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

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“Mortality Paradox” seemed to be built on the premise of “We need to get our own Q in Orville”.  The story didn’t seem to be developed much beyond that idea.

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

So the orville just came out with a book / audio book (narrated by an actor) based on one of the scripts of a popular episode.

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

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

So the orville just came out with a book / audio book (narrated by an actor) based on one of the scripts of a popular episode.

That is... less than accurate.

The novella SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL is written by Seth MacFarlane and the audiobook version will be read by noted actor Bruce Boxleitner (BABYLON 5). The story was originally a script for Season 3 that could not be filmed due to pandemic restrictions. (I don't think you can describe it as a "popular episode" if it was never actually filmed.)

"Just came out" is also... less than correct. It's coming out July 19.

https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Sympathy_for_the_Devil

484 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2022-06-27 18:51:27)

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

ireactions wrote:
RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

So the orville just came out with a book / audio book (narrated by an actor) based on one of the scripts of a popular episode.

That is... less than accurate.

The novella SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL is written by Seth MacFarlane and the audiobook version will be read by noted actor Bruce Boxleitner (BABYLON 5). The story was originally a script for Season 3 that could not be filmed due to pandemic restrictions. (I don't think you can describe it as a "popular episode" if it was never actually filmed.)

"Just came out" is also... less than correct. It's coming out July 19.

https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Sympathy_for_the_Devil

Thank you for the corrections.  My details were fuzzy as I had just heard the news.  Exciting nonetheless.  I think it represents a model that could be applied to SLIDERS.  More importantly, I like that MacFarlane has thought outside the box to get the franchise out there in various ways.

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

I assume it's because I have young daughters, but the newest Strange New Worlds made me cry like a baby.  I don't remember being that emotionally attached to a plotline in a long time.

I've also noticed that the comedy in the Orville is all but gone.  I know they're handling heavier topics, but I liked that the Orville felt like a real place with real people.  Real people make jokes, are late to work, tease each other.  I know the Enterprise would be a great place to work full of very nice, hard-working people.  But the Orville (and the Cerritos) feel like real places.  You can be a hard worker and a goofball.  You can crack jokes even when your life is in danger (tons of people use humor to cope).

I agree that MacFarlane doesn't just want to be known for his comedy, and I think the Orville is really good even without it.  But I do miss that part, which separated his show from others.  I've also noticed that shows like Strange New Worlds are adding more humor and more "real people" to their shows.  Ortegas on SNW feels like someone who would fit in on the Orville.

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

Spoilers










The week's episode had a scene where Topa, an adolescent, decides to ask someone out on a date. She asks Gordon Malloy, chronologically a grown-ass man, to dinner. Malloy tells her that he sees her as family, as a sister, and she can talk to him any time she wants about anything and reinforces that he's happy to be her older brother. Malloy then tells his friends not to make fun of Topa.

I know Gordon is an arrested adolescent (and obviously, that's why Topa related to him), but he handled that really well, exactly as he should have. Gordon turned Topa down while making sure not to embarrass her or insult her.

Seth MacFarlane has this joke about how TNG had the most professional characters in the most professional workplace ever. No one was ever hungover, tired, bad-tempered, impatient; no one ever failed to do exactly the right thing, but more critically (and at times unbelievably), the characters always did the right thing in the right way.

This is in contrast to real life where most of us here do the right thing too -- but because we aren't TV characters, we will often do the right thing clumsily and miss the mark. If in Gordon's position (Gordon being an adult man being asked out on a date by an inappropriately young girl), we might express aggravation where Gordon expressed appropriately familial affection. We might be caustically dismissive where Gordon was understanding but firm about the correct boundaries. We might be horrified where Gordon gently kept his cool.

Gordon didn't just do the right thing (which I'm sure all of us here would or have done in his situation); he did the right thing in the right way. Which has me wondering -- now that THE ORVILLE is no longer doing the comedy and no longer having its characters do the right things ineptly and incompetently... how is it different from STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION?

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

I think the Orville is a modern version of Trek.  It's a society that is a lot like Roddenberry's vision - free of prejudice and fear and focused toward a better tomorrow.  But unlike the TNG crew, they're flawed and silly and human.

I think it's so much fun.  I do think Strange New Worlds is fantastic, but other than that, I think Orville is better than every other modern Trek show.  And I'm not terribly sure it's close.

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Just a couple episodes ago, the Union was aggressively trying to pursue an alliance with a species that didn't value men.  This week, they kicked out a species that didn't value women.  Is the Moclan's crime that they're actively destroying and hunting females?  I don't want to evoke a former member here, but are those two situations all that different?

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

I think the difference is that the matriarchal society still wanted their men; they had just reduced them to second class status like many cultures on earth have done to women for centuries.

On the Moclan side, they are committing what could be called gendercide - the complete eradication of a people just because they hold different beliefs.

There are mirrors there of things we’ve accepted as a culture and things we have not.  Oppression vs extinction.

I do agree, though - Orville has walked a tightrope in many ways of presenting material with hooks for both sides to grab onto (similar to classic Trek).  That’s how you open the door to discussion; you have to get people to the table first

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

I just found that a bit wild.  I think they could've told some interesting stories about the compromises we make in the name of safety.  That the Union disapproves of both cultures, but that they need to overlook that in the name of protecting against the Kaylon.  The Janisi and the Moclans seem like such clean parallels, but I can certainly see that the Moclans are much worse.

But I'm still surprised the Union and the Moclans decided to end their partnership.  I assume if the Orville goes long enough, the Moclans would come back to the Union with news that they've allowed females in their culture to live.

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

I think I've figured out THE ORVILLE in Season 3. It is no longer a workplace comedy set aboard a starship. It is no longer STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION with normal people who have lapses of competence and ability and good judgement. THE ORVILLE is TNG but with heartfelt and warm and stirring character arcs and emotional quandaries whereas THE NEXT GENERATION was an emotionally cold series with muted emotions and little to no character progression. If THE NEXT GENERATION were made today, it would be THE ORVILLE.

Still miss all the jokes.

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

Michelle Nichols, most known for her role as Lt. Nyota Uhura on Star Trek, has passed away at 89.

Nooooooooooooooo!!!

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/31/entertai … index.html

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

Spoilers for the full season of the Orville

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Man, I loved season 3 of the Orville.  It was probably a bit bloated - some of the episodes could've been a bit tighter, but it was so strong.  I think they probably crammed in a little too much suspecting that they didn't have much more leeway.  Especially towards the end, they covered a lot of material and skipped over quite a bit. 

I would think if this was a 7-season show, they probably would've developed the Kaylon weapon over the course of the whole season instead of it sorta showing up all of the sudden.  The collapse of the Moclan alliance would've probably fallen apart over the course of a few episodes and not all in one.  I mean, heck, they glossed over what seemed to be the storyline for the whole season (going into unexplored Krill space) in just a couple of episodes.

But if this is the last season we get, I'm glad they did that.  Even though they covered so much material (and burned through a lot of storylines), I think there's still plenty of stuff they could do.  Kaylon/Union vs Moclus/Krill could still be a multi-season affair.  The Isaac/Finn marriage could have a lot of strong storytelling.  Not to mention the handful of other potential relationships in the crew.

I do wish they would've left some items a little less.  Gordon's time travel episode gutted me, and it was a little annoying that it was wrapped up so easily.  The Kaylon alliance probably shouldn't have been so easy, even with the sacrifice made.  Bortus and Klyden reconciled a bit too easily.

But all in all, I loved it.  I hope it gets renewed, and if it doesn't, I hope MacFarlane tries to go the movie route.

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

Spoilers
















Season 3 of THE ORVILLE was very good. The "crew becomes monsters" and "crew encounter deadly fantasy scenarios" episodes were misfires. But the other eight episodes went from strength to strength. The Charly character was very well-handled. Given that the actress, Anne Winters, is reportedly dating showrunner Seth MacFarlane, some eyebrows were raised, but the optics seem okay given that Charly was meant to be a one season role with a clear conclusion and exit no matter how her relationship went. And given that THE ORVILLE brought Alara back again for a brief cameo when the actress (an ex of MacFarlane's) had no contractual obligation or financial need to return, it seems likely that, as Temporal Flux said years ago, MacFarlane's conduct is professional and appropriate.

Season 3 did a good job using its extended-length episodes to sell developments that most shows would force like the Krill and Moclan alliances with the Union falling apart and the Kaylon peace accord. Season 3 did a great job of making seven out of ten episodes focused on important social issues from DeepFake and politics to transphobia to intergenerational trauma to bigotry and then doing a sequel to "Majority Rule" for the season finale.

I felt like Season 3's last episode was a series finale. It ends with a gathering and almost all loose ends resolved and Alara returning so that all original cast members are present. It ends with a guardedly hopeful note for our own present day climate emergency and global war. It ends with nuance, both allowing Lysella to 'escape' from a troubled planet but carry the wounds of her world with her. It ends with warning that ORVILLE can't save us, only inspire us to save ourselves. It ends.

I hope there's a Season 4, but there are difficulties. Season 3 took so long to make that all cast and crew contracts have expired. If Disney+ renews the show, not everyone may be available. Most cast members, Seth MacFarlane included, finished working on THE ORVILLE and have found other jobs. There is no contractual agreement to bring them back if they won't or simply can't leave their current jobs. Even MacFarlane is busy running his new TED series. A Season 4 could conceivably have a very different if not completely new cast with a new writing team and MacFarlane only consulting if he isn't free to return fully. I think MacFarlane knew this and therefore wrote and filmed Season 3's finale as the last ORVILLE story ever.

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

In other news, "Sympathy for the Devil" was to be Episode 9 of ORVILLE (or it is at least meant to take place after Episode 8). Due to budgeting issues, it was released as a novel instead. It's also an audiobook. Please note that you do not have to buy the product off Amazon; I bought my copy from Kobo.

https://www.amazon.com/Orville-Sympathy … 09Z76NZRH/

I haven't finished it yet, but the critical question for Slider_Quinn21: is "Sympathy for the Devil" canon? I understand that to the world at large, TV has a much bigger audience than a novel and TV generally won't accept a novel as canon. But this novel was written by Seth MacFarlane. Does the fact that series creator and showrunner Seth MacFarlane wrote the novel elevate it to canonicity whereas it wouldn't have the same weight if it were written by a STAR TREK freelancer?

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

"Sympathy for the Devil". Holy S-word, this book is amazing. Drop whatever you're doing and go buy and read or listen to this incredible ORVILLE story right now. It's stirring, powerful, disturbing and highly relevant to our world. It's too bad they couldn't film this story for Season 3. This was Seth MacFarlane doing the ORVILLE version of SCHINDLER'S LIST. I accept it as canonical and as Episode 8-B of Season 3.

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

ireactions wrote:

In other news, "Sympathy for the Devil" was to be Episode 9 of ORVILLE (or it is at least meant to take place after Episode 8). Due to budgeting issues, it was released as a novel instead. It's also an audiobook. Please note that you do not have to buy the product off Amazon; I bought my copy from Kobo.

Interesting.,  I knew that the season was supposed to have 11 episodes so I was surprised last week to find that the season was ending with episode 10. 

The notion of canon is complicated to me.  I'm more open to the idea that non-screen items can be canon.  I think Star Wars is a good example.  I would think a character like Doctor Aphra would be canon, even though I don't think she's ever been referenced in any on-screen Star Wars.  But I think that the further you get from the Star Wars movies, the weaker the canon gets.

Movies
Live-Action TV
Animated TV
Comics/Books/Video Games

So Doctor Aphra's adventures are canon because they exist in this hierarchy.  However, just like Kanan's origin from his own comic was overridden by The Bad Batch (one level up), I think the Mandalorian could completely rewrite and overwrite anything from Doctor Aphra comics.  So it isn't that Doctor Aphra isn't canon.  It just isn't strong canon because it can be easily overwritten.  The same thing happened with Ahsoka and her novel, I believe.

So is Sympathy for the Devil canon?  Sure.  But if there's a season 4 of the Orville that wants to undo or rewrite any portion of that, it can.  And then it's not canon anymore.

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

I think that is a fair take on canon.

I'd like to say that all STAR TREK novels exist in a side-universe adjacent to the TV shows and movies... but then the novels went and blew up their continuity in the three volume CODA series.

**

Slider_Quinn21 said he'd heard that actor Wil Wheaton (Wesley Crusher) had a certain "dickishness" to people in his private life and at conventions. I finished reading STILL JUST A GEEK, the new edition of some of Wheaton's blog entries with new content. Wheaton was at the center of a seriously messed up situation from ages 7 to 30.

Wheaton annotates his original 2004 writings where he calls out a lot of his 1980s to early 2000s behaviour. He says that in the 2000s, he would blog about auditions and name the specific projects for which he auditioned before casting decisions had been made.

Speaking now in 2022, Wheaton says that it was grossly inappropriate for him to name the projects as it was putting pressure on casting directors. He also regretted taking each rejection at each audition so personally.

Wheaton also notes in 2022 that his 1995 - 2004 audition performances were probably not good; he'd been auditioning for roles where the character was "dangerous", where the character didn't care about other people's opinions.

Wheaton said he had played each (potential) character as unthreatening and insecure. It was perfectly understandable if people didn't hire him to perform as hyperconfident, reckless characters.

He observed: his best performances came from playing characters who didn't have a father. Who were trying to fill that hole with friendship, submachine guns, piloting a starship, or tormenting Sheldon Cooper. It was completely mismatched to the roles Wheaton was pursuing in the 2000s.

Wheaton in 2022 also apologized for the published 2000 - 2004 diary entries where he objectified women, saying it was crude to talk about female fans that way and disrespectful to his wife.

In the annotations, Wheaton describes himself as "an asshole" in his teen years and twenties, finally elaborating. He says that he was frequently moody, withdrawn and rude on the TNG set. He also looked down on the ORIGINAL SERIES actors for doing convention appearances and making a living off of decades-old work instead of doing anything new.

He was uncomfortable with fans talking to him because each interaction made him think he'd end up mining only his STAR TREK work like the TOS actors (and he notes the irony he ended up doing exactly that). He didn't want fans touching him; no hugs, no handshakes.

Wheaton explains: his mother forced him into child acting work when he was 7 years old. From that moment forward, Wheaton's life was going to sets to perform mostly among adults, doing photoshoots for teen magazines, and acting as a monetizable asset to support his parents' lifestyles.

He was repeatedly told by his mother that he'd wanted this career; he was repeatedly disparaged by his father if he didn't get a job. Wheaton felt under pressure (at age 7) to support his family as the only person working. His father mocked him when he felt tired from working so much. His mother told him he wasn't tired or upset about working so much. Wheaton barely spent time with friends his own age: his circle was the TNG cast (adults), and his manipulative mother and degrading father.

Reading between the lines, I'd guess Mr. Wheaton was insecure that his little boy was the family breadwinner; hating Wil allowed Mr. Wheaton to avoid any guilt for wringing all the money he could from the boy and working Wil until Wil cracked under the pressure and quit STAR TREK.

With all his film and TV work, young Wheaton had been too isolated to develop age appropriate social skills. His parents didn't love him, only the money he brought in. Interacting with fans or normal human beings felt like another form of being squeezed for profit. He became hyperaverse to physical contact and an anxious wreck of a human being.

Wheaton seemed to have a guardedly civil relationship with his parents from 1999 to 2009. Starting in 2009, before doing THE BIG BANG THEORY and getting a decent payday out of it, Wheaton decided to take over his finances as a grown-ass 30 year old man. He told his mother and father to hand over the financial details of the Wil Wheaton corporation (the registered business that received and processed all of his acting earnings and paid the taxes and union fees).

Wheaton's parents refused. Wheaton took action (or threatened legal action) and got all the banking information and receipts. Wheaton discovered that from 1986 to 1994, his parents had taken 85 percent of his earnings from his STAND BY ME and TNG performances and transferred that money into their own accounts. No savings, no investments. His parents took it and spent it.

Wheaton's parents had also taken 100 percent of Wheaton's residual payments from TNG from 1994 to 2009. These residuals for syndicated reruns and DVD releases had been hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, all of it going into Mr. and Mrs. Wheaton's pockets even as they watched their son -- whose work had earned all of this money -- facing crippling debt, foreclosure and potential homelessness, and starvation from 1999 to 2005.

Wheaton had borrowed money in 1999 from his parents for his wedding and house and frequently had to borrow additional amounts to buy food for his wife and adopted children (his wife's kids from a previous marriage). Wheaton discovered that the loans had come from his own corporation. Out of his residuals. His parents had lent Wheaton his own money and made him repay with interest.

Wheaton had spent 1999 to 2009 thinking all his STAR TREK money was gone (spent on a house for his new wife and her kids). Feeling stupid for leaving STAR TREK and its regular pay and savings. Ashamed for condemning his wife and children to life on the poverty line. But STAR TREK had never stopped paying Wheaton.

Paramount had been sending Wheaton six figure residuals every year since the mid-90s -- and his parents had intercepted the money for 15 years even as they saw Wheaton struggling to feed himself and his wife and his sons.

Wheaton demanded repayment, but his parents had spent all of the purloined funds, thinking they could appropriate Wheaton's annual STAR TREK payments indefinitely. Mr. and Mrs. Wheaton declared that as they had managed Wil's acting career on TNG, they were entitled to all of his residuals.

Wheaton promptly removed them from his corporation; his parents were enraged but had no legal recourse (it's the Wil Wheaton Corporation) and presumably didn't want their child labour exploitation in the press. Wheaton cut off any further contact and seethed for 10 years before making an angry 2020 Father's Day blog post where he raged about his father and mother (who, I assume, are still fuming that their abuse-fueled free ride is over).

When parents exploit their children this way, the children grow up believing that everyone on Earth will treat them the same way much as the Kaylon believed that any biological lifeform would be a threat. I can see why Wil Wheaton has a reputation for "dickishness". It could be well-earned, but he deserves pity. He is really screwed up.

I can see why Wheaton might be socially deficient, troubled, anxious, and suspicious of anyone and everyone after going through all of the above. The only winner here is Wheaton's psychotherapist; Wheaton is going to be attending sessions forever.

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

ireactions wrote:

"Sympathy for the Devil". Holy S-word, this book is amazing. Drop whatever you're doing and go buy and read or listen to this incredible ORVILLE story right now. It's stirring, powerful, disturbing and highly relevant to our world. It's too bad they couldn't film this story for Season 3. This was Seth MacFarlane doing the ORVILLE version of SCHINDLER'S LIST. I accept it as canonical and as Episode 8-B of Season 3.

I took a road trip with the family over the weekend, and I bought this as an audiobook to listen to during the long drive.  I know MacFarlane referred to it as an experimental way of storytelling, and I'm not 100% sure it would've been well-received by the audience the way it's written as a book...but I agree.  What a cool, unique story.  Really well done - really effective. 

I wish they'd been able to film this - I think it could've been one of their best episodes in an already-strong season.

Spoilers below:

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It takes almost 8 chapters to see anyone in the main cast and I think another full chapter before we have any idea how any of this relates to anything.  Is it time-travel?  Is it past lives?  I did think that maybe it was the "holodeck" but that someone in the crew was trying to understand human history?  Around chapter 5 or 6, I started wondering if I had the wrong book, or if the crew was just going to appear at the very end.

I'm glad I waited because, while I felt we were spending too much time on Otto, by the end I knew it was the right call.  We needed to get to know Otto the way we did, and every scene we spent with him was effective.  The whole thing was great.

It was my first audiobook so I half-expected to hear some of the cast in the production.  But I thought Bruce Boxleitner did a great job.

Thanks for the recommendation!

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

Yes, but is it canon... ?

**

Really enjoying LOWER DECKS this season. Spoilers for Season 3, Episode 8, "Crisis Point 2: Paradoxus":














The transporter duplicate of Boimler fakes his death and joins Section 31 at which point he's handed the black Starfleet badge that Section 31 agents used in DISCOVERY (but not in ENTERPRISE or DEEP SPACE NINE).

BOIMLER: "Isn’t Section 31 supposed to be like a big secret? I mean why would we wear special comm badges that advertise who we are?"

SECTION 31 AGENT: "You could still be dead."

BOIMLER: "... you know, I like the badge. I like the badge!"

Hilarious wisecrack at DISCOVERY making Section 31 exist within Starfleet's chain of command sharing information with starship crew and taking orders from Starfleet Command when DEEP SPACE NINE had presented it as an officially non-existent, covert operation with the Federation pointedly ignoring its existence.

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

ireactions wrote:

Yes, but is it canon... ?

My revised philosophy is that everything is canon but some things are more canon than others (TV over comics for example).  So I would think it's canon until something on the show directly overrides it.

But if the show comes back for a season 4, I'd love to see the episode on screen.

Any word on Season 4?

501 (edited by ireactions 2022-10-15 10:47:35)

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

No news is... no news.

At this point, none of the actors are contracted to return. Season 3 took so long to film and edit due to the pandemic that all extension options for Season 4 would have expired by now. Since Disney+ and Hulu don't pay cast and crew to work on shows that aren't in production, everyone is doing other work now.

However, Seth MacFarlane has given his word that if ORVILLE is renewed, he will work it into his schedule and the other actors are keen to return if Season 4 can be scheduled after the jobs they are doing now to earn a living. This is most unlike SLIDERS where the second Jerry's contract expired, he was out the door.

It could also be a situation where Disney+ and Hulu never actually cancel THE ORVILLE but also never renew it, much like FOX never cancelling THE X-FILES after the 2018 season but never ordering Season 12.

Usually, networks and streamers announce cancellations so that cast and crew contracts can be closed and concluded, allowing the studio to cease paying staff to keep their schedules available and allowing employees on a now cancelled show to find other work.

But Disney+ and Hulu don't have to do that with THE ORVILLE because the Season 4 options in the cast and crew contracts have expired by now. THE X-FILES starting with Season 10 only signed David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson to one season at a time, so no cancellation notice was needed.

It's entirely possible that Disney+ and Hulu might never officially cancel THE ORVILLE and would simply never address it.

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

Thoughts on the first 60% of Season 3 of Picard.  First just a general "I really love this show" because I think it's really great.  I think it's as well done as Strange New Worlds but with a level of nostalgia that I appreciate more as a bigger fan of the TNG/DS9/VOY era.  I don't know if it's definitely the best of "new Trek", but it's miles ahead of the first two seasons of Picard and a lot of Discovery.

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I'll start with my negatives.  As much as I *love* that the Changelings are back because I think they're a really cool villain...are we really doing a "Starfleet has been infiltrated and is the real bad guys" season again?  Didn't we basically do that in season 1 and then show it again in the alternate future in season 2?  I get that Starfleet is supposed to be this rock, but TNG went to this well a hundred times too.  Essentially 90% of the admirals we've ever met are evil or corrupt or secretly a (insert evil species).  The Changelings are cool, and if this is going to be their sequel story, this is probably how they'd go about doing it.

But couldn't we just have this be the TNG cast reuniting to go on one more adventure?  Does it have to be the End of Starfleet (TM) or the End of the Federation (TM) every time?  95% of Trek isn't about saving the entire galaxy.  I don't know why New Trek has to be almost entirely about that.

Okay, enough bad stuff.  I love the crew getting back together.  And I love that the space between Nemesis and this season feels lived in.  Worf, Geordi, Crusher, even Data...it feels like time has actually passed.  I know there's some weird timeline stuff (season 3 should be way further removed from season 2 if I understand the timeline correctly), but I feel like they put some thought into how these characters would react and grow.

And I'm really liking the nostalgia stuff, like I said.  Episode 6 is essentially an easter egg factory, and as corny as the scene at the shipyard with Seven and Jack could've been, it was beautiful.  Playing the theme for TOS/DS9/VOY as we saw each ship was great.  Having Seven discuss her life on Voyager as the Voyager theme played was amazing.  I've rewatched that scene several times.

(Side note since I've rewatched it so many times - Jack has heard of the Defiant but not Voyager?  Does that make sense in-world?  I get that the Defiant was a big part of winning the Dominion War, but people know the Titanic before any military ship, right?  Voyager made it seem like the ship was big news for civilians so I would think Jack would be familiar with Voyager before anything from the Dominion War.  But maybe I'm wrong?)

I also think it's interesting that if you look carefully, you can see the proposed refit from the cancelled season of Enterprise.  So they built a model for it, but they didn't mention it?  I know Enterprise has no connection to this show, but you'd think they could've added a line of dialogue about it.

Anyway, I'm still hoping to see more cameos before the season is over....or that the "Star Trek Legacy" show comes about.  I still think there are so many characters that I'd like to catch up on.  And if everyone comes back but Chief O'Brien doesn't....come on.  We need to see some of Seven's old family.  We need to see Dr. Bashir.  We need to see Quark.  I'd love an anthology series where we catch up with each of these guys properly.

And Picard has been so good that I actually started watching Prodigy.  I needed a bit more Trek in my life.  So far it's very kiddie but I hear that it gets a bit more mature as time goes on.  Anyone else watching it?

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

Sorry, I don't think I'll get to PICARD or PRODIGY for awhile. I still have two seasons of DISCOVERY to watch and one of STRANGE NEW WORLDS. *sigh*

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

So I really loved Picard Season 3.  I have a bunch of very spoilery thoughts and some nitpicks

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- I guess I'll start with the future.  I think Terry Matalas gets Star Trek, and I think he hit the right nostalgia notes for most of the season.  Setting an episode at the fleet museum so we got to see all the classic ships...great.  Bringing back the Changelings and the Enterprise D...chef's kiss.  The episode with Ro and the awkwardly poetic end for Shelby...great touches.  If he wants to do Captain Seven and the crew of the Enterprise-G for another series, sign me up.  If he wants to do pretty much anything else, sign me up.  I'd love to see him get another show.

- I was surprised that we didn't get more cameos.  I think Chief O'Brien would've worked well on the show.  Someone like Bashir would've fit in nice.  Janeway would've made a ton of sense.  I know they didn't want to step on Prodigy's toes...but I don't see how Janeway being on two shows at the same time steps on anyone's toes.  They referenced her as being alive so it can't be "well what if we want to kill Janeway on this kid's show".  I do wonder why DS9 is the black sheep of the universe.  They retconned Worf's DS9 ending and he's never spoken of it again.  But since the story focused on Changelings for so long and involved Seven as a key figure, I figured we'd get more than just Tuvok as cameos.  Where's the Doctor???

- Season 3 made me so mad at Seasons 1 and 2.  It's so obvious that this show needed to be Picard and his crew.  Not that I didn't like the new characters - I liked a lot of them.  But it was so much more fun to have the whole cast there, and I can't believe they waited until season 3 to do it.  This is what season 1 should've been, and we could've had two more seasons with this as the jumping point.

- Speaking of that, Matalas didn't seem to have a ton of love for the first two seasons either.  They essentially abandoned the Laris storyline after the season premiere even though that was a huge part of season two, and the rest of the season 2 storylines (the Jurati Borg and Q's "death") got "Rise of Skywalker" level retcons.  I liked season 3 better than Seasons 1 and 2 but it's weird and confusing to re-write continuity with a couple one-off lines.

- I loved the character moments, but the plot this season doesn't hold up under much scrutiny.  One thing I thought I liked about season 2 was that the Borg seemed like a nullified threat.  Maybe they could be villains again, maybe not.  But for the Borg to essentially be the main villain for all three seasons is pretty lame in my opinion.  And to be fair, I didn't even like that the season was about Starfleet being infiltrated again (since it was technically a storyline in all three seasons if you count the Evil Starfleet from the beginning of season 2).  Changelings on a ship being chased by Changelings could be a cool story, but I'm a little tired of Starfleet command always being evil or replaced or infiltrated or whatever.

- So why did the Changelings work with the Borg?  Is it just an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation?  What did the Changelings get out of the Borg being rebuilt?  Wouldn't they hate the Borg just as much as they hate any other solids?  How did the Borg Queen even find the Changelings and how is it better revenge to assimilate Starfleet than to simply take over themselves (which they'd already done).

- The whole Enterprise D thing was cool, and I feel like the explanation made sense?  I don't know how difficult it would be in the 25th century to rebuild a ship by yourself, even if you're a master engineer and you have 20 years to do it.  But maybe when he says he rebuilt it, he means he had low-level grunt help.  I saw an article saying that maybe he used the outlawed "slave androids" from season 1 since they would've been legal for some of that time.  Since he references drones, maybe that's all he needed to do.  And to be fair, maybe the D wasn't as damaged as we think and it just needed a decent amount of cleanup (which could be done in 20 years).

All in all, I thought it was a great sendoff for the Next Generation Crew.  I acknowledge that the series wants to move forward with new blood, but I would love an anthology series where we get an episode for different TNG/DS9/VOY castmembers (either main cast or even smaller roles like Naomi Wildman).  Let's see what everyone is up to and get cool little one-off stories for Bashir and Quark and Tom Paris and even Harry Kim.  Let's see the Doctor again!  I know a lot of these guys could come back for the already-announced Starfleet Academy but I want an anthology show to put some of these characters to bed.  Then we can either do a time jump again (like Next Gen did), pick up from Discovery, or whatever.

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

I'm looking forward to seeing PICARD soon.

I think what happened that makes Season 3 feel disconnected from the show: PICARD was originally run by the very eccentric and individual Michael Chabon. Chabon has a certain style of storylines that don't entirely cohere in theme and purpose until the purpose is revealed. Season 1's arcs felt really detached and isolated: then it became clear that Season 1 was really an extended eulogy to Data, a character who exited the series rather severely in NEMESIS. Season 1 gave us a chance to revisit Data and say goodbye to him in a "gentler" way, as Brent Spiner put it. It's a very unusual narrative style that is very specific to Chabon.

In Season 2, Chabon laid out the storylines, but then he left for another job. Terry Matalas and other writers handled converting Chabon's storylines to actual scripts and all the on-set rewriting. And... it wasn't quite the same. Chabon's gift for building in the themes gently and subtly with the points being overt and clear later was not present in the writing. It's unclear how Picard's mother, Q's fondness for Picard, the redemption of the Borg and other elements really tied together or why they were in the same season of TV. Chabon is too eccentric and peculiar a writer for someone else to write scripts out of Chabon's plots.

You might say Season 2 of PICARD was the equivalent of SLIDERS' "Revelations"; a story outline written by one person, converted into a script by somebody else who either couldn't or wouldn't execute the outline coherently.

And in Season 3 -- which I have not seen -- I would imagine that Terry Matalas was finally writing his own material instead of converting Chabon's bullet points.

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

Very interesting.  I'm surprised that Matalas had anything to do with Season 2 since Season 3 seems so quick to move away from it.  It does feel like Rise of Skywalker compared to The Last Jedi.  Season 3 doesn't ignore or contradict season 2 - but it does move quickly to distance itself from season 2.  Maybe Matalas arrived too late in the process to do much about the overall story and did what he could with it but didn't believe in the concept.  I guess that feels right.

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

It's not necessarily that Terry Matalas didn't believe in Season 2's storylines. My personal opinion on Season 2: completing Michael Chabon's unfinished stories is an impossible task and no one should ever have to try. Even a resurrected Ernest Hemingway wouldn't have been able to handle this nightmare assignment.

Chabon's sudden departure from PICARD was not expected, and it happened too late into Season 2 to start over with storylines. And Chabon has a difficult style for another writer to adopt.

My take on Chabon: he introduces a ton of story elements, but he is not entirely aware of how it all ties together when he starts. He lets the story's meaning reveal itself to him.

With Season 1: he knew that it was about artificial intelligence and Data, but it may not have been clear to him until scripting that it was all about Picard getting to see Data one last time, to tell Data how much he loved him, and to say goodbye to him fully, wholly and meaningfully -- in all the ways Picard didn't get to in NEMESIS.

I think in Season 2, Chabon again came up with story elements: Picard's mother, Q being sick, the Borg wanting peace, a fascist alternate Starfleet, time travel -- but when the time came to start writing the scripts, Chabon wasn't around to weave his story elements together. All the beats were handed over to Terry Matalas. Matalas tried and... it just didn't work.

Season 2 was like one of those Netflix Marvel TV show where there is a lot of random material to stretch out the episode count. What did the Borg have to do with Picard's mother or Project Khan or Wesley Crusher or Q dying? Matalas didn't know, Chabon wasn't there to find out.

Chabon has a rather abstract approach to story conception that's hard to replicate.

It's true that lots of shows have a head writer leave material for other writers to expand upon in the house style. But Chabon's style is very difficult to adopt in his absence. Chabon's writing is low key subtlety that is severely underplayed. It is very difficult for another writer to identify what defines Chabon style in order to extrapolate and continue what Chabon might have done. He's more M. Night Shyamalan than, say, Tracy Torme.

Maintaining a house style is all about knowing the specific identifiers of that style, maintaining them while bringing in your original ideas and perspectives. Tracy Torme's SLIDERS is about the American Dream; Jon Povill's SLIDERS questions that Dream, but both versions have Torme's style for the jokes.

In terms of Chabon's PICARD, Chabon's stylistic identifiers are so low key and chameleonic, with Season 1 slowly exploring the artificiality of life whether it's sex or machines or borders. Chabon finally offers the contemplation (as opposed to a conclusion) that artificiality is about defining beginnings and endings, and so, artificial intelligence like Data can't technically be life unless it's capable of experiencing death, a thought that Data offers in his final moments with Picard.

It is a moment that seems to have come intuitively and emotionally rather than through carefully plotted calculation. And since pastiche and maintaining a house style are fundamentally exercises in calculation, trying to predict what Chabon would have improvised is futile.

With Season 3, I think Matalas was out of Chabon beat sheets and ready to turn to do TERRY MATALAS' PICARD rather than TERRY MATALAS' MICHAEL CHABON'S PICARD.

For better or for worse. (Not sure which one, eager to find out.)

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

First off, I will say that despite excessive fan service and plot holes, this season 3 send off for the TNG crew was one of my most fulfilling TV journeys ever.  There's almost nothing I would change about it.  It reminded me of the feeling many had from the first Abrams movie, where it was "cool" to be a Trek fan again, even though personally I thought those movies shared little with actual Star Trek.  Bravo Terry! 

The return of the Galaxy Class "big" E was so unexpected and yet tremendous.  We never really got to see it in modern CGI technology at play.  Loved hearing Walter Koenig deliver some great lines.  I'm sure there's a million critiques one could have, and I've seen many friends do so.  If you weren't thrilled by this Picard season, sorry, you're clearly not a Star Trek fan.

I happened to greatly enjoy the prior Picard seasons, although I felt the Soongh android stuff was really bad, including turning Picard into one, and having a monster threaten the galaxy.  I think having Matalas come in was very fortuitous, and reminded me of when Manny Coto "rescued" the burning hulk Enterprise with a good bit of TOS nostalgia.

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

Grizzlor wrote:

If you weren't thrilled by this Picard season, sorry, you're clearly not a Star Trek fan.

I'm sure people can dislike a show and still be fans of the franchise.

I've finished the first four episodes of PICARD Season 3 and it's very enjoyable. Season 1 with Michael Chabon was a dark, operatic and somewhat nihilistic story of Picard in retirement and bitterness and regret, healed and made whole through a final reunion with Data. Season 2 was a puzzling attempt to do another Michael Chabon season without Michael Chabon and it was bizarre: it created a new trauma for Picard within Season 2 to resolve it in Season 2.

Season 3 so far for me feels like Season 8 of THE NEXT GENERATION. It's Picard and Riker on a mission. It's arguable that Season 1 of PICARD should just have been TNG Season 8, that PICARD was always going to be another season of TNG at some point, and doing something else was just wasting time.

However, I think there's something to PICARD and Stewart deciding that the world didn't need TNG back in its sunny, corporate optimism. Instead, they spent the first season establishing that the 25th century was a darker world where Picard and his TNG attitude had been defeated by cynicism and abandonment. Season 2, though -- it didn't seem to add very much to the show beyond the Seven/Raffi relationship. It didn't have much of anything to say about Q or the Borg. Then the second season might as well have been the third season: TNG, Season 8.

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

It's interesting: many have fairly complained that Season 2 made the Borg non-malicious allies yet Season 3 has the Borg villains again with no mention of Dr. Jurati and the Cooperative.

The Cooperative are actually mentioned in one line in Episode 4: "Forget about the weird shit on the Stargazer. The real Borg are still out there," says Captain Shaw, declaring that the Borg of Season 2 were just a few anomalous individual Borg and that the Federation being on good terms with Jurati had no impact whatsoever on the Federation-Borg conflict.

I have to say, it is a shockingly dismissive attitude that grudgingly acknowledges Season 2 of PICARD and then hurriedly asks you to forget it.

But, to be fair, I can barely remember anything that happened in the very haphazard Season 2 of PICARD, so Season 3 was asking me to forget what I had mostly forgotten anyway.

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

ireactions wrote:

It's interesting: many have fairly complained that Season 2 made the Borg non-malicious allies yet Season 3 has the Borg villains again with no mention of Dr. Jurati and the Cooperative.

The Cooperative are actually mentioned in one line in Episode 4: "Forget about the weird shit on the Stargazer. The real Borg are still out there," says Captain Shaw, declaring that the Borg of Season 2 were just a few anomalous individual Borg and that the Federation being on good terms with Jurati had no impact whatsoever on the Federation-Borg conflict.

I have to say, it is a shockingly dismissive attitude that grudgingly acknowledges Season 2 of PICARD and then hurriedly asks you to forget it.

But, to be fair, I can barely remember anything that happened in the very haphazard Season 2 of PICARD, so Season 3 was asking me to forget what I had mostly forgotten anyway.

The problem with Dr. Jurati and the cooperative that everyone who is complaining about that particular plot hole misses is that that was an alternate timeline Borg, so it is not relevant to mention in the prime timeline.

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

I don't believe that the events of Season 2 are an alternate timeline. Picard recalls that his ancestors were mystified by the strange damage to Chateau Picard; the damage is caused by Picard and his friends in a firefight with the Borg. Guinan tells Picard she always remembered meeting him in 2024 (just as she remembered meeting him during that run in with Mark Twain) but withheld it until now. The time travel events were always a part of the original timeline.. although I admit, Season 2 of PICARD is very narratively shaky.

In the Season 2 finale, the Cooperative asks to be granted provisional entry into the Federation. Therefore, the Cooperative, in the context of the Season 2 finale, is representing itself as all Borg. Except... given that history hasn't been altered, doesn't that mean that the Cooperative must exist alongside the Collective Borg that's out there invading and assimilating? Wouldn't the Collective still be out there? How can the Cooperative also engage in diplomatic relations on behalf of the Collective?

But the story presents itself as the start of peace between the Federation and the Borg, so the implication would be that Cooperative has replaced the Collective at this point in time; that in the decades between FIRST CONTACT and PICARD, the Collective has either died out or given way to becoming the Cooperative.

Season 3 discards this implication and sticks flatly to what was onscreen: the only Borg who are our friends are the individual Cooperative Borg we saw onscreen in Season 2. Those are the only ones to be trusted; all other Borg are our enemies. It's kind of rude, but given how muddled and confused Season 2 was, I can't blame the Season 3 writers for being dismissive of it.

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

ireactions wrote:

I don't believe that the events of Season 2 are an alternate timeline. Picard recalls that his ancestors were mystified by the strange damage to Chateau Picard; the damage is caused by Picard and his friends in a firefight with the Borg. Guinan tells Picard she always remembered meeting him in 2024 (just as she remembered meeting him during that run in with Mark Twain) but withheld it until now. The time travel events were always a part of the original timeline.. although I admit, Season 2 of PICARD is very narratively shaky.

In the Season 2 finale, the Cooperative asks to be granted provisional entry into the Federation. Therefore, the Cooperative, in the context of the Season 2 finale, is representing itself as all Borg. Except... given that history hasn't been altered, doesn't that mean that the Cooperative must exist alongside the Collective Borg that's out there invading and assimilating? Wouldn't the Collective still be out there? How can the Cooperative also engage in diplomatic relations on behalf of the Collective?

But the story presents itself as the start of peace between the Federation and the Borg, so the implication would be that Cooperative has replaced the Collective at this point in time; that in the decades between FIRST CONTACT and PICARD, the Collective has either died out or given way to becoming the Cooperative.

Season 3 discards this implication and sticks flatly to what was onscreen: the only Borg who are our friends are the individual Cooperative Borg we saw onscreen in Season 2. Those are the only ones to be trusted; all other Borg are our enemies. It's kind of rude, but given how muddled and confused Season 2 was, I can't blame the Season 3 writers for being dismissive of it.

What do you think of this, presented by Den Of Geek?

https://www.tiktok.com/@denofgeektv/vid … 5969375530

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

I think Season 2 was confusing for a lot of people including the actual writers of Season 2 and those fine people at Den of Geek (a wonderful sci-fi fantasy website with deightful reviews including their reviews of Denise Richards and Bruce Willis' direct to video movies. Yes, they do great stuff while some of us hang out... here... writing ruminations on POWER RANGERS and SLIDERS DVDs. *sigh*).

I can see why Den of Geek might think the Cooperative are from an alternate timeline. Season 2 was very hard to follow.

However, what's onscreen in "Farewell" (2.10) declares that the Season 2 events in 2024 have always been part of the timeline we know, that the Cooperative Borg have always existed alongside the Collective Borg, but we just never encountered them until the Stargazer incident of 2401 in Season 2 of PICARD.

I just finished episode 10 of Season 3 and the episode reasonably fits in with the Cooperative except for the fact that the Cooperative is never, ever, ever mentioned. The Collective has decayed so badly after VOYAGER that the Borg Queen was reduced to cannibalizing her own drones to exist. It's reasonable to think that in the vacuum left by the Collective, the Cooperative became the dominant Borg.

If I had to find some explanation for why the Cooperative don't come up, I guess we'd have to say that the Cooperative are currently a highly guarded Starfleet secret known only to those directly involved, to Captain Shaw (because he has a former Borg drone as his executive officer), and when people say that the Borg haven't been seen in decades, they're unaware of the Stargazer incident.

I'm not sure how well it holds up to say that the Cooperative Borg are currently a classified secret. And where are they in Season 3? I guess they're still investigating that transwarp gateway in Season 2 that was described as a mysterious piece of a complex puzzle that I assume Michael Chabon never got around to finishing and Terry Matalas understandably decided to forget about.

"Forget about the weird shit on the Stargazer."

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

ireactions wrote:

The Cooperative are actually mentioned in one line in Episode 4: "Forget about the weird shit on the Stargazer. The real Borg are still out there," says Captain Shaw, declaring that the Borg of Season 2 were just a few anomalous individual Borg and that the Federation being on good terms with Jurati had no impact whatsoever on the Federation-Borg conflict.

I actually missed this line on my initial watch and only went back after episode 9.  But here's the problem: Shaw is not a reliable witness.  And Shaw has no idea - he's speculating.  Just like he refuses to acknowledge Seven's Borg-ness, I think he refuses to acknowledge that the Borg might have evolved.  Even if the Jurati Borg were the real Borg, I think Shaw would've said it.

Now it's obvious that it was intended to be the truth.  But I would've felt better if this were delivered by someone with a little less Borg baggage.

One more thing I forgot to add to my list:

S
P
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The Frontier Day stuff and the "whole fleet" being there.  Ummmm....what does that mean?  The entire Starfleet fleet?  Every ship everywhere?  That can't be what they mean, right?  Because I assume Starfleet exists both as a peacekeeping force and a deterrent to other forces, right?  If the entire US military decided to have a big celebration in Washington, DC...I imagine there are a handful of nations/rogue nations/terrorist organizations that might take advantage of that.

Maybe it is simply all their non-essential ships?  Maybe it's all their ships that were going to be in Sector 001 anyway?  I have trouble visualizing what the entire fleet would even look like.  I assume it would be thousands of ships, no?

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

I can say from experience that state wide law enforcement agencies will do this for a meeting.  It’s left up to Sheriffs and Police departments to handle things until they get back.

I would imagine that’s what this was.  Starfleet is the statewide / federal agency, so it was left to the local agencies to handle things

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

Yeah, I guess we don't know a ton about the current politics of the Alpha Quadrant.  The Romulans aren't in any position to make a move.  I assume the Cardassians aren't either.  The Klingons are an ally.  So maybe there isn't really anyone that could make a move.  And even if they did, it would be a short move since the fleet probably was going to go home right after the festivities.

So do we think the intention was that it was *every* ship?

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

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Yeah, I guess we don't know a ton about the current politics of the Alpha Quadrant.  The Romulans aren't in any position to make a move.  I assume the Cardassians aren't either.  The Klingons are an ally.  So maybe there isn't really anyone that could make a move.  And even if they did, it would be a short move since the fleet probably was going to go home right after the festivities.

So do we think the intention was that it was *every* ship?

I'm not entirely sure the Federation has any distinctions between federal, state and municipal law enforcement.

Much in the same way Starfleet is the NASA and the NSF and the EPA and the Navy and the Air Force, Starfleet in TNG and DS9 also seemed to be the CIA and the DOD and the NSA and the FBI and the state police and the local PD and the parks and recreation department. I honestly would not be surprised if Starfleet officers were responsible for replacing lightbulbs in streetlamps and doing restaurant inspections.

I guess, if I had to come up with an explanation, it'd be that while the entire fleet will be gathering on Frontier Day, they will not be gathering at the exact same time on Frontier Day. There will be a lot of headliners in standing positions. There will also be a lot of ships that will be passing through, making an appearance, and then warping back to their posts, operating on an alternating schedule with other ships so that no patrol is abandoned.

It's possible that the Borg-compromised Starfleet went so far as to set up 'commandeered-from-the-Borg' transwarp conduits so that every ship could at least do a flyby. As handwavy an explanation as they come.

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

Is there a real-life explanation for why DS9 doesn't get as much love from the producers of modern Trek?  I think it's overwhelmingly thought of as the best Trek, but it's also overwhelmingly the black sheep of Trek as a whole.  Worf's DS9 ending was ignored essentially and he simply showed back up in the TNG movies with less and less explanation.  Chief O'Brien was essentially a TNG castmember (50 episodes) but showed up in none of the TNG movies and none of the seasons of Picard. 

The show is happy to borrow plot elements from it (mostly the Dominion War), but in terms of actual appearances, the only DS9 castmember that got any love is the Defiant (showing up in First Contact and season 3 of Picard).  I know some of the producers of DS9 rubbed people wrong at the time, but that was over 20 years ago, and I assume most of the people have left the franchise by this point anyway.

I get why Enterprise is ignored - it was a massive prequel and wasn't as beloved.  But DS9 takes place at the same time and is beloved.  Why no love for Deep Space Nine?

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

It's probably just a numbers evaluation. The series finale of THE NEXT GENERATION was watched by 30 million people; DS9's finale was watched by 5.3 million people.

In terms of DS9 characters not appearing on PICARD -- that's probably due to budget and the wish to bring in characters who had actually interacted with Picard or had some specific point of commonality (assimilation by the Borg). There were hopes of Season 3 featuring Janeway, Data's daughter(s), Harry Kim -- but between rebuilding the Enterprise-D and rehiring the whole TNG cast, the budget didn't stretch to those roles.

I imagine the DS9 characters were even lower on the priority list when they couldn't even afford Garrett Wang. Garrett Wang organizes STAR TREK conventions. Organizing STAR TREK conventions is an honourable profession, but one would think it wouldn't elevate him beyond affordability, so the budget really was straining.

But I don't know if DS9 is really ignored because the whole Starfleet-suspicious attitude of TREK since INTO DARKNESS originates from DS9, as does Section 31 (or some organization calling itself that, *sigh*) on DISCOVERY.

I don't know if ENTERPRISE is really that ignored either, given that the STAR TREK 2009 movie revealed the terrible fate of Captain Archer's dog Porthos.

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

I thought this thread was interesting

https://twitter.com/Darren_Mooney/statu … 0918763521

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

Also intesting that star trek prodigy was originally meant for nickolean, as someone commented in the thread.

Agree with their insinuation that network was a much better way to pull in new fans than paramount plus.

523 (edited by Slider_Quinn21 2023-06-26 08:02:11)

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

I was saddened by what happened with Prodigy, although I'm also still a little unclear on what exactly did happen with Prodigy.  It's cancelled, it's getting pulled off Paramount + (or whatever that's becoming) and season 2 doesn't have a home.  But if Nickelodeon said no and Paramount + said no...what even are the options?  Would Paramount make it cheap enough to go somewhere, or is season 2 of Prodigy a Batgirl situation?

When it was announced, I didn't think Prodigy was for me.  It felt kiddie.  But I heard good things from people I respect, and I gave it a shot.  And while it's geared for kids, I never thought it was kiddie.  It's probably as mature as Star Wars Rebels.  And the stories were interesting and well done.  I hope it finds a home and we get to see season 2.  While I haven't loved everything "new" Trek has done, this is the first major misstep for me.

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

I don't know why PRODIGY is being reported as cancelled. Season 2 was written, recorded and is in post production. It's going to be completed and shopped to another streaming service. Paramount + won't stream it to take a tax writeoff, but Season 2 is going to be released somewhere at some point.

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

ireactions wrote:

I don't know why PRODIGY is being reported as cancelled. Season 2 was written, recorded and is in post production. It's going to be completed and shopped to another streaming service. Paramount + won't stream it to take a tax writeoff, but Season 2 is going to be released somewhere at some point.

I don't know how this works, but how cheap would that need to be to make sense?  Batgirl was finished and will never get released.  Does it make sense for Netflix (or some kids' streaming service) to pay for 30 episodes of a show?  If it's cheaper to not release it, why would another streaming service pay for it?  If it was part of a package with TOS, TNG, Voyager, etc maybe.  But by itself?

But honestly, I don't know anything about this.  Maybe its an easy sell.  I hope you're right - I would like to see the rest of the episodes, even if the show won't get a proper sendoff.

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

In the case of BATGIRL, the tax writeoff was for the entire WB-Discovery conglomerate. In the case of PRODIGY, the tax writeoff is specific to the Paramount+ streaming service and not Paramount Global as a whole. The Paramount+ division will take a tax writeoff on the loss of buying PRODIGY but no longer streaming it, no longer earning revenue from ads or subscriptions that viewed it. However, CBS Studios (owned by Paramount Global) still has the show and will sell it to a different streamer. Probably to a non-Paramount Global streamer.

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

ireactions wrote:

I don't know why PRODIGY is being reported as cancelled. Season 2 was written, recorded and is in post production. It's going to be completed and shopped to another streaming service. Paramount + won't stream it to take a tax writeoff, but Season 2 is going to be released somewhere at some point.

I expect it to land on Netflix.  Hard to explain, but it just has their flavor.  It’s similar to how I could always tell if something was from NBC, ABC or CBS because something about the film stock looked different between the three.

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

I have zero interest in Prodigy, but this tax write-off garbage is out of control.

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

Disney just did it with “Crater”.  Cost $50 million to make; they let it run for seven weeks and now it’s gone.

https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a4441 … s-removed/

It’s funny how the past few years have seen us reverse so much progress.  What’s happening now with streaming is like TV was when I was a kid.  There was no recording or even a promise of one.  You caught a show when it aired or you likely never saw it again.  It would just become a legend people talked about while wondering if it actually happened or if they dreamed it.

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

Grizzlor wrote:

I have zero interest in Prodigy, but this tax write-off garbage is out of control.

It's always happened, there's just more publicity around it now.

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

TemporalFlux wrote:

It’s funny how the past few years have seen us reverse so much progress.  What’s happening now with streaming is like TV was when I was a kid.  There was no recording or even a promise of one.  You caught a show when it aired or you likely never saw it again.  It would just become a legend people talked about while wondering if it actually happened or if they dreamed it.

Get it on DVD if you want to keep it.  Otherwise you're at the whim of whatever streaming service.

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

I finished Season 3 of STAR TREK DISCOVERY and... I don't get it. While each episode was enjoyable, each episode seemed to drift farther and farther from the stated intentions of the season. Season 2 of DISCOVERY ended with Discovery being sent into the future, going from 2258 (a decade before the original 60s show) to 3188, nearly 700 years after the NEXT GENERATION / DEEP SPACE NINE / VOYAGER / PICARD shows. Some thought it was so DISCOVERY wouldn't have to deal with being visually inconsistent with the 60s show anymore, but it was probably just to give the 23rd century to STRANGE NEW WORLDS.

So we have DISCOVERY in the far future of the far future and... honestly, it's not that different. The 32nd century still features ship battles, interstellar conflicts, laserblast fights. Despite going nearly 1,000 years in the future, the changes to technology and to the series are cosmetic at most. I concede that it's hard to imagine a more futuristic world on top of the already futuristic world.

Season 3 of DISCOVERY starts with the crew discovering that in this era, the Federation has fallen due to warp travel becoming difficult due to a galaxy-wide cataclysm where all dilithium (the power source of warp engines) exploded. But a few episodes in, we learn that the Federation and Starfleet are still around, but reduced to the scale of a small town sheriff trying to police an entire country. Instantly, the idea that the Discovery crew have to survive in a lawless environment is gone and the idea that they have to rebuild the Federation is gone as well; it becomes more about re-estending it.

Then the series finds the reason for the exploding dilithium and the answer is... confusing, small-minded, revolves around a single guest-character and this massive catastrophe is just dismissed as a freak accident that can simply be forgotten. The mystery of all dilithium exploding starts out as an eerie mystery of enormous scale; it gets written off as a minute issue.

I don't get it. It's a strange season. I don't know why they did it this way. The individual episodes are strong action-adventure stories with terrific character moments and excellent character arcs throughout. But the story of the season in terms of its ongoing plot elements and its world-building and its mythology is a strange misfire of nothing.

In terms of release order, I should be watching DISCOVERY's fourth season next, but I think I'll take a break on it and switch to STRANGE NEW WORLDS instead.

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

I watched the first episode of STRANGE NEW WORLDS and it was enjoyable, but rather safe. It's a low-stakes, low conflict opening hour. The Enterprise visits a warring world that's created a warp bomb, a world that the Enterprise must bring to peace, but the show avoids showing what this planet was fighting each other over, leaving it impersonal and vague. But that makes a sort of sense in that this episode is more about introducing the pre-Kirk crew of the Enterprise.

What's curious: the look of this show is probably what most TREK fans expected from DISCOVERY when it was announced as a pre-ORIGINAL SERIES show: a show with modern materials to present the retro-designs of TREK in the 1960s. DISCOVERY actually looked more advanced than any of the TREK shows it was supposedly prequelizing. In Season 2, DISCOVERY brought in the Enterprise and its 60s-style uniforms, but the ship, sets and costumes were updated to maintain recognizable accent colours while using modern 3D printing and plastics and metals over the old velour and wood and cardboard. The DISCOVERY Enterprise had a similar layout to the original but with smooth glass and touchscreens, a revisionist but recognizable design that suggested we were seeing the ship through high definition eyes rather than standard definition eyes.

Now STRANGE NEW WORLDS focuses entirely on this aesthetic: modern materials on retro designs and... it's a little awkward. The communicators are large, bulky, fliptop devices that only act as communicators. The tricorder looks like a Geiger counter with buttons and dials and a tiny screen. The lack of touchscreen displays on these gadgets is at odds with the touchscreens on the Enterprise bridge. Yes, the communicators and tricorder resemble the 60s props, but the designs make these supposedly future-technology devices look primitive compared to Blackberry or an iPod or some other obsolete 2000s gadget.

Strangely, DISCOVERY used similar communicator and tricorder props, but those versions were smaller, convincingly presented as military hardware that prized durability and security over aesthetic appeal. STRANGE NEW WORLDS goes back to the bulkier 60s designs with the buttons emphasized over the screens. Whenever the show uses a very reverential and faithful design, it seems at odds with the more futuristic surroundings.

It's a difficult situation. DISCOVERY was supposedly set during a 60s-conceived 23nd century and looked like a modern space adventure show. It didn't look anything like the 60s era show, leading to some fans unable to accept the visuals in a prequel story. STRANGE NEW WORLDS has been applauded for bringing back the 60s identifiers even more fully than DISCOVERY's second season: the accent colours, the uniforms, the smooth look to sets, the classic look to phasers and tricorders and communicators, but some of the preserved 60s designs actually makes the future look dated.

I'm sure there are any number of in-universe explanations: communicators need shielding and security, tricorders are extremely advanced scientific equipment that need to prioritize sensors over user experience, etc. But it's still a bit mismatched. It's very charming in its way.

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

I'm continuing to enjoy STRANGE NEW WORLDS... but it can be a bit difficult to reconcile it with the original STAR TREK. Captain Pike is a capable, stalwart leader instead of the somewhat violent and sexist figure of tedium in "The Cage". Spock is almost a completely different character: this is a much more tactile person with romantic pursuits and an ongoing wedding engagement and some deep-seated insecurities who is not the steady, reliable diplomat and scientist who comes to define THE ORIGINAL SERIES.

Nyota Uhura and Christine Chapel stand out as the most difficult to square with continuity: Uhura in THE ORIGINAL SERIES is a glorified secretary with no ambitions or standout abilities or anything noteworthy about her; she was not the polyglot puzzle-solver and adventurer we see in STRANGE NEW WORLDS. Christine Chapel in THE ORIGINAL SERIES was witless and dull feminine figure who was defined by being a nurse and having a crush on Spock; she was not a bold-tongued, vivacious, quippy scrapper like in STRANGE NEW WORLDS. The diversity of the ship with a Colombian pilot (Erica Ortegas), a female executive officer (Una Chin-Riley), a Chinese security officer (La'an Noonien Singh) is completely opposed to the predominantly male-Caucasian lineup of STAR TREK, and STRANGE NEW WORLDS seems to break STAR TREK canon by writing Chapel and Uhura with actual characterization, agency and competence in a military organization.

At this point, it doesn't feel like STRANGE NEW WORLDS is getting things wrong. It feels like THE ORIGINAL SERIES got things wrong in claiming to represent progressive values of diversity and inclusion only to never give women anything to do that didn't revolve around male desire or desire for men, and STRANGE NEW WORLDS is getting it right and THE ORIGINAL SERIES needs to be reconciled with STRANGE NEW WORLDS instead of the other way around.

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

Gene Roddenberry was nobody's idea of a feminist.  The whole "women can't be captains" thing from Turnabout Intruder came from him.

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

Agreed. I didn't give STRANGE NEW WORLDS any credit for dismissing the claim that no woman had ever captained a starship by the 23rd century because ENTERPRISE's fourth season set in the 22nd century featured Captain Erika Hernandez of the Columbia NX-02, blatantly ignoring "Turnabout Intruder". However, perhaps it's important to note that STRANGE NEW WORLDS takes pains to show that Captain Christopher Pike has a casually-open romantic relationship with a woman named Marie Batel who is also captain of the starship Cayuga and Pike's thing is to cook her breakfast.

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

STRANGE NEW WORLDS has had a somewhat guarded relationship with the continuity of THE ORIGINAL SERIES in its more progressive and diverse and nuanced approach to rendering people of colour and women aboard the Enterprise. It's been unclear how this could be reconciled to THE ORIGINAL SERIES and I've come to actively not want any reconciliation at all.

Season 2's "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" offers an explanation, not only for why women have independence and agency in a TOS-prequel, but why the cast of VOYAGER and PICARD returned to the 1990s and 2020s and didn't see any evidence of the 1990s Eugenics Wars and the early 21st century World War III and post atomic horrors.

The explanation is that Romulans and the Federation's own Department of Temporal Investigations have been in a long running time travel conflict where the Romulans have tried to erase the Federation from history by erasing the Eugenics Wars; the conflict has caused the Eugenics Wars and WWIII to be constantly pushed further into the future. The implication is that WWIII now being closer to the 23rd century is why the Discovery and the Enterprise in the prequels have a more militaristic edge in their designs and crew than what we saw in THE ORIGINAL SERIES.

The Romulan temporal sabotage and the DTI intervention is effectively a catch-all explanation for why 'present-day' time travel stories never reflected the TOS-described Eugenics Wars, why characters in DISCOVERY and STRANGE NEW WORLDS don't entirely match their depictions in TOS, why technology has shifted, and possibly why Section 31, previously a rogue organization that was ignored by Starfleet has become a branch of Starfleet Intelligence within the chain of command; a Federation where the Eugenics Wars were a more distant memory would reject Section 31 whereas a Federation where the Eugenics Wars were more recent would accept Section 31.

This closer-to-war context for the 23rd century would undoubtedly change cultures and personalities; the Christine Chapel of TOS may have grown up taking peacetime utopia for granted and never developed a harsher edge. The Christine Chapel of SNW knows that peacetime could vanish at any moment and isn't inclined to sit around pining for a man when there's research and exploration to be done.

I think the move mostly makes sense in that STAR TREK has struggled with its chronology being set according to fixed and specific years. With the temporal incursions, STAR TREK has now shifted to a floating timeline where the future is always a number of centuries after the date of the most recent broadcast rather than a date that the viewer could conceivably live to see and pass.

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

Science fiction set in a human future will always have that problem.  Set it too far in the future and you risk real world technology overtaking your supposedly advanced gear, to say nothing of things like language remaining the same hundreds or thousands of years in the future.  If it's not far enough in the future and it can quickly become alien as the real world develops differently.  That's without even addressing problems of zeerust and the like.

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

I love Strange New Worlds.  I think it is fantastic, and I genuinely have enjoyed every episode I've seen.

I hate Star Trek prequels.  I will *always* prefer to move the story forward.  I understand not wanting the past to look ridiculous, but the past will always look ridiculous.  Star Trek was made in the 60s with a limited budget and limited technology.  But that's when it was made and it was the best they could do.  They were also limited by the thoughts and morals of the time.  And I understand wanting to update that and also feature classic characters.

But I would leave the past as the past.  If they want to do a time travel episode, they have to do it the way DS9 did it. If they want to explain differences, they have to do it the same way ("we don't talk about it with outsiders").  The past is the past.

TNG looks outdated.  But Picard didn't gloss over the differences - they called them out.

Now DS9 and Voyager look outdated.  But if you're consistently moving forward, it will always make sense.

I know I'm probably in the minority of this, but I would've loved a 25th Century story with the Strange New Worlds cast.  I would've always set Discovery in the post-Voyager era.  Move things forward.

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

Some people have overtly or indirectly commented: I am overly concerned with 'fixing' things. For example, when writing SLIDERS stories, my top priority was resurrecting Quinn, Wade and Arturo and reuniting them with Rembrandt. Temporal Flux's priority was coming up with interesting parallel Earth ideas and satirical jokes.

I love STAR TREK, but it has committed some crimes for which I think the bill has come due. STAR TREK claimed to be a progressive series that presented a vision of how human beings could build a better world of equality and diversity. But invariably, all the women were passive oafs to be seduced or dismissed by men; military might was necessary in most if not all situations; black people were a curiosity or on the side; Christianity, transgender-exclusion and gender-essentialism were declared as universal constants; the final episode of STAR TREK declared that women weren't allowed to be starship captains.

STRANGE NEW WORLDS, reasonably or unreasonably, has risen to the challenge of standing trial for all of Gene Roddenberry's sins and asking: can STAR TREK overcome its mis-steps and misdeeds? Can STAR TREK plead guilty and pay for its crimes? Can STAR TREK pay for its crimes by making more STAR TREK that is better than what came before?

**

Episode 2.02 of STRANGE NEW WORLDS is "Ad Astra Per Aspera" where Una Chin-Riley, Number One, is tried for joining Starfleet under a false identity: she is a genetically modified Illyrian, from a race in which genetic modification is a cultural norm, and genetic modification is illegal in the Federation and unwelcome in government service after the Eugenics Wars saw a war on humans by genetically engineered superhumans. Number One is facing 20 years in prison after declining a plea deal and having spent 25 years as a Starfleet officer under a falsehood, effectively treason and sedition. And Number One's lawyer, Neera Ketoul, seems to make a mess of the case right from the outset.

Ketoul puts Admiral Robert April on the stand, gets him to say he would never have recommended Number One for Starfleet service had he known how she was born, then rants at April for all of his Prime Directive violating humanitarian work, noting that Starfleet has no problem with its captains ignoring the rules when it suits them. Ketoul has Number One detail the extent of Number One's deceptions for nearly three decades of Starfleet service where Number One notes how her life as a child was constantly in danger and led to her terror of being found out in adulthood.

Ketoul raises the question of who knew Number One was a genetically modified Illyrian; as a result, Number One is forced to confess on the witness stand that Captain Pike has known for months that Number One is an Illyrian and did not report it. Ketoul questions Number One on who even reported her true nature to Starfleet and got her arrested; Number One confesses that she reported herself because she could no longer bear the guilt of her lies.

The prosecutor declares that Pike and Number One have engaged in a conspiracy to commit treason by Pike knowing who Number One was and hiding it. Ketoul calls Starfleet an unjust institution, doing little or nothing to actually help Number One's case. Ketoul notes that under Federation law, individuals fleeing persecution and violence based on their biological identity may seek safety via Starfleet; that refugees upon self-identifying and requesting asylum may be given consideration; that Starfleet captains have the discretion to grant asylum, yet Una Chin-Riley, Number One, receives no such consideration for being genetically modified. The situation is dire and all Ketoul seems to do is dig Number One and Pike in deeper.

But then Ketoul notes that Number One has met each and every condition to be considered a refugee. She was a genetically modified child who had to hide her identity to avoid persecution and violence against Illyrians; she self-identified when she confessed to Captain Pike. "And then by turning herself in, Una fulfilled the third and final requirement for asylum. She asked for it. And Captain Pike granted it. Like all good Starfleet captains, he exercised his judgement and gave her asylum. All this tribunal needs to do now is confirm that status to absolve them both."

I'm not a lawyer myself, I can't comment on the efficacy of this tactic in real life court, but in terms of an argument, I find it convincing.

I don't know Una Chin-Riley's trial is really related to putting STAR TREK itself on trial, but I believe that what Gene Roddenberry created is greater than Roddenberry himself, and I think STAR TREK will emerge from its trials better and stronger for it. So, in this instance, I think a prequel makes sense, is effective, and it's worth doing.

But I would say that. I care too much about fixing things.