Star Trek Strange New Worlds Season 2 (Paramount, 2023)

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shevek
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Trailer for SNW Season 2 just dropped, using an orchestral version of The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights"
(if you don't know the song, you were asleep in the 2000s).

Season is out June 15.

Back to the good-looking regular Klingons.
Kirk gets it on with La'an "where fun goes to die" Noonien-Singh. She looks pretty hot.



Chato's reaction to the trailer.



See you on 6/15!
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Can't wait. Well, I mean, will have to wait. Let the golden age of Trek continue.
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The snibbet of the new trailer with live action Mariner and Boims is so fricking good.
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Dogfish wrote:
10 months ago
The snibbet of the new trailer with live action Mariner and Boims is so fricking good.
Don't know why you didn't just go ahead and post it :)

Yup, the Lower Decks crossover looks spot on. Hopefully this is lots of fun.
The Spock and Chapel pairing is hot, too!

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Sorry but I hate what they did to Spock. Spock was an incredible character in TOS. A rational breath of fresh air. This looks like magic land.
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shevek wrote:
10 months ago
Dogfish wrote:
10 months ago
The snibbet of the new trailer with live action Mariner and Boims is so fricking good.
Don't know why you didn't just go ahead and post it :)

Yup, the Lower Decks crossover looks spot on. Hopefully this is lots of fun.
The Spock and Chapel pairing is hot, too!

I must confess I'm kind of gutted that Tendi didn't make it to live action. Unless she did and we just haven't seen her yet.

All the Spock stuff has been incredible, going back to him appearing in Discovery. Ethan Peck gets Spock, just, like, absolutely gets him. I think Leonard Nimoy would love what he's doing with the character.
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Mr. X wrote:
10 months ago
Sorry but I hate what they did to Spock. Spock was an incredible character in TOS. A rational breath of fresh air. This looks like magic land.
He's going to become that. First he has to watch one of his dearest friends get reduced to a burned up husk of his former self in a warp core breach.
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I am SO ready for some Nurse Chapel!!
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Holy shit this season is so good.

I love that they kind of revisited The City On The Edge Of Forever with the last episode. Also NewKirk is finding his feet.

Makes me wonder where stories of this quality are hiding for other shows and movies.

It's impressive as fuck btw that they just dropped back to back Trek classic formulas, the courtroom episode and a standalone time travel one, and knocked both of them right out of the park.
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Actually, much of these episodes are stand alone.

Is anyone still watching this other than Dogfish? I managed to plough through EPs 2 through 4 tonight.

EP2 is very preachy. It deals with the 'civil rights' of the augmented Illyrians being treated like pariahs and second class citizens who are not legally
allowed to join Starfleet. Many 'Current Year' allusions are made to people who 'can't love who they want', 'color of their skin' and stuff like that.
Why the Federation still needs 'civil rights lawyers' in the 24th century is beyond me.
It's pretty janky. Rebecca Romijn is really beautiful to look at, though.

Yes, EP3 with its history-changing time travel premise is a lot like City on the Edge of Forever.
Remember I said La'an is hot? She really is. Christina Chong has an impressively fit body, and an enticing face you want to get close to like Kirk does.
Kind of the whole "I'm going to seduce you, but I'm also going to possibly mass murder you" vibe, because she is a Noonien-Singh.
She also has a great catfight (in a corridor, natch) with an undercover female Romulan.

Here is Chong in a bit of a weak moment, it's not really peril, but you can see her fit body in the spandex and a bit of attractive chest.
christina chong.jpg
christina chong.jpg (38.61 KiB) Viewed 2297 times
EP4 has an interesting and intense premise about a whole society that forgets who they are every night due to some toxic radiation.
I wonder if that's an original concept - it seems like I've heard about it somewhere else but I can't remember where (get it? heh heh).

Anyway, we get yet another love story where Pike hooks up with the Cayuga's Captain Batel. She is also gorgeous. We've now basically got three lovely brunettes who all look fairly similar to each other, one attractive platinum blonde (Nurse Chapel), the kind of plain-looking Uhura (sorry, but she just can't measure up to Nichelle Nichols), and the pilot Ortegas, who has the sides of her head shaved and seems certain to be lesbian (but I wonder if they'll pull the trigger on that).

Which brings me to my observation: this Star Trek is very female.
Either they made a conscious effort here to attract more of a 50/50 audience, or they're still playing the representation game.

But we're still getting better stories and more classic Trek-style moments than we were in the past two series, so overall it's still a positive.
We'll have to see what other threads develop as the series goes on.
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Technically I don't think the civil rights lawyer was in the Federation, she was from the people that were genetically modified, if they wanted to be in the Federation they had to suffer for it, so they still had their own independent planet (I think). That's how it seemed to me anyway, given how Pike had to go there cap in hand to get help.

I'm sure I'd heard something about Rigel before, with regards to the memory-holes episode. I'm sure I'd heard of the Starfleet officer going rogue and taking over a civilisation before. Not sure where. Was a good episode. I concur that Ortegas is sending my gaydar off the charts. Am sure it was mentioned last season that she's bisexual. Nurse Chapel was also if memory serves. She's certainly the biggest tomboy in the galaxy though.

It really is all gravy with this show. There's not much to talk about because it's just good, every week. And even if it hypothetically wasn't good that'd just mean the next good episode was a week nearer.
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Dogfish wrote:
8 months ago
Technically I don't think the civil rights lawyer was in the Federation, she was from the people that were genetically modified, if they wanted to be in the Federation they had to suffer for it, so they still had their own independent planet (I think). That's how it seemed to me anyway, given how Pike had to go there cap in hand to get help.

I'm sure I'd heard something about Rigel before, with regards to the memory-holes episode. I'm sure I'd heard of the Starfleet officer going rogue and taking over a civilisation before. Not sure where.
That lawyer was from a planet of those gene modifying folks. As for the rogue Starfleet officer taking over a civilization, there is that classic Nazi planet episode, Patterns of Force. Doing more research, I found The Omega Glory.
Doing research on Wikipedia, I found that Rigel VII was referred to in The Cage/The Menagerie as a world that Pike lost crew on. When I saw this week's ep, I was thinking about that barbarian he "fought" on Talos IV. I guess that was a different planet?
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Danorian wrote:
8 months ago
When I saw this week's ep, I was thinking about that barbarian he "fought" on Talos IV. I guess that was a different planet?
Yes. Talos IV is not allowed to be visited by any Starfleet vessel, ever. Transgression is punishable by death.
This is General Order 7 of the Starfleet Directives (the Prime Directive being Order #1).

Here is the list of Directives:
https://www.st-minutiae.com/articles/tr ... rders.html

And yes, I knew that the lawyer (Una's old Illyrian friend) was not from a Federation planet.
My point was with all social ills in the Federation conquered by what the Lanthanite art collector called the "no-money socialist utopia", absolutely nobody is discriminated against, because everyone has exactly what they need at all times.
So I was questioning why the Federation would even recognize the existence of someone called a "civil rights lawyer", when there are no civil rights to be violated in the Federation.
It still seems like an incidence of "presentism" in the writing. But maybe that's just me.
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shevek wrote:
8 months ago
Danorian wrote:
8 months ago
When I saw this week's ep, I was thinking about that barbarian he "fought" on Talos IV. I guess that was a different planet?
Yes. Talos IV is not allowed to be visited by any Starfleet vessel, ever. Transgression is punishable by death.
This is General Order 7 of the Starfleet Directives (the Prime Directive being Order #1).

Here is the list of Directives:
https://www.st-minutiae.com/articles/tr ... rders.html

And yes, I knew that the lawyer (Una's old Illyrian friend) was not from a Federation planet.
My point was with all social ills in the Federation conquered by what the Lanthanite art collector called the "no-money socialist utopia", absolutely nobody is discriminated against, because everyone has exactly what they need at all times.
So I was questioning why the Federation would even recognize the existence of someone called a "civil rights lawyer", when there are no civil rights to be violated in the Federation.
It still seems like an incidence of "presentism" in the writing. But maybe that's just me.
Okay so I guess this might be the first series of Star Trek you've watched, but there's always civil rights stuff popping up in Star Trek.

For example one of the earlier series was called The Next Generation, and they did an episode called The Measure Of A Man, it's quite a famous one that a lot of fans have seen and reference about an android trying to prove he is a person and not property.

Characters who have been genetically altered have always been a sticking point in the Federation because of the Eugenics War. So issues surrounding them have been explored in some depth. There was a show called Deep Space Nine where one of the main characters was genetically engineered, you should check that out.

Also, worth remembering, in the original series everybody was always racist as fuck towards Spock. Especially Bones. It's going to be super weird if Strange New Worlds runs long enough to introduce those characters and suddenly everybody is being a dick to Spock for having pointy ears. A lot of the population of the Federation are humans, and a lot of humans are still tools, even in Star Trek times. So that's another reason to keep civil rights lawyers around.

It comes up a lot with people who are new to the show that they don't realise that often it is about contemporary issues reframed through the lens of science fiction. It's been the same way for well over fifty years now but for some reason that part of its formula keeps catching people by surprise and then they complain it's woke or something.
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The Lower Decks crossover is probably the best episode of Star Trek since DS9. Holy crap.
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Dogfish wrote:
8 months ago
It comes up a lot with people who are new to the show that they don't realise that often it is about contemporary issues reframed through the lens of science fiction. It's been the same way for well over fifty years now but for some reason that part of its formula keeps catching people by surprise and then they complain it's woke or something.
The show presented issues, it never told you how to think. And just because something is an issue does not mean all issues are weighted equally. The other thing is just because TOS presented issues does not mean people weren't fed up with heavy handed messaging.

TOS had a message about civil rights. New Trek has a message about some nonsense edge case issue. Therefore both are exactly the same since both present "issues".

As an example. If TOS presented LGBT they would present both the good and the bad and let the viewer decide. They wouldn't tell you what to think or present only a super positive view of one side. In New Trek they present LGBT as ONLY super positive and scold any disagreement or wipe away any disagreement. New Trek tokenizes.

The other issue is the lessons new trek are teaching have already been taught to us from the 1970s forward through progressive education, movies, TV etc. Taking an already existing issue and recycling it to use as a shame beating stick is not talking about issues. MOST of the people being lectured already KNOW these lessons or what was the point of 35-50 years of progressivism. Anyone your trying to change don't watch the show. Are these lessons aimed at Chinese? Muslims? Who?
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Dogfish wrote:
8 months ago

Okay so I guess this might be the first series of Star Trek you've watched, but there's always civil rights stuff popping up in Star Trek.

For example one of the earlier series was called The Next Generation, and they did an episode called The Measure Of A Man, it's quite a famous one that a lot of fans have seen and reference about an android trying to prove he is a person and not property.

Characters who have been genetically altered have always been a sticking point in the Federation because of the Eugenics War. So issues surrounding them have been explored in some depth. There was a show called Deep Space Nine where one of the main characters was genetically engineered, you should check that out.

Also, worth remembering, in the original series everybody was always racist as fuck towards Spock. Especially Bones. It's going to be super weird if Strange New Worlds runs long enough to introduce those characters and suddenly everybody is being a dick to Spock for having pointy ears. A lot of the population of the Federation are humans, and a lot of humans are still tools, even in Star Trek times. So that's another reason to keep civil rights lawyers around.

It comes up a lot with people who are new to the show that they don't realise that often it is about contemporary issues reframed through the lens of science fiction. It's been the same way for well over fifty years now but for some reason that part of its formula keeps catching people by surprise and then they complain it's woke or something.
Wow. Nope. I've watched all of the first five series. First time I ever noped out was a bit of the way through DIS S1.

And, we've already established in another thread that your conflation of 60s/70s Western liberalism with 2020s neo-Marxism is incorrect. The two ideologies are quite different - for example, one considers "justice" to be legal, the other considers it to be social. Wokeness opposes a whole lot of things that classical liberalism does not. So, presentism in the 60s or in the 90s (a cockeyed optimism about how things can improve in the future, using the positive values of the West and a liberal application of its technology) is not presentism as it exists now.

A good example is your mention of racism against Vulcans in many of the previous series, probably from TOS all the way to Enterprise, right?
The problem with your claim is that the racism was *comments in the dialogue*, not active discrimination (like preventing Vulcans from dining in Ten Forward or using the same bathrooms as humans). Free speech is protected under the law, apparently even in Federation times, and there was no civil rights action or prosecution in those series for things that Bones or anyone else *said*. So no, there was no need for civil rights lawyers in any of those Star Trek series, except as dealt with genetically altered humans (as you've mentioned) who were truly feared and hated for having been genocidal at one point. It was like being wary of space Nazis: the ancestors of the Illyrians basically *were* the future equivalent of white supremacists.

That's why it's ironic that the Illyrians need defending with a 'civil rights' lawyer, since they are the superior beings, and many of them even feel that way. After all, they can survive on planets where regular humans cannot. This was made clear when Pike had to wear the breathing apparatus on the Illyrian planet. Do the writers, who are certainly trying to introduce a presentist 'woke' analogy of marginalization and oppression into the script, realize this?

It's kind of analogous to progressives being staunch defenders of the Ukraine army even though it has a sizeable portion of Nazis in it, yet refusing to acknowledge the pragmatism of their choice to lend that support. Not an exact analogy, of course, but somewhat close.

Anyway...just watched Episode 6 of SNW S2. It's yet another Uhura-centered episode, but it's fairly well done. The idea of an alien species that can only communicate through hallucinations is intriguing, although it is a bit questionable that their presence can't be detected by any physical means whatsoever. The analogy is a bit strikingly similar to the plots of both of the eco-thrillers 'The Rig' and 'The Swarm' that I brought up in another thread: there's an invisible organism that's protesting our exploitation of a vital energy source.

Also, the documentation of Kirk and Spock's very first meeting is completely iconic - that handshake photo should be in the Smithsonian. It's the single most important moment in all of Star Trek, excepting maybe when Zefram Cochrane invented the warp drive.

However, I do have to question one thing: "deuterium poisoning" doesn't really exist as SNW has presented it. You can't be affected, hardly at all, by a small amount of deuterium leaking from a nacelle or whatever. You would literally have to drink gallons of heavy water (which is what deuterium is) for it to have any effect at all on your system. Nice try, guys!
Mr. X wrote:
8 months ago
MOST of the people being lectured already KNOW these lessons or what was the point of 35-50 years of progressivism. Anyone your trying to change don't watch the show. Are these lessons aimed at Chinese? Muslims? Who?
Oh, the answer to this one is simple. They're not trying to affect change. They won't change anyone, especially not anyone in China, the Middle East, or much of Africa. In that sense, they are like Kamala Harris, acting the word-salad blowhard while China invests millions in African countries.

They're simply virtue signaling like most of Hollywood does. Just showing how much better they are than the average viewer, especially any viewer who might have preferences for preserving canon and legacy from the 60s through the 00s, which are things that need to be smashed and destroyed.

Otherwise, why would folks like them constantly use the phrase "Do better" when talking down to others morally? It's how they feel. Superior. Kind of like ideological versions of the Illyrians.
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Dogfish wrote:
8 months ago
The Lower Decks crossover is probably the best episode of Star Trek since DS9. Holy crap.
Just watched EP7 and EP8, and I'm sad to say, no it isn't.

EP7:
The episode where they present live-action versions of Boimler and Mariner is a mere filler gimmick episode.
Much of it is played for guffaws and cheap time-travel jokes, and so much time is spent building up the character of Uhura as this amazing legendary genius that the term "badass" is actually used. Again. This is similar to Season 1 where they did the same thing. I'm not sure why the writers of this series feel so obligated to lionize both Uhura and Una (who is literally presented as the "poster girl" of Starfleet recruitment). So, no, this one didn't satisfy - the innards of the story were shallow and hollow.

EP8:
However, the story about Chapel and M'Benga at the battle of J'Gal is whole different story. It's rare (in fact, it might even be the first time) that we get to see a Starfleet medical unit doing its triage and operating theater as if it were an episode of MASH (without the humor). A surprising amount of warlike, military sentiment is expressed, which one wouldn't normally expect from the writers of a show that's supposed to present a future utopia.
And the balance that M'Benga and Chapel strike between vengeance and justice is great. Deep lessons to be learned here about fighting for one's cause.
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I should have known with the Lower Decks episode that something brutal was about to happen and so it was with episode eight. Star Trek loves to go light and breezy right before hoofing you in the nards.

I think the show is setting the stage to replace M'Benga with McCoy, which should be happening in the timeline at some point. Can't have M'Benga around as the top doc if Pike can't trust him, and I'm fairly sure that trust is gone now, since it might already have been shaky before what with the whole daughter in the pattern-buffer thing.

This episode was a great twist on the themes of the DS9 story Duet. M'Benga's a good guy, but he's permanently damaged by his trauma and without the moral certainty and guidance that Major Kira got from her Bajoran spirituality he embraced the simple solution of "I'm tired of holding it together, I'm going to stab this dude."

Also it's very cool that Starfleet had a squad of drug-powered ninjas and that M'Benga, when he went all Space Rambo, was ferocious enough to straight up scare a Klingon General into recanting his warlike culture and embracing Federation values. He just NOPE'd right out of Klingon-ness.
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Dogfish wrote:
8 months ago
setting the stage to replace M'Benga with McCoy

DS9 story Duet

Starfleet had a squad of drug-powered ninjas and that M'Benga, when he went all Space Rambo, was ferocious enough
Speaking of DS9, I immediately wondered if the Protocol 12 enhancement drug could cause the kind of addiction we've seen with the Jem'Hadar and
their Ketracel White, and what kind of withdrawal and treatment struggles its users might undergo after taking it repeatedly in the heat of war.

M'Benga could meet his end in the series that way, retiring from the fleet, or in any other similarly appropriate manner.
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shevek wrote:
8 months ago
Dogfish wrote:
8 months ago
setting the stage to replace M'Benga with McCoy

DS9 story Duet

Starfleet had a squad of drug-powered ninjas and that M'Benga, when he went all Space Rambo, was ferocious enough
Speaking of DS9, I immediately wondered if the Protocol 12 enhancement drug could cause the kind of addiction we've seen with the Jem'Hadar and
their Ketracel White, and what kind of withdrawal and treatment struggles its users might undergo after taking it repeatedly in the heat of war.

M'Benga could meet his end in the series that way, retiring from the fleet, or in any other similarly appropriate manner.
Definite paralells with the Jem Hadar I think. They would be the far end of that path I think, which M'Benga can probably see coming in his own way, even if the other lads are gung ho for it.

In theory, keeping with the timeline anyway, M'Benga could be stepping down to be replaced by McCoy almost any time now. He still serves on the Enterprise throughout Kirk's captaincy in theory, but Bones becomes CMO.
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As we continue to watch the upcoming SNW episodes, hopefully in relative peace, I place here a video by science fiction writer and comic book publisher Jon Del Arroz who maintains that Star Trek was not "woke" until the death of Gene Roddenberry and Alex Kurtzman took over,
because "woke" did not exist yet.



Previous series TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT, although they certainly may have had some 'liberal' tendencies as were common from the 1960s to the early 2000s, were not 'progressive' in the same way we think of today with philosophies like intersectionalism.

Please note that I do not agree necessarily with much of Jon Del Arroz's world view. For example, I am not Christian, I am not Catholic, I am not right-wing, nor do I seek to demean women in any way (I think that he possibly does). Yet he makes solid points all the way through.

And yes, there is such a thing as having "too many females" on a cast, whether it's SNW or The Flash or Legends of Tomorrow. If a series is meant to emphasize the feminine, then it makes sense, but if it's just an action show, and the casting is deliberately female-majority, you know there's probably an agenda.

Second-wave feminism (the type I adhere to) is about equality of the sexes, not domination.

Anyway, you can watch JDA's clip, or you can not. Either way, I would appreciate people not freaking out about it. It's just not necessary.
Let's just continue to watch this series, it's generally a decent watch so far.
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shevek wrote:
8 months ago
As we continue to watch the upcoming SNW episodes, hopefully in relative peace, I place here a video by science fiction writer and comic book publisher Jon Del Arroz who maintains that Star Trek was not "woke" until the death of Gene Roddenberry and Alex Kurtzman took over,
because "woke" did not exist yet.

Previous series TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT, although they certainly may have had some 'liberal' tendencies as were common from the 1960s to the early 2000s, were not 'progressive' in the same way we think of today with philosophies like intersectionalism.

Please note that I do not agree necessarily with much of Jon Del Arroz's world view. For example, I am not Christian, I am not Catholic, I am not right-wing, nor do I seek to demean women in any way (I think that he possibly does). Yet he makes solid points all the way through.

And yes, there is such a thing as having "too many females" on a cast, whether it's SNW or The Flash or Legends of Tomorrow. If a series is meant to emphasize the feminine, then it makes sense, but if it's just an action show, and the casting is deliberately female-majority, you know there's probably an agenda.

Second-wave feminism (the type I adhere to) is about equality of the sexes, not domination.

Anyway, you can watch JDA's clip, or you can not. Either way, I would appreciate people not freaking out about it. It's just not necessary.
Let's just continue to watch this series, it's generally a decent watch so far.
I'm a little baffled as to why you expend so much of your time and energy on things you hate.

Star Trek = No racism, no sexism, no capitalism, meritocracy = Hippie's vision of the future

Hippies.

Space hippies.

Ask yourself, right wing or left wing?

Space hippies.

Conservative? Progressive?
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Yeah Shevek, why bother. Let these people burn their own house down. Its like women's soccer. People demand we all watch it and support but they themselves don't spend a dime on it. No system of just rebellion is sustainable. Look at Disney, Netflix, etc all crashing. Heck Disney is talking about selling itself off. MCU, DCU, all dead. Heck secret wars was so bad it was full of "secret" d-list and unkown characters nobody cared about. WTF are these two unknown skrulls fighting? Don't know, don't care.

I don't watch SNW. No reason to. And the people defending it won't watch it either. Let it wither on the vine. Its gone. Instead insist on more of it and double the budget.

If its not important then neither is your viewership and neither is your money. LET IT DIE.
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I dived into a bit of the video at random just for a taster and he described Starfleet as military so I'm out.

Fundamental misunderstanding of the subject matter. Insert le trash meme face.

It is rather vexing to see people like that trying to co-opt Star Trek into something it's not. The Family Guy dude made like a whole conservative Star Trek clone so those folks like that would have something to watch. So did Joss Whedon. I think they got four seasons and a movie between the two of them.That's, y'know, something right?

But yeah the streaming wars will separate the wheat from the chaff.

Given what DIsney and DC have now decided is a suitable budget for shit like The Flash and Secret War I can't imagine things will carry on as they have been for much longer.
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Dogfish wrote:
8 months ago
I dived into a bit of the video at random just for a taster and he described Starfleet as military so I'm out.

Fundamental misunderstanding of the subject matter. Insert le trash meme face.

It is rather vexing to see people like that trying to co-opt Star Trek into something it's not. The Family Guy dude made like a whole conservative Star
What you're thinking of as "progressivism" from the 60s, the kind espoused in Star Trek, is now known as "classical liberalism".

21st century "progressives" have in Current Year re-branded their ideology to mean pretty much the same thing as "woke" (intersectional, neo-Marxist etc). Where as a classical liberal is now a moderate or centrist position, but far-leftists criticize (more like fantasize!) that it's actually "right-wing". It isn't.

The video commenter (JDA) is not co-opting anything. He made the video after attending SDCC and hearing from the IDW Star Trek panel that the three writers for the current Star Trek comics hadn't seen the show before they took the job.

He's offering a right-wing perspective on what he enjoyed most about the series (again, it's not my perspective)
and there were some things for him to enjoy, like the masculine trio of the lead actors.
They gave sexy women tight outfits in Star Trek to satisfy the male gaze right up until the mid-2000s.
Again, that's not what 21st century types called "progressive" (or woke) - that's classic liberalism, at best (or its subset, second-wave feminism).

Seth McFarlane did not make a "conservative" version of Star Trek with The Orville. He made a "classical liberal" version - that is to say, he simply made a version as it already existed in the 1980s with TNG. I already explained the fallacy of woke types trying to call classical liberalism "conservative" or "right wing". It's not, man. Seth MacFarlane is a Democrat. You don't get away with calling MacFarlane "conservative".
Joss Whedon isn't conservative, either - not by a long shot.

Starfleet is a military fleet representing the common interests of the Federation. The races unite for common defense against outside threats.
It has an exploration wing to be sure, but so did the navies of European nations during, uh, the Age of Exploration, at the same time they also
had Armadas.

It is, in fact, a fundamental misunderstanding of Star Trek to not understand that Starfleet fought HUGE WARS in which millions died - the latest episode of SNW which we both discussed even mention a battle in possibly more detail than has ever been mentioned before.

The series contains a total of TEN WARS, all of which are listed in this article:
https://screenrant.com/star-trek-war-kl ... -eugenics/
Many of the starships (even the exploratory ones) are named directly after ships in the United States armed navy by the authors of the shows themselves!

Also - there is definitely capitalism in Star Trek! For example, what do you think the Ferengi are doing? Not everything can be synthesized with transporter tech. Plus, there is feudalism (Klingon), aristocracy (Romulans), de facto theocracy (Bajorans), and collectivism (Dominion).
Pretty much any system you can think of. It is a well-populated universe of cool ideas: IDIC, as Spock would say.

Come on, man, don't be that dense.
Mr. X wrote:
8 months ago
Yeah Shevek, why bother. Let these people burn their own house down.
I don't watch SNW. No reason to. And the people defending it won't watch it either. Let it wither on the vine. Its gone. Instead insist on more of it and double the budget.
If its not important then neither is your viewership and neither is your money. LET IT DIE.
Sorry, Mr. X but I'm not quite that cynical. I'll watch because it's there, it's Star Trekkish, and it doesn't make me vomit like Discovery or the first 2 Picard seasons did.
Last edited by shevek 8 months ago, edited 1 time in total.
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Mr. X
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shevek wrote:
8 months ago


Sorry, Mr. X but I'm not quite that cynical. I'll watch because it's there, it's Star Trekkish, and it doesn't make me vomit like Discovery or the first 2 Picard seasons did.
They've had too many gimmick episodes. I know TOS wasn't perfect (gangster planet) but the show isn't compelling and none of the characters strike a cord.

MacFarlane's Orville is not conservative. Not sure how anyone thinks that. Empowered women, the whole Moclin trans thing. Nobody on the show is religious. I don't see any real "conservative" things. Maybe some family first messages with the doctor and her kids.
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theScribbler
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shevek wrote:
8 months ago
...

Come on, man, don't be that dense.
HAH! shevek calling anyone else dense is the most looking at himself in the mirror projection, and pathetic thing, I've seen today!
the Scribbler

:christmastree:
If U C Xmas tree on TV show
it's Xmas Activism! :christmas:

:lynda1:
If U C attractive brunette in a movie

it's Dark Haired Women Activism!

Be very careful!
Don't B indoctrinated!
Cover your eyes! & ears!
:tv:
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The musical episode was about as good as a musical episode can be, given my brain just doesn't get musicals. I think like 90% of its success lies with the Klingons though.
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They have a much bigger budget than TNG and access to better CGI and yet the klingon bridge looks like some amatuer fan fic with a repeating hall in the back. They couldn't even do a good cgi klingon bridge? Continuing Voyages does 10 times better work.


This looked better with a worse budget. At least that kind of looks like a bridge.
Dogfish
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Mr. X wrote:
7 months ago
:crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:
I'm talking about the Klingons in the musical episode specifically.
Danorian
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Dogfish wrote:
7 months ago
The musical episode was about as good as a musical episode can be, given my brain just doesn't get musicals. I think like 90% of its success lies with the Klingons though.
I'm not liking Lip Sync Battle: Star Trek Edition. Watching, and sooo tempted to fast forward through the singing. :evil:
Oh NO! Not a sing along of the whole crew! :evilmad:
I used to sing barbershop in school, and was in all-county chorus, but ugh!
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Danorian wrote:
7 months ago
Dogfish wrote:
7 months ago
The musical episode was about as good as a musical episode can be, given my brain just doesn't get musicals. I think like 90% of its success lies with the Klingons though.
I'm not liking Lip Sync Battle: Star Trek Edition. Watching, and sooo tempted to fast forward through the singing. :evil:
Oh NO! Not a sing along of the whole crew! :evilmad:
I used to sing barbershop in school, and was in all-county chorus, but ugh!
I am dreading watching this. Unless, of course, it's a dramatic re-staging of Aktuh and Melota, but I doubt it.



Post-watch analysis:

This episode was terrible, probably one of the cheesiest things I've ever watched on TV, and very possibly in the top five worst Star Trek-related episodes of all time. You know how songs in modern Broadway musicals are often very bland adaptations of modern pop tropes, like the songs from Hamilton or Glee but dumbed-down even further? That's exactly what is presented here.

Also - the premise of the "quantum improbability" is violated. You know how in this episode, Enterprise crew members are forced to start singing whenever their emotions become intense? Well, there is a scene smack the middle of the episode (I think it's between Kirk and Da'an) where emotions are very intense, and yet nobody starts singing. They just keep talking and working out their (lack of a) relationship until the scene is over.

Busted!

Furthermore, I sense a theme: 1) Uhura is always the smart one who somehow inherently knows what to do and solves the problem saving the ship
and 2) what saves the ship is an application of collectivism rather than individual initative (which would be the hallmark of a solution by, say, Kirk).

And no, we don't get anything cool like a throwback to Aktuh and Melota. The only Klingon number in this musical episode is some kind of brief autotuned trap garbage.

Yeah, skip over this one, big-time. Unless watching that musical episode of Supergirl and several seasons of Glee somehow floated your boat.
Then go for it.
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