A
Amaris
Guest
Dammit, now I need to watch. I keep forgetting that this is on. I want to feel like a kid and get excited about space and science and things!
It feels great!
Sunday 9PM (EDT) FOX, and Monday 10PM (EDT) on NatGeo.
Cosmos - With Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Thread starter Greylock Crescent
- Start date
It feels great!
Sunday 9PM (EDT) FOX, and Monday 10PM (EDT) on NatGeo.
Yeah, it really does. The show, while it certainly has some flaws, does an exceptional job of conveying the wonder and majesty of the cosmos. That trip to Titan, for example, was great. I loved seeing the evolution of the eye, too. The episode really underscored just how much we are a part of the universe - a way for it know itself, as it were.
There's more on the matter here:
http://ncse.com/blog/2014/03/why-did-cosmos-focus-giordano-bruno-0015457
http://ncse.com/blog/2014/03/why-did-cosmos-focus-giordano-bruno-0015457
A
Amaris
Guest
I love Neil's voice, too. There's this passion for mystery and wonder, and you can hear it in the way he tells the story.
There is nothing about which every Trek fan agrees. And even people who weren't fond of Braga as a showrunner are often willing to acknowledge that he did good work as a writer on TNG. Here his role is a lot less central than it was on VGR or ENT; the creative minds guiding the series are Ann Druyan and Steven Soter, and Braga and Seth MacFarlane are mainly just there to provide the clout and expertise that Druyan, Soter, and Tyson need to get the show made and on the air. Also, interestingly, Braga is working as a director on this series, something he's never done before.
(And really, I think Braga got kind of a bum rap, blamed for problems with VGR and ENT which were at least as much UPN's fault for placing too many restrictions on the show. Braga's done more interesting work on post-Trek shows like Threshold and Terra Nova, so I think that UPN was probably holding him back.)
As for myself, I wasn't crazy about Braga's work as a showrunner, but I utterly loathe Seth MacFarlane's work. Still, there's nothing in the show itself that suggests MacFarlane's influence. It's clearly Druyan, Soter, and Tyson's show, whoever else may be helping them.
^I actually think the first half of "Threshold" isn't bad at all, a nice character focus for Tom Paris. I think it could've been salvaged if the whole thing had turned out to be his hallucination or something.
I was actually kinda kidding. I was just surprised to see Braga's name associated with Cosmos.
Regarding the show - one of the more interesting segments last night for me was how dogs were created through selective breeding by humankind. Tangentially do the dog breeding is the series Life After People has an episode that points out that sheep herding dogs would be tending their flocks for perhaps 2,000 years after we're gone because the breed has been so well trained to only breed among themselves so they wouldn't revert back to wolves without us.
The natural selection of the eye segment was fascinating as well.
He's done a lot since Trek, and has been hired as a showrunner on several shows he didn't create: Threshold, 24, FlashForward, Terra Nova. And one he did co-create, WGN's upcoming Salem. There's a lot of fan hate for him because there's a lot of fan hate for all sorts of things, but he apparently has a pretty solid reputation within the industry itself. And given that two of those shows were FOX series, I'm not all that surprised that they picked him to do this. After all, he's got plenty of experience doing an FX-heavy, space-focused television series.
What does surprise me, as I've mentioned before, is seeing him listed as a director, something he's never done before. But then, the director of episode 2 is mainly a cinematographer (with some music-video directing credits). I guess the directorial requirements for a show like this are different than for an ensemble drama, since it's more about visuals and effects than performances. Still, Braga's experience is more on the creative side than the logistical/visual side, I would've thought.
Well, I cannot actually, "hate," anyone I don't know personally and I don't know Braga. However, both he and Berman characterized, These are the Voyages as some sort of, "Valentines Gift," for the Trek fandom tells me that he was at that point completely out of touch with what any Trek fan would want from final episode from the final series of the show likely for a very, very long time.
Because the vast majority of Trek fans I know felt TAV was terrible [which is an understatement] ending for both Enterprise and the series generally.
Yeah I don't think most people really appreciate the dramatic changes we've made to many species just through simple breeding. If we can do all that in just a few thousand years, just imagine what nature could do during 4 billion.
Once you can appreciate the immense timescales involved in the process, the basic idea of evolution doesn't really seem all that bizarre or outlandish at all.
Yea. It makes perfect sense why the wolves would evolve more quickly into dogs because they got their supper a lot easier from us in exchange for a little bit of protection.
I wonder why feline's didn't evolve in a similar fashion? And to every cat lovers out there - I'm sorry - domesticated cat's are no where near the same level as dogs are in terms of being, "man's best friend."
Yeah it was pretty bad, but it was also characteristic of most of the writing on VOY and ENT-- i.e.: derivative, corny, simplistic, and seemingly aimed only at teenage boys.
I've never really understood why fans single out that episode for most of their rage (yeah Season 4 improved somewhat, but by that point most of the damage had already been done to the concept and characters, as far as I'm concerned).
If anything, seeing Riker, Troi and the Ent-D again only reinforced just how much more shallow and generic ENT was in comparison.
It makes no sense to judge an entire career based on a single mistake. Every creator has ups and downs. Every episode is an experiment, and some of them succeed and some of them fail. And TV producers have to do everything on the fly and hope it works out for the best -- like building new cars onto a train while it's already careering downhill. It can be hard to step back and get perspective, and you never really know whether a story is going to work or not until the audience sees it.
Besides, by that point, after all those years producing Trek, it's understandable that Braga and Berman would've been kind of burned out creatively, which probably contributed to the bad decision that was TATV. But moving on to new projects can be revitalizing.
Anyway, TATV was nearly nine years ago now. Braga was only a Trek showrunner for seven years. So the majority of Braga's career at the executive level has now been spent doing things that are not Star Trek. Given that, it doesn't really make sense to dwell on something so far in the past. Life moves on. Careers move on. And a person can change and grow a lot in nine years.
Nothing to apologize for -- neither is better or worse, just different. Dogs are pack animals; their psychology is geared toward being part of a group and showing deference to its authority figure. Humans domesticated dogs by taking the place of the pack alpha in the dogs' existing psychology. So they think of us as their leaders and show appropriate obedience and devotion.
Cats, on the other hand, are solitary hunters, so their psychology is very different. The only context in which they really get close to another being is when they're kittens dependent on their mother. The behavior of a domesticated cat is basically a prolonged kittenhood with the human taking the place of the mother in the cat's existing psychology. There is (relative) dependence and affection, but not much obedience, since as solitary animals with little in the way of a social hierarchy, cats have little incentive to develop obedience behaviors.
But I'd say it's a matter of what you look for in a friend. If you want someone who showers you with constant affirmation and does what you want them to do, then you'd prefer a dog. But if you prefer a friend who's independent, who doesn't crowd you, who lets you have your space as long as you let them have theirs, but who can be very close and affectionate when they're in the mood, then a cat can be a very fulfilling friend. As I see it, dogs show loyalty by default, since it's what they're wired for; but you have to earn a cat's approval, and that makes it more precious when they give it.
Last edited:
I wouldn't say I hate Braga himself, just generally dislike his writing, and actively hate some of it. His fixation on time travel in the later series got pretty tiresome. I'd say All Good Things was the last thing of his I enjoyed, and that was with Ron Moore balancing him (not say I have any idea which of them came up with what idea, admittedly).
But he's not writing Cosmos, so that shouldn't be an issue. This is Ann Druyan and Steven Soter's show.
I have that same reaction to Seth MacFarlane, but I'm not letting it color my reaction to the show, since I know his role is secondary.
I think MacFarlane is basically responsible for getting the show made and paying for it. He had a contract with Fox for another show and decided to make a new Cosmos after having a meeting with Tyson, asking what he could do to improve understanding of science in America. So he sold it to Fox who would have to spend more to buy him out of the contract than to produce the show and air it. He might be friends with Braga since he was on Enterprise a few times, other than that I have no clue why he's on board.
