What will make it "Star Trek"?
- Thread starter ChallengerHK
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That's one way of relating to it, but it's not actually my way of relating to it. I'm able to use my sense of empathy to understand how the Mafioso character perceives the situation, and I'm able to be invested in the stakes of the entire conflict, without morally submerging myself. If I'm watching The Godfather or Scarface, I might be fascinated by the characters and their conflicts, but I never lose sight of my the fact that these people are murderers who ought to be made to pay for the harm they've inflicted on others. The same principle applies to, for instance, political thrillers or historical dramas.
(Indeed, this speaks to one of the recurring themes of the gangster genre: That the state is just another mafia.)
But, that's just my way of relating to gangster films. Full temporary submersion is also a legitimate way of relating to the work.
I mean, yes and no? I think it's really important to bear in mind that a lot of gangster stories are based on real-world personalities and conflicts from the history of organized crime. So sometimes, they are working within the constraints of the real world -- it's just that real life has fewer constraints than we like to imagine in our day-to-day lives. So I would say it's not a matter of not being constrained by real-world limitations, but of not being constrained by conventional social limitations.
I would go one step further and say that one of the dramatic strengths of the gangster genre is that the stakes are very clear, very high, and very easy to relate to emotionally. If The Godfather's conflict between Mafia families fighting over the control of the drug trade were to be translated into a more common real-world experience, it would be about two corporations competing with each other for product sales; the stakes may be high for the characters ("I want my bonus! We need to placate our stock owners!") but they would not be easy for the audience to relate to. But if you present the basic conflict of The Godfather -- one association of people competing with another association of people for product sales -- in the form of the gangster genre, the stakes become life and death, because the constraints of a conventional life are removed. Same thing if you, say, translate the conflict into the science fiction space opera genre.
Modern Classic doesn’t mean much to me if I don’t care for the content.
Enjoyment is subjective, and no work of art can be wholly objectively evaluated. But there is an element of objective merit -- I'm sorry, there just is. I don't like Mad Men, but I recognize that there's a level of insight, depth, emotional impact, and honesty in the writing, acting, and direction that is just objectively superior to something like Law and Order. You may not love Batman: The Animated Series, but there's just no way to reasonably argue that it isn't artistically superior to Transformers.
I think this is ultimately why I would argue that even when Star Trek: Discovery falters, it is artistically superior to Star Trek: The Next Generation (even when TNG is at its best): DIS's depiction of the emotional consequences of the events the characters live through is more honest.
Batman: The Animated Series is a show that is written and performed to explore a level of emotional depth and empathy for its characters that far exceeds that which is seen in Transformers. The characters in Transformers can be fun, but they are extremely shallow and static. B:TAS also has a more thoughtful and emotionally expressive aesthetic, with an animation design that is structured to reflect the thematic content of the episodes in question. Transformers, by contrast, has a much less subtle and expressive aesthetic, with a more restricted range of color and lighting. And, yes, the animation in BTAS is just smoother than in TF.
Insert *yours is superior* meme here
The part about base ideas often being the best was a topic change, I meant in regards to shows like Buffy, not a continuation of my thoughts on gangster movies.
I find it hard to watch shows where the protagonists are killers without the submersion. I get too horrified by the slaughter if I’m in any frame of mind that applies morals. If I allow the victims to be seen as objects of empathy, I feel way too much of it to keep watching.
I think there's a difference between "I think it sucks!" and "It's not to my tastes." That's where a distinction needs to be made and, too often, it isn't. Especially online.
"The Inner Light" (TNG) and "The Visitor" (DS9) aren't exactly episodes that are on my go-to list if I feel like watching Star Trek. They're not my type of episodes. But I'm definitely not going to say I think they're bad.
"The Inner Light" (TNG) and "The Visitor" (DS9) aren't exactly episodes that are on my go-to list if I feel like watching Star Trek. They're not my type of episodes. But I'm definitely not going to say I think they're bad.
That doesn’t make one artistically superior to the other, as they are engaged in different types of storytelling. That’s like saying a poem is inferior to a novel even though they don’t remotely have the same objectives.
But, I do enjoy the “repainting the Mona Lisa with more modern equipment, unlimited funds and less restrictions, nominally changing the background then calling the latter version superior” line of discussion.
I think the debate over which of those shows is artistically superior is the Apollonian/Dionysian debate in disguise.
I would probably say TNG is the more artistically successful show. It knew what it was trying to accomplish and executed that. And it had a more unique concept of human Utopianism which even if you correctly criticize it as being stuffy and emotionally distant, it’s still more of a statement whereas Disco is just trying to tell genre stories in the universe.
I would probably say TNG is the more artistically successful show. It knew what it was trying to accomplish and executed that. And it had a more unique concept of human Utopianism which even if you correctly criticize it as being stuffy and emotionally distant, it’s still more of a statement whereas Disco is just trying to tell genre stories in the universe.
One thing I'm learning from this conversation and the different dynamics presented in newer Trek is how important the idea of unity vs. uniformity is. Star Trek is one big uniform thing-it's a lot of little things that unifies fans across the world in spite of differences, rather than just any one thing.
Oh, okay! Sorry, misunderstood ya.
That's totally fair. I'm usually able to push through that -- the only thing that really shuts down my ability to process a story is body horror, TBH -- but I get it.
Exactly. There's a difference between artistic merit and subjective enjoyment.
Well, I think here we're running up into the source of our disagreement. I think that all forms of storytelling have certain obligations, and one of them is to be in some manner emotionally honest. I may enjoy Star Trek: The Original Series, but there's no way a show that begins its first season with the revelation that the main character witnessed the murder of thousands of people as a child and then end the season with him first having to prevent his friend from saving the woman he fell in love with and then the very next episode losing his brother, yet does not depict him as being fundamentally traumatized by these events in every subsequent episode, is emotionally honest. TOS is, frankly, lying about what being a person is like when it presents people going through these kinds of horrible events and walking away untraumatized. And yes, that makes it artistically inferior to Star Trek: Discovery.
I mean, the idea of "less restrictions" is interesting. Saying that a work of art is artistically inferior is not actually the same thing as saying the artist is inferior. If, for instance, Artist 1 is working under a system of censorship that Artist 2 does not face later on, it's entirely plausible for Artist 2's work to be superior to Artist 1's work yet for Artist 1 to be capable of higher-quality work than Artist 2 in an unconstrained environment.
It really doesn’t, because TOS like many other shows of the period were anthologies in disguise. They set out to tell individual stories in what was a shared universe. They didn’t sit down with a ten-person writing staff and break out 24-30 episodes a season, they invited in actual sci-fi writers to pitch concepts and write scripts. In addition to all that, they were inventing the Trek wheel.
For me, Discovery’s cheap melodrama simply doesn’t compare.
But it's not an anthology. It is a show that's borrowing the writing conceits of anthologies, but the very act of doing that with a continuing cast of characters renders the writing fundamentally dishonest.
It would be fine if TOS had, for instance, revealed that it was Captain Robert April who had seen Kodos the Executioner murder thousands of people as a child; and if it had been Captain Christopher Pike who had to let Edith Keeler die; and if it had been Captain James T. Kirk who lost his borther on Deneva.
But the mere act of presenting all three events as happening to Kirk while not depicting Kirk as fundamentally traumatized, renders the writing emotionally dishonest. The fact that it was borrowing a creative conceit from another form, does not render the writing that resulted emotionally dishonest. Nor does the fact that such conceits were common for the era. (There is, after all, a reason that so many people concerned with artistic quality condemned television in general in the 1960s as artistically inferior -- much of it was artistically inferior.) Emotional dishonesty in art is emotional dishonesty no matter what real-world constraints motivated the creative choices made.
I'm curious about what draws you to Mad Men. It's a show I have never watched, for a multitude of reasons, but I keep hearing good things about.
I thought just the opposite. Being generous I'd say they had three episodes of show and they needed to stretch that out, so we got a Borg plot which went nowhere, and a Romulan plot which was stretched to the point of breaking, and a 7 of 9 plot which went nowhere.
I'm not going to go into spoilers then in case you do watch it, but I'll tell you what I like about the show in general:
1. The mysteriousness and mystique of Don Draper.
2. The illusion of how "great" things were in the mid-20th Century versus the reality.
3. Showing women's perspective on the sexism of the time.
4. The thought process that goes into creating ads.
5. All of the characters and their personalities.
6. The show covers from 1960 to 1970 and you get to see how everyday characters are affected by the changes in society. You get perspectives from people who wouldn't have been on the frontlines of the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights Movement.
7. The production design is first-rate. It's so well done, you actually believe you're looking at the 1960s.
8. Character arcs continue from season to season, not just with Don Draper, but with all the characters.
9. Trying to figure out the double-meaning behind the themes of each season.
10. The insight into corporate culture and office politics.
11. The clash between the generations that becomes more prominent over time.
12. The slower and deliberate pace means that nothing is rushed.
13. The exploration of the different romantic relationships. Especially comparing the ones that work versus the ones that don't and their ups and downs.
I’m sorry, I’ve never found a show’s writing “fundamentally dishonest”, they’re stories designed to be entertaining. Maybe that’s the problem, I’m looking for entertainment to serve the purpose of entertaining? I’ve got more than enough on my real world plate to take it THAT seriously.
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