Well, among other things, Silence! is no longer running. It was a production of the New York International Fringe Festival, which was finished at the end of August. I saw it; I even reviewed it for the theatre website I write for. It was okay. A dynamic lead performance (by the woman playing Clarice), but a lot of other so-so people doing, saying, and singing so-so things. It got a pretty good response from audiences, and I believe it sold out every performance, but reviews and word of mouth were decidedly mixed. Whether it will show up again in New York any time soon is anyone's guess... mine is no, at least not in exactly its previous form. But it might come back in a couple of years and try again; most Fringe musicals that move on (Urinetown being the most famous example) tend to do exactly that.
Krugman is anti-Bush. That's all. He makes mistakes about economics in his columns all the time, simple things that he really should know better about, but doesn't consider important because all that matters to him is getting Bush out of the White House. If Krugman was sane at one point, it was before I started reading him and becoming aware of the many, many errors he makes on an almost weekly basis. He's an embarrassment, and based on his output over the last couple of years, doesn't seem qualified to write for The New York Times or any other publication about economics. Politics is another story, but, refresh my memory, what are his qualifications there...?
I've never bought into this argument, either. "Some of the most intelligent SF ever seen on television"? I'm sorry, but like what? Like "Trials and Tribble-ations" in the 4th season? Like all the episodes with the holographic lounge singer? Like the baseball episode in the last season, "Take Me Out to the Holodeck," or whatever it was called? Like the one in which the Wormhole Aliens vaporize 2800 Dominion ships... just because?
Nothing I saw in DS9 remotely qualifies it as "some of the most intelligent SF ever seen on television." Especially given the fine work done concurrently on Babylon 5 and, earlier, on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I've read other posts in this thread by people who disapproved of TNG rehashing themes and concepts from the original series, but that's part of what made it work for me. TNG might have been formulaic at times, but it almost never wavered.
DS9 went back and forth between trying to satisfy hardcore Trek fans and trying to branch out with new ideas, but it was never, ever able to reconcile these two concepts. So you got the typical Star Trek filler crap (the episodes mentioned above, which are just the beginning of what I could name) mixed with faux-Babylon 5 attempts at continuity that don't really hold together. The storylines are loosely connected thematic threads that can be pulled whichever way as desired by the writers--there's no core, no singular theme around which the show revolved.
Let me take that back: There was in the first season of the show, but it was mostly abandoned when the writers came to the conclusion (incorrect, in my opinion) that what they were doing wasn't exciting enough and needed to superimpose a galaxy-level conflict on what was happening. That led to all sorts of ridiculuous things like the Defiant and Worf and the Pagh Wraiths and all that... Too many things that didn't really connect because, again, there was no core beyond "whatever will keep people watching." I understand that the business part of "show business" isn't really avoidable, but to neglect common sense and previously established character and plot points whenever they become inconvenient is simply not the hallmark of well-written drama. Watching the finale, with the ridiculous conclusion of Sisko's "story" and Odo's "relationship" with the female shapeshifter and the Dominion-friendly alien who turns out to be a clone after he's killed so he can keep coming back as many times as necessary... It all just pointed up the arbitrary nature of everything that happened.
But while I don't think any of this could ever have been great, I don't think it would have been so bad had we not gotten the pretentious drivel from them about how they were doing a six-episode arc here (except for this one irrelevant Klingon honor episode in the middle) or another ten-episode arc there (which is immediately followed by a holosuite episode), and so on. Voyager lacked these pretensions, and, yes, a lot of it was garbage, but they never tried to pretend it was anything else. So, when they threw an amazing episode at you--like "Year of Hell," or "The Chase" or "The Game" or whatever it was when they were trapped in a WWII scenario or something, you just kind of had to boggle because it was so unexpected. But the DS9 people were trying very, very hard. And it looked, from the beginning, like they were trying very, very hard. And I don't ever want to see the wheels turning.
That's one of the things I so loved about Babylon 5--while far from perfect, it always felt effortless, like things really were unfolding, and not being manipulated into getting this to work with that, and this idea to fit with that concept no matter what. (Well, with an exception or two, but far fewer than with DS9.) But with DS9, I just never bought any of it. It was never convincing. It was written, it was scripted, and, worst, it was false. To me, false drama d
Do you have some proof of this? I have never, ever heard from anywhere that "Sleeping in Light" was filmed in the third season. I've always heard that it was filmed as the final episode of the fourth season, with the provision that additional material could be filmed during the fifth season if necessary, an option that jms elected not to exercise.
Will someone with mod points please mod the parent insightful?
Sorry, DS9 did suck. Bit time. The only thing Voyeger did was make DS9 not seem as bad as it did.
Yes, that's exactly right. DS9 was atrociously written -- surely I can't be the only person who remembers the Wormhole Aliens just making 2800 Dominion ships vanishing... because? Or a holodeck baseball episode being slipped in during last "story arc" of the series? Or an irrelevant Klingon honor episode smack dab in the middle of the storyline where Sisko and company lost control of DS9? Or the finale with Odo and the female Shapeshifter that made no sense? Or how a one-episode character received a huge onscreen funeral and Jadzia Dax received nothing, only to have the next Dax come onto the station in the first episode of the next season, though previous episodes went to great trouble to establish that that can never, ever happen? I'm only stopping there because I've blocked out most of thee show's other ridiculousness, but it just didn't stop.
The writers didn't care about telling a story, so there simply wasn't a consistent story told. And that made DS9, in its later years, unwatchable to me, even though I followed it from the beginnings. Wormhole Aliens? Pagh Wraiths? The holodeck lounge singer? These are not signs of a well-written show. No consistency whatsoever, and not enough people cared because it was Star Trek and because Voyager kept flying off the handle. But at its best, I feel that Voyager was better than DS9 just because it occasionally made some sense--not always very much--and occasionally had characters dealing with human, emotional situations you could relate to. And I also feel that, on the whole, the acting was better, but when you have only garbage writing to work with, it doesn't always matter how good an actor you are.
For me, whatever chemistry Star Trek had vanished, for the most part, somewhere during season 6 of The Next Generation. That cast, however, was so good that they were able to finesse their way through the less-than-fortuitous episodes they had to deal with and turn out good work even when the odds were really against them; that's why, even when the quality was lesser, it still seemed pretty high. The DS9 and Voyager casts simply didn't have those tools. But Voyager came off better because the writers, producers, and actors never tried to make it more than it was. Maybe they should have, but they didn't. DS9's attempts to reach for the stars (even if they were in Babylon 5's universe) made it fall that much faster and harder. I can't say it's the worst of all Star Trek series, because I've only seen two episodes of Enterprise. But 75-80% of it is really embarrassingly bad, and a sad chapter in Star Trek history that is best left forgotten.
Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are commentators and make no attempts to portray themselves as anything else. (Conveniently, you didn't mention Alan Colmes, a liberal commentator.) No one would mistake Maureen Dowd or Paul Krugman for conservatives, nor should they--they're unabashedly liberal. But the question is: To what degree does the bias extend beyond the editorial page and into the news coverage. You claim it does at FOXNews and not at The New York Times; others claim it's the opposite. Who is correct? And how can you prove it?
Your unwillingness to see any bias whatsoever in The New York Times suggests that your ability to faithfully discern bias in FOXNews is similarly flawed. But regardless, don't cite FOXNews commentators as examples of bias (Colmes notwithstanding) unless you're willing to hold Times op-ed contributors up to the same scrutiny.
I present this link to Donald Luskin's piece for National Review. It's well worth reading, and provides an interesting contrast to the piece from The New York Times: Reform lies at the Times
No, he won't, becuase your children would have to choose to go into the military.
I'm so sick of this "send our children" garbage being used as the reason to avoid every military conflict under the sun. We don't have a draft anymore. That means that, if your children, or anyone's, don't want to fight, they don't have to.
Berman, Braga, and whoever else is involved with Star Trek these days (it's been a while since I followed it actively) don't really understand what the original point of the show was. You only need to watch the original series in order to find it: it's to tell stories. Actual stories with real characters, real plots, and real meaning. TOS wasn't even really a science-fiction show when it came right down to it--it was just speculative fiction (SF) that happened to be set in space. And that's why it worked, why it proved captivating. That's also why, at least in the first several years, The Next Generation worked as well as it did.
But somewhere along the line--maybe with Roddenberry's death, maybe a little bit after--people started getting the idea in their heads that Star Trek needed to really be sci-fi, and that's when things blew up. You got ridiculous stories it was impossible to care about. You got endless political arcs with no beginning, middle, or end on Deep Space Nine that provided little entertainment or sense of purpose; all those things were provided, and much more interestingly, on Babylon 5. You got the very concept of Voyager, which only became interesting when they discovered they found a back door into the original point of Star Trek: "To boldly go where no man/one has gone before." As for Enterprise, it's all about ret-conning this and setting up that. There's no real substance to it. That's not what it's about. What it is about, though, I couldn't begin to tell you.
They need to hire actual writers to writeStar Trek again. Make it intelligent, literary, provocative, forget all the crap that's started seeping into the very fabric of the franchise, that's forced everything to be so boring and sanitary, and let it be again what it once was. They want to ignore Roddenberry's ideas because he was of the past, and that time is gone. But when he was around, Star Trek worked. It just doesn't anymore.
I don't have any mod points right now...
on
Should Star Trek Die?
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· Score: 1, Interesting
...but I wouldn't mod you down even if I did. Voyager is infinitely superior to Deep Space Nine, with generally better acting and, in its middle three seasons or so, better writing. The early years and the later years weren't so great, but it was realStar Trek, and played very, very well. Could it have been better? Absolutely. But it also could have been much worse, as both Deep Space Nine and Enterprise have proven.
This idea is long overdue as far as I'm concerned. Given the delivery method of most cable services now, there's no reason for it not to happen. Well, I take that back: The reason is, if people are allowed to do this, the cable companies would make less money. So that's probably why it hasn't happened yet. But I live in New York and deal with Time-Warner Cable, paying $50/month for expanded basic service, which gives me some 60-70 channels, of which I regularly watch maybe 15. Hopefully the cable companies will come around to this way of thinking eventually, but I'm not sure I'm holding my breath.
This simply isn't accurate. At one point or another, I owned just about all the Infocom hint booklets, including the one for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and never once had a problem with running out of ink in the markers. (And that includes the extra-large books that included hints for multiple games.) And Infocom sold replacement markers for all their hint books, and even included a message to this effect in the books themselves.
Please tell me you're not serious about this. What makes you think that, if we raise the taxes back up to 55-60%, rich people are going to pay it? If they can find places to pay less tax somewhere else and do the same business, don't you think they will? Or is it their responsibility to just sit around and pay as much in taxes as YOU see fit? Give me a break. Higher taxes do not grow economies. If they did, then America would be behind "most of the European countries, Canada, and Australia," and it's not. It's at the top. That's not accidental, you know.
I know tons of people who complain about FOXNews for every imaginable transgression, real or imagined. A lot of people have even taken to calling it Faux News. I don't know where you are that no one complains about FOXNews, but please let me know so I can move there!
Stephen Schwartz. You will have to try harder around me.:)
I will say, however, I'm not a huge fan of Wicked; it seems to be a show that splits people pretty much down the middle.
...taken from Ken Mandelbaum's (fantastic) 1991 book, is "Not since Carrie..."
Although, I must say that, despite the ridiculousness of its execution by director Terry Hands, who staged the entire thing as a Greek tragedy, there was some excellent music in it. "And Eve Was Weak" and "Evening Prayers" were ravishingly dramatic, "I Remember How Those Boys Could Dance" was heartbreaking, and "When There's No One" was very dramatically stirring, cutting right to the heart of what Margaret must be experiencing when she and her beliefs are rejected by her daughter. But for each of those brilliant, almost-operatic numbers, there were songs that were as ridiculous as those were profound: The Bye Bye Birdie-esque "Don't Waste the Moon," the leather bar "Do Me a Favor," and the nadir of them all, "Out for Blood," which found Chris's boyfriend and his cohorts dancing around a pig trough (a trap set in the stage) and smearing blood all over their chests.
But, yes, I think The Lord of the Rings has the capacity to surpass that in sheer "flop"itude, though, if it succeeds, it will probably be absolutely spectacular. As I said in my original post on this subject, I think it's one or the other, with almost no middle ground.
By the way, we must move in very different circles... A lot of the people I know look forward to talking about Carrie and its music, whether or not they actually saw it. It, like Moose Murders, has attained an almost mythical status among most serious New York theatregoers. So, if it's not appropriate to mention it in polite company where you live, come to New York, where you'll likely be welcomed with open arms!
And what proven calibre did Peter Jackson have before he started working on the LOTR trilogy?
Nice try, but I don't think your analogy works. The problem is that epic stories lend themselves to film much better than stage. Sure, it would have been possible for Jackson to screw up the films--it's happened before with the same property, has it not?--but I maintain that it would have been harder than it will be for Matthew Warchus and company to botch a stage musical using the same subject matter. For one thing, Jackson had at least nine full hours to tell the story; the stage musical will have three. He also had the benefit of location shooting and hundreds of extras in addition to CGI and a budget that was probably at least ten times--at least!--what the stage version will have.
The stage version must attempt to compress the events of, I don't know how long it is, 12-18 months or so, into 3.5 hours onstage, establish the characters, establish the locale(s), establish the story, find a way to stage the epic battles on which the story thrives while not neglecting the intimacy and emotion in the story that captures people's hearts, and find room for songs. Then, on top of all of that, they have to budget and adjust the ticket prices accordingly, so that this huge show, currently with an estimated cost of 8.5 million pounds--and which will almost certainly have increased by the time it opens--has a chance of paying off, and then they have to fight expectations on the part of audiences and critics who will be comparing it not only to the original source material, but the series of three dazzling motion pictures that have dominated movie news for about the last three years.
This is really, really hard. I think it's even less likely to work than most shows, and only a very small percentage of shows is ever successful anyway. I wish them the best, but I'm just afraid it's going to blow up in their faces. It should be a spectacular explosion, though.
I can only envision one of two possibilities for how this is going to turn out: (1) The most amazing thing ever, or (2) The biggest flop in the history of the musical theatre.
The problem is that, for the most part, really epic stories are simply not endemic to the musical theatre art form. How many have there been? And, of those, how many have truly been successful? Even theatre epics, like Show Boat or Les Miserables are still pretty small in scope when compared to something The Lord of the Rings because they focus pretty pointedly on people, whereas LOTR is about big events, big stakes, and even larger plot points.
Shrinking the story down to where it would it would on the musical stage, and still leave room for the things every play needs (exposition, characterization, and, probably most importantly, songs) would be almost impossible under the best circumstances, and most of the people involved simply aren't of the proven calibre necessary to pull all this off. Sure, A.R. Rahman had some kind of a success with Bombay Dreams, but what in Matthew Warchus's resume suggests he's even remotely qualified to handle something on this scale? He's talented, yes, but not with material of this size. His solution to staging one of Broadway's most traditionally opulent musicals--Follies--on Broadway in 2001 was to strip away everything that made it so oversized and, in its original production, so thrilling. If you do that with The Lord of the Rings, what's left?
So, while I wish them the best of luck, they're really facing a difficult struggle, and I'm not sure they will be able to pull it off. Under most circumstances, I would suggest that they rework the idea as an opera, or perhaps a series of operas, but of course, Richard Wagner already did that with Der Ring des Nibeluengen, and the less comparison The Lord of the Rings has with that, the better, I think. It will be unavoidable in any case, but critics (and audiences) will have their knives sharpened going into this, and it will have to be even that much better to win them over. I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy the challenges facing the creators of this musical.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think a big part of this also relates back to the days when producing games was a lot harder than it is today. I know people who spent a whole year playing Ultima V until they beat it, but it made sense, because there was, as I recall, more than a one-year gap between Ultima V and Ultima VI. Origin, for example, kept people interested enough in that game to keep their attention up until the next one came out, and so on down the line. When so many games today are cookie-cutter style or expansion packs--and with the sheer number of games being so much higher, that's a lot harder to do. So, as you say, the publisher is interested in getting as much money from the consumer as possible as fast as possible, and making difficult games doesn't fit well into that business model.
I suppose it goes without saying I preferred the old days.
Well, actors do occasionally forget lines, even in the highest caliber of plays. That just happens sometimes. However, in a musical like Les Miserables it's less likely to be an issue--if you go up on a lyric while singing, it's easy enough to just make up a word or two (or even sing "la") until you can find your place and get back on the beat again. But, you're right, it won't be much of an issue.
What is an issue, apparently, is training someone to correctly use the system. I covered the Broadway musician's strike last year, and learned a bit about how these things work. Apparently, there's a pretty steep learning curve involved, and getting everything to sync up just right (and it has to be just right, of course) is not something one can just do right away. I believe the companies wanted to send someone out to use the systems during the shows and then train someone else, but even with a week or two of advanced notice, it proved unwieldy for the musicians and dangerous for the actors (as, on Broadway, a lot of scenery and light cues are timed to the music).
While I have no doubt that, in this case, Sir Mackintosh will make sure everything comes across just fine, I still wish it were a road we didn't need to go down. The experience just isn't equivalent. But, unfortunately, the people who really know--and care about--the difference between live musicians and virtual orchestras don't make up the majority of the audiences. And, as I said in another message, they've likely already seen Les Miserables and moved on anyway--the show first opened in the U.K. over 20 years ago. What will come of this is anyone's guess, but I'm not seeing it as a particularly positive thing.
I have mixed feelings about this. While I believe very strongly that live music is a vital part of the theatrical experience when attending a musical, the proliferation of poor amplification or just too much amplification reduces the orchestral accompaniment in most musicals to little more than a wall of mostly uncolored sound anyway. That, of course, is why producers can get away with this--when the sound is changed/distorted electronically, the application of virtual orchestras will make it sound just good enough to be passable. You assign the particularly lively or agile passages of the score to the live musicians and let the virtual orchestra play everything else. Why not? In most cases, the audience won't be able to tell. But I think it does truly alter the experience. I've seen performances of (professional) shows using taped/recorded music, and while this isn't exactly the same thing, the experience doesn't compare with seeing a musical with a live orchestra. And, of course, that experience doesn't compare with a full-sized orchestra unamplified with unamplified singers. That is the best, most natural way to go, but that's a battle that has mostly been lost in the professional theatre arena anyway.
Les Miserables has to move out of its current theater because of renovations, and the theater they're moving into is the only one currently available. But, as it's quite a bit smaller, there's not enough room for the orchestra. But I find it odd, then, that the stage is big enough for the show (which, itself, is quite big) or the cast (which is also quite big), but the pit isn't big enough for the orchestra. And, of course, by ripping out a row or two of seats, the orchestra pit could easily be expanded. But no one wants to do that, because it would cut into the profits. The easiest thing to do for audiences who mostly don't know or care about the difference between virtual music and live music is to replace musicians. But at what point does reducing Les Miserables or any show make it no longer the same show? At a certain point during the Broadway run of the show, they just cut 15 minutes out of it to get it to run under three hours so they would have to stop paying the cast overtime. But the ticket prices, of course, didn't go down. Rest assured that audiences paying to see Les Miserables in London will not be paying less for fewer live musicians. The difference will go right into Cameron Mackintosh's pocket, as is always the case.
Personally, I think when it comes time to start cheating the audience out of the full experience of the show, as in either the current London case or the Broadway one I mentioned above, it might be best to just close the show and move on. But that's speaking from an audience member's perspective--from the perspective of someone who is something of an industry insider, sure, take the customers who don't know the difference for as much money as you can. The ones who do know the difference probably have already seen Les Miserables one or more times and have no desire to go back to see a reduced version of the show.
While I'm ranting, what's with filling out "applications". If I'm applying for a sysadmin or programmer position, you have my resume. It details everything I'm required to copy onto your damn 6 page, small type, not-enough-room, non-online-pen-online-sore-fingers application. I will fill out a life history and anything else you want if you are actually interested in me, but don't make me fill out a phonebook before I'm even issued a first interview.
This was one of my biggest pet peeves about my recent spate of unemployment. I lost a job as an IT administrator I'd held for a year and a half and was trying to get back in the swing of things, with recruiters, headhunters, jobs I'd found on the Internet or in the paper, and at a good 90% of them, I'd be asked to fill out an application when I got in the office. And all they would do with it was staple it to my resume. Why not just use the resume? I've never understood this.
Even worse was when I went to talk with someone at a major staffing firm and, after filling out the application, she asked me, "What percentage of the time did you use [a certain skill] at your last job?" I responded that I didn't know, and she asked, "Would you say 25% of the time? Or 10%?" This went on for probably about five minutes. As soon as the interview was over, I hightailed it out there and never called them back. That isn't information that helps me or information that helps them--it's just another damn hoop to jump through. If they had bothered to read my resume or the four-page application I'd filled out, they would have known my skills without needing a number assigned to it.
By the way, I eventually got another job: in another field by someone who came to me because they knew me and my work and wanted me with them. What a change. And nothing to fill out... until after I was hired. But I don't mind filling out W-2 forms and that type of thing once I have the job. But before? It's a waste of everyone's time.
I think that what pushed Deep Space Nine to wherever it eventually went was the influence of Babylon 5, not the other Star Trek shows. The shows were very similar in many ways, and there were always rumors (unsubstantiated, it must be said) that Deep Space Nine had been inspired from J. Michael Straczynski's original pitch to Paramount about Babylon 5.
But beyond that, the shows had a very similar feeling in their basic concept, which should have produced two very similar shows. But no. Babylon 5 was completely free to do whatever it wanted within the realm it was setting down, while Deep Space Nine could not. Any time they wanted to actually change something, they had to reinvent, and every time they reinvented, they just caused more problems for themselves.
As time went on, Deep Space Nine's plots just kept getting more convoluted and more ridiculous, because, in their desperation to stand out from the other Star Trek shows and Babylon 5, the creators forgot what those shows had that Deep Space Nine did not: consistency. I found the final episode of Deep Space Nine insulting from a dramatic point of view, and I wish I could provide more specifics, but I really can't--it's been too long. I just remember the "climax" involved Odo merging with the Evil Shapeshifter Woman in a "plot twist" that made no sense with what had come before. And this was capping off a year (or two--I can't remember which) that involved the Wormhole Aliens completely decimating 2800 or so of the Dominion invasion force... well, just because the story needed it.
There were forever comparisons with the last episode of that arc (I think it was Deep Space Nine's last season, but again, I'm not sure--it might have been the sixth) and "Into the Fire," the episode early in Babylon 5's fourth season that finally wrapped up the Vorlon/Shadow plot that had driven much of the show from day one. But, again, what made that episode work to the degree it did was that it logically followed from everything that had gone before--there were no surprises, nothing being hoisted on the characters (or the viewer) at the last minute. It was the outgrowth of previous events in the show.
But Deep Space Nine simply couldn't build that over the long term because they didn't understand what their story was or where they were going with it. Again, I wish I could provide specifics, but there was a big to-do made of the beginning of (again, I think) Deep Space Nine's last season, which opened with a six or seven episode arc of shows. Well, the penultimate episode was a Klingon Honor episode completely irrelevant to the arc story... just sort of stuck in there. No reason for being, no bearing on the story they were trying to tell, it was just there. Really, all of Deep Space Nine was like this, and the constant reinventing and reimagining and shifting of characters to do whatever as required, without a lot of consideration given to the question of why was what sank the show for me. The writers clearly weren't interested in having a story that worked; they didn't even seem to mind that a completely irrelevant one-episode character received a major funeral in the next-to-last episode of Deep Space Nine's sixth season, while Jadzia--a character who had appeared in nearly every episode of the show's then-six-year run--had an offstage funeral, and approximately one line talking about it. No care. No thought for the viewer. No sense about what any of it really meant emotionally or dramatically.
I always hear that Deep Space Nine is the best of the Star Trek shows, and I don't see it, and I never have. The first one was a space opera, basically, and fine within those terms. The Next Generation had bigger aims (and a harder job) and came through admirably, though it faltered as it reached the end of its seven-year run. Voyager was sloppy, but not dishonest; the
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Well, among other things, Silence! is no longer running. It was a production of the New York International Fringe Festival, which was finished at the end of August. I saw it; I even reviewed it for the theatre website I write for. It was okay. A dynamic lead performance (by the woman playing Clarice), but a lot of other so-so people doing, saying, and singing so-so things. It got a pretty good response from audiences, and I believe it sold out every performance, but reviews and word of mouth were decidedly mixed. Whether it will show up again in New York any time soon is anyone's guess... mine is no, at least not in exactly its previous form. But it might come back in a couple of years and try again; most Fringe musicals that move on (Urinetown being the most famous example) tend to do exactly that.
So, since you don't think that this is the greatest nation on Earth, which do you think is? I'm honestly curious about this.
Krugman is anti-Bush. That's all. He makes mistakes about economics in his columns all the time, simple things that he really should know better about, but doesn't consider important because all that matters to him is getting Bush out of the White House. If Krugman was sane at one point, it was before I started reading him and becoming aware of the many, many errors he makes on an almost weekly basis. He's an embarrassment, and based on his output over the last couple of years, doesn't seem qualified to write for The New York Times or any other publication about economics. Politics is another story, but, refresh my memory, what are his qualifications there...?
You're right. Most documentaries document reality.
Nothing I saw in DS9 remotely qualifies it as "some of the most intelligent SF ever seen on television." Especially given the fine work done concurrently on Babylon 5 and, earlier, on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I've read other posts in this thread by people who disapproved of TNG rehashing themes and concepts from the original series, but that's part of what made it work for me. TNG might have been formulaic at times, but it almost never wavered.
DS9 went back and forth between trying to satisfy hardcore Trek fans and trying to branch out with new ideas, but it was never, ever able to reconcile these two concepts. So you got the typical Star Trek filler crap (the episodes mentioned above, which are just the beginning of what I could name) mixed with faux-Babylon 5 attempts at continuity that don't really hold together. The storylines are loosely connected thematic threads that can be pulled whichever way as desired by the writers--there's no core, no singular theme around which the show revolved.
Let me take that back: There was in the first season of the show, but it was mostly abandoned when the writers came to the conclusion (incorrect, in my opinion) that what they were doing wasn't exciting enough and needed to superimpose a galaxy-level conflict on what was happening. That led to all sorts of ridiculuous things like the Defiant and Worf and the Pagh Wraiths and all that... Too many things that didn't really connect because, again, there was no core beyond "whatever will keep people watching." I understand that the business part of "show business" isn't really avoidable, but to neglect common sense and previously established character and plot points whenever they become inconvenient is simply not the hallmark of well-written drama. Watching the finale, with the ridiculous conclusion of Sisko's "story" and Odo's "relationship" with the female shapeshifter and the Dominion-friendly alien who turns out to be a clone after he's killed so he can keep coming back as many times as necessary... It all just pointed up the arbitrary nature of everything that happened.
But while I don't think any of this could ever have been great, I don't think it would have been so bad had we not gotten the pretentious drivel from them about how they were doing a six-episode arc here (except for this one irrelevant Klingon honor episode in the middle) or another ten-episode arc there (which is immediately followed by a holosuite episode), and so on. Voyager lacked these pretensions, and, yes, a lot of it was garbage, but they never tried to pretend it was anything else. So, when they threw an amazing episode at you--like "Year of Hell," or "The Chase" or "The Game" or whatever it was when they were trapped in a WWII scenario or something, you just kind of had to boggle because it was so unexpected. But the DS9 people were trying very, very hard. And it looked, from the beginning, like they were trying very, very hard. And I don't ever want to see the wheels turning.
That's one of the things I so loved about Babylon 5--while far from perfect, it always felt effortless, like things really were unfolding, and not being manipulated into getting this to work with that, and this idea to fit with that concept no matter what. (Well, with an exception or two, but far fewer than with DS9.) But with DS9, I just never bought any of it. It was never convincing. It was written, it was scripted, and, worst, it was false. To me, false drama d
Do you have some proof of this? I have never, ever heard from anywhere that "Sleeping in Light" was filmed in the third season. I've always heard that it was filmed as the final episode of the fourth season, with the provision that additional material could be filmed during the fifth season if necessary, an option that jms elected not to exercise.
The writers didn't care about telling a story, so there simply wasn't a consistent story told. And that made DS9, in its later years, unwatchable to me, even though I followed it from the beginnings. Wormhole Aliens? Pagh Wraiths? The holodeck lounge singer? These are not signs of a well-written show. No consistency whatsoever, and not enough people cared because it was Star Trek and because Voyager kept flying off the handle. But at its best, I feel that Voyager was better than DS9 just because it occasionally made some sense--not always very much--and occasionally had characters dealing with human, emotional situations you could relate to. And I also feel that, on the whole, the acting was better, but when you have only garbage writing to work with, it doesn't always matter how good an actor you are.
For me, whatever chemistry Star Trek had vanished, for the most part, somewhere during season 6 of The Next Generation. That cast, however, was so good that they were able to finesse their way through the less-than-fortuitous episodes they had to deal with and turn out good work even when the odds were really against them; that's why, even when the quality was lesser, it still seemed pretty high. The DS9 and Voyager casts simply didn't have those tools. But Voyager came off better because the writers, producers, and actors never tried to make it more than it was. Maybe they should have, but they didn't. DS9's attempts to reach for the stars (even if they were in Babylon 5's universe) made it fall that much faster and harder. I can't say it's the worst of all Star Trek series, because I've only seen two episodes of Enterprise. But 75-80% of it is really embarrassingly bad, and a sad chapter in Star Trek history that is best left forgotten.
Your unwillingness to see any bias whatsoever in The New York Times suggests that your ability to faithfully discern bias in FOXNews is similarly flawed. But regardless, don't cite FOXNews commentators as examples of bias (Colmes notwithstanding) unless you're willing to hold Times op-ed contributors up to the same scrutiny.
I present this link to Donald Luskin's piece for National Review. It's well worth reading, and provides an interesting contrast to the piece from The New York Times: Reform lies at the Times
I'm so sick of this "send our children" garbage being used as the reason to avoid every military conflict under the sun. We don't have a draft anymore. That means that, if your children, or anyone's, don't want to fight, they don't have to.
But somewhere along the line--maybe with Roddenberry's death, maybe a little bit after--people started getting the idea in their heads that Star Trek needed to really be sci-fi, and that's when things blew up. You got ridiculous stories it was impossible to care about. You got endless political arcs with no beginning, middle, or end on Deep Space Nine that provided little entertainment or sense of purpose; all those things were provided, and much more interestingly, on Babylon 5. You got the very concept of Voyager, which only became interesting when they discovered they found a back door into the original point of Star Trek: "To boldly go where no man/one has gone before." As for Enterprise, it's all about ret-conning this and setting up that. There's no real substance to it. That's not what it's about. What it is about, though, I couldn't begin to tell you.
They need to hire actual writers to write Star Trek again. Make it intelligent, literary, provocative, forget all the crap that's started seeping into the very fabric of the franchise, that's forced everything to be so boring and sanitary, and let it be again what it once was. They want to ignore Roddenberry's ideas because he was of the past, and that time is gone. But when he was around, Star Trek worked. It just doesn't anymore.
...but I wouldn't mod you down even if I did. Voyager is infinitely superior to Deep Space Nine, with generally better acting and, in its middle three seasons or so, better writing. The early years and the later years weren't so great, but it was real Star Trek, and played very, very well. Could it have been better? Absolutely. But it also could have been much worse, as both Deep Space Nine and Enterprise have proven.
This idea is long overdue as far as I'm concerned. Given the delivery method of most cable services now, there's no reason for it not to happen. Well, I take that back: The reason is, if people are allowed to do this, the cable companies would make less money. So that's probably why it hasn't happened yet. But I live in New York and deal with Time-Warner Cable, paying $50/month for expanded basic service, which gives me some 60-70 channels, of which I regularly watch maybe 15. Hopefully the cable companies will come around to this way of thinking eventually, but I'm not sure I'm holding my breath.
This simply isn't accurate. At one point or another, I owned just about all the Infocom hint booklets, including the one for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and never once had a problem with running out of ink in the markers. (And that includes the extra-large books that included hints for multiple games.) And Infocom sold replacement markers for all their hint books, and even included a message to this effect in the books themselves.
Please tell me you're not serious about this. What makes you think that, if we raise the taxes back up to 55-60%, rich people are going to pay it? If they can find places to pay less tax somewhere else and do the same business, don't you think they will? Or is it their responsibility to just sit around and pay as much in taxes as YOU see fit? Give me a break. Higher taxes do not grow economies. If they did, then America would be behind "most of the European countries, Canada, and Australia," and it's not. It's at the top. That's not accidental, you know.
I know tons of people who complain about FOXNews for every imaginable transgression, real or imagined. A lot of people have even taken to calling it Faux News. I don't know where you are that no one complains about FOXNews, but please let me know so I can move there!
Stephen Schwartz. You will have to try harder around me. :)
I will say, however, I'm not a huge fan of Wicked; it seems to be a show that splits people pretty much down the middle.
Although, I must say that, despite the ridiculousness of its execution by director Terry Hands, who staged the entire thing as a Greek tragedy, there was some excellent music in it. "And Eve Was Weak" and "Evening Prayers" were ravishingly dramatic, "I Remember How Those Boys Could Dance" was heartbreaking, and "When There's No One" was very dramatically stirring, cutting right to the heart of what Margaret must be experiencing when she and her beliefs are rejected by her daughter. But for each of those brilliant, almost-operatic numbers, there were songs that were as ridiculous as those were profound: The Bye Bye Birdie-esque "Don't Waste the Moon," the leather bar "Do Me a Favor," and the nadir of them all, "Out for Blood," which found Chris's boyfriend and his cohorts dancing around a pig trough (a trap set in the stage) and smearing blood all over their chests.
But, yes, I think The Lord of the Rings has the capacity to surpass that in sheer "flop"itude, though, if it succeeds, it will probably be absolutely spectacular. As I said in my original post on this subject, I think it's one or the other, with almost no middle ground.
By the way, we must move in very different circles... A lot of the people I know look forward to talking about Carrie and its music, whether or not they actually saw it. It, like Moose Murders, has attained an almost mythical status among most serious New York theatregoers. So, if it's not appropriate to mention it in polite company where you live, come to New York, where you'll likely be welcomed with open arms!
Nice try, but I don't think your analogy works. The problem is that epic stories lend themselves to film much better than stage. Sure, it would have been possible for Jackson to screw up the films--it's happened before with the same property, has it not?--but I maintain that it would have been harder than it will be for Matthew Warchus and company to botch a stage musical using the same subject matter. For one thing, Jackson had at least nine full hours to tell the story; the stage musical will have three. He also had the benefit of location shooting and hundreds of extras in addition to CGI and a budget that was probably at least ten times--at least!--what the stage version will have.
The stage version must attempt to compress the events of, I don't know how long it is, 12-18 months or so, into 3.5 hours onstage, establish the characters, establish the locale(s), establish the story, find a way to stage the epic battles on which the story thrives while not neglecting the intimacy and emotion in the story that captures people's hearts, and find room for songs. Then, on top of all of that, they have to budget and adjust the ticket prices accordingly, so that this huge show, currently with an estimated cost of 8.5 million pounds--and which will almost certainly have increased by the time it opens--has a chance of paying off, and then they have to fight expectations on the part of audiences and critics who will be comparing it not only to the original source material, but the series of three dazzling motion pictures that have dominated movie news for about the last three years.
This is really, really hard. I think it's even less likely to work than most shows, and only a very small percentage of shows is ever successful anyway. I wish them the best, but I'm just afraid it's going to blow up in their faces. It should be a spectacular explosion, though.
The problem is that, for the most part, really epic stories are simply not endemic to the musical theatre art form. How many have there been? And, of those, how many have truly been successful? Even theatre epics, like Show Boat or Les Miserables are still pretty small in scope when compared to something The Lord of the Rings because they focus pretty pointedly on people, whereas LOTR is about big events, big stakes, and even larger plot points.
Shrinking the story down to where it would it would on the musical stage, and still leave room for the things every play needs (exposition, characterization, and, probably most importantly, songs) would be almost impossible under the best circumstances, and most of the people involved simply aren't of the proven calibre necessary to pull all this off. Sure, A.R. Rahman had some kind of a success with Bombay Dreams, but what in Matthew Warchus's resume suggests he's even remotely qualified to handle something on this scale? He's talented, yes, but not with material of this size. His solution to staging one of Broadway's most traditionally opulent musicals--Follies--on Broadway in 2001 was to strip away everything that made it so oversized and, in its original production, so thrilling. If you do that with The Lord of the Rings, what's left?
So, while I wish them the best of luck, they're really facing a difficult struggle, and I'm not sure they will be able to pull it off. Under most circumstances, I would suggest that they rework the idea as an opera, or perhaps a series of operas, but of course, Richard Wagner already did that with Der Ring des Nibeluengen, and the less comparison The Lord of the Rings has with that, the better, I think. It will be unavoidable in any case, but critics (and audiences) will have their knives sharpened going into this, and it will have to be even that much better to win them over. I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy the challenges facing the creators of this musical.
I suppose it goes without saying I preferred the old days.
What is an issue, apparently, is training someone to correctly use the system. I covered the Broadway musician's strike last year, and learned a bit about how these things work. Apparently, there's a pretty steep learning curve involved, and getting everything to sync up just right (and it has to be just right, of course) is not something one can just do right away. I believe the companies wanted to send someone out to use the systems during the shows and then train someone else, but even with a week or two of advanced notice, it proved unwieldy for the musicians and dangerous for the actors (as, on Broadway, a lot of scenery and light cues are timed to the music).
While I have no doubt that, in this case, Sir Mackintosh will make sure everything comes across just fine, I still wish it were a road we didn't need to go down. The experience just isn't equivalent. But, unfortunately, the people who really know--and care about--the difference between live musicians and virtual orchestras don't make up the majority of the audiences. And, as I said in another message, they've likely already seen Les Miserables and moved on anyway--the show first opened in the U.K. over 20 years ago. What will come of this is anyone's guess, but I'm not seeing it as a particularly positive thing.
Les Miserables has to move out of its current theater because of renovations, and the theater they're moving into is the only one currently available. But, as it's quite a bit smaller, there's not enough room for the orchestra. But I find it odd, then, that the stage is big enough for the show (which, itself, is quite big) or the cast (which is also quite big), but the pit isn't big enough for the orchestra. And, of course, by ripping out a row or two of seats, the orchestra pit could easily be expanded. But no one wants to do that, because it would cut into the profits. The easiest thing to do for audiences who mostly don't know or care about the difference between virtual music and live music is to replace musicians. But at what point does reducing Les Miserables or any show make it no longer the same show? At a certain point during the Broadway run of the show, they just cut 15 minutes out of it to get it to run under three hours so they would have to stop paying the cast overtime. But the ticket prices, of course, didn't go down. Rest assured that audiences paying to see Les Miserables in London will not be paying less for fewer live musicians. The difference will go right into Cameron Mackintosh's pocket, as is always the case.
Personally, I think when it comes time to start cheating the audience out of the full experience of the show, as in either the current London case or the Broadway one I mentioned above, it might be best to just close the show and move on. But that's speaking from an audience member's perspective--from the perspective of someone who is something of an industry insider, sure, take the customers who don't know the difference for as much money as you can. The ones who do know the difference probably have already seen Les Miserables one or more times and have no desire to go back to see a reduced version of the show.
This was one of my biggest pet peeves about my recent spate of unemployment. I lost a job as an IT administrator I'd held for a year and a half and was trying to get back in the swing of things, with recruiters, headhunters, jobs I'd found on the Internet or in the paper, and at a good 90% of them, I'd be asked to fill out an application when I got in the office. And all they would do with it was staple it to my resume. Why not just use the resume? I've never understood this.
Even worse was when I went to talk with someone at a major staffing firm and, after filling out the application, she asked me, "What percentage of the time did you use [a certain skill] at your last job?" I responded that I didn't know, and she asked, "Would you say 25% of the time? Or 10%?" This went on for probably about five minutes. As soon as the interview was over, I hightailed it out there and never called them back. That isn't information that helps me or information that helps them--it's just another damn hoop to jump through. If they had bothered to read my resume or the four-page application I'd filled out, they would have known my skills without needing a number assigned to it.
By the way, I eventually got another job: in another field by someone who came to me because they knew me and my work and wanted me with them. What a change. And nothing to fill out... until after I was hired. But I don't mind filling out W-2 forms and that type of thing once I have the job. But before? It's a waste of everyone's time.
But beyond that, the shows had a very similar feeling in their basic concept, which should have produced two very similar shows. But no. Babylon 5 was completely free to do whatever it wanted within the realm it was setting down, while Deep Space Nine could not. Any time they wanted to actually change something, they had to reinvent, and every time they reinvented, they just caused more problems for themselves.
As time went on, Deep Space Nine's plots just kept getting more convoluted and more ridiculous, because, in their desperation to stand out from the other Star Trek shows and Babylon 5, the creators forgot what those shows had that Deep Space Nine did not: consistency. I found the final episode of Deep Space Nine insulting from a dramatic point of view, and I wish I could provide more specifics, but I really can't--it's been too long. I just remember the "climax" involved Odo merging with the Evil Shapeshifter Woman in a "plot twist" that made no sense with what had come before. And this was capping off a year (or two--I can't remember which) that involved the Wormhole Aliens completely decimating 2800 or so of the Dominion invasion force... well, just because the story needed it.
There were forever comparisons with the last episode of that arc (I think it was Deep Space Nine's last season, but again, I'm not sure--it might have been the sixth) and "Into the Fire," the episode early in Babylon 5's fourth season that finally wrapped up the Vorlon/Shadow plot that had driven much of the show from day one. But, again, what made that episode work to the degree it did was that it logically followed from everything that had gone before--there were no surprises, nothing being hoisted on the characters (or the viewer) at the last minute. It was the outgrowth of previous events in the show.
But Deep Space Nine simply couldn't build that over the long term because they didn't understand what their story was or where they were going with it. Again, I wish I could provide specifics, but there was a big to-do made of the beginning of (again, I think) Deep Space Nine's last season, which opened with a six or seven episode arc of shows. Well, the penultimate episode was a Klingon Honor episode completely irrelevant to the arc story... just sort of stuck in there. No reason for being, no bearing on the story they were trying to tell, it was just there. Really, all of Deep Space Nine was like this, and the constant reinventing and reimagining and shifting of characters to do whatever as required, without a lot of consideration given to the question of why was what sank the show for me. The writers clearly weren't interested in having a story that worked; they didn't even seem to mind that a completely irrelevant one-episode character received a major funeral in the next-to-last episode of Deep Space Nine's sixth season, while Jadzia--a character who had appeared in nearly every episode of the show's then-six-year run--had an offstage funeral, and approximately one line talking about it. No care. No thought for the viewer. No sense about what any of it really meant emotionally or dramatically.
I always hear that Deep Space Nine is the best of the Star Trek shows, and I don't see it, and I never have. The first one was a space opera, basically, and fine within those terms. The Next Generation had bigger aims (and a harder job) and came through admirably, though it faltered as it reached the end of its seven-year run. Voyager was sloppy, but not dishonest; the