I think you should volunteer to let us dissect your brain. For Science.

 

That's why, for all it's faults, I was annoyed when Enterprise was cancelled. It was starting to get more interesting through season 4, they'd got a new writer in, and were apparently going to start covering the Romulan War in season 5. Instead, it got cancelled and we got that thing that the studio tried to call a final episode.

 

You know, if seen from a certain perspective, it could be said that right now they're the only Star Trek movies.

 

Do we know if this series in the neoST universe or the canon timeline?

 

Things I'm looking forward to:

- Another good female lead (I don't care what anyone fucking says, Janeway was awesome)

Things I'm not looking forward to:

- Everything else


Seriously, how hard can it be to write non-prequel Trek? The main theme of the show is and always has been about exploring the universe. Get a few hundred years away from the established timelines and you can literally write whatever you want. You could make the Federation a distant memory. You could set it in another galaxy. You could set it in another universe! You could do anything, and you decide to go TOS prequel again? I just.... ugh.

Also, Picard facepalm at how they're trying to draw attention to how diverse and progressive the show is. Star Trek has always been diverse and progressive, stop making such a BFD out of it.

Serialization. No. Fuck you, Fuller. Star Trek is made to be episodic. Don't constrict an entire season to one story, because if that story turns out to be shit sci-fi, we're not going to be able to tune in the next week hoping for something better. Also, where are you going to fit holodeck shenanigans, weird space phenomena, and temporal hijinks into a condensed 13 episode serial?

 

On the one hand I totally agree with you. Episodic Star Trek allows you to explore all sorts of shit.

But I've heard rumors that this show will jump time periods each season. So, this first season takes place as a prequel, but subsequent seasons could be post-Voyager.

So I still have hope.

Plus, at the end of the day, its new Star Trek on TV. I'm just hoping that its good.

 

This tells me that they are going waaaaaay far out of their way to show how awesome they are for being diverse.

Translation: A bunch of our shows are going to be about diverse topics! :facepalm

I could be wrong... maybe. Doubtful.

Anyway, if they are being so diverse, then why is the diverse lead relegated to only a Lt. Commander? Isn't the ST-verse diverse enough to promote diverse people into diverse captain's spots? I smell racism. They're keeping the diverse person down!

Paying extra to watch ST: strike one
Being extra diverse for diverseness's sake: strike two

Ah, fuck it. Two is enough. Striking the new ST off my watch list... which is sad, because I love ST. Seen every episode of every show, and every movie, not to mention quite a few books.

 

I always laugh when they talk about 'diversity' in science fiction (shows or films) because they always end up using a human for the lead character anyway. Also, they act like Star Trek has never done diverse, by their standards, before.

I'll just echo @Heather_Sinclair and say that this also worries me.

More likely than not, they'll go overboard with it.

 

Can't wait for the episode that asks if aliens should be allowed to use human bathrooms.

 

Or if a human can really be an alien on the inside.

One of my big problems with Star Trek is how "progressive" it is, so seeing them really play it up here pretty much means I'm not going to bother with it.

 

All the noise about diversity casting makes me laugh.

They had Bellana Torres in Voyager. She was the chief engineer. Half human, half klingon and with enough anger issues to qualify as mentally challenged. Now that is diversity.

 

You forgot she was with a terrorist organization as well. We must cover all our bases. They screwed up later and had her dating the whitest guy on the ship... Bad Writers! Bad!

 

Reboot Khan was a white Brit, people complained, tv peeps saw it and now they be like "we'll have all kinds of queer shit, gays left, right and center! So, we cool now, yeah?"

 

I can't even fathom how a real SF fan can prefer episodic ST vs. a serialized one with a real arc.

Babylon5 showed how it's done and forced them to react somewhat with DS9 which was a far superior product than NG or god forbid Voyager which were mostly episodic.

 

Take your 'real SF fan' shit back to reddit where it belongs, thanks.

I prefer episodic sci-fi because it allows you to explore a vast number of interesting tropes, and it keeps things fresh and interesting, even when you have a particularly awful episode / string of episodes.

Most sci-fi shows that cling heavily to an over-arcing plot get painfully stupid as the episodes/seasons progress because they stretch and stretch and stretch to conform to the original concept instead of evolving (see: Orphan Black, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Fringe, Falling Skies, Dark Angel, Helix, Humans, Dark Matter... the list goes on and on).

I can only think 2 or 3 truly non-episodic greats that didn't fall prey to the conceit above, Babylon 5 with its serialized season-by-season subplots being among them. Hopefully quality newcomers like The Expanse, Sense8, and Stranger Things will follow Babylon's example, but I'm not super optimistic.

Conversely, all my favorite sci-fi shows are largely episodic, with light over-arcing themes: Farscape, Doctor Who, Firefly, all teh Star Treks, the first few seasons of Stargate SG1, Twilight Zone, Torchwood. They all have bad episodes (with the exception of the perfection that is Firefly) but its easy to forget about those bad episodes a week later when the writers move on to the next plot. This can't be done with bad plotting in a serial.

 

I'd say the best way to handle Serialization vs. Episodic is to use the Deep Space Nine/Babylon 5/Farscape model. There's a larger plot, character growth, and arc episodes, but also plenty of episodes that stand on their own.

 

Fuck prequels and fuck that ugly arse ship.

 

The idea that there's a trade off between procedural (or episodic) and serial elements is I think quite outdated. The best shows combine them both and are generally stronger than shows that commit to one or the other. Buffy did it in the early 2000s, a more recent example is The Good Wife.

 

I was desperately hoping it wouldn't be a prequel but them's the breaks. At least we get to look forward to... Well I'm sure there'll be some positives if they can fit anything in around the crew of androgynous trans microwave people they're shoehorning in for the sake of diversity.

"We're absolutely having a gay character."

Isn't the point of equality so things like the above don't actually need stating?

Imagine if some asked, "Are you going to have a black guy on the show?"