All sorts of stories. There's such a wealth of potential. And it it needn't be limited to politics. One just needs to be inspired by local stories and legends, and they can even be humorous in nature.
Internal Culture War?
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All sorts of stories. There's such a wealth of potential. And it it needn't be limited to politics. One just needs to be inspired by local stories and legends, and they can even be humorous in nature.
There's a lot in here but I'm going mostly off of the original post:
First off: Inglorious Treksperts. I've been listening for years. And they actually miss quite a lot of opportunities to bash nuTrek. For the longest time they took the approach that there is plenty of Star Trek that they love that they don't need to talk about the shows that they don't. The only reason I ever thought Robert Meyer Burnett was a reasonable person was because when he was on Treksperts they would talk about TOS and sometimes Berman era. It's mostly been a great show. Go find the episode where they have with Robert Salin. Or as I now call him, the Gene Coon of Wrath of Khan.
Which kind of brings me to the rest of the original post. They may have brought back Okuda and Drexler, but to me it didn't really show up on screen. I didn't think that the overall aesthetic of Picard looked all that different other than specific things that were brought out of the mothballs. The flow, the characters, none of it felt like TNG to me anymore than the other seasons did. But they name dropped a lot more and they had the TNG cast.
The WEIRD part to me is all of the people who HATED Picard 1 & 2 suddenly fell in love all over again. I've quit listening to Treksperts because it's been all about Picard. Burnett is freaking me out with his "THIS is how you do Star Trek!" shtick. (I guess that just gives me a newer reason to avoid his show.) I really don't get it.
I watched the first three seasons of Discovery. There were things I liked. Things I really didn't like. It was a sci-fi show and I often watch those. But it didn't grab me like STAR TREK. Prodigy is great. I love Lower Decks far more than I ever thought I could.
My jam? Strange New Worlds. This feels more like Star Trek than anything I've seen since the 80's. I loved DS9 and if I'm honest I loved TNG. (Eventually.) But I never wanted to LIVE there. But that's how I feel with SNW and how I felt with TOS and the movies.
I'm all for more Star Trek. If they want to make more Picard or Legacy or whatever, I'll probably watch it. But it's certainly not the Second Coming of Star Trek. Maybe some day it will be.
Oh, and for all of the ISSUES of the DAY (just from skimming the thread there only seems to be one that people care about): Star Trek's gift was (supposedly) getting through to people that otherwise wouldn't listen.
If you go up to someone and say "You voted for so and so! YOU can't watch Star Trek!" then you're doing it wrong.
I knew SNW was onto something when they did Ad Astra per Aspera and there were different large groups of people who were CERTAIN is was about (fill in the blank).
First off: Inglorious Treksperts. I've been listening for years. And they actually miss quite a lot of opportunities to bash nuTrek. For the longest time they took the approach that there is plenty of Star Trek that they love that they don't need to talk about the shows that they don't. The only reason I ever thought Robert Meyer Burnett was a reasonable person was because when he was on Treksperts they would talk about TOS and sometimes Berman era. It's mostly been a great show. Go find the episode where they have with Robert Salin. Or as I now call him, the Gene Coon of Wrath of Khan.
Which kind of brings me to the rest of the original post. They may have brought back Okuda and Drexler, but to me it didn't really show up on screen. I didn't think that the overall aesthetic of Picard looked all that different other than specific things that were brought out of the mothballs. The flow, the characters, none of it felt like TNG to me anymore than the other seasons did. But they name dropped a lot more and they had the TNG cast.
The WEIRD part to me is all of the people who HATED Picard 1 & 2 suddenly fell in love all over again. I've quit listening to Treksperts because it's been all about Picard. Burnett is freaking me out with his "THIS is how you do Star Trek!" shtick. (I guess that just gives me a newer reason to avoid his show.) I really don't get it.
I watched the first three seasons of Discovery. There were things I liked. Things I really didn't like. It was a sci-fi show and I often watch those. But it didn't grab me like STAR TREK. Prodigy is great. I love Lower Decks far more than I ever thought I could.
My jam? Strange New Worlds. This feels more like Star Trek than anything I've seen since the 80's. I loved DS9 and if I'm honest I loved TNG. (Eventually.) But I never wanted to LIVE there. But that's how I feel with SNW and how I felt with TOS and the movies.
I'm all for more Star Trek. If they want to make more Picard or Legacy or whatever, I'll probably watch it. But it's certainly not the Second Coming of Star Trek. Maybe some day it will be.
Oh, and for all of the ISSUES of the DAY (just from skimming the thread there only seems to be one that people care about): Star Trek's gift was (supposedly) getting through to people that otherwise wouldn't listen.
If you go up to someone and say "You voted for so and so! YOU can't watch Star Trek!" then you're doing it wrong.
I knew SNW was onto something when they did Ad Astra per Aspera and there were different large groups of people who were CERTAIN is was about (fill in the blank).
I could never get into Discovery nor the first few seasons of Picard. Picard season three was interesting but then they ruined it with the Borg hook at the end. SNW is more of what I expect when watching Star Trek. The characters are interesting, the stories are well written and seem fresh. Plus there is an optimism to it that should always be in the background if you're going to put the franchise name on it. They took a lot of chances this past season( a cartoon crossover, a musical etc.) and for the most part scored hits. So no one can ever say SNW doesn't take chances or plays it safe. There are a few minor nitpicks I have, but it's by far my favorite Trek incarnation since DS9.
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No it didn't, I still seem him occasionally talk down on Picard Seasons 1 and Discovery/SNW on facebook. He only talks up Season 3 of PIC, and occasionally Season 2.
He responded negatively once to RMB making a negative tweet about another Trek show.
RMB's access to Season 3 scripts wasn't Terry, he seemed to be surprised that RMB had access, so Terry wasn't his source, but Terry did show him some episodes after they got to know each other, according to RMB at least.
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Problem with these arguments is that straight people are the majority. Love stories are inserted to these stories to catch a casual majority. You can't captivate a casual majority audience with a minority sexual orientation.
I'm deep in the category of zero love story nonsense, as it's always been one of the biggest flaws in trek. Like the only one well done relationship is Dax and Worf, and you could easily argue that dax is an obvious stand in for "use to be a man, fights like a man, but is a woman", so the hetero normative angle doesn't jive with me.
It's real odd to me when people think the gay thing is shocking to others, while the people claiming to be most progressive seem to be the ones that dwell on it most. My gay friends never wanted representation, they want hot guys on screen, not unattractive gay characters just attractive men, and for them there's no appealing guys in anything new aside from pike. Ironically because agenda folk are trying to normalize their unattractive personalities using some "moral cause". Characters can't be heroic and humble, it's either they're not heroic at all, or if they are they're heroic in a way that a narcissist would fantasize about. No flaws never wrong, and they're victims of people trying to oppress them for being so great.
Like seriously how much of modern politics on both sides is just narcissistic individuals trying to hijack reasonable viewpoints. Is it a political cause, or is it just a narcissistic trying to justify their behaviors. I mean it's shocking how true this is when you start looking at individuals. So many vocal people who are obvious narcissists on both sides, the difference between a political person and a narcissists is so hard to parse out nowadays. You can always make yourself the most important person in the room by claiming to be the biggest advocate, while you can never be wrong because, even if you are wrong it's for a cause. Anyone who critisizes you is doing so only because they're your political enemy even if they factually agree with you. Being power hungry is simply you trying to right the wrongs of the past. There's also a massive thing where you're the most important group in the room because you're a victim of a moral injustice, even if your group is dominant in one way or another.
Point is these things are not interesting, they're the dull crap you turn to star trek to get away from. People pushing politics are people trying to avoid the fact they have personal flaws that they refuse to take ownership for. People don't engage in personal struggles or demons anymore, they try to fix the world instead of themselves.
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I'll jump back to the original post:
There's always been an "internal culture war". Are we all forgetting the TOS v TNG debates of the late 80's? The uproar over the death of Kirk in Generations? The wailing and gnashing of teeth that greeted Enterprise?
It will all pass, I'm sure. Not that there aren't valid criticisms to be made. Discovery, for instance, went from my favorite new Trek series to the bottom of the barrel as season 3 and 4 progressed. Lower Decks and Prodigy took me completely by surprise with how much I loved them (I expected to hate them). And SNW has actually lived up to every expectation I had for it, and then some. Picard...righted itself in season 3 by becoming what it really should have been all along. You'd think, after Stewart's input made Insurrection and Nemesis WORSE movies, that they wouldn't have given his demands so much leeway. But, at least he acknowledged he was wrong in the end.
The one thing I think is great right now is that there is something for EVERYONE to enjoy. While I may not like the weepy, emotional tone of Discovery, there are clearly many fans who do. So, great! Enjoy it. I'm sorry it was cancelled. I'm sorry when ANY Trek Series is cancelled, because whether it's my favorite or not, it still raises the franchise up.
As for the LQBT thing, go ahead with it and screw anyone who has a problem. Discovery has swung between beautifully authentic (Stamets and Culber) to wildly hamfisted (Gray and Adira). Picard fumbled it, but not in an egregious way. And SNW has done a good job of representing without making it feel forced. So hooray to that.
There's always been an "internal culture war". Are we all forgetting the TOS v TNG debates of the late 80's? The uproar over the death of Kirk in Generations? The wailing and gnashing of teeth that greeted Enterprise?
It will all pass, I'm sure. Not that there aren't valid criticisms to be made. Discovery, for instance, went from my favorite new Trek series to the bottom of the barrel as season 3 and 4 progressed. Lower Decks and Prodigy took me completely by surprise with how much I loved them (I expected to hate them). And SNW has actually lived up to every expectation I had for it, and then some. Picard...righted itself in season 3 by becoming what it really should have been all along. You'd think, after Stewart's input made Insurrection and Nemesis WORSE movies, that they wouldn't have given his demands so much leeway. But, at least he acknowledged he was wrong in the end.
The one thing I think is great right now is that there is something for EVERYONE to enjoy. While I may not like the weepy, emotional tone of Discovery, there are clearly many fans who do. So, great! Enjoy it. I'm sorry it was cancelled. I'm sorry when ANY Trek Series is cancelled, because whether it's my favorite or not, it still raises the franchise up.
As for the LQBT thing, go ahead with it and screw anyone who has a problem. Discovery has swung between beautifully authentic (Stamets and Culber) to wildly hamfisted (Gray and Adira). Picard fumbled it, but not in an egregious way. And SNW has done a good job of representing without making it feel forced. So hooray to that.
The idea that there's something for everyone to enjoy, is just like wow.
I like Star Trek: The Original Series// Star Trek: The Next Generation/ Star Trek: Deep Space 9/Star Trek: Enterprise /The Expanse/For All Mankind/Raised by Wolves/Dune/Blade Runner/Alien/Orville/OT Star Wars/ Star Wars: Endor/ Space Above and Beyond/Babylon 5/ Starship Troopers/ Stargate SG-1/ Stargate Universe / Classic Battlestar Galactica/ Farscape/ Reimagined Battlestar Galactica / Caprica
And nutrek is basically unwatchable. It's not even an Independence Day like guilty pleasure. And I'm not like some anomaly, there's a massive number of people in my boat. We'll watch anything space related if it delivers and this show doesn't for people like me.
Nutrek for me and a massive number of people is basically a mix of an afternoon soap opera, and a high school drama. I mean that quite literally, I see these shows at their absolute bests being a lower tier version of "The 100", even the 3rd season picard which I like, is basically a soap opera version of TNG.
Star Trek has massive pull with me, and many in my peer group. We'll watch anything and have tried to watch nu trek and it's always the same thing.
Nu Trek for me isn't just star trek, it's something that doesn't even fit under the umbrella of all the shows I listed above. And yet people still come back with you don't like it because it's diverse, it's new whatever. If I like pretty much anything, hard to make that argument.
To you, to my gay friends they're basically gay wesley crushers.
Nutrek fans remind me of gay conversation therapists ironically. So convinced that some conversion is just around the corner, and just fundamentally oblivious to how uninterested some people are. Like it's not a "a small group of people aren't interested" it's more "this entire nutrek entity clashes with several or most aspects of my identity and being". When I see the STD crew, I see the cast of clerks 4, and not the fun people either.
You were born with a certain personality and emotional orientation, great but stop trying to pretend more trek fans are interested in seeing people cry than they actually are.
I don't like crying, emotions and soap opera features in a story. It just makes me uncomfortable and emotionally tired. I get some are indocxtrinated to believe it's because people like me are macho and aren't open to our feelings, and it's just not based on science.
It doesn't feel forced to you, to me the hair of pike is telling. It feels like "I'm really focused on big important things, and by the way I spend 30 minutes a day on my hair". It's like someone going to a coffee shop, buying one $1.25 cookie ever 2 hours, so they can't get kicked out of the shop. They aren't interested in the product they just want to occupy the room.
Interesting to look back. TNG is certainly better loved than when it debuted, but it also took some time to find its footing. If anything season 1 is regarded WORSE than when it aired.
Enterprise and Kirk's demise have not gone up in people's estimation, generally speaking. But DS9 has found boundless new appreciation. And to a lesser extent so has Voyager.
With some exceptions like DS9 it seems that most fan pushback that fades is the pushback that comes before anyone has seen anything. ("You'll never replace Kirk and Spock!" "How can a space station boldly go?" "It sits! -- J. Frakes")
I guess what's different now is that there is so much Star Trek that there can be a section of the fanbase that just doesn't feel they have to engage with anything that gives the whiff of "Well, I just know this is going to suck." (I'm not saying that everyone who hates Discovery has never seen it. Lots of people have. And there are people who hate SNW who have seen the show and they will simply have to live with their wrongness.
)To the original topic, though, I don't recall a time when it was "TOS vs. TNG" or "Niners vs. everybody". There was never an Us vs. Them mentality among the fanbases that I recall.
That's pretty much spot on, they didn't hate it because it was different they hated it because it sucked. Just the same TNG never gained many of the elements that made TOS great.
Enterprise? I take it for granted that Enterprise is now the other Star Trek show, the one you watch after you've seen everything else and pleaseantly surprised.
DS9 is the better made of the above, but it obviously has limited appeal.
I'd argue the hatred is intense because people have never been so desperate to like something, and see all the same crap that is ruining every other franchise. The established audience will pay for these shows just to hate watch them and the studios like it.I guess what's different now is that there is so much Star Trek that there can be a section of the fanbase that just doesn't feel they have to engage with anything that gives the whiff of "Well, I just know this is going to suck." (I'm not saying that everyone who hates Discovery has never seen it. Lots of people have. And there are people who hate SNW who have seen the show and they will simply have to live with their wrongness.
It's the hilarious part with people hating on the haters. These people are so convinced the hatred is motivated by something other than it is. The studio is trying to milk the established fan bases, and they don't care if they make us bitter as hell in the process. The bait and switch marketing for virtually every sci fi show in our era is telling. "this show is different, we've hired a technical expert this time we'll actually bait you with something you want" Mandalorian being such a prime example of this. Like literally half way through season 2 we some "The Many Mandalorians" on a show called "The Mandalorian". Like you can just see the vultures on every IP.
For me the moment I lost all failth in sci fi was season 4 of the expanse. Such a great show, and the corporate folks saw a vehicle/ "Oppressor-Victim complex, clearly that is what this is all about, why bother with all the aspects of the show that are not that!!"
The big one that gets overlooked is the B5-DS9 animosity. Mainly because it still has relevance.
Like is the only reason DS9 any good, is because they had money and borrowed heavily off B5?
Personally I can't decide. DS9 is so much better than B5 in a lot of ways, but you can't argue it didn't rely on B5 to make it happen.
Count yourself lucky.
There was a pretty large "TOS vs. TNG" argument back in the day. The difference was back then those that hated TNG simply didn’t watch it and went about their business, they felt no need to angrily pontificate on the internet about how it wasn’t real Star Trek.
Oh, sure. There was definitely TNG isn't real Star Trek. It's just that there was no "TNG fans aren't real fans." See what I mean?
(Oh, HELL yes there were TNG haters. Good heavens. We were still Star Trek fans!)
The Web didn't, but there were still nerds on Compuserve and what not. The COOLEST thing was knowing that you could post someplace and actual Star Trek people (Wil Wheaton, even back then) might respond!
If only I could get all that time I spent on the Usenet boards back
@Tallguy yeah, I had an actual conversation with J Michael Straczynski on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 back in the day.
I first saw him at a convention where he pitched B5 years to the crowd years before it even sold to a network. Once the Usenet group started up he was there working the room like crazy. He was probably more of a visionary there than even all of modern TV things he tried years early, like filming in 16:9, using CGI effects and heavy serialization.
I think you might like season 4. What made it *not* Star Trek for you?
That seems to be a big part of this "internal culture war": What does make something STAR TREK besides being set in that world? I think most of us have a "I don't know exactly, but I know it when I see it" thing going on. I never saw DIS as not being Star Trek-y, but I recognize that's just my viewpoint. I don't really get the whole "this Star Trek show just isn't/doesn't feel like STAR TREK." I didn't stick with VOY or ENT, but I don't consider them not-Trek.
I'm certainly not claiming that Disco isn't Star Trek. Hell, Into Darkness is "Star Trek".
Some of it was superficial look and feel. Some of it was just a story vibe. (There was an episode in season 2 with Saru that was the most STAR TREK thing I'd seen in forever. I wept.) The only reason I didn't watch season 3 when it aired was because I HATED the end of season 2 so much. (Screw you "We will never speak of Michael Burnham on pain of treason".)
But SNW has hit pretty much every Star Trek button in my entire being. (The outside of the ship could be prettier.)
Some of it was superficial look and feel. Some of it was just a story vibe. (There was an episode in season 2 with Saru that was the most STAR TREK thing I'd seen in forever. I wept.) The only reason I didn't watch season 3 when it aired was because I HATED the end of season 2 so much. (Screw you "We will never speak of Michael Burnham on pain of treason".)
But SNW has hit pretty much every Star Trek button in my entire being. (The outside of the ship could be prettier.)
You'd have a point if cbs didn't keep releasing new series trying to convince us, "this time it's different".
You're acting as if CBS announced that they were doing their equivalent reimagined BSG, where hey there's some great ideas but we want to do our thing.
Their entire business model is based around milking the value of the star trek brand.
Ironically they finally did what they were suppose to do with season 3 picard, only took a dozen seasons to get that one right.
And what's that? We're sci fi junkies. You'd have a point if Star Trek was the stand alone legacy ip that was hijacked and ruined.
But it's not, it's a concerted effort on every legacy brand. Same tricks being used again and again. And now we're suppose to act like it's some shocking thing that streaming services are suffering.
This is problematic in several ways. Not the least of which is this the undercurrent of homophobia disguised as “my gay friends say…” As if your “gay friends” represent the entire breadth of the community.
I’ve received multiple reports on this post. Leave that part out next time.
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