Quick note, but I don't think Melkor ended up in the Halls of Mandos. He was cast out into the void beyond Arda.
Can I talk about this modern trend in "diversity casting in TV shows?"
- Thread starter Samtemdo8
- Start date
- Status
I'd add that I think Discovery focuses on one character too much. I don't think Star Trek ever was, or ever should be a one person show. It probably is closest to TOS in that respect
I found that really interesting about Star Trek myself. There was a big debate for a little while about what the first science fiction book was, and a lot of people were against it being Frankenstein because apparently, the definition of science fiction (depending on the source) can include a requirement that the science is semi-realistic and include themes regarding societal impact. Now, I don't personally care about that argument - the race to be the first science fiction writer was won by the Greeks via Icarus, clearly - but it did strike me that if you want to use that robust of a definition of sci-fi, I don't think most of Star Trek actually fits in the genera.
There are definitely some episodes that have heavy theming regarding society wrestling with technology (Ricardo Montalban's fantastic chest for instance), but a huge amount of the individual stories could have been played out by a group of hippies in a VW driving across America. Voyager would be a bunch of people waking up in Amsterdam and realizing they have to get home to India the hard way because they can't afford plane tickets. DS9 would be an English outpost trying to pull a country away from France. Most of the science is either hand-waved with technobabble or tacitly ignored with the pure intention of giving that time to the characters instead. The Prophets? Either actually magic, or wormhole aliens, don't sweat it, we have a really interesting character study for Sisko but for it to work we need someone to jerk him around on Earth so whatever the Prophets are, they're the kind of thing that can do that.
It sucks that the hardcore insistence that lore and technological realism is making shows like that harder and harder to pull off. New Star Trek is definitely suffering from it, but a lot of other sci-fi shows like The Expanse are often bogged down similarly. It seems like the new push in sci-fi is to be like The Martian, and also try to pull off the same kind of dramatics of GOT, but there doesn't seem to be any acknowledgment that there isn't really time in an hour block to be super technically thorough and self-consistent, and still have time for characters to get mad at each other about banging the wrong person. A lot of time in The Expanse goes to explaining space technology that is fundamentally neat, but not what I'm actually watching the show to see, so its hard not to view it as stealing time from Gunny vs Mars for instance.
If the writers don't care enough to keep their story consistent, why should I?
Some of the writers of Star Trek seem like they may have overheard something about science at a pub one time, but that's as far as their involvement went. Like the episode of Next Generation where they get a virus that makes everyone in the crew de-evolve into animals from deep in their genetic history. Different animals. Including a spider in one case.
Or the episode of Voyager where they go faster than warp 9 and it causes Janeway and Paris to turn into lizards and have babies, and then be easily returned to normal for the next episode. I'm sorry but I don't see there being any return from that change. If I boil an egg, I can't then unboil it and hatch it into a chicken.
Or the Deep Space 9 episode where they reignite a star with a shuttlecraft. Yeah.
Yeah it wasn't great. I still think the Voyager hitting Warp 10 and making both Janeway and Paris turn into monitor lizards and mate is worse, but in the way being executed by blind firing squad is worse than a clean trip to the guillotine.
There's a problem with all TV series when they run out of ideas. Classic examples are episodes set in the 1920s/1950s (ST had the holodeck, everyone else needs a dream or hallucination), musical numbers, and - specific to SF - time travel and alternative dimensions (except where the show is about those, obviously). Bar the few inevitable exceptions, these are barrel-scrapers. I don't think anyone can possibly say some form of "Time Police" made Star Trek a better place. It particularly infested ST:E as I recall (which is not much).
You know, there wasn't that much time police stuff in ST:E. But I don't think there is that much Borg stuff in Voyager and find all Borg interactions boring in TNG and was thankful Voyager was willing to do something with them... even if it didn't hit on all cylinders. So take my 'not too much' as you see fit
Only time I remember those guys, the Department of Temporal Investigations, showing up was the DS9 comedy episode 'Trials and Tribbl-uations' where their job was to be officious straight men to Sisko's gleeful enjoyment of possibly fucking around with time.
Well the holodeck, and also random planets that are inexplicably 1920s versions of Earth.
Yes, those were really really dumb.
I mean yes, Star Trek was never particular hard fantasy, but if you manage to destroy suspension of disbelief of elementary school children with your science errors, you have gone too far.
Eh, cut 'em some slack.
With how many stories they churned out for TNG, DS9 and VOY, there are bound to be a some of whacky things in there.
Well, i did like TNG a lot and later DS9, was a bit more lukewarm on VOY. But some stories were just really really bad.
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.
Star Trek really nails that concept.
Voyager in particular has an exceedingly high quantity of really bad episodes. For how many start off with one of the crew crashing a shuttlecraft you would think that Janeway would have banned the use of them.
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 and lose shuttles with wild abandon.....
At the beginning they clearly liked the idea of Voyager have to deal with limited supplies and no allies, but in reality that ended up being Janeway occasionally grumbling about being out of coffee.
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.
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.
- Status