Alex Kurtzman Gets New Deal With CBS, Will Expand 'Star Trek' TV

I'm hard-pressed to imagine what a "legitimate complaint from a white person" even looks like in the real world. A critical sunscreen shortage would be one, I suppose.

I'm defining "legitimate complaint" here as one legitimately arising from the premise that "I or other persons have been unfairly disadvantaged by systemic neglect or malice because of identification with this group."

 

One could definitely argue that it wasn't political at all. Political is "A Private Little War." It was certainly thoughtful and "about something" but it wasn't about politics.

 

Not enough Lawrence Welk on modern television?

 

Trek has always tried to tackle the hard issues, the underlying subtext. In the 1980 and more recently no one was willing to discuss extraterrestrial ghost rape. But Berman's bull pen of writers were willing and indeed possibly salivating to do so.

 

Some great episodes there, so no, not dull or trivial. But not apolitical either. I can find some interesting political subtext in pretty much every one of those. (Whether it's intentional or unwitting, and especially whether it makes a coherent point or undermines itself, is another matter, and certainly one of the criteria by which a story can be analyzed and judged.)

 

I don't know that ol' Lawrence fits in at all, but American redneck culture is some awesome shit. No lie. It's my heritage and I love...a lot of it.

It's just there's just no way we're systemically mistreated.

 

You're assuming that he must care about his skin colour's representation no matter what he says. No, not everyone cares about this stuff.

No, there are plenty of people on both sides of this issue who make a huge deal of out this stuff.

 

Babylon 5 is the most ridiculously '90s thing I've ever seen in my life. And the Nimbari must drench their heads with entire bottles of Aqua Net. Super Maximum Hold. I thought I used to use a lot of hair spray...

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This is great!

 

That isn't hair, it is bone on the Minbari heads.

 

Babylon 5 is stupid fun. That is some of it is fun, but most of it is stupid.

 

Very few of your concerns (or anyone's) are exclusively "personal," though. As John Donne observed way back in 1624,

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind."​

Also, if you think of politics only as things that "should be the government's concern," you have a very narrow conception of politics. (And even within that conception, what you or I may think is the government's concern and what the government thinks is the government's concern are not necessarily the same thing...)

No, quite the contrary. It involves acknowledging the complex multiple causal factors and ripple effects involved in human actions. What's reductionist and simplistic is pretending the political aspects aren't there.

The kind of people who refer to political themes as "nonsense" are the kind who are comfortable enjoying unearned privilege thanks to the status quo.

I can't begin to imagine how one could argue "Devil in the Dark" was apolitical, but feel free to try. Just off the top of my head, if you don't see the theme there about colonialism and exploitation of native resources, then you're trying very hard not to look.

Meanwhile, on a whole other topic!...

Just for the record, the current somewhat rough look of B5's effects on DVD (and streaming) isn't actually a result of "production limitations." It's more a result of after-the-fact penny-pinching by Warner Brothers. Long story short, the original effects as produced were more sophisticated than they look now; it's just that they were only rendered at 4:3 for original broadcast... then, later, for DVD (and subsequent) releases, WB would only pay for a cheap pan-and-scan crop job, working from the interlaced video, to blow the images back up to 16:9. JMS reports that WB actually still has a pristine archival film master of the whole show (albeit in 4:3) that could be used to strike a new print, making the CG look much sharper than the current version, but they haven't made it available. This article is really fascinating and informative.

 

I haven't finished yet (mid-way through season four), but I've really been enjoying it.

 

When you are done with season 4, skip all of season 5 and just watch the series finale.
Without spoiling anything, season 5 series finale is direct sequel to season 4. You can watch rest of season 5 later if you want, but it has no bearing on season 4 and series finale at end of season 5.

 

Privilege? Ahahahahahahahaha! You think I have privilege? Hahahaha! Hilarious!!

 

I know so.

 

yes. and so do I.

 

I never said they were.

No, exactly. You're trying to fit the entirety of art into a snappy platitude.

What the fuck are you babbling about? Why did my general statement suddenly become about what's apparently your pet issue?

 

No where is that more applicable in fandom and nowhere is it so poorly understood than fandom. Ok, maybe not "nowhere" but the idea that some how place is improved by the removal of people we don't agree with really stuck out to me. I'm sure I am not expressing it well but that just felt prescient when there is so much handwringing over Kurtzman and the "damage" he will do to Trek.

 

Just finished the first episode. The guy who looks like Bruce Willis was laughing way too hard at Duck Dodgers.

But overall, in all seriousness, pretty good. Last I'm going say about it here. It would be interesting to see how this show would be done with modern production values.

My only serious critique is they keep talking about the political situation and while it's natural from their perspective, because they know what they're talking about, I was over here thinking, "Huh? What?" They could've done a better job bringing viewers up to speed so we could know about the situation they seem to be taking so seriously.

 

Everything gets explained.