Let’s not expect miracles…

It’s probably worth noting that this is what he had to say about fiction in general, and Star Trek in particular, a few years ago:

I dislike social commentary. Like… I really hate it. When I’m reading a book, I just want to be entertained, not preached at by the author. Plus, it ruins the wonder of the story if I know the author has a political or social axe to grind. I no longer speculate about all possible outcomes of the story because I know for a fact that the universe of that book will conspire to ensure that the author’s political agenda is validated. I hate that.

Yeah, I didn’t really like the political message aspects of those stories [Stranger in a Strange Land, Brave New World, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale]. Not that I disagreed with the political point. Just that I didn’t like the political points being there at all. Now, those writers are so good they make compelling and addictive stories despite the political messaging. But that’s often not the case with other stories and other authors.

You’re not mis-reading me, though. I deeply dislike social commentary. For instance, as a lifelong Star Trek fan, it’s always bothered me that there is a presumed “responsibility” within Star Trek shows to talk about social issues. I just want to watch Romulans and the Federation shoot at each other.

I would argue that very little good science fiction tries to have nothing to say about humanity or the human condition.

I’ll take it a step further and say it’s impossible for any fiction, let alone sci-fi.

If you’re writing a story, you have something to say, and to claim otherwise is either a cover-up or profound ignorance of your own work.

It’s arguably only Prodigy that has faced a similarly unfortunate fate

This is certainly true by the standards laid out, but I’m struck by the fact that the only new series that was more-or-less free of studio fuckery was Picard (which certainly had its own issues).

I think Shatner is complicated because (a) he’s 95 years old, and can’t be expected to be fully “in touch,” and (b) he has definitely had some questionable people handling his social media over the years.

Well, he’s certainly in a better position to know than any of us in the peanut gallery.

Let’s hope they get it over with and make an announcement sooner, rather than later.

Couldn’t read your comment beyond the first few letters, 0/10.

Hmm, that is a very interesting data point.

It does seem like Paramount+ has a problem with drawing younger people - stuff aimed at younger demographics doesn’t seem to last long (with the exception of Spongebob). I always thought SFA’s success was a bit of a long shot for that reason.

And ironically, merging with HBO Max might actually help with that, but it won’t come soon enough.

Well, damn.

There’s inevitably (and understandably) going to be a lot of speculation about what, exactly, led to this decision, but…in the absence of any further information, I’m just going to be bummed about it.

I don’t have a satisfying answer for that one - wireless power transfer is NBD in the TNG era, so maybe it’s just an extreme version of that?

Reno once had a line about replacing the warp plasma conduits with “polaric” ones, so maybe they don’t use plasma at all?

But the Athena seems to, so 🤷

I’ll go for a deeper cut and say the Nova class. Small, purpose-built, and pretty cool-looking.

I’m assuming it makes sense in-universe, but my brain is still trying to figure out how.

In “Scavengers”, right after Discovery gets her refit, Saru says, “even her nacelles are now detached, improving maneuverability and enabling us to be more efficient in flight.”

I found this pretty puzzling, but it eventually dawned on me that the explanation is probably seen most clearly with Book’s ship. There are a few times when we see his ship rearrange itself on the fly to navigate the many, many debris fields present in the post-Burn galaxy - it looks like the detached bits let them dodge debris without actually changing their course or speed.

We do get a glimpse of Discovery doing something similar late in season 5, when they ram their way into the Breen dreadnaught - the nacelles tuck themselves up and behind the saucer, reducing the ship’s profile.

It was a bizarre choice to exclude Sam and Quorra, but all things considered they did it pretty well. Shame we will likely never get the continuation that they laid the groundwork for.

Your comment reminded me that I still hadn’t seen Tron: Ares, so I rectified that tonight.

It’s…perfectly fine? It looked cool, it sounded cool, it had a basic plot that worked well enough. That meets the threshold of Tron expectations for me.

I assume you’re referring to Kurtzman, but it seems to be like that’s exactly what he’s doing? Of the six series we’ve had under his watch, he’s been the showrunner of two of them. The rest of them seemed to be fairly free to execute their creative vision, for good or ill.

That, I’m not so opposed to. No sense in visiting that time period if you’re not going to check in on the status quo of the neighbours!

The Rios one is a lot of fun if you enjoyed “A Piece of the Action”…

almost an anthology of legacy characters being visited by the Titanprise with the bridge full of offspring.

Oof, that would be real uninteresting, to me.