As was First Blood and maybe the first ten minutes of Rambo.

As was First Blood and maybe the first ten minutes of Rambo.

This feels like a bit of a straw-man. In my youthful nonsensical cross-franchise pissing-match days, we pitted the Enterprise versus a Star Destroyer, or at least some other capital ship.

Unless you were asking which one was cooler, in which case the Falcon wins every day and twice on Sunday.

You also know somebody is running on empty when a show or movie franchise set in the future or a fantastic world transports their characters to “the present” for any extended period. Now, whether that’s the writers, the cast, or the accountants, no one can say.

I love that podcast, and particularly when I’m driving, because while Kevin tends to repeat himself and speak slowly, it’s generally pedagogically sound, somehow in the service of his point and ensuring I don’t miss much if I get distracted. He’s also an attorney (probate, IIRC), so when he occasionally drifts into legal stuff, it’s doubly insightful.

Poppycock. It’s mispronounced German and Latin and Greek and French and… well… English, all with a delightful seasoning of mispronounced Dutch and Spanish.

STD will make you all warm and fuzzy.

On the other hand, if they do depart from a joyless slog from one plot point to the next, people scream “filler” like it’s a crime against humanity. I do have some sympathy for people writing shows, but I agree that too many of these shows began life as single-movie pitches that were padded (or at least never edited down) rather than a traditional mini-series, which is what they are, or a season of TV slimmed down to the high-points.

leave things more open or unresolved or ambiguous, which is simultaneously dissatisfying and refreshing

Agreed, and it absolutely depends on the episode. Also agree that they sometimes (often?) bit off more than they could chew, but in general they weren’t so disastrous that I didn’t appreciate the effort. I imagine there was a lot of compromise and horse trading on those scripts, and people were probably relieved to get out something as good as they got. I like to imagine the Ferengi episodes were generally the penance exacted from writers who insisted on too much self-respect.

I enjoyed B5 and would consider it one of the shows that did things well. The production values haven’t held up quite as well (except for the prosthetics and hair, which are easily Star Trek quality I think), and I never fully warmed to either station commander, but for what it was trying to be and within the constraints of its budget, it is a really good show.

I did stop watching after the “original” finale though. I didn’t see where it was likely to get any better and I wasn’t quite invested enough to tolerate a significant downturn.

Those are actually becoming an artform of their own. The best ones subtly hint at the areas of focus in the upcoming episode and get your mind tee’d up.

I think DS9 and some other shows of the era really hit the sweet spot here. They were mostly contained episodes, but there were overarching narratives lurking in the background, sometimes occupying an episode or two, or a subplot here and there, blowing up around season finales and premiers, although once war broke out the ones that didn’t do much to acknowledge it admittedly felt a bit out of place. That method of storytelling also forced the writers to at least consider character developments that had occurred in prior episodes and not simply ignore them in the name of the quest for syndication.

The modern format can make for some truly great TV (Andor, e.g.) and freeing up the run time without reducing the budget can mean beautiful looking shows, but they don’t work well when you’re basically filming an overlong first draft of a movie script, rather than writing a story (or two or three) that’s meant to occupy 8-12 hours. I also agree with the others who say that a gap of more than a year (and even that much, really… it used to be three or four months) puts all but the most anticipated shows at a huge disadvantage, and god help you if you cast kids in S1.

If there is a world where we get tired of DS9/Derry Girls mashup memes, then I don’t want to know about it.

Sounds like he’s made peace with its living on in forks as well. Nice to see he’s doing okay.

DON’T GET SASSY WITH YOUR TECHNOBABBLE WITH ME, FRED BUCKLE! I’M THE MAYOR!

You know, the unabashed moral superiority Klingons would have when treating average Londoners would flow very nicely with how the real show starts to feel after a while.

YAY! This new doctor is from the working class!

OH NO! This is the one educated professional who’s addicted to opiates!

YAY! Racism is bad!

OH NO! Nobody realized until a cosplay nun told them so in RP!

Yes, I’ve seen every episode. The hate-watch is fully armed and operational!

I saw Master and Commnder at 10fps on a 2" screen because I managed to get video working on the iRiver H320 I got because even 5(?) years later I was still part of the generation of nerds who thought iPods were just “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”

Even then… pretty good movie.

It’s unlikely she’ll be returning to school before the end of the year. So I think the only thing we can do now is…

Pray for her?

No, what use will that do?

It’s the utter bafflement that sells it. The nun not only disbelieves in the power of prayer, but can’t even comprehend why someone would believe.

Unexpected Derry Girls. Well played.

In my estimation, its biggest fans, often (but not always) folks who are also Discovery’s loudest detractors, overpraise it. It was made by a TNG superfan to let him be a TNG captain acting out TNG scripts with TNG production values and TNG acting, and – for good or ill – with his particular sensibilities about what makes doing so fun. It definitely gets much better than the first couple of episodes, once they’d successfully tricked Fox into thinking it was a full-on Galaxy Quest spoof, and overall I enjoy it, but it has its issues.