Discovery Showrunners fired; Kurtzman takes over

[CorporalCaptain]

Nobody's expecting it to be a documentary

Nobody's expecting Star Trek to be a historical documentary, either. It's just a question of degrees, dude.

I'm a big believer in the importance of willing suspension of disbelief... and IMHO, the more you turn Trek (or any fictional reality) into something that's perpetually retconning itself, the more you undermine that very quality that makes suspension of disbelief possible. With that in mind, I honestly don't see why anyone thinks Trek's backstory needs to be linked to 2018 (or any particular "present day"). Lots of properties explicitly aren't. Any work of "alternate history" (like, say, Man in the High Castle) obviously isn't. Any work of "modern fantasy" (from Harry Potter to American Gods) obviously isn't. That doesn't diminish either the internal consistency or the thematic power of any of those works one iota. With Trek the disconnect is a bit less obvious, and perhaps that's what's confusing some people, but the same principle applies.

You're talking apples and mushrooms. In The Man in the High Castle, the whole freaking point is that it's set in an alternate reality. There's a clear distinction between that and "The City on the Edge of Forever," in which the objective is to get the timeline back to the way it is in the real world.

No one says that Star Trek takes place in an alternate reality (except when the characters temporarily go over to an alternate reality). The conceit is that it takes place in the future. In the case of DISCO and TOS, it's taking place in the 23rd century. It's a lie as big as any fairy tale, but that's the conceit.

 

[Donker]

For the arguments on why TOS is used, I agree with the argument that TOS is iconic thus it is used. EVERYONE knows who Kirk and Spock are and TOS will always have an iconic aesthetic. Boomers as well love TOS, but the thing is, as I've heard from the mouth of my parents, they think "later" Star Trek shows were too dark and serious, shows like TNG, DS9 and Voyager, what they like about TOS isn't the era, but the light-hearted 60s adventure sci-fi. This is also I think why the TOS era works for 2009 and Beyond, but not for something like Discovery.

Also whoever said it up above I think had it right, TOS is ICONIC but it isn't super popular. I'm a millennial and I spend most of my time around young people, from 18-30. TNG and Voyager, are by far, a mile, hands down the most popular Star Trek shows among the younger generation. I think most young people will know the Borg, over Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans, Gorn etc. I would actually put the Borg and Seven of Nine, even above Kirk and Spock in terms of iconic among my generation, throughout my teenage years, the image of "Star Trek" that I and all my friends had, even as fans of the show, was Picard with a Tommy gun shooting Borg.

I honestly believe if you want a successful modern Star Trek show, rebooting the Borg as the major threat is the way to go.

I'd be curious what the actual #numbers are for female Trek fans. Trek may have a female fanbase, but Sci-Fi is notoriously male-heavy. Thinking about the ratio of chicks in miniskirts to guys in tank tops, I suspect Trek's fanbase isn't as evenly distributed as one might imagine.

I know it's hard to believe, but I actually think women outnumber men in terms of pop culture fandom in general. The difference is girls and women approach the pop-culture differently than men. As explained by female fans, male fans tend to focus on lore, technical details, debates about lore and characters, merchandise etc, where female fans tend to focus on fanart, fanfics, cosplay, narrative discussions. Sadly both tend to not cross over. Go into any fanfiction or "book club" style space for pop culture franchises and it's 99% women, go into any technical, lore based space for pop culture and it's 99% males.

What appears on the screen though is mostly aimed at males because males dominate the most important aspect of pop culture, merchandise sales. There are quite a few instances of wildly popular shows that actually got canned because the ratings were coming from mostly female audiences and girls don't buy action figures, pop culture branded clothes and models. (Young Justice and Teen Titans instantly spring to mind)

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I honestly believe if you want a successful modern Star Trek show, rebooting the Borg as the major threat is the way to go.

I think it's just a matter of time. It may not come to pass of course, but I expect the Borg to be on DISCO eventually, and I expect them to pop up in the movies again eventually, too.

IMO, they are the most interesting villain conceived after TOS. (Q's not really a villain.)

 

[CorporalClegg]

Star Trek is absolutely "our future" in the abstract. That's at the core of the series. And, yes, that does extend to all of the 'alternate realities' as well. -- as noted by Adrock piercing through young Kirk's stereo.

But it also includes the mirror universe, which is why the Darkly montage uses images from our real history. It's kind of the whole point of the mirror universe.

#B3 (Bring Back Borg)

 

[Agony_Boothb]

I honestly believe if you want a successful modern Star Trek show, rebooting the Borg as the major threat is the way to go.

Deep Space Nine worked fine without the Borg. The Borg are great when they were treated as a force of nature. The minute they started becoming humanised in TNG was the moment they became less effective as villains. I have to admit I'm surprised with how effectively Enterprise used the Borg in Regeneration though and I wouldn't mind seeing a series reboot the Borg as part of a small story arc. But to have the Borg as ongoing villains and making a series dependent on them runs the risk of completely neutering the Borg like Voyager did. It's also a bit of a cop-out creatively. New series need to make their own iconic villains.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Regarding your point to me:

I'd be curious what the actual #numbers are for female Trek fans. Trek may have a female fanbase, but Sci-Fi is notoriously male-heavy. Thinking about the ratio of chicks in miniskirts to guys in tank tops, I suspect Trek's fanbase isn't as evenly distributed as one might imagine.

Regarding your last paragraph quoted above:

If you left Trek's backstory intact, women wouldn't be starship captains. If Trek left Trek's backstory intact, ships would run on lithium crystals. A little retconning doesn't hurt as much as bad retconning does. I'm all for updating the Trek future to incorporate technical and social advances we've made since whenever, and I'm usually rolling my eyes when they're being lazy. DS9's genetic-engineering ban and VOY's "faster than light no left or right" were a couple of hard rolls for me. On the other hand, I was surprised how much I liked DSC's holographic displays and communications.

The female fan base is probably roughly equal to male fan base. You probably shouldn't base it on who the show seems to cater to, otherwise the fanbase would be no one but 14 year old boys.

 

[Donker]

minute they started becoming humanised in TNG was the moment they became less effective as villains.

Killed off completely in Voyager. But statistics show overwhelmingly these days that the Borg episodes of Voyager are the most popular Trek episodes and I know as a kid and teen, everyone knew the Borg and they were what people thought of when they thought Star Trek.

This is also why I said "reboot the borg", they need to go back to being a terrifying, completely alien unstoppable force of nature that just leaves a path of destruction in it's wake. Something like the film Shin Godzilla I think would be actually quite a creative way of handling the Borg. Most of the time is spent just mitigating and trying fruitlessly to minimise the damage until a plan can be cobbled together to take the threat down.

Just handwave Voyager Borg away by explaining that the Borg Queen was just a Borg experiment gone bad trying to take advantage of the quick adaptability individuality allows.

 

[jaime]

I'm extremely skeptical of the claim that in the end Lucas wanted all stormtroopers to be clones. Now, I wouldn't doubt that at different points in the process over the years he might have had that notion, especially early on in the 1970s. But as for what he wanted to represent going forward in the 21st century, it's an extraordinary claim, that would rate the need for extraordinary evidence, given how the OT-era show Rebels so liberally contradicts it. He changed Boba's voice in TESB. Why wouldn't he rerecord all the stormtrooper lines in the OT? It's really a far-fetched claim.

Rebel’s is post Disney. I think he was heading that way till the walke talkie backlash on Spielberg’s E.T. Just the way the wind seemed to blowing. It didn’t happen, but I could see him leaning that way. Maybe ‘look sir droids’ in the 3D remaster that never happened would have been the point, but by that point maybe not. It’s OT of The OT anyway, but is a plausible direction he was heading in.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Rebel’s is post Disney. I think he was heading that way till the walke talkie backlash on Spielberg’s E.T. Just the way the wind seemed to blowing. It didn’t happen, but I could see him leaning that way. Maybe ‘look sir droids’ in the 3D remaster that never happened would have been the point, but by that point maybe not. It’s OT of The OT anyway, but is a plausible direction he was heading in.

If you have any actual evidence, I'm all ears, as they say.

 

[cultcross]

suspension of disbelief... and IMHO, the more you turn Trek (or any fictional reality) into something that's perpetually retconning itself, the more you undermine that very quality that makes suspension of disbelief possible

But yet Trek still does continually retcon itself to stay in line with real events. Despite all the deviations from modern history mentioned in TOS, the 1986 of The Voyage Home is indistinguishable from the world outside the movie theatre. The same again with Voyager's 1990s. I can't think of any more obvious indicator that it is meant to be set in our world.

Any work of "modern fantasy" (from Harry Potter to American Gods) obviously isn't.

Not seen/read American Gods, but Harry Potter is definitely set in the 'present day', well the 90s at any rate. That's not only explicit in the Muggle characters like the Dursleys but part of the whole attraction of the series, that the fans can imagine there might really be a wizarding world hidden from view and children can dream of getting their Hogwarts letter on their birthday.

 

[jaime]

Whatever that is. I've never heard of it.


"Male-heavy" as in the fans, or as in the authors?

I've been sorting out my book collection recently, and I've got entire bookshelves filled with some very good science fiction, written and edited by female authors. And given the number of male fans who turned out to hear C.J. Cherryh speak at both conventions where I saw her, I'd say she's well respected by fans, period.

As for "chicks in miniskirts"... I have yet to see any baby chickens running around a barnyard, wearing any sort of skirt.

Dark Page is a Lwxana centric episode of TNG, that provides a lot of backstory and rounding out.

 

[jaime]

If you have any actual evidence, I'm all ears, as they say.

Like I say, (and others have mentioned the ‘storm troopers are clones’ theories going back to 77....only imperial stormtroopers are so precise...aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper...and the mention of the clone wars as being what seemingly out the empire in power, can lead to it as a valid interpretation) it’s just a gut feeling...Lucas has by the nineties edited out deaths of human looking characters. He’s introduced the clones in AOTC and they are very much ‘proto stormtroopers’ , it’s a logical next step in making the ‘hero’ characters more ‘pure’ while still giving them an enemy to fight. It’s very plausible indeed, likely even, that George could have headed that way. It’s only much later that it becomes fairly implausible (the clones were aged fast to adulthood, it’s only much later that it is shown to continue and give them a limited shelf life.) as well (I think not until Rebels in fact, and even then we know that it’s possible some clones still serve, the empire offer Rex a new set of armour and regard him as a military hero, and we know that with the Rebels he served as far as the Endor mission....so it’s still not cut and dried.) as remaining a possibility. It serves two purposes really, it makes the troopers a slave race to be freed, programmed from birth (which we still see with Finn. In fact it’s almost possible to suggest that Finn himself is simply from a different batch of clones, because there’s not a lot of info flowing.) and therefore tragic (which we see with the regret of the clones over order 66 in rebels) but also makes them into ‘faceless mooks’ More than ever (videogame targets for the heroes...if they have no real life, not much different to manufactured droids, it somehow becomes more o.k for the heroes to zap em...we see that as part of the same coin with the battle droids in the prequels. Troopers are just the manufactured soldier of the republic, the droids are the manufactured soldier of the Federation...they are deliberately similar for narrative reasons.) they are ‘safely’ Expendable.
Greedo shooting first is another hint of Lucas sanitising the films.

It’s basically a logical assumption, but it didn’t go that far before the sale to Disney. The pieces are there though. Maybe Spielberg talked George out of it before the Blu releases xD

Erm...how to tie it back to topic?
Well...it shows how producers can change a work to suit an ideology, but also how they may change their minds...and....a change in producers changes that ideology or how it is shown. Disney Wars is not Lucas Wars. For some this is good, others bad, some in the middle.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

it’s just a gut feeling

OK.

 

[Spot261]

I'd be curious what the actual #numbers are for female Trek fans. Trek may have a female fanbase, but Sci-Fi is notoriously male-heavy. Thinking about the ratio of chicks in miniskirts to guys in tank tops, I suspect Trek's fanbase isn't as evenly distributed as one might imagine.

Leaving aside the "chicks in tank tops" business, I suspect it probably is pretty even. Sci fi was pretty male heavy but that is a stereotype that I doubt really holds much water these days. Nerddom in general is mainstream and inclusive, although I do suspect there is resistance to that from people who are uncomfortable with a male domain being invaded.

 

[jaime]

OK.

And a quick yahoo search shows it’s a common one, including, as discussed, one that seems to exist among the masses.
https://www.bustle.com/articles/128...e-awakens-breathes-new-life-into-the-henchmen

Apparently some of the new canon novels show clone troopers still making up a chunk of the stormtroopers well into the empires run too.

 

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

You guys know that if they bring back the Borg, literally 98% chance they will ruin them.

I mean look at Dr Who's Cybermen being repeatedly ruined, not once, not twice, but in like three attempts at rebooting them... none have remotely captured that "Tomb of the Cybermen" feeling... TV writers seem incapable of articulating something as coldly high-sci-fi as "Q Who", for whatever reason. I guess they feel they need to humanise everything, even a villain that is meant to be a pure early-20th-Century Arthur C Clarke inhuman technical concept. From being an unstoppable force of machine efficiency with total disregard for cost, they were given a Queen who spends several Voyager episodes having chats with people.

Don't ask for things if you know people are not competent to do them, it will result in pain.

 

[jaime]

But yet Trek still does continually retcon itself to stay in line with real events. Despite all the deviations from modern history mentioned in TOS, the 1986 of The Voyage Home is indistinguishable from the world outside the movie theatre. The same again with Voyager's 1990s. I can't think of any more obvious indicator that it is meant to be set in our world.



Not seen/read American Gods, but Harry Potter is definitely set in the 'present day', well the 90s at any rate. That's not only explicit in the Muggle characters like the Dursleys but part of the whole attraction of the series, that the fans can imagine there might really be a wizarding world hidden from view and children can dream of getting their Hogwarts letter on their birthday.

You get bonus geek power points for knowing Potter is set in the nineties, despite the confused depiction on screen.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Even in the now de-canonized Legends, new Fett clones were no longer being made by the time of EpIV, and non-clones were filling out the ranks by then.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kamino_uprising

Battlefront II was mentioned upthread and dates from 2005. That was all developed while Lucas was still at the helm, which makes the idea that Lucas wanted something else a claim all the more extraordinary.

 

[Timewalker]

I know it's hard to believe, but I actually think women outnumber men in terms of pop culture fandom in general. The difference is girls and women approach the pop-culture differently than men. As explained by female fans, male fans tend to focus on lore, technical details, debates about lore and characters, merchandise etc, where female fans tend to focus on fanart, fanfics, cosplay, narrative discussions. Sadly both tend to not cross over. Go into any fanfiction or "book club" style space for pop culture franchises and it's 99% women, go into any technical, lore based space for pop culture and it's 99% males.

What appears on the screen though is mostly aimed at males because males dominate the most important aspect of pop culture, merchandise sales. There are quite a few instances of wildly popular shows that actually got canned because the ratings were coming from mostly female audiences and girls don't buy action figures, pop culture branded clothes and models. (Young Justice and Teen Titans instantly spring to mind)

If you want a crossover of interests that seems weird to some other people but perfectly normal to me, take a bunch of tabletop RPG players, some board gamers, some Civilization players (board and computer games), toss in several collections of science fiction and fantasy books and memorabilia, a small Star Trek club, and then realize that all of these people belong to the same branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and you end up with a group in which women made up the majority of the numbers, both in the larger group and in the smaller sub-groups. And back then, "cosplay" was not a word, or at least not one any of us had ever heard.

Or at least that's how it was for me in the decade following TNG's premiere. The way I explained it to people was that "We like science fiction, fantasy, history, computers, and doing things as traditionally as possible... we're just a group of people who can't make up our minds which century we want to live in."

I own the first 12 Star Wars action figures, as well as the TMP figures and most of the first 6" TOS figures. I never got into collecting kits or ships; books have always been my thing. I have a friend in Calgary who has duplicates of some of the large TNG figures... as she put it, "One set to keep in the box and another set to play with." So she's had Beverly Crusher sitting on Picard's lap on her computer desk for years, now, while their counterparts are still in their unopened boxes.

I don't collect many action figures anymore - they got too expensive and it was difficult to find a place to put them anyway. I think the last one I bought was Lily, from First Contact, and I've got Quark and Chief O'Brien around somewhere.

As for other stuff... I've got a ThinkGeek account, and have a few things on my "someday, if the exchange rate ever improves, if I've got the money, and if it's on sale, just maybe..." list. For the most part I prefer the more practical things. The TARDIS blanket they sell is really very cozy in the winter months. As for the fun stuff, I've got the plush Jupiter and Pluto, and it looks like they didn't sell well enough to offer the rest of the solar system.

It just depends on what gets offered. All the t-shirts in the world won't mean a thing if they're not offered in sizes that non-average people need, and there are some items I want but they're not available for Canadian customers.

But yet Trek still does continually retcon itself to stay in line with real events. Despite all the deviations from modern history mentioned in TOS, the 1986 of The Voyage Home is indistinguishable from the world outside the movie theatre. The same again with Voyager's 1990s. I can't think of any more obvious indicator that it is meant to be set in our world.

Do we have transparent aluminum yet?

Dark Page is a Lwxana centric episode of TNG, that provides a lot of backstory and rounding out.

Thank you for clarifying. The title meant nothing to me because I just don't remember the titles of most Trek episodes other than the TOS/TAS ones, and some of the first-season TNG episodes, though I may have seen the episode itself several times.

 

[jaime]

Even in the now de-canonized Legends, new Fett clones were no longer being made by the time of EpIV, and non-clones were filling out the ranks by then.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kamino_uprising

Battlefront II was mentioned upthread and dates from 2005. That was all developed while Lucas was still at the helm, which makes the idea that Lucas wanted something else a claim all the more extraordinary.

And ET did it’s walkie talkie thing in 2002. Backlash followed.
Like I say, it’s very plausible, and in keeping with those times. Lucas walked back the Greedo shooting first in the final ones he touched, reversing the sanitisation he had been putting in with edits. I am not saying ‘Lucas definitely intended’ I am saying ‘it’s possible Lucas intended, based on what we see happening’ and ‘some viewers will have that interpretation, based on what they see on screen’.
Rebels is the only thing that on screen shows what is now status quo. If we went and dug a hemit up, and showed him the episodes in order, he would likely assume that the troopers are clones, because in order, it’s clear that the republic became the empire, and that the republics army became the empires army, and that since the clone troopers are clones, the storm troopers are the same clones. (Even in non screen canon...some of them still are.) All of them. Stormtroopers get few enough lines that are gruff enough to make the accent drift barely noticeable.
The fact we know Lucas was sanitising the films in the late nineties (when the prequels were gearing up) by removing human empire deaths (the prison block) makes it extremely plausible. His reason for walking back? Also easily deduced, because of the backlash to walkie talkies in ET (his buddy Spielberg) and to Greedo shooting first. It’s likely, and not impossible. *shrug*
I feel like I am in ‘is deckard a replicant’ territory here, only that’s more clear cut. XD