News Lower Decks is self-censored

[Dukhat]

Dropping F-bombs doesn't fit the tone of Lower Decks and bleeping them out is funnier.

Lower Decks also wants to call back to the tone of TNG, DS9, and VOY. Discovery and Picard don't. Picard, especially, wants to fight it. Each of these shows are different by design. They want to be tonally different from each other.

Yep. South Park and Family Guy were way funnier when they bleeped all the curse words. I remember streaming FG and hearing Quagmire and Stewey actually say the word ‘fuck’ and it took me right out of the show.

The problem with DSC and PIC is that they’re cursing just for the sake of cursing. They’re doing it because they can. And those are stupid reasons for doing it.

 

[KennyB]

The problem with DSC and PIC is that they’re cursing just for the sake of cursing. They’re doing it because they can. And those are stupid reasons for doing it.

Of all the f bombs I'd only give you the first Tilly one and even it showed her youth and lack of military bearing by blurting it out. So nah. I don't think any of them have been just for the sake of it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I think there is a whole YouTube channel dedicated to adding unnecessary bleeps to perfectly in innocent scenes of movies and tv shows to make them sound dirty and funny.

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[The Wormhole]

Well, I had been wondering why the profanity was bleeped out on this show despite it being sheer fucking cool to swear on Disco and Picard. I can tolerate bleeps though it does kind of get to me in scenes where there's not enough context to figure out what they're saying, like in Moist Vessel when Ransom says they already got Mariner on the holodeck cleaning [BLEEP] out of the [BLEEP] filters, with Freeman commenting "is that really what people do in there?" Though now that I know the bleeps are intentional, maybe that's part of the joke? Leave it to the audience's imagination as to what's being said there.

The problem with DSC and PIC is that they’re cursing just for the sake of cursing. They’re doing it because they can. And those are stupid reasons for doing it.

Of all the f bombs I'd only give you the first Tilly one and even it showed her youth and lack of military bearing by blurting it out. So nah. I don't think any of them have been just for the sake of it.

Indeed, only Tilly's F-Bomb was gratuitous and clunkily done in a manner just to show off the moment as Franchise's First F-Bomb. The swearing on Picard is just fine, and indeed not all of it is even scripted. IIRC, Laris's line about "cheeky feckers" was in fact ad-libbed. If anything, an issue I've had with the profanity on Picard is that it's only the new characters saying it, none of the returning characters have yet to utter fuck. That will be a historic moment, when Picard or Riker or Seven of Nine or whoever they bring back in season 2 says fuck on screen.

 

[Tuskin38]

IIRC, Laris's line about "cheeky feckers" was in fact ad-libbed

I think it was the specific phrasing that was adlibbed, I believe the line was always going to be fuckers.

But I could be misremembering.

 

[The Wormhole]

I think it was the specific phrasing that was adlibbed, I believe the line was always going to be fuckers.

But I could be misremembering.

According to Memory Alpha, the line in the script was "cheeky bastards" with the actress deciding to say feckers instead.

 

[DEWLine]

It shows how good the UT software's getting re: local idiom and dialect in Laris' case on PIC. :-)

As for Lower Decks...so long as viewers have the option of turning bleeps on or off on the DVD sets, I won't worry about this.

 

[The Wormhole]

As for Lower Decks...so long as viewers have the option of turning bleeps on or off on the DVD sets, I won't worry about this.

Mike McMahan already said in the tweet linked in the OP that's not happening.

 

[Oddish]

Mike McMahan already said in the tweet linked in the OP that's not happening.

Nor should it. The bleeps are part of the original art, not material removed by censors. There's no reason to delete or replace them. It's like replacing the verse ends of the assumption song with the actual swear words.

 

[fireproof78]

Of all the f bombs I'd only give you the first Tilly one and even it showed her youth and lack of military bearing by blurting it out. So nah. I don't think any of them have been just for the sake of it.

Pretty much. It fits in context, just like the bleeps make sense in Lower Decks context.

 

[Dukhat]

Nor should it. The bleeps are part of the original art, not material removed by censors. There's no reason to delete or replace them. It's like replacing the verse ends of the assumption song with the actual swear words.

In my South Park example, the bleeps were not part of the original art; they were mandated by Comedy Central. The fact that the bleeps only served to make the show even funnier was an unintended side-effect. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think that Mike McMahon thinks the same way I do.

Of all the f bombs I'd only give you the first Tilly one and even it showed her youth and lack of military bearing by blurting it out. So nah. I don't think any of them have been just for the sake of it.

So you think Admiral Pottymouth Clancy just likes saying ‘fuck’ a lot in regular discourse with people?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

It’s kind of weird anyone would both add swears and bleep them.

Like they are shooting for the teenage scandalousness of swearing instead of adding it cause it makes sense in the story.

 

[Oddish]

That actually sounds about right. Kind of like swearing without actually swearing.

 

[fireproof78]

So you think Admiral Pottymouth Clancy just likes saying ‘fuck’ a lot in regular discourse with people?

Yes.

 

[Dukhat]

Yes.

So it is cursing for cursing’s sake, then.

 

[fireproof78]

So it is cursing for cursing’s sake, then.

No, I think it is a part of her vocabulary.

 

[Dukhat]

No, I think it is a part of her vocabulary.

I fail to see the difference. One does not need to use curse words in regular discourse. She’s doing it here because the writers are able to have her curse.

 

[Tim Thomason]

In my South Park example, the bleeps were not part of the original art; they were mandated by Comedy Central. The fact that the bleeps only served to make the show even funnier was an unintended side-effect. I’m going out on a limb here, but I think that Mike McMahon thinks the same way I do.

I think with South Park (and Family Guy and similar shows), the creators know that it will be censored ahead of time for broadcast, and there's no intention to circumvent that, and in fact, it may have led to increased use of profanity (and, thus, beeps in the broadcast version) for comedy's sake. These shows were intended to be broadcast for American television as we saw them. Even if they didn't insert the bleeps themselves, they submitted it to the network with the understanding of how it would be eventually aired.

You could also see "It Hits the Fan" for a good South Park episode exploring profanity use in media and its effect on society at large.

 

[fireproof78]

I fail to see the difference. One does not need to use curse words in regular discourse. She’s doing it here because the writers are able to have her curse.

If it comes down to need then of course not. It's not a matter of need that I swear in regular discourse either. But I do.

I think it fits. Mileage, etc.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I recall being weirded out first time I saw South Park uncensored. It was cool at first, but pretty soon I realised I preferred the bleeps. They fit LDS' tone better than actual swearing.