Star Trek: Keeping Up With the Cardassians

[Werthead]

 

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Oh, come on.  V'ger = Voyager; it's not "prophecy", it's programming. An example of that dialogue you mention:

In B5 - as it ends up - it's not prophecy either, it's simply all a memory. They know the future because someone lived through it, which isn't the same thing. In B5 as originally planned the "prophecy" was also vague AF, and didn't have much to do with anything other than Sinclair and Delenn having a kid. The actual importance of the prophecy became more important in Babylon 5 only after it became more of a thing in DS9, which is quite amusing.

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I did not say Arnold was saying anything about B5 at all. My point was that he was an insider -- working on that lot, an actual employee of The Next Generation and Paramount, familiar with many of the writers and staff -- and so when you dismiss Koenig as just hearing stuff "at conventions", I wanted to note that he heard it, specifically, from someone who was at that very time a Paramount employee who was still an employee of the TNG production and was a regular on the lot.

 

The point is that Arnold was a consultant and archivist. He had nothing to do with the suits, and not much to do with the producers and writers. His job was to look up information for them, to liaise with fans and act as a resource. He certainly would not have been in a position to know anything at all about high-level discussions behind the scenes at Paramount corporate.

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So they claim that the development process was done all by themselves, carte-blanche, no network notes from anyone? That is not how the networks work. They had a boss that asked them to produce something, and layers of people who would work with them to make it happen and get it approved.

Not hugely. For starters they were separated from a lot of the standard Paramount chain of command, which revolved around producing shows for the networks. Since they went straight into syndication, they had far less oversight. Voyager, as the UPN's flagship ship which had a lot riding on it, had far, far more Paramount corporate interference in its development and how it progressed (which is why it turned out so vanilla); DS9 was kind of forgotten about in contrast. A lot of the suits at Paramount also didn't really get why TNG worked and were generally content to allow Berman to get on with it and DS9. It's why Berman became so hugely powerful, because if he recommended or approved something, Paramount usually just accepted it because he'd already steered TNG to great success for six seasons by that point and not gotten them in trouble (later on, if Paramount realised how little Berman had to do with DS9 and how it was basically operating with almost no oversight from him, that may have changed, but again they didn't really care about DS9; it made a solid dollar profit for them and they let them get on with it as long as the money rolled in). Piller made the creative decisions, Berman approved them, Tartikoff approved what Berman was doing and that was pretty much it.

It's also worth noting something that people conveniently leave out of the argument, the power of the Hollywood credit. If a suit came up with a substantial idea about DS9, like "let's have a shapeshifter on the show," or "let's have a prophecy about the main character", which defined or even created a regular character with long-term ramifications, they'd be quite within their legal rights to ask for a credit as a writer, co-writer or producer on the show, which has a significant dollar value (as it entitles them to residuals). It's why some shows end up with ballooning credits of people who don't seem to have done much: it's why LotR has a writer listed who had sweet FA to do with the actual script, but contributed a couple of ideas two years before filming started which ended up in the film, and why the guy who commissioned Lost got a credit when he'd already been fired by the network for commissioning Lost (because without him, there'd be no show). Yet DS9's credits list exclusively Berman and Piller, and the rest of the producers are the actual production producers. No PINOs to be found. So if someone did steal B5 ideas and gave them to Berman and Piller they were happy to forego a huge amount of money for it over many years, which sounds distinctly un-Hollywoodish.

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

In B5 - as it ends up

Italics mine. We don't need to look at "as it ends up", we just need to look at the pitch document.

The important point, to me, is that in the pitch, among all the other elements, is this one element that is distinctly like nothing Trek had ever done before: the lead, the captain of the station, is considered a prophesized figure by one of the major players.

And then Trek then ends up, strangely, doing the exact same thing by having the captain of the station be seen as a prophesized figure by the religious authorities of the locale where they're at. The fact that it's there to begin with at all is what raises my eyebrow. Because it's just not like anything Trek did before, and it just happens to be exactly like what was pitched to Paramount a couple of years earlier.

The credit thing is pointless. Would the people who saw the pitch suddenly having their names on DS9 be a smoking gun? I'd rather think so. But if your boss asks you about information regarding a pitch you saw, and you figure out afterward that he's fed some of it to the writers of your own show, then you can expect to be in his good graces, maybe get a bonus, bump in salary, or promotion -- all without anyone needing to explicitly connect you to DS9. It's not a credit, but jeez, a credit could potentially pull you into a huge lawsuit, so...

 

 

 

[RumHam]

I like Book a bit more after that episode.

I didn't need the transporter scene with him and Georgiou though. It seems a bit unrealistic that he and Burnam spent a year alone on his ship flirting as they do and never got together.

They didn't say which trill this new character was, right? I know someone posted a rumor about Dax showing up and I'm wondering if she (it?) just did.

I guess former-Arium is third in command? I was surprised to see her in the captain's chair. The crew must wonder why Georgiou isn't commanding. I was hoping to get a little mutiny action but it doesn't seem like they're going that route. No shots of Dentmer acting weird or staring off into space either so maybe they're not bringing Control back.

Given that all the dilithum randomly exploded one day and no one knows why or if it might happen again, I don't think I'd want to be flying around with a bunch of it in the cargo hold. 

I laughed at the reveal the alien was a human in a bug like helmet with a voice modulator. Seemed like a twist out of TOS. 

[SpaceChampion]

5 hours ago, RumHam said:

I like Book a bit more after that episode.

 

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I didn't need the transporter scene with him and Georgiou though. It seems a bit unrealistic that he and Burnam spent a year alone on his ship flirting as they do and never got together.

 

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I think Burnham implied they were periods where she was off on her own, so it wasn't continuous.

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Spoiler

They didn't say which trill this new character was, right? I know someone posted a rumor about Dax showing up and I'm wondering if she (it?) just did.

 

Spoiler

They did.  The previous host was Senna Tal who died 2 years ago, and this one is named presumably Adira Tal.

 

[Corvinus85]

6 hours ago, RumHam said:

I like Book a bit more after that episode.

 

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I didn't need the transporter scene with him and Georgiou though. It seems a bit unrealistic that he and Burnam spent a year alone on his ship flirting as they do and never got together.

They didn't say which trill this new character was, right? I know someone posted a rumor about Dax showing up and I'm wondering if she (it?) just did.

I guess former-Arium is third in command? I was surprised to see her in the captain's chair. The crew must wonder why Georgiou isn't commanding. I was hoping to get a little mutiny action but it doesn't seem like they're going that route. No shots of Dentmer acting weird or staring off into space either so maybe they're not bringing Control back.

Given that all the dilithum randomly exploded one day and no one knows why or if it might happen again, I don't think I'd want to be flying around with a bunch of it in the cargo hold. 

I laughed at the reveal the alien was a human in a bug like helmet with a voice modulator. Seemed like a twist out of TOS. 

 

 

Wait, the blonde woman is robot girl? Didn't she die? I don't remember much of the previous season.

Spoiler

I really like the addition of a Trill , and yes, Book is a promising character.

Earth went a little too much on the Earth first doctrine to not even keeps tabs on the rest of the solar system. How can you forget about your developed colonies? 

 

[Mindwalker]

She's not a

Spoiler

Trill but a human with a trill symbiont. I think the other young person will be the "real" Trill.

 

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Wait, the blonde woman is robot girl? Didn't she die? I don't remember much of the previous season.

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I really like the addition of a Trill , and yes, Book is a promising character.

Earth went a little too much on the Earth first doctrine to not even keeps tabs on the rest of the solar system. How can you forget about your developed colonies? 

 

She's the actress who played robot girl in season one. She got to play a new character in season two while someone else played robot girl until she was killed off. 

[Maltaran]

20 hours ago, Mindwalker said:

She's not a

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Trill but a human with a trill symbiont. I think the other young person will be the "real" Trill.

 

Just looked up the casting announcements - you’re right, the other new actor is playing

an unjoined Trill

.

Also, I don’t recall if Adira got any pronouns on screen, but the actor is non-binary and uses they/them.

[RumHam]

18 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

Just looked up the casting announcements - you’re right, the other new actor is playing

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an unjoined Trill

.

Also, I don’t recall if Adira got any pronouns on screen, but the actor is non-binary and uses they/them.

Hmm, so I wonder if the Tal symbiote will be transferred to this other character. That could create an interesting dynamic between them.

I'm Almost positive Saru used "she" I thought it was odd that they did the trill explanation without her in the room.

[Mindwalker]

Regarding the

Spoiler

pronouns, yeah, I was just lazy. BUT I'll pretend it was because Saru was using "she", so I assume that we, the viewers, will be educated along the way. I hope it will be done casually, as it should not be a big thing even in Discovery's original timeline, much less many enturies in their future.

 

[DaveSumm]

38 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Regarding the

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pronouns, yeah, I was just lazy. BUT I'll pretend it was because Saru was using "she", so I assume that we, the viewers, will be educated along the way. I hope it will be done casually, as it should not be a big thing even in Discovery's original timeline, much less many enturies in their future.

 

Spoiler

I’d rather they just never referred to it, that seems a more traditional Star Trek approach, but I’m wondering if there’s some complications from the join i.e they used to identify as female but now the symbiont has confused things? I hope not, it just seems messier with not much to gain from it, but then again the first non-binary character happens to have several decades of male memories unexpectedly loaded into their brain? Maybe it isn’t coincidence.

 

[Ran]

Watched the third episode, pretty underwhelmed by most of it. Netflix here in Sweden recently launched its speed-up feature and I was mighty tempted to use it, but instead just skipped ahead of some of the interminably padded scenes. (There's about a minute devoted to Burnham's reuniting with the crew, slow motion hugs and all, that was just ... ugh.)

I do find Adira and Tal intriguing enough, and I guess the mystery of why the Burn happens (and when it happens) will be a feature of the season, as well as whatever is going on with Detmer. But the writing is mostly pretty annoying.

[sifth]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Watched the third episode, pretty underwhelmed by most of it. Netflix here in Sweden recently launched its speed-up feature and I was mighty tempted to use it, but instead just skipped ahead of some of the interminably padded scenes. (There's about a minute devoted to Burnham's reuniting with the crew, slow motion hugs and all, that was just ... ugh.)

I do find Adira and Tal intriguing enough, and I guess the mystery of why the Burn happens (and when it happens) will be a feature of the season, as well as whatever is going on with Detmer. But the writing is mostly pretty annoying.

Not to mock Discovery, just asking an honest question. Is the Bridge crew still mostly being ignored in season 3 or are they actually doing something with those characters? This was one of the primary reasons I gave up on Discovery, because I honestly hate shows that seem to waste characters and the way some of the supporting characters on Discovery were treated just seemed laughable silly in seasons 1 and 2.

[Ran]

19 minutes ago, sifth said:

Not to mock Discovery, just asking an honest question. Is the Bridge crew still mostly being ignored in season 3 or are they actually doing something with those characters?

No, not really. Detmer has the shadow of a story role in this season, but otherwise it remains the Burnham-Saru-Tilly show. 

[sifth]

51 minutes ago, Ran said:

No, not really. Detmer has the shadow of a story role in this season, but otherwise it remains the Burnham-Saru-Tilly show. 

Thanks for the info.

[dog-days]

I liked the first two episodes of this season, but the third one slowed right down. Am also not a fan of extended group hugs. They should stop. Now.  I preferred Michael back in S1 when she wasn't a group hug person.

I gave up on S2 somewhere in the middle, because all the stuff with Spock and Pike seemed very fan-servicey, and I'm not a 'proper' Star Trek fan. (Haven't seen TOS, Next Generation, Voyager or Deep Space Nine). I was feeling a bit more hopeful about S3 because it looked as if it was aiming to tread new ground - but in S3E3 plot seemed to go on holiday more frequently than I'd like, and the kind of dialogue we were getting in its place mostly wasn't worth it. At least Georgiou is there. I'll persevere just for her. 

On a very unelevated note, why on earth haven't Book and Burnham slept together? They've been living in close quarters for a year, and are obviously attracted to each other. They must put their undergarments in the refrigerator every night so they're nice and glacial in the morning. 

[DaveSumm]

12 minutes ago, dog-days said:

At least Georgiou is there. I'll persevere just for her. 

Can someone remind me what official role she has on the ship? Is there any incentive not to put her in the brig? I’m sure they’ll give her more to do, but at the moment she just makes snarky remarks and assaults people (why the fuck didn’t Saru reprimand her for that?).

[Mindwalker]

I like s3 or at least its possibilities. They could rebuild a better Federation, for example.

My biggest issues are the pathos (whenever Burnham or the future Fed. president dude* speak about the Federation) and some of Sonequa's acting.

On the positive side, I think they're trying to become better at character development front (not their strong suit). I hope they'll succeed. So I didn't mind the slower pace.

Also, I find Book well acted (dude is a Royal Shakespeare Company guy) and although

Spoiler

I could do without another romance for Burnham at this time, at least it develops somewhat organically, plus they have chemistry, unlike, you know, Burnham and whats-his-name.

*just my speculation!

Oh, and I'm so over mirror Geourgiou...

[SpaceChampion]

10 hours ago, Ran said:

No, not really. Detmer has the shadow of a story role in this season, but otherwise it remains the Burnham-Saru-Tilly show. 

You're forgetting Stamets and Culber have had significant stories to play.  I'd argue Stamets is slightly more of a central character than Tilly.

TOS was Kirk-Spock-McCoy.  The rest were supporting characters without much stories of their own.

[Ran]

10 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

You're forgetting Stamets and Culber have had significant stories to play.  I'd argue Stamets is slightly more of a central character than Tilly.

I was taking bridge crew literally here. But yes, they're also significant, but then they were from the first season on while most of the rest of the crew are background.