Which puts you (and me) in the age bracket of the showrunners, who are trailing-edge Boomers/leading-edge Gen Xers (as far as I can tell).
What are your controversial Star Trek opinions?
- Thread starter Amasov
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That was a train wreck. Gerrold had thirty years to polish that turd, and that was the best he could come up with?
Someone should compare it the version he did for his Star Wolf novel and see which one is better.
It's better but not by much. The crisis the XO is going through tends to take center stage.
That's basically what Strange New Worlds is.
And Lower Decks, except from a comedic lense.
Excellent points, all.
But about the last point, it's not selfish. It's iconic. More so than the red/blue/greenish-gold outfits that should have ended with the sixties, as color TV was so common by 1979 that nobody was wowed "because, color" anymore. Now, as much as I'd love to see a new show be as creative with the color palette of TOS, that's probably not going to happen - and not because everything is made in generic teal/orange palette.
But all that aside, will Trek ever have that iconic, stolid, militaristic and formal in dialect/prose feel ever again?
Or graceful ships. As much as I adore Season3 PIC (and I do!), the Enterprise D now flitting about like a hyperactive ferret, rather than the more graceful glides like a swan was a tad much.
I found the "Blood and Fire" TNG script was both simultaneously really dark and gritty and fascinating and also soap operatic and unfocused. I think both Gerrold and the people who nixed it were right at the same because TNG could have done at least a little to explore homosexuality in Trek but the script itself goes overboard in the end with drama and has way too much focus on the guest characters instead of the actual TNG cast. I found the bioweapon subplot incredibly fascinating and just the myth of the Ferengi and the panic they stir in people in this paints a really interesting picture compared to what we got.
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Younger. Hmmm. Now it gets complicated. Paramount + is a paid subscription service, so they need to create content to attract subscribers. This is not an area I have experience in, but I would say that it’s a similar thought process to what brands use to determine the key demographic target.
Key demographics for brand advertisers can vary depending on the specific brand, its products or services, and its target market. However, there are some common demographics that brand advertisers often consider when crafting their advertising strategies. Here are some key demographics that brand advertisers typically focus on:
- Age: Different age groups may respond differently to advertising messages. Brand advertisers often target specific age ranges based on the products or services they offer. For example, a brand targeting teenagers may focus on advertising through social media platforms popular with that age group.
- Gender: Gender can also play a role in advertising targeting. Some products or services may be more appealing to one gender over the other, so advertisers may tailor their messaging accordingly.
- Income: Household income is an important demographic for many brand advertisers, as it can impact purchasing power. Advertisers of luxury goods, for example, may target higher-income demographics.
- Education: Education level can influence consumer behavior and preferences. Some brands may target more educated consumers with messaging that appeals to their interests and values.
- Location: Geographic location is another important demographic for brand advertisers. Advertisers may target specific regions, cities, or even neighborhoods based on factors such as climate, culture, or local trends.
- Ethnicity: Cultural background and ethnicity can also influence consumer behavior. Some brands may tailor their advertising to specific ethnic groups to better resonate with their target audience.
- Family status: Whether a consumer is single, married, or has children can impact purchasing decisions. Advertisers may target specific family statuses with messaging that speaks to their needs and preferences.
- Interests and hobbies: Understanding the interests and hobbies of their target audience can help advertisers create more relevant and engaging campaigns. Advertisers may use data on consumer interests to target specific demographics.
- Digital behavior: With the rise of digital advertising, understanding consumers' online behavior is crucial for brand advertisers. This includes factors such as websites visited, social media platforms used, and online shopping habits.
- Psychographics: In addition to demographic factors, brand advertisers may also consider psychographic variables such as values, attitudes, and lifestyle choices. This information can help advertisers create more personalized and targeted campaigns.
So you can reverse engineer their targets based on their content. The CW, for instance, creates more YA content. Movies typically cater to the audience that attends first run theaters. This tends to skew younger, so you’ll find movies with a tone more attuned to their sensibilities.
Let me turn this question loose… given the content, style and tone of the nu trek, who do you think they’re targeting?
Except for the TNG angle, I always felt MUDD'S WOMEN was taking the same approach. For nearly five minutes Eve and Childress have a lengthy dispute with no Starfleet officers in sight. Even when the ship's decrystalizing, it's mostly the Mudd and Eve show.
Answer me honestly: was this specific portion of your post generated by an AI?
I'm not sure how that's different than spending time with the kids in 'Miri' or on the Romulan BOP in 'Balance of Terror.' For TOS, the guest stars were usually the central focus in the stories and we did spend a lot of time with them away from the series regulars.
My old mba class. I’m not that articulate. we used to run regressions to ascertain the key factors for buying media based on all these factors. There are always outliers in any cohort but you try to maximize the target audience in any purchase.
With that being said, I do need to learn chat gpt. I was chatting to a friend who told me to try it and see what it can do. I’m told it’s eerie.
Hell, they should've had gay main character(s) in TNG. It's not like gay characters were unheard of in 1987. I was thinking Billy Crystal's character of Jodie Dallas on Soap was the first gay character on primetime, but Wikipedia tells me that there was another gay character on a short-lived series five years before that.
DS9 It's only a paper moon. The best Trek episode to deal with PTSD and the effects of war on military personnel.
(Might not be controversial)
(Might not be controversial)
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At the San Francisco convention a few months ago, I got to spend some time with Cirroc Lofton. I told him my background, and told him I thought his performance in Nor the Battle to the Strong was spot-on brilliant.
Here's a potentially controversial opinion: I find TNG's "The Drumhead" to be pretty trite and overrated.
It's incredibly obvious where the episode is going to go right from the start, and the investigation ramps up WAY too quickly since they only have 45 minutes of screen time. Jean Simmons becomes cartoonishly evil at the end with her "I've broken bigger men than you, Picard!!!" And once again Worf is TNG's Designated Wrong Guy, which is a trope TNG indulged in way too much.
I also think the final ending is weak, with Admiral Whatshisname just walking out of the court without ever saying a word, and Picard shutting Admiral Satie down with a completely made-up quote from Satie's fictional father. "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably," doesn't carry any weight, because it's not some famous quote from history, it's just some fake quote Jeri Taylor made up on a deadline, and it ends the entire investigation way too conveniently.
Hell, if the plot called for Picard to shut down Norah Satie with a well-chosen quote from history, why didn't they just have him quote Joseph Welch from the McCarthy hearings, with "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" That at least would've had some bite to it, since it's a real quote.
The Simon Tarses stuff was interesting, but the rest I don't really care for.
It's incredibly obvious where the episode is going to go right from the start, and the investigation ramps up WAY too quickly since they only have 45 minutes of screen time. Jean Simmons becomes cartoonishly evil at the end with her "I've broken bigger men than you, Picard!!!" And once again Worf is TNG's Designated Wrong Guy, which is a trope TNG indulged in way too much.
I also think the final ending is weak, with Admiral Whatshisname just walking out of the court without ever saying a word, and Picard shutting Admiral Satie down with a completely made-up quote from Satie's fictional father. "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably," doesn't carry any weight, because it's not some famous quote from history, it's just some fake quote Jeri Taylor made up on a deadline, and it ends the entire investigation way too conveniently.
Hell, if the plot called for Picard to shut down Norah Satie with a well-chosen quote from history, why didn't they just have him quote Joseph Welch from the McCarthy hearings, with "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" That at least would've had some bite to it, since it's a real quote.
The Simon Tarses stuff was interesting, but the rest I don't really care for.
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Hear freaking hear.
I think not connecting it to real events allows the message of the story to not feel like you're being preached to. There's a danger that if Picard had started quoting Joseph Welch of it being cringe and corny. I still believe one of the reasons why a lot of original episodes of The Twilight Zone don't come off as preachy is they're about racism, authoritarianism, fascism, and a lot of other real world stuff, but they allow the audience to draw those connections themselves. It doesn't hit you over the head with a character saying: "This alien world has discrimination just like what's going on in Mississippi!"
I like "The Drumhead" and find it interesting for the same reason I like a lot of the themes that Deep Space Nine would later go on to explore in-depth, which it starts with the audience probably accepting as a given that humanity and the Federation have overcome a lot of the social problems to create a fairer society that (we've been told has) eliminated crime, war, and discrimination on Earth. And over the course of the episode we watch that system succumb to the same historical hysterias and fears that leads into witch hunts and searches for scapegoats.
And the story shows how easy it is to fall into that, even for the Federation. There was a saboteur aboard the Enterprise (i.e., the Klingon traitor). So, at least initially, the investigation has legitimacy and seems reasonable. But then it goes further, searching for answers beyond those the evidence provides, and everything begins feeding on itself, when questioning the direction of the investigation is considered evidence of suspicious behavior.
It's thematically similar to something that DS9 repeatedly goes back to, which is that while humanity has created a near-paradise, it only exists because people fight to preserve it and the values that built it. The evils of the past are waiting right there to come back if we get scared enough, give in to fear, and lack vigilance.
The one place I will agree is that I do think the motivation for Admiral Satie is not really clear. Is she doing it as part of a power-play to gain influence within Starfleet and the Federation? Is she a true-believer (and a Star Trek crazy admiral) that really thinks she's protecting the Federation? The episode implies she might have daddy issues, living in the shadow of her father's image, given that Picard quoting her father is her ultimate undoing. So does she think this is her way of being seen as an equal to her father in the history books?
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