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What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?

I think if they had been more aggressive with the Kelvin universe movie releases it might have bumped up the popularity with the general public. They had six years before Star Wars returned and only managed to release one movie during that time.
Yup. Kelvin films were the biggest opportunity and it was pretty well wasted.
 
After 2009 the world was the movie franchise's oyster. The critical and fan reactions to STID didn't help BEY so we're now in the boat where cinematic Trek is probably going be on long-term hold with just the periodic development story released to keep interest stirred.
 
I think the reason they went with the choice they did was the writers saying: “well, how does this personally connect with our characters?” I’ve seen this argument with the Marvel shows on Disney+. People will say you can’t just have Mephisto show up in the finale, because it’s a character we haven’t been introduced to and how does that connect to the characters and story you’ve already presented?

I have the feeling the Discovery writers felt they had to give the explanation something that would connect with one of the main characters in some way, and they thought it would give a chance to explore another aspect of Saru.

But I don’t think it works at all, and I would have much preferred a more kind of WTF? ending introducing something new that you could build on then what we got.

I'm sorry it didn't work for you. But I gotta say, after losing my grandmother in November 2019 and then my mother in August 2021, that Su'Kal's grief really speaks to me. I understand what it's like to carry the kind of grief that feels like it could make the galaxy burn.

The Burn doesn't bother me. At least it wasn't another Big Bad or more AI run amok. One reason I like DSC Seasons 3 and 4 so much more was because they largely got away from that kind of crap.

One aspect of DIS S4 that doesn't get enough attention is that there is literally no villain that season. The conflicts all come from people having different ideas how to handle the Dark Matter Anomaly, and even Ruon Tarka isn't a villain -- just someone who's suffering from profound trauma.

Reducing it to a depressed child made the entire thing feel so small,

I understand that you may have wanted a more intricate plot device, but I really do wish people would not use reductive language to diminish the power and importance of grief as a human experience. It is one of the most profound, important, and painful parts of life.

This is touchier (and I'm going to be more serious): I don't know the whole Probert thing. I understand that he's (to be charitable) become a bit eccentric. I'm not downplaying the allegation. I'm not.

Except that there are people making the show who ACTUALLY know the man. In real life. Not on the internet. And they think it's OK to put his name on the show. So I'm guessing they don't see him as racist.

Lots of people go into denial about the racism of the white people they love.

It's a word that is losing it's power because it gets used a LOT.

No, it's a word that is losing its power because a large percentage of our society is racist and doesn't think racism is a bad thing.

But I can't help but smile at the acknowledgement of "right wing Trekkies". That was considered an oxymoron not long ago.

Bryan Fuller once remarked -- I'm paraphrasing -- that Star Trek appeals to both liberals and conservatives -- liberals, because it presents a world where poverty, racism, sexism, bigotry, etc., no longer exist; and conservatives, because it focuses on what you might reductively call a bunch of "space cops" in a hierarchical, diet-authoritarian military organization. To which I would add it also presents a fantasy of a benevolent colonialism, and that it also often uses racial essentialist ideas in its presentation of alien species.

Also the Orions were really poorly done and dragged the whole season down with them.

How so?

Part of the issue with The Burn is it wasn't really the Season 3 arc, it was just a part of it:
  • Episodes 1 and 2 were about reuniting Michael and the Discovery crew.
  • Episodes 3-5 were about "finding the Federation"
  • Episodes 6-8 were more clearly about the "cause of The Burn"
  • Episodes 9-10 were a side-quest to get Georgiou "put on a bus" for the spinoff which (apparently) will never happen with a few random scenes in engineering.
  • Episode 11 solved The Burn
  • Episodes 12-13 shifted the story to "let's defeat discount Seksa...I mean Osyrra!"

I agree that S3 really had a lot of mini-arcs that were loosely linked by the Burn as a backdrop, but I really don't see how Osyrra is anything like Seska apart from both being female villains. Also, I think "Terra Firma, Parts I & II" were primarily about giving Mirror Georgiou the opportunity to redeem herself and conclude her story, with the option of coming back for a future spinoff, than they were just about setting up the spinoff.

He's on the right. He's even apparently a Trump guy. (I won't bore you with a quibble of if I think that means "right" but it is unfortunately accepted terminology.) It happens.

To be clear, Andrew Probert is also a chemtrail conspiracy theorist; continues to advocate for the fascist candidate who attempted to overthrow the legitimate government of the United States in a coup d'etat; supports violating women's fundamental right to bodily autonomy; propagated the Q-Anon conspiracy theory that John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive and would publicly reveal himself to run for Vice President with the aforementioned fascist candidate; he has propagated Q-Anon conspiracy theories about organ harvesting and white supremacist, Islamophobic conspiracy theories about former President Obama being a Muslim; and claims that humanity has been contacted by alien civilizations since the 1950s; propagated the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory on Facebook in 2015; and posted what Ex Astris Scientia's Twitter account described as racist memes on Twitter, so he apparently has a long history of racist behavior online that hasn't been preserved in documentation.

Andrew Probert is more than just "on the right." He is a bigoted, racist, Islamophobic, misogynistic, conspiratorial fascist. He should not be hired by anyone who believes in equality or democracy.

What happened to enjoying a show and starship designs without bringing politics into it?

People seem to have forgotten how to separate the professional work and the personal lives of people.

Fascism is an existential threat to human liberty and democracy. You cannot separate the art from the artist when they're fascists.

DISCO was the flagship series for the franchise, until SNW arrived. Between the critics and audience reviews, it easily became the new flagship for the franchise.

I'm not convinced there's any one "flagship" for the franchise right now. Obviously SNW will become the flagship once DIS and PIC have both ended, but Paramount+ seems to give them all roughly equal weight when they're airing.

Plus, given the rising costs per season of DISCO, and the recent decision by Paramount Plus to cut costs because of the Showtime merge, DISCO's days were numbered.

Sadly, yeah. Paramount+ has not yet turned a profit for Paramount Global, and while that doesn't necessarily mean it won't get there or that the years they've spent building up a good original programming library won't be an important part of why it becomes profitable if it does, the unfortunate fact is that streaming television has been a bubble for most of the last ten years and investors are demanding the streamers start turning profits or cut costs. That's why we're seeing so many streaming cancellations when previously streaming shows were able to get by for years at a time with smaller but dedicated fanbases.

Paramount had a very ambitious notion of having at least one Star Trek series releasing new episodes on Paramount+ every week of the year, and unfortunately that strategy has not yet led to enough subscribers that Paramount+ has been able to turn a profit. I suspect that in the next two years, we're gonna see Star Trek pulled back to, if we're lucky, two live-action shows and one animated show.

I also wouldn't be surprised if Paramount+ folds and new Star Trek productions get picked up by Netflix or Amazon.

I think the rhetoric that Trek is only for “smart, intellectual science fiction aficionados” probably didn’t help the show’s appeal. It’s condescending and exclusive.

Very true. And while Star Trek could be very smart, it was always firmly middlebrow rather than highbrow, and oftentimes it was dumb as a rock. It was never as smart as those folks pretended.
 
and conservatives, because it focuses on what you might reductively call a bunch of "space cops" in a hierarchical, diet-authoritarian military organization.
As a moderate conservative this is a bit reductionistic. Both sides of that argument appeal to me in Star Trek, save for authoritarian nature of Starfleet. I appreciated it when they realized that some things are just outside their authority or control.

Very true. And while Star Trek could be very smart, it was always firmly middlebrow rather than highbrow, and oftentimes it was dumb as a rock. It was never as smart as those folks pretended.
I think this goes to the exclusivity factor of Star Trek-people make fun of me because their not smart enough to appreciate Star Trek. A bit reductionist but that was sometimes the experience for me on both sides. It comes across as a bit of a modern style of gnosticism in a way that Trek was for the smart people and the lesser people did not get it.
 

They were just incredibly boring and had no screen presence. Also played a bit too much on the incompetent card for a supposedly major threat (that's more regarding nephew whats-his-name than Osyra, but he was really too much of what the Orion storyline was focused on).

The Orions in DSC s3 are essentially the exact same concept as the Kree in Agents of Shield (I wanna say season 5? Or was it 6? When the characters were trapped in the future). With the major difference being the Kree and their technology are actually visually arresting and their storyline is focused on genuinely interesting characters that I actually looked forward to seeing from one episode to the next. And also DSC tossed that whole storyline together with the Burn storyline with neither really connecting to the other and with pretty poor pacing overall, which is probably the main reason why there was no even remotely decent build up to actually get me invested in the Burn storyline in the first place.
 
As a moderate conservative this is a bit reductionistic. Both sides of that argument appeal to me in Star Trek, save for authoritarian nature of Starfleet. I appreciated it when they realized that some things are just outside their authority or control.

It is reductionist, but I still think there's some truth there. Even though you might appreciate when Starfleet realizes something is outside of its authority, Star Trek as a narrative still traditionally paints Starfleet as a benevolent organization and its embrace of hierarchical social relationships as a good and desireable thing. And maybe it would in real life be just that, in the context of them being a military force operating in deep space far from the safety and infrastructure of a planetary surface. But conservatism as a political ideology is motivated by a tendency to support hierarchical social relationships in general, and that means that Star Trek's vision of Starfleet as a benevolent, all-pervasive hierarchy appeals to them.

(All-pervasive because Star Trek almost always focuses on life aboard a Starfleet starship rather than the fifty bajillion social institutions that no doubt exist in civilian life outside of Starfleet throughout the UFP. Hell, even Star Trek: Prodigy ends its first season with its rag-tag group of space teenagers joining Starfleet!)

I think this goes to the exclusivity factor of Star Trek-people make fun of me because their not smart enough to appreciate Star Trek. A bit reductionist but that was sometimes the experience for me on both sides. It comes across as a bit of a modern style of gnosticism in a way that Trek was for the smart people and the lesser people did not get it.

Agreed.
 
But conservatism as a political ideology is motivated by a tendency to support hierarchical social relationships in general, and that means that Star Trek's vision of Starfleet as a benevolent, all-pervasive hierarchy appeals to them.
I suppose. That's not typically how I approach conservatism, but fair enough.
 
After 2009 the world was the movie franchise's oyster. The critical and fan reactions to STID didn't help BEY so we're now in the boat where cinematic Trek is probably going be on long-term hold with just the periodic development story released to keep interest stirred.
I felt for action packed space adventure the kelvinverse wasn't a bad flick at all compared to other new space flop adventures of the decade..
If it wasn't set in the Star trek franchise it might have become a franchise of it's own.
What I think upset Trek Fans was it's attempt to play around with Trek history.
 
I felt for action packed space adventure the kelvinverse wasn't a bad flick at all compared to other new space flop adventures of the decade..
If it wasn't set in the Star trek franchise it might have become a franchise of it's own.
What I think upset Trek Fans was it's attempt to play around with Trek history.

Maybe so, in general, but I was more upset by its near complete lack of playing around with Trek history. There was so much potential for the idea of just having a new universe where literally anything can happen, but instead they twisted themselves into knots in order to make the crew almost exactly the same in every way and tried to sell us Khan as Star Trek's Joker. It just made the whole Kelvin universe feel small and boring because it didn't feel like the characters were actually earning their positions but were simply being awarded the positions they're 'supposed' to have because that's what the audience expects.

That's also part of why I loved Beyond so much more than the other two films, because its the only one that actually gets away from established Trek Lore, tries to do its own thing and actually dares to have an original character other than the bad guy.
 
I felt for action packed space adventure the kelvinverse wasn't a bad flick at all compared to other new space flop adventures of the decade..
If it wasn't set in the Star trek franchise it might have become a franchise of it's own.
What I think upset Trek Fans was it's attempt to play around with Trek history.
Which is odd because it didn't really do much to the history. It brought together the same crew, and sent them against similar enemies, either corrupt admirals (Marcus compared to TUC) or Khan (TWOK). I didn't like Beyond as much because Edison was so poorly used, but I did appreciate the Yorktown, Kirk's personal struggle and the marooned on a planet story.

But, the sadder part is simply that 09 was the perfect base to launch out and try something new, and instead of doing so they meekly stepped back and waited too long for the next film, and played coy with the villain, resulting in a lot of disappointment.
 
Eccleston is mine. Imagine my utter glee when he was announced as a guest at DragonCon a few years back... especially considering how I expected to never be able to meet him due to his falling out with the show.

Once I met him (and he was a blast), I have met all of the living Doctors except for Jodie and Tom Baker.
 
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