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Star Trek Discovery's First Trailer Brings a New Ship, New Characters, and Old Conflicts (cbs.com)
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."
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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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...
The Trek series before now have always felt inclusive. This one feels exclusive. Big difference.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
https://youtu.be/d8aUuFsXRjU
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I thought female captains weren't allowed in the TOS (or earlier) time period? That was the whole reason Janis Lester had to swap bodies with Kirk in order to become captain. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Janice_Lester
Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it.
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?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
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.
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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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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