Now that's just wrong. Fungoidaphobia and the resulting discrimination against hybrid lifeforms is a real problem, even in today's enlightened Federation, and you should have never suffered empty birthdays as a result.
Family over fungus, I always say. But family is where you find it, and seeing as I just happened to be passing through Orion space on my way here, here's a keg of Klingon blood wine and a barrel of Andorian ale for the party, that is if you don't mind a bit of pirate contraband to liven things up a bit...
No, no, Kubrick hated shooting on location. All those Vietnam scenes in Full Metal Jacket…? Filmed right next to London.
Now, he did fake the moon landing, of course, that’s why NASA gave him the lens he used to make every single frame in Barry Lyndon look like a period painting… but much like with the start of 2001 (also filmed in London), he wanted lots of location pictures for reference (he didn’t want to go there, wherever it was, but he had no qualms whatsoever about sending other people), so he demanded NASA send astronauts to the moon anyway to take those pictures, and the official moon landing was faked using those pictures taken in the real one as reference.
There’s a case to be made for dueling what is essentially a post-scarcity socialist Federation against the embodiment of capitalism-as-cult.
Conversely, the Borg are in a way aspirational-- growing and assimilating knowledge and improvements seems a bit higher of a goal, but their presentation comes off ham-fisted.
I feel like there’s a missing explanation of why “assimilating the diversity” of a civilization needs to be a total stripmine rather than taking a few (potentially willing) representatives and regularly coming back in case anything new evolved, like binge-watching a civilization every few years. The stripmining aspect seems necessary to make them recognizabily villianous-- the enemy of sacred individuality rather than just data hoarders whose homelabs turned into giant cubes.
It does feel like Latinum is very much a MacGuffin for undermining a huge amount of “we have virtually infinite free energy and can replicate anything we need” worldbuilding; they needed a way to make 24th century capitalism seem remotely plausible.
I’ve always assumed that the Borg were once a truly egalitarian faction. One that seeks out other points of view in order to invite them into a collective where every voice has a share in the overall direction of the whole.
I could see such a collective evolving into the current Star Trek Borg if things like fascism take root. A rabid xenophobia of thought that seeks to destroy any ‘wrong-think’ within the hive mind.
It would explain a lot of the problems that the Borg seem to have. Why they never seem to learn from their mistakes despite their adaptability, why they all share one mind despite their quest for distinctiveness, why they have a single load-bearing queen despite their usual priority of hyper redundancy in all things.
I’m actually rewatching TOS with my wife (which is a miracle)
I love seeing Shatner again … every single scene looks like he’s about to do something, say something important, the ship is about to be destroyed or his toast is on fire … every camera shot of him is overly dramatic and looks like the last image we’ll ever see of him.
He’s a classically-trained Shakespearean actor, trained with the Royal Shakespeare Company. You should check him out on his The Twilight Zone episodes. They’re about the hammiest, scene-chewiest things you can imagine. 
While he was a Shakespearean actor at Stratford in Canada, and in fact was Christopher Plummer’s understudy before taking on leading roles himself, Shatner’s US career kicked off in the 1950s in film noir. He was considered a quite serious actor.
So glad to be witnessing some Shatner love. I also just re-watched TOS and TAS. They get better with every rewatch.
Only TOS season three… Every time I get mad, idk, some episodes have such a heavy 70’s community love vibe. I actually love the style of the 70s, just not the hippie sing along stuff, that always somehow creeped me out. I’m so happy i was born in 1971, so i got to the 80s when i was 9 years old. Perfect timing, considering how delicious the 80s were for coming of age.
I made the mistake ( or not ) of watching all of Madame Columbo in between Star Treks, what an awkward ride for Janeway.
I’m in the process of a TOS rewatch right now, on S3. I feel like I’m slowing down because I don’t want to reach the end again.
Shatner’s performance as Kirk is just pure fun to watch. His delivery is confident and over-dramatic, and it’s like he’s competing with the main cast and even the guest star actresses to always be the prettiest one in the scene, lol. He gets a lot of flak for his “main character energy” on and off the set, but he sort of is the main character, and he also really embraced engaging with the (extremely passionate and opinionated) fans over the years, which I appreciate. I don’t think any of them were prepared for the level of popularity they were thrust into (still household names nearly 60 years later!), and many of them didn’t know how to handle it.
I saw that documentary where Shatner visits the other Captains. Loved it and his encounter with Chris Pine ( i kept writing Pike lol ) was just wholesome. I’ve thought a lot about sudden fame and how people deal with it - it must be difficult to see the thing you’re in get popular, coupled with another person getting the spotlight in that popularity. Nowadays the whole cast is popular, but i assume it wasn’t always like this or at least the actors didn’t get the kind of feedback, that’s possible with internet and social media.
I was heartbroken, when Shatner came back from his short amazon(g) space trip - for the way he was dismissed by Bezos when landing and for his experience. Some Astronaut might have said this kind of thing before, but it was my first time hearing someone that was in space, say other things than it was a miracle, wonderful, in awe, 100% would do again, etc.
The way he was shocked about the bleakness, darkness and the void that is around us. I think we cannot imagine how it feels to see Earth from ‘another’ place - i now imagine the Earth like a submarine in the deepest depth of the ocean, but with less protection. We only have an atmosphere, keeping the surrounding void from destroying us in a whim.
I’m in the process of a TOS rewatch right now, on S3. I feel like I’m slowing down because I don’t want to reach the end again.
LOL - i’ve been dong this consciously as of late. Like, going 3 episodes back, before watching the last episode. Just not letting it end. I’ve only caught myself doing this with Star trek series though.
I’m now doing this with Picard season 3. Watching it the first time and i just don’t want it to end. I avoided spoilers, so them all coming back caught me pretty off guard.
Bezos was particularly jerky about it when its established fact that Shatner was one of the celebrity calls that astronauts asked to have in the early days of the space station when communication was more limited.
So this actor, who was an inspiration for astronauts, had been asked to talk to them during their missions and hear their perspectives for morale benefits. But when he finally has his own experience, Bezos assumed no one wanted to hear it. Just tone deaf and uninformed.
YES! Something about Shatners performance just screams captain. The composure. The looks. The inflection. Like every decision truly weighs on his character
One of the consequences of a wisely used but small budget. Simple sets and costumes, plus a LOT of creative lighting. All that’s left are actors to fill that otherwise empty-feeling space on the stage.
Also, color TV was in its infancy, so networks used the medium to compete for viewer attention. It really looks like NBC made sure that every scene was as vibrant as possible. But now that I think about it, it also had to “read” well in B/W too.
Edit: @StillPaisleyCat corrected me here. TOS was indeed an expensive show, which upon rewatching (as I am today), becomes more evident the longer you look at it.
Star Trek was considered big budget television in the 1960s. It was early peak broadcast television made to show off colour technology.
Roddenberry modeled and pitched the original pilot (The Cage) on MGM’s movie Forbidden Planet, which was the most expensive science fiction movie to date when it was made in the mid 50s.
For those who don’t know how much Rick Berman sucks:
“He’d comment on your bra size not being voluptuous. His secretary had a 36C or something like that, and he would say something about ‘Well, you’re just, like, flat. Look at Christine over there. She has the perfect breasts right there.’ That’s the kind of conversation he would have in front of you. I had to have fittings for Dax to have larger breasts. I think it was double-D or something. I went to see a woman who fits bras for women who need mastectomies; I had to have that fitting. And then I had to go into his office.”
– Terry Farrel
“Apparently someone had told Whoopi that we had written the episode, so she came over and started asking us if she could change one of her lines. And we were like ‘Oh you have to talk to Rick Berman. That’s Rick Berman’s domain. Only Rick Berman can go through and change the dialogue.’ There are some shows where actors just ad lib their lines, then there’s Star Trek where you have to say exactly what’s on the paper. So, I as a courtesy said I would let the production office know that she had a question about the script… Rick’s response was ‘Why the hell was Whoopi Goldberg talking to Eric Stillwell? What was he doing on the set?’ The next thing I know, I’m banned from the set. Just for passing on a message… and it was humiliating, on my episode, that I’m banned from the set.”
As much as I hate him, I also hate actors who change and ad lib lines. Someone went through this work to phrase or develop a conversation or monologue, stayed up to make it the way they want, then an actor comes and changes it. I realized that while watching the making of Sopranos and David Chase explaining how disrespectful it is to to writer. But yeah Berman sucks.
Sometimes the actors know their characters a lot better than the writers. For example, in the empire strikes back, the original script had Han saying something else, whereas Ford came up with the ‘I know’, which fits much better with his character.
Kershner: (Tries it out) “I love you.” And you say, “Just remember that, Leia, because I’ll be back.” You’ve got to say, “I’ll be back.” You must. It’s almost contractual!
Ford: If she says “I love you,” and I say “I know,” that’s beautiful and acceptable and funny.
One of the most influential science fiction monologues was ad libbed, and it's so much better than the original script.
Original script:
"I've seen things... seen things you little people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion bright as magnesium... I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments... they'll be gone."
Hauer's monologue:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die."
Like David Chase once said to Tony Sirico when Sirico said “my character wouldn’t say that”
“Your character?? This is MY character mother fucker, I wrote him”
Everyone needs to stick to their job and not fuck with the jobs of others. Collaboration is ok, but not on most shows, as most scripts are written just the way they’re meant to be said
But it’s not there character any longer, they gave them away. The writer isn’t going to be able to, much less should they dictate every little detail about a performance. Those details are so important to a charter, you can’t say a charter is solely the writers creation.
I’ve worked in all sorts of performance disciplines. Comedia dell’arte, High clown, low clown / children’s ents, improv, film, theatre in pros-arch, round…, puppet , Grotowskian devised theatre, Boalian Theatre of the Oppressed…
Only one small subset of that work demands word-perfect adherence. Performance is much more than post-Stanivlaskian Aristotlean drama.
Even Beckett, who was completely, insanely anal about everything from the design of the tree in Waiting for Godot, to the size of the spotlight in Not I, to the length and timing of the tapes in Krapps Last Tape, still made on-set changes right up to the performance.
Not to mention, often on set the script supervisor will sometimes give you last minute changes between takes.
Then, no script is ever perfect. I did Glengarry Glen Ross (which is suuuper tight in terms of interruptions, e.g.
A: “And a man has to shiver in his…”
B: “…shoes…”
A: “…boots…”
B: “…shoes… boots…”
A: “…And for what?” )
But one night the cop missed his cue during one of the sections where people are coming in and out of the office to be interviewed, and I’m (as Roma) trying to put the screws on the guy from the Chinese restaurant so I have to keep vamping on convincing him not to call his wife until the cop remembers to come out and confuses him for Shelly Levene.
It’s so much better for the audience for me to vamp than it is for us to stop the play and go and tell the actor he missed his cue. The show must go on.
Don’t forget the fact that he was aggressively homophobic and refused Gene’s wishes to depict the HIV/AIDS crisis in multiple episodes or even have a gay character on the show, including blacklisting a script about the crisis titled Blood and Fire. Not to mention shooting down the Garak/Bashir connection that both actors actively wanted and refusing to allow Malcom in Enterprise to be gay despite his actor also specifically playing him as gay.
Then there’s the fact that he aggressively tore Denise Crosby’s badge off of her shirt on her last day then lied about it on Twitter saying that she ‘gave it to him’. Or the fact that he’s the SOLE reason that Tasha Yar’s legacy is being forced into sexual slavery for a high ranking Romulan. Or that he constantly fought with Marina Sirtis about her contract as well. Or that he forced himself on a ton of writing credits just on the off chance that someone might potentially sue him. Or the fact that he was micromanaging everything to do with DS9 and only got worse with Enterprise. Or the fact that he fucking breathed this morning.
Fuck him.
Unfortunately, the article also says Brent Spiner is a big defender of Berman.
Data wasn’t perfect. Why should Brent Spiner be. That being said, that’s a hell of a character flaw…
Oh no I get what you mean, it’s clarification. I wasn’t super clear there. I didn’t mean the actor was gay but that the actor had definitely played the character as gay.
Don’t forget the fact that he was aggressively homophobic and refused Gene’s wishes to depict the HIV/AIDS crisis in multiple episodes or even have a gay character on the show, including blacklisting a script about the crisis titled Blood and Fire. Not to mention shooting down the Garak/Bashir connection that both actors actively wanted and refusing to allow Malcom in Enterprise to be gay despite his actor also specifically playing him as gay.
There was also the push to have a male actor play the main androgynous alien in The Outcast that Riker falls for. Frakes was all for it. Berman nixed it.
I try not to hate people anymore. It’s just too exhausting. I did before, a lot of people, and I’m just so tired.
But that man?
I could be on my deathbed and would still put on a Grandpa Joe type display if I found out that scum-covered amalgamation of used condoms had finally fucking died.
Also: “Since the early 2000’s, several writers of Star Trek material, such as David Gerrold[10][11] and Andy Mangels,[12] have criticized Berman’s participation in removing and minimizing LGBT themes from multiple Star Trek series, including The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.[13] Berman has responded by saying that he took full responsibility for the lack of such characters and that he had been working with other producers on including gay characters,[14] telling Kate Mulgrew that such a character would be included “in due time”, though no such characters would be included during his time as producer.[15]”
I think her surprise is the least believable thing about this scene. Any captain would know that the cum filter gets full quickly and needs to be cleaned out.
Well no actually. In that episode he tells Bashir at least three different contradictory stories. Though right before Garrak thinks he’s about to die he tells Bashir that he was really ashamed because he fucked over his best friend and we’re lead to believe this is the actual final truth. Then you later find out the friend’s name he gave Bashir was actually just Garrak’s own first name and that every story Garrak told was a likely a complete fabrication. In the end we know nothing more definitive about him or why he’s at the station.
It doesn't "stand for" anything in that it's not an acronym or acrostic.
It's the name of Star Trek "tropical resort planet." People go on shore leave there in the way that people go on vacation to Bermuda or the Bahamas; it's kind of the default "iconic tropical paradise" location.
On one notable occasion, Captain Picard went on vacation there.
Before he left, Commander Riker asked him to pick him up a certain souvenir from there.
You see the wooden statue in the sidebar over there? --->
That thing. It has a name. I don't remember what it's called.
What Riker didn't tell him is that displaying one of those statues openly is basically Risan shorthand for "I'm cruising for casual sex." So Picard was just like "yeah, I finally got around to buying Will that ugly statue he wanted; can't be arsed to take it back to my room right now though." So he just kinda carried it around with him for the day, had it hanging out on the table next to him while he was reading and such. With predictably awkward/hilarious results.
So yeah. This community is named after a low-stress tropical tourist trap that was occasionally spiced up with adventure and trolling. The perfect place for Star Trek related memes and shitposts.
It’s also where Worf got radicalized and engaged in some planetary level terrorism and then everyone was like “eh you’re just a toxic person to be in a relationship with so whatevs.” What a world.
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