*updates interests field*
2021 Emmy Nominations
- Thread starter MvRojo
- Start date
You do realize that 30-20 years ago was a different time?
There was a huge stigma attached to SciFi shows.
Getting nominations for awards from organizations that are mainstream and not dedicated to SciFi (Hugo, Saturn) and in non-technical categories was rare.
Today this is different, as we can see with the nominations for Mandalorian/Handmaid’s Tale/WandaVision/Lovecraft Country.
Discovery and Picard are supposed to be flagship shows, prestige television.
The aspiration should be to get multiple nominations in the Primetime Emmy Awards, and not just Creative Arts Emmy Awards, every year.
These deflective/defensive statements "Old Trek didn't win a Primetime Emmy/only had two Primetime Emmy nominations" are just sad.
Having these low expectations just shows that people have internalized that Kurtzman Trek/NuTrek can't compete with other modern shows.
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Or that other modern shows are completely uninteresting compared to Trek right now. I give zero cares for Mandalorian, Handmaids Tale, or anything else. Awards mean zero when I'm not entertained.
On this, and it has already been addressed, but just to add more...
No, but in Star Wars the technology was never really that integral to the story to begin with. And technology was in a way the bad guy, and spiritually was the good guy.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, the in-universe reason of the technology was because the long time ago, far, far away galaxy is so old that the technology had reached a point that there was little to any more advancements. Also, I guess you can throw in the oppressive nature of the Empire too if you want, as part of the cause of the stagnation.
The prequels of course kind of complicates things with that "Empire" reason. But I guess it's a big galaxy, so there's bound to be large variations in everything. And of course, the prequel thing is because it's George Lucas and he could do whatever he wanted to do with Star Wars.
But think of it sort of like the lightbulb. They pretty much got that down a long time ago, and there hasn't been a great deal of advancement since them. Or the paperclip or something like that.
So modern Star Wars using "tech as retro as the originals" (which the technology from the original movies wasn't retro at all, it's just how the technology is in that universe) doesn't really have much of anything to do with confidence on the filmmaker's part, it's just in keeping with the story. And the technology was a fair amount more advanced in the sequel trilogy than it was in the original trilogy. Nothing huge of course, but it seemed appropriate.
Anyway, in The Original Series with Star Trek I'm not sure if technology was really that huge of a deal for that either. I suppose it was more important to it than it was to Star Wars, but The Original Series seemed to be more about people. By The Motion Picture though it was about technology. And I guess The Next Generation is the one that sort of went in more with technology, with the technobabble and all of that. And the rest sort of followed. But of course there were no leaps and bounds or anything like that with technology in the 90s series, because it all took place within a short amount of time. The Next Generation just set the look and feel and that was it.
Getting to your point though, yes , of course, the technology on the Discovery is more advanced than The Original Series; or anything from any of the 90s Star Trek too for that matter. But the Discovery was supposed to be an experimental ship anyway, right, what with the spore drive and everything? So an experimental science vessel. So some of it's advancements and design were due to that. And it was brand new when Michael first came aboard.
Of course, that doesn't explain the Shenzhou looking more advanced than The Original Series, or anything from the 90s too.
So yeah, it's of course just one of those things. You accept it or you don't. Or you try and find a way for it to fit for you.
I just treat Discovery as it's own separate timeline. And will count Strange New Worlds as part of that timeline too, and a Section 31 show as well if that happens. And I treat The Original Series as it's own separate timeline. And I don't count 90s Star Trek at all, but I bash on that too much, so never mind.
Yes, ideally you shouldn't have to create your own head canon. But first world problems, yeah?
EDIT:
And just a meaningless add: the technology in 2001: A Space Odyssey looked more advanced than the technology on The Original Series, and those two were out at the same time. But of course the technology was the focus of the story in 2001. And one was a movie and the other was a television show.
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Which is funny to me with TMP having a tag line of "the human adventure is just beginning."
But, yes, TOS was by and large about people and humanity exploring new frontiers. Later Trek became more about futurist projections of an evolved humanity and use of technology to solve all problems, rather than exploring different aspects of human kind in relationship to others. Depending on the episode, obviously. But, the emphasis was largely on technology being an improvement for the humans, while Star Wars it was sometimes a detriment in the larger themes of the work.
Ultimately, I find that stories about humans more interesting that technology.
So yeah, it's of course just one of those things. You accept it or you don't. Or you try and find a way for it to fit for you.
I just treat Discovery as it's own separate timeline. And will count Strange New Worlds as part of that timeline too, and a Section 31 show as well if that happens. And I treat The Original Series as it's own separate timeline. And I don't count 90s Star Trek at all, but I bash on that too much, so never mind.
Yes, ideally you shouldn't have to create your own head canon. But first world problems, yeah?
I'm not one of these people who don't like the inconsistency of pre TOS ships looking more advanced than post-Voyager ships. Far from it. I don't mind that sort of canon bending at all.
I just think it would have been so much more interesting, memorable and bold to use retro technology on Discovery. Modern day Star Wars proves it can be done, and look good. Plus they'd have Picard they could use all fancy tech in.
It's not a big deal but I think it's indicative of why these shows don't win many Emmy nominations, it's all pretty safe stuff, the kind of scifi visual language we see everywhere these days.
That's all people want has been my observation. Safe and familiar and inoffensive.
Okay, I see what you mean.
An aside: I guess Bryan Fuller wanted to do the uniforms more in line with The Original Series...
CBS opted not to do that though, obviously.
One thing on the original Star Wars aesthetic is that of course Star Wars was massive from the start. And from the very beginning in '77 Star Wars was bigger than anything Star Trek had ever been and probably ever will be. And the "look" did play a large part in that, I would venture to say.
Opposite of that, the original Star Trek aesthetic is from a television show that was cancelled. So I imagine when you're making art direction decisions you factor those kinds of things in.
One aesthetic was embraced from the very beginning, and that other was rejected in a way.
But yeah, I see what you're saying.
That's kind of the thing, Star Trek is pretty much the generic science fiction visual language. So it's pretty much unavoidable.
Or maybe more like, there's two styles: the Star Wars "lived-in" science fiction visual language, and the Star Trek "pristine" science fiction visual language. And naturally there's variation between those two. But the two biggest franchises in the genre set the standard. And you're usually doing one or the other in varying degrees, so "sameness" is bound to happen.
As someone who almost invariably loves whatever "the new" is, I of course love the new Discovery uniforms...
It takes the Star Trek "pristine" science fiction visual language and makes it really clean and pristine. A dress uniform in style that's an everyday uniform. And of course I think it's the best Star Trek uniform ever. But I think pretty much anything Discovery does is the best Star Trek ever. So water is wet.
Anyway, whether it's the style of dress, or the technology, if you go too different than you know you're going to get the "That's not Star Trek." And of course Discovery already gets from time to time the "They're doing Star Wars" or whatever. Never mind that Star Wars isn't as "clean" as Star Trek.
But, y'know, damned if you do, damned if you don't.
EDIT:
Just to add, I guess whatever they do after Discovery is where we'll see something that's even more of a departure from traditional Star Trek. Whether that's "safe" or not of course only time will tell.
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I really couldn't get into The Mandalorian when I tried. It just felt like a very derivative, paint-by-numbers, spaghetti western-meets-SW pastiche. But good on them for being a space opera show that finally gets major Emmy nominations! There's a major institutional bias particularly against space opera shows, so maybe this is cracking that barrier.
1) Sure, but that doesn't mean it was the aesthetic the creators of DIS wanted, and that is a completely valid creative decision.
2) SW's version of a retro aesthetic is frankly more advanced-looking than TOS's. Or, to be more specific, it's more timeless than TOS's. TOS's aesthetic is tied to a particular 1960s conception of "the future" and to the limitations of 1960s-era TV construction budgets and lighting. SW's is tied to a late 1970s concept of "the future" (the late 1970s being an era where more of the foundations of modern technology were being laid in the computing world, for instance) and has the benefit of the addition time and budget feature films always had over TV. A New Hope's droids and control consoles still look pretty convincing; TOS's don't. So I'm not convinced that the example of SW's retro aesthetic applies to TOS.
Ultimately, I think the aesthetic the DIS producers went with for the Enterprise bridge in the DIS S2 finale is a good broad direction: It's clearly based on and inspired by the TOS aesthetic, but it's also clearly updated to look more like a late 2010s/early 2020s idea of "the future."
First off, I don't think SW is ST's "long-time rival and competitor." SW is primarily a film franchise and ST is primarily a TV franchise; ST has had a long-time film series but that's never been the primary focus of the franchise, and vice versa for SW. In fact, there is only one year since SW premiered that ST and SW both had a movie release in: 2002, when SW had Attack of the Clones and ST had Nemesis. And even then, they did not directly compete! AotC opened in May, and NEM opened in December.
Secondly... Let's get real here. Star Wars always has been and always will be more broadly popular than Star Trek. There are a lot of reasons for that, but there's a point where trying to frame everything as a competition between the two becomes silly, because they're two different franchises trying to achieve different creative agendas, and trying to judge ST by the terms on which SW operates is just setting ST up for failure.
To me, comparing SW and ST and being upset ST isn't getting as big is a little like being upset that the Decemberists aren't as high on the music charts as Arianna Grande. They're totally different styles of music pursuing totally different audiences and creative goals. The Decemberists aren't trying to be the #1 pop hit -- they're trying to be successful but are an inherently more niche audience, and their goal is sustainability over dominance.
Anyway, the Academy has traditionally been biased against overt genre fiction and particularly against space opera. The success of shows like WandaVision demonstrates that that's starting to change. I'm not surprised SW got a nom before ST, because SW hits those epic childhood nostalgia/cinematic feels buttons more than ST does. But I do hope that we'll see ST continue to grow its niche audience and get more recognition.
1) Sure, but that doesn't mean it was the aesthetic the creators of DIS wanted, and that is a completely valid creative decision.
2) SW's version of a retro aesthetic is frankly more advanced-looking than TOS's. Or, to be more specific, it's more timeless than TOS's. TOS's aesthetic is tied to a particular 1960s conception of "the future" and to the limitations of 1960s-era TV construction budgets and lighting. SW's is tied to a late 1970s concept of "the future" (the late 1970s being an era where more of the foundations of modern technology were being laid in the computing world, for instance) and has the benefit of the addition time and budget feature films always had over TV. A New Hope's droids and control consoles still look pretty convincing; TOS's don't. So I'm not convinced that the example of SW's retro aesthetic applies to TOS.
Ultimately, I think the aesthetic the DIS producers went with for the Enterprise bridge in the DIS S2 finale is a good broad direction: It's clearly based on and inspired by the TOS aesthetic, but it's also clearly updated to look more like a late 2010s/early 2020s idea of "the future."
First off, I don't think SW is ST's "long-time rival and competitor." SW is primarily a film franchise and ST is primarily a TV franchise; ST has had a long-time film series but that's never been the primary focus of the franchise, and vice versa for SW. In fact, there is only one year since SW premiered that ST and SW both had a movie release in: 2002, when SW had Attack of the Clones and ST had Nemesis. And even then, they did not directly compete! AotC opened in May, and NEM opened in December.
Secondly... Let's get real here. Star Wars always has been and always will be more broadly popular than Star Trek. There are a lot of reasons for that, but there's a point where trying to frame everything as a competition between the two becomes silly, because they're two different franchises trying to achieve different creative agendas, and trying to judge ST by the terms on which SW operates is just setting ST up for failure.
To me, comparing SW and ST and being upset ST isn't getting as big is a little like being upset that the Decemberists aren't as high on the music charts as Arianna Grande. They're totally different styles of music pursuing totally different audiences and creative goals. The Decemberists aren't trying to be the #1 pop hit -- they're trying to be successful but are an inherently more niche audience, and their goal is sustainability over dominance.
Anyway, the Academy has traditionally been biased against overt genre fiction and particularly against space opera. The success of shows like WandaVision demonstrates that that's starting to change. I'm not surprised SW got a nom before ST, because SW hits those epic childhood nostalgia/cinematic feels buttons more than ST does. But I do hope that we'll see ST continue to grow its niche audience and get more recognition.
I don't care what the history is here, but if you think someone is here to cause trouble your options are to ignore it or to notify the mods so they can check it out (nothing he said here was actionable, however). What you can not do is essentially call them out for being a troll.
Picking TOS as your interest, assuming you were even paying attention to what you were clicking, does not mean you are a "TOS Only", and even if you were, they're allowed to post here too. Cut the gatekeeping and learn to deal with people having different opinions on the show than you.
Just another thought on this:
...that of course is taking it to the ultimate extreme.
So if something like that is what you're talking about, then yeah, there was probably next to no chance of doing an entire television series like that. Doing an episode like that is one thing, but I don't see how you could possibly sell that to the people whose money would actually be being spent in order to do an entire television series that way.
That is a tough sell. And I grew up on The Original Series, it's my the "first contact" with Star Trek if you will. And, y'know, as a nostalgia thing I still enjoy watching it again every now and then. But after an episode or two it's like... "Okay, I'm good."
Strange New Worlds will obviously be doing it's thing. But even that will be a pretty big departure from The Original Series. And I don't know if one would call that a modernization of The Original Series, or a reinterpretation. Or if both of those are the same thing.
Also, is there a happy medium between what Strange New Worlds looks to be doing, and what "Trials and Tribble-ations" did? Maybe? Who knows.
The biggest challenge with doing The Original Series aesthetic today I imagine is the lighting and that "glorious technicolor." It's of course that "glorious technicolor" that I loved as a kid, but that's a big ask to do something like that today and have it be accepted on a broad scale.
My favorite go-to from that time period is 2001: A Space Odyssey. That still of course still holds up today, and holds up very well...
...and you could very easily do that today and set something in that version of the year 2001, and using the aesthetic from that movie.
The Original Series is just too kitchy cool to work now I think, though. I guess technically it didn't really work then either, but whatever.
Something like Deep Space Nine's "Trials and Tribble-ations"...
...that of course is taking it to the ultimate extreme.
So if something like that is what you're talking about, then yeah, there was probably next to no chance of doing an entire television series like that. Doing an episode like that is one thing, but I don't see how you could possibly sell that to the people whose money would actually be being spent in order to do an entire television series that way.
That is a tough sell. And I grew up on The Original Series, it's my the "first contact" with Star Trek if you will. And, y'know, as a nostalgia thing I still enjoy watching it again every now and then. But after an episode or two it's like... "Okay, I'm good."
Strange New Worlds will obviously be doing it's thing. But even that will be a pretty big departure from The Original Series. And I don't know if one would call that a modernization of The Original Series, or a reinterpretation. Or if both of those are the same thing.
Also, is there a happy medium between what Strange New Worlds looks to be doing, and what "Trials and Tribble-ations" did? Maybe? Who knows.
The biggest challenge with doing The Original Series aesthetic today I imagine is the lighting and that "glorious technicolor." It's of course that "glorious technicolor" that I loved as a kid, but that's a big ask to do something like that today and have it be accepted on a broad scale.
My favorite go-to from that time period is 2001: A Space Odyssey. That still of course still holds up today, and holds up very well...
...and you could very easily do that today and set something in that version of the year 2001, and using the aesthetic from that movie.
The Original Series is just too kitchy cool to work now I think, though. I guess technically it didn't really work then either, but whatever.
So, thinking on the whole aesthetic debate and thinking on TNG I had a thought about what works and what doesn't for me, and why Star Wars staying pretty much the same isn't in the same category as Star Trek.
One, as many have noted, Star Trek was 60s' era interpretation of the future. How technology works, how people interact with it, etc. But, there was also a different feel to TOS than even later TNG shows, especially in Season 2 of TOS. Shatner notes in one book that early on they were treating props a bit more delicately and then Season 2 came along and they were more confident. It took on an air of professionalism and the crew went about its business. Now I may be misremembering but rarely did I feel like the crew was pausing to explain the tech to me, aside from the occasional moments. The tech simply did its job and the crew moved on. The technology didn't always make sense for my 1990s brain but it worked.
TNG, by contrast, felt a lot different. It felt like it needed constant explanation. And now, rewatching it, it feels very officy, and not futuristic at all. And I think part of that is their efforts to show off the technology that now feels very difficult to find futuristic.
Star Wars, by and large, let the technology be a set dressing. Things were explained only when necessary. It also very rarely changed because it wasn't tied directly to any understanding of humanity or humanity's future. Leaving it the same made sense because we had no idea what their tech movement was supposed to be.
TOS, in my opinion, could update the easiest. But, I always associated it with the future in a way that TNG never had and Star Wars was never to be. Also, white and blue were always futuristic to me.
The more I think about, the more it seems to me that the biggest difference between TOS and SW in terms of their retro aesthetics is in the lighting, cinematography, and set design rather than the technology per se. TOS style tech might work today, but the set design, cinematography, and lighting probably wouldn't work for most modern audiences. A TOS style set that's clearly not made from wood, combined with modern lighting and cinematography, might work.
That is the thing about The Next Generation that never worked for me...
Even watching it back in 1987 I never believed that I was in the 24th century. I never bought into it. So yeah, it didn't look like the future to me either. It looked modern, but not futuristic to me. And I didn't think it looked bad or anything, I just didn't believe it.
Star Wars... well, I was 7 years-old in '77, so a kid is a pretty easy target for anything. But that felt right. That world was very easy to buy into. And making it not our world was kind of a genius move.
The Original Series... I was watching that in syndication maybe a year or so before A New Hope came out, because I had all of the Star Trek Mego stuff (I was an only child so I was spoiled). The Original Series though is something that I never took all the serious (because I was a little kid). It came on the same UHF station that I watched The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island reruns on, so I never held it up to any kind of high standards or anything. It was just the cool looking space show that came on at 6 o'clock on Sunday or whatever. I thought it was better than Lost In Space, but that's about it.
As I got older, and as one usually does, I became more critical and discerning, and The Next Generation just simply didn't cut it. I guess I probably shouldn't have watched it when it premiered. "Encounter At Farpoint" probably wasn't the best "first contact," because it was like, "What in the hell is this?"
Oh, and yeah, and aside from what I thought was the goofy Klingon open, Star Trek: The Motion Picture looked like the future to 9 year-old me, but Star Trek: The Next Generation to 17 year-old me was like," What the f*ck is this?"
TV versus movies, I guess.
That is a funny thing about Star Wars and Star Trek too. Everything works in Star Wars. Other than Han and the Falcon, but that's because he and his walking dog are horrible mechanics. Everyone's else stuff though in that galaxy works perfectly fine.
(And R5-D4 says, "Does this motivator look like it's working perfectly fine to you?! Because it ain't working perfectly mine to me! I could have been a somebody! Yeah, I didn't have any fancy message from some princess, but we would have figured something out! I'm so mad right now... beep this bop, man! This boops!)
Anyway, everything in The Original Series in Star Trek seemed to pretty much always work too. Scotty was "givin' her all she's got" on what seemed like a regular basis. It's just The Next Generation who had the tech that seemed to always need repairs. It's like, "Get your tech together, guys." You're going way out in space in the middle of nowhere, make sure this stuff will work before you leave.
Obviously, JJ Trek I immediately bought into. The opening minutes was all it took to buy into that. The same with Discovery. The desert scene got my attention, then the opening minutes on the Shenzhou and I was sold. It was like, "Yes, this is the kind of Star Trek that I like."
So production design. If you can get me to buy into the world, then that's a large part of the battle right there. Because now I'm receptive to the story that you want to tell. And I'll even let you slide on Mirror Universe episodes... and let you slide twice, even.
Uh...
They've been in direct competition for toy/memorabilia/merchandise sales for forty years. And now with at least a half dozen new Star Wars shows on the horizon they're going to be in direct compaction for share of a market that was already set to become highly competitive in the next year or so.
But whatever makes you feel better, I guess.
If so, then Star Trek has lost for decades now.
But, in this day and age, marketshare is a lot easier for people to go out and grab what they want.
But, yes, I lie to myself so I can sleep at night...
Well then that was a competition ST was never gonna win, because SW is explicitly aimed at children in addition to adults, whereas ST is aimed primarily at adults and secondarily at teenagers. ST was never, ever gonna beat SW when it comes to selling toys.
Meanwhile, the simple fact remains that ST is primarily a franchise of TV shows, and SW primarily a franchise of movies. The latter is starting to change, but this era of The Mandalorian on Disney+ and Star Trek on Paramount+ is the first time ST and SW have been in competition with each other. (I repeat: Except for 2002, no ST or SW films have ever been released in the same year.)
And even then, I don't really think the competition is particularly serious or meaningful. This is the era of peak TV, where there are so many high-quality TV shows streaming (both in current production, and from the recent past, and from the past 50 years) that it seems silly to frame any two given shows as direct "competitors," as though there's a finite number of timeslots shows have to fight for anymore. We live in an era were there is just significantly less scarcity of audience resources, because everything is recorded and plays on-demand now.
Really, if anything, I think ST and SW compliment one-another and have helped one-another over the years. The success of A New Hope very famously inspired Paramount Pictures to turn what would have been Star Trek: Phase II into Star Trek: The Motion Picture with a large budget. The success of the ST films helped ILM grow (keeping it in business in-between SW films) and develop new special effects techniques that fed back into the SW spectacle machine (e.g., the famous Genesis CGI animation sequence from TWOK), and ST itself is clearly one of the many franchises that influenced SW. The longevity of ST demonstrated to Lucasfilm that there was a market for an SW revival in the late 1990s, leading to the prequels. The prequels' groundbreaking use of things like digital photography and extensive CGI influenced ENT (first ST series to adopt digital photography) and the Kelvin series (which were themselves clearly influenced by SW), and the continued success of ST in streaming (even before the development of DIS) is probably one of the factors that led Lucasfilm/Disney to conclude that there was a market for SW as a streaming television production. The success of Mando has led to technological innovations like those electronic background screens that are now being implemented on DIS. Etc. The success of ST and SW benefit both franchises.
At the end of the day, all that really matters is whether both franchises are able to continue telling stories that entertain their audiences. Considering that we're looking at no less than five series of both ST and SW, all in simultaneous production, I'd say both franchises are doing well. SW will probably always be more popular, but that's okay, because ST's goals aren't the same as SW's. There's room for Arianna Grande and the Decemberists, and there's room for SW and ST.
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