Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I wish they'd get out of the TOS era.  If Picard doesn't want to do any Starfleet action, I'd rather have a companion piece on a Starfleet show that takes place during the Picard era.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I don't think you're ever going to get out of the 23rd century. It looks like we have two 23rd century shows now, SECTION 31 and NEW WORLDS, but it's understandable. It's where the mythology took hold. It's the basement office of THE X-FILES. The warehouse of WAREHOUSE 13. The Pawnee city hall of PARKS AND RECREATION. The basement lab of SLIDERS.

However -- you didn't need to watch DISCOVERY to understand PICARD. So I guess you won't need to watch the TOS era shows to understand the post TNG shows, especially with DISCOVERY set in the distant future.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Well they can use the same actors and sets, so it's cheaper, to be in the same time period.  I think Picard might open the door for "future" endeavors in the 24th century but I also don't think it's that necessary.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

https://trekmovie.com/2020/06/11/interv … rn-burner/

ORVILLE update!

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I'm very much looking forward to the return of the Orville

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Orville cancelled.  The upcoming season three is the end unless it finds another home:

https://www.thecinemaspot.com/2020/08/0 … n-at-hulu/

427 (edited by ireactions 2020-08-02 11:33:10)

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Uh -- ORVILLE co-producer Tom Costantino has said on Twitter that THE ORVILLE has not been cancelled.

https://twitter.com/TomCostantino/statu … 7748195329

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

ireactions wrote:

Uh -- ORVILLE co-producer Tom Costantino has said on Twitter that THE ORVILLE has not been cancelled.

https://twitter.com/TomCostantino/statu … 7748195329

Hope that’s true - the show deserves a long run

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Agreed - hope it isn't true.  Although moving to streaming only can't be good for its future hopes.  I know some shows on streaming-only get longer runs, but it seems like most of these shows are 3-4 seasons and then go away. 

My favorite idea is still for CBS to buy the series and have it seamlessly reset in the Trek universe.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Regarding the reported cancellation: Executive producer Jon Cassan says it's not true.

https://twitter.com/joncassar/status/12 … 71360?s=21

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Okay if Lower Decks is canon, then Trek can incorporate the Orville with minimal changes.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

LOWER DECKS is good. DISCOVERY was going for STAR TREK done in the style of FRINGE and ALIAS. PICARD was the arthouse version of the franchise. And LOWER DECKS is attempting the RICK AND MORTY hyperactive comedy version. LOWER DECKS declares that STAR TREK no longer has a house style and is no longer required to have every character talk like a lawyer and have every scene written as a business meeting. Instead, each show is a different artist's rendition of the same universe.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

there's a show called "Other Space" on DUST (a channel, roku app etc etc).  it originally was part of yahoo's programming line up (when they did a season of community too).  Those who like the orville or avenue 5 may like this as well.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Boo, if true.

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/t … rlane.html

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I think it's unlikely we'll have any decision on the future of THE ORVILLE until Season 3 is nearing actual completion. As for MacFarlane -- it is a very difficult job on a very difficult show. MacFarlane is the star, the showrunner, the lead writer, effectively the lead story editor and responsible for all scripts. He's like Jerry O'Connell in Season 4 of SLIDERS if Jerry had been sober and engaged and I have no doubt that MacFarlane has been exhausted from Seasons 1 - 2. Three years of acting, writing, producing and directing THE ORVILLE might be all he has in him, especially if he's also been doing voicework for FAMILY GUY and writing and producing three other shows in the meantime.

That said, no announcement has been made, but if MacFarlane wanted to end the show so that he could sleep more than two hours a night, I could understand and sympathize.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Seth is not terribly fond of acting, so I'm not surprised by the news.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

That's really disappointing.  I think if they picked the right guy, the show could continue without MacFarlane.  But I think he's great on the show, and it's written really well.

I wonder if he'd be okay with some sort of Sherlock-like situation.  Maybe just get the gang back together every few years and do something like 10 episodes.  People that can return will.  People that can't wouldn't.  Crews would probably rotate like that anyway.

Either way, I'm excited about Season 3 if it ever comes.  And if that's it, MacFarlane gave us an awesome show.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I finished Lower Decks this morning.  I really liked it.  I hope they do more of it.  I also hope they do their best to take it a little seriously (like I feel they did in the finale).  This is canon (I think) and it's our only true look at Starfleet post-Nemesis.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Discovery started pretty well.  Spoilers below.



Although I'm not 100% sure that I love that they have to work in galaxy-shattering stuff again.  At least this time it's the future and they aren't messing with future continuity.  But we have a dark version of the Federation in Picard and now a collapsed version of the Federation in Discovery.  I know "Discovery goes to the future and everything is great!" is not the most intriguing premise and I'm sure they're doing "the US is falling apart but it can be saved!" parallels so maybe it gets more hopeful.

But I sorta look to Trek to have hope for the future.  And all the new shows sure love "ACTUALLY THINGS ARE HORRIBLE" premises.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I liked LOWER DECKS a lot. It was funny, daring, bizarre and it really dispensed with the idea that everyone in the 24th century has to talk like Data.

Haven't gotten to DISCO yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Hmmm...a surprise HD upgrade for Babylon 5 now on HBOMax?

https://www.comicsbeat.com/fandom-flame … -remaster/

For any who have never seen the show, I recommend starting with season two.  You can go back later and watch season one as a kind-of prequel if you want; but you’ll enjoy it more starting with season two.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

And as an aside, didn’t know this existed?

https://www.startrektour.com/

443 (edited by ireactions 2021-01-31 09:56:47)

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Minority opinion here: I like Season 1 of BABYLON 5. I also like the pilot movie, THE GATHERING, although I've only ever seen the home release version which was re-edited and used the score from the TV show when the originally aired version didn't. I definitely agree that Seasons 2 - 4 of BABYLON 5 are the high point of the show whereas Season 1 has a somewhat stiff lead actor (although I really like his gravitas and presence) and doesn't quite indicate where all its running arcs are going (although most are indeed going somewhere).

Season 1 has a lot of stuff I love: Sinclair saying humanity must go to the stars because when Earth is inevitably consumed by the sun, all human achievement will be lost unless humans have shared what they have to offer with the universe. An array of Earth religions honoured. Sinclair trapped in a simulation of the Earth-Minbari war and confessing that he doesn't know why the war ended, only that he saw madness and horror only for the triumphant enemy to choose peace. I like it. Most people don't.

Season 5 is a bad year, however, as Season 4 anticipated a cancellation and aimed to conclude everything only to get renewed. Thankfully, the series finale (filmed to be the Season 4 finale but withheld for Season 5) offers a good conclusion to everything. The spinoffs are also unfortunate: a TV movie leading into sequel series that was cancelled in mid-storyline, a pilot movie that went nowhere.

Anyway. I cannot stress enough that the views of ireactions do not reflect the consensus of Sliders.TV. In fact, my view that Season 1 of BABYLON 5 is good and that THE GATHERING is good does not reflect the consensus of Sliders.TV and is completely in the minority of BABYLON 5 fans.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I didn't and don't have time to rewatch the entire BABYLON 5 series in its remastered format -- but I did rewatch "And the Sky Full of Stars" from Season 1, in which Sinclair is kidnapped and forced to revisit the closing moments of the Earth-Minbari war by an intelligence officer convinced that the Minbari surrendered to Earth for nefarious reasons. The episode is amazing, a polite homage to the PRISONER episode "Once Upon a Time" in forcing the lead to revisit past memories and arranged as a vivid, abstract psychodrama stageplay.

And the remaster is a capable, professional job. They have redone the film transfers to get a good amount of colour and sharpness but kept the image in 4:3. This means that the special effects shots could also be lightly upscaled and maintain the same aspect ratio -- in contrast to the original DVD releases which presented the episodes in 16:9 widescreen and cropped the 4:3 special effects shots, making them blurry and misframed.

The remaster aims lower than other projects, doesn't attempt to make BABYLON 5 look like it was made today as a pastiche of 90s sci-fi television, doesn't attempt to make BABYLON 5 look modern and current, doesn't make BABYLON 5 look painstakingly restored and rebuilt -- the remaster just makes it look properly preserved as a 90s show that is presentable on a high definition TV.

I'd like to see something similar done with SLIDERS' first two seasons. I don't think SLIDERS would benefit from redoing all of its effects as that would simply add new flaws to the existing visual issues. But I'd like to see the master tapes rescanned to the highest possible bit rate and lightly upscaled to 720p via artificial intelligence algorithms. It would never look like a true HD release, but it'd be presentable (albeit not as presentable as BABYLON 5).

445 (edited by Grizzlor 2021-05-30 18:09:13)

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

TemporalFlux wrote:

Hmmm...a surprise HD upgrade for Babylon 5 now on HBOMax?

https://www.comicsbeat.com/fandom-flame … -remaster/

For any who have never seen the show, I recommend starting with season two.  You can go back later and watch season one as a kind-of prequel if you want; but you’ll enjoy it more starting with season two.

So who actually upscaled the show?  HBOMax or fans?  I know fans have been using AI, like ireactions for Sliders episodes, for DS9 and VOY to what I'd say are uneven results.

TemporalFlux wrote:

And as an aside, didn’t know this existed?

https://www.startrektour.com/

Yes, a group of fans rebuilt the TOS sets pretty much close to the original specs years ago, and used them in the Star Trek New Voyages/Phase II web series.  They also leased them out to other fan productions, all located out of Ticonderoga, which is WAY upstate New York.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Discovery started pretty well.  Spoilers below.



Although I'm not 100% sure that I love that they have to work in galaxy-shattering stuff again.  At least this time it's the future and they aren't messing with future continuity.  But we have a dark version of the Federation in Picard and now a collapsed version of the Federation in Discovery.  I know "Discovery goes to the future and everything is great!" is not the most intriguing premise and I'm sure they're doing "the US is falling apart but it can be saved!" parallels so maybe it gets more hopeful.

But I sorta look to Trek to have hope for the future.  And all the new shows sure love "ACTUALLY THINGS ARE HORRIBLE" premises.

Well I'm not sure where else the writers can go?  Particularly on series that must have stories told in 10-15 episodes.  That's what streaming is these days, and how they've adapted Trek to it.  Picard clearly intentionally mirrors Discovery's third season in that way.  Picard especially, how they kind of turned it into Firefly meets Blade Runner, and Discovery which seemed to be an homage to Terminator.  Also, not for nothing, but in Picard's case, the late 24th century was nothing but galactic destruction brought on by writers of TNG, DS9, and the 09 movie.

I finally got a chance to catch up on Picard, Short Treks, and most of Discovery.  All I would say is that I've thoroughly enjoyed what has been done.  Yes, certain things are a bit dumb or annoying but overall they've been great.  Many fans bitch nonstop about Burnham or other characters, but I feel like these are mature characters doing mature things.  Hugh of Borg and Seven of Nine I felt had magnificent returns in Picard, as did Riker/Troi, and even Data.  It just all felt right.

PS: I cannot bring myself to watch Lower Decks or Prodigy whenever that comes out.  To me Trek is not slapstick comedy or children's toons.  ST:TAS was I felt mature (for the 70's) and serious.  In fact, I wish someone would reanimate that show using the original audio.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Grizzlor wrote:

I cannot bring myself to watch Lower Decks or Prodigy whenever that comes out.  To me Trek is not slapstick comedy or children's toons.  ST:TAS was I felt mature (for the 70's) and serious.  In fact, I wish someone would reanimate that show using the original audio.

LOWER DECKS is fun. It's a great take on STAR TREK as a cosmic workplace comedy. While I wouldn't want LOWER DECKS to be the STAR TREK series, it works well as one of the current STAR TREK shows. I'm looking forward to PRODIGY.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Grizzlor wrote:
TemporalFlux wrote:

Hmmm...a surprise HD upgrade for Babylon 5 now on HBOMax?

https://www.comicsbeat.com/fandom-flame … -remaster/

For any who have never seen the show, I recommend starting with season two.  You can go back later and watch season one as a kind-of prequel if you want; but you’ll enjoy it more starting with season two.

So who actually upscaled the show?  HBOMax or fans?  I know fans have been using AI, like ireactions for Sliders episodes, for DS9 and VOY to what I'd say are uneven results.

Warner Bros. upscaled the show. Fans were using DVD releases. The upscale has been achieved by rescanning the original film to 4K and then shrinking it down to 1080p, then taking the special effects tapes off the master tapes and upscaling them from 480p to 1080p. Fans generally don't have access to film elements and master tapes. ;-)

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I was reading Sabrina Lloyd saying on Instagram (paraphrasing): "Thanks so much for all the SLIDERS questions. I'm glad the show meant so much to you, but I have to be honest: I can barely remember anything about it."

It reminded me of this SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE sketch that William Shatner did where a fan asks Shatner: what was the combination to the safe in Captain Kirk's quarters? And Shatner says he doesn't know, he doesn't remember.

In William Shatner's novel, STAR TREK: AVENGER, there's scene where Kirk and Spock are locked up and don't know if one or the other may be a hologram. Spock asks Kirk to prove his identity by saying, "The safe. What was the combination?"

And Kirk says, "Five three four," thinking to himself: that's the birth months of his brother, himself, and his nephew. Three numbers he could never forget.

There was a point to this story, but I've forgotten what it was.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Shatner put out TV and Movie memory books on Star Trek years ago.  He himself remembered very little, Nimoy had the better memory of scripts and whatnot.  On films it's normally up to assistants to take notes and such, particularly for directors.  Most of these actors forget this stuff, it's just the job.  They rush through a script in a couple weeks time and then it's immediately to the next one.  They rarely watch the finished product.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Absolutely. I just think it was very funny and self-mocking for Shatner to write a novel in which Spock tells Kirk to prove his identity by answering the question ("The safe. What was the combination?") that Shatner failed to answer on camera in an SNL sketch and would undoubtedly fail to answer in real life as well.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Just finished Season 3 of Discovery.  Huge improvement over the first two!  There's still too much of Burnham's oppressive voice overs talking about her feelings and too many scenes of the crew bonding & encouraging each other & mourning their losses.  Unlike TNG, this crew actually needs a therapist.  The season improves as it goes along and gets away from some of that.  When we get to the end of the season it starts to make more sense why the series has been centered on Burnham.  It's been building to...

SPOILER!


...her becoming captain.  We've seen the false starts, set backs, and inspired actions that got her to this point.  That's very different from the already experienced captains we've seen in other Trek shows.  It actually makes me want to rewatch the first two seasons.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

ireactions wrote:

However -- you didn't need to watch DISCOVERY to understand PICARD. So I guess you won't need to watch the TOS era shows to understand the post TNG shows, especially with DISCOVERY set in the distant future.

Discovery S3 had a direct call back to a TOS episode

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

@pilight

The reliance on heavy emotions is for better or worse, simply a result of the streaming phenomenon.  It's what every show does now just about.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Grizzlor wrote:

@pilight

The reliance on heavy emotions is for better or worse, simply a result of the streaming phenomenon.  It's what every show does now just about.

In Discovery's case it bogs down the pace of the show.  It'll be moving along then one of those scenes will grind it all to a halt.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

pilight wrote:
Grizzlor wrote:

@pilight

The reliance on heavy emotions is for better or worse, simply a result of the streaming phenomenon.  It's what every show does now just about.

In Discovery's case it bogs down the pace of the show.  It'll be moving along then one of those scenes will grind it all to a halt.

I agree, but unfortunately most streaming shows are like this.  I often have a really difficult time getting through an episode without falling asleep!

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

It goes back to a principle I’ve noted over the years - restrictions create better content.  In this case, the constraint of traditional tv is that you have something like 45 minutes to tell your story due to commercial breaks.  It was an unforgiving limit - you had to make it fit.  And that led to more thought into what was important and needed.

With streaming shows, the limit is not hard and fast.  And even if they add just 3 to 5 minutes beyond the constraints they once had, that waste can drag the momentum and take the punch out of a story.  With no hard limit, the streaming production is not thinking about that pit fall of run time as much as they once did.  They don’t trim the fat as well.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Totally agree with Temporal Flux about restraints, restrictions and the creativity it inspires, except... I'd argue that we should also be aware of all the advantages that come when limits are surpassed. Compare the singing flowers of the original STAR TREK pilot to their CG augmented counterparts in "If Memory Serves"; compare the slow submarine battles of the original STAR TREK with the hyperkinetic action of the third season of ENTERPRISE. Note the episodic constraints of THE NEXT GENERATION matched with ENTERPRISE doing three parters -- effectively feature films -- on its fourth season.

Extended length is a tool and I agree that it can be a crutch, but I'd also argue that it can be a springboard once the tool is mastered. That mastery is not apparent yet, but perhaps it will be soon.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Recently read the three volumes of STAR TREK: CODA novels. After the NEMESIS feature film, the novels took over all the NEXT GENERATION, VOYAGER and DEEP SPACE NINE ongoing stories and also produced a series of novels that served as the fifth season of ENTERPRISE (the Romulan War and the rise of the Federation). From 2002 to 2020, this was STAR TREK's ongoing storyline for the 24th century and there were no TV shows or movies to say otherwise until STAR TREK: PICARD presented a completely different situation for the Federation and the TNG, DS9 and VOY characters. It was unclear what the novels would do: they couldn't dovetail, they couldn't coordinate. They would have to stop publishing in their current continuity, much like the STAR WARS novels. However, the STAR WARS novels avoided a grand finale and just had a low key installment as their last.

However, STAR TREK: CODA's three book series has the book continuity versions of the cast discovering that reality is under attack from omniversal beings called the Devidians. They collapse timelines and consume the energies of dying timelines and now they've come for this one, the Prime Timeline. The TNG and DS9 crews investigate and soon realize: they aren't the Prime Timeline. They are actually a splintered timeline from the original; the events of FIRST CONTACT in which the Borg attempted to use time travel to invade Earth created an alternate thread of time that stirred the Devidians' interest in eating timelines. This splintered timeline, while originally close to the Prime Timeline (for the remainder of DS9 and VOYAGER and INSURRECTION and NEMESIS) has diverged farther from the Prime Timeline, granting the Devidians more power from their consumption.

The TNG and DS9 characters discover that the Devidians have become so powerful that they can't be stopped; instead, the crew must use time travel to erase their splinter timeline -- and their adventures and relationships and families created since NEMESIS -- or the Devidians will destroy all realities including the Prime Timeline. Many of them are killed off in the course of this mission; eventually, Picard resets reality, erases the novel universe from existence. The NEW FRONTIER books, the SHATNERVERSE novels, the post-NEMESIS adventures, the TITAN series, the DS9 relaunch, the VOYAGER relaunch -- anything published and set after NEMESIS is effectively wiped out of all existence along with the Devidian threat, saving all other realities.

The only record that they ever existed are in typewritten manuscripts containing the text of all the STAR TREK novels written by a psychic author living in the 1960s (Benny Russell from DS9's "Far Beyond the Stars") and this author sets aside these manuscripts as a story he has finished writing. He turns his typewriter to writing the story of STAR TREK: PICARD.

... that is... not the ending I would have chosen, to put it mildly.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Weird. I didn't get around to watching DISCOVERY Season 3 or 4 (yet). I guess Season 2 felt like a finale.

I am three episodes into PICARD. As always, I am in dire need for Professor Arturo. I need the Professor to come back. I need his wisdom, his perspective, his bombast, the patience beneath his impatience. But I'm alright because even though we don't have the Professor right now, we have our Captain back.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I think Discovery seasons 3 and 4 were a huge improvement on the first two seasons.  It's what they should've done in the first place.  New technology?  They're in the future!  Aliens have been redesigned?  They're in the future!  Things look slick and futuristic?  They're in the future!

It feels like a clean slate, much like TNG was to TOS.  And I think that's a great thing.  There's no canon to navigate, and they can chart their own path.

The only thing I haven't liked is the almost complete abandonment of Trek-style one-off episodes.  I typically love serialized television telling a story.  It would be fairly annoying when LOST would take a week off to tell a little one-off story and not advance it's primary story.  But I think Trek needs stuff like that.  It's great that they're using more modern storytelling, but come on, give us a planet in danger or two civilizations that need Federation support.  Especially after (SPOILER) at the end of season 3.  And even though (SPOILER) sets that up just as well in season 4, I think they could easily tell a collection of standalone episodes that tell a larger story about (SPOILER).

Picard is doing the same thing.  I want to see some new adventures with Starfleet.  All my favorite TNG/DS9/VOY characters are out there having adventures.  And now, instead of more fun reunions, we're getting a time travel story?  Hopefully Picard season 3 has more fun in that sandbox.

Also apparently Strange New Worlds is going to be more standalone adventures.  But I'm so bored of that era...

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Can you believe that Season 3, Episode 1 of THE ORVILLE is the first episode of the show that's aired since 2019? 2019!!

I was also surprised to find Episode 1 in the Disney+ app. I wasn't expecting to see it there. Watching it now!

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

ireactions wrote:

Can you believe that Season 3, Episode 1 of THE ORVILLE is the first episode of the show that's aired since 2019? 2019!!

I was also surprised to find Episode 1 in the Disney+ app. I wasn't expecting to see it there. Watching it now!

Was gonna post about this

So great it's back.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Strangely, no spoilers for Season 3 in this post!

"Electric Sheep" is a very good episode, but this episode had no business being the Season 3 premiere. It should have been aired in Season 2 immediately after the Kaylon two-parter. Putting it in Season 3 was insane and reflects some moderate -- not serious, but moderate -- problems in Seth MacFarlane's showrunning where he and his staff write all the outlines for the episodes in advance, then have to stick to the outlines when having the scripts without a lot of room for revisions and alterations. The reason MacFarlane runs his show this way: because he has to act in the show too, he doesn't have time to do rewrites when filming or throw out scripts and bring in new ones.

As a result, Season 2 had a magnificent two-part epic episode, "Identity" 1 and 2. Part 2 had an ending that was good but a follow up that didn't make sense. To recap, since it's been three years: the mid-Season 2 two parter revealed that Isaac is a double agent plotting for the AI Kaylons to exterminate all biological life forms in the galaxy, starting with the Union planets. Isaac's presence aboard the ship from the Season 1 premiere has been a plot to gather full data on the Union's technological abilities to kill them more easily.

Isaac complies with orders from Kaylon Primary at first in taking the Orville under Kaylon control and imprisoning the crew. Isaac is complicit in the death of an Orville crew member, standing by when a crewman is ejected into the vacuum of space by the Kaylon. But when the Primary orders the death of Dr. Finn's little boy, Ty, it compels Isaac to switch sides, free the Orville crew, shut down all Kaylon aboard (including himself) to allow the Orville crew to regain the ship and contact the Union to summon a defensive force against the invasion.

The Union fleet can barely hold their position and only win once the Krill, brought in by Grayson and LaMarr, come to the Union's aid. Thousands of Krill and Union officers are killed; the fleet has triumphed at terrible cost of life. Captain Mercer has Isaac reactivated and reinstated aboard the Orville, declaring that maintaining Isaac's life as a Union officer and accepting his presence will allow the Union to benefit from Isaac's knowledge of the Kaylon in advance of their next attack.

This was fine for the end of the two-parter. But there were five episodes after that and not a single one of these five episodes addressed how WEIRD it must be for the Orville crew to be working and serving and living alongside an officer who was complicit in a plan to surveil and eventually kill them all. An officer who was knowingly and willfully a part of an invasion plot that led to thousands of their colleagues and friends and family dying in the Kaylon attack. An officer who knew this attack was coming and passively permitted it and complied with it until his favourite babysitting charge was threatened.

Crew members worked alongside Isaac without comment. Isaac was not featured very prominently in Season 2 after the "Identity" two parter. Isaac had no subsequent arcs for the rest of Season 2. Isaac simply performed his role as the science and engineering bridge officer with little to no comment. The Season 2 finale indirectly revealed that in an alternate timeline, Isaac and Ty never formed any connection due to the absence of Commander Grayson; as a result, Isaac never turned on the Kaylon and the Kaylon succeeded in their invasion.

Aside from that Isaac was treated as one of the crew with no trauma, mistrust or anger expressed towards him. This simply didn't make any sense. The reason this error happened: the outline for Season 2 had specified that Isaac would betray the crew but then change his mind. The outline assumed that Isaac's redemption in "Identity"'s second part would be sufficient; the next five episodes of Season 2 were planned as standalones focusing on other characters.

But when "Identity" was actually scripted, there were scenes where, for the plot to unfold as outlined, Isaac had to be present and passively permitting the Kaylon to kill crew members. The script also makes Isaac far more complicit in the invasion than the plot likely intended. "Identity"'s first part indicates that Isaac was operating under the belief that the Kaylons were waiting on his reports before deciding whether or not to attack the Union, but Part 2's script indicates that the Kaylons never had any intention of sparing the Union no matter what Isaac reported. Part 2's script also shows that the Kaylon have a collective database of shared functions, knowledge and intentions. This plot point is needed to explain how Isaac can singlehandedly stop all the Kaylon aboard the Orville once he switches sides. But it also means Isaac was neither ignorant nor unaware.

The script therefore made Isaac a lot more treacherous and inactively murderous than the writers had clearly intended, and so much so that Isaac saving Ty was not sufficiently redemptive. As a result, all the post-"Identity" episodes would need to address how Isaac was a traitor and an accessory to one murder and a planned genocide.

But Seth MacFarlane could not do that; the post-"Identity" episodes had all been outlined and were already being written at the same time as "Identity" was written. Due to his workload as showrunner and actor, it was impossible for MacFarlane to throw out any one of the next five scripts to slot in an Isaac-centric story dealing with the aftermath of his betrayal and attempted redemption.

As a result, THE ORVILLE simply offered no comment on Isaac's social standing among the crew. It didn't say the crew were angry at him; it didn't say the crew were happy with him; it just didn't say anything at all but implied that the crew were nonsensically tolerant of him for reasons unstated.

Season 3 finally addresses it. The premiere, "Electric Sheep," reveals *exactly* how the crew feel about a (reformed) traitor still serving among them. They feel exactly how you'd expect them to feel, so much so that it's odd to think that everyone was okay with being in the same room with Isaac for the last five episodes of Season 2 when everyone would clearly not be okay with it.

"Electric Sheep" reiterates Mercer's Season 2 reasons for keeping Isaac on the team: Isaac turned on the Kaylon, Isaac is the only chance the Union has for mounting some defence against the next Kaylon attempt at genocide. But Mercer forcing his crew to work with someone who was part of an effort to kill them and all their families and friends is going over precisely the way you think it would.

"Electric Sheep" does not pretend to offer an easy answer or a quick resolution to Isaac's shocking revelations in Season 2, merely indicating that there is a path forward and that there is a tentative optimism towards this path. It's very good -- and it simply makes no sense for this episode to air three years after "Identity". "Electric Sheep" should have been "Identity"'s third part and aired the week after.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

MacFarlane could probably do an interesting Sliders.  Would love to see him and Tracy work together though I'm not sure if there would be some lack of chemistry on some of the pushing the boundaries of political correctness Tracy might desire to do.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I got a message from one of the ORVILLE producers saying that as originally scripted, the battle scene in "Identity"'s second part was actually a lot smaller. But when doing the special effects, it went from a few Kaylon ships to a massive conflict with thousands dead and that had the inadvertent effect of making Isaac's complicity seem a lot larger than originally intended. By the time those effects were complete, the rest of the season had already been written and couldn't address Isaac's situation.

This seems to tie into MacFarlane being too busy acting to possibly do rewriting.

It looks like there were intended to be some scenes of Isaac being friendly with the crew after "Identity", but in editing, the creators removed them because they knew it made no sense for a post-"Identity" Isaac to be on good terms with anyone but Ty. This is why Isaac didn't really appear that much after "Identity" and why Isaac being a pariah only finally comes up in Season 3, three years later.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

That actually makes a ton of sense.

I loved the episode and was willing to forgive the super awkward ending to season 2 because of it.

I've also loved Strange New Worlds, which feels like both a throwback and a remake of TOS.  It think it's wonderfully done, wonderfully acted, and a lot of fun.  I will even forgive another TOS-era show when I feel like Trek should always be moving forward and never backwards. 

Strange New Worlds is the best of the new Trek, and I think the Orville is just as good.  In fact, I think they do a lot of the same things about as well.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

I've also loved Strange New Worlds, which feels like both a throwback and a remake of TOS.  It think it's wonderfully done, wonderfully acted, and a lot of fun.  I will even forgive another TOS-era show when I feel like Trek should always be moving forward and never backwards. 

Strange New Worlds is the best of the new Trek, and I think the Orville is just as good.  In fact, I think they do a lot of the same things about as well.

Totally agree.

In fact, Picard could have just been Strange New Worlds with some of the opening, "back out of retirement" stuff from Picard.

It probably should have been but there is an obsession with serialized storytelling vs. procedural now.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Yeah I don't know why there's an obsession with serializing every episode.  It might've been harder with Picard, but I think Discovery could've easily done it in seasons 3 and 4.  Have an overarching storyline but still do some fun one-off episodes.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I've gotten kind of stalled on PICARD at episode 4. This is not a fun show. It's dour and grim. In contrast, I raced to watch ORVILLE because I knew it would be fun, a little sad, serious, enjoyable, emotional and a good experience.

I don't know if it is 'right' for me to get to STRANGE NEW WORLDS until I have grimly gotten through PICARD and two seasons of DISCOVERY. STRANGE NEW WORLDS looks fun, though, and it is hilarious that the pilot episode of STRANGE NEW WORLDS was "The Cage," an episode shot in 1965 that never aired in full and the series to follow was only picked up to air in 2022.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I like Picard.  I like Seven.  I like Q.  I really actually like most of the cast of Picard, both in Season One and Season Two.  I don't understand why it is what it is, though.  I get that they're kinda working through some of the sins of the past - his connection with the Borg and the Romulans and Q.  But I wonder if it would've been better as a non-serialized sequel to TNG.  Where maybe Picard and Riker go around the galaxy fixing mistakes they made.  Picard is close to death and, while everyone keeps talking about how great his life was, he's haunted by some of the things that didn't go right.  Or the way he'd planned.  Or ended up going south anyway.

You'd need a real TNG fan to work on this (certainly not me) but pick a handful of TNG episodes where Picard makes a difficult choice or gets overruled or things don't go the way he wants...and write sequels to those episodes.  Maybe two aliens were at war, and things have gotten worse.  Maybe he helped save a leader who's become a tyrant.  I don't remember enough minor episodes of TNG that I could come up with any real examples.

But that's kinda what I'd like to see out of Picard.  Small stories that are sequels to small stories.  What does it mean to make these life or death decisions for decades and then have to live with them?

******

But I totally understand not being able to start Strange New Worlds until you've finished what came before it.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

I have made it to Episode 4 of PICARD and the appearance of The Punk from THE VOYAGE HOME (and played by the same actor!) was pretty funny. There was the sense that he had a deeply traumatic event the last time he was asked to turn off his music and didn't (because Spock nerve pinched him). That's fun.

I understand that not every story every told is going to be a fun, lightweight, optimistic adventure like THE ORVILLE and it's okay -- it's just that the real world has gotten so scary that Picard going to some dark alternate timeline is really not what I want to see and not even that much more disturbing than the actual 2022 we're living in now where TF keeps making dire predictions and is right three out of five times.

Admittedly, TF also repeatedly predicts the return of SLIDERS, so it's not all bad.

STAR TREK in the 60s resonated because it declared that we would become our best selves and set off to STRANGE NEW WORLDS. But you can't have light without dark; not every show should be STRANGE NEW WORLDS or THE ORVILLE and PICARD is that show that isn't. That's okay.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Yeah I don't mind a darker tone.  I'm just not sure it works for Jean-Luc Picard.  His story was always hopeful and bright.  And I think you can do dark with the lens of someone like that, but I'd prefer to see something different with him.  That's why I think it might be fun to do little sequels to TNG episodes.

Because Picard made a lot of tough calls, but the show tells us that it was the right call.  But what does the right call look like 30 years later?  If you save a kid from a burning building, it's the right call.  But what if that kid ends up becoming a tyrant?  Was it still the right call?  If you stop a genocide, but then that race ends up building a terrible weapon...were you right to save them?

To be fair, this is essentially the same idea I'd do for a Sliders: the Next Generation.  I'd have Quinn leading a group of younger sliders, and they'd occasionally end up on worlds they'd visited before.  How did Last Days world change with the introduction of the Bomb?  How did Weaker Sex world change now that the Men's Rights movement got a kick in the butt?  How did Eggheads world change now that....Quinn isn't there anymore?

That wouldn't be the primary driving force of the show, but in an E214 sequel show, I was going to do something like that.  My fun twist was going to be that one of the new sliders was going to get swapped out for his double (in my plan, he was autistic and could create wormholes organically).  So instead of trying to find their way home, they'd still be able to slide where they want, but they'd be looking for their lost friend.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

On strange new world, I made it thru episode 3 or 4 of discovery season 2, and never returned.

Strange new world 5 episodes in is about the best star trek has been since maybe ds9.  The show looks amazing, the characters  are all interesting it leaves you with the sense of adventure that originL star trek gave you as a 10 year old. But. The episodes are written in a way where you want to figure out mission with capt. Pike.

I can't think of a more complete Sci fi show ever...you are missing out, it gives flashbacks to I assume discovery so as your not lost.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

On strange new world, I made it thru episode 3 or 4 of discovery season 2, and never returned.

Strange new world 5 episodes in is about the best star trek has been since maybe ds9.  The show looks amazing, the characters  are all interesting it leaves you with the sense of adventure that originL star trek gave you as a 10 year old. But. The episodes are written in a way where you want to figure out mission with capt. Pike.

I can't think of a more complete Sci fi show ever...you are missing out, it gives flashbacks to I assume discovery so as your not lost.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

No spoilers. I finished PICARD's second season. It was good in a lot of places. It wasn't great.

The plot was good; the actual episode-to-episode scripting was strangely unable to exploit the ideas for full impact.

Q forces Picard to confront a childhood trauma! But the story doesn't use Picard's childhood trauma for anything but a plot purpose to help Picard escape some villains. The Borg evolve to a new stage! But it largely happens in a single scene and then centuries of development take place offscreen. Picard engages with his family history and how his ancestor was critical to Earth coming out of a very dark age! But it's dealt with in a single scene of pep talking.

I found myself spending entire episodes engaged but getting to the end and realizing the episodes were less than the sum of their parts. It was totally okay and I liked every scene, but good scenes need purposeful alignment and arrangement to cohere into a good story.

In Season 1, there were a lot of scenes that seemed disconnected and detached but hinted at some deeper purpose; the finale revealed that every scene was in some way about Data's legacy and Picard and Data having what Brent Spiner termed a "gentler" farewell to each other. In Season 2, all the scenes are theoretically about Picard's legacy: his family's legacy as pivotal space explorers and Picard's own legacy as Locutus of Borg.

But it never comes together. There is no sense that Picard's actions in the story had any real effect on history (it's mostly other characters who do that) or on the Borg (again, that's the work of another character).

It looks like Michael Chabon, the Season 1 showrunner, stepped back from Season 2. Chabon's writing style is gentle introspection, seemingly disconnected scenes, then gradually (and again, gently) revealing how they are all connected in the conclusion. It's a style that is unusual among TV writers were clear, unambiguous writing is the norm. Chabon was a master at doing the opposite and doing it well. Chabon seems to have laid out the Season 2 storylines. But Chabon wasn't running Season 2, rewriting every page and rearranging every scene to fit his themes. He wasn't really there because he'd signed a new production deal with CBS to create other shows for them and had no time for PICARD.

This seems to have thrown the writing staff off because Chabon is such an idiosyncratic, unique creator and it's probably hard for someone to come into the show to try to maintain Chabon's style.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

This is almost totally irrelevant to PICARD. The Eugenics Wars! PICARD's second season, set in the year 2024, should have been right in the thick of nuclear hellfire that dominated 1990 to 2053. Instead, 2024 was... basically 2022. What's up with that?

In case you're not familiar: the original STAR TREK established that the Enterprise is the product of a post-apocalyptic, dystopian civilization in which humanity devastated itself and was at the brink of self-annihilation before blundering towards a more peaceful world and their eventually positive collaboration with the Vulcans. The utopian values of STAR TREK came in the aftermath of bloody horror, global destruction, and mass deaths across the entire world. Humanity in STAR TREK completely fell apart before it put itself back together.

The 1967 first season episode, "Space Seed," reveals that 1992 - 1996 was dominated by the Eugenics Wars in which genetically engineered superhumans began collaborating and then competing to conquer planet Earth. These superhumans, the most prominent of whom was Khan Noonien Singh, conquered a third of the Earth before humanity repelled them and Khan and his surviving followers fled the planet in a spaceship that put them in suspended animation. Spock describes this 1992 - 1996 conflict as the "last" of the Earth's "World Wars."

In "Bread and Circuses" (1968), Spock says that 37 million people died in this "World War III." In "The Savage Curtain" (1969), Spock further elaborates that this World War III was actually composed of multiple conflicts which include several iterations of Eugenics Wars that went into the 21st century and that a pivotal faction was a group of eco-terrorists led by the notorious Colonel Green. This is a retcon indicating that World War III was not a 1992 - 1996 conflict but actually went to the 2050s.

THE NEXT GENERATION's pilot episode, "Encounter at Farpoint," establishes that World War III was a global nuclear conflict with cities across the globe nuked and destroyed, and that even after the war ended in 2053, it was an era of "post-atomic horror" with humanity ravaged by radiation, famine, starvation, disease, martial law, brutal systems of dictatorial law enforcement, executions for any breach of law, soldiers forcibly drugged to maintain their combat readiness and savagery. Subsequently, DEEP SPACE NINE and ENTEPRISE reinforce that Earth was in shambles after the war.

The feature film FIRST CONTACT shows the Earth in 2063, most major cities on Earth have been destroyed with nuclear weapons and few governments remain after the post-atomic horror. Due to Zefram Cochrane's first faster-than-light warp flight, the Vulcans make first contact with humanity and are recalcitrant and hesitant to offer humanity advanced technology given the disaster of 1992 - 2063. However, by 2151 (the premiere of ENTERPRISE), humans have formed a United Earth government and conquered war and famine.

For all of Gene Roddenberry's utopian ideals in TNG, Roddenberry was very firm that his personal vision of STAR TREK was a post-apocalyptic society. That his 'perfect' vision of humanity in the 24th century was the result of humanity having given in to its absolute worst impulses between 1992 - 2053.

However, in every time travel story that has brought STAR TREK characters to the 'present' day between 1992 - 2022, the Eugenics Wars are not shown; they don't appear to have happened.

VOYAGER's "Future's End" two parter aired in 1996. It features the Voyager crew travel to the year 1996. No global conflict is shown; the Eugenics War isn't referred to, 1996 is the real world 1996. The Earth is not overrun by world-conquering superhuman tyrants. PICARD has the characters travel to the year 2024 which, according to TREK lore, should be a time of nuclear war. But it's just 2022.

The PICARD producers said that in their minds, the Temporal Cold War of ENTEPRISE had shifted the WWIII dates to later in the 21st century and/or that due to the nuclear war wiping out records, the history of the Eugenics War and WWIII were poorly recorded. However, a scene in PICARD has an evil geneticist seize a personal project file that is labelled Project Khan and despite the producers saying that Khan's time is now later in the future, the file is dated 1992 - 1996, the original date of the Eugenics Wars.

Obviously, STAR TREK producers preferred to depict the real version of the 90s and the 2020s when their characters travelled to these eras in shows produced in the 90s and 2020s. However, the idea that STAR TREK's World War III has shifted is a rather facile explanation: FIRST CONTACT is set in 2063, and the 41 years that now exist between today and Zefram Cochrane's first warp flight will only become shorter and narrower.

I don't see anything wrong with perpetually shifting STAR TREK's WWIII ahead. STAR TREK's continuity has always been a continual work in progress. Kirk worked for the United Earth Space Probe Agency and the Enterprise was an Earth ship before Starfleet and the Federation solidified. The time period of the original series shifted from the 22nd to 27th century; only TNG finally placed TOS in the 23rd century with TNG in the 24th. The when of STAR TREK was a vague, improvised projection of the future based on the present that later writers have pinned down specifically with set dates and years that are now causing problems due to the longevity of the series.

The STAR TREK novel duology, "The Eugenics Wars," depict the 1992 - 1996 conflict as a series of covert events where the presence of superhumans was hidden from the world at large and their wars and conquest led to numerous real world crises that the public were deceived into viewing as natural disasters when it was covert warfare. The novel series cuts off in 1996 before getting to the nuclear war and post atomic horrors of the 21st century.

The INTO DARKNESS comic book tie in, KHAN, depicts the Eugenics Wars as a full blown conflict that is simply an alternate reality to the real world.

Ultimately, I think the simplest solution here is to (a) accept the Eugenics Wars as covert events (b) maintain the nuclear driven WWIII to keep Roddenberry's intent that STAR TREK's utopia was hard-earned and (c) just stop having the characters time travel to the 'present' day in which Khan didn't take over a chunk of the planet in the 90s and nuclear war hasn't started (yet).

Just leave it alone and focus on the future.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

ireactions wrote:

Just leave it alone and focus on the future.

If I was the Kevin Feige of Star Trek, this would be my entire mantra.  It would be written on every white board in the office, it would be written on my email signature.  I would make t-shirts.

I really enjoy Strange New Worlds.  But I like it in spite of being set when it's set....not because of it.  I don't need another Spock or another Kirk.  I don't need a new Uhura.  I don't need a new Pike.  I get that they found gold in Anson Mount, but I don't need to see more of this time period.  We know what happens to most of these characters, and it takes out at least a layer of suspense.  I know that the ship won't be destroyed in season 1 of any Star Trek show, but we definitely know the Enterprise won't.  They won't kill off the main character in episode 4 of any show, but we know Pike doesn't die here.  We know Earth won't be destroyed or the Federation won't be overrun.  We know the Klingons and Romulans and Federation will all be friends at some point down the line.

Plus, there's advancements in current technology and special effects.  When we see TOS, we can accept that it looks the way it looks because it's "in the past" - it doesn't matter that it's hundreds of years in our future - it's in *their* past.  Of course things look better now.  But by going back and updating things, am I supposed to believe that Kirk's enterprise always looked this way?  That they always had the technology we see on SNW and Discovery?  Does the Enterprise-D look different than we thought it did too?  It also looks dated now.

To me, the show should always move forward.  Especially when there's gaps in our time.  Discovery should've been set in the late 25th century.  That way, you can explain anything you need to explain with "technology got better"

So I think they never should've messed with the past.  If they said there was nuclear war in the 90s, then they should've stuck with that.  If they want to time travel to "now" they need to time travel to a world that's been through WWIII.  I'm sorry...that's just the case.  Unless, of course, you want to do a time travel story that undoes WWIII and just have Cochrane's flight be a last ditch attempt to prevent WWIII.  Or maybe Cochrane is going to create some sort of doomsday weapon but creates warp instead. 

I don't know.  I'm not the Kevin Feige of Star Trek.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

Very long post on a variety of TREK topics.

Should TREK go to a floating timeline?

I wonder if the solution to STAR TREK's continuity for 1992 - 2053 now being at odds with 1992 - 2022: change TREK continuity from fixed dates to a floating timeline.

In Marvel Comics, all of the 1960s adventures up to today exist in a floating timeline of 15 years in the past with topical references updated. Peter Parker is always in his mid to late 20s and has been Spider-Man for 10 - 15 years; Steve Rogers has always come out of suspended hibernation 10 - 15 years previous.

STAR TREK might benefit from switching to a floating timeline of one to two centuries in the future. If it needs to be justified in-story, a SHORT TREKS 10 minute film could have the Department of Temporal Investigations recreate the Big Bang to restart the universe. Indicate that due to this being version 2.0 of the same universe, the timeline may have some minor shifts that will fold into the timeline gradually.

At this point, STAR TREK could become vague about years.

In this restarted timeline, stories set during ENTERPRISE say Earth: Final Conflict (hahahahahah) happened "a century and a half" ago and the first warp flight happened "a century" ago. TOS will say that it happened "over two centuries ago." TNG and onward stories say that it happened "over three centuries ago."

STAR TREK can go back to being as vague about the year as THE ORIGINAL SERIES. If asked in interviews, the writers can say that TOS is set 300 years from "today," TNG is 400 years from "today" and continually keep TREK in a floating future timeline.

Or STAR TREK could avoid time travel to time periods where real-life history contradicts STAR TREK history.

Earth: Final Conflict

Just speaking for myself as a STAR TREK fan: I actually find it a little unfortunate for VOYAGER and PICARD to take their cast to 1996 and 2024 and not show the Eugenics War and World War III. I find it totally misses the point of STAR TREK. Roddenberry is a problematic creator, but to ignore the 1992 - 2053 conflict is to dismiss Roddenberry's most redeeming quality.

The Doom of Star Trek
Roddenberry had a glowing vision of the distant future, optimistic to the point of being unrealistic and therefore sickeningly sentimental. But Roddenberry had a very bleak outlook on the immediate future. Roddenberry believed that everyone watching STAR TREK was doomed.

Roddenberry envisioned that planet Earth would suffer six decades of war that would start with genetically augmented soldiers and culminate in a nuclear holocaust that would leave our entire world in the ruin of the post-atomic horrors. You die. I die. We all die, some quickly in a flash of nuclear bombings or slowly from radiation poisoning.

Humanity's survivors are scant. Crumbled governments resorting to martial law and brutality just to protect scant resources.

First Flight
In the midst of this savagery and bleakness and hopelessness, a lonely and bitter scientist nearing the end of a painful and lonely life tries to achieve one final dream, one empty gesture of defiance against defeat and suffering. He tries to fly faster than light.

He flies his ship. He doesn't believe he will succeed; he thinks his ship will likely fail before even reaching light speed. But with his future only containing starvation and illness, he has nothing left but his dream even if it is doomed to death and failure.

First Contact
But he doesn't die and he doesn't fail; he enters warp speed. Zefram Cochrane is the first human being to travel faster than light. He lands safely. His achievement catches the eye of a Vulcan science vessel crew. Earth has achieved warp speed; humans now qualify for First Contact. The Vulcans land to meet Zefram Cochrane and reveal themselves to humanity. They introduce themselves to us.

The Vulcans tell us that we humans are no longer alone in the universe.

We tell the Vulcans that we are in a terrible situation. We have destroyed our civilization. We have destroyed ourselves. Those of us who survive face ecological collapse. Global devastation from radiation. The dissolution of government. Famine. Disease. The Vulcans have come after our darkest hour. They have arrived to see humanity's twilight.

The Vulcans tell us that we're wrong.

A Gift of Knowledge
The Vulcans tell us that they have experienced everything we have -- and worse -- on their own planet. They tell us that they had to teach themselves to control their worst instincts and darkest emotions. They formed a new belief system based on self-control and logic. The Vulcans say that their logic demands that they offer the human race information and knowledge to save Earth. Knowledge that will be offered at a rationed, gradual pace.

Failure
The Vulcans offer the knowledge to let humanity build the tools to clean the atmosphere and restore the water, flora and fauna of the planet. But five years after First Contact, Earth's fractured governments reject and ignore the Vulcans, instead forming fascist dictatorships battling over remaining resources, executing anyone accused of any crime, engaged in rampant, violent purges of nuclear war survivors.

The Vulcans retreat but do not withdraw, watching and waiting. Reaching out to key figures with the hope that when this aftermath passes, the Vulcans can try again. If nothing else, the sociological situation on Earth will provide useful data for the Vulcans' own civilization.

Eventually, the post atomic horror governments collapse and the Vulcans resume their full efforts. With Vulcan knowledge and human work, humans repair Earth's irradiated soil, regrow crops and replant forests. They teach humanity to treat and repair bodies ravaged by radiation sickness. They offer humanity a new system of economy that dispenses with money.

The Vulcans refuse to directly provide aid. They provide information. They make suggestions. But they say humans have to do the work to clean the air, grow the food, restore the water. The Vulcans will teach, but they won't act.

United Earth
Two decades after First Contact, humanity has found a second chapter with the Vulcans' suggestions and ideas. Earth has replaced its disparate and fallen nations with a united planetary government and together, humans have finally conquered war, famine, poverty and disease.

As humans move past scarcity and avarice and look to the stars, they begin actively resent the Vulcans' withdrawn, withholding attitude. They resent being judged for the damage they have repaired. For the past that they have overcome.

They fume at spending a century building a Warp 5 engine when Vulcans could hand one over.

The Vulcans never expect humanity to reach the stars. The Vulcans are dismayed when humans achieve sufficient warp capability to explore the universe.

Mentally Transmitted Diseases
Humans and Vulcans find themselves repeatedly at odds in their parallel interstellar explorations; the humans are bold and interested while the Vulcans are restrictive within their protocols and procedures and disdainful of human space travellers.

Captain Jonathan Archer of the Enterprise NX-01 discovers that the Vulcans' isolationist attitude is due to a secret they are trying to hide from other races: Vulcan civilization is experiencing an epidemic of Pa'nar Syndrome, a disease caused by mind melding, a telepathic form of intimate thought sharing through psi-power enhanced physical contact.

Mainstream Vulcan society considers mind melding abhorrent and obscene. A tawdry abomination of deviant behaviour.

Epidemic
Archer protests that intimacy shouldn't be taboo. But then it's shown: mind melds cause degenerative neural disease that is further transmissible upon future mind melds. There is no treatment or cure. Vulcans have withdrawn from the concept of intimacy and sharing except in terms of cold, objective information. This is why the Vulcans were so distant and passive-aggressive in their dealings with humans.

The NX-01's Vulcan science officer, T'Pol, is infected by this mentally transmitted disease after to succumbing to temptation for intimacy over cold, objective logic. She also becomes addicted to an emotion-stimulating drug, unable to cope with the Vulcan way suppressing emotions to the point of denial.

Vulcan: Final Conflict
Captain Archer investigates further. A year later, he discovers: mind melding is not inherently harmful. Pa'Nar Syndrome is caused by poorly trained mind melds performed without psi-safety precautions. The art of safe mind melding and the philosophy behind mind melds have all been lost in Vulcan history. Archer tries to find out why.

Archer comes into contact with a telepathic recording of Surak, the founder of Vulcan logical philosophy. This echo of Surak's consciousness reads Archer's memories of Vulcans and notes that Vulcan logic has taken a turn from Surak's original intent.

IDIC
Vulcan history has prioritized Surak's logic but misplaced the true heart of his teachings: the value of infinite diversity in infinite combinations. With IDIC, Vulcan logic is a guiding principle to Vulcan emotion rather than a force to remove emotion. The concept of mind melds were created to share emotions with control and safety, to express openness to all philosophies, to make Vulcan logic merely one starting point to enlightenment.

Archer returns this telepathic echo of Surak to the Vulcans, starting a reformation of Vulcan culture, restoring the gift of the mind meld and helping Vulcans rebuild their culture, and repaying humanity's debt to the Vulcans. Vulcans and humans reach a new stage of their partnership that leads to the United Federation of Planets.

Greatness
All these improvised, revisionist, separate accounts of Earth's pre-TOS history told across TOS's "Metamorphosis," TNG's "Encounter at Farpoint," the FIRST CONTACT movie and Enterprise's fourth season -- I feel that together, they form the greatest story ever told. A story of failure, downfall, disaster followed by redemption and restoration. I think this is the core of STAR TREK.

Roddenberry wrote the first half up to Zefram Cochrane's warp flight. The genius screenwriter Gene L. Coon wrote Cochrane's story in the TOS episode "Metamorphosis". Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga delved further into Cochrane with the FIRST CONTACT movie. And Season 4 ENTERPRISE writers Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens wrote the Vulcan reformation storyline. And these stories exist within the Roddenberry framework.

Meaning
Roddenberry's framework is incredibly meaningful because it's hard to look at 2022 and imagine our dire circumstances leading to a future that's anything like THE NEXT GENERATION. Except Roddenberry's vision of our present was actually a whole lot worse than our actual present.

There's something very hopeful in declaring that humanity effectively melted down between 1992 - 2053 but somehow found its way to a United Earth, to First Contact, to the Earth-Vulcan partnership, to Starfleet, to the Vulcan reformation, to the Federation, to the stars.

A lot of reviewers lambast STAR TREK for being overly optimistic and dismiss Roddenberry's vision of humanity as a foolish fairy tale in which humans make all the right choices because of humanity's inherent goodness. It's true that Roddenberry wrote many scripts that present this opinion.

But in Roddenberry's vision of human history from 1992 to 2063: humans make all the wrong choices. They choose war, famine, starvation, hoarding, greed and disease, they nearly destroy themselves -- but then a miracle gives them a second chance and this time, they learn from their mistakes.

On the aesthetic differences between THE ORIGINAL SERIES, DISCOVERY and STRANGE NEW WORLDS

DISCOVERY and STRANGE NEW WORLDS are what some fans call a "visual recast" in which the original characters, set designers, propmakers and effects artists are now roles performed by new people.

The way the creators are approaching it: the 1966 cardboard and wood of THE ORIGINAL SERIES was the 23rd century for low-res black and white TVs (with colour gradually entering the market). The 3D printed plastics and metals we've been seeing in DISCOVERY are the 23rd century for 4K TVs.

This was definitely not the intention when DISCOVERY first started. Originally, DISCOVERY was an anthology series that would only have one season in the 23rd century that would use modern materials for 60s style costumes and sets. Bryan Fuller's intention was for DISCOVERY to look like a variant on the 60s costumes. After Fuller was fired, CBS had the costume designer go with an updated version of the ENTERPRISE costumes instead.

When the NCC-1701 Enterprise showed up in the Season 1 finale of DISCOVERY, the ship designers said they created a version of the Enterprise that could conceivably become the 60s version after a few refits. However, the show didn't really commit to this and left it ambiguous as to whether DISCOVERY's 23rd century would shift into the 60s designs or replace them.

Season 2 decided to go with what Memory Alpha (the TREK Wikia) has called a "retcon design" and declare that the 23rd century looks like DISCOVERY with visual discrepancies being a matter of artistic interpretation. The Season 2 episode "If Memory Serves" used clips of the 60s-shot episode, "The Cage" and used the standard definition effects of the practical Enterprise prop instead of the remastered computer generated version from the blu-ray release. "If Memory Serves" flashes from Jeffrey Hunter as Pike to Anson Mount as Pike.

The episode also shows a clip of Spock examining singing flowers (cardboard on string) on the planet Talos IV. Michael Burnham later visits Talos IV and examines computer generated flowers with a deeper shade of purple-blue. The flowers make a similar (but more richly designed) sound effect; the statement is that the cardboard is the standard definition version and the CG flowers are the high definition 4K version.

As rationalizations go, I've seen worse.

(The worst rationalization I've ever heard for dated filmmaking was George Lucas 'explaining' why Obi-Wan and Anakin engage in all sorts of stunt-driven acrobatics in the prequels but just stand and point with their lightsabers in EPISODE IV. Lucas said they were using a different form of Jedi martial arts in E4. He was better off not talking about it.)

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

A thought about Season 1 of PICARD: a lot of fans were wondering why PICARD did such a limited, minimalistic deaging on Brent Spiner, why they didn't make Data look as young as he did in Season 1 of TNG with the magic of deepfake; why CBS wouldn't put in the same effort that fans have with their own deepfake fan videos of PICARD scenes.

Well, I've been watching Luke's scenes in BOBA FETT where Luke's face is based entirely on RETURN OF THE JEDI stills and photographs grafted over a body double and his voice is composed completely from Mark Hamill's audiobook performances from the 80s. A lot of viewers marvel at how mobile, plausible and sharp Luke's face looks, how his voice sounds exactly like Hamill in the correct era.

While technically proficient, I would say that Luke's face is highly inexpressive with only vague approximations of actual emotions; his face is so neutral that even in motion with animation, it has the feeling of a still and immobile photograph. Luke comes off as a highly advanced animation or animatronic rather than a human being.

Mark Hamill's acting wasn't like this hyperadvanced shop window dummy; Hamill was expressive, vulnerable and he used his body language, face and voice with thought and feeling. Deepfake Luke is like a very versatile statue, great for a few shots, but once the fake Luke has to do any actual acting, there's a sense that there is absolutely no performance here, just a computer program animating still photos and rearranging sound clips.

I think that a deepfake version of Data in PICARD would have taken Brent Spiner's performance out of the character's face, leaving his expressions largely neutral and devoid of the subtlety and thought that Spiner put into the character. The way Data expresses his facial reactions is something that should always be in Spiner's control when he plays the character onscreen; the CG deaging slimmed and smoothed him, but the face and the movements of that face were Spiner's own. It was a limited deaging, but any more would remove Spiner's facial performance and then you'd have something as empty as deepfake Luke.

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!)

THE ORVILLE: the third season's second and third episodes were really weak for me. "Shadow Realms" reminded me of that third season ENTERPRISE episode where crew members get transformed into monsters and it was a grim, miserable episode of nothing. "Mortality Paradox" was a collection of random scenes of danger in random settings (a high school, a plane, whatever) followed by an overlong denouement where a superior being explains that it was a test of something or other. There was no characterization, no insight into the crew members, no meaningful arc development.

Also, the humour of the show seems to have evapourated. I got the sense that MacFarlane never really wanted to do a comedic STAR TREK, that he put in jokes to sell the show to FOX, but now that Disney and Hulu are funding the series, MacFarlane is no longer required to add in comedy and he doesn't want to.

This is difficult for me. THE ORVILLE was, to me, a workplace comedy with that workplace being a STAR TREK starship staffed with more normal people. Now it's a space workplace drama with minimal comedy, but with LOWER DECKS having aired two seasons of a comedic STAR TREK while THE ORVILLE was off the air, I can understand ORVILLE getting more into flawed human starship drama instead.

Episode 4, "Gently Falling Rain," was a serious episode of THE ORVILLE that had all the character development that seemed absent in the previous two episodes. There is real insight into the nature of fascism and demagouges and bigotry, the madness of the mob, the hunger for power in fascists and the trap of thinking that you can appeal to the better nature of racists who despise any life that doesn't resemble what they see in the mirror. MacFarlane played this episode with gentleness and vulnerability without the moral superiority and unrelatability of, say, Captain Picard. The action was intense and the increased budget has led to some gripping space battles.

It's good.