This rant was originally a response to Laura Wallace. But after 20min and multiple paragraphs of writing, I realized it needed to be a blog post.
My complaint about modern Star Trek is that it’s run by people who, at best, have a surface-level, pop-culture knowledge of Star Trek (Beam me up, Scotty, Dr. Spock, the Enterprise, Khhhaaaaannnnn). They don’t know or care about the huge universe that’s been built around Star Trek over the last 60yrs. At worst they’re actively hostile to it and wanna “subvert our expectations”. And what ticks me off most is the lazy writing. Roddenberry had a life in the real world before Star Trek and understood that the machines he showed should have some kinda practical, CONSTANT working features. And the stories have to to conform to that. Plus, he hired seasoned SciFi writers who understood this. The Next Gen era got away from this. The techno-babble got to the point where they were making fun of themselves over it in one ep. But the modern era… it’s completely off the charts. The Enterprise can be a submarine. Our Irish Romulan has a device that’ll look into the past, the cut-rate Han Solo gets a device that’ll repair anything just by thinking about it.
I’ve worked in the industry. I know. These recent shows are being written by people who barely understand how to work their iPad. People who, for real, think any sufficiently advanced technology is magic. And so they write that way. Tricorder, magic wand… whichever.
What happened w/ STD is that the show was crashing and burning. Fans hated it and critics on Youtube were roasting it for it’s SJW-ness. So the show-runners went back to the well. Rehashed what had already been done and introduced the Enterprise/Spock/Pike/Number One into STD. Although fans were unimpressed w/ hippie Spock, Pike and revisiting the episode The Cage went over well. Now w/ the thud that Picard landed w/, it looks like they’re giving up and going back to well, whole hog.
And this is where I disagree w/ Bill. I think it’s a really bad sign that a team w/ a proven track record of being hacks is going back 57yrs to mine characters. I don’t think the scripts’ll be any better. I doubt it’ll be any less woke than Picard and STD. I don’t think it’ll be any less shallow than the JJ ‘verse. It’ll just be cultural vandalism of the last vestiges of the original Roddenberry concept. Cultural vandalism by TV writers who could be writing Star Trek eps, a cop show, a lawyer show or a doctor show. Doesn’t matter and they don’t care. But they do have their own little pet things to say about Trump, LBGTQ, economics, immigration or a plethora of other modern social ills and they are damn well gonna shoehorn that into the scripts.
What would make me feel better about Star Trek: Pike? Fire the whole writing staff. Hire actual SciFi writers. More, hire SciFi writers that know and respect Star Trek. John Scalzi may be a raging lefty but he writes good technical SciFi and he knows Star Trek. Even better? Buy out Alec Peters (Axanar). Whoever owns Star Trek should call him up say, “here’s $30 million, complete access to Paramount Studios and our rolodex. We’d like 12 episodes by next summer.” But none of that is gonna happen. Kurtzman is never gonna do that. He’s got his own things to yell from his soapbox and a media empire to build. Star Trek is just the veneer that’s allowing him to do that.
Ya wanna go back to the well? Here’s my idea. It’s 2245. The second of the brand new Constitution class starship has just been launched. A brand new ship and ship type. Robert April, a seasoned captain w/ experience in the Klingon (4 Years) War has been tapped to command her on her first 5yr mission. An episodic show of exploration, man against nature, man against man and occasionally man against himself. A crew populated by normal people. Set against the final years of the war. Nobody’s the greatest, bestest helmsman/navigator/engineer/1st officer in the fleet. Just people that are good at their jobs. April and the crew going out, shaking down the ship, maybe meeting a new species that fans already know about (Kizin?). The only nod to a story arc is if something relevant happened in a previous episode, it would be appropriately referenced in the current ep. Our characters would not live in a 47min bubble.
Also, two technical/production points. If the money’s there, I would make someone like Lt. Arex at least a reoccurring charachter. The tech is now available to make a believable completely alien character. Not just a guy in a rubber mask. Also, I’d get better production designers. Looking for you , John Iocavelli. My problem w/ Star Trek going back to DS9 was that the sets were very nice and detailed, and they look like very nice sets. DS9 didn’t look like a space station, it looked like a set on the Paramount lot. Same w/ Enterprise. I’m willing to cut TNG and Voyager slack here cause both came from the “hotel lobby” design aesthetic of the the 24th century. But DS9 was an alien station and labor camp. Enterprise was from a far earlier, more industrial/practical era. A good production designer/DP team should be able to make them not look like crisp, clean sets.
OK. I’m done ranting.
7 replies on “Did they really fix Discovery?”
I haven’t watched Discovery or Picard for 2 reasons – 1) I saw the SJW crapola in the previews and 2) I won’t pay to watch them. I’ve got enough subscriptions going to fork out more money on sub-standard series that would ruin the mythology for me. I’ll stick with my TOS, TNG and movie dvds. Someday, when Hollywood isn’t so stupid and wrapped up with shoving their political and social messages down our throats, I’ll entertain any new ST series they come out with. Until then, I’ll stay in my happy place!
Apropos of this discussion, Ben Shapiro’s Sunday Special this week is with Orson Scott Card. MUST WATCH! He makes several of the same points you do here. Synergy! I really enjoyed it–first one of Ben’s Sunday Specials I’ve watched in months.
Thanks, I’ll go hunt that down today.
”I’m not going to say that (Serenity is)… the best science fiction movie ever. Oh, wait. Yes I am.”
-Orson Scott Card
“They” achieved their goal. Human success was trivialized. Science was turned into grade school magic or worse. Achievement was reduced to wishing. Conflict was reduced to a Days of our Lives soap opera or worse. They intended to instill a lack of hope, destroy the drive to succeed, and to turn mankind into nothing but a collective of willing slaves. Slaves seeking only to be consumed by the collective: without hope or a vision of a better world. A civilization that is on the way out never to rise above the muck of the swamp.
In other words they set out to destroy the very thing that Star Trek made visible. That a human future is possible. That it won’t be easy or cheap. It will take work, conviction that success is possible, and dedication to purpose. In the end, good things will happen BECAUSE HUMANS MADE IT SO. We were willing to pay the price reality demands for it. THIS is the vision of mankind that Star Trek made visible and that they attempted to destroy. Did they succeed?
We have free will. We can choose a different path. Will we choose wisely? Time will tell.
Modern Trek & Star Wars, and I guess a lot of entertainment, is created by egotistical narcissist w/ serious personal issues that have never worked out side of the entertainment industry. IMAO.
Agreed, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
I love it!! I am so pleased to have inspired such a rant!
I like your ideas. I would watch a show based on your idea. I would also watch Axinar-turned-Real-ST.
Your point about the poor writing is really It. I am willing to put up with a taste of SJW preachiness–Roddenberry wasn’t afraid to tackle social issues of his day, after all–but only a bit of it. It has to be fundamentally good writing, with good characters, or who cares.
For example, I tried watching the almost-spoof series by that cartoon-show-creator everyone thinks is such a genius but I’d never watched any of his shows, but I lost interest about half a dozen episodes in.
For another example, I enjoyed Voyager. I was annoyed by Janeway’s preference of “Captain” to “ma’am” (rant: and I was actually offended by Feinstein’s similar point–why do powerful women think they have to de-sex themselves or turn themselves into men in order to be respected? For me, it achieves the opposite. I am actually offended by “Ms.” /rant) but generally speaking the characters were interesting and throwing them out into the Gamma Quadrant (or was it the Delta?) made it a little more like the original ST and got them away from the tea-drinking diplomacy (can you believe the SW writers thought that was a good enough idea to borrow?).
ST:TNG, depite its many flaws (and I fully subscribe to Bill’s view here, he converted me completely) was nonetheless enjoyable to me. Troi made me roll my eyes, but I remember very distinctly coming home from my first semester of college (oh, no, I am dating myself) and making fun of my mom and brother for wanting to watch this silly-looking ST “remake.” Puh-leeeeease! OMG that’s like gross! And then I got sucked in with the very first episode and had to eat my words because it was enjoyable. But then, I had only ever watched the original ST in syndication as a pretty young child, so I didn’t fully “get” it then.
Whatever else you may say about that show–and again, Bill’s converted me–it worked. And ever since, they’ve been trying to recreate that magic and failing because all the things that made it work are not the things that they think did so. And yes, the entire series moved away over time from the original-ST-ness of it, but I’m sorry, those last couple of seasons featured good writing. “Sub Rosa” may be the best episode they ever broadcast.
So yes, yes, yes, it’s the writing, it’s the writing, it’s the writing!
(Note to self: in future, do not log into BWDC after drinking a whole glass of wine, even with dinner.)