Star Trek Discovery Gets Delayed After Losing Showrunner Bryan Fuller (variety.com) 191
It looks like we're going to have to wait even longer for CBS's upcoming Star Trek Discovery series, as the production's showrunner, Bryan Fuller, is stepping back. He will however still remain the show's executive producer. Variety reports: The decision was made late last week to hand the day-to-day showrunning reins to "Star Trek" exec producers Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts as "Discovery" gears up for the start of filming next month and a May 2017 premiere date. Fuller, who will remain an executive producer, will still be involved in breaking stories, and the show will continue to follow his vision for the universe that this latest "Trek" series will inhabit. Writer-director Akiva Goldsman is also expected to join "Discovery" in a top creative role. He's envisioned as serving as producing support for Berg and Harberts, Fuller and exec producer Alex Kurtzman as they juggle the demands of the series that CBS is counting on to be the marquee selling point for subscriptions to its CBS All Access SVOD service. Sources said there had been some strain between "Star Trek" producer CBS Television Studios and Fuller over the progress of production on the show, as Fuller is also juggling the final weeks of shooting and post-production duties on Starz's upcoming drama "American Gods" and prepping a reboot of "Amazing Stories" for NBC. Fuller has penned the first two scripts for "Discovery" and has hammered out the broader story arc and mythology for the new "Trek" realm. But it became clear that he couldn't devote the amount of time needed for "Discovery" to make its premiere date and with production scheduled to start in Toronto next month.
Easy win so load show up with friends (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that the director wasn't playing ball with their 20th century ways and they replaced him with someone more "controllable" let's see how that works out.
If we are lucky the show is run by people even better at avoiding such crap. If we aren't we will get a half crap show that is loaded up with acting has-beens from the last 20 years who were owed favours by various CBS executives, hack writers who weren't even good in their Full House days, and editorial urine tasting contests where executives say, "NO NO NO to much science. We need people talking about their emotions. Let's see if we can get Oprah to dress up like we got Woopie to do."
Then the few union seniors who do make the show don't want to do star dreck (that is what they will call it) but they want to make some crap 80's drama like LA Law. So they will make LA Law in space. That was their first Union gig, and they haven't changed one bit since.
Re:Easy win so load show up with friends (Score:5, Informative)
"CBS All Access" should tell you everything you need to know about this show. It's not network TV where everyone can watch it, it's not cable TV, it's not big budget premium channel TV, it's not big budget netflix/amazon streaming originals, it is a network TV channel's obscure streaming site that they are trying to lure nerds into paying for.
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CBS All Access" ... is a network TV channel's obscure streaming site
It's not really obscure. They already have about a million subscribers [theverge.com] and it may already profitable [fiercecable.com], though they don't seem to have released individual numbers for the HBO and CBS streaming services so it's impossible to tell. The new content will almost certainly help increase those numbers.
For decades there have been people saying that wanted cable TV to let them buy individual channels instead of a bundle because the increased cost for the handful of channels they want would still be cheaper than the
Re:Easy win so load show up with friends (Score:5, Interesting)
Horse shit. It costs about as much as Netflix and all it offers is the CBS library. I already own all the Star Trek that there is, and can watch it any time without streaming on their shit service. What else am I going to watch? Murder She Wrote?
$7/month (or $10/month if I don't want to be forced to watch unskippable commercials) for one show, as opposed to all the content I can get on Netflix... fuck that.
The commercials again... UNSKIPPABLE. This isn't what the consumer wanted, this is what the network executives wanted.
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Which is of course why all the networks are ensuring more and more that you can't get all their content on Netflix anymore, and forcing Netflix to turn themselves into just another network.
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The only horse shit here is your implication that I argued that people want commercials. I did nothing of the sort.
People have said for years that they wanted to be able to buy cable channels a la carte rather than as a bundle and those channels have commercials. This is basically what those people asked for and about a million of those people have subscribed.
You aren't one of those people because you hate commercials, but that doesn't change the facts that I presented. Believe it or not, you do not spea
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CBS All Access" ... is a network TV channel's obscure streaming site
It's not really obscure. They already have about a million subscribers [theverge.com] and it may already profitable [fiercecable.com], though they don't seem to have released individual numbers for the HBO and CBS streaming services so it's impossible to tell. The new content will almost certainly help increase those numbers.
For decades there have been people saying that wanted cable TV to let them buy individual channels instead of a bundle because the increased cost for the handful of channels they want would still be cheaper than the bundled price for 300 channels that they don't want. This gives them what they asked for and it turns out that about a million people weren't just talking out of their ass.
It's pointless to talk about numbers we don't actually know so I'll just address the fact that CBS is not a cable channel, they are a national network of OTA TV stations that anyone in the US can already watch for free. You can even buy a cheap USB TV tuner and record it if you want to watch something later. The only way I'd ever consider paying for it is if I were living abroad but they say they restrict access to only the US and I don't know how much VPN wack-a-mole they do.
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need to also have it on showtime.
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You could just find out what's happening on other websites that have better insight.
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I just read the linked Wikipedia article. Apparently, they've already decided that the protagonist is a "female minority". So... that was one of the writer/producers' overriding concern about the new series, I guess? Making a social statement instead of just finding a great actor to carry the series? Well, Star Trek has always been an ensemble affair, and has been reasonably progressive in matters of casting without being too distracting about it (mostly), so hopefully it won't matter too much.
I never r
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Wikipedia appears to be trolling you. The original article [aintitcool.com] that the paragraph is based on does not mention the character's minority status at all. Someone added that bit themselves, presumably to anger readers like your good self.
What it does say is that they had Majel Barrett's character in the original series pilot in mind. It's a real shame they got rid of that character, she was actually one of the most compelling and interesting in that show. It seems like Riker took a lot of inspiration from her too.
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I wasn't angry. I'd say I was just a bit disappointed.
Star Trek was always attractive for me because of it's positive outlook on the potential future of humanity, where we manage to overcome many of our baser instincts and natural prejudices. I was hoping that Star Trek, of all series, had become post-gender and post-racial in at least its casting as well as in the fictional universe. It had been moving that way for several decades, it seemed to me, overcoming casting barriers with each new series. Wel
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So... that was one of the writer/producers' overriding concern about the new series, I guess? Making a social statement instead of just finding a great actor to carry the series?
Right. Gene Roddenberry certainly never used the show for social statements.
Re:Easy win so load show up with friends (Score:5, Informative)
In the old Trek series the humans were colorblind, and gender issues were pretty much ignored. I liked that. It was a bright future where everyone moved past that shit. I will not be shocked though if in Discovery in every episode we have to hear the captain explain that she's a strong independent wymynz what don't need no man as she triumphs over institutionalized discrimination against strong independent wymynz what don't need no man.
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In the old Trek series the humans were colorblind
I suspected as much - it explains the uniforms.
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Which was a single episode, was an allegory for apartheid, and in the first season of TNG (the vast majority of which was crap) and no one liked it.
Just saying, Janeway's defining character traits were her curiosity and her hard-assed rigid adherence to rules and standards. But the way character writing has gone today half the time a female character's defining character trait is "woman."
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TOS was Tokenism Trek. Get over it.
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TOS was Tokenism Trek. Get over it.
Hey. If there's anything I've learned from South Park and Eric Cartman is that Token's Life Matters [teepublic.com]
Re: Easy win so load show up with friends (Score:3)
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Even worse, when it does blow up and their turd of a streaming service dies, they won't see it as their clinging to the old model, but as categorical proof that streaming is a bad idea and that Netflix's days a
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For the first time in my life, I did not watch the most recent Trek movie. Enough is enough, and fans should grow balls and stop watching crap foisted on you.
If you like it, bon apetit.
I will watch this one's apparent premeire on TV, but will not watch it on CBS All Access (it won't come close to overlapping a Big Brother live feed, and in no way will I pay to watch commercials in any case.)
They tell you upfront it isn't going to be good (Score:2, Interesting)
So why worry
Set 10 years before the events of the original Star Trek series,[2] the series follows the crew of the USS Discovery as they discover new worlds and civilizations, while exploring the franchise's signature contemporary themes.[3][4] The season-long storyline revolves around "an incident and an event in Star Trek history that's been talked about but never been explored".[2]
Number One: A female minority character serving as a lieutenant commander aboard the Discovery. The decision to not make the character a starship captain, like previous Star Trek series' protagonists, was made "to see a character from a different perspective on the starship—one who has a different dynamic relationships with a captain, with subordinates, it gave us richer context".[2] The decision to call her 'Number One' was made in honor of the character of the same name portrayed by Majel Barrett in the original Star Trek pilot "The Cage". When the character was first pitched to CBS, she was to only be called Number One in the series, but her real name will ultimately be revealed before the end of the first season.[6]
They made their priority pushing diversity as the theme and put the science fiction in the back. If you want a tv show about freakish aliens pushing diversity point your browser at a San Francisco Web Cam, no need to subscribe to CBS.
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Is having a female character really "pushing diversity"? Aside from anything else they have had a female captain (Janeway) and female fist officer (T'Pol) before anyway, so it's not even new.
What could be interesting is to see if they mention the fact that apparently by Kirk's time there were no female captains and little opportunity to become one. In the episode Turnabout Intruder it's stated that women can't become captains for some unspecified reason. Star Trek Continues tackled the issue in its most rec
Re:They tell you upfront it isn't going to be good (Score:5, Insightful)
No, having a female captain (Janeway) isn't pushing diversity. Neither is having a black station commander (Sisko). UNLESS this is their main qualification and you get it paraded out every single episode how awesome it is that Janeway is a woman and that Sisko is a black guy. Because then it becomes a nuisance.
What made Star Trek great was that these things were exactly treated as non-issues. Like, say, in the future, we consider it ridiculous that we even have to mention that women can command ships or that black people hold power on stations. Even TOS had an alien as the second in command (and admittedly, it was made a theme far more often than necessary).
But what made the shows that had "minority bosses" great was that it was treated as normal, and, lo and behold, it was normal for the viewers. Remember anyone saying that a woman can't do that and that Janeway could command her ship was "unrealistic"? I don't. The only thing unrealistic about that women was her hair, what kind of futuristic concrete hairspray did she put onto that hairdo that it NEVER moved, no matter the damage to the ship?
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I mostly agree, the Federation was post-racial and post-feminist for the most part.
Trek has always pushed diversity though, e.g. the first on-screen interracial kiss. Sisko occasionally mentioned race as an issue, e.g. when they had that 1950s hollodeck program because of course in the real 1950s America black people were second class citizens. In the future though, race was never an issue.
Having a woman in charge was just completely natural though, I don't recall it ever being an issue.
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Exactly, and that it never was an issue actually was the strongest statement they could make: It's so normal, we needn't point it out.
That's one hell of a powerful statement.
Re:They tell you upfront it isn't going to be good (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that Star Trek original episode in which the crew encounters two survivors of a race which had one half of their body pitch black, the other half pure white. They stated to have killed each other in a "race war". And so they get asked why, since they were the same people. And to you, the viewer, they did look alike. The revelation: one of them was black on the left and white on the right; the other the other way around.
The beauty of that: you, the viewer, in all likelihood did not even notice that their colours were reversed until you got told so. Very poignant, and you shared the utter astonishment of the Enterprise crew that this was an issue at all.
Now, THAT is how you make a point about racism instead of these muh diversity officer appointments.
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And to you, the viewer, they did look alike. The revelation: one of them was black on the left and white on the right; the other the other way around.
The beauty of that: you, the viewer, in all likelihood did not even notice that their colours were reversed until you got told so. Very poignant, and you shared the utter astonishment of the Enterprise crew that this was an issue at all.
I saw that episode for the first time when I was about 6 years old--about a year after I learned what the WHITE ONLY/COLORED ONLY signs were all about.
It still comes back to me whenever I encounter racism.
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That was indeed one of the best (if not the best) TOS episode. Very powerful, very well written, and I also remember how I saw it the first time, I did actually notice the difference in their faces but couldn't imagine that this was the reason for their mutual hunt, it was so silly, pointless and insane.
Still is.
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No, having a female captain (Janeway) isn't pushing diversity. Neither is having a black station commander (Sisko). UNLESS this is their main qualification and you get it paraded out every single episode how awesome it is that Janeway is a woman and that Sisko is a black guy. Because then it becomes a nuisance.
What made Star Trek great was that these things were exactly treated as non-issues. Like, say, in the future, we consider it ridiculous that we even have to mention that women can command ships or that black people hold power on stations. Even TOS had an alien as the second in command (and admittedly, it was made a theme far more often than necessary).
But what made the shows that had "minority bosses" great was that it was treated as normal, and, lo and behold, it was normal for the viewers. Remember anyone saying that a woman can't do that and that Janeway could command her ship was "unrealistic"? I don't. The only thing unrealistic about that women was her hair, what kind of futuristic concrete hairspray did she put onto that hairdo that it NEVER moved, no matter the damage to the ship?
DS9 had some great episodes that focused on issues of race and gender but I'll agree that what made their typical approach to diversity great was making it seem normal.
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What made Star Trek great was that these things were exactly treated as non-issues. Like, say, in the future, we consider it ridiculous that we even have to mention that women can command ships or that black people hold power on stations. Even TOS had an alien as the second in command (and admittedly, it was made a theme far more often than necessary).
Well said. Roddenberry's optimistic view of the future is the reason most often cited when people talk about the appeal of ST:TOS.
Trek, in its original run, was adept at tipping the sacred cows of gender, ethnic, and political identity (Uhura, Sulu/Uhura, and Chekov, respectively).
But I think you missed one sacred cow by dismissing the role Spock played in Roddenberry's attack on societal mores. Roddenberry wanted to skewer religious sensibilities as well cultural ones, so he gave one character green sk
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In Star Trek: Voyager, the character striving for humanity was the Doctor. Also Seven of Nine, but the Doctor was definitely the outsider. By the time the show Voyager came around, half-Klingon wasn't really news and simply made portraying the internal struggles of the character B'elanna easier (since everybody has internal struggles) when it came up. It wasn't a huge deal that she was half-anything. The Doctor's programming to resemble a human and act similar to a human, as well as Seven of Nine's Borgness
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Not to mention, he was supposed to be red instead of green. It was nixed because it didn't work in black-and-white (it would have looked like he was wearing blackface or something).
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Perfectly said.
Just to add, it's interesting that Star Trek was both post-racial and extremely racist at the same time. Yes, the humans didn't even notice they were different colors or genders. But every Klingon's a warrior, every Vulcan's a scientist or diplomat, ever Ferengi is a greedy weasel, etc. And sometimes the plot would center around the struggles of a character who didn't fit their racial stereotype.
It would be nice if they would make a new Star Trek series about exploration, discovery, science f
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No one is saying that men and women are the same. When we talk about equality we're talking about neither being superior to the other.
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No one is saying that men and women are the same. When we talk about equality we're talking about neither being superior to the other.
Not to quibble, but one IS superior to the other, depending on the function required. In general, male humans evolved for a higher peak load, whereas females evolved for a lower peak load, but better endurance, all other things being equal.
Now if you're talking equality before the law, you are correct. However, on both a biological and purely physical level, you're incorrect. . .
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Oh please. Spare us your faux evolutionary expertise.
Furthermore whatever may be true in trends is not true in the specifics.
So even if your pop pseudo-theories about evolution were true, it wouldn't make a bit of difference when talking about individuals - we all know men who can't do a single pull-up.
You look at the population as a whole, not a single outlier. Men are taller than women despite Danny DeVito being short. That's why you try to look at large population sizes.
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Are all men equal by that definition of "equal"? Or all women exactly like all other women?
"Men" aren't stamped out of some kind of archetypal "man" mold, nor are all women exactly whatever you think a "woman" is or should be. Both men and women are going to be distributed along a normal curve (or maybe log-normal) when it comes to their fitness for some particular job.
So this raises the question: how much overlap do those populations have? The traditionalist view is that there are manly jobs for which n
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The cynic in me would say that TNG tried to be PC, but failed miserably at it by using stereotypes to be PC. The women got the "empathy" positions (medicine and counselor), the blacks the dangerous and menial ones (engineering and security) and the android was the science guy.
Plus Wesley Crusher, the Jar-Jar of the Star Trek universe.
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A woman was the security officer until the actress wanted off the show for unrelated reasons (didn't want to be type-cast, iirc). RIP, Lt. Yar!
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My guess is that her hair didn't grow fast enough and they couldn't replicate it. Else that stuff would've been what any space ship should be built of.
But seriously, she should've gotten some ad contracts from hairspray makers.
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In the episode Turnabout Intruder it's stated that women can't become captains for some unspecified reason.
Everyone knows the reason. It's because one of the duties of the captain is to handle parallel parking on crowded space docks.
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That's the pilot's job.
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Having watched the original series, I thought it was because the main duty of a starship captain is to woo heterosexual female aliens.
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Not true at all. The ship is his long term relationship, but he woos women constantly and loves them for a very short term. This has diplomatic advantages in influencing their behavior during first contact.
Re:They tell you upfront it isn't going to be good (Score:4, Interesting)
..look, if you write it into synopsis and PLAN for the whole series that it is a female minority then yeah it kind of is pushing diversity.
notice that they didn't specify something like "a female of asian descent" or "a funny fat black woman" - they had no idea what the plot is going to be besides facing odds and prejudice and prevailing against misogynist racist system by pure talent of the person. sounds nice yeah? sounds like star trek? of course not.
they had not decided on anything else than it is a woman and minority. never mind it has not been addressed that much which race is in minority in star trek except that nobody is really and they are all equal.
"so who is in this show? janet jackson? selma hayek?" "uh I don't know. it's just some female minority person, we can sort it out later" "so do I write the backstory as someone from .. where exactly? lost the family at a young age or what?" "hmm that doesnt matter, just make it very female struggle and put some racism in the backstory too so it's very good".
who the fuck designs a tv show like that - that's what I want to know. how many female captains there are in USA navy at the moment anyways? if you want to know why captains in star trek og series were all male. I doubt they thought up any backstory to that.
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The Wikipedia article is wrong. If you read the source that sentence is based on, it doesn't mention "minority" at all. It just says female. Some Wikipedia editor is trolling.
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And yet in "Prelude to Axanar [infogalactic.com]" and "Axanar", the much-fought-over Star Trek fan-film "Captain Sonya Alexander [imdb.com]" commanded a Starfleet vessel (USS Ajax) a generation before Kirk et al. . .
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Axanar was never produced, and never will be. Alec Peters never intended to do anything but fleece the maximum number of dollars he could out of doe-eyed fans.
Axanar doesn't count.
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this is like TOS
first inter-racial kiss
one of the first shows on TV with minorities and white people working together in top jobs and not just as janitors
a lot of the episodes were based on themes of diversity and how it's stupid to not like people because of skin color
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Except the "diversity" in TOS represented bad 60s racial and ethnic sterotypes and largely one dimensional characters. This is one of the things that's blatantly obvious when comparing TOS to the reboot. You get crude stuff that doesn't age well when all you're really about is ticking off checkboxes.
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They made their priority pushing diversity as the theme and put the science fiction in the back.
Hold on a second. Let's read back part of the section you quoted:
The decision to call her 'Number One' was made in honor of the character of the same name portrayed by Majel Barrett in the original Star Trek pilot "The Cage".
So you're claiming this is is "pushing diversity" and implying that this is somehow in violation of the legacy of Star Trek, when the character was inspired by a female officer from the original Star Trek pilot episode. And let's not forget that this is a show that included a black woman as an officer during the civil rights era, as well as a Russian officer during the cold war.
Re:They tell you upfront it isn't going to be good (Score:4, Insightful)
Set 10 years before the events of the original Star Trek series
God Damn It. Star Trek was about the future. I want a series set after DS9/Voyager. Stop @#(* with the timeline and do the formula that has worked in the past.
Star Trek movies were after TOS. TNG was after TOS movies. DS9/Voyager were after TNG. Enterprise went back in time and it all went to shit.
What happens after the Dominion War? Is there anything else in the other quadrants? Maybe make up some new techno bable and explore the 26th century. Make some new pretty ships.
I was a die hard Trekkie. I had the LCARS Star Trek encyclopedia. Knew all the specs of their ships and they managed to lose me with this constant mucking in the Trek 'past'. Now we have a movie franchise that just blew away all of the original timeline I grew up with.
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Star Trek has ALWAYS promoted diversity and equality. Have you not ever seen TOS?
Showrunner? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder what a showrunner is. Since I'm not involved in the production of TVs or Movies in any way, I don't have the first clue. Maybe TFS would explain this term before using it?
I'll keep in mind, in my future job at Slashdot, to remember to use obscure terms of art from my own field of chip design and cryptography. People will appreciate it I'm sure.
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It's a self-explanatory term. The person who runs the show and has the highest control over it.
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I was envisaging a person who runs between shows.
Boss, CEO, manager, PHB, head honcho, etc. Those are the kind of terms I would expect for the person who is in charge.
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No, it's not self-explanatory. It's some kind of hipster language. Movies and TV shows have always had producers and directors, and that pretty well covers "running" the show. The fact is that a "show runner" is actually an executive producer who is also a writer. So just CALL him that.
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It's a self-explanatory term.
Hardly.
The person who runs the show and has the highest control over it.
So, the showrunner is the director. Or maybe the producer. The head of the studio? President Obama?
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They have multiple roles that can be summed up as THE BOSS of the show. Shows have several writers, directors (often changing every episode), and producers but the showrunner usually does all of those things and makes sure everything else is running smoothly. It really is simply that they run the show.
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When you read descriptions of it, I can't help but think its a synonym for prima donna -- someone who wants influence over writing, production and direction but doesn't want to be burdened with the details of those jobs unless it fits into whatever creative impulse they're having that moment.
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It's a self-explanatory term. The person who runs the show and has the highest control over it.
I don't think I ever heard the term until about 2 years ago at most. It's certainly not self-explanatory, because I've been meaning to look it up for a week now.
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I have a BA in Media Studies and *I* don't know what a showrunner is.
But I don't know what a lot of things are.
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They are responsible for the overall direction of the show. Often they are hands on in the creative process while other times they are more concerned with keeping everything running smoothly. Basically the CEO of the project.
Brian Fuller would probably be in the former I suspect as has a history of writing.
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Fuller, who will remain an executive producer, will still be involved in breaking stories, and the show will continue to follow his vision for the universe that this latest “Trek” series will inhabit.
Doesn't sound so bad...
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He was a writer on Star Trek Voyager. Bad stuff.
Putting him together with Star Trek is like giving an alcoholic a drink. Much better off when kept apart.
Re:Showrunner? (Score:4)
I am not sure why people hate Voyager so much.
I think it was really good Star Trek and I grew up watching TOS and remember when STTNG first came on the air.
As a matter of fact, Voyager is about tied with STTNG in my book for best Star Trek series. It has the highest number of good characters. Tuvok is, by far, my favorite ST character of all time. But Seven of Nine and B'Elanna are excellent as well.
I think Voyager was the last true Star Trek. After that it was all gritty "lens flare" Abrahms and serialized war stories.
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His leaving the star trek series means its going to be a lot less fun to look at.
But hopefully more fun to listen to. Hannibal was one of the very few shows I've watched where I stopped part-way through. I could deal with the way concepts (and sometimes just isolated sentences) from the original films/books were jammed into odd places on the show but as time went on the show seemed bent on one-upping itself to the point of farce. Hannibal was beautifully directed, true, but for the most part the plot and dialogue were absolute dreck.
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Wikipedia says it's executive producer + writer.
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It's always fun to look at movie credits and see how many jobs are listed for which you have no idea what they actually do. Sure, you can spoil it by going to Wikipedia or using Google... but that's cheating.
Key Grip?
Best Boy?
Show Runner?
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I've looked up "Key grip" and "best boy" before. I know they are specific jobs, but can't remember what.
My favorite one is gaffer (Score:2)
My favorite one is "gaffer". I haven't looked it up because I like to imagine that the gaffer is either someone responsible for the "gaffes" from the start, or some sort of honorary title given at the end to the cast member with the most gaffes.
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I knew about "gaffer's tape", so I always assumed gaffer was involved with setting up and tearing down sets - but It turns out he's the lead electrician for the production.
Actually the grip and best boy also are involved with lighting... I guess it's not surprising there are so many people involved with lighting on a movie or TV set. But the names are fascinating.
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The title should be fairly self-explanatory. But it is a fairly new thing. In traditional parlance, it's about halfway between executive producer (secures and handles the money but doesn't take creative role) and line producer (tends to the tedious day-to-day details but doesn't have the bandwidth to look at the big picture.).
Axanar (Score:4, Insightful)
We all know the executives are going to ruin this show.
While they continue to fumble to get a new show out, we should keep the heat on them to allow better things to get made like Axanar.
Prelude to Axanar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Axanar (Score:2)
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Fuck Axanar. The slime that made that trailer you linked tried to throw all the fan productions under the bus when he found out that CBS/Paramount wasn't going to let him print money with their property.
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I LOVE the comfort of the old Star Trek format. The utopian idealness is what makes Star Trek what it is, imo. I am not a big fan of Enterprise for it's serializing of the franchise nor it's attempt to make it "gritty". I really enjoy the stand-alone episodes that deal with big ideas, moral dilemmas, political questions and more. An over-arching story line is fine (Voyager, DS9).
Don't get me wrong, I love some serialized dramas, but it just isn't for Star Trek. I don't think that Gene Roddenberry would be s
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Awww, poor baby. Did he say your trigger word, Axanar? Don't worry, we'll find you a nice safe space.
Because Enterprise Faired So Poorly (Score:2)
Enterprise could have and should have been the ultimate Star Trek prequel, and other than the stupid temporal cold war and Xindi things, I quite enjoyed the show. It was quite fascinating to see how new technologies and discoveries were dealt with by the crew.
Another series ripe for a reboot is Stargate. It is such a shame that its writers so jumped the shark with SGU. Members of forums I frequented quite loudly told them how the direction they were taking was destroying the franchise, but of course they kn
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Prequels are really hard. You can't do anything that alters the outcomes of major events and even if you're writing about those prior events you have to resist the urge to put in characters from the later series or alter them significantly. Even Babylon 5 (which generally did well with continuity) failed the miserably with In the Beginning: Delenn and Sinclair had good reasons for being there, but the roles of G'Kar, Franklin and Mollari were contrived, as was Sheridan's interaction with some of the other
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The original ideas for the Romulan war were just stupid anyways. NONE of it made any sense. They needed a new canon either way. This is a good example of some of the weaknesses in TOS that just needed to get pushed out an airlock.
You simply can't fight an interstellar war (in Trek terms) without Warp drive.
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That's an awful big mad-on you have for a now-deceased actor who wasn't nearly as bad as you describe.
What did he do anyway? rape your dog to death?
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Maybe he just generally hates people with mental illnesses? [youtube.com]
The Great Bird of the Galaxy.... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is such a sad situation, as corporations are cashing in on the legacy of Gene Roddenberry.
Since his death, the echoes of his influence have faded. Resulting in a "Star Trek in name only" sci-fi universe. It's sad, but predictable. Personally, I'd be gratified if the show never made it out of the gate. The reboot movies were marginal at best, and we cannot expect much better from the series.
The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica was a psychodrama in space- do we want to see that aboard the Enterprise?
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Re:The Great Bird of the Galaxy.... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is such a sad situation, as corporations are cashing in on the legacy of Gene Roddenberry.
Since his death, the echoes of his influence have faded. Resulting in a "Star Trek in name only" sci-fi universe.
Unfortunately there are always people like you. I'll bet you watched maybe a handful of episodes of anything not TOS or STTNG (maybe not even that) and dismissed them. Or maybe you've never seen anything after STTNG. The people I know who bitch the most in the USA about airline security are people who never, ever fly. The people who bitch the most about Trek after TOS are those who never watched it either.
As a long time fan, I can tell you that Roddenberry's influence and importance to Trek is vastly overrated. Season 3 of TOS was pretty much done with him in a caretaker role. Season 3 wasn't perfect (Spock's Brain) but it did have some really good episodes too. The Next Generation only got good after Roddenberry's influence waned due to health issues and Michael Piller basically ran things. Roddenberry had a fairly negative influence on STTNG in my opinion. He demanded rewrites that weren't necessary or better just to push his own particular vision of the future. He was kind of infamous before STTNG started for maybe being way too focused on trying to squeeze every possible dollar out of TOS, not because he loved Trek, but because he loved the money it brought. He was also kind of infamous for not paying his employees very well, which led to the situation where to avoid giving some assistant a raise he gave the guy a new job title instead and in theory made that guy the sole determiner of what was and was not Star Trek canon. That led to this guy saying that Star Trek The Animated Series was not canon, a decision still not accepted by a large number of Trek fans. Note that Roddenberry himself never said that the animated series wasn't canon. He let some dude who worked for him make the determination because it allowed him to avoid giving the guy a raise. I appreciate what he did, with some reservations, for Trek. Note that good people like David Gerrold and DC Fontana had little to no impact on STTNG because of issues either directly with Roddenberry or issues with others that he could have but chose not to resolve. Roddenberry deserves some big criticism in my opinion for the whole Gates McFadden issue where she was fired after season 1 because she complained about the sexist scripts in the season. Patrick Stewart has stated that he was shocked when she was fired because he and others on the show felt the same way about the scripts. Note that Roddenberry had a huge influence on the season 1 scripts so he was either personally responsible for a lot of what she complained about or simply did nothing to tone it down. Roddenberry may not have been the person who fired her, but he sure as hell didn't fight it and jumped at the chance to bring on his old friend Diana Muldaur to replace McFadden. McFadden returned for season 3 probably because Roddenberry's health had declined to a point where he couldn't really do anything on STTNG any more. But he deserves some praise too. He let Denis Crosby out of her contract in season 1 as a person favor to her when he didn't have to. Wil Wheaton also has very good things to say about him. It's a bit of a mixed legacy.
There. Fixed that for you. (Score:2)
The reboot movies were marginal at best, and we cannot expect much better from the series.
The reboot movies were, at best, "movies". And we cannot expect much better from the series.
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I agree.
I think that we have seen the last of the utopian sandbox format of the series which I really love.
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I'm guessing when Superman recently learned that "sometimes, he must kill", you were like right on! Screw daddy's Goody Two Shoes Superman and milksop Clark Kent!
Mercifully, we have found a home for that in Supergirl. Enjoy your asshole-rich Superman movies.
Incorrect headline. (Score:2)
Fuller reduced his duties just this week (late October 2016).
After MacGyver (Score:3, Insightful)
After MacGyver my trust in CBS to warm up any old series is below zero. Every geek's favourite smart, gun hating, extra-legal, teetotaler, loner, semi-vegetarian pacifist who actually understood how things worked has turned into an idiotic gun loving, face punching, government employee always accompanied by a sidekick that just wants to drink beers around the world's fakest campfire.
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I did not even know that MacG had even been rebooted....
It sounds like the new version is nothing more than Burn Notice...
My prediction (Score:3)
Will probably be full of SJW stuff and
1) Canceled after 3 months
2) Continue, but no one will watch it