Reva

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Braga: ‘I still cringe when I hear it.’ Apparently, it was a long road to the franchise’s most despised title music ( www.slashfilm.com )

Working from the oral history in The Five Year Mission: The next 25 years, this is a fascinating deep dive that answers the question “How did a recycled cover of a 1998 song written for Rod Stewart, ‘Where My Heart Will Take Me’ aka ‘Faith of the Heart’ become the title music for Enterprise?”...

Reva ,

I liked the song when I was a kid and watched Enterprise (and I liked Enterprise in general) but growing up, the sheer American nationalism throughout the series was pretty unwatchable. Still leagues ahead of the all-American new Trek.

Reva ,

Ira Steven Behr was the person whose influence I loved most.

What's a faction/group/alien race in Star Trek most similar to the Tech Priests / Mechanicus in Warhammer 40,000?

By that I mean that the basic premise being: that the means of (re)creating new technology is lost, the current technology around is treated as sacred and the function marred in elaborate rituals or prayers because they don’t know how to otherwise operate it, and to a lesser extent that new ideas or (often xenophillic)...

Reva ,

Absolutely the Pakled.

Star Trek executive producer wants more Strange New Worlds episodes, and I’m nervous ( screenrant.com )

Strange New Worlds has been my favorite Trek since Next Generation, and if the quality continues, could easily be my favorite Trek ever. But with the e.p. wishing for more episodes per season, there’s a danger of diluting the show by adding weak episodes that would have never made it in a 10 episode season....

Reva ,

What quality? It has the writing and acting quality of Big Bang Theory.

Reva ,

Thought I was watching a Marvel preview for a second. yawn

Enterprise era new trek show?

I’m not sure if this is the right community or not, but I’m curious what y’all would think if they came out with a new show set in the Enterprise era. Ent is one of my favorite shows, and I always felt like we got screwed out of some really compelling TV when they ended they stopped making Trek after ENT ended. That era of...

Reva ,

I just am scared how they’ll represent Earth life in a new show. It will most likely be incredibly Americanized with every radical Roddenberry-ism and Berman-ism thrown out of the window. The “Federation News Network” (FNN) and all of the American cultural dogwhistles in Picard made me turn it off in the first episode. It just feels like we throw utopia out of the window and make everything just future-USA.

They even reintroduced car culture and wide highways, American architecture and cultural norms.

Reva ,

There’s a reason TNG/DS9/VOY are called the Golden Age, not TOS.

Reva ,

The problem I have with the new shows is that they all feel acted, designed and written like American advertisements or stock videos. It’s hard to describe, but everything is glossy, polished and corporate-designed, and people never act or speak like the people I know in real life; they act and speak like influencers, vloggers and YouTube personalities. It’s eerie and I cannot immerse myself at all. It’s too clean, too bright, not industrial or lived in enough. Even the “relatable” scenes just remind me of what an upper class hipster writer in a glass-front writing room thinks is relatable.

The people and sets on DS9 felt so real, so tangible, so relatable. The episode with Bashir’s parents comes to mind where the interaction between Julian and them was so gut-punchingly accurate to a regular immigrant working class family. The relationship between Ben and Jake. The entire character of Miles. The people in new Trek feel fake, like a Hollywood writer’s idea of a regular person. The politics in DS9 felt genuinely radical, in new Trek they feel shoe-horned in out of an obligation to be progressive with no meat behind it at all, just to market to a target demographic.

Maybe it is because I am European, but DSC/SNW/PIC just feel SO incredibly American. Like Alegria art.

Reva ,

But that’s just the thing. I too like utopia, but I want a believable utopia, not a Starbucks upper class version of what they think is “yass relatable”. I thought DS9 was actually a wonderfully utopian show because it showed that despite incredible hardship, people can still overtake their circumstances and keep a level head, good relationships and a just society. It was authentic to what I as a working class person experience, to what my life is; just an idealized version of it where others and society as a whole share my ideals and ethical standpoints. New Trek on the other hand tries so hard to appeal to progressive politics but fails at realizing the actual authentic circumstances of the working class and instead makes it into some kind of “Eurovision” or “Oscars”-ish upper class atmosphere thing. The recent musical episode was even more insulting in its “what rich people think is fun”-ness.

Now that you mentioned it, I hate that they stopped talking about “duty” and started talking about “work” or a “job”. It’s not supposed to be labour! That’s the entire point of a utopia! Why does everyone treat their Starfleet career like an employment contract with annoying bosses and all? The Lieutenant next to me is my comrade, not my “coworker”. Do they think it becomes relatable because they - in this utopia - still deal with the socialized equivalent of wage labour?

Everything in SNW/DSC/PIC looks, feels and sounds like a Marvel movie with unfunny quips and one-liners, or an advertisement at worst. They speak like the Microsoft boss does when he talks about Xbox - “millions of players all over the world come together to celebrate these incredible, amazing worlds that our people have created for you to express yourselves in” - it’s just marketing talk. It feels incredibly, incredibly sterile and corporate, but when DSC/SNW/PIC characters talk about Starfleet or the Federation, they sound exactly like that. The characters look like Hollywood actors, especially Pike; not like people I know in real life. Miles O’Brien could have been in my local pub; Pike looks and acts like someone who lives in a Californian villa and socializes with Jeffrey Epstein.

Star Trek has turned from union shop working class entertainment to rich white Americans’ entertainment. I do not like that one bit. And it’s not like I hate everything new. I thought Lower Decks was really enjoyable outside of a few stinkers, and I keep reading the novels.

Reva ,

I’d be super into that too! I am reading through some of the novels at the moment.

Anyone else out there who actually really loved Discovery's S1 style of Klingons?

I am the kind of person who enjoys “big weird” scifi like Stanisław Lem. Stories about trying to relate to and find common ground with something so alien that the prospect of even understanding is basically hopeless. Star Trek usually doesn’t do stories that, which makes sense as it often uses alien races as allegories or...

Reva ,

That’s the attitude of someone who does not really care about a continuous universe or a coherent world and just wants to watch sci-fi for the plot. If that’s the case, why not write and direct original fiction?

My entire enjoyment of Star Trek comes from the fact that it is a vast, largely consistent universe that feels real to me. I could mostly not care less about plot points or individual lead characters, I want the world that I know and love to expand. It’s like daydreaming.

Reva ,

Then I’ll make a Dune sequel where Arrakis is a grassland planet. Just need a bit of imagination.

Reva ,

… spoiler :( I’m only half way through.

lxskllr , to Star Trek
@lxskllr@mastodon.world avatar

Fan Made Shows/Movies?

@startrek

Any particular shows people here like watching? I've seen Renegades and a few others. I'm currently in the middle of Phase II. The special effects impress me for the budgets involved, and the writing/acting makes me appreciate the professionals more :^P I don't want to shit on any of them though. The effort is solid, and they're still an enjoyable watch.

Reva ,

I think the biggest thing for me is how the actors and actresses “look”. Many fanfilm people look very… 21st century plain, and not very believable to my eyes.

Reva ,

Doesn’t impact my favorite shows since they were already wrapped up twenty years ago.

Reva ,

I don’t know about you, but I cried during some of the songs. DS9 just started feeling like home, like these characters were my genuine friends. I loved just seeing them thrive and immersing myself in this world. For all that matters, I’d watch nine seasons of DS9: Operating Normally if it existed.

It might not have driven some kind of plot, but I am here because this universe is my happy place. I don’t care about some suspenseful plot.

Reva ,

Just watch Voyager and Enterprise instead.

What's your views on PIC season 3?

I’m currently rewatching it, and at first I admit I hated the season and didn’t understand all the praise it got, but on this second viewing, I am actually warming up a bit to it. It still is deeply flawed, with a lot of things that don’t make sense or could have been done better, but I kinda like it regardless. What do...

Reva ,

But we already had remote-controlled, crewless ships.

Reva ,

Although I agree that the Federation should be conceptualized as a socialist state, I can’t help but think that the writers just threw it in there as a hip buzzword to engage Gen Z and make for a great marketing clip, even though they themselves probably think that “socialist” means “government welfare and being against discrimination of minorities”. The writing of the newer Trek series constantly contradicts the idea that the Federation has a moral high ground, let alone is an actually socialist society, or that there is any kind of political, let alone revolutionary ideal in the writing room other than “yass diversity”.

Reva ,

It’s just the utter cynicism with which the writers treat the Star Trek universe and humanity as a whole now.

90s Trek, even DS9, believed thoroughly that a better version of humanity can be possible. They despite that did not sweep issues like racism or sexism under the rug but instead were incredibly progressive and made very political episodes by projecting current humanity’s issues on alien societies (or individual movements within the Federation) and portraying the in-universe humanity as a positive counterexample.

Like the Ferengi, who are espousing a very exaggerated version of capitalist greed, serving as the viewer’s mirror image of today’s humanity, contrasted with the (better) ideals of the Federation. Or the countless metaphors for various ideologies, issues and systems in the show, from Let This Be Your Last Battlefield to Section 31 as an evil CIA equivalent. Even the incredibly healthy father-son relationship between Ben and Jake, or the almost-poly triad between Keiko, Nerys and Miles showcasing how family relations SHOULD go; or the constant trans-shading of Dax. All of these were portraying the Federation as a positive example while commenting on these issues from their lens projected onto alien species.

Modern Trek on the other hand seems hellbent on making the Federation have the exact same issues, culture and opinions that we do today. Ben and Jake would probably hate each other and Ben would be a stand-in for abusive parents while Jake is the oppressed minor with anxiety issues. A valid story to tell, but why is this our protagonists then? Why would transphobia, racism or sexism be an issue in the Federation utopia? Why do we need strong women clapping back at toxic masculinity, if the latter should not exist anymore? Why does the Federation strive for a regime change on Qo’noS as if it was a comically evil CIA? Why is there apparently evil clickbait media conglomerates like the Federation News Network with only thinly veiled differences to real-life CNN? Why in God’s name is Trump supposed to be the ultimate evil causing WWIII? Why is Elon Musk a scientific hero in this “socialist utopia”, or even relevant? Why do we gleefully murder alien races now just because they are “evil”? Why is humanity still swearing and cussing and suffering from very 21-st century coded anxiety issues, wearing the same clothes and using the same slang born from a capitalist society? I am not saying to make no episodes about social issues - by all means, please do! A lot of them! Make them explicit, too! Just make the Federation the good, socialist utopia, because the entire message otherwise becomes “humanity will always be bigoted and exactly like we are today”.

As a progressive non-binary Marxist (lol), I feel like DS9 was a hundred times more progressive and anti-capitalist than any of the new trek shows ever could be, despite them priding themselves on it.

Reva ,

I hate about that word that the Federation clearly is not “post scarcity”; or if they are, they’re not “post logistics”, if that makes sense. Federation citizens like in the DMZ constantly suffer from poverty and war.

Reva ,

I’d love to see a community dedicated to sharing fan work, like cosplay, fanfiction or fanart. Right now, quark’s seems too off topic for that, DI and Risa are obviously not the right place, and the main Trek community seems to be focused on serious discussion about the shows.

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