I think that when it comes to a TV show or franchise, we would have a better idea of whether it "insults our intelligence" if we were involved in the creation of a show, movie or even an episode. The consideration surely wouldn't be "How can i make a show that will insult people" nor "How can i make a show that won't insult anyone". It's storytelling, story-depiction created with real-world resources and constraints. I wonder if the people who nitpick the shows to death did the same with Enid Blyton or any of their other childhood fiction at the same level.
When Trek insults our intelligence
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
Enid Blyton wasn't writing science fiction, and using technobabble to try to hide not caring if anything made sense.
Point is, it is fiction and art. Created by someone/people who isn't a god. Before we go criticizing a show for being what it is, it would be better to actually be involved in creating a show like that. Does any critic know all of the constraints the writers, producers, directors, actors, camera-folk, extras etc. all faced when they created it?
It's so easy to sit in an armchair and fire away at every little tick that appeared out of nowhere and created a plothole or whatever, so much harder to actually go ahead and create a show of your own. I cringed (and then guffawed) at the salamanders, but of course I accept it for what it is: an episode created by someone who thought it would be good for it to be in Voyager.
Riker sees all.
Riker knows all.
Yes.
Even that.
And that.
That too, but tch, shame on you for wondering that about Ensign Ro.
Oh, please. If I go to a restaurant and order a meal, I can decide whether I like it, or whether it's good, without knowing every detail of the food's preparation, the availability of ingredients, or the level of staffing.
And on the rare occasion that I've complained about my meal at a restaurant, never once has the chef told me I had no right to gripe unless I could do it better.
Maybe we should be insulting their intelligence, then.
Complaining about food or service in a restaurant is perfectly understandable, but returning to the same restaurant night after night?
Applying the restaurant complaint to Star Trek is a bit like going to an Indian restaurant and complaining about the lack of carbonara on the menu.
I've been involved in writing and I used to work on the properties crew in musical theatre. So yeah, I am quite aware that things happen that the audience doesn't know about that affect how a scene is put together, or if lines and/or blocking have to be changed because a prop or costume simply won't work as written or as the director demands.
I had to actually explain to the director why we really couldn't have a live monkey in "Gypsy" or use real burning arrows and fireworks in "Peter Pan"... both would have been in contravention of several laws, and the arrows and fireworks could have burned the damn theatre down.
So the lines pertaining to the monkey had to be changed (we eventually used a rabbit, after I also put my foot down on using a goldfish, since it wouldn't have survived). We had to make do with a fake bomb and change the lines to do with the arrows. They weren't major changes, and would only have been noticeable to people who had memorized the script. But they were necessary to stay inside the laws pertaining to animal welfare and fire regulations.
It's a rare time that the first draft is ever anywhere near good enough for publication or as a shooting script. But presumably the salamander story that got to the screen wasn't a first draft, or even the second, third, or fourth. Somebody thought it would be a good idea, yeah. But somebody else should have overruled them. It makes no sense scientifically (and the science in science fiction should be at least plausible), and the way it was executed was stomach-turning. As in I nearly threw up my supper when I watched it. That's not good, and I do not give any portion of a rodent's anatomy what was going on behind the scenes.
I had an experience on this forum several years ago, when one of the pro authors demanded to know what qualifications I had to criticize his novels... was I a professional Star Trek author?
My response was that as a reader and person who bought the novels with the expectation of being entertained by a good story, that gave me all the qualifications I need to criticize a novel if it doesn't meet my expectation. He didn't take that well, and the end result of the argument is that he permanently lost a reader (and customer).
So whether it's here or on TV or in a movie, if insult is given to the audience, whoever is responsible for the insult shouldn't be surprised if the audience is critical and votes with their wallets.
Maybe so but it still felt too cheap and even insulting. There was no indication it was imagined rather than just trying to ignore that the memories were supposed to be memories and the episode would have probably been better if a lot of the clip use had just been shorter.
nah
The snowball has to start rolling somewhere. And some genres are more intentional than others. Look at political shows, though the issue there is whether it's deliberate, accidental, or inevitable.
I've been in writing classes; it's not easy a field to get into, everyone makes plotholes but some are easier to not see than others, and there's not much value in it either or else we'd see more people going to creative writing college to rebuild the working class with. Of course, the cost of college is so high that nobody can afford it but before we get back into that Möbius strip of an issue, noting that my spellchecker wanted to replace "Möbius" with "bigamous" and I think that's cute, but I digress on a digression.
And I agree; the makers of "Threshold" were trying to do something other than predictable, which means taking a risk. I applaud the episode for trying to take risks, and Trek hadn't delved into the magical Warp 10 barrier and what might happen if it were crossed.
Did the episode ultimately work? For most, no. Did the writers think the episode would work when writing it or while seeing it filmed? Perhaps, perhaps not.
But, indeed, even fort an episode that isn't more than the sum of its parts, there are some parts of interest and some noteworthy quotes made by characters. So it can't be too much a clunker despite the misfire.
But how many in the viewing audience care about details? They just want mindless fun because it's free. Then again, if they don't realize it's not free, then will they care about anything else?
it's paid by sponsors, which means every time one buys a sponsor's product, one is paying for every show the sponsor supports - whether one likes the show or not. It adds rather a new dimension to the recurring real life thing known as "boycotting" or, as a more amusing tangent, "YouTube Adpocalypse".
Oh absolutely. Like it, love it, hate it. No one can tell you what to think or feel or say. But just bear in mind that no one can satisfy everyone all the time, episode after episode.
And I don't buy the analogy with food preparation. You are likely someone who knows and does some cooking. It gives you some experience. Have you produced a TV show?
Obviously because the chef wants to improve his craft and that's his job and responsibility. As a critic, it's your responsibility to bear in mind that the chef isn't a god and critique his preparation accordingly. If you start to point to every little detail and go into excruciating nitpicking of his food while he stands there listening, pretty soon he's gonna flip and ignore everything you've said. Even Ramsay doesn't do to contestants as much on Hell's Kitchen, what I've seen some of the posters here do to Trek.
I don't know about you, but I don't live my life trading insults. I'd rather trade compliments.
Actually, I'm a pretty lousy cook, and it's entirely possible I do have more of the skills associated with producing drama than I do of the skills associated with producing good food. (I have an English degree with a focus on writing, and was sufficiently involved with my school's theater to qualify for the national drama honorary.)
But that's not the point. The point is that I don't have to know anything about cooking to be qualified to comment on the quality of a meal that is served to me. I don't have to be able to write a professional Star Trek novel (per @Timewalker 's example) to be qualified to comment on whether I, as a reader, feel it was worth the time and money I spent on it. And I don't have to be able to produce a TV show to be qualified to say whether an episode was intelligent or enjoyable.
Literally the reason why we are here, on this board, is to comment on Trek. It's not going to be an unending stream of paeans. And if some of us are insulting to Trek, so what? Trek is a thing; it has no feelings. And if the people who produce the shows are dropping by a BBS for advice, or opinions, or affirmations, then they should be ready to deal with what they see. But since I actually assume that they mostly don't stop by this board, then how can anything we say affect them, or hurt their feelings, in the slightest?
I have to be honest. Clip shows in general insult my intelligence. If you haven't got the budget to do an episode then just don't do the episode. Don't waste my time making me rewatch scenes from better episodes. I can do that by myself by pulling out the DVDs.
They are generally committed to networks, sponsors, etc for a specific number of episodes.
Yeah I know, but given that they know the number of episodes in advance before filming anything you'd think that a little planning would enable them to split the budget appropriately.
If you’re taking Star Trek so seriously that you feel it’s personally insulting you, then you’re not appreciating it for what it is. The show was created to entertain us, not to provide literal, chronological facts about the future. There were dozens of writers, series made forty years later that went back in time before TOS, an obscene amount of alternate timelines and 5 different types of Klingons that look like completely different species. If you need to pull every piece of it apart, you’re not going to be able to fully enjoy it for what it is. Star Trek is flawed, but with a franchise so big, what wouldn’t be?
About the only clip shows I like are tributes / retrospectives. Like when Jack Soo passed away 40 years ago and the cast of Barney Miller did a clip show of Nick Yemana's finest moments.
Anyone remember the hash in the brownies? "Mooshy-mooshy!"
Clip shows are an unfortunate necessity sometimes, but I will say that XENA generally did the best clip shows, by finding ways to have fun with them. See "The Xena Scrolls," which was done as an Indiana Jones parody, or the episode with the epic story-teller Homer, which managed to work in clips from SPARTACUS (with Kirk Douglas) and an old Italian sword-and-sandals movie as well! 
Never mind that the Spartacus lived well after the days of Homer and ancient Greece. XENA was never a show to let a little thing like historical accuracy get in the way of a good time.
Never mind that the Spartacus lived well after the days of Homer and ancient Greece. XENA was never a show to let a little thing like historical accuracy get in the way of a good time.
