Comment on The recent Star Trek series are often criticized for "not being woke enough", but I've come to feel the envelope they are pushing is much more radical, bolder, and important to our specific time...

kbal@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  As if Star Trek wasn’t corporate from the beginning!

  Every major difference between the original pilot ‘The Cage’ and the original series / TOS was rooted in corporate priorities.

  The bright, primary coloured uniform tunics, bright colourful flashing lights on the bridge and other sets were designed to promote NBC’s ‘Living Color’ television broadcasts.

  Kirk was younger, physically more vigorous and less cerebral than Pike, no matter what Roddenberry wanted. Action adventure hero, romancing women, was what the network wanted no matter that Roddenberry wanted Kirk to be a ‘stack of books with legs’ and for Yeoman Rand to be the original third principle character and long term romantic interest.

  source

  • kbal@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Sure they were subject to all the constraints of commercial prime-time TV, but as that video discusses in some detail with respect to DS9, the writers still had freedom within that corporate framework to tell woke anticolonialist stories beyond the classic sci-fi adventure fare of TOS which itself often explored what was new ground for commercial television at the time. Under some other corporate masters it might've been possible for the new crew to find similar freedom today, if things had worked out differently — and if any of them have the ability to do it and the willingness to try. But Larry Ellison and the forces he's standing in for seem far more alert to the subtleties of it than they used to be. There's bigger money involved now and they're keeping it on a tighter leash.

    source

    • ValueSubtracted@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Is there any evidence at all of the writers of the more recent series not having “freedom,” or of corporate interference in the shows?

      source

      • kbal@fedia.io ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I don't know. It just seems like one plausible explanation for what's been produced. To me it has that feel to it.

        source
    • StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Skydance only bought Paramount this past summer after production of SFA season one was well advanced and SNW was largely done seasons four production.

      While there is genuine reason for concern regarding future Star Trek, it’s very hard to make the case regarding anything in pre production before 2025.

      source
• YoiksAndAway@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Thanks, I enjoyed that.

  source