“Star Star” was the 1970s-approved name of a Rolling Stones song about groupies called “Starfucker.”Also... "Star Star."
For what it's worth, he made a very nice, sincere apology afterward.
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The issue with these podcast people is that they want to get involved in studio politics.
Everyone gets mad when they don't come out and say their opinion, but that stuff is best left behind closed doors.
I don't get why everyone expects them to undermine their predecessor or successor.
I'm so tired of activist podcasts, and the outrage machine.
(If you think the show is gonna be bad, don't watch it. Don't watch it, then listen to a MAGA podcaster, because you're still helping it, and the bottom feeder podcaster succeed. It's that simple. Change the channel, go to a different streaming service, ignore the product.)
These aren't critics, they're MAGA activists in a skin suit, a skin suit that used to be kind of interesting.
Jon Del Arroz is one of my favorites, he got offended over Bill Nye the science guy being cast in SFA season 2.
But it wasn't Bill Nye, it was Bill Nighy (Davy Jones). They're looking for things to start a controversy over.
(It must be hell to be an illiterate sci fi author.)
Why would he be offended if they did cast Bill Nye?
People like this got their panties up in a bunch, when Bill Nye used his Netflix show to talk about gender fluidity.
Who cares? Jon Del Arroz cares.
My question is, does this help the studio rake in viewers?
Or does it hurt them?
I think it helps them in a way, the audience who hates the critic, goes to watch the show, the audience who agrees with the critic also watches the show.
The critic then writes a shit plagiarism novel with AI, and gets some scratch too.
It's scraping the bottom of the barrel.
For a season that doesn't air until March.
I don't think any franchise is immediately going to attract a new audience.
Star Trek needs to accumulate a new audience slowly, while relying on the older audience as a foundation.
That's how that should work, it's the same way that Stargate needs to be handled.
Expecting a new audience immediately is so fucking dumb.
With Star Trek at the moment, it has a new audience that's been built over the last 10 years.
It needs to attract a new audience again...again?
What crack are these studio executives smoking?
You have several audiences.
The outraged audience, and the new audience(Kurzman fans) , TOS fans, Berman fans.
What makes a franchise great is that it brings together people from multiple demograhics.
Wine aunts, MAGA, Far left activists, 18-49 year olds, idk, there's this thing about IDIC, where it brings everyone together, like a good dinner on a Sunday.
Instead of throwing an audience away, that your company just spent 10 years building.
These executives go through new audiences like I go through cigs, there's a finite amount of people interested in Star Trek.
There's a finite amount of people in the USA. Star Trek isn't going to sell in China.
Your market is the European Union, Nato countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and some audiences in South America (specifically Brazil.)
It already has 4 established audiences, and a finite amount of space where you can sell it, and show it.
Who are you trying to attract now, suit monkey?
You can make money with Star Trek, but you're not getting Star Wars numbers out of it.
Budget and manage accordingly.
Remasters are affordable (if you go hybrid, upscale the VFX, music licensing is probably what's holding DS9 and Voyager back, imo.)
Then budget new content like "The Orville" on a TNG model, there's your slow growth audience.
Put less money into VFX, and only use them when you need them.
The over reliance on VFX is what is killing these new shows.
I watch DS9 often, and sometimes, there's an episode with no VFX at all in it, or a recycled shot.
There's too much competition, and Star Wars is declining too.
Star Wars was an exceptional phenomenon, that younger demographics are losing interest in.
Aside from a brief reprise, Grogu can't carry it forever.
Have we not targeted penguins in Antarctica yet?
I hear they love Beach Cliff Sardines and Mustard.
Perhaps they'll watch Trek, and we can sell them Sardines and Mustard to generate ad revenue.
My big thesis, Streaming budgets and VFX, along with activist execs and critics are poisoning the writing.
It's an economic model that underperforms it's predecessor in every way, but it has good CG.
But CG isn't the most interesting thing about Star Trek.
The funniest story I've ever heard, was when Ira Stephen Behr went and did an interview for a job on ENT, and everyone says he ripped Bragga and Berman a new ass over what was wrong with that show (in his opinion.)
Even then, they waited 20 years to tell that story, it was best left behind closed doors.
I'll conclude the decline with this, Star Trek was a family show in the 90s, it sold toys, and merch.
It's not selling merch anymore. Kids are on screens.
So, if the merch is the only thing that was keeping these franchises afloat, you probably shouldn't make any more of them.
If you need to make money off of them anyway, and I harp on this a lot,
Remaster TOS in 4k.
Remaster DS9 and Voyager.
Even Disco, SNW and SFA will eventually be regarded as greats in the grand scheme of things, but exploit your catalogue, because new content isn't making money off of the merch that it needs to sell.
Parents aren't buying toys for kids anymore, Star Wars is declining too.
1. Activist execs, and activist critics poison the well. (Get rid of them, and seal them in a fire cave wit the pah wraith.)
2. Decentralize, Star Trek was most successful when it was decentralized, Social media kills it. (Fuck reddit, encourage independent coverage sites, and systems again. Plurality was a sign of success. It'll never be what it was, but Trek was more successful, when it wasn't centralized to Reddit, Discord, and a handful of other places. Big Tech killed fan sites, Big Social media killed this, and it's not nearly as fun, it's boring.)
3. Try to make some cheap trinkets for adults and kids, some that are sturdy.
4. Don't abandon audiences, embrace IDIC.
5. Leave politics to the writers.
6. Manage your fucking catalogue.
The studio does everything antithetical to this, they don't know what they want, or they want to somehow impregnate a franchise to birth a new one.
Not a spinoff, just something new, but something where they can transplant audience A.
If I go with what the commentators say, what they're saying makes no sense.
Everyone gets mad when they don't come out and say their opinion, but that stuff is best left behind closed doors.
I don't get why everyone expects them to undermine their predecessor or successor.
I'm so tired of activist podcasts, and the outrage machine.
(If you think the show is gonna be bad, don't watch it. Don't watch it, then listen to a MAGA podcaster, because you're still helping it, and the bottom feeder podcaster succeed. It's that simple. Change the channel, go to a different streaming service, ignore the product.)
These aren't critics, they're MAGA activists in a skin suit, a skin suit that used to be kind of interesting.
Jon Del Arroz is one of my favorites, he got offended over Bill Nye the science guy being cast in SFA season 2.
But it wasn't Bill Nye, it was Bill Nighy (Davy Jones). They're looking for things to start a controversy over.
(It must be hell to be an illiterate sci fi author.)
Why would he be offended if they did cast Bill Nye?
People like this got their panties up in a bunch, when Bill Nye used his Netflix show to talk about gender fluidity.
Who cares? Jon Del Arroz cares.
My question is, does this help the studio rake in viewers?
Or does it hurt them?
I think it helps them in a way, the audience who hates the critic, goes to watch the show, the audience who agrees with the critic also watches the show.
The critic then writes a shit plagiarism novel with AI, and gets some scratch too.
It's scraping the bottom of the barrel.
For a season that doesn't air until March.
I don't think any franchise is immediately going to attract a new audience.
Star Trek needs to accumulate a new audience slowly, while relying on the older audience as a foundation.
That's how that should work, it's the same way that Stargate needs to be handled.
Expecting a new audience immediately is so fucking dumb.
With Star Trek at the moment, it has a new audience that's been built over the last 10 years.
It needs to attract a new audience again...again?
What crack are these studio executives smoking?
You have several audiences.
The outraged audience, and the new audience(Kurzman fans) , TOS fans, Berman fans.
What makes a franchise great is that it brings together people from multiple demograhics.
Wine aunts, MAGA, Far left activists, 18-49 year olds, idk, there's this thing about IDIC, where it brings everyone together, like a good dinner on a Sunday.
Instead of throwing an audience away, that your company just spent 10 years building.
These executives go through new audiences like I go through cigs, there's a finite amount of people interested in Star Trek.
There's a finite amount of people in the USA. Star Trek isn't going to sell in China.
Your market is the European Union, Nato countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and some audiences in South America (specifically Brazil.)
It already has 4 established audiences, and a finite amount of space where you can sell it, and show it.
Who are you trying to attract now, suit monkey?
You can make money with Star Trek, but you're not getting Star Wars numbers out of it.
Budget and manage accordingly.
Remasters are affordable (if you go hybrid, upscale the VFX, music licensing is probably what's holding DS9 and Voyager back, imo.)
Then budget new content like "The Orville" on a TNG model, there's your slow growth audience.
Put less money into VFX, and only use them when you need them.
The over reliance on VFX is what is killing these new shows.
I watch DS9 often, and sometimes, there's an episode with no VFX at all in it, or a recycled shot.
There's too much competition, and Star Wars is declining too.
Star Wars was an exceptional phenomenon, that younger demographics are losing interest in.
Aside from a brief reprise, Grogu can't carry it forever.
Have we not targeted penguins in Antarctica yet?
I hear they love Beach Cliff Sardines and Mustard.
Perhaps they'll watch Trek, and we can sell them Sardines and Mustard to generate ad revenue.
My big thesis, Streaming budgets and VFX, along with activist execs and critics are poisoning the writing.
It's an economic model that underperforms it's predecessor in every way, but it has good CG.
But CG isn't the most interesting thing about Star Trek.
The funniest story I've ever heard, was when Ira Stephen Behr went and did an interview for a job on ENT, and everyone says he ripped Bragga and Berman a new ass over what was wrong with that show (in his opinion.)
Even then, they waited 20 years to tell that story, it was best left behind closed doors.
I'll conclude the decline with this, Star Trek was a family show in the 90s, it sold toys, and merch.
It's not selling merch anymore. Kids are on screens.
So, if the merch is the only thing that was keeping these franchises afloat, you probably shouldn't make any more of them.
If you need to make money off of them anyway, and I harp on this a lot,
Remaster TOS in 4k.
Remaster DS9 and Voyager.
Even Disco, SNW and SFA will eventually be regarded as greats in the grand scheme of things, but exploit your catalogue, because new content isn't making money off of the merch that it needs to sell.
Parents aren't buying toys for kids anymore, Star Wars is declining too.
1. Activist execs, and activist critics poison the well. (Get rid of them, and seal them in a fire cave wit the pah wraith.)
2. Decentralize, Star Trek was most successful when it was decentralized, Social media kills it. (Fuck reddit, encourage independent coverage sites, and systems again. Plurality was a sign of success. It'll never be what it was, but Trek was more successful, when it wasn't centralized to Reddit, Discord, and a handful of other places. Big Tech killed fan sites, Big Social media killed this, and it's not nearly as fun, it's boring.)
3. Try to make some cheap trinkets for adults and kids, some that are sturdy.
4. Don't abandon audiences, embrace IDIC.
5. Leave politics to the writers.
6. Manage your fucking catalogue.
The studio does everything antithetical to this, they don't know what they want, or they want to somehow impregnate a franchise to birth a new one.
Not a spinoff, just something new, but something where they can transplant audience A.
If I go with what the commentators say, what they're saying makes no sense.
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Don't get me started on JDA.
He's said that Trek is trying to do away with "normal people" in favor of more
LGBTQ+ people (Newsflash: LGBTQ+ people ARE normal).
"The Cloud Minders," "A Taste of Armageddon," "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," "Justice," "Balance of Terror," "Measure of a Man," and "Critical Care" have entered the chat.
Where have you BEEN since 1966? Trek has always had a message.
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Don't get me started on JDA.
He's said that Trek is trying to do away with "normal people" in favor of more
LGBTQ+ people (Newsflash: LGBTQ+ people ARE normal).
I got into an argument with him on X the other day, he told me I should learn to read.
I recommended he write a rip off of Stargate since he's a bottom feeder, and a shit writer anyway.
I had some fun with it (I wish I could write the whole screed here.)
They were upset that modern TV is propaganda, (As if they've never seen 7th Heaven, or remember when the Air Force made RDA an honorary general during the Global War on Terror.)
It's always been propaganda in some form.
They forget that even "The 6th Day" had the military sharing concepts of tech, and vehicles in order to plant ideas in the public's mind.
This has always been a thing in the USA.
Oooh look....6, 7.....woooah.
Less than 24 hours later, he had to eat his words since he can't tell the difference between Bill Nighy and Bill Nye.
(He rage deleted it later, when everyone called him out on it, including me.)
He's moved on to Stargate, and I ended up getting into an argument over that.
I definitely agree LGBTQ are normal people.
But my main point is that these activist podcasters are a sign of the decline, I don't like activist execs, (their only goal is to provoke the activist podcasters.)
I don't care if my characters are gay, if the story is interesting.
Paul Stamets and Culber's arc in season 2 was really good, I just felt that once the outrage people got hold of Discovery, that it became boring and sentimental, and it went off the rails in season 3 because of it.
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Don't get me started on JDA.
He's said that Trek is trying to do away with "normal people" in favor of more
LGBTQ+ people (Newsflash: LGBTQ+ people ARE normal).
"The Cloud Minders," "A Taste of Armageddon," "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," "Justice," "Measure of a Man," and "Critical Care" have entered the chat.
Where have you BEEN since 1966? Trek has always had a message.
There's a difference between writers doing it, and executives doing it.
I don't have a good term for it, so it's not as well articulated.
I don't define a writer as an executive per se, and I don't define Alex Kurtzman as an activist.
Nor do I define Michelle Paradise as an activist in that way.
Essentially after Discovery season 2, things got dumbed down.
Then there was a surface coverage of modern politics, but it wasn't particularly intelligent, or handled with any nuance.
(I can't accept Discovery season 3's explanation for The Burn, Star Trek is allowed to be stupid, but not that stupid.)
The fact you spent 20 hours on two of the worst season finales I've ever seen, Seasons 3 and 4.
It was dumbed down. (It's almost like a troll.)
The right wing podcasters bitched about Woke, (I wouldn't call these shows woke, by any means, DS9 was woke, The Shield was woke, I have no idea what the fuck these people were smoking in the writers rooms.)
The adversarial marketing strategy, continued to play out, Nerdrotic and this new class of activist critic bitched and moaned, to make money.
I don't even think these people like Star Trek. Instead of bitching about how bad the writing was getting. (We're not getting another Calypso.)
We're getting 4 years of Disco 3 and 4, and Picard 1 and 2.
These 4 seasons were pretty bad. Like boring, stupid we have no message bad.
The other thing is, all of the writers can openly state their politics and beliefs.
But none of that reflected in the writing for me.
What I got was, the writer has a message, and they're producing a very dumbed down version of Star Trek.
(I've never criticized their politics, I'm all for that. I just don't want to waste an hour on a stupid stupid script, to me, watching Discovery season 3 and getting to that awful ending is as grating as a convo with Jon Del Arroz.)
In a nutshell, I don't feel like the current generation of Trek has a message.
I'm not sure what the message is.
I know what the writers of it have to say, and I know what their message as a person is.
For the shows they're making, I don't see a message.
It's like Xmen 97, season 1 had a clear message, Beau Demayo who worked on SNW did a damn fine job.
Season 2?
What the fuck was that? We made an Apocalypse diamond.
I call them activist execs (I'm not talking about people running the franchise, I'm talking about studio heads, and investors.)
I want Star Trek to have a message, I love it's message.
I don't love it's over reliance on VFX, and I don't love the executives in charge of the franchise going out of their way to antagonize two sides of the fanbase, that's how you end up with Nerdrotic, and Jon Del Arroz.
It's more activist marketing, and executives micromanaging the writers.
I think the best quote was what Lenneir said in B5, to paraphrase,
"The ends justifies the means, corrupts good works." Or something of the sort.
I don't feel that message should come through me hating or discovering Jon Del Arroz.
It should come through in a perfect script, and a well made hour of TV, not the Jerry Springer dumbasses that are more interesting than a 10 hour season dragging ass.
(It's not just Trek, I feel this way about Streaming serials in general. Fallout season 2 dragged ass.)
My other opinion is, Star Trek is for everyone who watches it, which is why activist marketing pisses me off.
I want a good trailer.
These shows rely on the activist podcasters, and I hate this marketing ecosystem which relies on culture jamming, and I blame MAGA for it heavily.
This is killing Star Trek.
As far as productions themselves are concerned, aside from Picard season 3, they ignored the Okudas and Doug Drexler, and people who spent 20 years building a visual language for Trek, (They need to get those people back. Sadly, you're going to have to marry them to the new people as well, and see if they can't come together, and build a cohesive visual style. Star Trek is a family comprised of those people.)
Maybe, what I could call it is 3 things.
An Ideological Marketing Strategy, with an Adversarial Marketing Group, targeting Activist Podcasters.
...and the Marketing morons are micromanaging the writers.
That's the best way I can break down what I'm seeing, and I hate it.
Stargate is gonna be an example.
Amazon's afraid to gamble, and selected the wrong writer, they did this on purpose.
The activist podcasters are going to lose their shit over it, and this is how it's going to sell.
The Fandom doesn't trust the original franchise heads to do what they always did well, which was to not be bigots and pass the torch.
Star Trek was run by progressive punks, and leftists, it always was.
Stargate was never exactly a right wing show, but struck me as a moderate series, in the Vein of Trek (Which I do consider a genre.)
(Trek always had a message, but Piller, D. C. Fontana, Behr, and Braga weren't exactly part of the marketing group, and weren't micromanaged by them to piss off MAGA podcasters.)
I don't like adversarial and political marketing, because it's not about the show.
It's about the flame war, and the shows suffer because of it.
Since Discovery season 3, I've found Star Trek to be less interesting than the flame war.
I've spent more time reading and covering flame wars than enjoying it.
I've watched everything, but there's more no budget flame war content, than there is Trek, and this goes for every franchise now.
More people watch the flame wars, than the content. I feel that's a problem.
It gets in the way of Star Trek's message, and drags it down back into the mud, and somehow it becomes about America's favorite Narcissist center of Gravity, Donald Trump.
(It would be wrong for me to wish death on a sitting President on the 20th anniversary of my father's death, but to make an understatement...I'm really looking forward to him leaving office.)
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Is there a Cliff's Notes version of your posts available?
In a nutshell that's mostly what I'm saying.
I just provided examples.
With the exception of "Visual Style".
Picard seasons 1 and 2 have a cohesive Visual Style.
My issue with visual style more or less has to do with how that style relates to the franchise as a whole.
A lot of SNW and Picard just feel like generic Mass Effect, even in season 3, up until you get to the Enterprise D's return, Picard Season 3's set design feels like Mass Effect.
The Uniform design, feels like Mass Effect, it doesn't feel like Trek anymore.
SNW still feels like Trek, mostly, except for the white uniform that Chapel wears, which reminds me of Discovery's awful blue uniforms.
With SNW, I'm not saying that the Enterprise shouldn't look like that, but it should've been maybe 50/50, 50 what it is now, and about 50 percent constrained to the size of the original version of the ship, with a smaller sickbay.
From '09-'26, the people who'd developed Trek's visual style from '66-'05 felt a betrayal from the studio, and after listening to them, I can't blame them for feeling that way.
As for Fallout, it's more drag ass writing than dumbed down writing.
X-men 97 season 2 was dumbed down and rushed writing, every episode feels like a teaser for next weeks episode, and it's perpetual.
No episode stands on it's own. (An episode in a serialized Television series can stand on it's own, and still be part of a serialized program.)
The issue is rushing to the next script perpetually, until you end up at a shitty finale.
(I haven't seen tomorrow's Enterprise yet, but for all of my criticism of SNW, it's finales always seem pretty solid, so I'm gonna wager that season 4's finale is solid, until I see otherwise.)
ChatGPT distilled my argument into this:
Modern franchise television is caught in a cycle of expensive production, audience replacement, controversy-driven marketing, and diminishing attention to the underlying catalogue. Studios spend heavily to attract new viewers while risking the audiences they already have; outrage commentators turn every creative decision into another political confrontation; and the resulting noise can overshadow the storytelling that made these franchises valuable in the first place. The alternative is not to abandon new audiences or political themes, but to invest in sustainable production, preserve the catalogue, respect institutional knowledge, encourage a pluralistic fan culture, and let writers communicate the franchise's values through good story telling.
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He should pitch it to Matalas.
Do provide examples for the class.
Any episode from LOST season 1 and 2, Jericho season 1, Carnivale (etc.)
The Shield was a perfect serial drama.
I can't say that about Twin Peaks: The Return, insulting Lynch is blasphemy.
Most of the Sopranos in season 1 and 2.
Honestly, I'd say most of American Horror Story from seasons 1-5 and 7 worked.
I fucking hated Roanoke.
From LOST season 2, "Lockdown" is probably one of the best examples.
It ends on a cliffhanger, but it didn't make the episode about the cliffhanger.
"Live Together, Die Alone." is another favorite, as were "Exodus" 1-3, preceding "Man of Science, Man of Faith".
Why?
Sure the latter functioned as a 4 parter, but each one of them left you wanting.
Not in a bingy way, like I feel sick and bored, and need to finish this can of Pringles.
It left you wanting for next weeks episode, in a very positive way.
Breaking Bad's first season is another favorite of mine, as everything felt like it's own self contained movie, within the larger tapestry of the serial.
It wasn't skipping stones until a bad season finale.
Modern Serial Dramas feel so lazy.
We gotta rush through this season to get to the next season.
Instead of the 2000s, where each episode mattered on it's own merits, even if it was part of the greater whole.
I think part of why these serial dramas were so great is because all of these writers came off of procedurals first, before they got into a genre of television that was being rejuvenated.
Now that Serial Dramas are common, no one gives a shit anymore.
I think the standards for a serial drama to succeed were a lot higher at the time.
It's probably the same reasons serial dramas fell out of fashion back in the day, because every installment felt like a trailer, like a run on.
They're going to fall out of fashion again.
But Babylon 5 and DS9 toyed with serialization, as did The X files.
Twin Peaks paved the path toward it, and The Sopranos, The Shield, LOST, and Breaking Bad did the finishing work.
I feel like a lot of modern serial dramas are intended to be a 10 hour film, that you're supposed to binge in one sitting.
It doesn't work in episodic installments anymore.
Where LOST by design worked by keeping you ready for next week, but you got some damn good acting, cinematography and writing in every weeks episode.
VFX weren't always something to write home about.
What I'd love to see is Star Trek's progressive tradition maintained with strong hour long installments, in 15 episode seasons, without the activist marketing, and activist podcasting.
I'd like to see it stand on similar merits that it's predecessors did.
Somewhere between TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Discovery seasons 1 and 2, those were the strongest times for the franchise imo.
Honestly I'd model it off of what has worked.
The Orville, and Picard Season 3, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Discovery seasons 1 and 2 (even if Discovery always went off the rails.)
Probably SG1, B5, and SGA, should get honorable mentions, these are what audiences want broadly speaking.
SNW should have had longer seasons, and TOS is the source of the franchise. I'd distill it from these.
I feel that modern Trek writers would take a script like "Far Beyond the Stars" and go with the first draft.
They wouldn't end up with changing the main character from Jake to Benny Russell, then end up with a very strong memorable episode.
You wouldn't get that, you'd get the first draft with some antagonistic bullet points, and it wouldn't feel like an enriched masterpiece.
with "Once La'an a time", I'm not sure exactly what it is I watched. I just feel like the episode was pointless, and then shoehorned a trauma metaphor in through a dog.
I don't feel like the current writers took Star Trek seriously. Any of the gimmick episodes of season 4 could have been a lot better with a few more drafts, where the writers were playful.
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Sorry to hear it. My condolences on what must be a rough day for you.
