Star Trek

Linkdump for March 30th from 13:25 to 16:32

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Sometime between 13:25 and 16:32 on March 30th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

  • The Male Power Fantasy (and why Mad Max and Captain Kirk don’t fit): This relates to a theory I have, which is that the archetypal Western Male Hero is James Bond, to the degree that people (Mainly straight white men) start to see every Western Male Hero as James Bond. Which is to say an aggressively masculine, quip-spitting, hyper violent womanizer. The ultimate Male Power Fantasy. A new supermodel love interest (or two) every film, a gun in his hand, and no consequences for his actions.
  • So many biological genders: If anyone tells you that there are 2-3 sexes in the world I want you to just go ahead and slap them.
  • Fight Club and toxic masculinity (with a side of Mad Max: Fury Road): Hold up – you mean there are people who watch Fight Club and don’t realise that Tyler Durden is meant to be full of shit?
  • Geisha FAQ: Please do not spread misconceptions about these hard-working women artists. They deserve respect and have persevered for centuries with women at the forefront of these professions.
  • Earth is dangerous: I really want a science fiction story where aliens come to invade earth and effortlessly wipe out humanity, only to be fought off by the wildlife.
  • Of privilege and nostalgia: The reality is, there was never a time when everyone could just enjoy things. To be able to say you had that time is to admit the privilege you had at not having to think about problematic behavior because it didn’t negatively affect your life.
  • To everyone else in the galaxy, all humans are basically Doc Brown.: Random Headcanon: That Federation vessels in Star Trek seem to experience bizarre malfunctions with such overwhelming frequency isn’t just an artefact of the television serial format. Rather, it’s because the Federation as a culture are a bunch of deranged hyper-neophiles, tooling around in ships packed full of beyond-cutting-edge tech they don’t really understand.
  • Snarky but amusing and thorough Romeo and Juliet analysis: SUMMARY: Romeo and Juliet is a stunningly rich play that is mostly about how feuds fuck people over badly and how if you have to wait until YOUR KIDS OFF THEMSELVES to figure that out you deserve to lose your children. Romeo and Juliet are victims of the feud and its mindless death-lust, not perpetrators of death on others. They’re not supposed to be figures of ridicule OR representatives of True Love: they’re supposed to make the audience go “oh BABIES, no, you’re going to end so badly” and then be sad when they do.
  • The singular “they”: Next time someone complains about singular “they” I’ll point them to this 17th century rant against singular “you”.
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One of my favorite geek shirts; unfortunately, it’s showing its age and is getting a little harder to decipher. Need to see if I can track it down to buy another one. (241/366) #coexist #geek #nerd #fandom #starwars #lordoftherings #lotr #alien #aliens #xfiles #drwho #harrypotter #shazam #startrek

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I’ve been seeing some people grousing about #StarTrekDiscovery being set pre-#TOS. While I can understand disappointment if one was hoping for a post-#Nemesis setting (though I’m fine with the announced setting), there seems to be this idea that there can’t be any real suspense because we know so much about #StarTrek universe in Discovery’s future. Well, I have shelves of Trek books that beg to differ: there are plenty of ways to tell interesting stories in eras where we know much of the relative future. Plus, most of these books are about a ship and crew that we know will survive intact; #DIS will be a different ship and different characters, so peril is still very much a possibility. There are so many ways to have good stories, drama, and suspense without having to put the fate of the entire Federation in jeopardy. (I’ve also seen people whining about the announced diversity; “we’ve already had women/black captains, why is this such a big deal”, and my favorite, “this left-wing liberal crap is going to ruin Star Trek”. All I can say there is that these poor people have a very odd idea of Trek’s messages, its past, and the politics of the show and its creators.) 🖖

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Totally geeking out over today’s #StarTrekDiscovery announcements. Is it January yet? 🖖 (And yes, that’s the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise, but I don’t have a Prime Timeline ship model, so I work with what I have.) (223/366) #StarTrek #STD #DIS #DSC #cantremembertherightabbreviation #youknowwhatimean

About that new Star Trek show…

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This morning, CBS announced a new Star Trek series debuting in January of 2017. Yay!

Well, maybe yay. Hopefully yay. But, of course, since we’re geeks, and since many of us feel that Trek hasn’t been treated terribly well lately, there’s a lot of trepidation mixed in with the general surprise at the news. So, a few thoughts on what little we know so far.

  1. Yes, the executive producer is Alex Kurtzman, notorious among many for being part of the team behind the recent reboot movies, which were successful but are regarded by many as being more than a little problematic. (Personally, I enjoyed the first and thought that though there were some issues, it did a good job of rebooting the franchise for modern times while still respecting its roots; the second is a big dumb summer action flick that is very, very questionable from a lifelong Trek fan’s standpoint.) However, Kurtzman is listed as executive producer, and his work as a series producer has often been on shows that have been worth watching (Alias, Fringe, and Sleepy Hollow are particular high points), and his greatest travesties have been as a film screenwriter (the Transformers franchise, the Trek reboots).

  2. Kurtzman’s aforementioned screenwriting problems (Transformers, nuTrek) were done in concert with Roberto Orci (notorious for essentially telling Trek fans critical of the new films to fuck off). Since the two decided to go their separate ways, it’s possible that he might do better shepherding a Trek show on his own than in partnership with Orci. (It’s also interesting that Kurtzman is doing the new show for CBS, while Orci is still part of the production team for the upcoming Star Trek Beyond for Paramount. Maybe that will help us figure out which of the two has a better handle on Trek?)

  3. I think it’s a safe bet that the new show will probably be part of the reboot universe. With three movies in the new universe out by the time the series debuts, and another planned for 2019, that simply makes the most sense. But that’s not definite: all we really know from the announcement is that it will “introduce new characters” and that “is not related to the upcoming feature film Star Trek Beyond“. This makes sense, as CBS controls Trek’s TV rights, while Paramount controls the feature film rights. So, while I think keeping it in the new universe (even if it doesn’t directly integrate with the films) makes the most sense, there’s no way to know for sure at this point.

  4. I’m in agreement with Ron Moore (and others) that while the films are fun, Star Trek works best on TV.

    I think that Star Trek, in its DNA, is a television show. The features are great. They’re a lot of fun and they’ve certainly opened it up to a lot of different audiences, but the features all are basically atypical episodes, if you think about it. The features are very big action-adventure movies, lots of spectacle, run and jump, shoot-em-up and blowing things up. The fate of the Earth, or the universe itself, is always at stake. It’s always about the captain, and one other character has a strong B-story, and everyone else sort of has very small roles beyond that. But Star Trek, as originally conceived, and as you saw play out in all the other series, was really a morality play every week, and it was about an ensemble of players. They were exploring science fiction ideas, sociological ideas and moral ideas. That’s really what the shows are about….

  5. It’s still over a year away. There’s a lot of time for rumors, speculation, hopes, fears, and everything else. I choose to remain cautiously optimistic.