ah! silly me

What is an S3 bucket?

I guess what I mean by Star Wars is they want to be doing what Disney+ is doing; serialized Cinematic Universe that’s all boom boom pow pow?

Absolutely. Ideological consistency =/= stagnation; my two favorite pieces of Trek are The Voyage Home and the Dominion War arc, and while they may not share almost anything on the surface, their core thrusts are wholly aligned!

The fundamental lack of understanding of the purpose and point of Trek as an idea that Kurtzman et al have consistently demonstrated clearly illustrates not simply a schism in taste, but one of worldview, politics, and values.

These guys just wanna be making Star Wars - and there ain’t anything wrong with that! It’s just that Star Wars and Star Trek are for, and accomplish, different things!

Is this in regards to the Skydance acquisition? I thought that had gotten canned!

So much of the mindset expressed by Kurtzman in this interview makes me sick and sad. I typed out these thoughts elsewhere before but I’m repeating them here:

In my opinion the purpose of Star Trek, when functioning properly, is not just to be optimistic, but aspirational; it’s to show us a vision of a future in which we’ve surmounted the problems that face us today.

TNG has so far been the keenest example of this, moreso than TOS or any of the Treks that followed. DS9 may be my favorite Trek, but it’s also responsible for setting a dubious precedent of darkness in the property that I don’t think subsequent showrunners have been capable of fully wielding, or even of fully understanding.

A major part of this, for me, is the nu-Trek focus on “optimism” over “aspiration.” Yeah, it might sound like arguing semantics at first, but I really don’t think it is. Regardless of the dictionary definition of those two words, we use them in specific ways in modern parlance.

I feel like most people understand optimism as a positive attitude, a glass-half-full outlook, or even just a sunny disposition. At best, it’s understood as personal traits adhering to a broadness of vision, generosity, and kindness. Yeah, these are good and virtuous characteristics; but they’re not really the same as something being aspirational.

A future we aspire to is a very different thing than a future containing positive people. There are positive, optimistic people all over the place in today’s world, and yet… just look around. We kind of live in hell!

I guess what I’m saying is that optimism is mostly an emotion, whereas aspiration is a goal.

Star Trek, when functioning as it should, is aspirational because it shows us what humanity and society could be like once we surmount the problems facing us today.

So I guess that this, for me, is the principal failing of Abrams and Kurtzman-era Trek; in this future, humanity still succumbs to the pains and pitfalls of present-day life in a way that suggests we won’t grow out of them. Sure, they contain positive, optimistic, kind, gentle, generous people, but society as a whole has simply iteratively progressed instead of having wholly transformed.

There are so many little specific cumulative examples I can give of this, but I know once I start listing them, I’ll forget to list ten more that are better. Maybe I’ll make that list someday when I have some time to kill; but for now, the biggest offenders are the constant tropes of The Galaxy Facing a Danger Unlike Anything We’ve Ever Seen, and the handling of Section 31 as an organization + subsequent reality of the movie.

Another major problem is that the seasons are all too short, so we rarely ever get any breathing room downtime with the characters! 20+ episode seasons are a vital, crucial, fundamental component of Trek as a property, and it’s really not adapting well at all to the modern format of shows.

TMBG? Teenage Mutant Binja Gurtles?

Oh, hush. My answer was about all of it.

One other kid won a BluRay of that Will Smith movie Hitch. He wasn’t happy.

Almost 20 years ago I won an iPod Nano and a Fubu shirt at a raffle at a black church in Norfolk VA when I was 17. I was the only white kid in there.

To say the bus ride back was uncomfortable is an understatement

It’s a little tough to explain without sounding glib, but the gist is that in my opinion the purpose of Star Trek, when functioning properly, is not just to be optimistic, but aspirational; it’s to show us a vision of a future in which we’ve surmounted the problems that face us today.

TNG has so far been the keenest example of this, moreso than TOS or any of the Treks that followed. DS9 may be my favorite Trek, but it’s also responsible for setting a dubious precedent of darkness in the property that I don’t think subsequent showrunners have been capable of fully wielding, or even of fully understanding.

A major part of this, for me, is the nu-Trek focus on “optimism” over “aspiration.” Yeah, it might sound like arguing semantics at first, but I really don’t think it is. Regardless of the dictionary definition of those two words, we use them in specific ways in modern parlance.

I feel like most people understand optimism as a positive attitude, a glass-half-full outlook, or even just a sunny disposition. At best, it’s understood as personal traits adhering to a broadness of vision, generosity, and kindness. Yeah, these are good and virtuous characteristics; but they’re not really the same as something being aspirational.

A future we aspire to is a very different thing than a future containing positive people. There are positive, optimistic people all over the place in today’s world, and yet… just look around. We kind of live in hell!

I guess what I’m saying is that optimism is mostly an emotion, whereas aspiration is a goal.

Star Trek, when functioning as it should, is aspirational because it shows us what humanity and society could be like once we surmount the problems facing us today.

So I guess that this, for me, is the principal failing of Abrams and Kurtzman-era Trek; in this future, humanity still succumbs to the pains and pitfalls of present-day life in a way that suggests we won’t grow out of them. Sure, they contain positive, optimistic, kind, gentle, generous people, but society as a whole has simply iteratively progressed instead of having wholly transformed.

There are so many little specific cumulative examples I can give of this, but I know once I start listing them, I’ll forget to list ten more that are better. Maybe I’ll make that list someday when I have some time to kill; but for now, the biggest offenders are the constant tropes of The Galaxy Facing a Danger Unlike Anything We’ve Ever Seen, and the handling of Section 31 as an organization + subsequent reality of the movie.

Oh, and another major problem is that the seasons are all too short, so we rarely ever get any breathing room downtime with the characters! 20+ episode seasons are a vital, crucial, fundamental component of Trek as a property, and it’s really not adapting well at all to the modern format of shows.

Long answer woops!!

I’m glad you’ve been able to enjoy it! For me, I feel like the franchise on the whole has fundamentally lost its way; Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, and Prodigy have many virtues, but even when at their best, they’re still tacking against the wind.

RogerEbert.com - Star Trek: Section 31 (one star out of four)

I’m finding God for a moment today to pray that this debacle finally and utterly strips Alex Kurtzman of whatever warlock-ass pact-magic power he must have ensorcelled around him

Star Trek either needs to go to Ron Moore and Jane Espensen, or it needs to go back into storage for a decade.

It can be so, so, so much better than all of this!

this slaps

you’ve got a killer eye for shape and expression

Would that I were so lucky. I am, in fact, Tymon Brown, for whatever that’s worth.

You talking Shaggy Rogers of Mystery Machine fame, or beloved recording artist Orville Richard Burrell CD?

slapping your face into the middle of the pie and sucking like a dyson

Very much appreciate that 🖖

My website has links to most of my works, or my linktree for the rest. I’ll be releasing work with Jacobin Magazine soon too.