I don't need it pointed out to me that a lot of people are wrong about things. That's exactly why it's necessary to speak up for the truth.
Spoilers Star Trek: Prodigy General Discussion Thread
- Thread starter The Overlord
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I don't need it pointed out to me that a lot of people are wrong about things. That's exactly why it's necessary to speak up for the truth.
Fair enough. But personally if if find a particular post as something that I already know , I tend to not comment. I don't think there's anything wrong with me providing feedback on message forums. Just like reporting about word of mouth about a new movie. Others may find it insightful even if you do not.
I'm all about the truth, but sometimes you need to be careful. I once said a song that my partner likes has country music influences. She disagreed and took great offense as she HATES country. I can prove she was wrong, including the songwriter mentioning country influences in interviews, but is it really worth it? Something happened when I said Greys Anomony was a good show but has "soapy" elements. ,Again even the main actress from that show used that exact term on an interview in YouTube in describing the show. .
If you look back on my posts, you will find qualifiers indicating my personal disagreement. Subtle but it's there. My passive pushback is due to the subject mater. ( entertainment). We should always pont out the truth. But for me I fight harder for something like a criminal injustice than I would on erroneous judgments/opinions on entertainment.
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My mom won't watch anything animated. Drives me nuts.
On a forum dedicated to entertainment one would expect passionate debate.
On a forum for justice I would expect the same.
I guess being in education has me slanted moreso on tact and bejng more considerate of other viewpoints. IMO, There's is some degree of subjectivety when it comes to how entertainment is perceived. I still state my opinion and point it out when I disagree but I do not try too hard to push to others that they are wrong and I'm right. Even in message forums, I'm like that and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
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No one said there is.
But I won't couch my language in the name of politeness always, especially with misperceptions. I'm in mental health counseling, working in schools, and I can grant different perspectives but that only goes so far outside of work.
There is opinion, and there is fact. Disagreeing with objective fact is not an alternative viewpoint, it is an error. The belief that Prodigy is made in a "generic Star Wars animation style" is objectively erroneous and based in a lack of knowledge of the subject, because it's clear to anyone who's actually watched the Star Wars animated shows that they have several wildly different styles, only one of which (Rebels) is even broadly similar to Prodigy's style. That has nothing to do with anyone's preferences or tastes; it is purely a question of what is factually true or untrue.
Pointing out that something is factually wrong is not an attack on someone's right to an opinion; it's an attempt to help them make informed opinions, rather than basing them on erroneous assumptions.
Most people I've head comparing Prodigy to Star Wars is more on vibe than the tangible animation style. "It just feels like Star Wars to me" . Which I don't see but is a subjective opinion. Those are the instances where I'm careful not too push too hard that they are wrong. Just like debating with someone whether a show they like is "soapy " or not
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But that's a different conversation. It's not what I was talking about. I was responding to the mistaken belief in an objectively nonexistent "generic Star Wars animation style," as I have clearly stated more than once.
Of course, I don't understand why people think Prodigy's storytelling or "vibe" feels like Star Wars either. I think it's just because they have too little familiarity with genre-fiction references besides Star Wars, so they don't realize that Star Wars itself is entirely an exercise in homage to other things and a conscious effort to embrace universal "Hero's Journey" tropes. "Reminds me of Star Wars" is the genre equivalent of "tastes like chicken." Star Wars is so archetype-driven by design that it's a trivial comparison to draw.
I must track back to see where I giot my wires crossed. Apologies if i got off track with the conversation flow . I think we were always talking about 2 different things. My intention with previous posts was always on the general stigma that Prodigy has had as being labeled as Star Wars ish or Disney ish. Not on style but on vibe and feedback. Something I maybe saw early on ( guilty myself of those premature thoughts) but not for long . I soon realized how distinctively different it is.
I'm not disputing the misconception exists that Prodigy's animation is done with a Star Wars animation style. But from my experience, most people do not pay much attention to animation styles to begin with. It's either CGI or classic animation to the layman. I would hazard to guess, that a significant amount of Netflix's consumer base are probably cut from
that cloth. The profile of an individual who is knowledgeable enough to understand and recognize various degrees of diverse animation styles probably is not someone who would toss up Prodigy as simply being Star Wars animation. But perhaps you have had different experiences.
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The problem with both shows was their initial episodes being so different from what comes later to the point that they can equally serve to turn off existing Star Trek fans. Both initial seasons close with very strong episodes, so it's not like writing staffs were completely turned over to get there. So my reasonable hypothesis was a degree of studio interference.
I'm barely a casual Star Wars fan, so at best I have a peripheral awareness of their animated shows from various trailers and the series breakdowns on Disney+. "Generic Star Wars animation" was the term used by various pop culture pundits describing PRODIGY after it was announced and the initial key art released. I used the quotes to imply more of the genre pop cultural zeitgeist fandom impression of Star Wars animation than a subject matter expert point of view.
PRODIGY may very well have had a marketing problem with the existing Star Trek fanbase. I'm guessing the Netflix numbers weren't too promising. Which is unfortunate as PRODIGY season 2 was one of the best NuTrek efforts.
Star Trek is a franchise whose literal mission statement is to boldly seek out the new and different. In the 1960s and 1980s, it stood out from the pack of failed SFTV shows by embracing innovation and pushing the envelope. TOS succeeded by being the first American TV show of its kind (a non-anthology adult science fiction drama), and TNG and DS9 both succeeded by striving to make themselves as different from their predecessors as they could -- while fans and critics found both VGR and ENT disappointing for not being different enough, for just trying to recreate TNG's style rather than embracing their full potential to do something new.
So I've never understood how anyone who calls themselves a Trek fan can see novelty or change as a bad thing to be recoiled from. It seems like fundamentally missing the point of the franchise, both in its storytelling and in its real-world history.
That's not even remotely reasonable. It's predicated on your assumption that the writing staff of a show would want it to be homogeneous throughout, and that is a completely absurd proposition. The whole point of the show, again, was to be an on-ramp for young (or adult) viewers who knew nothing about the Trek universe, by telling the story from the perspective of characters who knew nothing of the Federation or Starfleet. Having them start out in a very different world and gradually discover the Trekky stuff as they went was the entire point.
It was also necessary to establish how oppressive and utterly un-Federation-like their living conditions were at the start, so that once the characters learned about the Federation and how much better it was, they'd have a strong drive to seek it out and become part of it. So the contrast was essential to the overall season plot.
Also, you're forgetting how coherent the storytelling was. The mysteries that were set up at the start of the season about how the Protostar got there were eventually explained in season 2, and it all held together. So all this was clearly planned in advance and paid off according to the original plan.
I see no value in restating a false and ignorant opinion. It's just noise that gets in the way of an intelligent conversation about reality. It doesn't matter if a wrong idea is widely believed. Lots of popularly held beliefs are utter BS, and the only worthwhile reason to bring them up in conversation is to debunk them.
The existing fanbase for a franchise is never the exclusive or primary target audience for a new entry in the franchise. The legacy fans from earlier series are too small an audience by themselves; a show or movie succeeds by appealing to a much larger audience of new or casual viewers.
This is especially true of a children's show. The target audience for Prodigy is children age 7-12 -- people who weren't even born when Enterprise went off the air, and who are too young for TV-14 and TV-MA shows like Discovery and Picard. Why would you expect "the existing fanbase" to have any relevance here?
