Try to Imagine Shinzon played by Jamie Oliver, who prepares a different very healthy meal (in real time, on camera) for the Enterprise crew as they each encounter the new Praetor.
Michelle Yeoh will feature in Discovery, possibly as lead
- Thread starter Captain of the USS Averof
- Start date
In the second season, Michelle Yeoh's character will change her name to Yusuf Islam.Maybe one of the DSC writers is a Cat Stevens fan?
(his real name is Steven Georgiou)
Oh, baby, baby, it's a wild galaxy.
finally a way to get the wife into old Trek!
Got to pander to that Chinese market!
a super geriatric crew like that would be amazing
Even if this isn't TV, US TV doesn't work like that.
It's often a completely different group of people in charge of international sales chasing a different incentive system 6 months after the Domestic sales people have moved on to their next project.
Besides... International distribution is handled by Netflix and Netflix isn't "associated" with China, so China is the last people NETFLIX or CBS need to pander to....
Unless?
This is a plan to break CBS All Access into China?
^Well that ain't gonna happen, Guy. The CCP does NOT like "foreign" media in China! I mean, anything that gets accessed in China has a temporary shelf-life, and it all goes away once the robots track it down. But FWIW your insight here gives one a glimmer of hope.
However - as much as I adore Michelle Yeoh, this "pandering" is a bit of an on-the-nose coincidence, in this era of China exerting soft power abroad (such as in the developent of Confucius Institutes as well as a deluge of mainland college-goers turning every class into an ESL class). Not to mention the current election divisions and the yes, liberal media's affirmed all-out campaign on progressivism. It feels a bit like Trek has been nudged from science fiction into a propaganda device. Maybe not - but yeah, may be.
For which reason, I will watch the series with a healthy heap of salt. Because Confucianism and Meritocracy do not play well together in reality; but Marxist utopias and Communism do. And the simple fact that if China could turn Trek into a propaganda mechanism - it would push that button immediately without a second thought to why Trek had become popular in the first place. Marx - is not the first word that pops into mind (though the older I get, the more I see it in Hollywood's hidden agenda file). Oh well, what do I know, I've only lived in China longer than most people in China who tell me I don't understand China because I'm foreign.
Anyway, as far as I'm concerned glorifying Marx is glorifying genocide. Golly! But Trek producers, knock yourselves out. I certainly do hope I am leaping to the wrong conclusions here. And anyone feel free to disagree with me, but if you don't mind please bear in mind my criticisms are sociocultural and not ethnic; so the race card is really moot here (though not on the Mainland, where the CCP has definitively appropriated and synthesized race and nationalist ideology, while cherry picking heritage and history, and scorching the rest).
Anyway, if it's more than an entertainment - but a kind of propaganda with greater aspirations in the political world now - then as far as I'm concerned the franchise will be overreaching. Oh and also - if T & A are central plot devices, then it's not really vital to the culture, either, and will be but a pale shadow of what once made Trek important to people.
However - as much as I adore Michelle Yeoh, this "pandering" is a bit of an on-the-nose coincidence, in this era of China exerting soft power abroad (such as in the developent of Confucius Institutes as well as a deluge of mainland college-goers turning every class into an ESL class). Not to mention the current election divisions and the yes, liberal media's affirmed all-out campaign on progressivism. It feels a bit like Trek has been nudged from science fiction into a propaganda device. Maybe not - but yeah, may be.
For which reason, I will watch the series with a healthy heap of salt. Because Confucianism and Meritocracy do not play well together in reality; but Marxist utopias and Communism do. And the simple fact that if China could turn Trek into a propaganda mechanism - it would push that button immediately without a second thought to why Trek had become popular in the first place. Marx - is not the first word that pops into mind (though the older I get, the more I see it in Hollywood's hidden agenda file). Oh well, what do I know, I've only lived in China longer than most people in China who tell me I don't understand China because I'm foreign.
Anyway, as far as I'm concerned glorifying Marx is glorifying genocide. Golly! But Trek producers, knock yourselves out. I certainly do hope I am leaping to the wrong conclusions here. And anyone feel free to disagree with me, but if you don't mind please bear in mind my criticisms are sociocultural and not ethnic; so the race card is really moot here (though not on the Mainland, where the CCP has definitively appropriated and synthesized race and nationalist ideology, while cherry picking heritage and history, and scorching the rest).
Anyway, if it's more than an entertainment - but a kind of propaganda with greater aspirations in the political world now - then as far as I'm concerned the franchise will be overreaching. Oh and also - if T & A are central plot devices, then it's not really vital to the culture, either, and will be but a pale shadow of what once made Trek important to people.
I was back handedly suggesting that CBS is insane. 
(Still being silly)
Maybe China can reverse-Power-Rangers CBS and buy the cgi from Discovery to make their own version of Star Trek?
(Still being silly)
Maybe China can reverse-Power-Rangers CBS and buy the cgi from Discovery to make their own version of Star Trek?
Buy CGI, hilarious. 
Michelle rocks and might be the one reason I would consider watching this show. I have just about all of her martial arts flicks and I loved her in Tomorrow Never Dies.
Can somebody change the title? It's misleading, because Michelle Yeoh's character isn't, and was never going to be, the lead character on the show.
Back when the thread was started, comingsoon wrote this:
http://www.comingsoon.net/tv/news/788489-michelle-yeoh-star-trek-discovery
"Although it is unconfirmed at this time, Michelle Yeoh’s role is quite likely the series’ lead, a female Lieutenant Commander."
So the "possibly as lead" thread title is not coming from nowhere. We just have more facts now.
Trek has often had a left leaning view underplaying things like the federation...that gets really amusing when you look at the Borg who are introduced as ultra consumers, fetishing the material goods of technology, with a hive mind...but then get that hive mind flipped to become another communist parallel (the ferengi as enemies were ultra capitalist too) when the allegory changes and assimilation is introduced. On the one hand Trek shows what is essentially a socialist/Marxist utopia (in terms of the early bearded dude and its hippy interpretation form the sixties.) but at the same time ties it into capitalist western history. Of course, the fact that Trek essentially takes place in a post-scarcity, post-ideology (in current terms) world helps cover that. This is especially true of the later shows, which ironically get accused of a more conservative bent by some fans....it's all over the place, but still one of those basically utopian futures...(despite in fact being the rarest of beasts, a post-apocalyptic utopia that isn't hiding some dark secret under its hippy facade.) It always has social propaganda elements, but I don't think it necessarily went outright for political on more than a few ill-guided moments (comms and yangs....historical references to the IRA...that sort of thing.)
As to how china can use it....well...they have a Star Trek phone launched off the current movies, so it will likely be just a novelty entertainment.
The political entity that most strongly resembles Trek at the current time is probably the EU, but that's still quite a stretch.
I concur with much of what you say here, jaime. And while Trek may be a western novelty, access to a major media market in the US is something China takes very seriously.
The plot thickens:
So, Paramount, parent company of the Star Trek franchise, has successfully wooed major investment from China's CCP-partnering film studios. I guess we won't be hearing about North Korea hacking and crashing Paramount's private business....
Some of us are able to enjoy it anyway, because we don't fear ideas, just those who would invoke them for private, subversive agendas. Just let's be clear about what it is and who is funding it - and why. There's homegrown entertainment, and there's foreign-directed propaganda on the US's major systems of influence. Can we say definitively that this question is moot at this juncture? Can we all be "comfortable" with such implications?
Having lived in China for a very long time, I can assure you that the CCP's reach is intended to be absolute across all of its possible avenues for power and influence, in all areas of society. They are very much interested in influence over the USA - the bedrock of its cash flow, as well as its major obstacle to global power. That is a fact we are certainly free to overlook. Totalitarianism is alive and well and possibly even being broadcast into your living room sooner than you think.
At the very least, it could provide a kind of US-validated legitimacy of CCP values for the China domestic audience - who do take some cues from the free world. Abroad, soft power and spin over the CCP's global agenda. Normalization of its influence. (But if you really asked me it all probably comes down to pocket scratch for the elite few; and of course, misdirection of accountability).
Sure, I'm fine with being wrong about it. But I see smoke and I'm calling it sooner, not later.
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Star Trek show in China is very possible at this point. Just look at the previous Star Trek Beyond. There were Alibaba and other Chinese's investors there. It means that there are some interest to Star Trek in China.
Netlix owns the international rights.
China and Netflix do not get along.
China and Netflix do not get along.
Then what stop CBS taking another partnership to enter China Market? If China is out of Netflix reach, then China is outside Netflix international right, right? CBS can always get another partner. Maybe from China itself.
Just look at Star Trek Beyond. China contribute the biggest international revenue with US$ 65.000.000 in the box office. Surpass even the United Kingdom which contribute US$ 20.000.000, and Germany which contribute US$ 15.000.0000. The only market that can beat China is the United State Market, alone. With US$ 150.000.000. Should CBS avoid this big market?
Plus, Chinese live outside China too. Like in Hongkong, Taiwan, and Singapore.
There are a lot of potential Trekish in the making there that you have to catch. So why avoid China?
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