RDM - not the answer
- Thread starter jimbtnp2
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Agreed
no story can really be spread over 24 hours
most shows that do try rapidly devolve into soapish melodramas
who goes ga-ga for B5?
Disagree strongly. I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that arcs are the end all and be all. I think episodic tv has its place and I count many episodic series among my favorites
However, saying that no story can be spread over 24 hours is just not true. Look at season one of Heroes. That season was packed full of plot development, storylines, characters and nothing except one or two things felt like filler. As long as you don't spin your wheels or drag things out and forge ahead unremittingly with plot advancement it can be done and has.
In fact, there have been some arcs that I felt should have been expanded because there was just so much material that could have been addressed and mined such as DS9's Final Chapter.
could you clarify what you mean by soapish melodramas? You mean relationships or romance being included.
like a soap opera - stories about details that lead to no where other than to delve deeper into their own minutea
RDM Trek was the best IMO.
I tend to agree with his criticisms of Trek.
I tend to agree with his criticisms of Trek.
But "arc storytelling" is not deeper. The Adama/Roslin romance arc for instance is character morphing. Taking several years of viewers' lives to tell the story just covers up the bizarre morphing of Adama from menace to mortal enemy to moral superior to savior to true love. That's pure dumb fuckery, not good writing. This kind of nonsense shows BSG is fundamentally a soap.
I'm not sure I understand what you're referring to here. If you mean that the show would have to break, or at least the evolve, the formulas of TOS and TNG then that's a good thing. If you mean what he was saying about his idea that the crew would return home but realize that they no longer belonged to the culture of Starfleet, then that too would be a good thing. It would give the audience a more than they were expecting. He certainly never advocated disregarding basic canon or to deny that the ideals of the Federation be something this crew would work towards.
And the problem with arguing against arc-storytelling, at least with regard to VOY, ENT, and BSG, is that all three shows have an endgame built into the premise. On TOS and TNG the shows were basically built around a ship just sort of exploring space and serving as a diplomatic liason between the UFP's home government and new and/or hostile worlds. Episodic storytelling would work better for those shows if and until those shows would set a goal for the crew to work towards. In the 60s that wasn't as much in vogue and with TNG they settled on character arcs and setting up DS9 and VOY as their goals.
TV evolves, it changes, it grows. So too must Star Trek.
And that would be a bad thing why?
'Why would it be a good thing' is the real question. It's pretty much saying that the work every past person and every past actor put into the series is negligible and it's okay to throw it all out and shove the finger in their collective faces saying "I want to do this, and if it means getting rid of all the hard work you put in, nyah-nyah!".
And yeah, he was pretty much saying they should disregard basic canon and that Trek ideals are worth throwing away because being animals is better.
That's total nonsense. No new Trek show can destroy what was good about the older shows. The good Trek of the past will always be there.
He wasn't saying that. But if that would produce a show that's more entertaining than what we got with Voyager, then yes, I would say throw out the holy canon.
Well, he didn't have to think about whole ST canon in BSG, and it is still not more entertaining than Voyager, not for me.
I wached a few episodes of BSG, but it is so boring.
If he can't write new interesting ST stories and episodes without throwing out the whole canon, then he shouldn't write more ST, he's just not the good person for that. He can work on other shows instead, like he is doing now.
I liked Voyager pretty much. Am I the only one in these boards who liked it, and thinks it didn't need a big change to be good? Some little changes would make it better, but I never wanted it to be much more darker or much different.
I'm still utterly confused as to what you mean by him throwing away canon. That would consist of willful contradiction of facts, not something he advocated without a full re-boot, or unless a minor point should be fudged to service a story. But canon has nothing to do with changing the philosophy of Trek. Changing the dates and starship registries and what happened when has to do with canon.
I think what you're talking about is the idea that this odyssey home would change the crew's code of conduct. But that's not the same thing as dumping canon. Whether or not doing that would contradict Trek's utopian ideals is debatable, but Moore's point was that something as profound as being flung a 70-year journey's distance from home should have had more impact on the characters and the general culture of the ship. I totally agree with that.
If you're saying that for him to make those changes once he started working on the show would have been a bad thing, I don't know. Maybe the show had already found its voice, for better or worse. But there certainly could have been some changes, akin to how each TOS movie tweaked things a bit.
Moore had a great deal of love and respect for what had happened in Trek before, but that didn't mean he wouldn't try to help make it more compelling while he was in the position to do so. And he's on record saying he wouldn't have went as far as nu-BSG, that he wouldn't have changed what Trek was, but he might have made it a little more like DS9 in that it would be a show where people striving to maintain their Starfleet idealism would face tough decisions that had an impact on next week's episode.
Maybe we would have learned more about the junior officers, non-coms, and Maquis under his watch. Maybe we would have seen a sort of economy based on these replicator and holodeck rations crop up. Maybe we would have seen Janeway grow as a diplomat and strategist from having learned tough lessons in early seasons. Surely we would have had a tension-relieving lighter episode now and then, or a more sci-fi episode to mix things up, but the focus would have been on this world that's developed on this ship lost in space. I think Moore would have waited until BSG to do his more challenging to watch and pitch-black dark-and-gritty stuff.
Agreed. To each their own, but I found the episodes of nBSG I managed to slog through unrelentingly dreary and it featured some of the most thoroughly uninteresting and unpleasant characters I've seen in any TV show. Others feel differently and that's great, but it tells me that Moore Trek isn't something I'd care for at all. Thus, for me, he's not the answer.
Exactly. Win-win for all, really.
No, you're not the only one around here who likes Voyager.
As a fan, I'm comprehensively aware of its flaws and there are definitely things that could and should have been done better...but I like it anyway. In general, it's the least popular series on this board and always has been, and people do seem to enjoy painting it as being far worse than it actually was because it didn't fulfill their expectations. That's fair enough. Nothing appeals to everyone, after all.
Basically Moore was blathering on about how the ship should've been more damaged, should've been harder to manage resources, how the crews should have clashed more, etc. I disagree on all points. The replicators pretty much shoot down any "resource management" plots unless you de-canonize the replicator.
As for "challenging their ideals" and stuff, you only really start to think twice over your morals and ideals if your faith in them wasn't very strong to begin with.
The crew disputes? The Maquis' only point of contention with the Feds was over the DMZ, and in the DQ the DMZ would've been 70,000 LY away so there'd be no more reason to fight over it. Why waste time fighting over it now that it's so far away, the Cardassians are far away, and you're in a situation where you can't waste time over that stuff? Chakotay would be the first to realize this, he wasn't even a traitor like Eddington he officially resigned before joining the Maquis.
So yeah, unless you want to throw out established stuff, Moore's argument pretty much is just the whining of a disgruntled ex-employee.
As for "challenging their ideals" and stuff, you only really start to think twice over your morals and ideals if your faith in them wasn't very strong to begin with.
The crew disputes? The Maquis' only point of contention with the Feds was over the DMZ, and in the DQ the DMZ would've been 70,000 LY away so there'd be no more reason to fight over it. Why waste time fighting over it now that it's so far away, the Cardassians are far away, and you're in a situation where you can't waste time over that stuff? Chakotay would be the first to realize this, he wasn't even a traitor like Eddington he officially resigned before joining the Maquis.
So yeah, unless you want to throw out established stuff, Moore's argument pretty much is just the whining of a disgruntled ex-employee.
Just the fact that they couldn't go to a starbase whenever they wanted would have meant they would have had to improvise repairs and conserve resources. There should have been a makeshift patch of metal somewhere on the hull, relaxed dress codes, some more clues that they were adapting to the situation instead of simply living in denial of it. The replicator can't do everything. It still requires power and matter. They'd need to stop off at planets for batteries and stuff so Janeway, a scientist captain, would need to learn better diplomacy. There's room for an arc there.
People will always challenge ideals, if only to provide a check and balance for those same ideals. Otherwise we're just blind soldiers worshipping Big Brother and chanting slogans that put us in our place. Those that don't question their faith are pawns of those in power.
Any two people that could truly call themselves human would have different points of view. No matter what the over-arching philosophy of the Federation was, just the fact that they weren't computers meant that there would be conflict. That should always be exploited for drama. The Maquis point of contention may have been the DMZ on the surface, but it was also a philosophical dispute and the fact that these people they resented were now ordering them around. Even if they all had the same goal, to get home, they wouldn't all agree as to the best way to go about that. See my point above about any two humans.
And inter-personal conflict is well-established in all Trek, even TNG. On that show there were several episodes in which it was a civilian or Starfleet Federation member that was the villian of the piece.
All of these things are just basic to writing stories. In order to tell stories in the milieu of Trek one must first know how to write stories. Moore knows how to write stories. Moore knows Trek. Generally he's done a good job on the shows that he's written. And I think he's been pretty fair about his time on Trek. His commentary on First Contact was pretty positive, and he and Braga were fair about where they didn't quite reach their grasp on the Generations commentary too.
People will always challenge ideals, if only to provide a check and balance for those same ideals. Otherwise we're just blind soldiers worshipping Big Brother and chanting slogans that put us in our place. Those that don't question their faith are pawns of those in power.
Any two people that could truly call themselves human would have different points of view. No matter what the over-arching philosophy of the Federation was, just the fact that they weren't computers meant that there would be conflict. That should always be exploited for drama. The Maquis point of contention may have been the DMZ on the surface, but it was also a philosophical dispute and the fact that these people they resented were now ordering them around. Even if they all had the same goal, to get home, they wouldn't all agree as to the best way to go about that. See my point above about any two humans.
And inter-personal conflict is well-established in all Trek, even TNG. On that show there were several episodes in which it was a civilian or Starfleet Federation member that was the villian of the piece.
All of these things are just basic to writing stories. In order to tell stories in the milieu of Trek one must first know how to write stories. Moore knows how to write stories. Moore knows Trek. Generally he's done a good job on the shows that he's written. And I think he's been pretty fair about his time on Trek. His commentary on First Contact was pretty positive, and he and Braga were fair about where they didn't quite reach their grasp on the Generations commentary too.
I've always been highly impressed by his work. Especially the Dominion Arc and BSG.
They can draw power from stars, nebulae, dust clouds, etc.
And blatantly challenging those ideals simply because they exist means said person is an advocate for Anarchy and the end to all social orders and norms.
So a bunch of people who have to rely on each other should waste their time killing each other other something no longer present and not doing anything productive. With that mindset the entire crew would've been dead in a year.
In DS9, which is on some untouchable pedestal, most of the conflict still came from external sources. Because they were stationary they simply ran into those same external sources more often.
Moore's a dummy if he thinks his changes would've made VOY a good Trek show.
