with a somewhat more optimistic culture.
I think Star Trek is more aspirational. It aspires to have this society where most everyone is very professional, very intelligent, very emotionally controlled and empathetic, etc. The newer seasons seem to miss some of this especially on that professionalism front. The kind of “British stiff upper lip” stereotype. It’s harder to imagine this utopia future without a significant change in how everyone acts and talks in their day to day lives, and modern Star Trek doesn’t really capture that latter part (imo). It makes it feel like society just kind of “stumbled into” a utopian society
The newer seasons seem to miss some of this especially on that professionalism front. The kind of “British stiff upper lip” stereotype.
This presumes that that sort of stoicism is particularly aspirational or healthy, and I don't think there's anything close to universal consensus on that one.
I think something that gets missed in discussions of "utopia" is that it's not real. Utopia is not attainable, because there is no universal definition of what that would look like. It exists as a dream of the future, but that's all.
This is not to say that the ’90s shows never delved into the complexity and nuance of this ethos—indeed, playing at the edges of their internal morality was how they derived much of their interest...Things are different in modern Trek.
If you have to include a variation of "sure, it was always like this, but it's different now," it's time to go back to the drawing board with your thinkpiece.
'Why are people pirating our IP instead of following it around to each walled garden and paying for it!? Won't someone think of the shareholders!' - Some Exec
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