It is true--i think we are a little smarter than we used to be, based on the collective discussions online (the visceral like of Star Trek Insurrection was sharpened by people questioning me on here seven years ago, and having to defending my opinion, recently re-watching the same movie to look over the coloring, set-design, and lighting to see why it appealed more than Star Trek VI), DVD commentaries and featurettes allowed us to peer into the minds of creators (for instance, hearing that the Borg assimilation was a mind "rape" of Picard, that DS9 had few episodes of the series like Rejoined where our taboo is never commentated, but the Trills...) added to our collective knowledge, and we have more Liberal Arts degrees, including Cinema and Drama classes, than any other degree, coming out of the Great Recession (meaning they create the businesses, I personally learned a lot about logic and writing with my studies), that we are an audience who will not accept what we did ten or twenty years ago.
I was watching "Nor the Battle to the Strong," and Jake runs from the explosions to find a soldier wounded on a dune. Remember?
The poorly-drawn, ancillary character doesn't live and breathe. He is a device to teach Jake a lesson, and I was insulted after something like "The Visitor," where Jake's wife, just as integral and internal as this man, in relationship to Jake, was more of a person, than an idea. He's there to pound over the audience's head that Jake don't know war, he is weak, civillian. It's completely superfluous. Jake needed not a tough guy, or a deserter who shoots himself in the foot, or to stumble through the hills over dead bodies, but a story of connection to one human being--just one--that teaches him the realities of war.
His story, as written in VO, is cheesy, with no original angles. It could've been written by a 12-year-old, in America, 300 years before. Cliche.
If I were doing it, I'd build through conversation, a connection with one of the triage victims. He stays by his side and then slowly reveals to Jake what he had done, in this war. Allegorical conversations of childhood experiences, or past lives, before the war. He's a civilian, so offering aid in the form of emotional support, and being naive, getting too close to a human face in the middle of the war, cloaks this lesson in realism. And, then reveal at the end of the episode that this person committed an atrocity, and Jake has been talking with a deserter or someone who took too much pleasure in killing, or who dies with the weight of his decision that killed all those people on the colony. He got the Farragut destroyed by contacting them when he shouldn't, etc. And that Jake is conflicted over liking this person, but knowing how badly they screwed up.
These thoughts ran through my mind during the scene with the soldier on the dune. We are a more fickle bunch for a reason, I think. They smartened us through education and conversation and technology. It's always in the hands of the user, subject to taste. But, we can see things as they occur.
For one, I knew before the Tribble in Into Darkness, Khan's blood was about to save Kirk's life. I was muttering it in the death scene. I wasn't even paying attention to the dialogue because A. I've seen II, and B. Khan's blood.
We're not stupid.
