What if you lived in the old days when there was no TV? Most Shakespeare and Greek plays are re-tellings of well-known stories. Everyone knew who would die in the end but they still watched anyway.
Haters of Star Trek: Discovery - wtf?
- Thread starter SpaceLama
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What if you lived in the old days when there was no TV? Most Shakespeare and Greek plays are re-tellings of well-known stories. Everyone knew who would die in the end but they still watched anyway.
Everything new, by definition, is new. We haven't seen anything yet. This could be the greatest Trek ever and we'll all die from multiple orgasms watching the pilot, or it could be the worst monstrosity to ever pollute an electron.
Probably something in between though.
Probably something in between though.
Nicely put.
And as have others have already pointed out, that applies to the vast majority of TOS episodes as well. Very few of them had to do with the vast sweep of galactic politics; it was mostly about one crew out on the final frontier and their experiences coping with human dramas with a sci-fi twist.
The fate of the Federation did not depend on whether Kirk got put back together after a transporter accident, or whether Pike ended up in an alien menagerie, or how Spock coped with pon farr, or whether the landing party stayed trapped in the past or the Mirror Universe or whatever. And none of this made the show any less science-fictional, since the dilemmas and dangers facing the crew usually had a sci-twist and were stories that could not have just as easily been told on, say, Perry Mason or Route 66. (Unless I missed the episode where Perry had to push Della Reese in front of bus to restore the timeline.)
Just because we know the outcome of Dominion War way, way in the future doesn't mean we know what's going to happen to our unnamed protagonist and her crew and what strange new civilizations and phenomena they may encounter. And, since this is largely unplumbed territory, who knows what other crises Starfleet was coping with during that time?
TV drama in our day and age focuses almost entirely upon character. Plots are basically soap-like, and do not alter the political landscape of the world to the degree that Babylon 5 did to it's world. Instead consequences are measured almost entirely in characterization. They call it the 'Golden Age of TV' and the 'age in which TV has surpassed cinema as a medium', because people really go for this kind of complex character based drama - and it has allowed unprecidented levels of acting to emerge, such as Bryan Cranston's performance as a villain.
You have to understand the context that this show is being made in. The context is that Trek is being updated for this 'Golden Age of TV' - the era of Netflix-exclusive series - the era of season-long arcs. It is probably being made as a 'modern TV drama' - in other words, the acting/character-based/dramatic consequences will probably be emphasized to a degree never before seen in Star Trek - closest to DS9. The exact type of 'character-only' consequences that you would prefer they were not doing.
But people will love it - because that is the way of modern TV - to focus upon angst and turmoil and psychology - and quite honesty, if you look at early TOS - there is a good argument that it's been a part of Trek from the get-go - the whole point of episodes like "The Cage", "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "The Man Trap", etc. Look at how "The Man Trap" ends with Dr McCoy having to kill a replica of a former love interest, being shouted at to fire, while it sucks the life from Kirk's face - I believe that is what we will see from Fuller, and I'm game for it! It might be best to accept DSC on it's own terms, rather than want it to be Babylon 5 or Farscape or SG-1 or BSG.
I think you really have to embrace it for what it is, or you will be disappointed. Find the joy and interest in this type of storytelling. I think there will still be lots of plot, but no, there will probably not be some existential threat to the Federation that we don't already know will fail - the story will be how much suffering is inflicted before that threat is vanquished - or how an untold part of the Klingon-Federation Cold War unfolded - or how a defector and spy has their assumptions and life destroyed. We may well get a show set in the 25th century in the next few years, but I think for now, this is the approach that will be explored.
Dude, you couldn't be more wrong.
Never have I said anywhere I don't want charater drama. In fact I would be sriously dissappointed if there wouldn't be any, because that's part of what makes great drama. I just don't want only character drama. Is that so hard to understand?
Especially not in a speculative fiction show. Seriously. If Game of Thrones were only the characters backstabbing each other I wouldn't like it as much as I do like it with all the "plot drama" - white walkers, dragons, witches and wars included.
Have you ever noticed that how two theater-plays are the same? You can see Julius Caesar getting stabbed by Brutus two times, and each of them it would be in a completely new context, with completely different interpretaions of the characters involved, with absurdly different moral implications attached.
Don't worry Rahul, I know you don't mean you dislike character drama - I was just replying to what you said about needing more plot-based storytelling in a Trek show - trying to provide a little context about what I think (unless I'm misreading him) Bryan Fuller will go for - it won't be the kind of galaxy-changing politics you might be craving, but like TOS, will have repercussions on people we will grow to love.
Bryan Fuller is a massive Twilight Zone fanboy, in addition to TOS, so The Man Trap with it's weird fiction monster story sprang to mind. And he is also someone who studied psychology, and made something as cerebral as Hannibal, so I'm betting we get that Kirk/Spock/Bones angst of early TOS
This interview might interest you:
Bryan Fuller is a massive Twilight Zone fanboy, in addition to TOS, so The Man Trap with it's weird fiction monster story sprang to mind. And he is also someone who studied psychology, and made something as cerebral as Hannibal, so I'm betting we get that Kirk/Spock/Bones angst of early TOS
This interview might interest you:
Even Janeway was nostalgic as all get out for the 23 Century "wild west" of space exploration.
Just to digress, that's probably why Hollywood has struggled to adapt Asimov over the years, as opposed to, say, Richard Matheson or Ray Bradbury. Don't get me wrong; I read and enjoyed my fair share of Asimov growing up, but I've never thought that his books and stories lent themselves to movies or TV. They're mostly plot and ideas and puzzles and, as you say, "not so much about what happened to the characters."
STAR TREK, on the other hand, has always been about human drama and emotions and as much as it's been about time warps and alien probes and interstellar wars and politics.
They are now adapting Foundation
They are now adapting Foundation
I'll be curious to see if and how they pull that off. I, ROBOT (the movie) pretty much threw out the entire book and made up their own story, not that Asimov's estate probably complained. (The movie tie-in edition of the original novel, with Will Smith on the cover, sold very well.)
And I swear THE GODS THEMSELVES is deliberately unfilmable. The entire first third of the book is basically scientists in a laboratory theorizing about alternate dimensions and physics, while the middle section features no humanoid characters whatsoever.
Or so I recall. It's been decades since I've read that book.
I've only read the Foundation trilogy amongst Asimov's work - but would like to read his others.
I recon they will try to sex it up with added angst and turmoil during the individual time periods - I hope they won't simply lose the ideas, and make it a more generic space opera (certainly possible in the Hollywood system) - but Christopher Nolan's brother, who was a writer on Interstellar, is working on it, and I thought he did a good job with Interstellar's presentation of physics - so here is hoping he can find some way to present psychohistory
I recon they will try to sex it up with added angst and turmoil during the individual time periods - I hope they won't simply lose the ideas, and make it a more generic space opera (certainly possible in the Hollywood system) - but Christopher Nolan's brother, who was a writer on Interstellar, is working on it, and I thought he did a good job with Interstellar's presentation of physics - so here is hoping he can find some way to present psychohistory
Frankly I laugh when I hear people saying this is the Golden Age of TV. I've never seen so much crap
In my life. And the supposedly tv series that are so fantastic ain't all that honestly
Sure you can have nudity, vulgar language, sex scenes that wasn't really allowed before on tv but that don't impress me much. Serialized storying isn't something that happened in the last ten years. It's a little more prevalent but tv dramas and tv soaps were doing it decades ago and to better effect. Nowadays shows have such a limited interconnected premise that thanks to LOST the arc storytelling is unnecessarily convoluted with bloated series spanning mythologies, flashbacks/flash forwards that it has totally ruined arc storytelling. Give me a good old fashioned modest ensemble with two or three parallel linear season long arcs that pay off within a season. The type of mystery puzzle piece arc storytelling that's so en vogue now with -How to Get away with murder, Once upon a time, blindspot, Alcatraz, Quantico, Dead of Summer, The Event, V 2.0, Flash Forward etc etc is just fundament flawed
And the so called complex character work is hit or miss. Most of the time it's just writers seeing how pretentious and depraved they can get which got old a long time ago. Other times it feels so dry and academic leacing me detached from the characters that I could care less how complicated they are. They're insufferable or just over the top to showcase acting
And this golden age of tv well it's pacing ain't that hot either. It's either breakneck speed where you can't enjoy anything because you're being assaulted by so much going on. In turn you also get shorter scenes that don't get time to breathe. Or on the other extreme other tv shoes nowadays are slow as molasses and boring as can be
So you'll forgive me if I find this so called golden age severely lacking.
Yeah, I got a copy of that edition (it was really cheap used) and the fact that the cover has next to nothing to do with the book is something I find really funny. (Confession: I think I liked the movie better than the book.)
Could the theorizing parts be compressed into the essential details (the way that Jurassic Park cut out the unneeded fictional science stuff from the book so that we were only given the stuff we needed) and the rest made into a narrative?
In regards to the Golden Age of TV, I personally think that, like all things, that continuing narratives do play to the strength of serialization, but that a healthy mix of shows (interconnected with some that are more episodic) is best. Now, I don't follow modern TV much, so I may be out of the loop, but I find nine times out of ten the most interesting sounding stuff is cartoons.
Have you even watched Bryan Fuller's shows? "Wonderfalls" and "Pushing Daisies" were some of the best, most innovative and creative TV I have seen in a long time. And Fuller's always wanted to do Trek.
IDIC, dudes. Wait and watch. Allow yourself to be surprised
I don't think anyone is saying that TV is better today just because there's relatively more freedom with regard to nudity or profanity and "depraved" characters, although I think that it's generally a good thing that censors and self-appointed moral guardians have less power, so that stories can go wherever they need to go. Do we really want to return to the days where STAR TREK had to fight to show a belly-button, or tiptoe around the topic of birth control in "Mark of Gideon"?
And, yes, I do think that the best TV series these days tend to be more ambitious and adventurous and wittier that many of the hits of the past. I mean, aside from nostalgia, are we really going to argue that Wonder Woman or The Six Million Dollar Man were better written than, say, The Flash or iZombie? Or that Logan's Run and Buck Rogers were better than, say, The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones? Or that Charlie's Angels was better than Alias or Buffy?
And I say that not as a callow youngster, but as a middle-aged guy who remembers what TV was like in the sixties and seventies without any rose-colored glasses.
Which reminds me, Killjoys is on . . ..
I'd rather go back to the Pre TOS Era then go Post Nemesis (Which almost killed the movie franchise.) Or Picking up after ENT (Which almost killed the TV franchise.) Going to back where it all began. (TOS) Is the best idea I could think of. Good move CBS and Fuller. 
Newer shows have the luxury of more advanced technology and bigger budgets to do more as far as production, costumes and sets.
So of course those shows will look inferior but I definitely find pre 2000 tv and films much more entertaining
I'd ascribe to this past 15 years the term excessive
There's too many characters, too many plotlines and the pacing is ridiculously fast.
I miss the days when you had tv series that had wide open premises. Episodic tv where you could enjoy a nice little adventure--and don't confuse episodic with procedural. Or a nighttime drama telling 3-5 parallel
Storylines over a season. Not the LOST approach to serialized arcs that everyone is copying nowadays.
I miss the idea of a modest ensemble with a handful of recurring characters. I'm tired of writers worrying about Easter Eggs rather than solid writing. I prefer likeble characters over angst ridden broken insufferable characters
So yeah I prefer some of those older shows over flash or the Walking dead. Those 80s shows may not be Shakespeare but at least they were entertaining. Flash for instance is a hot mess and not even entertaining. They throw everything but the kitchen sink into the mix and add cringeworthy romantic angst to it. Instead of focusing on good writing they think the thrill of seeing Reverse Flash or Dr Light or whatever else tickles fanboys fancy is what's important. And maybe if they stepped back and focused on fewer things and developing them better the show would would improve. Instead it's manic and all over the place
And Izombir is just a vehicle for rob thomas to get another crack at Veronics Mars because that's pretty much what it is with the corny campy dialog and "clever" sleuthing girl
game of Thrones is bloated and unfocused. I have pat wiener for things to develop and build but the show just tread water until recently and the whole backstabbing isn't the least bit appealing
game of Thrones is bloated and unfocused. I have pat wiener for things to develop and build but the show just tread water until recently and the whole backstabbing isn't the least bit appealing
Hah. I see we have different definitions of the old days. I was thinking sixties and seventies, not the nineties.
I still think of nineties shows as "new" shows--and arguably the beginning of the today's Golden Age.
And I loved Veronica Mars and its clever, snarky dialogue, and I love horror and monsters, so Veronica Mars with extra bonus brain-eating is right up my alley!
I still think of nineties shows as "new" shows--and arguably the beginning of the today's Golden Age.
And I loved Veronica Mars and its clever, snarky dialogue, and I love horror and monsters, so Veronica Mars with extra bonus brain-eating is right up my alley!
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