Well, Space Lincoln basically points out that she's black.
But other then that, I think you're right.
Alex Kurtzman Gets New Deal With CBS, Will Expand 'Star Trek' TV
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Well, Space Lincoln basically points out that she's black.
But other then that, I think you're right.
Do you know why? Because 80% of filmed entertainment at that time filled the criteria you list. There were PLENTY of other choices for white representation, even though non-whites made up a much bigger segment of the movie going public. Even today, according to working successful screenwriters*, if you do not specify a race in the script, casting directors will default to white. So the only way to ensure racial diversity in a script is to specifically call out that you would like a character, big, small, whatever, to be of a specific racial group. Casting directors are the ones in control of putting out the casting call and who comes in to read for a part. Just saying "It should be the most qualified" doesn't work in a system specifically skewed against people of color. They will just bring in the most qualified white people. Unless your solution is to replace the entire casting system in Hollywood, which I think you know is not going to happen. Just because they are looking for people of a specific color or gender does not mean they are going to throw the first one who walks in the door on the screen. They are going to look for qualified actors in that gender or race and hire them. Specifying race or gender in no way hinders the quality of a performance.
*John August and Craig Mazin in the ScriptNotes podcast
Do I think actively going out of their way to push women and minorities has nothing to do with what they're trying to do with DSC? No. But I think some people are blowing it way out of proportion to the point where they've become fixated on it.
The question I have for them is: why be so fixated? What's wrong that most of the bridge crew on Discovery are women? Or that the lead is a black woman, when we had a black lead on DS9 and a woman lead on VOY?
I think -- and this is only a guess -- that the objections have nothing to with Discovery itself but have to do with what they're bringing to their viewing experience.
The question I have for them is: why be so fixated? What's wrong that most of the bridge crew on Discovery are women? Or that the lead is a black woman, when we had a black lead on DS9 and a woman lead on VOY?
I think -- and this is only a guess -- that the objections have nothing to with Discovery itself but have to do with what they're bringing to their viewing experience.
As we've discussed before, if anything, actors of color (particularly non-American ones) have been severely under-represented in Trek. While the Federation in Earth is supposed to some sort of idealized U.S. analogue, it's not supposed to literally be the United States. it should reflect global diversity, not American diversity.
I wonder which animation style they will choose. hopefully 2D, but nowadays everything seems to be 3D animation
First of all, they sometimes DID air at the same time, so yes one did take viewers from the other, and second, even when they didn't, as VOY was seen as the more "classic" Trek versus DS9's different approach, having the former could take away from the latter. So none of your argument above holds any water.
More of this nonsense! Not everyone shares some's obsession with seeing their skin colour on screen. Stop projecting that behaviour onto all of us.
I would add Sheridan, vir, Deleon to the list. Oh and Marcus.
I am SO with you on this! I wish I could like it double!
Having a villain to defeat is nowadays the go-to in every friggin' movie that even as only a hint of speculative fiction in it, it's quite annoying. It's obvious why it's used to much: You can super easily pin a 3 act structure around it, introduce him in the first act, have the conflict in the second, and defeat in the third act, that's why everyone uses it as a sceleton for theri superhero/science fiction/fantasy story.
I friggin' hate that.
IMO the best Star Trek stories were always those that have been built as puzzles. Dangerous puzzles, which the characters had to solve. Yes, there could be bad guys in it: The Cardassian interrogator in "Chain of Command" was a clear cut villain. But the story wasn't centered around "defeat the villain". It was "solve the puzzle" (how to get Picard free, without starting a war and solve the border conflict). It is very noticable the villain never even got a real come-uppance. He was a personal test to Picard. But the story wasn't centered around him. The story was centered about all the characters overcoming the bad situation. How they worked together, to solve the central puzzle of the episode.
Whilst it’s a money thing in the end, it’s usually the number of viewers that determines cancellation.
well, I tried
get that a lot, do you?
oh tears of privilege, always so salty
To be honest, no. I’m more interested in the extent of the visual reboot combined with the reimagining of certain characters - namely Harry Mudd - and how all of this interacts with the “modernisation” of Star Trek.
Granted I think BSG did a better job, but I’m curious as to what else could happen in the DSC continuity longer term - in the hope that there is a longer term mind you.
So, time for these graphs once again, I suppose.
http://www.madmind.de/2009/05/02/all-star-trek-movies-and-episodes-in-two-charts/
The downward trend for DS9 was begun prior to VOY, both VOY and DS9 follow along that same trend while both air together, and VOY follows along that trend alone after DS9 ends. ENT continues the same trend after both are a memory.
It's exactly as if they all have the same audience that decays over time. There's no evidence of any show interfering in the viewership of one of the others.
So, unless those years are just coincidence, I'm guessing you started with the Crisis (or perhaps Dark Knight?), and stopped with the "New 52"? Pretty glaring contrast between a well-executed reboot and a badly executed one. The latter almost drove me away from comics, as well.
Perhaps, but they're also a "force of nature" type villain. To deal with them properly in any "final" sense, you need something on the scale of the Destiny novel trilogy... and that's not going to happen on film. What Picard needs for a closing bookend story is something that suits his character, a thinking man's opponent... and the Romulans do fit that bill. Although they're not the only ones...
...this, for instance, could be really fascinating as well. In fact, it's kind of a shame we've never seen these two characters on screen together. (Of course, I'd love for them to pick up the thread from the novels that Garak is now Castellan of the Cardassian Union...)
As we're talking about "cultural impact" and not just artistic or commercial success, I suppose you have a point here. I'd be curious about the relative sales for Pocket of TOS-based vs. TNG-based Trek novels. (Actually, given that someone somewhere is clearly standing in the way of renewing the license for Trek novels, after a nearly 40-year run, I'd be curious about the sales overall for Trek novels. But that way lies a different discussion...)
This aspect, I don't quite get. No question that the Star Wars PTB have been geniuses at toy marketing over the years, but even when I was a kid and it was all new, I just didn't get the point of all those little plastic action figures and whatnot. I definitely never collected them. I prefer "ancillary" products that still involve a story of some kind.
I don't think those two things are necessarily in opposition. TNG is an integral part of the larger Trek "franchise," yes, but the core of the franchise has always been TOS.
Consider Sherlock Holmes. Over the decades the character has been developed in every possible way. Sequels and prequels and interquels and "lost tales," adaptations and modernizations and crossovers and reimaginings and genderswap versions and more, in every medium from books to comics to stageplays to movies to TV... often multiple versions competing at the same time, since thanks to the magic of public domain Holmes isn't a monolithic "franchise" controlled by some corporation and is free to evolve in every direction at once. And much of it is wonderful. And yet, despite all that, the core of the Holmes mythos, its reliably beating heart, remains the canon of 56 short stories and four novels written by Conan Doyle... nothing more and nothing less, and that's what it will always remain.
I do wish the creators would realize that a bit more. "Crew of bridge officers on a ship at the frontier" is a pretty flexible format itself when done right, but it can and does get tired after a while, and there are so many other possibilities to explore!...
Interesting. You don't specify what you mean by "significantly younger than you," but FWIW if I were to say the same I'd have to say the gateway drug was VOY. I know a lot of millennials, people currently about 18-35 — the key demo for marketers, let us note — and as I discover more of them who are into Trek, they repeatedly cite VOY as the show that hooked them as kids. I personally can't quite grasp how VOY on its own merits could turn anyone into a fan, but there you have it, nonetheless.
(It's also interesting that quite a lot of them haven't heard of DSC, and of those who have quite a few haven't watched it. CBSAA seems to be a very effective bushel basket under which to hide a light.)
Yep, exactly. This.
I'm surprised you find it surprising that people like what they like and don't like what they don't like, and have a sentimental attachment to the former but not the latter. Why should anyone care about the fortunes of a corporate IP "franchise" that's producing material one doesn't like?...
Wow, I ordinarily agree with you so much that this statement really shocks me! I think B5 not only stands up admirably to re-watching (I've watched it beginning-to-end more than once), but arguably stands out as the single best SF series in TV history. And seriously, you can't say "other than the writing," because the writing is what made the show. What JMS accomplished there was and is amazing. Not only did B5 pioneer long-form serialization and nail the landing better than any show since, not only did it do slow-build reveals and dramatic payoffs that really worked, but it was chock-full of the kind of wonderfully intricate politics and shifting allegiances and evolving characters that characterized, say, the early seasons of Game of Thrones (before it went past the books).
It's not just the internet; it's really nothing new, and hardly worth hating. The personal is political, as the saying goes, and always has been. Politics is interwoven into every aspect of life. In any era, the only people who claim they prefer being "apoltical" are those who happen to enjoy the maximum advantages of the current status quo, and therefore prefer to think of it as a natural state of affairs rather than a constructed one, and avoid rocking the boat.
Eek! I'm as progressive as the next person (actually much more so, on average), but political sensitivities should never be an excuse for bad grammar!
(And as @Jinn helpfully pointed out, when you're dealing with a magic hammer, it's covered anyway.)Seriously though, anyone who's opposed to "SJWs" and yet somehow conflates them with "hippies" has political sensibilities lodged 50 years in the past, so...
...umm, then again, most people like that do, I suppose. So never mind, point taken!...
Not necessarily originally... the screenplay for Alien did specify that most of the roles could be played by someone of either gender, and Ridley Scott has always worked well with strong female characters, but still the producers were originally looking for a male to cast as Ripley before they eventually discovered Sigourney Weaver. But after that, in the sequels?... Yes, it's hard to argue that it was anything but a deliberate agenda — especially in Aliens — and hey, it was one that worked!...
That's meaningless, as viewership could've stabilised had VOY not been there, etc.
I don't know if you were around back then, but there was a lot of discussion about how VOY was "more Trek-like" and such, from fans.
I agree with you, about films in general and Trek in particular. And yet, I also love super-heroes. I think the problem here isn't so much super-heroes (or their villains) as a (sub) genre, it's formulaic screenwriting as the dominant approach in Hollywood these days. The more money is at stake, the harder it is to take creative risks, and a lot of today's screenwriters don't even seem to know how.
With comics characters as with anything else, clever writers can bring something new to the table. But when the goal is a four-quadrant blockbuster, they may not be allowed to do that.
The thing that gets lost with cut and paste villains, is the concept of Nemesis.
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