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My guess is that if the evil spy twins plot hadn't gone over like a lead balloon, he would've gotten away to menace our heroes another day, rather than being handwaved into jail between seasons.
If you take the showrunner at his word, that was not ever the plan/implication. He had a post-climax scene written up for the guy, but the scene was cut due to time constraints. All the stuff I read about Michael Chabon's time writing for Picard, the guy had a lot of really interesting ideas and spent a lot of time/energy doing stuff like fleshing out the lore of Romulan society. But the guy's ability to condense his ideas down into a modern TV show format seemed lacking. It's often a rough transition for someone to write in one medium and then cross over into another. I'm personally willing to chalk up a lot of PIC S1's struggles due to Chabon's growing pains. I'm cautiously optimistic that Chabon stepping down as showrunner for S2 and 3, but still being in the writing room will lead to his strengths as a writer being catered to, and his weaknesses tempered and ironed out by the industry vets on the team.

Say, what's Denise Crosby up to these days...?
She should have shown up during Nemesis, but then didn't. Honestly, Tasha should have just been straight up revived from the dead and allowed to join the Enterpise-D back in the day when she wanted to come back. Rick Berman is a dbag.
 

Why?

Note: I like all 3 of these movies. I think 1 is a ton of fun, 2 had some cool s31 stuff before it was run into the ground, and 3 was very underrated.

That said - this very much not needed in the post Discovery world of oops! all treks!

Thoughts?
 
Because those movies are well liked, made a lot of money, made the careers of many of its actors who are now very bankable stars, were an important gateway drug for tons of fans into the franchise (even more important now that almost everything is locked behind P+), and still to this day one of CBS/Viacom/Paramount's crown jewel IPs that shouldn't lay fallow for too long. "TV Trek is thriving, why make movies?" to me seems like a question that answers itself.

I've gone back and forth on the Kelvin Timeline movies but I think I've settled into broadly enjoying them. They're dumb, but they're fun and well made. And despite the bleating of gatekeepers, they're perfectly fine Star Trek things.
 
Because those movies are well liked, made a lot of money, made the careers of many of its actors who are now very bankable stars, were an important gateway drug for tons of fans into the franchise (even more important now that almost everything is locked behind P+), and still to this day one of CBS/Viacom/Paramount's crown jewel IPs that shouldn't lay fallow for too long. "TV Trek is thriving, why make movies?" to me seems like a question that answers itself.

I've gone back and forth on the Kelvin Timeline movies but I think I've settled into broadly enjoying them. They're dumb, but they're fun and well made. And despite the bleating of gatekeepers, they're perfectly fine Star Trek things.
Beyond lost a lot of money though.
Don't get me wrong. I'm there, but still seems odd lo these many years later.
 

Purple

(She/Her)
I would argue, strongly, that Into Darkness actually lost all that money.

I argue this broadly with all movie sequels, really. There's a one movie delay for ticket sales to catch up with receptions.
 
Beyond lost a lot of money though.
It did, but on top of the delayed punishment from Into Darkness, that was also through the magic of Hollywood financing shenanigans. It had a worldwide box office take of $340M on a budget of $185M. That's less than the other two but not egregiously so/beyond the point of profitability. And because of how the film was made in a special partnership with a Chinese distributor this time around, the Paramount cut of the pie was a lot smaller versus the previous movies. Fundamentally, nothing about the movie itself was bad or would justify nailing the coffin shut on that universe/film series. Quite the opposite, in fact IMO. If they can still make a movie that made money despite how poisoned the well was from the last one in the series, and despite the lackluster marketing effort, and despite the dumb attempt to pander to the Chinese market... making another one of these but learning from all the dumb administrative mistakes ought to work out pretty well for them.

Star Trek Beyond should be in the conversation for "best Star Trek movie."
star-trek-star-trek-tos.gif

 
CBS dropped a new teaser trailer for Strange New Worlds


Looking good! On a tangent, I am amused by P+ waiting until after the Obiwan trailer went up to put this up. And this show will come out a day after it on May 5th.
 

Kirin

Summon for hire
(he/him)
Huh, yeah, seems like a weird move to bring him on so soon, and the article seems to be implying as captain (though they may have that wrong?). Also not that I care a whole lot but having a bunch of time with both captains on the show seems much more fraught with continuity issues, as my memory is Kirk wasn’t nearly as familiar with Pike as Spock was in the relevant TOS eps.
 
They may want to establish that Pike/Kirk relationship like the Kelvin movies, which was pretty cool.

That said - not pumped to have kirk here in capacity beyond guest appearance.
 
Huh, yeah, seems like a weird move to bring him on so soon, and the article seems to be implying as captain (though they may have that wrong?). Also not that I care a whole lot but having a bunch of time with both captains on the show seems much more fraught with continuity issues, as my memory is Kirk wasn’t nearly as familiar with Pike as Spock was in the relevant TOS eps.
If memory serves, Kirk said in The Menagerie that he'd only met Pike once, when he was promoted and Kirk took over the Enterprise from him. So any earlier encounter would contradict that. But I'm not really too upset at undoing this wrinkle from The Menagerie (not a great episode) when undoing wrinkles from TOS is literally a TNG era pastime. (Zefram Cochrane it turns out, is not from Alpha Centauri, and First Contact was a better movie for it.)

A picture on the P+ twitter (same as the thumbnail for the article) shows the actor with Captain stripes on his sleeves. I dunno if that's a photoshop, or an on-set picture. There's a million possibilities here, there could be timey-wimey stuff going on, this could be another one of Pike seeing the future business like he did in S2 of DIS. The USS Farragut could show up with Lt Kirk, who knows. I just think it's too early to play this card regardless. I was excited for Pike to get his own show without the spectre of Kirk breathing down his neck, and a little disappointed they're going in this route. BUT! I'll try and keep my preconceptions and expectations to a minimum to give this a fair shot.
 
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Four posts in a row, why not.

It's late and I can't sleep and I'm listening to the soundtracks from the different motion pictures since they're all up on Apple Music. Just a few random musings:

- Jerry Goldsmith is really good guys. It would be criminal that he didn't get an Oscar for TMP, if the Oscars themselves weren't a massive joke. He also got screwed by having some of the worst Trek movies being ones used for his scores.

- The music for Search For Spock is so bad/not original that I can't even find a listing for it on Apple Music. So much of it is such a retread they probably thought why bother.

- Dennis McCarthy's work on Generations is really strong. Like, to the degree that I believe he was abused and his talents gone to waste for all the work he did on TNG proper. It's honestly a shame his music got wasted on such a mediocre film, because his Generations music is actually incredible. He deserved to get more work on the franchise, and that he didn't is a shame.

- The B-Side of Generation's OST is all background beeps/boops/sound effects from the movie, and it's a goldmine for anyone who both wants to incorporate those sounds into any homemade thing, and just is a neat overall thing to do in such a nerdy franchise. This should be industry standard, and to my knowledge only this film did it.

- Cliff Eidelman's work on The Undiscovered Country is also crazy impressive, and does a great job of helping build and sustain the tension/drama in that movie. But it's not a great listen independently from the film because of how oppressive most of its tracks are.

- There isn't a single Star Trek film with a bad OST, and every Star Trek movie has really good music through their ending credits.

- I still don't understand why Star Trek Beyond didn't get better advertising. In retrospect, it's ridiculous that Rihanna made a song for the film in her prime, and I had to learn about that while watching the movie itself in theaters.

- There's a track in ST6's OST (IIRC it corresponds to Kirk & McCoy first landing in Rura Penthe) that features a chorus of Klingons chanting "To be or not to be!" in Klingon, and it's just delightful.

- The track "Market Street" in The Voyage Home's OST sounds almost nothing like the version they used in the movie, but oh man am I in love with this song:
80s Gen-X nostalgia bait never sounds like this because it's all hair-metal, R&B, and proto-rap, and it's a shame.

- The track "The Moon's A Window To Heaven" at the end of The Final Frontier's OST is a whole done up version of the fan dance song that Uhura is singing in the film. And OH MAN is it MAGICAL. My people, please listen if you haven't before:
 

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
Oopsies! Let me put this where it belongs. My apologies in advance.

I was watching old episodes of Deep Space Nine on Paramount Plus, and I find it fascinating how Sisko differs from the other Star Trek captains, even in the early episodes where the series was burning off Next Gen scripts and hadn't yet found its own voice. Kirk goes into difficult situations with guns blazing and Picard is a pragmatist, willing to compromise his goals to satisfy everybody. Sisko takes a different approach, though. He's not particularly concerned with what the other side wants, and will take big risks to achieve the best possible outcome for his team. He doesn't do this with brute force like Kirk, but instead plans strategies in advance, and manipulates others to get them to cede control in a tense situation.

Invasive Procedures is a good example. When a team of mercenaries invades the station in an attempt to steal Jadzia's symbiont, Sisko first tries to take one of the criminals by surprise. When that fails, he turns attention to the female partner of the Trill who engineered the heist, using her unrequited love for the Trill against her and eroding her confidence in the mission. When the Trill takes Jadzia's symbiont, Sisko starts putting pressure on him, reminding him of their past friendship and angrily threatening to end it if the symbiont isn't returned to its rightful host. Nothing Sisko says is a lie, and his emotional blackmail doesn't quite toe the line of sociopathy, but it's nevertheless effective in wearing down the kidnappers' defenses and leading to their eventual defeat.

Picard tries to find ways to placate everyone at the table, while Sisko adopts a "winner take all" approach, convincing his adversaries to give him what HE wants without offering anything in return. It's what makes the character compelling. If he weren't fighting on the side of the angels, he would be pretty damn scary.
 

Alixsar

The Shogun of Harlem
(He/him)
Is anybody watching the new one? Strange New Worlds? The entire premise of this one is "oh hey, you don't like New Trek™? We're gonna make a New-Old Trek™!" So, that's me. That's what I want.

...but I have absolutely zero faith that anyone at the helm of the franchise nowadays can actually do that??? Is this good? Is it ACTUALLY like Old Trek or are they those kinds of people who say a video game is "like Dark Souls" simply because it's hard? Like is this "look we made a episodic series so it's like Old Trek" but then each episode is absolutely nothing like Old Trek? Or...is it like Old Star Trek? I don't know!
 

FelixSH

(He/Him)
Is anybody watching the new one? Strange New Worlds? The entire premise of this one is "oh hey, you don't like New Trek™? We're gonna make a New-Old Trek™!" So, that's me. That's what I want.

...but I have absolutely zero faith that anyone at the helm of the franchise nowadays can actually do that??? Is this good? Is it ACTUALLY like Old Trek or are they those kinds of people who say a video game is "like Dark Souls" simply because it's hard? Like is this "look we made a episodic series so it's like Old Trek" but then each episode is absolutely nothing like Old Trek? Or...is it like Old Star Trek? I don't know!
Yeah, there is already quite a bit of excitement going on here. ;)

Not quite sure at the moment, but I'm looking forward to watching an episode. We'll see if it is what I want out of on old-style Trek show, but I'm cautiosly optimistic.
 
Is anybody watching the new one? Strange New Worlds? The entire premise of this one is "oh hey, you don't like New Trek™? We're gonna make a New-Old Trek™!" So, that's me. That's what I want.
I'm watching it. I love it personally, but I also love most, if not all of nuTrek so don't take my word for it.

I would say it's a mix of old and nuTrek. There are very obvious attempts at placating fans of the old stuff - attempts that feel so naked and obvious it's honestly a little embarrassing. But if the pilot here is any indicator, it doesn't really feel cynical about it. It just really wants to be something that people like, while also living up to the moral ideology that the franchise has grown to embody among some in pop culture.

The pilot is very much an open and close, one-off story. But there's lots of obvious hooks for character development arcs among most of its cast. The showrunners, writers, and actors all swear up and down that this is the formula to the show, to the frequency, degree, and insistence that it almost feels like a hostage plea.

The moral dilemma here is a classic Prime Directive episode, with lots of things to say about modern social issues. But it does it in a way that honestly feels almost annoyingly naive about maintaining the idealism and faith in the human spirit that is classic Trek for good and bad. The pilot however gets very literal and direct about its morality play here, speaking almost directly to the audience in ways that is actually pretty typical of oldTrek (TOS) but that most Gen-Xers and Millenials who grew up on TNG will feel unaccustomed to. I actually prefer this, obfuscating your moral and societal critiques through vague allegory is for cowards and people who literally fear for their lives/livelihoods.

Almost the whole extended cast gets an introduction in the pilot, already have well defined personalities, and also gets to do meaningful things in the plot in a way that almost feels masterful how it's juggled together. Very obviously trying to reassure the audience that this is an ensemble show, despite Star Trek historically almost never living up to that ideal. There are also a whole lot of obscure, legacy characters in supporting roles that will be fun to peel back the layers on, but I could see annoying some fans due to Small World Syndrome.

The Enterprise looks very familiar to the original sets, but with a very sleek and sensical visual update. It's a good mix of nuTrek modernizing with the outlines of what the old Enterprise looked like.

There's a lot of exploration of the setting/world building in this episode that personally doesn't feel very oldTrek, but will probably feel welcome/at home to the kinds of fans that like to expend copious amounts of energy arguing lore on the internet.

The new characters so far are all really fun. There isn't a single thing I could complain about in the casting, short of generally wanting South Asia better represented in Star Trek someday. Ethan Peck and Anston Mount both continue to kill it as Spock and Pike. Having handsome, white, straight men with classical depictions of masculinity will feel very at home to certain Trek fans.

I found the dialog snappy and engaging. But it's reliant on witty quips and playful banter that feels almost Marvel-adjacent. That's very much a nuTrek thing, but I don't mind it. YMMV.

Overall I think it's a really strong pilot. One of the stronger in the franchise, even. We'll see how it goes from here.

If anybody has any questions about anything specific, or didn't understand any specific nod to this or that in the show, hmu in the SNW thread.
 
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Is anybody watching the new one? Strange New Worlds? The entire premise of this one is "oh hey, you don't like New Trek™? We're gonna make a New-Old Trek™!" So, that's me. That's what I want.

...but I have absolutely zero faith that anyone at the helm of the franchise nowadays can actually do that??? Is this good? Is it ACTUALLY like Old Trek or are they those kinds of people who say a video game is "like Dark Souls" simply because it's hard? Like is this "look we made a episodic series so it's like Old Trek" but then each episode is absolutely nothing like Old Trek? Or...is it like Old Star Trek? I don't know!
It's great
It's episodic, but in the new design and feel of NU. MCU quips, overly WIZ BANG wonder (i'm here for it, but none of that "TNG" feel: slower pace, debate based, chamber drama?)

So it's cool and I recommend - but if you want that early 90s trek feel, watch or re-watch Orville.
 
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