I thought Ira Behr's and Anton Mount's comments were interesting.

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[–] 1 point 5 days ago (9 children)

I grew up watching reruns of the first series, and have enjoyed various stretches & episodes of the later series, but honestly, it wouldn't be any great tragedy to me if the franchise died a natural death.

I mean, as we've come to learn, the whole premise was an interesting thought experiment, but hugely flawed. Roddenberry in no way 'practiced what he preached' in real life, and space travel is almost certainly complete pie in the sky nonsense from multiple angles. I won't bother going in to the current existential & sustainability threats that will render it unlikely, but there's also this massive problem.

Going somewhat against my own opinion above is the fact that some of the later series drifted in to grittier, more unpleasant directions, and that does seem appropriate for where the world is now. That said, such is not particularly in line with ST's naive optimism that ran through the first few series. It's not on brand, for whatever that's worth.

Other than marketing, finances, and studios recycling absolutely everything they can if it's projected to make money, it seems completely appropriate for some other series to have a say, altho I imagine it being darker and more apocalyptic.

I still love aspects of the earlier series (and books... there were some fine novels), but I just don't care about the franchise continuing on, anymore.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 days ago (8 children)

    I couldn't disagree more. Roddenberry is just some guy, Star Trek has always been so much larger than him. And as The Orville demonstrates, there is no justification for a 2020s star trek to be grittier than a star trek that aired between the Korean and Vietnam war, with the second red scare with the existential threat of nuclear warfare.

    Its utopian vision of the future has a backstory of humans fighting each other to near extinction in the Eugenics War and WW3, because that seemed where things were headed. The present has always been gritty, but Star Trek used to be about zooming out past the horrors of the present day to imagine a brighter future.

    The franchise has simply switched hands from being propaganda by a bunch of left-leaning weirdos to being propaganda for huge corporations and the state they wear as a trench coat.

    It is entirely possible to write Star Trek today that is as left-wing (relative to its time) and utopian as it used to be. The owners of the IP simply will not permit that.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 days ago (6 children)

    dare I ask... gritty? If anything the new series (except Picard arguably) were a hyper hug fest compared to TOS, DS9 and Voyager

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago (5 children)

    Yeah, I don’t get this complaint. By the end of Discovery, my partner started referring to the episode wrap ups as “Care Bears moments” because of how saccharine they could get.

    Disco and Picard both got pretty dark in their first seasons, but that’s a decade ago, and not appreciably darker than DS9 was known for.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago* (2 children)

    Honestly nothing in Disco comes anywhere close to "Chain of Command". Either they mean something else by "gritty" or they didn't watch the actual shows and just watched youtube reviews.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago (1 child)

    Picard S1 was quite a bit darker than other Trek. Pointless death in just about every episode, even an on-screen eye pull moment.

    I love Star Trek old and new, but I sincerely hope the writers who killed off Hugh and Icheb are never allowed near the franchise again.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago

    Honestly, the eye gouging didn't hit me all that hard. I'll have to do a rewatch someday and see how I feel. But sure, if it were 2020 I wouldn't really bother arguing against the "gritty" description. Looking back at this point, only about 10% of the Kurtzman era had that kind of tone.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 days ago

    Roddenberry is just some guy

    He was indeed assisted by a brilliant, resourceful team of production people and actors, but yeah... okay. Lol.

    Anyway, I'm glad you still find something to like, but I really couldn't give a toss about more ST.

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