No. But the new ones will have more time to become entrenched. They'll be harder to shake off than Windows XP was.
Spoilers General Disco Chat Thread
- Thread starter Lord Garth
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No. But the new ones will have more time to become entrenched. They'll be harder to shake off than Windows XP was.
I suppose it is time for a new round of 'DSC FAILURE FACING CANCELLATION!'
That's pretty low on my list of "must haves" for a showrunner.
Not necessarily a "must have". Though it would be nice to have someone who understands sci-fi. But Michael Piller was able to make the transition, so we'll have to wait and see.
There's not much to understanding Sc-Fi in my opinion. It's not all that "special".
It's just substituting law/medical/police jargony gobbledygook with sciencey-sounding gobbledygook.
You must read a very different type of science fiction than I do then.
Probably not.
This is nothing new to Star Trek.
Take a look at Gene Goon's credits before Star Trek, Michael Piller's (as you mentioned), Ronald Moore's.
Or Roddenberry for that matter. His bread and butter seemed to be cop shows and westerns.
It's hard for me to figure out how you make say The Left Hand of Darkness, Hyperion, Startide Rising, Red Mars, A Fire Upon The Deep, Childhood's End, etc as legal, medical, or police procedurals.
I don't think @CorporalClegg was saying that.
Do not ask such questions of Hollywood producers. They will find a way. Example: Neil Gaiman's Lucifer.
I mean, I do think it's broadly true that Trek has often not been an example of high-concept sci-fi. Though it's generally speaking been better at it than most other sci-fi series.
I do agree that we don't really need a showrunner who gets science fiction. But you should have someone in the writer's room who is well versed in it, who can come up with somewhat off-the-wall concepts rooted in science fiction so that the story doesn't entirely rely upon character drama that could just as easily be used in any setting.
Maybe. Though I tend to think that Star Trek's best episodes aren't driven by "somewhat off-the-wall concepts rooted in science fiction."
That many have been accurate in the 60s, but its gotten less and less accurate as time has marched on.
I think there were a lot of great Trek episodes which basically required a SF-nal concept to work. TOS was more full of them, but the later Treks had fine episodes like Cause and Effect, Parallells, Living Witness, The Measure of A Man, and The Visitor.
Sadly, you are correct. As I've noted in the past, in a lot of ways Trek started out as being The Twilight Zone on a ship, but ended up being Lord of The Rings. Basically it was supposed to be a vehicle where the cast could be used to tell basically any SF tale, but as time went on what people really wanted was fanwank - self -referential stories that built up the characters and the Trek universe, rather than using it as a framework for more freeform storytelling.
I dunno about that.
I tend to think they were telling stories that used a SF setting.
I disagree with you 100%. And below is why.
As usual my statement gets twisted around for you to push your Discovery is a fantasy series BS. That couldn't be further from the truth. All science fiction TV has improved from the 60s, to the point that Star Trek is not at the leading edge like it was in a simpler time. Yes, a much simpler time, especially for television.
Between TOS and TNG, there were shows like Space 1999, Doctor Who and Star Cops which further pushed the envelope of science fiction. And while the Berman Era shows were more concerned with remaining in their comfort zones, Babylon 5 and Farscape continued to push the limits from the safe 40s-50s level of literary fantasy that Star Trek remained stuck in. BSG, Fringe, The Expanse, Defiance, 12 Monkeys, Sense 8 and even Killyjoys continued to push the envelope before Discovery arrived to make an attempt to push Star Trek out of the pre-new wave era scifi that it had been stuck in for 50 years. And while I can laud the series being almost as interesting as the 60s novels I have read, there's been Counterpart and Altered Carbon which continue to do things that Star Trek *never* has, and whose producers seems afraid to do out of fear of upsetting fans of traditional trek, who want their old moral play, one simple idea episode nostalgia back and think that any kind of deconstruction of the franchise is creative treason. Trek isn't helped by backwards navelgazing and the rejecting of everything new the franchise tries as a betrayal of some people's nostalgia for what they watched decades ago and want Trek to remain.
For the record, most of the best Star Trek episodes in past series would have fit in with 40s-50s decent short magazine fiction. Discovery at least pushes the franchise into the kinds of science fiction I have read that were more commonly published as late as the 60s. I will admit its not much, but its actually forward motion, not the backwards breaststroke some would appear to want the franchise to engage in as apparently 'any' SF tale to traditionalist doesn't actually mean 'any' SF tale, just something in a very narrow range that doesn't dare push any envelope the original series did 50 years ago.
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