Predictions for Star Trek under Skydance?

[Steve Roby]

Seeing Phantom Menace as an 8-year-old in 1999 would probably have been fun. Seeing it as a 36-year-old in 1999, not so much. By far the best thing about that night was that my sister's smart, cute, funny friend came along with me, my sister, and my sister's husband. Maybe the fourth or fifth time we met. The next time we all went to a movie at that theatre it was The Blair Witch Project and my sister's friend and I had already started dating. She let me borrow her Star Wars Dark Forces computer game. A year later she moved in, a year after that we got married. I never had to give back the game. Pretty crafty, huh?

What does this all have to do with Skydance? Well, we don't know anything useful about what Skydance is going to do, so there's not a lot we can say that's on topic.

 

[Tomalak]

I was 13 I think, and had a great time. But I was old enough to find Anakin annoying.

 

[JRob94]

I was 5 and went to see it 4 times while it was in theatres, once with each of my parents and each set of grandparents. So I am very biased and have fond memories of The Phantom Menace

 

[Set Harth]

My flatmate ( we don't use that word around here but there isn't a better one ) got 12 tickets for opening night. We joked he used a Jedi mind trick

 

[Sim]

I would generally agree, but I do think the aesthetic, the principles of Star Trek in movie form have leaned into a sort of generic space-opera action/adventure trope. Star Trek has always traditionally been a little more/different to that - and I think that spirit could be leaned into a little more without losing "epicness"

I understood your posting differently than Danja. I assumed you weren't saying Star Trek should be about flawless people and ignore the dark sides of humanity, but that you'd prefer a classic sf approach (like TNG's nods to written SF of the 40s to 70s), over the action-adventure popcorn flick approach along the lines of Marvel movies, Star Wars and the like.

If that is what you were saying, I agree. But I'm afraid the general audience hasn't been reading anymore for a while, certainly not classic SF.

 

[bdub76]

My expectation is that Star Trek will be pushed back towards the middle of the spectrum between very conservative and very progressive media. This should maximize viewership. I expect the studio to want more fun adventures devoid of most politics in the show going forward. I expect they'll want their Star Trek to be more like TNG/DS9 than DISCO/SFA.

I also expect SFA to get canceled after its second season. The criticism its receiving has mirrored what I saw with the last two seasons of Doctor Who, and it couldn't bring enough viewers to stay at Disney+. I expect SFA to have numbers worse than Doctor Who as P+ has fewer subs.

 

[Steve Roby]

No politics anywhere to be found in the anti-religion TNG episode "Who Watches the Watchers," the anti-capitalist "The Neutral Zone," the pro civil rights "The Drumhead," DS9's pro-union "Bar Association," etc.

 

[Danja]

No politics anywhere to be found in the anti-religion TNG episode "Who Watches the Watchers," the anti-capitalist "The Neutral Zone," the pro civil rights "The Drumhead," DS9's pro-union "Bar Association," etc.

There was also Voyager's ode to single-payer healthcare, " Critical Care."

 

[Steve Roby]

I think the main difference between the TNG era and the streaming era is talking the talk vs walking the walk. I remember Berman being asked once about gay characters and he switched the subject to the "gay issue" that needed to have a story worth telling. They had to have something Picard could make a big, bold speech about without changing the show's status quo.

On the new shows, they just have gay characters, or trans, or whatever. That Culbert and Stamets are gay doesn't, in the stories themselves, really matter any more than that Burnham and Book aren't. They're just characters in relationships and drama can come from complications in those relationships regardless of anyone's gender identity. Nobody has to make big speeches about how it's okay for Beckett and Jennifer to have a lesbian interspecies romance, they just do.

Some people think it's necessary for the standard character template to be a straight cis able-bodied white male, and for any character to deviate from any of those traits, there has to be a justification in the story. I remember people arguing exactly this point decades ago, on the grounds that only a black person can identify with Sisko and only a woman can identify with Janeway, but anyone can identify with Kirk or Picard, because they don't have any arbitrarily added traits, they are the perfect default.

If you see people as issues instead of people, then simple representation like we get in the streaming era feels more political than having Picard standing on the bridge telling off some morally inferior alien, because those people were put there without any justification. It's that belief, that there needs to be some justification, and that creating straight white male characters doesn't involve any kind of choice being made, that's the problem.

 

[Danja]

anyone can identify with Kirk or Picard, because they don't have any arbitrarily added traits, they are the perfect default.

As a woman, I most certainly don't identify with Picard. He doesn't speak for me.

For too long, men have been seen as the default in just about everything (NASA is now having to redesign its space suits to fit the female anatomy. For years, it was assumed that only men were going to be astronauts. As a result, space suits were too big for female astronauts, who tend to be shorter than men.)

 

[Sim]

I think the main difference between the TNG era and the streaming era is talking the talk vs walking the walk. I remember Berman being asked once about gay characters and he switched the subject to the "gay issue" that needed to have a story worth telling. They had to have something Picard could make a big, bold speech about without changing the show's status quo.

On the new shows, they just have gay characters, or trans, or whatever. That Culbert and Stamets are gay doesn't, in the stories themselves, really matter any more than that Burnham and Book aren't. They're just characters in relationships and drama can come from complications in those relationships regardless of anyone's gender identity. Nobody has to make big speeches about how it's okay for Beckett and Jennifer to have a lesbian interspecies romance, they just do.

Naw. In TOS, Uhura and Sulu were just who they are, without any speeches or justifications added why they are who they are. Same with Sisko or any other non-white male character prior to streaming.

That was imho always Star Trek's strength, because it's easier for a "default viewer" to identify with a "non-default" character when they just happen to be interestingly written characters, rather than making their particular identity a big topic.

It should be a no-brainer for any white male to be able to relate to i.e. a black female, if the situations and problems that character is facing are general human nature problems. How can i.e. any father not relate to Sisko and Jake?

I have to admit, I have a much harder time relating to obscure pronoun issues people might have.

 

[Steve Roby]

Naw. In TOS, Uhura and Sulu were just who they are, without any speeches or justifications added why they are who they are. Same with Sisko or any other non-white male character prior to streaming.

Roddenberry always made a big deal of having a multiracial cast. TOS also clearly and unequivocally condemned racism more than once, if sometimes allegorically.

That was imho always Star Trek's strength, because it's easier for a "default viewer" to identify with a "non-default" character when they just happen to be interestingly written characters, rather than making their particular identity a big topic.

For the most part, that lets out Sulu and Uhura. In 79 episodes they rarely had much to do.

It should be a no-brainer for any white male to be able to relate to i.e. a black female, if the situations and problems that character is facing are general human nature problems. How can i.e. any father not relate to Sisko and Jake?

Well, yes, that's why the relatability argument is dumb. People actually can relate to people different from them in some ways, because there are still a million things we have in common. But some people would have argued that it was enough for Sisko to be an interesting character, he didn't have to be black too. Some of the dumber racists at the time said things like, black fans are only going to be offended by Sisko being black, because they know it's insincere politically correct tokenism by Hollywood liberals trying to pander to other Hollywood liberals, and black Americans can see through that. Also, for the record, relatability and representation are two separate issues.

I have to admit, I have a much harder time relating to obscure pronoun issues people might have.

Yeah, when I see people blather about how Jesus never used pronouns, or that pronouns should be banned, I can't relate to them.

 

[Sim]

Roddenberry always made a big deal of having a multiracial cast. TOS also clearly and unequivocally condemned racism more than once, if sometimes allegorically.

You said Trek prior to streaming talked a lot about the topic. I don't think it did. In fact, the only TOS episode I remember in which racism i.e. was a topic, was "Let That Be..." (and one short remark in "The Savage Curtain").

Trek did not explicitly make identity issues a topic, short for a handful of episodes among hundreds.

Their statement was made by just casually including diverse characters and treating that as perfectly normal, without any need of further discussing that.

 

[Set Harth]

Yeah, when I see people blather about how Jesus never used pronouns

CANON VIOLATION

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

 

[Steve Roby]

I was originally talking about Berman era vs streaming era, not TOS. Something like "The Outcast" as opposed to simply having characters of different gender orientations and expression.

CANON VIOLATION

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Yeah, I don't think the Trumpists and other bigots really know what pronouns are.

 

[Sim]

CANON VIOLATION

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Religious people often use non-standard pronouns that deviate from common usage, by referring to God or Jesus as "He" with a capital "H", even when it's in the middle of a sentence. :P

 

[Sim]

I was originally talking about Berman era vs streaming era, not TOS. Something like "The Outcast" as opposed to simply having characters of different gender orientations and expression.



Yeah, I don't think the Trumpists and other bigots really know what pronouns are.

Fair enough, and I totally agree with you that the identification argument (that only blacks can identify with black characters i.e.) is stupid.

I just don't think the Berman era, like TOS as well, differs that much from the streaming era, in these regards. They also had many normally, naturally included diverse characters without making it a topic.

I rather have a problem with it when such characters are not well written and it feels like they were just included to check boxes on a diversity sheet, rather than actually making them interesting contributions to the show. But at least in the Berman era, I never got that feeling. These characters were always much more than their skin color or gender.

 

[Set Harth]

Yeah, I don't think the Trumpists and other bigots really know what pronouns are.

Why stop there? They probably think the earth is flat too! That's the ticket!

 

[Turtletrekker]

Well, they believed that masks were ineffective against spreading disease, vaccines were dangerous and that climate change is a liberal hoax, so flat Earth isn't that far off the mark. Some even believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

 

[Set Harth]

Well, they believed that masks were ineffective against spreading disease, vaccines were dangerous and that climate change is a liberal hoax, so flat Earth isn't that far off the mark.

"One of these things is not like the others. One of these things does not belong."