Chapel Character Teaser

[Sci]

Um. I might have found my new celebrity crush.

Is she sporting a Starfleet delta earing?

Yep!

"Her backstory wasn't explored..."

Oh oh: I hope they didn't forget about Korby...

Honestly I don't care if they ditch the Roger Korby backstory. It never made any sense anyway.

It isn’t the same team. Different show runner and writers room.

Different showrunner but an important overlap: Akiva Goldsman was a major writer on PIC S2 and is the co-showrunner for SNW S1.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Honestly I don't care if they ditch the Roger Korby backstory. It never made any sense anyway.

"... Little Girls..." wasn't about Chapel anyway. It was way more about Korby, or rather the android he had become. Chapel has precisely two functions in the story: to assert that she can't tell the difference between the real Kirk and the android Kirk, which is entirely superfluous, and to assert in the end (after having been fooled up until then, despite her misgivings, even after witnessing the android-duplication process) that she can in fact tell the difference between the android Korby and the real Korby, which arguably influences the android to dematerialize himself and Andrea. Chapel is barely relevant to the entire affair, and in terms of "backstory" she had precisely nothing to do with what had happened on Exo III to Korby and his party.

 

[Harpsichord]

It isn’t the same team. Different show runner and writers room.

Different showrunner but an important overlap: Akiva Goldsman was a major writer on PIC S2 and is the co-showrunner for SNW S1.

He's a co-showrunner for both:

Star Trek: Picard and the upcoming Strange New Worlds represent two very different sides of the Trek franchise coin. The first is a heavily serialized meditation on the adventures of an aging Jean-Luc (Patrick Stewart), and the latter is an as-yet-unseen episodic throwback to The Original Series. One thing they have in common: Akiva Goldsman as a co-showrunner.

 

[Noname Given]

I believe that's literally true, at least in all pre-streaming-era Trek.* Korby was only ever referenced in "... Little Girls...".

* - I suppose it's possible his name is mentioned in an obscure Okudagram or the like, but so what if it is.

Sooo...
"I AM ROGER SOONG KORBY!"

 

[Mudd]

Yeah, this is the kind of thing I like to hear:

If you think back to The Original Series, it was a tonally more liberal — I don’t mean in terms of politics, but it could sort of be more fluid. Like sometimes Robert Bloch would write a horror episode. Or Harlan Ellison would have “City on the Edge of Forever,” which is hard sci-fi. Then there would be comedic episodes, like “Shore Leave” or “The Trouble With Tribbles.” So [co-showrunner] Henry Alonso Myers and myself are trying to serve that.

They did war stories. They did polemics. They did action-adventure, and the aforementioned comedy and horror. They did a Western or two ("Mudd's Women").

The original premise of the show was to graft the appeal of a family of characters onto the kind of wide-ranging fantasy storytelling exemplified by Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. They were fairly successful in that, in the first year.

TV was different, in those days. The culture and economics of it were different. The idea was to entertain the broadest number of people every week, rather than to identify what a given small slice of the potential audience really particularly likes and to service that with as little variation in quality from week to week as possible.

 

[KirkusOveractus]

Yeah, this is the kind of thing I like to hear:



They did war stories. They did polemics. They did action-adventure, and the aforementioned comedy and horror. They did a Western or two ("Mudd's Women").

The original premise of the show was to graft the appeal of a family of characters onto the kind of wide-ranging fantasy storytelling exemplified by Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. They were fairly successful in that, in the first year.

TV was different, in those days. The culture and economics of it were different. The idea was to entertain the broadest number of people every week, rather than to identify what a given small slice of the potential audience really particularly likes and to service that with as little variation in quality from week to week as possible.

I think the writing was also a lot more subtle at that time. My dad wasn't the most open-minded person for anything (he grew up in the 1930's and 1940's) but he loved TOS, Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. He didn't realize he was getting stories told to him that would present anti-war, race issues, etc.

He didn't know because it was written so well that you could appreciate the adventure aspects and be told a story, not realizing that's what was happening.

A lot of writing now has little to no subtlety. They even go ahead and say what they're trying to tell you over the course of the episode.

 

[fireproof78]

A lot of writing now has little to no subtlety. They even go ahead and say what they're trying to tell you over the course of the episode.

Times have changed. Much of the time the writing strikes me as not necessarily trying to appeal to people don't agree, for whatever reason, but rather actively reinforce to those who do agree that they are right.

 

[KirkusOveractus]

Times have changed. Much of the time the writing strikes me as not necessarily trying to appeal to people don't agree, for whatever reason, but rather actively reinforce to those who do agree that they are right.

And that's what I don't like, the "preaching to the choir" aspect. To me, storytelling should appeal to as many as possible, reinforce to those that they feel they are right, but also tell others who don't agree why they should look at the other side of the argument. It's why writers like Serling, Ellison, Bloch, Bradbury, Asimov, etc. are still revered and at such a high level, and you probably can't remember the names of who wrote episodes of the latest iteration of The Twilight Zone or Star Trek: Discovery.

To me, that's the annoying thing, that writers for such highly-regarded names in the genre haven't been able to approach those who came before.

 

[fireproof78]

And that's what I don't like, the "preaching to the choir" aspect. To me, storytelling should appeal to as many as possible, reinforce to those that they feel they are right, but also tell others who don't agree why they should look at the other side of the argument. It's why writers like Serling, Ellison, Bloch, Bradbury, Asimov, etc. are still revered and at such a high level, and you probably can't remember the names of who wrote episodes of the latest iteration of The Twilight Zone or Star Trek: Discovery.

To me, that's the annoying thing, that writers for such highly-regarded names in the genre haven't been able to approach those who came before.

And they won't because they don't want to reach the other side. The other side is a monster and should be feared, diminished and dismissed. At least from what I read at times.

It's sad, but that's not what stories are for right now. Strikes me as closer to be like old school fairy tales as cautionary tales rather than broad entertainment.

 

[KirkusOveractus]

And they won't because they don't want to reach the other side. The other side is a monster and should be feared, diminished and dismissed. At least from what I read at times.

It's sad, but that's not what stories are for right now. Strikes me as closer to be like old school fairy tales as cautionary tales rather than broad entertainment.

And to me, that's what a good writer or storyteller should be, is fearless. I can remember the interview with Rod Serling, and he didn't care at all who would be offended by his writing.

I just hope that the writing on SNW will have at least a little aspect that TOS had of how it told stories. I would lump TNG in there, too, but they had their moments of hitting you over the head with something and not let the story tell itself. Like DeForest Kelley said on the Inside Star Trek record, "Now, Gene, you know our audience is smarter than that!"

 

[fireproof78]

And to me, that's what a good writer or storyteller should be, is fearless. I can remember the interview with Rod Serling, and he didn't care at all who would be offended by his writing.

I just hope that the writing on SNW will have at least a little aspect that TOS had of how it told stories. I would lump TNG in there, too, but they had their moments of hitting you over the head with something and not let the story tell itself. Like DeForest Kelley said on the Inside Star Trek record, "Now, Gene, you know our audience is smarter than that!"

Maybe? Writers work from their experience and knowledge. Until you are willing to actually believe that the other side can be reached you won't move past that fear.

It's not a matter of offensive; it's a matter of purpose.

 

[Sci]

I think the writing was also a lot more subtle at that time.

Very subtle.

 

[T'Bonz]

Well they couldn't ALL be winners.

 

[Sci]

Well they couldn't ALL be winners.

I mean, it's not like "A Private Little War," or "Errand of Mercy," or "The City on the Edge of Forever," or "The Enemy Within," or "Balance of Terror," or "Space Seed," or "The Devil Within," or "This Side of Paradise," or "Mirror, Mirror," or "The Doomsday Machine," or "The Omega Glory," or "The Ultimate Computer," or "Elaan of Troyius," or "The Mark of Gideon," or "The Way to Eden," or "The Cloud Minders," or "The Savage Curtain" were particularly subtle, either.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

If the intent is to get a message across in 45 minutes, subtlety takes a backseat. People are just inured to TOS.

I love TOS by the way, but I wouldn’t say it’s subtle at all. And it’s all the better for it.

 

[KirkusOveractus]

If the intent is to get a message across in 45 minutes, subtlety takes a backseat. People are just inured to TOS.

I love TOS by the way, but I wouldn’t say it’s subtle at all. And it’s all the better for it.

The point I was making was that it wasn't just TOS. It was almost all classic Sci-Fi writing for television in the late 1950's to mid-1960's or a bit later. The Twilight Zone sometimes told a good, solid story with a lesson in 30 minutes. That isn't a time constraint, that's talent.

And some of the stories told in TOS had a moral or parallel, and were subtle enough. If my dad watched it and didn't complain about being hit over the head with what they were saying, then it was subtle.

 

[Sci]

The point I was making was that it wasn't just TOS. It was almost all classic Sci-Fi writing for television in the late 1950's to mid-1960's or a bit later. The Twilight Zone sometimes told a good, solid story with a lesson in 30 minutes. That isn't a time constraint, that's talent.

And some of the stories told in TOS had a moral or parallel, and were subtle enough. If my dad watched it and didn't complain about being hit over the head with what they were saying, then it was subtle.

I mean, The Twilight Zone was the same series where they spend an entire episode with a woman with a bandage over her face talking about how before her surgery she was so ugly, and then the doctors take the bandage off and she's this gorgeous blonde and the doctors and nurses are all hideous pig-people. The Twilight Zone was not exactly all that subtle, either.

 

[KirkusOveractus]

I mean, The Twilight Zone was the same series where they spend an entire episode with a woman with a bandage over her face talking about how before her surgery she was so ugly, and then the doctors take the bandage off and she's this gorgeous blonde and the doctors and nurses are all hideous pig-people. The Twilight Zone was not exactly all that subtle, either.

I'm not saying it was always subtle. That's my mistake for the blanket statement. But if you take some of the best moments from one of those shows and put it against an allegorical story from a newer version, the originals tended to handle it better, IMO.

 

[fireproof78]

I'm not saying it was always subtle. That's my mistake for the blanket statement. But if you take some of the best moments from one of those shows and put it against an allegorical story from a newer version, the originals tended to handle it better, IMO.

But, that's a difference of purpose rather than talent. Stories have shifted in their purpose today, from more escapist style entertainment to not subtle allegories to real world events. Star Trek has just leaned in to specific aspects of the franchise rather than worry about subtlety.

 

[Sci]

I'm not saying it was always subtle. That's my mistake for the blanket statement. But if you take some of the best moments from one of those shows and put it against an allegorical story from a newer version, the originals tended to handle it better, IMO.

I just think the conventions of dramatic television have changed. That doesn't necessarily make things better or worse per se -- the creative goals of 1960s TV producers and 2020s TV producers are just very different.