What went wrong: The US government allowed studios to own streaming and broadcast channels. This resulted in extreme fragmentation of the market where programs were no longer sold on the open market and every studio felt like they had to open their own streaming channel to compete.
It didn’t work when studios owned movie theaters and so that was outlawed. Now we’ve come full circle and studios can buy movie theaters. That’s not going to save the theaters because the studio is going to put their product out for a week before shuffling it off to their streaming channel. Or worse, cancel it for a write off rather than let it air on competing networks.
A side effect of so many streaming channels is that they are all feeling the pressure to keep up with the catalog depth of Netflix and Disney/Hulu. This results in lots of mediocre content being produced to create the illusion of lots of stuff to watch. But no one wants to watch it or hasn't heard of it to build mind hype for it. All that content is wasted money to prop up a failing service that is bleeding every contender dry. There will be more like Paramount. Consolidation is coming.
Why not? The bell riots themselves was one of the steps to class consciousness, something we desperately need now. Yeah people were hurt, but how different is that than BLM and other rights protests being mass arrested or openly fired upon these days?
That is a very machivellian attitude. I don't believe that hurting people who aren't a threat in the name of "progress" is justified, even if it were somehow a shortcut to utopia, which it's not.
Nonviolence is an inherently privileged position in the modern context. Besides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class, pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context. It ignores that violence is already here; that violence is an unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy; and that it is people of color who are most affected by that violence. Pacifism assumes that white people who grew up in the suburbs with all their basic needs met can counsel oppressed people, many of whom are people of color, to suffer patiently under an inconceivably greater violence, until such time as the Great White Father is swayed by the movement’s demands or the pacifists achieve that legendary “critical mass. -- How Nonviolence Serves the State
I didn't say anything about pacifism, but I also disagree with your proposition equating violence and politics. Violence is a breakdown of politics. Politics, almost definitionally, is how a people settle disputes without violence.
Politics is how how decisions are made in groups. If one person or group is forcing their will upon others, then no decision or compromise between the parties can be said to have been made freely. And therefore it cannot be truthfully described as following a political process.
Pacifism is an ideology centered on political change through nonviolence. Maybe you didn't explicitly say it, but you might as well have. Can you provide a source on violence being a result of political breakdown and not intrinsic to politics itself? How do current regimes uphold their power?
Politics is, more or less, how decisions are made in groups. Making a decision doesn't preclude violence. Wars are political and their entire point is violence. Colonialism was foundational to the politics of the last 3+ centuries and it was incredibly violent. Besides vibes, what evidence do you have to support the claim that politics aren't violent?
It's only Gish galloping if you edit your original message so they appear disconnected. You'd said all hurting was wrong, and my question was a direct followup to that.
Nah, Futurama is pessimistic. A thousand years passed and nothing got better. Humans just found new ways to screw each other over and more aliens to hate. Lower Decks is based and hopepilled.
It took me a few episodes to like Enterprise and now I really enjoy the series. I really wish it when t a couple of more seasons.
The theme song was off putting to me at first. Once I bonded with the cast and characters it somehow became better and now I let it play for most episodes and even sing along.
I think the reason people don't really like the theme song very much is because it isn't the classic instrumental. All of the other Star Treks have been very obviously Star Trek from the opening few tones. Enterprise isn't like that.
Strange New Worlds got this, even though it was a brand new piece of music just the first few notes, you can tell it's Star Trek without even looking at the screen.
Back when Enterprise was airing some fan took the opening footage and added instrumental music to it instead and it was soooooo much better. Worked wonderfully. Really wish I'd saved a copy of it, because I can't find it anymore.
I think it matches with the prequel aspect before Starfleet was really a thing, and it matches up beautifully with the montage of Big E’s evolution. DS9 has the best instrumental but ENT’s intro is great.
I didn't know what they were and had to look it up
The Bell Riots were an event that took place in San Francisco on Earth in September 2024. They led to the end of the Sanctuary Districts and marked the real beginning of Humans working to find a lasting solution that would resolve social problems. This would set humanity on the path to founding the United Federation of Planets.
Man I love that series, at least the first, Second and third seasons.
I love the idea of the show, the first enterprise as we know it, with none of the fancy tech and comfort of the other shows, the pioneering scent it has.
But they had to screw it up, the execs put their dirty hands on the show and ruined a lot of it, the first season would be on earth? Nooooo, not generic enough, There will be no transporters? Noooooo, too different, also: sexualize T'pol to the Delta quadrant and back.
And man I hate so much the time wars thing, I suspect the execs also forced it into the show, because I guess? Idk, they killed what could have been a great show.
I would even be glad for some sort of reboot of Enterprise, following a lot more of the original ideas of the show and characters, taking away all the dumb and continuing all the storyline with the Human-Romulan conflict.
Oh man, the episode where Archer basically says "Shut up, experienced scientist from centuries long space faring race with your well thought out careful procesures, I'm going down on that planet we discovered five minutes ago because I want to go camping! Also I'm bringing my dog."
I agree. Discovery is the least progressive Star Trek series and is already aging poorly. The other series use the Star Trek universe to cleverly explore present day issues whereas Discovery lazily frames today's social issues as if they're universal truths. It was a real back step for the franchise.
It's not that Disco isn't progressive; it's just lazily progressive. Case in point: the scene that bothers me to this day is Adira coming out as non-binary, just beyond cringe-worthy and very 21st century. As a viewer, the scene read like Adira was waiting to be judged harshly for their identity, and it just totally took me out of the era. By the 32nd century, I'd expect that being judged harshly for one's gender identity would be at least a millennium behind us, and the conversation should either have not happened or been so matter-of-fact that it was treated as nothing. I get what the writers were trying to do, and it fell so flat and felt so bluntly obvious. I'm all for the message, but the delivery was not great.
The saddest thing about Disco to me is that there were great ideas and great intentions, but the execution of those ideas was so poor. Really, it just shows that you can have great actors, great directors, and great concepts, but if the writers can't make it work, it just all comes apart.
I see your point, but I still don't think the scene works, but thinking about it like that makes it much more watchable. My point is that the scene is simultaneously poignant and a throw-away. It's a "big deal" but also just one scene.
By the 32nd century, something like that should be such a non-issue for humans, that it would be like stating just another fact about yourself (amnesia and trust-issues aside), which lends itself to being a throw-away...but that defeats the purpose of the scene. Again, I am all about the message and Stamets' reaction, but it felt very 21st century and on-the-nose.
I'd have preferred if Adira were just non-binary from the beginning and maybe have a quick correction of someone when they were misgendered. Or, let that scene be the reveal of something else, like the symbiont. With that change (I'd have to rewatch the season to see where this scene was in relation to the symbiont reveal), I think the scene would still work while tightening up the writing. I also think it'd get the message across, too.
Now, if the writers really wanted that scene to stay as-is, there are options. Make them an alien from a culture not as enlightened (which would cause other issues) or have this scene play into a bigger theme of Earth backsliding post-Burn (like a Dark Ages) to have mores closer to the 21st century and show the 23rd century crew as horrified by it and work to bring Earth and humanity back toward enlightenment.
This kinda sums up my main problem with Disco. There were great options on the table to realize a concept, but they just wrote it in an awkward way that is unsatisfying (at least to me). Sometimes, that awkwardness reads as performative/lazily progressive.
The problem I had with that scene (and the whole series, really, especially season 3) was that it framed human culture of the future as being generally oppressive and backwards. Acceptance shouldn't be portrayed as radical or exceptional. It should be normal and taken for granted among humans in the future. Like in TOS, Uhura's role was a big deal for viewers specifically because it was not a big deal for the characters. They just showed us a better future, where a black woman in a respected professional position was normal.
Discovery didn't show us a better future. It showed us a shitty future with a handful of decent people in it. This is just one example, but it's one that stuck in my mind as well.
It was presented as exceptional in-universe, from Adira's perspective. The fact that Adira felt weird about it at all paints the culture they grew up in as backwards.
How so? Perhaps I'm misremembering, but they were born on Earth and raised among humans, right? Does that not say something about the human culture of their time?
I've only made it to season 2, so I'm holding out hope that it gets better, but lazily progressive seems to describe it pretty well.
The one that really rubs me rough it how Tilly is very clearly coded to be some type of neuro divergent, probably autistic, but also only when it is convenient and quirky and will not interfere with the plot too much.
Her suddenly being very socially adept when the plot needed her to pretend to be an evil commander or whatever, and she dropped all of her character flaws to make it happen just felt so out of character and lazy.
Also the scenes with Spock and "child abuse bad" at the start of the red angel arc was very ham fisted.
I much preferred how SNW handled the "our wonderful society is supported by horrible child labor and death" arc. Still about as subtle as a brick, but it at least felt like an attempt was made to encode a message, and not just saying it at the viewer like a pre-school cartoon recapping the message of the episode.
The scene you're describing is a good example. Though I would argue that given this story line is set a millennium in the future, it isn't just lazily progressive, it's an ultra-conservative view of the future. It perpetuates today's bigotries as universal truths instead of challenging the audience to perceive of a future without our current bigotries like the Kirk / Uhura kiss did 50 years ago.
Yeah someone being non-binary or whatever and no one caring or commenting on it at all is a lot more progressive and meaningful. TOS did that really well with Uhura on the bridge. She was a black woman and absolutely no one on the ship acted like that was remotely odd. It sent a very powerful message.
It also felt like it was shoehorning in all the progressiveness for the sake of being progressive which sends the exact opposite message than they hoped for. The crew was so amazingly diverse representing so many different things that any adult would look at it and go "the odds of all these different sexualities/etc. being on one ship at once are so improbable as to be impossible." That makes it feel like pandering, not being progressive. That could work for kids, just being able to see someone like them on screen helps a lot, but Discovery is very much not meant for kids to watch.
Basically they tried too hard and didn't understand what they were doing.
Can you give some examples of this? Admittedly I didn't much care for Discovery and didn't pay a lot of attention through it as a result, but I'm not picking up what you're laying down ;-)
The original series was based in a post-race society. When Kirk and Uhura kiss, it wasn't an interracial kiss in the show because the concept of race doesn't exist in the 24th century universe. It got backlash when it aired because some people couldn't contemplate a the future without their current bigotry existing. Star Trek explored current social issues by visiting some planet with a veiled version of that issue.
Contrast that to Discovery where Burnham is having a conversation with an Admiral and the Admiral brings up Burnham's family's history of slavery.
Ah yeah, I remember a moment like that in DS9, where Sisko is lamenting the crew's interest in a holosuite program set in the 50s because of how "our people" were treated back then. It always felt out of place for me, though DS9 is still my favourite Star Trek.
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