Can I talk about this modern trend in "diversity casting in TV shows?"

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Drathnoxis

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You're thinking of Seska I think, and she was a Cardassian who had been surgically altered and embedded in Chakotay’s cell of the Maquis. And it was the Kazon she ended up throwing in with.
Man, was it Cardassians? Huh, I could have sworn that it was Romulans. Star Trek has so many nearly identical alien races that it's impossible to keep them straight.

But yes, the Kazon were who I was talking about. The first of Voyager's stupid and warlike alien races that inexplicably possess and maintain technology capable of interstellar travel. Voyager really is in love with that concept, also see the Hirogen, a race of hunters that would surely have either died out due to infighting or have been eliminated by the surrounding galactic community as being a hostile threat.
 

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Man, was it Cardassians? Huh, I could have sworn that it was Romulans. Star Trek has so many nearly identical alien races that it's impossible to keep them straight.

But yes, the Kazon were who I was talking about. The first of Voyager's stupid and warlike alien races that inexplicably possess and maintain technology capable of interstellar travel. Voyager really is in love with that concept, also see the Hirogen, a race of hunters that would surely have either died out due to infighting or have been eliminated by the surrounding galactic community as being a hostile threat.
The Hirogen I can buy being space flight capable; they’re essentially the Predator with a shitty tv budget design. And once Voyager gave them Holodeck technology they went away so they’re not totally unreasonable. The Kazon though, utter rubbish who were not missed when the writers quietly stopped using them.
 
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The writers just really did not grasp the premise of Voyager at all. So much handwaving you'd think it was a parade. Like how they kept somehow running into the same groups of people, like that Romulan woman that teamed up with those red aliens with the dirt encrusted afros, despite Voyager supposedly making a beeline back to the alpha quadrant as fast as they can go.
I've read the writers really didn't get along and among other problems, different writers would write Janeway the way they wanted to write her with no regard for consistency thus why Janeway came across as schizophrenic half the time.

Also a ton of executive meddling.
 
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Hawki

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I read someone's PhD on Doctor Who years ago - specifically, why it declined in the 80s and was eventually ceased. A major plank of this was that the show ended up written and produced by fans from the 60s and 70s, who drove it into a demand for continuity and thus self-reference that shut out potential new watchers, and so the viewing figures started to decline. There are legendary stories of Dr. Who conventions where poor actors are asked to explain lore inconsistencies between episodes 89 and 267 or whatever.
It may be unfair to ask the actors, but it's certainly fair to ask the writers.

I don't think it's fair to expect writers to remember everything about a setting, even with wikis available for reference, but if they write something that contradicts what came before, it's fair to ask them how/why.
 

Drathnoxis

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It may be unfair to ask the actors, but it's certainly fair to ask the writers.

I don't think it's fair to expect writers to remember everything about a setting, even with wikis available for reference, but if they write something that contradicts what came before, it's fair to ask them how/why.
I'm of the opinion that it doesn't matter. Once a work has been published it's finished, and no amount of 'take backsies' and 'well actually's change the text, no matter how much the author might want it to (JK Rowling).
 

Gordon_4

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It may be unfair to ask the actors, but it's certainly fair to ask the writers.

I don't think it's fair to expect writers to remember everything about a setting, even with wikis available for reference, but if they write something that contradicts what came before, it's fair to ask them how/why.
The answer to that is easy; it’s because the writers often change by the episode and by and large didn’t care what came before. Serialised television seldom had a single or consistent group of writers unless it was a specific project with a planned end.
 

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Man, was it Cardassians? Huh, I could have sworn that it was Romulans. Star Trek has so many nearly identical alien races that it's impossible to keep them straight.

But yes, the Kazon were who I was talking about. The first of Voyager's stupid and warlike alien races that inexplicably possess and maintain technology capable of interstellar travel. Voyager really is in love with that concept, also see the Hirogen, a race of hunters that would surely have either died out due to infighting or have been eliminated by the surrounding galactic community as being a hostile threat.
I mean, the Borg and Species random.number would fit war like and stupid

After getting trounced by Picard once, why would ANY federation ships and personal automatically destroyed. Eg. Data
 

Trunkage

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The answer to that is easy; it’s because the writers often change by the episode and by and large didn’t care what came before. Serialised television seldom had a single or consistent group of writers unless it was a specific project with a planned end.
Even shows like Babylon 5 had their continuity issues even if it was generally the same writer
 

Hawki

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I'm of the opinion that it doesn't matter. Once a work has been published it's finished, and no amount of 'take backsies' and 'well actually's change the text, no matter how much the author might want it to (JK Rowling).
If anything, that reinforces my point - once something's "out there," it's not easy to take back. Sure, the writers can simply declare something to be non-canon, which is a whole level of irritation on its own, but if you're writing something, it's common sense to make sure it doesn't contradict the setting, because if it does, then the lore's broken. There's certainly ways to get around that, such as giving in-universe reasons for discrepencies that ensure that they're no longer technically discrepencies, but it's not unreasonable to expect writers to at least try and keep things consistent.

Also, I'm not sure why you're mentioning Rowling, since the Harry Potter universe (Wizarding World?) has remained pretty consistent. There's certainly a few discrepencies I can think of, but nothing that breaks the setting.

The answer to that is easy; it’s because the writers often change by the episode and by and large didn’t care what came before. Serialised television seldom had a single or consistent group of writers unless it was a specific project with a planned end.
Well, yeah - that's bad, right? You understand that's bad?

There's any number of reasons why discrepencies occur, and discrepencies will almost certainly occur, with the chances of discrepency increasing as time goes on and the lore gets more dense, that isn't an argument to say "screw it all, just write whatever."

I mean, you can take that approach if you want, but people generally prefer it if things stay consistent.
 

Gordon_4

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If anything, that reinforces my point - once something's "out there," it's not easy to take back. Sure, the writers can simply declare something to be non-canon, which is a whole level of irritation on its own, but if you're writing something, it's common sense to make sure it doesn't contradict the setting, because if it does, then the lore's broken. There's certainly ways to get around that, such as giving in-universe reasons for discrepencies that ensure that they're no longer technically discrepencies, but it's not unreasonable to expect writers to at least try and keep things consistent.

Also, I'm not sure why you're mentioning Rowling, since the Harry Potter universe (Wizarding World?) has remained pretty consistent. There's certainly a few discrepencies I can think of, but nothing that breaks the setting.



Well, yeah - that's bad, right? You understand that's bad?

There's any number of reasons why discrepencies occur, and discrepencies will almost certainly occur, with the chances of discrepency increasing as time goes on and the lore gets more dense, that isn't an argument to say "screw it all, just write whatever."

I mean, you can take that approach if you want, but people generally prefer it if things stay consistent.
It’s not me who took the approach, it was the (many) writers of most of serialised television for the past sixty years who did. And until very recently, the audiences didn’t give much of a shit either.
 
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RhombusHatesYou

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It’s not me who took the approach, it was the (many) writers of most of serialised television for the past sixty years who did. And until very recently, the audiences didn’t give much of a shit either.
It's what happens when instead of hiring a continuity editor you invest in several buckets of cocaine.
 
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Drathnoxis

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Also, I'm not sure why you're mentioning Rowling, since the Harry Potter universe (Wizarding World?) has remained pretty consistent. There's certainly a few discrepencies I can think of, but nothing that breaks the setting.
Rowling is kind of notorious for continuously tweaking the lore of Harry Potter outside of what's been established in the novels.
 
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bluegate

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Exactly, just as long as they are making a lot of episodes it doesn't actually matter how good they are, all that counts is that you have something to fill the meaningless span of time before you die.
Not really.

VOY had 172 episodes, with a guessed generous twenty or so being double features, that's roughly 150 stories the writers had to write for that show.

With that wide a range there's bound to be lapses in quality from time to time.

Throw a 178 TNG episodes and 176 DS9 episodes on there and well...

Well, what's really amazing is how I think in the first episode or so Janeway makes a comment about having like 40 torpedos and best not waste them. Cue the rest of the show where they use torpedos ...
One of the dumbest complaints of Trek fandoms, really.

That comment about how many torpedoes they had was made at the start of their journey ( episode 5 ), in an unknown region of space, with little to no knowledge of what materials there were to find, outside the ones in their own storage.

It stands to reason that as they cruised through the delta quadrant that they came across the raw materials to make new photon torpedoes.
 

Drathnoxis

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Not really.

VOY had 172 episodes, with a guessed generous twenty or so being double features, that's roughly 150 stories the writers had to write for that show.

With that wide a range there's bound to be lapses in quality from time to time.

Throw a 178 TNG episodes and 176 DS9 episodes on there and well...
Or they could have just made... less episodes if they didn't have enough ideas. I'll take 50 episodes of pure gold over 172 of middling to low quality any day. But if you are bound and determined to excuse mass produced, dashed out television go right ahead.
 

Trunkage

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Or they could have just made... less episodes if they didn't have enough ideas. I'll take 50 episodes of pure gold over 172 of middling to low quality any day. But if you are bound and determined to excuse mass produced, dashed out television go right ahead.
Well, that's a problem called Capitalism. Quantity over quality
 

Agema

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I don't think it's fair to expect writers to remember everything about a setting, even with wikis available for reference, but if they write something that contradicts what came before, it's fair to ask them how/why.
"Fair" is something of a subjective value.

For a show like Doctor Who with dozens of writers across hundreds of episodes and decades of show lifespan, I would argue actually no it isn't fair to expect an encyclopaedic knowledge of everything that has gone before from writers. I think you could however consider degrees of inconsistency: few if any in TV series are big ones, they're more the lore equivalent of someone accidentally wearing a wristwatch in the shot of a medieval epic. (If that's the sort of thing bothering some people, these people need to go out and get a life.) Never mind that most writers think they don't think consistency should get in the way of a good story.
 

Satinavian

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It’s not me who took the approach, it was the (many) writers of most of serialised television for the past sixty years who did. And until very recently, the audiences didn’t give much of a shit either.
I always gave a shit.

And indeed, in recent times things got better. I heard that is mostly due to advent of streaming and viewers being more often expected to watch whole seasons and in order where decades ago much more focus was laid on each apisode being able to stand alone and networks being able to reorder or shorten seasons on a whim.
 

Satinavian

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I am just one who likes to immerse himself into stories and settings. And inconsistencies or outright ridiculous events always throw me out of the fiction. I don't care for drama or plot anymore when that happens.
 
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