If they actually did a new Star Trek show, it could very easily be good. Maybe even guaranteed. The problem here is they just cobbled together some awful crap and slapped the Star Trek name on it for recognition and hopefully an automatic fan base, while hoping nobody would notice that it's really not (Star Trek).

@Knixon said:

If they actually did a new Star Trek show, it could very easily be good. Maybe even guaranteed. The problem here is they just cobbled together some awful crap and slapped the Star Trek name on it for recognition and hopefully an automatic fan base, while hoping nobody would notice that it's really not (Star Trek).

Unless management changes at CBS we may never get a good Star Trek show ever again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLl17YXrAZY&t=0s

Interesting video CSWood and we finally get to hear who was responsible for screwing up ENT since this proves the statements made in earlier interviews by Berman and Braga,about having to deal with a very uncoöperative and vindictive managment at CBS when ENT went into production so Les Moonves was the moron who suggested putting boy bands on ENT .Plus this video also confirms my suspicions that they will probably let Discovery die in the production hell of the second season and focus on the Picard series and probably the Khan series especially since Paramount now has to pay for the production themselves in stead of Netflix paying the brunt of the budget.Paramount will probably think a Picard series is a much wiser investment(at least if they are smart)The best thing they can do on the short term is the fire Les Moonves and appoint someone who understands SF and at least has some knowledge of the Star Trek franchise and hopefully will learn from the mistakes made in the past .

At least if STD had boy bands we wouldn't be getting all the static from people who insist it's actually good.

Well, I hope not, anyway.

But these days, who knows?

Season 2 will have Pike in command of the Discovery; he will appear in a TOS-like uniform; and Spock will appear...though I don't think it will be the TOS Spock...we shall see.

I am always amazed at how much energy people put towards disliking this show. From using the pejorative (STD) instead of the more neutral (DSC); to finding fault with every little thing about the show. See, I like the Bond movies and I am not so much a fan of the Mission Impossible series. I would never think of going to the MI site to complain about how much it is NOT like the Bond series.

I guess people feel personally invested in the success or failure of the franchise. DSC is a re-imagination of ST. One to fit our times. Today's ST for today's viewers. Will it suit everyone's taste? No, it can't. Will is it 'look' like yesterday's ST? No, it can't do that either. Will is carry thru the themes and ideals of Roddenberry, hoping for a unified Federation of Planets set about doing the right thing? Yes, it has already started down that road.

Are the characters we have seen on DSC's bridge like those of the other ST bridges? No. Well ,perhaps the DS9 crew comes closest. The DSC bridge is not full of perfectly molded soldiers. We see real imperfect humans . We will see them grow and become a cohesive unit, a more perfect union.

Those forever reaching for ONLY nostalgia will NEVER be happy with anything new in ST. The Picard series is going to be their newest disappointment. At least they will remember Patrick Stewart said it himself. "this will be a DIFFERENT Picard"

@Thespear said:

Season 2 will have Pike in command of the Discovery; he will appear in a TOS-like uniform; and Spock will appear...though I don't think it will be the TOS Spock...we shall see.

I am always amazed at how much energy people put towards disliking this show...

I guess people feel personally invested in the success or failure of the franchise. DSC is a re-imagination of ST. One to fit our times. Today's ST for today's viewers.

I don't agree with the last part at all. If you watched the video I linked to it states clearly that the changes are for rights purposes. The JJ movies look so different because they had to be.

And as someone who has loved Star Trek for well over 25 years and have watched nearly every episode of every series at least twice if not more thanks to reruns, I have invested a ton of time to this franchise. The simple fact that STD blatantly ignores or needlessly changes things bothers me, especially now that I know it's all because of backroom politics.

BUT, if the show was actually well written I'd probably give it a pass, but it suuuuucks. Even when I divorce it in my mind and try to look at it objectively it still sucks. I mean do I really need to go down the list? Burnham sucks. The Klingons are uninteresting and hard to understand even with subtitles. Everything looks dark and murky. The Mirror Universe was the only mildly entertaining part of the season and even it doesn't make a lot of sense.

And even though I consider myself left wing, the identity politics and openly equating the Klingons with Trump supporters tells me they don't really care about Star Trek. Making Stammets gay and then killing off his lover halfway through the season tells me he didn't really need to be gay, he was just gay for social justice points. They just did a terrible job all around.

And the final nail in the coffin is that The Orville manages to nail the general style and color palette of Star Trek while being completely new and different and PEOPLE LIKE IT MORE, so the whole "re-imagination for today's audience" is total BS because Orville proved you can do classic ST in modern day with the allegories TOS was known for.

Also Orville has a character in a same sex relationship and they actually do something interesting with that character that required the character to be in a same sex relationship for the story to work, so Orville is knocking it out of the freaking park as far as I'm concerned.

So yeah, I will continue to poop on STD as often as I can because I personally would rather have no Star Trek than bad Star Trek. Same goes for Star Wars, which I have formally disowned after The Last Jedi.

And as someone who has loved Star Trek for well over 25 years and have watched nearly every episode of every series at least twice if not more thanks to reruns, I have invested a ton of time to this franchise. The simple fact that STD blatantly ignores or needlessly changes things bothers me, especially now that I know it's all because of backroom politics.

This^

And even though I consider myself left wing, the identity politics and openly equating the Klingons with Trump supporters tells me they don't really care about Star Trek. Making Stammets gay and then killing off his lover halfway through the season tells me he didn't really need to be gay, he was just gay for social justice points. They just did a terrible job all around.

This^

And the final nail in the coffin is that The Orville manages to nail the general style and color palette of Star Trek while being completely new and different and PEOPLE LIKE IT MORE, so the whole "re-imagination for today's audience" is total BS because Orville proved you can do classic ST in modern day with the allegories TOS was known for.

And this ^

Are the main reasons why people don't like Discovery not because of some overbearing need for nostalgia.

Are the characters we have seen on DSC's bridge like those of the other ST bridges? No. Well ,perhaps the DS9 crew comes closest. The DSC bridge is not full of perfectly molded soldiers. We see real imperfect humans . We will see them grow and become a cohesive unit, a more perfect union

Not only on DS9 but also the main characters of ENT were flawed but part of their continuing story arc was their growth more into the humans we know from the other series.

Those forever reaching for ONLY nostalgia will NEVER be happy with anything new in ST. The Picard series is going to be their newest disappointment. At least they will remember Patrick Stewart said it himself. "this will be a DIFFERENT Picard"

Well change has been the order of the day with the franchise we had the changes that were made when TOS moved to the big screen and most fans accepted that.Then we had the changes that were made when TNG was introduced and most accepted those (for some it took a while but eventually they did)When DS9 and VOY aired other changes were made and fans accepted that.Then came ENT and although it did cause a rift within the fan base(Mainly by those who were overt fans of the TNG era series and those who like the overall franchise and TOS) it at least was partially accepted.With Discovery however we see a general dislike by most Trekkies so the nostalgia argument makes no sense.and the reason why the new Picard series will be different mainly is due to the reasons mentioned in the video CSWood had posted about who owns the rights to what portion of the franchise.

@cswood said:

Making Stammets gay and then killing off his lover halfway through the season tells me he didn't really need to be gay, he was just gay for social justice points. They just did a terrible job all around.

Well done, but this part is confusing. Did Stammets "need" to be gay as long as his lover didn't get killed off?

@Knixon said:

@cswood said:

Making Stammets gay and then killing off his lover halfway through the season tells me he didn't really need to be gay, he was just gay for social justice points. They just did a terrible job all around.

Well done, but this part is confusing. Did Stammets "need" to be gay as long as his lover didn't get killed off?

My question is why make him gay and then do very little to establish his relationship with the doctor and then kill off the doctor almost immediately? It just stinks of them wanting to advertise they have a gay character without having to show too much gay stuff. I wouldn't put it past them to have a transgendered redshirt they kill off minutes after introducing them.

The problem with Stammets is that they don't use the fact he's gay to tell an allegory like Star Trek is known for. Maybe this is just me being a writer but I've always felt that if you're going to point out something about a character it should matter to the plot somehow. They could have gone to a planet where Stammets and the Doctor kiss in public and they are arrested because that's illegal on that particular planet, or make Stammets single and he dates a male alien whom homosexuality is still taboo in that alien's society. I'm thinking like the TNG episode The Outcast where Riker falls for a genderless alien who decides she's female in a society where having a gender is taboo.

In STD it just feels like pandering without putting in any work at all to make the character interesting. The actor does a decent job with Stammets but he's given so little to work with I never really cared about him, but I can say that about nearly all the characters except for maybe Tilly.

Its must be challenging for the CBS execs and producers in this day of divided social mores. In the '60s the country was also in turmoil. The Vietnam War. Youth culture rising up against the establishment. Who can forget the "hippie episode" in the original series. Then of course the notorious kiss between Kirk and Uhura -- a milestone moment in TV history. CBS Access needs viewers. How do you appeal to both middle America and the coasts? That will take some writing skill. Not sure they are so inclined or even up to the task. We shall see when the long long wait for next season finally arrives. CBS is on impulse power. Why not engage warp drive?

@cswood said:

@Knixon said:

@cswood said:

Making Stammets gay and then killing off his lover halfway through the season tells me he didn't really need to be gay, he was just gay for social justice points. They just did a terrible job all around.

Well done, but this part is confusing. Did Stammets "need" to be gay as long as his lover didn't get killed off?

My question is why make him gay and then do very little to establish his relationship with the doctor and then kill off the doctor almost immediately? It just stinks of them wanting to advertise they have a gay character without having to show too much gay stuff. I wouldn't put it past them to have a transgendered redshirt they kill off minutes after introducing them.

The problem with Stammets is that they don't use the fact he's gay to tell an allegory like Star Trek is known for. Maybe this is just me being a writer but I've always felt that if you're going to point out something about a character it should matter to the plot somehow. They could have gone to a planet where Stammets and the Doctor kiss in public and they are arrested because that's illegal on that particular planet, or make Stammets single and he dates a male alien whom homosexuality is still taboo in that alien's society. I'm thinking like the TNG episode The Outcast where Riker falls for a genderless alien who decides she's female in a society where having a gender is taboo.

In STD it just feels like pandering without putting in any work at all to make the character interesting. The actor does a decent job with Stammets but he's given so little to work with I never really cared about him, but I can say that about nearly all the characters except for maybe Tilly.

There's too much there to deal with at anything less than possibly book-length. But just the setup in the TNG episode, let alone how they dealt with it, was full of holes. "Being a writer" may lead to such oversimplification on a regular basis.

And if you want to see some better examples of getting in trouble on planets for seemingly innocent acts, I hope you're watching The Orville.

@Knixon said:

@cswood said:

@Knixon said:

@cswood said:

Making Stammets gay and then killing off his lover halfway through the season tells me he didn't really need to be gay, he was just gay for social justice points. They just did a terrible job all around.

Well done, but this part is confusing. Did Stammets "need" to be gay as long as his lover didn't get killed off?

My question is why make him gay and then do very little to establish his relationship with the doctor and then kill off the doctor almost immediately? It just stinks of them wanting to advertise they have a gay character without having to show too much gay stuff. I wouldn't put it past them to have a transgendered redshirt they kill off minutes after introducing them.

The problem with Stammets is that they don't use the fact he's gay to tell an allegory like Star Trek is known for. Maybe this is just me being a writer but I've always felt that if you're going to point out something about a character it should matter to the plot somehow. They could have gone to a planet where Stammets and the Doctor kiss in public and they are arrested because that's illegal on that particular planet, or make Stammets single and he dates a male alien whom homosexuality is still taboo in that alien's society. I'm thinking like the TNG episode The Outcast where Riker falls for a genderless alien who decides she's female in a society where having a gender is taboo.

In STD it just feels like pandering without putting in any work at all to make the character interesting. The actor does a decent job with Stammets but he's given so little to work with I never really cared about him, but I can say that about nearly all the characters except for maybe Tilly.

There's too much there to deal with at anything less than possibly book-length. But just the setup in the TNG episode, let alone how they dealt with it, was full of holes. "Being a writer" may lead to such oversimplification on a regular basis.

And if you want to see some better examples of getting in trouble on planets for seemingly innocent acts, I hope you're watching The Orville.

Of course I'm watching The Orville, it's more Star Trek than the Star Trek show.

Now I understand why two of the writers were fired recently from DSC (for creative differences). The money men have crumbled to the nay-sayers and in a reach for money, they are now trying to 'cater' to a viewership that never got and WILL never get what Star Trek really is. These detractors see a much different Star Trek than Roddenberry's original intent. They want to take the franchise back to the morays of the 60's and everyone knows that cannot happen. You see while Roddenberry created ST in the 60's his vision for mankind was far beyond the 60's. The money people will end up not changing many new minds AND will lose the essence of Star Trek and the original viewership they had already! The real irony in this situation is that had Roddenberry stuck his finger in the wind to 'cow tow' to the masses...as these people are doing...there would NEVER have been a Star Trek!

Enlighten me Oduntola. I was unaware two writers were fired and what were the creative differences? The show has been on hiatus for so long I had lost interest. If anyone should be fired it would be the show runner or CBS exec(s) responsible for such a long delay. The franchise has been so successful for so long that whatever "the essence of Star Trek" was due for diffusion and atrophy. For me at least, the essence of Star Trek is two fold. 1) Intrinsic fascination built into the human psyche to "explore new worlds and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before ... outer space. 2) To question current social mores and like a poker hand, decide which cards to keep and which cards to throw away because world culture has advanced and declined throughout the ages.

And as previously stated, point 2 is a perilous tightrope in today's toxic divisive climate. At some point, a common default sensibility needs to be established. And that takes courage -- the courage Roddenberry had in his day. Not sure CBS is up to the task. We'll see.

Skypower,

One was a lady 'Gretchen' something and the other a guy. They were let go after 4 new season 2 episodes were finished. I learned this from the Sept 2018 Comic-Con where the new cast and crew showed up and they didn't. If you are with CBS All access they frequently appeared on the After Trek shows giving useful explanations about the show. Yes, Star Trek was from inception (i) always forward looking; unafraid to explore new internal and external worlds/concepts/ideas and (ii) always a reflection of current social morays and a commentary on current culture. Perhaps Roddenberry did not make that commentary (ii) consciously, nevertheless by reviewing the episodes of TOS we can get some idea what 1960 society was like. My point is that a 2018 ST should similarly reflect this current world and I fear by trying to get more money, the producers have compromised this effort and 2018 will look more like 1960!

I don't know what the 'creative differences' were but as I compare season 2 's latest trailer with those of season 1, certain things become clear.