Have I mentioned here that I think that framing the discussion as Chabon vs Trek fans is a mistake, not least since Chabon is himself a Trek fan? As for the people who work with him, he is working with Kirsten Motherfucking Beyer. What possible ground is there to think she is not a Trek fan?
Maybe unusual but I think not that unusual that people read reviews about something they're not going to watch. You think people should never comment on a sequel or remake (I've written 5 now 6 posts over a few days), including how close or not it is to its predecessor, unless they're willing to spend 5 or 7 or 10 hours watching it? I agree that's a bad idea.
While I disagree with the title of the thread I don't think it is meant as a slant against Trek fans in general, but "Trekkies" which can be a more specific, detailed oriented, description of a subset of fans. That said, I see the point.
Chabon literally wrote an essay for The New Yorker in which he talked about how, at his father's bedside in hospice, he tried to figure out how to explain the gap between the relatively emotional Spock of Pike's Enterprise and the relatively emotionless Spock of Kirk's era. "One of us, one of us!"
Read reviews to determine that you don't want to watch a show? Makes perfect sense. Read reviews, determine that you don't want to watch a show, hang out on the forum of the show you're not watching to post opinions based on what you read about the show? Makes no damn sense.
Yeah. I just think that the case is very strong that Chabon himself is a Trekkie. The subject thread positioning Chabon vs Trek fans, or even versus the subset of detail-oriented fans, is just nonsensical to me.
The fans on this very forum rip each other to shreds on a daily basis. It's constant point scoring and snarky insults. There's no great bond between Star Trek fans from what I've seen.
It depends on the context. Within fandom there will be conflict and disagreement, but feeling like someone is an outsider (*ahem* Abrams *ahem*) then you will see more unity. The challenge, of course, is that this is a deeply emotional and passionate base and we want people who are just as passionate working on it-but that passion gets us in trouble too.
Quite. I do think that the case is very, very strong that the current generation of shows are being written by committed fans, with Chabon and Beyer and soon Mack involved. That said, I would not be surprised if there was at least one person who was disappointed by "The Cage" and who went on to hate-watch all the rest of Star Trek.