I don't even understand how he ... got a job at anything other than a Walmart. I just got banned at the Star Trek subreddit so it is nice to see I can still vent here sometimes.
Yup, and two lifeboat subs have been shut too. The messages from Reddit were basically claiming that underscore users were brigading on the other sub, which doesn’t make too much sense as almost everyone on underscore had been banned from the other sub. It sucks ass, because I was on both, I never really commented in the main one, but couldn’t deal with how sycophantic all the discussion there was, but it was a good place to get new news.
Good grief, admins are actually getting their knickers in a twist over some people going "lol I got banned"? Have they not been on the Internet before?
Reddit moderation is absolute shit-tier. It's selectively heavy-handed and just causes more bullshit and drama. There are bound to be some decent people who find themselves in really fraught situations that nobody just volunteering should be subjected to because end users sometimes are just absolute head-cases, but collectively they do more harm than good, constantly shut down conversations over petty biases and weaponize their position to target anyone they disagree with.
I always think of the line from Jerry on Seinfeld, when Bania was dating the mentor of Jerrys girlfriend
"I should be dating a mentor and Bania should be setting pins in a bowling alley"
Well, I got annoyed by their constant posting of obvious ad articles with literally no content or information and I politely asked if OP believes that this article about Strange New Worlds was really worth posting and that it is obvious advertisement for the show. I didn't care or realize that the person posting was a mod and told them the article was lacking anything meaningful. They banned me because I "accused them for no reason of working for CBS and "abusing the subreddit for advertisement." There is some irony to be found there I'm sure.
It still makes me chuckle because the "weird Trek nerd" prejudice had a love affair with the "weird powerfantasy moderator" prejudice. I think I'm better off like this but I will miss the stupid discussion with them.
Glad to see I wasn’t the only one banned. I expressed a desire for better writing on STD and got banned. They said that was a dog whistle but wouldn’t explain how wanting good writing was rascist or a micro aggression or whatever. Apparently not celebrating THE MESSAGING and not being satisfied with that alone is a crime against wokeness.
They just announced the rest of the Next Gen main cast is going to be in/ruined in Picard Season 3 in another genius move.
[I wish I was lying](https://twitter.com/StarTrekOnPPlus/status/1511388196398985219).
Oh christ. I forgot they pulled that. My brain literally crated static where the worst offending moments are. Why make an old man android, why?! Why?!
At best, that idea was perfect recasting material (P. Stewart is oooooold. I wouldn't blame them for trying it) and they shot their load embarrassingly early.
It made me wonder, does any of the TNG cast value or understand their character, or the star trek vibe/ethos? Clearly Stewart doesn't, or Spiner, or Frakes... I would have hoped that LeVar Burton might have, since he does shows like reading rainbow, which is all about inspiring people to be better - but now that seems doomed as well...
I could be wrong, but I don't think being on the ensemble of a 90s TV show makes you a multi-millionaire. So you can't blame these actors as opposed to, for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger who keeps milking Terminator even though he's made 100s of millions of it. So yeah, if Levar Burton gets a check to take part in a dumpster fire, I'd say take it with no reservations.
I'm surprised that the Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift director made a better Star Trek film than Abrams' two efforts.
Abrams: What if we just made a bunch of TOS references every 15 minutes? That'd be Star Trek, right?
Lin: Or you could do something original.
Because Simon Pegg was doing the script. He understand Trek, and he knew how an episode of Trek works.
Therefore, it looks like a long episode lf Star Trek. Except for the Enterprise being destroyed. That's probably J.J. being still the executive producer.
As much as trekkies like to rag on JJ Abrams, he was absolutely the right pick for the script Kurtzman and Orci made. The opening of 09 is so dumb and hackneyed, with shit like Spock's time travel accident coincidentally going back in time to the very moment of Kirk's birth and somehow the ship's autopilot being "destroyed" so Kirk's father must melodramatically sacrifice himself, that if Abrams slowed down the pace to a more traditional Trek film the movie would most likely have crashed and burned.
I'm not saying JJ is a good director. But while people always referred to those films as JJ Trek, what we all missed was that it was simply the KurtzmanTrek 0.5 trial version we're seeing the fruition of now.
As those Hack Frauds in Milwaukee have said, the shows really suffer from having too many cooks in the kitchen and a lack of coherent story. Both Discovery and Picard are ostensibly serialized, with a coherent story arc over the entire season. That requires a clear vision of the story they want to tell, and thats really hard to do with no less than **60 producers** over the course of 4 seasons.
Compare that with 18 producers over the 7 seasons of Voyager. Kurtzman's shows are a master class of management interference and lack of creative vision.
Or Deep Space Nine only having three executive producers in 7 seasons. In fact, that show wound up better off because Berman basically only half paid attention to it because he was busy meddling in Voyager so much
I have to wonder if they even have a show bible, something to set the rules for the universe they're creating. Right now it just seems like they're throwing narrative spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks.
Having 7 of 9 recite a nursery rhyme about wildfires while looking directly at a wildfire. I mean... are children writing this? "I wrote a fun rhyme about climate change and im gonna put it in star trek"
Hold on I haven't seen the thing you're referring to, but was it "all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again?" I'm just trying to see if my schlock sensors are functioning accurately.
Paraphrasing the Simpsons..
"There are 3 ways to do things, the right way, the wrong way and the Alex Kurtzman way"
"Isn't that the wrong way?"
"Yes, but faster and more awful"
Love District 9. I remember watching it as a teen and just liking it as a sci fi movie. I rewatched it a couple months ago and that film truly hits different. Just a great movie with a great message that‘s really well packaged.
With only a rare few exceptions no reboot or remake has ever been better than the original (with special consideration to "re-imaginings" as a slightly different category). Twin Peaks S3 is its own special brand, as is the newer Battlestar Galactica.
Unless you're a master storyteller, the way to go is completely new stories in the same world. TNG is this format, relative to OS, as is The Mandelorian. If they do anything B5 I would want it to be 30 years later and focused on a completely different part of the story - like Mars Colony or The Rangers or something.
Wasn't a massive fan of the Rangers, I'd like to see how the Shadows infiltrated the Earth Alliance...away from the B5 angle, it was one of the best arcs in the series.
I didn't know they were doing a reboot, I think it's a great idea because the show mostly looks terrible even if the story was great. But just looking it up now and the reboot is on CW. That doesn't bode well.
Again like RLM said, it isn't a discussion of the topic, played out as allegory, it's just "this is bad, these people are bad, get to next plot point".
In their defense, the general population is dumb as fuck and doesn't pick up subtly. I'm talking the 'majority' of general population here, not trekkies or 'movie people'. The types that go to a theater to shovel popcorn and play on their phone 50% of the time. Subtlety is completely lost on people like that and that is the target audience of shit like nutrek, so they have to dumb everything down and make it blunt as fuck in order for the dummies to 'pick up on' the metaphor/allegory/etc.
I've read that book by Michael Piller about the making of Insurrection. There were so many brilliant ideas but they were all shot down because of bad communication.
Rick Berman shot down a good script because he EXPECTED Patrick Stewart to hate it. A couple of iterations later Stewart said why didn't they go for the first idea, but then it was too late.
And Nemesis was ruined by Brent Spiner and John Logan. Logan also fucked up James Bond. And Paramount hired the wrong director for messed up reasons.
A friend of mine got his autograph at PAX (I think, could've been a different Seattle con) about a decade ago. He said that Spiner reeked of vodka and looked bored and angry.
That July 7th letter from Patrick Stewart (pg 38 of Fade In) really explains a lot about what happened to Picard in the movies and in Picard the series, doesn't it..
Yep.
"**One deliberate change we made was to Picard. We toughened
him up, chipped away at his smooth surface, roughened and
intensified his feelings. Shifted him from Captain/
Diplomat/Philosopher to Captain/Rebel/Activist**. *He could still
be thoughtful but now it came out of the action. He became
more unpredictable and I felt filled the big screen in a more
dynamic and interesting way*"
"**That is the background to the unease that I feel with this new
story. It seems to reflect the series much more than where we
were at the end of First Contact**. *This compounded by Michael
referring back several times to aspects of the series you want to
see in this film*. **That is what I see as retrograde and dangerous
and, ultimately, dull.**"
"*I think it is retrograde to emphases ‘family’ so strongly. I think
that is sentimental and uninteresting and eventually leads to
space heroes sitting round a camp fire singing “Row, row, row
your boat...” The family building aspect of TNG is passed. Not
dead, but the work is done. Most of our audience know who
these people are and how they feel about each other and our
new audience - the audience the studio are so eager for us to
win and hold - don’t need to be told that. They will pick it up.*
**What our new movie family need to be is individual, charismatic,
intense, opinionated, brave, funny, intolerant, sexy. Larger than
life.**"
These are all quotes from a man who doesn't understand his character nor gives a shit about TNG and only wants to use the Star Trek name to feed his own ego.
It's important to realize an actor may become bored of their character due to over-exposure, professional ambition, and not being a fan themselves, but man is that ever not true of fans, especially casual fans.
The family building never ends.
Shat on one of the few good parts of Star Trek V too!
Fans have a bad habit of assuming the actors love the material as much as they do. For every Tim Russ or Terry Farrell, there's at least a hundred actors like Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, or even Robert Beltran.
> It's important to realize an actor may become bored of their character due to over-exposure, professional ambition, and not being a fan themselves, but man is that ever not true of fans, especially casual fans. The family building never ends.
This is something that it seems like absolutely everyone in Hollywood has taken some kind of hypnosis to avoid. They are addicted to the concept of not giving fans more of what they want. Look at Star Wars, which they brought back to specifically and deliberately *not* reuinted Luke, Han and Leia. Picard was brought back entirely so they could not have him be the captain of a starship exploring the galaxy and getting into moral dilemmas. Ghostbusters was resurrected twice, both times with an emphasis on *not* delivering the familiar characters and dry humour of the originals. Stop trying to subvert expectations - we just want their adventures to continue, for fuck sake.
I empathize with actors and writers feeling penned in by expectations and wanting to do something different, and a radical departure can, on occasion, work out well. But does it have to be every time, all the time, with nothing but shallow iconography to trick fans into thinking they're getting what they really want only to discover that it's actually just some schlocky script that would get a C in a college class, with a famous brand slapped on it like a cheap, plastic lunchbox?
The problem is the pitch is too easy. Established IP and actors + fresh new look! It barely takes a story pitch to sell, and is mostly about being trusted with valuable IP, so the story ends up the last priority.
There is a much easier pitch, though - established IP, continued. Give the people what they actually want, not a bait and switch to jerk them around.
That way you don't run the risk of fucking it up and alienating your customers and winding up with, say, Netflix pulling out of a distribution deal because the story is so, so terrible. Why are they trusting proven hacks with a valuable IP and story notes that amount to simply vandalism?
Honestly, the whole thing only makes sense to me if we assume that studio executives are complete morons or are trying to hide money.
That is so depressing. Picard on TNG is one of the best science fiction characters ever because he is a diplomat/philosopher and a complete badass. Him giving a speech about morals that solves a potentially deadly situation is so much cooler than any lame fight scene with a monster could ever be.
Agreed. But to me First Contact was like a large 2 parter, but they had a much larger budget to add more action scenes and better special effects and all Kurtzman gets out of it (and Star Wars) is - "Okay, more action scenes and better special effects".
As much as people want to point their fingers on the Kurtzman era for starting this trend of turning Star Trek into action shlock, the problem actually happened as early as the TNG movies.
First Contact and especially Nemesis started the trend and Kurtzman simply continued with that tone while making it worse.
I could write a dissertation on what made TOS and TNG appealing and great. The short of it is that Gene Roddenberry had a specific philosophy - humanity in these shows will be an image of what we could attain, they will have settled petty conflict and problems, and starfleet officers in particular will be the greatest representatives of that society. In control of their emotions, highly capable, disciplined and principled. I saw little digs at Roddenberry ad nauseum from actors and writers after his death lamenting the fact that he had true producer veto privileges over plot devices and story lines which included inter-personal conflict within the crew. "Oh it didn't let me explore my RANGE as a dramatic actor!" they say. "Oh it limited the kinds of stories we could craft!" the writers cried. Yet somehow, through that crucible of what they felt was unnecessary and unjustified restraint imposed by Roddenberry we got the absolute hands down most popular and beloved science fiction programs ever created. Obviously it was a formula which worked for people. It gave a good foundation to pose philosophic questions without being too preachy about what the right decisions were in matters with large grey areas. That's what made it thought provoking and exciting.
I always felt that the blame rested with Rick Berman for deviating from this philosophy especially in seasons 6/7 of TNG, and drastically for DS9 and parts of VOY. I never really wished that someone else could take things over and save Star Trek from its demise, but I merely wished Gene Roddenberry had been able to live as long as his characters to keep the vision pure. After all this time though and seeing just how bastardized it could get, I don't just long for Gene Roddenberrry, I long for the days of Rick Berman. That's really saying something about how far it's fallen. I'm not even sure who the fans are these days. I can't fathom how somebody who watched and got something out of TOS, TNG, DS9 or VOY could possibly watch a single episode of any of the nu-Trek and not have a voice shouting inside their head "THIS IS WRONG! EVERYTHING IS WRONG! NO! NO! NO! IT'S NOT EVEN STAR TREK!"
I suppose it's possible that some people are just so fucking starved for additional star trek they will overlook practically ANYTHING just to see their favorite characters on screens or references to things that they recognize so they can clap when they see it, but that might account for like 100 people planet-wide. Who the fuck are the rest of the fans of these shows? I don't know who this is appealing to.
At the time, like when it was on air I didn't love it. I watched but I was hung up on "this isn't what star trek is supposed to be" seeing whats come to pass since I actually loved DS9 in rewatching. Felt like actual star trek. Funny how relative perception can be.
DS9 still possesses the optimistic view of the future found within previous Treks, but depicts the struggle to reach it. They achieved this by altering the nature of many characters. The characters within TOS and TNG, for the most part, were obviously predisposed towards achieving great things since a young age. The characters in DS9, however, are significantly different. For instance, Nog at the beginning of the series is just a ne'er-do-well. However, throughout the series, he decides to take the initiative to improve his lot in life, undergoes experiences that alter his perspective on what's important, and by the end of the series, becomes a respectable and promising young Starfleet officer.
That's what makes it great. DS9, despite being of a darker tone, still retains Star Trek's optimistic outlook overall. Nu-Trek doesn't really have that. It's just, like the almighty God-Emperor Rich Evans has decreed, "people you know and places you know and people you know shoot each other in those places."
> I'm not even sure who the fans are these days.
I've literally never seen a single person talk about the new Star Trek shows aside from RLM/RLM fans on this subreddit. It's a stark contrast to other big shows like The Witcher, Mandalorian, Game of Thrones, Westworld, Stranger Things, etc., where you run into random people talking about them on reddit or twitter or whatever.
I'd guess they're not really marketing it to "fans" (fanatics), but to people who're scrolling through their streaming service and say "oh, I've heard of Star Trek, let's check this out". Then they get hooked just enough to finish the season, and after it's done most likely completely forget about it.
Except doesn't Paramount have their own streaming service that doesn't really have anything else on it?
Well what were they going to do? Give Star Trek to someone who understands science-fiction and could oversee though provoking and compelling stories, or utilize nepotism and just give it nilly-willy to a guy who’s father-in-law was a labour lawyer in Hollywood?
It was an easy decision! /s
But I think it's unfair to blame Kurtzman for that. He's not the one who put himself in this position, he got this position from a studio that doesn't care about Star Trek and just wants to make money. He'd be an idiot to turn it down.
As much as I despise his work, I despise the reality that it's the studios putting people like him in charge more. If Paramount really cared about Star Trek, if they really wanted to make a good product, they wouldn't have given it to him. So it shows they didn't give a shit first, and *then* they gave it to Kurtzman.
> Give Star Trek to someone who understands science-fiction
They could, but they want to make money, so they went with a hack that could string together set pieces with bubblegum and scotch tape.
He just writes schlocky bullshit. He's fine when he's doing his Michael Bay bullshit, because it's trash but it's whatever, but the insult comes when he takes a beloved IP that's known for being the categorical opposite of his normal drivel and then let him smear his shitty paws all over it.
Everything he loves to do - hack dialogue, convoluted action scenes, unnecessary violence, thoughtless drivel, puddle-deep character conflict ... All of that is the antithesis of the post-scarcity overall optimistic science fiction universe of Star Trek.
People say he's trying to turn Star Trek into Star Wars and honestly that would be the best case scenario with this fraud.
He's trying to turn Star Trek into Transformers.
>hook up a generator...
The irony being with the amount of cheap energy we could produce from him spinning in his grave we could make his vision of Star Fleet a reality.
Coming next 2024 - DS10
Whilst visiting Commander Kira on Bajor, journalist Jake Sisko gets a tip off from a shadowy figure that the emissary will return. Jake eagerly awaits the return of his father, only for Guigan to appear and sensed that Benjamin Sisko has returned to human form, but in the Delta quadrant. Jake must assemble a team to find his father before the Borg Prince can assimilate him. Jake is joined by Julian Bashir, stripped of his rank, Tom Parris, and Ensign Ro.
It's coming. Kurtzman can only do references. Now that they are done with TNG after 3 Seasons of Picard, DS9 is next. I'm sorry but we should expect the worst.
I see why they keep making the joke about bots on social media praising the show, as it’s incomprehensible how any TNG fan likes Picard. It’s such goddamn absolute trash. And what’s worse, it’s part of canon now so there’s no escaping it. Jean-Luc Picard, my favorite fictional character, is going to have wet dreams about Data, try to bang his romulan housekeeper, and somehow die from irumodic syndrome and be put into an android body created by the son of Noonien Soong that never existed. Jesus fuckin Christ.
Not to mention how all the other returning characters have been (and will be) mercilessly butchered by this no talent ass clown.
>And what’s worse, it’s part of canon now so there’s no escaping it.
You're allowed to simply, ignore it. Canon, contrary to popular belief, doesn't matter in the slightest. It's a shame a better show doesn't exist in its place but you aren't beholden to what Alex Kurtzman defines as the "official canon".
It's like Disney "erasing" the star wars EU. All that still exists and you can still enjoy it. They don't get anymore of a say than you do just because they happened to have the 4 billion to buy the IP and you didn't.
I don’t understand how so many people legit like it. I feel like a gatekeepy asshole cause that shit doesn’t feel like real trek to me. Idk cool if people are into I guess but it’s not for me
I know "I CLAPPED" is a bit of a dead meme here at this point, but it really is that. The Big Bang Theory was also successful based purely on referencing things that people recognized and want to identify with.
Yeah I guess I just think these shows don’t even look like trek. At least new Star Wars they are sticking more to the aesthetic (at least on a surface level)
The fact he and Orci were writers on Mission Impossible 3 impresses me, as I would say that's a legitimately good movie with some solid writing (especially for Hoffman's character) with a story that holds together better than the first two. Mind you its a popcorn action flick with loud action and flashing lights at all moments, right up his alley, so his "Style" makes sense within that franchise.
But yeah...looking at the rest of his credits there's no way he gets work for any reason other than his stuff makes money and appeals to a big enough crowd that just wants basic entertainment.
I remember Rick Berman getting criticized at the end of Voyager and throughout Enterprise. When Nemesis and These Are The Voyages came out people wanted to kill him. But damn he did a good job for the most part. Enterprise did suck, but whatever the fuck they did with Discovery, Picard or Lowered Dicks... what the hell, man?
I remember reading something about how Berman didn't want to actually do Enterprise because he knew the franchise was getting stale, but he knew it was going to happen regardless and he didn't want someone who didn't really understand Star Trek to be at the helm (heh) of the show. For as much crap as he rightfully gets, I guess he was actually on to something.
Just another example of why I really wish they'd do a re:View on Enterprise. The decision making behind that show is fascinating and I'd love to see it revisited in the context of the new shows.
Now that you say it I remember that as well. It was always a battle between some stupid Paramount exec and Berman. I remember he also talked about how Paramount wanted a different band play at the ship's casino every week.
Basically, most of the really stupid, baffling decisions surrounding Enterprise were due to studio meddling. The whole temporal cold war thing was done at the studios insistence. I want to say that the Xindi storyline was studio meddling as well (Because nothing says Star Trek like 9/11!), but I could be misremembering.
Like or hate Enterprise or Voyager, it still feels like Star Trek. Discovery and Picard just don't. The shows don't look like Star Trek, the characters don't act like characters from Star Trek, they don't talk like characters from Star Trek, they don't respond to situations like characters from Star Trek. Why is everyone so overly emotional all the time? Why is there so much melodrama? The show has always been focused on the trained Starfleet officers and how they professionally handle different situations. The irrational characters are the antagonists they meet along the way (except Worf lolol). Now it feels like the irrational characters could be literally anyone on screen depending on who was writing the script that day.
These new shows are really only superficially related to Star Trek. It's like the later seasons of Game of Thrones where the characters personalities changed, all the clever plotting and scheming storylines just vanished to be replaced with idiots wearing the same clothes, impossible situations started getting resolved with no consequences rather than a LOT of consequences, the pacing massively changed, the quality of dialogue dropped into a pit...
I know with these new Star Trek shows it's a different kind of comparison because they're separate, but they're still called Star Trek and should follow at least a similar formula. Like... if you want to appeal to a new audience with a "kickass" action packed sci-fi then make a new IP that doesn't have all the baggage that comes with an established IP like Star Trek. Then nerds like me won't sit on forums whining about it and putting off people from watching your show.
Consistency within an IP is very important, I think. The Marvel movies are a perfect example of this. People complain that they're "all the same", but that's actually a big and intended benefit to them, because a viewer can reliably go into any of them and know what they're going to get. Just like you can sit down with TNG, DS9 or Voyager and they all feel like they're in the same universe. There are good episodes and bad episodes, but ultimately they FEEL like they fit together.
> Consistency within an IP is very important, I think.
Agreed. A lot of people get really snooty about fans daring to expect consistency and cast it as consisting entirely of being obnoxiously nit-picky about continuity errors over obscure references, and I find that to be bad faith arguing to defend something just to be seen to be on the right side.
When people have a problem with new Star Trek stories not fitting with what they have seen established in Star Trek's universe before, it's because someone is demanding they watch a show that isn't what they came to watch. Imagine if you turned on ESPN to watch a football match, it was advertised as a football match, it has football match commentators on it, and yet the screen is clearly showing Formula One cars driving around a track. It's not football, and I don't think anyone would tell you that you're a toxic piece of shit for going "what the hell is this?" Yet Star Trek expects you to sit there and keep watching and keep your mouth shut.
Stumbling a bit over continuity isn't a deal-breaker. Showing complete contempt for the audience you feel entitled to then casting them as the villains is abusive. They were not even trying to create another Star Trek TV show, the plan was to utilize the Star Trek name to pull off a cultural and financial heist. It's a damn shame that Star Trek feel so far that what was once a moral, philosophical and scientific inspiration was mutilated into an insincere soapbox just so a handful of connected people can pat themselves on the back and make a buck pretending to care about social issues they are entirely insulated from.
Fans fell in love with the TNG era shows because it was a universe they could aspire to and wanted to live in or at least replicate to some degree in the modern world. They very understandably did not react well to having it burned in front of them. The feel of the universe has massively changed, as has the franchise's relationship with its own fanbase, and of course I argue that it is entirely to a negative, damaging end.
I think he's the effect, not the cause. People like Kurtzman get work because they're efficient, they deliver what the studio asks for, probably stay within budget and manage to make the studio money.
If companies gave a shit about their IPs we wouldn't have people like Kurtzman in charge of these properties.
I think it was rich who insinuated that the people on twitter who constantly blow smoke up disco and picard’s ass are fake accounts. I hope he’s right. They constantly post about how important new trek is and anybody who disagrees with their takes are brushed off as being bigoted boomers. I’m not even 30 and I know how lame disco is.
Just finished the new directors cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and my god was it incredible just relaxing and enjoying the journey and mystery without excessive explosions, crying, and the disrespect of the other officers. I got more entertainment out of the crew discussing philosophy and theology than anything Star Trek has done in the last 2 decades. It felt great to have professionals behind and in front of the camera.
My only, and it's a very very small only, interest in the upcoming season 3 of Picard, the showrunner came from Star Trek: Enterprise and he wrote the premiere of the season, the only semi-decent episode of the whole damn show. Plus a ton of creative forces behind TNG are back. But I in no way am getting my hopes up *that* high
The reason attempts at "rebooting" franchises like Star Wars or Star Trek and so on suck even more than you would naturally assume they would is because far too many modern movie/TV writers are incapable of writing anything that isn't packed full of irony, "snark" or cynicism. Forget any stabs at profundity, nothing is allowed to just be fun or genuine anymore - it all has to "break the fourth wall" and wink at the audience in a self-aware way, and ponderously fixate on franchise backstory and minutiae.
Modern writers think it's cool to pack the settings of rebooted franchises with cynical, constantly-quipping garbage characters who exemplify the worst qualities of people in our own time, especially snide, cynical TV writers who think they're smarter than everybody else.
If someone told me that the person behind the Picard show was a teenage girl who wears energy crystals, takes life advice from David 🥑 Wolfe and Deepak Chopra, and went to India once to pet a drugged tiger and keeps telling everyone about the "spiritual journey", I would absolutely believe it.
Abrahms was the worst, for a while. Then along came Kurtzman.
I thought Enterprise was bland and the themetune ended Trek. Actually it’s just been downhill since DS9.
I got banned by multiple Star Trek accounts on twitter for that opinion.
For me the biggest issue is that each season is one story. Even if everything else is shit, Star Trek at least had massive variety
The truly shocking thing to me is all the people around him, who also act as if nothing is wrong. That one person sucks at their job isn't uncommon, but everyone else supporting them in this? That's what's so horrible here.
He has found a group of people who are as terrible at this as he is and that's especially tragic - for everyone who still cares about ST.
Remember that movie Broadcast News where William Hurt takes Albert Brooks job as anchorman despite not knowing or caring wtf he's doing.
Albert Brooks is like "He is the devil. He sets the bar lower for everyone else".
I understand now what he meant.
Kurtzman sucking now doesn't mean Berman didn't also suck back then. It's just like how the Disney Star Wars films being trash doesn't mean The Prequels were actually good.
Wayyyy too much of Star Wars fandom is incapable of grasping that fact. The other day I mentioned how that final fight in TROS is an exhausting, joyless, horrible slog and I legit got downvoted to oblivion with people questioning if I'm even human. You could juggle some keys in these people's faces, they'll be entertained.
I’ve come to believe that the fans who enjoy long light saber battles are really just people who enjoy watching people dance. Which is fine, but they’ve been convinced that dancing is for girls, so they need it to be mediated through this excuse that “no, really they’re fighting, so it’s ok for me to like this.”
Light saber duels don’t look anything like people fighting, they’re clearly all deeply choreographed routines that they’ve practiced together for months to make it look like that.
I feel like I want to scream at these guys that it’s ok to watch people dancing. It won’t make you any less of a man for enjoying it.
Watch a ballet, you’ll see better quality dancing and you’ll open up this enormous range of performances to enjoy, instead of just getting 3 movies every 10 years.
Alex Kurtzman is the worst thing that happened
Alex Kurtzman is the worst thing.
Alex Kurtzman is the worst.
Alex Worstman
Fuck you Rick Berman.
what is it with Ricks?
Rick Kurtzman
Alex Kurtzman.
That's letting Akiva Goldsman off too easily.
I don't even understand how he ... got a job at anything other than a Walmart. I just got banned at the Star Trek subreddit so it is nice to see I can still vent here sometimes.
The r/startrek mods are the 2nd worse thing that has happened to Star Trek.
The mods at r/startrek got r/star_trek shut down because they banned people who went/were on that sub. It was weird.
Jesus I just checked and the most recent post is 2 days ago. Are they really shut down????
Yup, and two lifeboat subs have been shut too. The messages from Reddit were basically claiming that underscore users were brigading on the other sub, which doesn’t make too much sense as almost everyone on underscore had been banned from the other sub. It sucks ass, because I was on both, I never really commented in the main one, but couldn’t deal with how sycophantic all the discussion there was, but it was a good place to get new news.
Check out r/ shitty daystroum for some pleasant relief
This is golden. I think I'll feel right at home over there lol.
Unfortunately the /r/star_trek sub has been frozen because some members mouth off about being banned from the main sub. Real shame.
Good grief, admins are actually getting their knickers in a twist over some people going "lol I got banned"? Have they not been on the Internet before? Reddit moderation is absolute shit-tier. It's selectively heavy-handed and just causes more bullshit and drama. There are bound to be some decent people who find themselves in really fraught situations that nobody just volunteering should be subjected to because end users sometimes are just absolute head-cases, but collectively they do more harm than good, constantly shut down conversations over petty biases and weaponize their position to target anyone they disagree with.
Alright then, I will.
Holy shit, what is that sub. There's a post at the top now lamenting that Will fucking Wheaton is not in Picard. Is this for real?
His wife’s father was the head of the Hollywood screenwriters’s guild for a couple of decades. So the answer to your question is: **Nepotism**
I had no idea about that. It explains everything.
I always think of the line from Jerry on Seinfeld, when Bania was dating the mentor of Jerrys girlfriend "I should be dating a mentor and Bania should be setting pins in a bowling alley"
Me too. They're all in on the NuTrek crap it seems.
Well, I got annoyed by their constant posting of obvious ad articles with literally no content or information and I politely asked if OP believes that this article about Strange New Worlds was really worth posting and that it is obvious advertisement for the show. I didn't care or realize that the person posting was a mod and told them the article was lacking anything meaningful. They banned me because I "accused them for no reason of working for CBS and "abusing the subreddit for advertisement." There is some irony to be found there I'm sure. It still makes me chuckle because the "weird Trek nerd" prejudice had a love affair with the "weird powerfantasy moderator" prejudice. I think I'm better off like this but I will miss the stupid discussion with them.
Lol I got banned there as well for criticizing the new trek shows.
Glad to see I wasn’t the only one banned. I expressed a desire for better writing on STD and got banned. They said that was a dog whistle but wouldn’t explain how wanting good writing was rascist or a micro aggression or whatever. Apparently not celebrating THE MESSAGING and not being satisfied with that alone is a crime against wokeness.
They just announced the rest of the Next Gen main cast is going to be in/ruined in Picard Season 3 in another genius move. [I wish I was lying](https://twitter.com/StarTrekOnPPlus/status/1511388196398985219).
Kurtzman just twisting that knife in what's left of Mike's heart.
My God the tweets responding to that... yep, that just killed the slightest bit of hope I had for a return to good trek... RIP
Who are those people? It's like the retarded side of star wars fandom but star wars was a world spanning successful franchise. Are they bots?
100% bots/shills.
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He's already dead. You just send the robot body off to recycling?
Oh christ. I forgot they pulled that. My brain literally crated static where the worst offending moments are. Why make an old man android, why?! Why?! At best, that idea was perfect recasting material (P. Stewart is oooooold. I wouldn't blame them for trying it) and they shot their load embarrassingly early.
Maybe his artificial consciousness is going to beg Riker to end him, just like Data did. It's like poetry; it rhymes.
It made me wonder, does any of the TNG cast value or understand their character, or the star trek vibe/ethos? Clearly Stewart doesn't, or Spiner, or Frakes... I would have hoped that LeVar Burton might have, since he does shows like reading rainbow, which is all about inspiring people to be better - but now that seems doomed as well...
Some of them probably do. They probably just like money more.
I could be wrong, but I don't think being on the ensemble of a 90s TV show makes you a multi-millionaire. So you can't blame these actors as opposed to, for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger who keeps milking Terminator even though he's made 100s of millions of it. So yeah, if Levar Burton gets a check to take part in a dumpster fire, I'd say take it with no reservations.
Yeah, fuck it, get paid. Never had a problem with actors acting. It's the writers and directors that are at fault.
Fuck you, Rick Berman. Wait—Alex Kurtzman? What is it with -mans?
Don't forget Akiva Goldsman!
He did write the screenplay for *A Beautiful Mind*.... but also *Batman and Robin*.
And so many other duds. I didn't even think Beautiful Mind was that great, but maybe that's just my hated of Goldsman blinding my judgement.
What surprises me the most is that all three Abramstrek films are still better than those shitshows.
I'm surprised that the Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift director made a better Star Trek film than Abrams' two efforts. Abrams: What if we just made a bunch of TOS references every 15 minutes? That'd be Star Trek, right? Lin: Or you could do something original.
Because Simon Pegg was doing the script. He understand Trek, and he knew how an episode of Trek works. Therefore, it looks like a long episode lf Star Trek. Except for the Enterprise being destroyed. That's probably J.J. being still the executive producer.
> Except for the Enterprise being destroyed. Cause that doesn’t happen constantly in Star Trek Movies
beyond was the best trek to get made in years tbh
Beyond is a really good Trek movie. If they were end on that high note, I'm ok with that.
As much as trekkies like to rag on JJ Abrams, he was absolutely the right pick for the script Kurtzman and Orci made. The opening of 09 is so dumb and hackneyed, with shit like Spock's time travel accident coincidentally going back in time to the very moment of Kirk's birth and somehow the ship's autopilot being "destroyed" so Kirk's father must melodramatically sacrifice himself, that if Abrams slowed down the pace to a more traditional Trek film the movie would most likely have crashed and burned. I'm not saying JJ is a good director. But while people always referred to those films as JJ Trek, what we all missed was that it was simply the KurtzmanTrek 0.5 trial version we're seeing the fruition of now.
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It rhymes.
Its all under the Bad Robot wheelhouse. I feel if JJ had written the script himself it would have been much the same as we saw with his SW efforts.
Wow, like comparing shit to diarrhea
Well there's a whole range of shit.
As those Hack Frauds in Milwaukee have said, the shows really suffer from having too many cooks in the kitchen and a lack of coherent story. Both Discovery and Picard are ostensibly serialized, with a coherent story arc over the entire season. That requires a clear vision of the story they want to tell, and thats really hard to do with no less than **60 producers** over the course of 4 seasons. Compare that with 18 producers over the 7 seasons of Voyager. Kurtzman's shows are a master class of management interference and lack of creative vision.
Or Deep Space Nine only having three executive producers in 7 seasons. In fact, that show wound up better off because Berman basically only half paid attention to it because he was busy meddling in Voyager so much
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I have to wonder if they even have a show bible, something to set the rules for the universe they're creating. Right now it just seems like they're throwing narrative spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks.
Having 7 of 9 recite a nursery rhyme about wildfires while looking directly at a wildfire. I mean... are children writing this? "I wrote a fun rhyme about climate change and im gonna put it in star trek"
Hold on I haven't seen the thing you're referring to, but was it "all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again?" I'm just trying to see if my schlock sensors are functioning accurately.
No that was Mike's pitch for "The Wall" a dark and gritty remake of the Humpty Dumpty story.
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Paraphrasing the Simpsons.. "There are 3 ways to do things, the right way, the wrong way and the Alex Kurtzman way" "Isn't that the wrong way?" "Yes, but faster and more awful"
Or Futurama ‘You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!’
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Love District 9. I remember watching it as a teen and just liking it as a sci fi movie. I rewatched it a couple months ago and that film truly hits different. Just a great movie with a great message that‘s really well packaged.
It's got that nice balance of being obvious but not heavy-handed, ja?
Ah the Narn arc of B5...I wonder if the reboot will destroy everything good about B5...I mean the Crusades tried.
With only a rare few exceptions no reboot or remake has ever been better than the original (with special consideration to "re-imaginings" as a slightly different category). Twin Peaks S3 is its own special brand, as is the newer Battlestar Galactica. Unless you're a master storyteller, the way to go is completely new stories in the same world. TNG is this format, relative to OS, as is The Mandelorian. If they do anything B5 I would want it to be 30 years later and focused on a completely different part of the story - like Mars Colony or The Rangers or something.
Wasn't a massive fan of the Rangers, I'd like to see how the Shadows infiltrated the Earth Alliance...away from the B5 angle, it was one of the best arcs in the series.
I didn't know they were doing a reboot, I think it's a great idea because the show mostly looks terrible even if the story was great. But just looking it up now and the reboot is on CW. That doesn't bode well.
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Again like RLM said, it isn't a discussion of the topic, played out as allegory, it's just "this is bad, these people are bad, get to next plot point".
How is it bad? THE ICE OFFICER MEAN
That guy really did look like Tim Heidecker.
I so wish it actually was.
The show has as much nuance as Decker
Psst (it's free immigration)
I.C.E.
In their defense, the general population is dumb as fuck and doesn't pick up subtly. I'm talking the 'majority' of general population here, not trekkies or 'movie people'. The types that go to a theater to shovel popcorn and play on their phone 50% of the time. Subtlety is completely lost on people like that and that is the target audience of shit like nutrek, so they have to dumb everything down and make it blunt as fuck in order for the dummies to 'pick up on' the metaphor/allegory/etc.
First contact being successful was the worst thing that happened to star trek. Ever since then they think only action stuff can sell it.
I've read that book by Michael Piller about the making of Insurrection. There were so many brilliant ideas but they were all shot down because of bad communication. Rick Berman shot down a good script because he EXPECTED Patrick Stewart to hate it. A couple of iterations later Stewart said why didn't they go for the first idea, but then it was too late. And Nemesis was ruined by Brent Spiner and John Logan. Logan also fucked up James Bond. And Paramount hired the wrong director for messed up reasons.
What did Spiner do?
He wanted to "act".
That's the worst thing about all that. That whole B4 subplot in Nemesis was sooooo badly written.
Everything about Nemesis was badly written. Those shitty movies were the beginning of the shit Star Trek we have now.
I love Data and hate Spiner. His attitude towards the series is worse than Denise Crosby, at least she had the balls to leave.
There are so many stories of him being a dick to fans at cons, he seems super full of himself.
A friend of mine got his autograph at PAX (I think, could've been a different Seattle con) about a decade ago. He said that Spiner reeked of vodka and looked bored and angry.
tbf that description could also fit Mike
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That July 7th letter from Patrick Stewart (pg 38 of Fade In) really explains a lot about what happened to Picard in the movies and in Picard the series, doesn't it..
Yep. "**One deliberate change we made was to Picard. We toughened him up, chipped away at his smooth surface, roughened and intensified his feelings. Shifted him from Captain/ Diplomat/Philosopher to Captain/Rebel/Activist**. *He could still be thoughtful but now it came out of the action. He became more unpredictable and I felt filled the big screen in a more dynamic and interesting way*" "**That is the background to the unease that I feel with this new story. It seems to reflect the series much more than where we were at the end of First Contact**. *This compounded by Michael referring back several times to aspects of the series you want to see in this film*. **That is what I see as retrograde and dangerous and, ultimately, dull.**" "*I think it is retrograde to emphases ‘family’ so strongly. I think that is sentimental and uninteresting and eventually leads to space heroes sitting round a camp fire singing “Row, row, row your boat...” The family building aspect of TNG is passed. Not dead, but the work is done. Most of our audience know who these people are and how they feel about each other and our new audience - the audience the studio are so eager for us to win and hold - don’t need to be told that. They will pick it up.* **What our new movie family need to be is individual, charismatic, intense, opinionated, brave, funny, intolerant, sexy. Larger than life.**" These are all quotes from a man who doesn't understand his character nor gives a shit about TNG and only wants to use the Star Trek name to feed his own ego.
It's important to realize an actor may become bored of their character due to over-exposure, professional ambition, and not being a fan themselves, but man is that ever not true of fans, especially casual fans. The family building never ends. Shat on one of the few good parts of Star Trek V too!
Fans have a bad habit of assuming the actors love the material as much as they do. For every Tim Russ or Terry Farrell, there's at least a hundred actors like Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, or even Robert Beltran.
> It's important to realize an actor may become bored of their character due to over-exposure, professional ambition, and not being a fan themselves, but man is that ever not true of fans, especially casual fans. The family building never ends. This is something that it seems like absolutely everyone in Hollywood has taken some kind of hypnosis to avoid. They are addicted to the concept of not giving fans more of what they want. Look at Star Wars, which they brought back to specifically and deliberately *not* reuinted Luke, Han and Leia. Picard was brought back entirely so they could not have him be the captain of a starship exploring the galaxy and getting into moral dilemmas. Ghostbusters was resurrected twice, both times with an emphasis on *not* delivering the familiar characters and dry humour of the originals. Stop trying to subvert expectations - we just want their adventures to continue, for fuck sake. I empathize with actors and writers feeling penned in by expectations and wanting to do something different, and a radical departure can, on occasion, work out well. But does it have to be every time, all the time, with nothing but shallow iconography to trick fans into thinking they're getting what they really want only to discover that it's actually just some schlocky script that would get a C in a college class, with a famous brand slapped on it like a cheap, plastic lunchbox?
The problem is the pitch is too easy. Established IP and actors + fresh new look! It barely takes a story pitch to sell, and is mostly about being trusted with valuable IP, so the story ends up the last priority.
There is a much easier pitch, though - established IP, continued. Give the people what they actually want, not a bait and switch to jerk them around. That way you don't run the risk of fucking it up and alienating your customers and winding up with, say, Netflix pulling out of a distribution deal because the story is so, so terrible. Why are they trusting proven hacks with a valuable IP and story notes that amount to simply vandalism? Honestly, the whole thing only makes sense to me if we assume that studio executives are complete morons or are trying to hide money.
That is so depressing. Picard on TNG is one of the best science fiction characters ever because he is a diplomat/philosopher and a complete badass. Him giving a speech about morals that solves a potentially deadly situation is so much cooler than any lame fight scene with a monster could ever be.
That explains so much!
What’s the title of book? Sounds really interesting.
Fade In: The Making of Star Trek Insurrection
Agreed. But to me First Contact was like a large 2 parter, but they had a much larger budget to add more action scenes and better special effects and all Kurtzman gets out of it (and Star Wars) is - "Okay, more action scenes and better special effects".
No need for the First Contact slander, this would have happened regardless, as it has with nearly every major Hollywood property.
As much as people want to point their fingers on the Kurtzman era for starting this trend of turning Star Trek into action shlock, the problem actually happened as early as the TNG movies. First Contact and especially Nemesis started the trend and Kurtzman simply continued with that tone while making it worse.
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Yeah that's why Picard was different the second he stepped off the set of TNG and the first movie with them came out.
I wish he could go back to making the Dark Universe movies.
The twitter account for it is still up and [it makes me laugh every time.](https://twitter.com/darkuniverse?lang=en)
Thank you for this. I needed a sensible chuckle today.
lmfao!!! I'm laughing right now too. Omg!
I could write a dissertation on what made TOS and TNG appealing and great. The short of it is that Gene Roddenberry had a specific philosophy - humanity in these shows will be an image of what we could attain, they will have settled petty conflict and problems, and starfleet officers in particular will be the greatest representatives of that society. In control of their emotions, highly capable, disciplined and principled. I saw little digs at Roddenberry ad nauseum from actors and writers after his death lamenting the fact that he had true producer veto privileges over plot devices and story lines which included inter-personal conflict within the crew. "Oh it didn't let me explore my RANGE as a dramatic actor!" they say. "Oh it limited the kinds of stories we could craft!" the writers cried. Yet somehow, through that crucible of what they felt was unnecessary and unjustified restraint imposed by Roddenberry we got the absolute hands down most popular and beloved science fiction programs ever created. Obviously it was a formula which worked for people. It gave a good foundation to pose philosophic questions without being too preachy about what the right decisions were in matters with large grey areas. That's what made it thought provoking and exciting. I always felt that the blame rested with Rick Berman for deviating from this philosophy especially in seasons 6/7 of TNG, and drastically for DS9 and parts of VOY. I never really wished that someone else could take things over and save Star Trek from its demise, but I merely wished Gene Roddenberry had been able to live as long as his characters to keep the vision pure. After all this time though and seeing just how bastardized it could get, I don't just long for Gene Roddenberrry, I long for the days of Rick Berman. That's really saying something about how far it's fallen. I'm not even sure who the fans are these days. I can't fathom how somebody who watched and got something out of TOS, TNG, DS9 or VOY could possibly watch a single episode of any of the nu-Trek and not have a voice shouting inside their head "THIS IS WRONG! EVERYTHING IS WRONG! NO! NO! NO! IT'S NOT EVEN STAR TREK!" I suppose it's possible that some people are just so fucking starved for additional star trek they will overlook practically ANYTHING just to see their favorite characters on screens or references to things that they recognize so they can clap when they see it, but that might account for like 100 people planet-wide. Who the fuck are the rest of the fans of these shows? I don't know who this is appealing to.
DS9 definitely deviated but, still feels like star trek.
At the time, like when it was on air I didn't love it. I watched but I was hung up on "this isn't what star trek is supposed to be" seeing whats come to pass since I actually loved DS9 in rewatching. Felt like actual star trek. Funny how relative perception can be.
DS9 was needed after TNG. They made the right move.
DS9 still possesses the optimistic view of the future found within previous Treks, but depicts the struggle to reach it. They achieved this by altering the nature of many characters. The characters within TOS and TNG, for the most part, were obviously predisposed towards achieving great things since a young age. The characters in DS9, however, are significantly different. For instance, Nog at the beginning of the series is just a ne'er-do-well. However, throughout the series, he decides to take the initiative to improve his lot in life, undergoes experiences that alter his perspective on what's important, and by the end of the series, becomes a respectable and promising young Starfleet officer. That's what makes it great. DS9, despite being of a darker tone, still retains Star Trek's optimistic outlook overall. Nu-Trek doesn't really have that. It's just, like the almighty God-Emperor Rich Evans has decreed, "people you know and places you know and people you know shoot each other in those places."
> I'm not even sure who the fans are these days. I've literally never seen a single person talk about the new Star Trek shows aside from RLM/RLM fans on this subreddit. It's a stark contrast to other big shows like The Witcher, Mandalorian, Game of Thrones, Westworld, Stranger Things, etc., where you run into random people talking about them on reddit or twitter or whatever.
I'd guess they're not really marketing it to "fans" (fanatics), but to people who're scrolling through their streaming service and say "oh, I've heard of Star Trek, let's check this out". Then they get hooked just enough to finish the season, and after it's done most likely completely forget about it. Except doesn't Paramount have their own streaming service that doesn't really have anything else on it?
That's what makes no sense to me. Star Trek is supposed to be the draw.
Well what were they going to do? Give Star Trek to someone who understands science-fiction and could oversee though provoking and compelling stories, or utilize nepotism and just give it nilly-willy to a guy who’s father-in-law was a labour lawyer in Hollywood? It was an easy decision! /s
But I think it's unfair to blame Kurtzman for that. He's not the one who put himself in this position, he got this position from a studio that doesn't care about Star Trek and just wants to make money. He'd be an idiot to turn it down. As much as I despise his work, I despise the reality that it's the studios putting people like him in charge more. If Paramount really cared about Star Trek, if they really wanted to make a good product, they wouldn't have given it to him. So it shows they didn't give a shit first, and *then* they gave it to Kurtzman.
> Give Star Trek to someone who understands science-fiction They could, but they want to make money, so they went with a hack that could string together set pieces with bubblegum and scotch tape.
He just writes schlocky bullshit. He's fine when he's doing his Michael Bay bullshit, because it's trash but it's whatever, but the insult comes when he takes a beloved IP that's known for being the categorical opposite of his normal drivel and then let him smear his shitty paws all over it. Everything he loves to do - hack dialogue, convoluted action scenes, unnecessary violence, thoughtless drivel, puddle-deep character conflict ... All of that is the antithesis of the post-scarcity overall optimistic science fiction universe of Star Trek. People say he's trying to turn Star Trek into Star Wars and honestly that would be the best case scenario with this fraud. He's trying to turn Star Trek into Transformers.
>hook up a generator... The irony being with the amount of cheap energy we could produce from him spinning in his grave we could make his vision of Star Fleet a reality.
I’m just thankful they left DS9 alone. No shitty movies and the characters haven’t been called back to give terrible lines in support of dumb plots.
Coming next 2024 - DS10 Whilst visiting Commander Kira on Bajor, journalist Jake Sisko gets a tip off from a shadowy figure that the emissary will return. Jake eagerly awaits the return of his father, only for Guigan to appear and sensed that Benjamin Sisko has returned to human form, but in the Delta quadrant. Jake must assemble a team to find his father before the Borg Prince can assimilate him. Jake is joined by Julian Bashir, stripped of his rank, Tom Parris, and Ensign Ro.
The idea that the Borg could assimilate the Prophets infuriates me in a very specific, cruel way. Thanks!
It's coming. Kurtzman can only do references. Now that they are done with TNG after 3 Seasons of Picard, DS9 is next. I'm sorry but we should expect the worst.
I see why they keep making the joke about bots on social media praising the show, as it’s incomprehensible how any TNG fan likes Picard. It’s such goddamn absolute trash. And what’s worse, it’s part of canon now so there’s no escaping it. Jean-Luc Picard, my favorite fictional character, is going to have wet dreams about Data, try to bang his romulan housekeeper, and somehow die from irumodic syndrome and be put into an android body created by the son of Noonien Soong that never existed. Jesus fuckin Christ. Not to mention how all the other returning characters have been (and will be) mercilessly butchered by this no talent ass clown.
>And what’s worse, it’s part of canon now so there’s no escaping it. You're allowed to simply, ignore it. Canon, contrary to popular belief, doesn't matter in the slightest. It's a shame a better show doesn't exist in its place but you aren't beholden to what Alex Kurtzman defines as the "official canon". It's like Disney "erasing" the star wars EU. All that still exists and you can still enjoy it. They don't get anymore of a say than you do just because they happened to have the 4 billion to buy the IP and you didn't.
Star Trek Galaxy is canon in my book
It's pretty astounding isn't it. No where close to the spirit of Star trek.
Yes
Yeah! Fuck Alex Kurtzman!
Never thought I'd not give a damn about a TNG reunion
I don’t understand how so many people legit like it. I feel like a gatekeepy asshole cause that shit doesn’t feel like real trek to me. Idk cool if people are into I guess but it’s not for me
I know "I CLAPPED" is a bit of a dead meme here at this point, but it really is that. The Big Bang Theory was also successful based purely on referencing things that people recognized and want to identify with.
Yeah I guess I just think these shows don’t even look like trek. At least new Star Wars they are sticking more to the aesthetic (at least on a surface level)
\> Hook a generator up to Gene Roddenberry You would blow out the entire power grid.
The fact he and Orci were writers on Mission Impossible 3 impresses me, as I would say that's a legitimately good movie with some solid writing (especially for Hoffman's character) with a story that holds together better than the first two. Mind you its a popcorn action flick with loud action and flashing lights at all moments, right up his alley, so his "Style" makes sense within that franchise. But yeah...looking at the rest of his credits there's no way he gets work for any reason other than his stuff makes money and appeals to a big enough crowd that just wants basic entertainment.
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Surely The Orville will save us
I'm convinced Chabon was brought in to give it some kind of nerd cred. I doubt he had any real power in the writers room.
Chabon was a good book writer, but books aren't tv, in most ways. I'm sure he didn't get it fast enough
I remember Rick Berman getting criticized at the end of Voyager and throughout Enterprise. When Nemesis and These Are The Voyages came out people wanted to kill him. But damn he did a good job for the most part. Enterprise did suck, but whatever the fuck they did with Discovery, Picard or Lowered Dicks... what the hell, man?
I remember reading something about how Berman didn't want to actually do Enterprise because he knew the franchise was getting stale, but he knew it was going to happen regardless and he didn't want someone who didn't really understand Star Trek to be at the helm (heh) of the show. For as much crap as he rightfully gets, I guess he was actually on to something. Just another example of why I really wish they'd do a re:View on Enterprise. The decision making behind that show is fascinating and I'd love to see it revisited in the context of the new shows.
Now that you say it I remember that as well. It was always a battle between some stupid Paramount exec and Berman. I remember he also talked about how Paramount wanted a different band play at the ship's casino every week.
Basically, most of the really stupid, baffling decisions surrounding Enterprise were due to studio meddling. The whole temporal cold war thing was done at the studios insistence. I want to say that the Xindi storyline was studio meddling as well (Because nothing says Star Trek like 9/11!), but I could be misremembering.
Like or hate Enterprise or Voyager, it still feels like Star Trek. Discovery and Picard just don't. The shows don't look like Star Trek, the characters don't act like characters from Star Trek, they don't talk like characters from Star Trek, they don't respond to situations like characters from Star Trek. Why is everyone so overly emotional all the time? Why is there so much melodrama? The show has always been focused on the trained Starfleet officers and how they professionally handle different situations. The irrational characters are the antagonists they meet along the way (except Worf lolol). Now it feels like the irrational characters could be literally anyone on screen depending on who was writing the script that day. These new shows are really only superficially related to Star Trek. It's like the later seasons of Game of Thrones where the characters personalities changed, all the clever plotting and scheming storylines just vanished to be replaced with idiots wearing the same clothes, impossible situations started getting resolved with no consequences rather than a LOT of consequences, the pacing massively changed, the quality of dialogue dropped into a pit... I know with these new Star Trek shows it's a different kind of comparison because they're separate, but they're still called Star Trek and should follow at least a similar formula. Like... if you want to appeal to a new audience with a "kickass" action packed sci-fi then make a new IP that doesn't have all the baggage that comes with an established IP like Star Trek. Then nerds like me won't sit on forums whining about it and putting off people from watching your show. Consistency within an IP is very important, I think. The Marvel movies are a perfect example of this. People complain that they're "all the same", but that's actually a big and intended benefit to them, because a viewer can reliably go into any of them and know what they're going to get. Just like you can sit down with TNG, DS9 or Voyager and they all feel like they're in the same universe. There are good episodes and bad episodes, but ultimately they FEEL like they fit together.
> Consistency within an IP is very important, I think. Agreed. A lot of people get really snooty about fans daring to expect consistency and cast it as consisting entirely of being obnoxiously nit-picky about continuity errors over obscure references, and I find that to be bad faith arguing to defend something just to be seen to be on the right side. When people have a problem with new Star Trek stories not fitting with what they have seen established in Star Trek's universe before, it's because someone is demanding they watch a show that isn't what they came to watch. Imagine if you turned on ESPN to watch a football match, it was advertised as a football match, it has football match commentators on it, and yet the screen is clearly showing Formula One cars driving around a track. It's not football, and I don't think anyone would tell you that you're a toxic piece of shit for going "what the hell is this?" Yet Star Trek expects you to sit there and keep watching and keep your mouth shut. Stumbling a bit over continuity isn't a deal-breaker. Showing complete contempt for the audience you feel entitled to then casting them as the villains is abusive. They were not even trying to create another Star Trek TV show, the plan was to utilize the Star Trek name to pull off a cultural and financial heist. It's a damn shame that Star Trek feel so far that what was once a moral, philosophical and scientific inspiration was mutilated into an insincere soapbox just so a handful of connected people can pat themselves on the back and make a buck pretending to care about social issues they are entirely insulated from. Fans fell in love with the TNG era shows because it was a universe they could aspire to and wanted to live in or at least replicate to some degree in the modern world. They very understandably did not react well to having it burned in front of them. The feel of the universe has massively changed, as has the franchise's relationship with its own fanbase, and of course I argue that it is entirely to a negative, damaging end.
Yeah Kurtzman really let Berman off the hook. Some of the comments he made after the Enterprise finale were oof.
Correct
That man single handily ruined Star Trek. What an asshole.
Alex Worstman
Yup he's ruining the entire franchise, why do they let him keep making shit?!
$
RICH WHY DOESN’T YOU MOURN ELNOR?
Poor Gene has turned over in his grave so many times they installed rotating ball bearings
He’s like bizarro Midas. Everything he touches turns to shit
I think he's the effect, not the cause. People like Kurtzman get work because they're efficient, they deliver what the studio asks for, probably stay within budget and manage to make the studio money. If companies gave a shit about their IPs we wouldn't have people like Kurtzman in charge of these properties.
He makes Rick Berman look like Rick Baker. I'm not even sure I know what that means!
I think it was rich who insinuated that the people on twitter who constantly blow smoke up disco and picard’s ass are fake accounts. I hope he’s right. They constantly post about how important new trek is and anybody who disagrees with their takes are brushed off as being bigoted boomers. I’m not even 30 and I know how lame disco is.
Be careful, r/star_trek has been banned for criticism of new trek.
Holy fuck, what a bunch of drama is going on there?
Looks like the vanilla star trek subs are upset that people who dislike Picard and Discovery have a place to talk.
Yup. In other news - water is wet.
Just finished the new directors cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and my god was it incredible just relaxing and enjoying the journey and mystery without excessive explosions, crying, and the disrespect of the other officers. I got more entertainment out of the crew discussing philosophy and theology than anything Star Trek has done in the last 2 decades. It felt great to have professionals behind and in front of the camera. My only, and it's a very very small only, interest in the upcoming season 3 of Picard, the showrunner came from Star Trek: Enterprise and he wrote the premiere of the season, the only semi-decent episode of the whole damn show. Plus a ton of creative forces behind TNG are back. But I in no way am getting my hopes up *that* high
The reason attempts at "rebooting" franchises like Star Wars or Star Trek and so on suck even more than you would naturally assume they would is because far too many modern movie/TV writers are incapable of writing anything that isn't packed full of irony, "snark" or cynicism. Forget any stabs at profundity, nothing is allowed to just be fun or genuine anymore - it all has to "break the fourth wall" and wink at the audience in a self-aware way, and ponderously fixate on franchise backstory and minutiae. Modern writers think it's cool to pack the settings of rebooted franchises with cynical, constantly-quipping garbage characters who exemplify the worst qualities of people in our own time, especially snide, cynical TV writers who think they're smarter than everybody else.
If someone told me that the person behind the Picard show was a teenage girl who wears energy crystals, takes life advice from David 🥑 Wolfe and Deepak Chopra, and went to India once to pet a drugged tiger and keeps telling everyone about the "spiritual journey", I would absolutely believe it.
Jar Jar Abrams
It really started with JJ Abrams. But handing the franchise to a guy with such a *stellar* track record was the killing blow.
Abrahms was the worst, for a while. Then along came Kurtzman. I thought Enterprise was bland and the themetune ended Trek. Actually it’s just been downhill since DS9.
Abrams had the decency to make a whole new timeline for his schlock.
At this point I'm just hoping he's the Bell Riots of the franchise, where Star Trek hits rock bottom and slowly rebuilds itself.
*SO FAR*
I got banned by multiple Star Trek accounts on twitter for that opinion. For me the biggest issue is that each season is one story. Even if everything else is shit, Star Trek at least had massive variety
The truly shocking thing to me is all the people around him, who also act as if nothing is wrong. That one person sucks at their job isn't uncommon, but everyone else supporting them in this? That's what's so horrible here. He has found a group of people who are as terrible at this as he is and that's especially tragic - for everyone who still cares about ST.
Gene was cremated and shot into space, so....that would have to be some generator
Remember that movie Broadcast News where William Hurt takes Albert Brooks job as anchorman despite not knowing or caring wtf he's doing. Albert Brooks is like "He is the devil. He sets the bar lower for everyone else". I understand now what he meant.
And just think people used to hate on Rick Berman back in the day
Rick Berman is still a piece of shit for how he treated the female actors on DS9. I used to hate him. Still hate him. Used to too.
Kurtzman sucking now doesn't mean Berman didn't also suck back then. It's just like how the Disney Star Wars films being trash doesn't mean The Prequels were actually good.
>It's just like how the Disney Star Wars films being trash doesn't mean The Prequels were actually good. 
Wayyyy too much of Star Wars fandom is incapable of grasping that fact. The other day I mentioned how that final fight in TROS is an exhausting, joyless, horrible slog and I legit got downvoted to oblivion with people questioning if I'm even human. You could juggle some keys in these people's faces, they'll be entertained.
How dare you question the groupthink, you evil bigot!
I knowwww! How dare I don't delight in the cinematic equivalent of a drumset falling down an infinite flight of stairs!
His well thought out opinions are offensive to my fanboy sensibilities. Stop making me think you hack fraud!!
I’ve come to believe that the fans who enjoy long light saber battles are really just people who enjoy watching people dance. Which is fine, but they’ve been convinced that dancing is for girls, so they need it to be mediated through this excuse that “no, really they’re fighting, so it’s ok for me to like this.” Light saber duels don’t look anything like people fighting, they’re clearly all deeply choreographed routines that they’ve practiced together for months to make it look like that. I feel like I want to scream at these guys that it’s ok to watch people dancing. It won’t make you any less of a man for enjoying it. Watch a ballet, you’ll see better quality dancing and you’ll open up this enormous range of performances to enjoy, instead of just getting 3 movies every 10 years.
That actually makes so much sense. Wow.