Irrelevant. If he can critique the DSC writers his work is certainly open critique as well.
Drop the S31 show for a Captain Pike show?
- Thread starter Tom
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Irrelevant. If he can critique the DSC writers his work is certainly open critique as well.
That's a bit of a fallacy, isn't it? Otherwise, none of us could critique anything, now could we? I mean, I don't think we have much space to critique anyway, but that doesn't stop, well, anyone.
And it was irrelevant to point out that Dennis wrote Tin Man as if that was some kind of slight against him. What exactly did pointing that out have to do with him critiquing DSC?
Tastes vary and nothing is above critique? 
Tastes vary and nothing is above critique?
Then I hope you didn't write something that was nothing short of a masterpiece, or you're in for some serious trouble, apparently.
You're sticking up for a guy who wouldn't hestitate to bully you if he felt like it. He's doing this for kicks. He doesn't care. This is his way of killing time, to see how many shots he can get in the rim. If he were another poster, I'd agree with you. But he's laughing at all of us, even the posters who think they're on his side. The sooner everyone wakes up to this, the better.
Even if I did I would still be in trouble. It's like trying to order pizza toppings in a group. No one will be completely happy.Then I hope you didn't write something that was nothing short of a masterpiece, or you're in for some serious trouble, apparently.
I'm not sticking up for Dennis personally. I don't even know him. I just felt he was being unfairly targeted. And I've never had any kind of experience with him like what you've described.
This is the key point right here. He's been winding people up since the ENT forum days, and he's good at doing it in ways that skirt the rules. The sooner he's ignored, the better.
Hey, speaking of rules, how about we go back to discussing posts and not the poster before this thread gets shut down?
I appreciate a person getting 1 at-bat in the Major Leagues, or even 1 home run (as an example), but it doesn't entitle a person to be a bully. You're spot-on.
I think throwing around the term 'grimdark' at whatever one hopes it will stick to is a superficial and indulgent posture at this point.
I found an interesting article that included a quote from one of the showrunners that I find interesting:
It would be an error to assume that something like TOS's wrap up and move on despite the emotional pain and difficulty that the characters go through. City on the Edge of Forever is considered Trek at its best and yet it is an episode that has some rather dark implications regarding the future of humanity for a time. That, in order to have the future Kirk wants, someone must die.
That is interesting but hardly light-hearted, or adventure filled romp. It's dealing with the nature of fate, and destiny and sacrifice.
Now, I don't think that Discovery and City are a one-to-one comparison, but I do think that the idea of introducing darker concepts, like spy agencies, and morally questionable actions, is not new to Star Trek, and invites more discourse, not less.
But of course, COTEF is an exceptionally well-written fifty-minute TV drama,* which is complete in itself - it's nearly as good whether or not one has seen or ever will see another episode of Star Trek. A Twilight Zone or Outer Limits story.
Which is something that none of the STD writers have demonstrated, on the show, even the whisper of a suggestion that they're capable of.
I suppose there's hope; they've moved from borderline-incompetent scripts in Year One to disposable CW-level nonsense in Year Two.
Also, of course, TOS then moved on from COTEF and did entirely different kinds of shows, each a complete story, with quite a range of tones. Again, on the evidence this bunch can't really be expected to do that; fortunately there are other skiffy shows that do it, and do it well.
COTEF happens to be my favorite Trek episode, but you know it ain't the one that shows up at the number one spot in most fan polls - that goes to a light comedy about something called "tribbles."
The question might be asked "if you can't write a good hour-long story, what makes you think you can write a multi-part saga?"**
STD's answer has pretty much been "Doesn't matter, as long as you can stretch the plot bits out long enough that the audience doesn't figure out for sure that you don't know what you're doing until the last couple of episodes."
*As good as it is, COTEF does fall back on a terrible cliche that Ellison was far too fond of and used in several of his well-known works: let's make a sympathetic hero out of a guy who's killed his girlfriend. We've seen another bad example of this just recently in a mega-successful prestige cable drama. Paraphrasing Lindsay Ellis, "Every violent guy who kills his wife thinks he's this hero; he had to do it."
**Well, not "might be asked" - was, on several occasions, by producers slogging through multiple script submissions via the "open door" policy.
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And I don't them to do it either. I have no problem with the story or tone that they done thus far and believe they can continue to improve, like most Star Trek often does.
YMMV.
Your analysis is flawed in that STD BY DESIGN isn't set up to tell a standalone/self contained 50 minute story. It's designed so that each full season tells an overall story in parts. It's like judging an entire book on a single chapter and complaining said chapter doesn't work as a standalone story because it leaves elements hanging, etc.
My larger point is that if that episode made today it would be multi-part arc to explore it. DSC, I agree, is a larger story and should be taken as such.
If anyone doesn't mind, I'd like to look at the kinds of stories the S31 Series and Pike Series might actually tell. If that's okay with the peanut gallery.
If S31 is Mission:Impossible-like, we might get episodes in the style of "The Enterprise Incident" (TOS), "Face of the Enemy" (TNG), or "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" (DS9). There was also an episode of ENT, I can't remember the episode title, where a Xindi is led to believe three years have passed and the war has turned right on its head. Straight out of the M:I playbook. I don't think every week is going to be an "In the Pale Moonlight".
With a Pike Series, I'm guessing we'd see more types of episodes in the vein of "New Eden" or "Si Vis Pacem".
If S31 is Mission:Impossible-like, we might get episodes in the style of "The Enterprise Incident" (TOS), "Face of the Enemy" (TNG), or "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" (DS9). There was also an episode of ENT, I can't remember the episode title, where a Xindi is led to believe three years have passed and the war has turned right on its head. Straight out of the M:I playbook. I don't think every week is going to be an "In the Pale Moonlight".
With a Pike Series, I'm guessing we'd see more types of episodes in the vein of "New Eden" or "Si Vis Pacem".
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We also have missions that are like Picard and Co in "The Chain of Command" where it is basically a black ops type mission, where Starfleet cannot acknowledge their existence. Or, perhaps even missions like the Valiant, sent behind the lines for espionage purposes.
Plus, as much as Trek loses its tech, you have them messing around with all kinds of experimental technology, and some of it could go wrong and then I would expect to be never referenced again.
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