Star Trek Discovery's First Trailer Brings a New Ship, New Characters, and Old Conflicts (cbs.com) 507
nyquil superstar writes: Hey all, the Star Trek: Discovery trailer is out. Looks entertaining! From a report via Vox: "The trailer features Sonequa Martin-Green, fresh from The Walking Dead, as Michael Burnham, a first officer promoted unexpectedly to the position of captain by her mentor, Captain Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh). Set 10 years before the original Star Trek series (and 90 years after the franchise's only other prequel, Star Trek: Enterprise), the new series follows the starship Discovery as Burnham learns to become a captain. But she soon finds her abilities tested by a host of challenges that will be familiar to all lovers of the classic sci-fi universe: new worlds to explore and alliances to forge, hostile Klingons, and the difficulty of adhering to the Federation's peacekeeping mission."
This video is not available (Score:5, Informative)
I guess that means that we're going to have to just talk about something else...
Re:This video is not available (Score:5, Funny)
I guess that means that we're going to have to just talk about something else...
Lack of knowledge of a subject has never stopped Slashdotters from ranting on endlessly about it. We don't read TFA, we don't read the summary, and sometimes we don't even read the post that we are replying to.
When in doubt, just string up something with Trump, Climate Change, Russians, Universal Basic Income, Bitcoin, 3D-Printing, Apple, Drones, Bones and Elon Musk's new plan to eat a cathedral.
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Re:This video is not available (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I can describe it if you are interested. It looks like a cross between the 90s/00s era stuff and a bit of the retina scorching bling from the new movies. It's set in the prime universe though.
The Klingons look kinda bad at first, but I suppose we have to remember that a decade later in Kirk's time some of them had mixed Klingon/Human augment DNA so lost the forehead ridges and gained a goatee. As we know, bad guys have facial hair in Star Trek.
A lot of it does seem familiar, especially the language used which could have been lifted from an episode of Voyager or Enterprise. No plot details at all.
It's too early to tell if it will be any good, and remember that all Trek series took at least one season to find their feet. To me it really seems like it is going to depend on if they get a good plot hook.
Alternative link (Score:5, Informative)
This one seems to work for me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8mesUEFjas
Not for me in the USA (Score:3)
CBS has blocked it on copyright grounds, apparently they don't want me to be excited about their show. Mission accomplished!
Hey Slashdot... (Score:2)
Perhaps before approving a story with a youtube link someone could actually check to make sure the video is available in a reasonable % of the world outside the USA?
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Perhaps before approving a story with a youtube link someone could actually check to make sure the video is available in a reasonable % of the world outside the USA?
Why do you hate the US's freedoms?
UNAVAILBLE (Score:2)
Fuck you Star Trek!
Wait (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wait (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wait (Score:5, Interesting)
You are correct, of course. The problem is that is even worse than what they're shovelling now... because while that was relevant social commentary back then, it ain't now.
Sticking with that - showing the great Federation as still recovering from post-WWIII social regression despite thinking of itself as an egalitarian utopia - would have been a great sci-fi premise, but a difficult sales pitch.
In fact, showing the Federation as a bunch of aggressive but cautious jerks who are reeling from getting kicked in the groin by the Romulan War right while still recovering from the Eugenics Wars, and heading straight into the Klingon War would have been a really brave move with a lot of potential for stories with emotional weight - something Trek's been pretty weak at.
Showing women (and scapegoated minorities) fighting to regain rights they know their ancestors had, in a Cold War-esque paranoid society with the general population trying to return to peace while the leaders and military know war looms and want to crack down on social progress to maintain control in the name of survival... there's so much material there. Plenty of which that would be a great analogue for the problems of today.
Re:Wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Showing women (and scapegoated minorities) fighting to regain rights they know their ancestors had, in a Cold War-esque paranoid society with the general population trying to return to peace while the leaders and military know war looms and want to crack down on social progress to maintain control in the name of survival... there's so much material there. Plenty of which that would be a great analogue for the problems of today.
Except no one would watch it. The audience of Star Trek is white male nerds. They want shows about exploring the galaxy and science and aliens, and yeah a few episodes a season do some kind of social commentary thing. But when absolutely everything else in school, the HR department at work, the nightly news is RACE RACE RACE GENDER GENDER GENDER GAY SHIT GAY SHIT STRONG INDEPENDENT BLACK WYMYNZ WHAT DON'T NEED NO MANS they kind of don't want to see that shit in Star Trek. Star Trek is the escape from all that. So, you can make SJW Trek, but nobody's going to watch it. And then it'll fail, and HuffPo will right nasty articles about how racist and sexist white men are because they didn't want to watch a show about how racist and sexist white men are...IN SPACE.
Re:Wait (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is what they did with Cisco and Janeway. The shows were never about how he was black or she was a woman. Geordi never had to give a speech about how he was discriminated against because "no negroes can engineer spaceships!" He was just the ship's engineer and nobody cared about his race.
The idea that nerds are especially racist or sexist is retarded. Nerds were watching all these shows and had no problem with strong independent women like Ripley or blacks in authority like Cisco for decades before wearing your tolerance on your sleeve became fashionable. Then the normies suddenly got their paws all over the franchises, make them shit because of the writing and the plots, shoehorn in "diversity" and then when the nerds complain "this is a bad show" they accuse us of racism and sexism.
It's just more nerd bullying. When we were watching shows about space and aliens with a diverse cast 20 years ago, they were pushing us into lockers for liking all that nerd shit. Now they've taken over all the nerd shit, made it crappy, and are bullying us for not liking it. The one constant is you can heap any amount of abuse you want on low social value males.
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Could be interesting to see if they decide to go with that and explain how the rule came about.
The fan series Star Trek Continues addressed it, explaining that it was due to the Telerites demanding it and the young Federation needing their support and so having to accept it. It wasn't an actual rule, just an informal agreement not to promote women to that level and cause a rift.
It's hard to see how they can get from where they start to where TOS started in a mere decade, with women going from apparent equal
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Wait the new Captain is a female with the name Michael? I am confused already.
I've known a few girls named Michael over the years, it's usually a boys name but it can be a girls name too.
Oh, and she's the first officer not captain.
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Probably a character building name. I'm sure being a girl named Michael she got bullied in school. Probably will have some flashback to being a bullied child when facing a Romulan and start screaming "Please don't give me a wedgie... PLEEEAAAASSSEEE!"
Looks nice but it smells like it will be shit. (Score:2)
nt
Criticism: Awful Lighting (Score:2, Insightful)
Characters they showed seemed likable, but I didn't care for the lighting. I really hope most of the sets are brighter than the bridge, or this is going to be a very short-lived show.
(IMO Stargate Universe failed because the screen was so dark most of the time. People don't like dark screens in prime time.)
Social Justice Checks Out (Score:2, Insightful)
Senior Transgendered Asian Female Captain: Check
Gender muted African-American Female Protege: Check
Black males portrayed as vicious savages: Check
While males in unimportant, peripheral roles only: Check
I for one love this show and just know it will be a great success!
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Real diversity isn't simply shifting the stereotypes.
Pure Incompetence (Score:5, Informative)
The episode order has been increased to 15. That's 15 too many, in my opinion. The development of Discovery has been marked by pure incompetence, despite having some really good people involved. I had high hopes with Bryan Fuller and Nicholas Meyer, who did really good work previously with Star Trek. I thought Rod Roddenberry might have a good feel how to run the show because he had praised Star Trek Continues, which is really well done. Fuller is gone and the show keeps sounding less interesting as more news comes out. It wasn't that long ago that Michael Dorn passed on being cast for Discovery as one of Worf's ancestors because they gave him an insulting lowball offer, about 65% of what he was paid on TNG and DS9. Between seven seasons on TNG and four on DS9, I don't think anyone else has come close to appearing in as many episodes as Dorn has. It's embarrassing.
I have no confidence in the people developing Discovery that it's going to be worthwhile. There's nothing in the trailer that impresses me. There's a lot of action but I'm not convinced there's an interesting story to go along with it. CBS hasn't given much information on the actual premise for Discovery, and I don't see a whole lot in this trailer to provide any more information about it. It doesn't matter how diverse your cast is or how much you include special effects and combat if you don't have good writing and an interesting story to tell. With all of the delays and personnel changes, there has been more than enough time to devise a compelling premise. If there was truly an interesting premise to this show, I would expect CBS to provide more information on what that is to attract viewers. The trailer doesn't do that at all. This just seems like more incompetence to me.
I wish this show interested me. But I have yet to see anything that makes me think it's worth watching. If I'm going to watch anything on All Access, it'll be Big Brother and The Good Fight, both of which seem far more worthwhile than Discovery. It's a shame because I really like TOS and DS9, and TNG was pretty good.
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They should have thrown some cash to Star Trek Continues for another season of that. They could do an entire season for what it costs Discovery to do one episode.
Re:Pure Incompetence (Score:4, Interesting)
The episode order has been increased to 15. That's 15 too many, in my opinion. The development of Discovery has been marked by pure incompetence, despite having some really good people involved. I had high hopes with Bryan Fuller and Nicholas Meyer, who did really good work previously with Star Trek. I thought Rod Roddenberry might have a good feel how to run the show because he had praised Star Trek Continues, which is really well done. Fuller is gone and the show keeps sounding less interesting as more news comes out. It wasn't that long ago that Michael Dorn passed on being cast for Discovery as one of Worf's ancestors because they gave him an insulting lowball offer, about 65% of what he was paid on TNG and DS9. Between seven seasons on TNG and four on DS9, I don't think anyone else has come close to appearing in as many episodes as Dorn has. It's embarrassing.
I have no confidence in the people developing Discovery that it's going to be worthwhile. There's nothing in the trailer that impresses me. There's a lot of action but I'm not convinced there's an interesting story to go along with it. CBS hasn't given much information on the actual premise for Discovery, and I don't see a whole lot in this trailer to provide any more information about it. It doesn't matter how diverse your cast is or how much you include special effects and combat if you don't have good writing and an interesting story to tell. With all of the delays and personnel changes, there has been more than enough time to devise a compelling premise. If there was truly an interesting premise to this show, I would expect CBS to provide more information on what that is to attract viewers. The trailer doesn't do that at all. This just seems like more incompetence to me.
I wish this show interested me. But I have yet to see anything that makes me think it's worth watching. If I'm going to watch anything on All Access, it'll be Big Brother and The Good Fight, both of which seem far more worthwhile than Discovery. It's a shame because I really like TOS and DS9, and TNG was pretty good.
The TV market has changed a lot since the last Star Trek series ended. Unless Amazon, Netflix, HBO, AMC or some other network that prioritizes quality picks up the franchise, the budget can be expected to not be sufficient. Star Trek has historically had a reasonably large cast of generally good actors, significant use of CGI, liberal use of guest actors, alien makeup and costumes, mostly decent writing, and a variety of custom-built sets of a generally professional nature. All of which cost money. They could cut any of these elements to save costs. My solution would be a smaller core cast of very good actors. This is a bit outside of the standard Star Trek formula, however.
Not interested, i am no longer a trekkie (Score:4, Funny)
JJ cured me.
Damn it JJ Look what you have done! (Score:3)
Let us not forget THE ORVILLE! (Score:4, Interesting)
Almost there (Score:2)
Re:Almost there (Score:5, Funny)
Anyway, what I hated about this trailer is the lead character's ridiculous eyelashes. What does an eyelash curler look like centuries in the future?
It's a genetic trait left over from Max Factor - L'Oreal wars of the late 21st century.
Why not include a character who looks Chinese but was raised Norse?
Said character could be from a binary star system.
And he or she could have a representation of Thor's hammer in his/her quarters, which could be a running gag in the show, with said character often threatening to "Grab Thor's hammer and..."
Why the past? (Score:2)
We know how the Klingon war went, we know all the back stories. It will be hard to really tell something big. And I already know there will be some story about the half vul
Saved me from watching! (Score:3)
I started to get interested, then this one character says his entire race was engineered for the sole purpose of "sensing death".
That's the stupidest thing I've heard on TV this year. Is there a writer's strike going on and the producer's fourteen-year-old nephew got the screenplay job?
Fire the script editor (and at least one writer) if you want this show to last seven years.
Re:The Quota Show (Score:5, Informative)
Star Trek has always been quite diverse, by TV standards.
Pilot - Number One was a woman
Original Series - Black woman, east Asian man, Russian and Scot in the main cast
Next Generation - Many female and black characters, Picard was French
Deep Space 9 - Black captain
Voyager - Female captain and chief engineer, Native American second in command
I didn't even mention the black/east Asian members of the crew in the later ones, they were so normal (for Trek) by that point. And Janeway was originally going to be French too, but they replaced the actor after some test footage didn't turn out as they had hoped.
Re:The Quota Show (Score:4, Insightful)
Star Trek was always diverse and inclusive, which was great. What they didn't do before now was to feel exclusive of anyone who can't check off their proper SJW victimhood credentials. If they follow the Hollywood pattern of late, there won't be one straight white human male in the main cast (unless he's a villain).
It saddens me to think of a Star Trek universe where this lifelong fan is villainized just because I was born with white skin and a dick. Excluding people ain't Trek.
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Re:The Quota Show (Score:5, Informative)
Why do you feel excluded from it? Half the cast is white males. Confirmed so far:
Sonequa Martin-Green (black female)
Terry Serpico (white male)
Maulik Pancholy (Asian American male)
Sam Vartholomeos (white male)
James Frain (white male)
Doug Jones (white male)
Michelle Yeoh (east Asian female)
Anthony Rapp (white male)
Chris Obi (black male)
Shazad Latif (British Asian male)
Mary Chieffo (white female)
Jason Isaacs (white male)
Mary Wiseman (white female)
Rainn Wilson (white male)
Kenneth Mitchell (white male)
Rekha Sharma (Asian female)
Damon Runyan (white male)
Clare McConnell (white female)
So the main confirmed cast is 50% white male, and 66% white. One character is gay, or 94% straight.
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You, like most Americans [gallup.com], overestimate the size of the gay population. This is not surprising, as gays have done an extraordinary job seeing to it that they are over-represented in pop culture (as I have indicated above). The Washington Post -- hardly a bastion of evangelical redneck conservatism -- reports [washingtonpost.com] that "More specifically, 1.8 percent of men self-identify as gay and 0.4 percent as bisexual, and 1.5 percent of women self-identify as lesbian and 0.9 percent as bisexual." So, yeah, 1-2 percent, like
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I'm British. It's around 5%, maybe a little more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yes! Mustn't exclude the trans population!
But seriously, learn some math, or at least some statistics: 1.8 percent of MEN, i.e., 1.8 percent of 50 percent of the population, or just 0.9 percent of the overall population. 1.5 percent of WOMEN, same thing...
Thanks for playing.
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This is true.
Re:The Quota Show (Score:5, Interesting)
You joke, but in the last two Star Wars films there hasn't been a single white male character who wasn't either grandfathered in (Han Solo and Luke Skywalker) or a villain.
Think of it this way: If Luke dies in the next Star Wars movie, there won't be a single white male left in the Star Wars universe who isn't a villain.
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Wait, Poe isn't a white male? Or was he somehow a villain? Or was he grandfathered in?
Maybe you're just self-selecting to confirm your biases?
Re:The Quota Show (Score:5, Informative)
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That captain probably won't even survive the pilot and most of the other white guys are hidden behind alien makeup. AFAICT, the only two human white guys in the cast are an Academy cadet and a science officer, and they've already announced that the science officer will be gay. Pretty sure that cadet's days are numbered too, or it will turn out that he's a villain, or an alien, or a transsexual, or gay.
Sad day.
The original serie (Score:5, Insightful)
Where the show was designed by the actor's race and sex instead of a plot and a casting call.
On the other hand, even the original serie, from the beginning has tried hard to be inclusive (the communication officier was a african american woman, the navigator comes from the other side of the iron curtain, etc.)
So trying to feature under-represented minory is absolutely nothing new in Star Trek.
The only key question is : are these characters otherwise well written, and are the actors portraying them good ? (or are their "under represented minority" the only noticeable thing about them). but that's hard to judge without watching 1-2 episodes of the serie.
(Which isn't available here around, at least not to me. So I can't judge)
Re:The original serie (Score:4, Interesting)
Two things:
First, there's a big difference between a black woman with authority accepted by white men in the 60s, and having a non-white woman in command in 2017. Orders of magnitude of difference. They're late to the game if the goal is to show what's possible in an egalitarian society. We're not perfect, but it is certainly no longer unusual to the point that people gasp upon seeing a female CEO, and if she wants to move into a new neighbourhood she's not going to have trouble buying a house or making friends.
All that ground got thoroughly trampled in the 80s and 90s, along with homosexuality... which is why being known as gay or lesbian is now a marketing gimmick rather than a career ender. We're even (mostly) over the childish novelty of getting girls to kiss each other for men's pleasure.
Second, Rodenberry was a cynical guy. One of the stories regarding Chekov is that his late addition was to cash in on the Monkees' popularity (thus the stupid bowl cut). I tend to credit that over most other stories, because Roddenberry was a cynical bastard who would push any story that sold his product. He was not particularly interested in the philosophy espoused in Star Trek when it came to his own life, and especially his own wallet.
>The only key question is : are these characters otherwise well written, and are the actors portraying them good ?
It's an order of operations issue. When they have a good character and then say, "Hey, you know what? What if we lean towards someone who is [trait x] for this role?" that's one thing.
When they say, "Hey, we need a show about a minority woman" that's a totally different, and offensive thing. Just imagine, "Hey, we need a show about a wealthy white male" and tell me how you feel about THAT as a starting point...
Re:The original serie (Score:5, Informative)
> Second, Rodenberry was a cynical guy.
Roddenberry was a working director in a tough broadcast market. From his own cast's testimony, he was a wonderful, sweet man to work with who had visions of what people could be and should be, and showed them living up to those goals in the face of tremendous pressures to please or avoid displeasing the sponsors who advertised on Star Trek episodes and on other shows by the same network.
> First, there's a big difference between a black woman with authority accepted by white men in the 60s,
This was the *early* 1960's, at the height of the civil rights movement. A black woman with authority for whom her racial identity was cultural, rather than a source of plot tension on a mixed staff, was a very large issue. The kiss between Captian Kirk and Leutenant Urura was a _very_ significatnt event, the first inter-racial kiss in television history. Nichelle Nichols part in Star Trek was a huge inspiration to black women and girls of all races. And Gene Roddenberry deserves all the credit he earned for his very positive stories that helped make Nichelle, and Uhura, heroes.
Re:The original serie (Score:4, Insightful)
OK. This is where you've called me a liar, and I call you a liar in return.
We can stop now.
"Major plot and character details about Star Trek: Discovery have not been revealed. It is known, however, that it will take place about 10 years before the events of the original series, and that the lead character will be a young woman, likely non-white, serving as a lieutenant commander aboard the Federation starship Discovery"
Literally all the studio felt like revealing. "Non-white woman lead."
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Exactly.
Re:The Quota Show (Score:5, Interesting)
They're on a five-year mission to discover even one straight human white male who isn't either a villain or an incompetent idiot.
Here's a hint, crew: Don't look on any planet affiliated with Disney.
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When I read the reactions to the casting, it seems like the reactions in some of the comments aren't that far off from the way Sesame Street was received. That show had an intentionally diverse cast, so much so that the state of Mississippi banned it from their PBS station in 1970. I disagree with criticizing a show for having a diverse cast or addressing societal issues.
The real issue here is whether the characters are well-written and the actors portray them well. The success of Sesame Street wasn't be
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Where the show was designed by the actor's race and sex instead of a plot and a casting call. Because blatant sexism and racism is good so long as it isn't favouring white males!
Why is this a thing? picked up from a two-minute trailer? It's like the people who trolled Force Awakens because the leads were a girl and a black guy. What is the fucking problem? Should humans boycott Pixar movies because the lead characters are fish???
Nobody complained 30 years ago when Alien and Aliens had a strong woman in the lead role. Why do white males have their balls bunched in their briefs now, over a fucking TV show that hasn't even aired yet?
I don't think this new Trek is gonna be any bet
Re:The Quota Show (Score:5, Informative)
Roddenberry certainly tried to give women equal roles in the original series. In the pilot Majel Barret played the second in command of the ship. Unfortunately the studio objected and decided that they would have the child-like Yeoman Rand, and then got rid of her to make way for a love-interest-of-the-week (which is how Kirk got his reputation).
Re:The Quota Show (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and it obviously worked, as 200something episodes will tell.
What Star Trek did right back then, and what it utterly fails at here, is that diversity is a good thing, but beating it into people with a sledgehammer is not. You see, people don't like that. Uhura was a black female as the communications officer. Back then that was an "impossibility". Not only a woman, not only a black person, but a black woman as an officer!
The real impact of it all was, though, that it was treated as a non-issue. They didn't parade her and try to "make a point" out of it, "look we are so progressive, we have a black female officer!". No, it was treated as normal. Which made in my opinion the even stronger point. The message was simply that in the future, black female officers are so normal that we needn't even talk about it anymore. It's a given. Nobody questioned her ability. Hell, if there was a mobbing victim on the ship, it probably was Chekov.
That was a pretty big statement for the 1960s, a decade when the civil rights movement still had to fight to at least get equal treatment of black and white people by law. And as we know, it still didn't really arrive in all heads.
What bothers me about the "new" Star Trek is that this message is now delivered by sledgehammer. Look, we're progressive, we have an asian female nonbinary transgender captain. If it was at least an alien... but for some odd reason, alien captains are still a nono.
Why not?
Why not have a nonhuman captain and a crew of humans and aliens that has to deal with it?
Re:The Quota Show (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really see how you can say having a black female officer at a time when it was unthinkable wasn't really hammering it home. And I don't know where you got that stuff about the captain being nonbinary transgender, but it doesn't seem to be the case at all.
The trailer and the marketing so far doesn't push the diversity side at all. In fact I don't think it does anything new at all really, since the new movies have an openly gay character.
Really, what makes you think they are hammering this in any way? Almost all the discussion I've seen about it has been anti-progressives complaining about it, with basically zero from the studio.
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Hammering it home would have meant that they used every other episode to showcase how they're not as backwards as they "used to be" (read: as they are in the 1960s) and making a point about Uhura being black. Actually, I don't even remember a single occasion where her skin color became an issue in the show.
You can't really say that about the more recent past, even in TNG we had to be lectured about how backwards humans were (read: are in the reality) and how lucky they are that they overcame it.
Take a hint.
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Take a hint. People don't like being lectured. It creates resistance.
Resistance is futile you will be assimilated
Re:The Quota Show (Score:5, Informative)
What about the episode where Kirk kissed Uhura? It was the first interracial kiss on US TV, a major and shocking moment.
They softened it by making the characters be forced to do it, but still, they were clearly pushing hard there. In fact Roddenberry and some of the other writers made it a point to push the limits on the show, resulting in a great deal of friction with the studio. It's all been extensively documented in the various books about the show.
By comparison, TNG and what we have seen of Discovery are pretty tame. Discovery has done basically nothing so far. By modern standards the casting is not shocking or even surprising in the least.
Take a hint. People don't like being lectured.
Unfortunately people seem to imagine being lectured and then blame the imaginary lecturer in real life for it.
Re:The Quota Show (Score:4, Insightful)
Discovery doesn't seem to be particularly diverse though. There is one gay character, but it's not been made a big deal of, at least not by the studio. Lots of other series have had more diverse casts, openly gay characters and so on before. The main cast of Discovery is 50% white males, which doesn't exactly scream "quota", does it?
Where is all this coming from? Did the studio throw a pride parade I missed?
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Maybe because we had to sit through a few too many movies where "diversity" became the main theme with everything else, from franchise to plot, had to take a back seat, and we fear that this may be just the next one in a line of stinkers that had zero plot, zero idea, zero investment in the characters, zero character developments, all sacrificed on the altar of the all important diversity?
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Can you name some of these movies? It's hard to evaluate your argument when I don't know what you are referring to.
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Why not have a nonhuman captain and a crew of humans and aliens that has to deal with it?
Why? Because makeup for a large number of nonhuman crew would take too much time out of the shooting schedule. They have a sci-fi show to make, not "Make-up Time for Geeks". Don't be an idiot. It's about the money.
Re:The Quota Show (Score:4, Informative)
2 words: Babylon 5.
Re:The Quota Show (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not have a nonhuman captain and a crew of humans and aliens that has to deal with it?
Because, ultimately, Star Trek, like many Science Fiction shows has always been about "humanity" and the "human condition". Most of the best science fiction is about looking at humanity through a different angle (hence the "sci-fi" part is usually to look at humans in a "what if" scenario, it's easier to examine issues and morality by separating it from the everyday normal).
Now, what's that got to do with your question? Well, if the alien is captain it takes the spotlight off humanity since the captain frequently becomes the focus. All the Star Trek characters had aliens, not to look at aliens, but to look at humans.
Data is the classic example, he's the Pinocchio of the series, the puppet that wanted to be human.
Seven-Of-Nine another classic example, a human separated from humanity by the Borg trying to rediscover what it is to be human.
These characters were loosely based on Spock, not to be like him but to fill the same role. Spock didn't want to be human of course, but his "differentness" was frequently a plot device to compare him to humans and humanity.
You probably COULD have an alien captain, but then the screenwriters would have to work harder and more creatively to write stories about humanity and human morals. A human captain makes it easier to work those into the plots.
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Yes, all the Star Trek series had its "odd man out" character. TOS had Spock, TNG had Data, DS9 had Odo and Voyager had the Doctor (along with Torres, 7of9 and the rest of the aliens).
None of them had an alien captain.
The exploration angle could be just that: How do you deal with someone who is in command who does NOT share your particular point of view, your moral code, your history and your beliefs? In our time where we more and more clash with others over petty things, the solution to this problem, i.e.
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Except we are human, so the whole show would become about how we can force our morals on the alien captain as they 'soften' to our views over time.
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This was so idiotic it made my brain bleed.
black female officers are so normal that we needn't even talk about it anymore
... except that if you actually put a black female officer on the show, all the Bros are going to whinge about what a SJW you are!
Apparently, the message did't stick.
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Re:The Quota Show (Score:5, Interesting)
decided that they would have the child-like Yeoman Rand, and then got rid of her to make way for a love-interest-of-the-week (which is how Kirk got his reputation)
Uhh, kinda no. Been reviewing TOS, like actually watching them, and the whole Kirk-boinks-a-green-chick-each-episode thing really doesn't hold up; even when Kirk does get some action, it almost always ends badly. This regrettable myth that Kirk was a jack-ass cowboy instead of a hard officer has overshadowed much of what made TOS so successful in the first place, so much so that studio idiots are still trying to beat life out of this dead horse.
As for "child-like" Yeoman Rand, it's a toss-up whether actress Grace Lee Whitney was written out because of some creative decision or because she was sexually assaulted on the studio lot by an still-not-identified executive associated with the series.
Re: The Quota Show (Score:3)
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The guy was morally flexible when it came to sheathing his penis
Is it "morally flexible" when ST at least appears to be partly a free love utopia? One man's different morals are another man's "flexible" morals?
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Free love is fine when everyone consents, but Roddenberry was cheating on his spouse with someone over whom he had significant authority.
I mean, yeah, it ultimately seems to have worked out for Majel, but it was a skeezy start.
Re: The Quota Show (Score:2)
I'm in the same boat. Had many years of ST enjoyment, so thank you Mr Rodenberry and all you other people that pushed it further, but I feel like I've grown out of the model where humanity has simply "solved" all the problems we currently have so we can focus on aliens. It was designed for a "story of the week", and it's hard to take the characters seriously. The dialog in the trailer feels like lines from Lucas (ok, perhaps too harsh). Enjoy it if it still turns your crank, fans, but I've moved on.
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the original star trek was nothing more than racial awareness propaganda
Yes, having one black woman character and one Asian male character was just early Political Correctness gone mad.
Star Trek? SJW Trek more like!
Re:The Quota Show (Score:4, Interesting)
The Trek series before now have always felt inclusive. This one feels exclusive. Big difference.
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TOS felt inclusive to people who'd been excluded.
Exactly what are you numerical requirements for you not feel excluded?
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Exactly what are you numerical requirements for you not feel excluded?
Enough to make the cast feel natural, not like they were assembled based on an SJW victimhood checklist.
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So, your objective standard is your feeling?
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So, your objective standard is your feeling?
I believe that you will find that almost everyone has an objective standard, and it is their feeling.
Not having watched the trailer, since CBS is putting out some effort to prevent me from doing that because they apparently don't want me watching their show, I can't even tell you what my feeling about this cast is. So far the only emotion I'm feeling related to this show is anger at CBS still being stuck in the past so badly that they're sending takedown notices for content which they ostensibly actually wa
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Now it doesnt.
We get it. It doesnt matter how big a white male population is, it can still be easily ignored... neigh even simply forgotten about... by the likes of you. So forggoten that you argue not just as if they didnt matter, but as if they didnt even exist.
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Except that if you look at humanity as a whole, "white male" is hardly the dominant category. Suppose we have a officer candidate pool of a 100 individuals. What would the demographics be like if that reflected the demographics of the human race as a whole?
You'd have about 15 white male candidates, and 28 Asian female candidates. And yet we have never seen a regular Asian woman character in command; in fact we've never seen any Asian woman in a command track position. They've been present, but entirely in
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With the difference maybe being that the average 1967 audience was a bit more racist (or at the very least way more tolerant to racism) than people are today...
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With the difference maybe being that the average 1967 audience was a bit more racist (or at the very least way more tolerant to racism) than people are today...
Based on most of the tone in this thread where so many people are up in arms and angry that the lead role went to a black woman, I'm not sure the 1967 audience WAS more racist than the current audience.
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I somehow doubt that many of them care that a black woman got the lead role. Else they would have been up in arms about Sisko and Janeway, too.
My guess is that they fear that this becomes the main topic of the show. Look, we are so cool, hip and progressive, we have a black captain, look at her, she is so great, she is so awesome, she is so black and she is so female!
Yes. We got it. We don't give a shit. Can we now have, you know, A PLOT?
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I somehow doubt that many of them care that a black woman got the lead role. Else they would have been up in arms about Sisko and Janeway, too.
My guess is that they fear that this becomes the main topic of the show. Look, we are so cool, hip and progressive, we have a black captain, look at her, she is so great, she is so awesome, she is so black and she is so female!
Yes. We got it. We don't give a shit. Can we now have, you know, A PLOT?
If that happens- I will pan it. But to assume that that will happen just because she is black is worrying.
I didn't watch DS9 much because it was so boring a soap-opera-y but I don't recall the plots being about him being black.
Voyager wasn't about Janeway being a woman either.
I somehow think it rather presumptuous for so many people to assume this is going to be ABOUT either of those things. The world is definitely a lot more racist than it was when those two shows were on the air. In a world with Brexit
Re:The Quota Show (Score:4, Interesting)
Again, we've come to associate a "diverse" cast with it becoming the main topic of the movie. It's sad that this is the case, but sadly it is. Personally I love the idea of having a space ship full of interesting, rich characters with diverse backgrounds, intricate background stories that offer many exciting plot hooks, old friends, old enemies, character flaws that they have to overcome and so on. Because what makes a character interesting is not his strengths but his weaknesses.
The problem is now that in the more recent past, certain character groups are not allowed to have weaknesses anymore. And that makes them formulaic and boring.
And far too often did this happen in the recent past with movies where diversity was a corner stone element. Which would be great, but it has become absolute anathema to give a "minority" character any flaws. Dare to and be prepared for the backlash. We had a slew of formulaic 50s TV-show heroes who could do no wrong, who could never make a mistake and who in turn cannot develop anywhere because, well, how do you improve perfection?
On the other side, we have had a stream of twirling-moustache villains that were evil for evil's sake. No motivation other than spitting in our great hero's soup. Complete with the bumbling fool sidekick. Whose side he's on doesn't really matter.
And the more "diverse" a movie presented itself, the more this held true.
I'd like to have a diverse crew with interesting background stories to explore. What bothers me is that they're mostly a stream of differently colored Wesley Crushers with varying gender.
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Look at the leads in the last two Star Wars movies, they were both white, and both built up as perfect Mary-Sues, they could do no wrong. You don't have to be a minority to be portrayed as an infallible character. I'm trying to think back to the last show I watched with a minority lead (embarrassingly, I think it was Luther about 6 months ago, or Marco Polo I watched around the same time... I don't watch much TV though).
Luther is certainly a very flawed individual. In Marco Polo, Kublai (who is arguably
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The problem isn't diversity, it's when diversity becomes the replacement for the plot. And the marketing department knows it. If the movie's funny, push the funny. If it sucks, push the diversity. And they do it.
I guess we'll find out when it is released (or in my case, I'll find out a few years later when it's on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime because I sure as hell won't be paying for a CBS equivalent of Netflix).
My problem with most people's reactions is that they're assuming it's all about race and gender without any plot when a single episode hasn't even been made yet. By leaping to those assumptions people are essentially saying black woman are incapable of playing a leading role without making it about race
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There's likely lots of people who disagree with me on this (such as those morons who are modding my original post 'troll' despite it being an accurate report of the original press releases...)
but Sisko and Janeway sucked.
Not because Sisko was black, but because Avery Brooks' delivery was odd and I personally didn't like it. Not because Janeway was a woman, but because the show's writing was atrociously bad and they wrote her making some of the dumbest possible decisions
Trek may have put women in important
Re:The Quota Show (Score:4, Interesting)
but the whole cultural/religious angle felt too forced.
Here's some diversity that might actually make for an interesting character on STar Trek: human characters that aren't all atheists/agnostics. Give me a Catholic science officer. Or maybe the weapons officer is a muslim and he goes Space Jihad on fuckers.
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They believe lots of things that are not rational, like "all life is precious." That's a transcendent religious belief that you cannot derive rationally. There's nothing irrational about naked self-interest in which my tribe of humans murders or enslaves opposing tribes of humans (or non-humans). Secular humanists (both modern and on Star Trek) also believe in irrational things, so belief in a different religion isn't that much more irrational than the other irrational things they do. At least it might be i
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I don't see how you get that from a trailer. You have a captain and a first officer who are both women, which would happen 25% of the time if men and women reached that rank equally often. Looking at the cast on IMDB, there are more women than in TOS, but more than half the characters are men.
And looking who they chose... Michelle Yeoh. If you can't see Michelle Yeoh in the captain's chair, you don't know who she is.
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Melodrama much?
In the end, movies are a business. If people like to watch it, it will be made. If audiences fail to show up, they will turn to different stories. It actually IS that simple.
Hollywood makes movies not to "push agendas" but first and foremost to make money. Yes, certain filmmakers may have their pet agendas, but at the end of the day, the studio wants a ROI. If your agenda sells, great, make more of it. If it doesn't, not great, get lost.
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Hollywood makes movies not to "push agendas" but first and foremost to make money
Actually, of late, there are certain companies (most notably Disney) who seem to have adopted such a pro-SJW stance that they seem willing to actually lose money to advance that agenda. Maybe it's a personal thing for their CEO's/boards or maybe they think they're playing the long-game with millennials, but there are a number of recent examples where they seem willing to take a financial hit just to show their SJW cred.
A great example is with Disney's Marvel Comics division (the actual comic books, not the
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Let's see how long shareholders are willing to play along. CEOs are easily replaced when they don't perform.
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Hey idiot, Star Trek already had a black captain who everyone *loved*. Does the name Benjamin Sisko ring a bell?
No one is threatened by a black captain, or a woman captain, or a Hindu lesbian captain, or whatever. The problem is that the casting of this particular series doesn't feel inclusive, it feels exclusive (intentionally excluding straight white human males). That's goes against the utopian Trek ideal of a society in which everyone plays a positive part.
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We'll under 50% of the Earth's population are White males, yet half the cast of this show are. That's only underrepresentation if you can't do math.
Re:The Quota Show (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually I was hoping to see the first purple nonbinary alien captain. But I guess Star Trek isn't ready for that yet.
The problem I have with the more recent development of Star Trek isn't that we have a more and more diverse crew. Far from it. What bothers me is that it becomes the focus of the show. We're not exploring exciting new worlds, we're exploring our feelings and how others hurt them.
I don't really need science fiction for that.
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Does the 2017 definition of nerd includes those unable to type 4 words into a search engine?
This is "Slashdot, news for nerds...". Idiots should go elsewhere on the web.
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Hi boys! I’m looking for my lovely man!
Then you came to the wrong place, this is Slashdot, hope you like fat hairy unwashed bellies, scruffy neckbeards, and cheeto stained scrotums.