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Cake day: February 15th, 2024

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  • Have you been privy to any of the discussions about what it means for the show to be set a thousand years later than most of the franchise, like where it makes sense for a previous entry to guide the interpretation, and where it maybe makes as much or more sense to let things go a little crazy. The interplay probably has to drift more toward storytelling realities within the brand than it does gaming-out what would “really” happen over a millennium of Star Trek time.

    Honestly, when I think about it, the post-Burn era seems downright conservative in terms of societal change, certainly at least within Starfleet. That’s obviously necessary for it to be recognizable as a property, but it’s kind of funny to think that it’s as static as it seems, like closer to the difference between 426 and 1426 than between 1026 and 2026 CE, and I’m probably understating how different the first two were.



  • It’s funny… In some ways, I think he adored the stories they were telling, and particularly the potential the characters and the setting held, but he really seemed to dislike the production environment and many of the specific decisions that were made. He is an artist with a very specific voice (lol, literally even) and mindset that was maybe poorly suited to making Star Trek his “thing.”

    God though, can you imagine if the brooding-to-manic Sisko acting roller coaster had become iconic in the broader culture like Shatner’s staccato shouting and dramatic pauses?





  • wjrii@lemmy.worldtoRisa@startrek.websiteNo contest
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    3 months ago

    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.






  • 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.



  • 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.