Reddit is dying. Its goals as a growth-oriented corporation are inherently contrary to its original nature as a community center. I have to give them props for dragging it out as long as they have (and will). All the factors that made Reddit possible and desirable still exist; in fact, the ActivityPub federation protocol enables an even more powerful form of collaboration that transcends a lot of the negative aspects of Reddit's design.
Give it time. Make content! Tell people about this wonderful new generation of media. Consider it an opportunity to engage with the glory days of a new form of internet media. Which it is.
I wasn't subbed to either of the communities that the op said this was originally for, and I found kbin whilst searching for a Reddit alternative. I like the whole federation thing, it's new and interesting, for now at least.
@Skrounge I was not subbed to any of the communities on Reddit, though I was active on Reddit, and the kerfuffle drew my attention here. And I am able to follow along here from Mastodon, which is amazing and a big point in favor of the fediverse catching on.
I mean, when we first started in on Twitter and Facebook a lot of us were using RSS feeds to see them and blogs on our livejournal feed, and eventually they killed that. But that's part of the core concept of the fediverse, and it's inherently attractive to people.
Yes, I regret using the sensationalized language. Reddit is not "dying" so much as it is "continuing its transition into the same homogeneous para-social media service as the other tech giants in that space." The elements that made Reddit special are continuing to slip away in a series of predictable corporate moves. Everybody taking out their frustrations on Huffman is par for the course, but it's not his fault. This is just the way of the Eternal September. It will come for the ActivityPub systems eventually. The people who created ActivityPub (the federation protocol underneath Lemmy, Kbin, et. al.) have actually already moved on to the "next next" generation of social media architecture: https://spritely.institute/
Exactly, it's going to be a long slow process. This will have slow bursts like we're seeing now as reddit makes their app shittier and shittier, but we're never going to see an exodus like Digg again, Reddit is 100s of times bigger now.
It's going to look like Facebook, where over time people leave as they realize they don't need it anymore, and eventually all that will be left are stubborn people, the people in admin/mod positions that refuse to give up power, our moms, the people who think Minions memes are funny, and the thousands and thousands of bots talking to each other about how great lysol cleaners are.
Honestly the only people that will remain there are, as you said, either very stubborn, or too young to give a damn. There's a community that I was a part of for a long time that I loved deeply, it was a very warm and inviting place. When the sub went on blackout and took a poll to extend indefinitely, I made a passionate plea to the sub to really consider what's at stake, even though so many of them felt like it was pointless. I wasn't rude, I wasn't callous or pessimistic, I just wanted people to know that whether something seems hopeless or not isn't the point at all, but rather taking a stand for something you believe in should be the point.
I was promptly met with a barrage of downvotes and someone replying to me spewing vitriol and telling me to touch grass, with another person just shrugging and saying they just want things to go back to the way they were (by ending the blackout). It's weird but I was honestly pretty hurt by that response. This community that I came to know and love turned on me the moment I suggested we take a stand.
There really is no persuading people like that unfortunately. But, hopefully, slowly, change will still happen.
Yeah for me I made the transition today feeling the same way as you. It sucks that just because mods try to go on strike, on behalf of everyone really, the users try to help reddit instead.
For me I’m making the change after being sure I won’t regret/miss too much the content on reddit. I might still go back sometimes for a google search (appending reddit), but for the most part, I’m not using it as a platform I browse.
Even if this fediverse stuff doesn’t pan out, I’m happy to tread these waters and see if it’ll be our future solution to avoiding these greed induced social media self destructions.
Today was the first day I just felt so sickened by how reddit just wouldn’t budge, no matter how disatisfied its users are. I just didn’t even feel good about using the site anymore, even if I love the content/lazy content there
Same. I was going to at least hold onto my account until the end of the month. Not that internet karma mattered, but for perspective I had over 157k karma that was 98% comment karma, across a decade of being on the site. Needless to say I was pretty active on the site a lot. So saying goodbye was pretty difficult, but that community's response, along with the recent comment Spez made idolizing Elon Musk/Twitter, was the final nail in the coffin. Deleted my account just a little bit ago and it was difficult. But, like when I deleted Facebook, I know it's a step in the right direction.
Strikes almost always get people lashing out against them, and in favour of the Evil Empire. People just love being crabs in a bucket, dragging each other down, ensuring that nothing gets better, all because they don't want to think long term about things.
All they see is that someone is trying to restrict what they can do right now. The reasons, or the long term consequences, be dammed.
My response to that would have been something along the lines of: Things going back to the way they were is what we all want, but the company's changes mean we won't get that again at reddit. So fuck reddit, join the growing communities elsewhere.
I had the exact same response from my favorite sub too, was honestly pretty hurt by it. Then the mods removed it after enough downvotes.
Like guys I love this community, at least I thought I did, I just want to see it continue without being held hostage by Reddit. Same thing, I didn't get angry, didn't push people to switch over, was more like "Hey we have a community over here, if anyone feels like they need to leave Reddit, here we are", like "here's a safe landing spot for you". I'd never seen my favorite community, where I had tens of thousands of karma from, get so angry.
As a purist, I'd say watch them all and in release order, but if you really have to be choosy with your time, here's a list of things you can skip (in my opinion):
Star Trek Into Darkness
Discovery (whole show)
Picard S1 and S2
Short Treks
I know suggesting skipping Discovery outright is going to be seen as... extreme, but I suggest doing so only if time is a crucial factor. It's a dizzyingly uneven show with the lowest points of quality in all of Trek. However, it also has some incredible highs and some truly great characters, so if you find the time to watch it, you should. And I know I'm in the minority on this, but I found Short Treks to be unwatchable.
On the flip side, Lower Decks is incredible, and Strange New Worlds is good. The third season of Picard is excellent. Prodigy is a little weird but it's got a lot of strength. Star Trek Beyond is also a surprisingly good movie.
I would say Discovery season 2 is worth watching - it's the show's strongest season, it's fairly self-contained, and it sets up Anson Mount's depiction of Pike ahead of the excellent Strange New Worlds (including explaining the specific context for SNW's first couple of episodes).
Agree with this, especially skipping Picard S1 & S2. I feel the showrunner(s) definitely agree too, as S3 is a standalone story and ignores many of the developments introduced in the previous seasons. While I also didn't completely love Season 3 it sits head and shoulders above the first two in every way.
I think Picard S1 was watchable. It had some neat stuff in it. But it is not a high point for the franchise by any means. It felt like an adaptation of some Arthur Clarke doomsday short story or something but stretched out until the breaking point.
S2 left a bad taste in my mouth. It was just kind of pointless and dumb. I enjoyed the characters very much, but the actual story was pretty damn rough. Storylines involving any kind of time travel are nearly universally awful across the whole genre and the mirror dimension getting played for anything other than camp makes me a bit queasy. At some point, I wondered if they were just trying to undo some of the damage Voyager did to the Borg lore, but they were actually spending more time doubling down on it so that can't be it.
Also, the world felt SO small. Star Trek always makes the galaxy feel smaller than it means to just because of the natural limits of casting, writing, and fandom, but Picard S1 and S2 are both excruciatingly tiny universes with so few important players. As a result, I haven't watched S3. I'm hearing it's way better, but I have to work myself up to giving it another try.
Both share a flaw with Discovery: it just doesn't feel like Star Trek. All three shows are trying to be big, dramatic, high-tension, cliffhanger-ending space epics for binging. Modern streaming shows, basically. And the best of Star Trek is nothing like that. My sibling could never get into Star Trek. Started with TNG. Their complaint was that it felt like watching stage plays at the local theater. That they were constantly aware of how this was just a bunch of people talking at each other on a set. There was all philosophy and cerebral-ness and drama and very little action, and the plotlines often resolved without an unambiguously right answer. They're totally right, and that's what makes me love the show and why I don't feel strongly about Picard and Discovery.
All of the best episodes are about strange or philosophical concepts about what it means to be human. It is mostly some talking with a single concept holding it together. I enjoy some action but only in small doses. That is what TOS did the best
TOS also has some truly awful episodes, but it's pretty easy to ignore them.
I think the low points of DSC and PIC stick out for two reasons:
Recency bias. It's been 15 years since I last watched Code of Honor, and I rarely even think about it except when it's time to make memes about season 1.
Serialization. You can watch TNG, skip bad episodes like Code of Honor or Sub Rosa, and not really lose out on anything. But if you watch DSC and skip a bad episode, you blow a giant gaping hole in the over-arching story.
Man. Very well put. Very, very well put. I'm so sad that Discovery was as it was. It's not Star Trek to me. I was excited to see how it started out. Things I wanted to see ever since I was a kid. And then it just doesn't do what Star Trek is supposed to do.
To me in each episode (or episode arc) we need an internal and external problem that have no apparent solutions and are worked out towards the end of it all. Self-Contained episodes with ongoing character changes and evolution. Not... "dark gritty" whatever the heck this is.
I'd also strongly suggest watching The Orville@dumples That's the most Star Trek show in the past few years, despite being a bit more light hearted. Heck, even Avenue 5 is worth a watch to scratch some of that Star Trek itch.
@AlteredStateBlob@dumples@tymon also despite it being a Seth McFarlane product, The Orville is very much not "Family Guy In Space" and while it is pretty hilarious, it can go into some REALLY heavy territory, especially in S3.
I also, speaking as a trans person, really don't like how it handled its allegorical trans character plotline, especially relative to how Discovery, Prodigy, and SNW have handled actual trans and nonbinary characters.
Absolutely, yeah. I like the levity of it and the recurring jokes, but they do tackle a whole lot of really difficult topics and do it really, really well. That's how it's very Trek like and why I love it.
Not to mention: It's actually nice and bright. I always loved that about old Star Trek. Why does modern Star Trek insist on everything looking like the inside of Darth Vaders helmet?
@AlteredStateBlob@dumples@tymon The Federation is what makes the show Star Trek. The moral standing of the characters is established by how they follow or break federation rules. The move to the future removed the soul of the show. It was a cowardly decision likely made to avoid criticism. First 2 seasons were great.
I get why they want to show the "The federation isn't flawless either" argument, but it is being done in the most hanfisted way possible.
The most recent episode of Strange New Worlds was an okay take on it, highlighting some hypocrisy in it all, but we really don't have enough information on the legal system to understand if any of it even matters.
I agree. The Federation as a well established monolithic structure around exploration, peace and dialogue helps frame everything else that happens in the show.
Throw that out of the window and what are we left with.
Maybe it is just a symptom of this whole "This is THE HERO" thing that popular story telling has shifted towards. Picard was undoubtedly an important and great captain. He certainty had those "everything hinges on what he and his crew do next" moments, but there were always others out there alongside him. Losing Picard was a blow to the federation when he became locutus. But it didn't break them.
Now watching more modern Star Trek it feels like the only people worthwhile in the entire federation are the people on screen right now and their renegade shenanigans.
This feels like an overly broad take. I agree that Discovery has some tone issues that make it feel heavy handed, but it has strong characters outside of the crew that represent a healthy Federation.
Strange New Worlds has been if anything very episodic and light, with the exception of the arrest and trial of Una, which was really the writers picking up a thread that has been hanging there since DS9.
Discovery, to me, is simply action SciFi. But what makes Star Trek Star Trek to me, isn't present at all. No self contained little adventures with moral conundrums, etc.
I'm simply not the target audience for that show, so to what I want out of Star Trek, it's not good but rather terrible. If it were simply some random SciFi Action thing, maybe, okay.
@durrandon@AlteredStateBlob@dumples@tymon They did have some really strong characters. And then they sidelined them and made the show all about Burnham. They lost me when Burnham made Book's life more important than her crew's. It's like the writers forgot about the character defining personal sacrifice she made in the beginning of the show as well as how sacrifice defines the role of captain in Star Trek. I would have mutinied.
I enjoyed Star Trek Beyond and was ambivalent about Into Darkness so I agree with that. I think Lower Decks might be the first to watch. I have heard good things about it here. I love weird things so I think Prodigy might be next. From the initial ads Picard seemed like it was a nostalgic cash grab but if there is an excellent season I would watch it all the way through. I might watch Discovery last if you think it is skippable. It depends on how much I enjoy the rest and if I can still find it streaming by then.
I think I'm much too old for Prodigy or something because one episode was too much.
But Lower Decks is absolutely amazing, it's really nice to have a legitimate comedy within the honest-to-god Star Trek universe so they can just actually make fun of Riker by name.
I like Strange New Worlds alright. It's better than Discovery, and I liked Discovery fine.
Picard was great until the S1 twist and I refused to watch further. Maybe that's not fair, I found it a bit Disney-ish but wow that ending. I just have to head cannon a more respectful ending and I imagine I'll get around to it.
Though I have somehow never managed to get around to Enterprise...
“I could be a severe bastard,” he writes. “My experiences at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre had been intense and serious … On the TNG set, I grew angry with the conduct of my peers, and that’s when I called that meeting in which I lectured the cast for goofing off and responded to Denise Crosby’s, ‘We’ve got to have some fun sometimes, Patrick’ comment by saying, ‘We are not here, Denise, to have fun.'”
“In retrospect,” Stewart continues, “everyone, me included, finds this story hilarious. But in the moment, when the cast erupted in hysterics at my pompous declaration, I didn’t handle it well. I didn’t enjoy being laughed at. I stormed off the set and into my trailer, slamming the door.”
Stewart then details how Frakes and Spiner came to his trailer for a heart-to-heart chat.
“People respect you,” Spiner told him. “But I think you misjudged the situation here.”
Recalls Stewart: “He and Jonathan acknowledged that yes, there was too much goofing around and that it needed to be dialed back. But they also made it clear how off-putting it was — and not a case study in good leadership — for me to try to resolve the matter by lecturing and scolding the cast. I had failed to read the room, imposing RSC behavior on people accustomed to the ways of episodic television — which was, after all, what we were shooting.”
In short, he became angry because he was used to theater acting and tried to hold a tv production to theater’s standards.
Yes. If he carried a grudge for years, that would make him a pompous ass. This, on the other hand, just sounds like someone making the adjustment to television acting from a stage career.
I like that his fellow cast members felt like they could talk to him about it. That alone says quite a bit.
he actually learns how to be a captain while playing the role, that's so awesome.. he gets a lecture from Number One and his Science Operations Officer on human behavior, it's just hilarious and beautiful, i'm dying here..
All good friend! I’m just too much of a Trek nerd to not correct it. It’s an easy mistake to make too, seeing as Data handles a lot of the science related stuff on the show and the Enterprise-D is notably lacking a Chief Science Officer. Behind the scenes Data was originally going to be in Sciences, but the producers didn’t like the way a blue uniform looked with his skin so they made him Ops.
that is awesome my friend, thank you.. you know i may have watched nearly every episode of that show, and not really been sure about his job, haha.. but i just naturally equate him with Spock, when i think about his relationship to the Captain character.. and the fact that Spiner's character is the one learning human emotions from square one makes the whole real world episode with Stewart (the ACADEMY man, for God's sake) even better..
There’s interviews with Frakes where he talks about stepping into the director’s role for a few episodes and quickly realizing that it was very difficult to do when the cast would goof off up until the word ACTION gets called.
So Stewart probably had a point, especially from production’s view.
It’s also why so many people latched onto The Orville.
People like to say that TOS was a product of its time, but thematically it reached for the absolute stratosphere. DIS just basically played our own paranoid dysfunction in a new setting. Hell, chunks of it felt like 24 in spaaaace
The Orville geeks me out, because all the ads play it up as “FAMILY GUYYYYYYY IINNNNN SPPPAACCCEEEE” and I whole heartedly believe that’s how he pitched it to make it happen -
And then it was one big bait n switch, “HAHA actually I’m just a nerd and wanted to make a good scifi show suck it Fox!”
That’s actually how he did it. That’s why the first couple eps are kinda meh, then BOOM if the stars should appear, pria, krill, what the fuck just happened???
Given the option between hanging out with 3,000 Trekkies who are willing to plunge headfirst into a strange new ecosystem and 600,000 Trekkies who find making an account to be an onerous process, I'll take the former, thanks
Seriously, aside from all the modding work that went on behind the scenes, you and the other HQG cadre drove so much traffic to reddit. I doubt I would have stayed as long as I did without all those wonderful gifs. Glad you're here! And thanks for all the laughs over the years.
The difficulty of entry to fediverse will be the difference between being a reddit replacement and being a separate much smaller community. I don't fault a non tech minded person for not putting in the effort to learn a new service that they have no attachment to.
I've been a member of reddit for 17 years and it took almost a decade before it became popular with the masses. People weren't attracted to the format, didn't fully understand how reddit worked, or were unaware of it's existence for a long time, and as such reddit was more popular with the technically minded. I see the same thing here. I fully admit, I am completely lost here, and in fact, this is my first post. So it needs development, for sure, but I do believe that decentralised social networking is going to be the future ... we are coming in on the ground floor. It's just gonna take a long time before the fediverse is even seen by the vast majority, let alone accessible and understood.
I literally don't understand what is there to learn that everyone isn't already used to in one form or another.
Kbin, lemmy, pixelfed, mastodon, beehaw are all pretty intuitive to start using right away. The account creation process is no different than what is available on mainstream sites.
The federation system sounds a bit intimidating but in reality, it takes about one hour of using your selected service to get used to.
As long as we direct people to instances with a stable stream of content from a large enough number of regular users, they should be absolutely fine.
I think it's pretty complicated. They need to work on the default "home" page so that it's populated and turns over. As it is now I'm seeing posts 2 to 3 to 4 days old, from small instances. Default really just needs to be the popular posts from the whole thing.
True, but that's why I said we should direct people to instances with a stable stream of content and large enough number of regular users.
I'm on kbin.social, and there's absolutely no shortage of content. The hot page always has content posted within two hours and as people comment on and boost threads, they more or less constantly update.
Ending up in a slow instance is a negative user experience, sure, but it isn't exactly complicated. It's no different than ending up on a dead sub on reddit.
I picked lemmy.ca which seemed like a middle of the pack one, which was advised. But they said it didn't matter because you can see content from all. Can see it and seeing it by default seems to be different because now I have to track it down or something. This is the confusing part. Just give me a default front page. Then I can edit my own subscriptions as I learn.
I'm hearing ya. I've created three accounts now, thinking mastadon, lemmy, and kbin are different ... which they are, but also they interact and I could just use one of those accounts to interact? But half the time when I click a link I end up somewhere where I need to sign-in to comment. I've learnt today, to search that same thing up on my own server, but I'm still well confused. However I'm also excited to keep trying at this unique new platform because I know I'm gonna have an "ah-ha!" moment eventually. lol. It'll just take a little personal persistence, and I also believe the accessibility and features will evolve and improve as more join in.
Things make a lot more sense once you realize that "instance" is just a hand-wavy synonym for "website".
"That community is on another website".
"When I click a link, it takes me to another website"
Etc.
Watch the url. If it's still showing you're on the website you have an account on, then you're working with locally mirrored content, and can comment without barriers. If it's the url of some other website, then... It's some other website,and you're probably not logged in there unless you have an account on that site, just like following links to Twitter or Facebook from Reddit.
The only real differences here compared to centralized social media is that other websites will share the content directly with each other. If they're asked to.
I also found the whole thing pretty intuitive, but then I've been using the internet regularly for long enough that, as you say, everything here is kinda familiar.
But we have to remember that a lot of people are younger and used to apps that "just work" with not even so much effort as having to sign up for an account. When I went to uni in my 30s I literally had to teach the kids what copy and paste meant, how are people like that gonna grasp how to join new communities here?
Or there are people who aren't as comfortable on the internet as a whole and have only really learned to use the handful of sites they need, anything else is wildly confusing to them even if it operates the same way as they're used to. Even a site changing where its login button is trips up a surprising amount of people.
It's not their fault, but the fact remains a lot of internet users are actually not very good at using the internet.
But we have to remember that a lot of people are younger and used to apps that “just work” with not even so much effort as having to sign up for an account.
If they're commenting on reddit they're used to the idea of signing up for an account.
I mean it's fair to say that there have been many performance issues as most of the federations were not prepared for the mass influx of people, and for someone literally brand new and without context it's hard to differentiate between temporary performance issues and fundamental flaws. I agree that all the bellyaching is laughably naive about how quickly websites and services come together and evolve, but we can't pretend that the growing pains haven't happened.
Growing pains are a separate issue than the problems associated with "non tech minded people putting up with learning a new service".
The first is a timing issue. Give it some time and the issues will resolve themselves as far as the average user is concerned. The second one implies inherent difficulties arising from the "tech mindedness" of the users and its interaction with the service experience. I'm saying that the average internet user today is "techi minded" enough, even if they don't consciously know it, to understand how to use fediverse services intuitively, unless we overthink the introduction and scare people away.
It's not sufficiently intuitive yet because not everything you can do is reachable by a link. For example, this instance automatically shows us many communities from beehaw.org because users from here have subscribed to them. However, we don't automatically see every community there, and even if we browse their main page from this instance we don't have a link to browse all their communities. It didn't take me long to work out I had to browse beehaw.org from a separate browser tab to see all the communities I could search from startrek.website and subscribe too, but that's too many steps for most people.
If I browse to a beehaw community from here and click the posts linked from their sidebar I end up on pages on their domain that don't know I'm logged into startrek.website. It just doesn't work seamlessly unless you're very web savvy or have even done some webdev before.
I say all this as someone who likes it here. I'm going to stay and I've pinned a browser tab here to replace my reddit tab, but Lemmy needs some dedicated work before people other than the rebellious, adventurous, and ancient net nerds like it.
I think they bring up a good point and just like Reddit isn't going to die overnight, Lemmy and the like are not going to see widespread adoption until the product matures.
I agree with this, I didn't really notice it that much on Reddit, but since coming to Lemmy I notice how pleasant it is to have time to actually engage with content before a thousand new posts are churned to the top.
Not even "it's too confusing" or "I can't find things" (both viable excuses right now but being actively worked on) but Signing up for an account is too hard.
In today's world of literally an email and a password, and most browsers/password mangers will suggest and autofill and save... I just can't even.
Fine, stay there and absorb ads and promoted shit to your hearts content. Not saying the bar for entry should be high, but goddamn maybe we don't need the ones who can't be bothered to create an account.
Let me walk you through my process. Go to join-lemmy and then realize I can't just join Lemmy, I need to choose a server. So now why go to one place over another. I picked one initially that I didn't like and apparently isn't a big one. Then I try beehaw. Beehaw tells me I need to wait to be approved but I can't even tell if my application went through. Still to this day I am not 100 percent sure if it went through.
Then I joinn sh.itjust.works and hey, great name. Shit just worked. From there it's not terrible to figure things out but you quickly realize that Lemmy has some rough edges that are obviously going to be a barrier for the masses. Combine that with the fact that the communities simply aren't quite there yet and it just makes sense. Lemmy is a great start with a ton of potential but I can't fault the average user for not being ready to make the jump.
Longer seasons would allow them to throw in a few SciFi oriented episodes that don’t necessarily advance character arcs. Where would SNW be if TOS didn’t have the “Arena” (Gorn) episode that was based on a completely unrelated SciFi short story?
Mirror, Mirror was a SciFi episode that not only gave us the foundation for Discovery, but cemented the evil-twin-goatee trope into pupular culture.
Space Seed (Botany Bay/Khan) was also a one-off SciFi episode. Where would the entire franchise be without it?
I really hope SNW makes room for exploring the sort of SciFi ideas that Star Trek was originally based on.
SNW has been pretty good with the standalone episodes though, no? Maybe leaning a little more on the comedy and hijinks than the sci-fi this season but they don’t seem too afraid of treating an episode as a mini movie in its own right.
I wouldn’t mind a few more episodes anyway, but 20 does feel like too much. And honestly I’m not unhappy with 10 either, particularly considering the quality of them and that it’s not the only Trek in town. 10 episodes of this show, but there’s like three or four other shows too. We’re not at a loss for Trek.
Part of the reason why TNG was good beyond the first couple seasons was because of the open script submission policy that’s no longer in existence. According to ex-Trek producer Ronald D. Moore, they were reading something like 3000 scripts a year. It allowed them to be choosy (though there were still some stinkers). Now that the characters are established, if the seasons were longer, it might be cool to see the open script submissions come back (though, as I’m typing this, maybe implementing this during or shortly after a writers strike would be a poor choice, even though there were limits to how many scripts one could submit before going through “official” channels). Anyway, one could argue that a huge amount of ideas need to be generated for a show as great as TNG to exist, more than a small group of writers could produce. If outside script admissions were allowed, I’m sure we’d see some great sci-fi episodes from writers who weren’t even thinking “Star Trek” as they wrote them.
I’m not against filler, and my post may have come off as being that way. Not every story has to advance character or advance some storyline. I’m just against bad filler.
Man, if they opened up script submissions, they’d probably be able to reap a LOT of fanfic-grown talent out there. Yeah, the slush pile would SUCK because it’s much easier to submit online than in the days of snail mail and paper, but we’ve had about 20 years of really explosive writing growth with the advent of fanfic online and as far as I know nobody’s really “mentoring” those people in this day and age.
I know people laugh and snort at fanfic, but writing is writing is writing . You’d do as well to laugh at painters who sketch bowls of fruit or sketch nudes from live subjects (as if people haven’t drawn those things for literal centuries!). It doesn’t really matter WHERE you practice and learn so long as you do it, and if fanfic/fanart/whatever gets you going, that’s how you’re going to grow your talent, by practicing over and over.
And some people get really damn good at it. If Trek opened up script submissions again, it’d open the doors to a new generation of writers kicking their careers off.
I couldn’t agree more. With Star Trek, or any established properties where the originator isn’t in control (Marvel, Star Wars, etc.), it’s all pretty much fanfic, professional or not. The writers are playing in a world they haven’t created.
Just a fun note: Ron Moore got his start through that open submissions policy when submitted a script for what became “The Bonding.” He had no writing credits before that.
Several of the Relaunch novelverse TrekLit authors tried out with spec scripts before being picked up to write tie-in fiction.
David Mack, a film school grad, got script credits for 2 DS9 episodes, Starship Down and Only a Paper Moon before being contracted for some Starfleet Core of Engineers stories.
Kirsten Beyer, a theatre grad, never got into one of the shows with a spec script, but was picked up to write Voyager books, then came full circle to be in the writers rooms on all the new live-action shows.
Wow thanks, that really explains well why the modern shows respect (at least some of) “beta canon” more than what I would expect. A natural consequence when some of the authors sit in the writer’s room :)
David Mack was more recently a consultant for the development and first seasons of both Lower Decks and Prodigy as well. I believe we can thank him for bringing Peter David’s Brikar aliens (from the YA Starfleet Academy and the New Frontier books) into onscreen canon with the character of Rok Tahk in Prodigy.
This is 100% the fault of the studio execs who don’t want their employees to have a fair wage. I can wait for my Star Trek if it means upholding the ideals that Trek stands for.
Star Trek is basically only available via streaming platforms or piracy these days.
One of the reasons studios have enjoyed such great profits on the move to streaming is because the contracts for the writers and actors cause them to get paid way, way, way less for a streamed show than with regular syndication.
Meaning the people making Star Trek are some of the ones who stand to gain the absolute most from the outcome of this strike. All power to them.
I thought this episode walked a really fascinating line in its approach to exploring the lived experience and cultural significance of mixed identities. Having the ancient alien species misinterpret Spock’s Vulcan DNA as an anomaly/pathology was a risky move from a writing perspective given the potential for reproducing language and ideas associated with eugenics. But doing so allowed what what I thought was a more robust examination of Spock’s character and his relationships, by way of separating one half of his identity from the other and seeing what happens (like a smaller scale of Community’s excellent “Remedial Chaos Theory,” which examined how the study group might be affected by the temporary removal of each group member in turn).
There was plenty to laugh at, of course. Ethan Peck could easily have gone too over-the-top in playing Spock’s surge in human emotions, but I think he threaded the needle really well in allowing through just enough Vulcan “muscle memory” (as it were) to tamp down the humania – and he still managed to be extremely funny. And Anson Mount as always shined with his subtle (and hilarious) comic timing as the host of the engagement ceremony. Watch the way he snaps his fingers when T’Pring’s father asks for more Tevmel --and how he continues on in wide-eyed stride on his way back to the group once Spock starts admitting to his “condition.” Mount is a performer who knows how to blend into the scenery rather than chew it – a distinct quality in a Star Trek captain and a consistently funny one to boot.
But what really made this episode work for me was the heart in addition to the humor. I have a friend who remarked earlier this season that she doesn’t understand why Star Trek is so obsessed with Spock’s human side; she’s much more attracted to his Vulcan side and is confused at what she sees as the constant efforts to make him “more human.” I can see her frustration, and this episode certainly turns into that skid a bit. But the show isn’t fantasizing or daydreaming about a Spock that’s fully human – it’s using the idea as a tool to understand his fuller and more complex identity, and to celebrate what makes Spock Spock. And I absolutely shed tears when Spock came clean to T’Pring’s parents about his condition, not just out of personal pride but as a way to express affection and appreciation for his human mother. What a wonderful moment.
And I think this episode’s true strength was in depicting how everyone in Spock’s life understood that being made “more human” didn’t make him better or more “fun” or more “relatable.” Not once did anyone murmur to anyone else something like, “Are we sure we want to fix him?” (which I could easily see Dr. McCoy saying, for example). Instead, everyone understood fundamentally the unique value of Spock’s half-human/half-Vulcan identity, and went to great lengths to bring it back. It might have been a bit corny to funnel that through Nurse Chapel’s romantic feelings for him, and having her have to admit those feelings to an ancient alien species – but it was smart, too. (And seeing her tell the Vulcan Science Academy that she didn’t think their fellowship was ready for her made me literally pump my arm, by the way).
Another solid Spock-centric episode in my book. I look forward to reading what everyone else thought!
I also can't agree enough with your observation about the human side as a lens through which to understand Spock and how he relates to those around him. Double points for noting the lack of quippiness in the vein of "Are we sure we want to fix him?" I hate that I need to praise that kind of restraint in TV / movie writing these days but, well, here we are.
As for my original contribution here:
I realllly liked the fact that while I'm sure I'm not alone in shipping TF out of Spock and Chapel, I feel like this episode went to decently robust character exploration such that the ending bit felt a lot less tacked on, or a writer's wink "for the shippers". A lot of that IMO rests on Spock's monologue at the end of the dinner. For just another layer of appreciation of that character moment.
Me at the beginning: Oh, great. More time travel. I'm so sick of time travel and temporal mechanics. The Science Vulcan Directorate has determined that time travel has been done to death.
You echo my exact sentiments. I was so prepared to be disappointed by "yet another time travel episode to modern day, oh boy" and the writers pulled it off.
I've been incredibly impressed by S2 so far, gotta say.
Yep. I used to think that I didn't need to download and back up stuff because "I just need to pop on over to Youtube or something and it'll be there!" only to find out the hard way that people delist and take down stuff from places all the time, including major corporations.
I wish I'd downloaded and backed up some of my favorite stuff back in the day. Whether it's videos, music, games... it's surprising how much crap gets taken down. I never thought that people who insisted on having physical copies were weird (unlike some others) but now I realize even more nowadays that they were right. Especially if they use those physical copies to make their own digital backups.
The new season will complete post-production, and the studio will be looking for a new home for Star Trek: Prodigy as season one comes off the service shortly.
The company said that “continues to be invested in growing the Star Trek franchise” with series including Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, movie event Star Trek: Section 31, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which returned for its second season June 15 and has been renewed for a third season, animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks, which will return for its fourth season later this year and has also been renewed for a fifth season, the upcoming final season of Star Trek: Discovery as well as Star Trek: Picard.
According to an individual with knowledge of the situation, although the show had aired on Nickelodeon in addition to Paramount+, it will not be returning to Nickelodeon either. Those on the show will complete post-production on Season 2 and then CBS Studios will be free to shop it to other outlets.
For goodness sake. Paramount+ just gained "The spot for all Star Trek films and series" earlier this month. Now, they have to put an asterisk on that statement, "*except Prodigy."
Disney did pull a few things Marvel, but they weren't prime MCU. They were all documentaries, time-sensitive hype pieces, or shows of dubious canonicity to the MCU.
Point taken, but I don't feel like a long dead show that was dropped from canon almost as soon as it aired is the equivalent of a currently in production canon Trek show.
Especially when Paramount+ has very little in the animated originals category.
More, Paramount has been trying to cover all of the demographics with their consolidated streamer. Compared to most of the others, excepting Disney, they have a decent amount of kids’ content and viewership. So, how shortsighted do they have to be to cut off their one major franchise offering for that demographic?
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