tymon
ACCOUNT INACTIVE DUE TO LEMM.EE SHUTDOWN
- 22 Posts
- 53 Comments
tymon@lemm.eeOPto Star Trek Social Club@startrek.website•Interview: Alex Kurtzman on Section 31 and the "evolution" of Star TrekEnglish10·5 months agoAbsolutely. 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!
tymon@lemm.eeOPto Star Trek Social Club@startrek.website•Interview: Alex Kurtzman on Section 31 and the "evolution" of Star TrekEnglish7·5 months agoIs this in regards to the Skydance acquisition? I thought that had gotten canned!
tymon@lemm.eeOPto Star Trek Social Club@startrek.website•Interview: Alex Kurtzman on Section 31 and the "evolution" of Star TrekEnglish51·5 months agoSo 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 subsequent showrunners have been incapable of wielding, or even of understanding.
A major part of this 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.
tymon@lemm.eeto Star Trek Social Club@startrek.website•"Section 31" early review round-upEnglish5·5 months agoOh, hush. My answer was about all of it.
tymon@lemm.eeto Star Trek Social Club@startrek.website•"Section 31" early review round-upEnglish21·5 months agoIt’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!!
tymon@lemm.eeto Star Trek Social Club@startrek.website•"Section 31" early review round-upEnglish7·5 months agoI’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.
tymon@lemm.eeto Star Trek Social Club@startrek.website•"Section 31" early review round-upEnglish24·5 months agoRogerEbert.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!
tymon@lemm.eeOPto Gaming@beehaw.org•Corinne Busche, director of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, departs BioWare5·5 months agoIf the discourse I’m seeing on dev/gaming twitter/bluesky is anything to go off of, It hasn’t made anywhere near the hoped-for sales target. I think a lot of that has to do with the blowback to its initial appearance as a glorified hero shooter, coupled with the lack of a strong franchise identity, then further compounded by the saturation of disappointing (if not outright disastrous) big-budget drops like Redfall, Forspoken, and Concord creating a wave of fatigue
This is an absolute nightmare scenario
oh boy oh boy oh boy I can’t wait to recut this show
in all seriousness though this looks incredibly dope and I cannot WAIT to watch
Do you actually think I’d go to all the unpaid labor of editing a mediocre show for the sole benefit of getting a few people on Lemmy to be frustrated enough with MEGA to sign up?
I don’t know why jdownloader isn’t working, but I’ll see if I can compress the size of the export more.
tymon@lemm.eeOPto Socialism@beehaw.org•‘It’s like I’m worthless’: hospitals dump patients on the street in Kentucky22·2 years agoI’ve had a cough for the last two months that’s given me a hernia. Can’t go to the doctor. It’s fun here.
tymon@lemm.eeto Sync for Lemmy@lemmy.world•Sync for Lemmy (beta) is now live for everyoneEnglish2·2 years agoGod, this is a welcome thing.
Hell yeah, hope you like it!
FWIW - the Mega App is a pretty light client and I usually uninstall it immediately with Revo once I’m done, ha
Ah! I tend to forget that
Thanks so much! Also, in case I’m mistaken, I believe there actually is a way to save posts, or at least there appears to be one for me. Do you see a Star button on the post? That saves posts for me, not sure if that’s a feature on all lemmy instances
You’re very welcome - I hope you enjoy it!
I hope you like it!
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?