StillPaisleyCat
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website
- Comment on ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Star Melissa Navia’s Spotlight Episode Is So Intense, She Was Told She Could ‘Shoot a Marvel Film After’ It 52 minutes ago:
I think you’re thinking about the 1979 novel Enemy Mine, and 1985 movie. Which itself was building off any number of shipwreck and wartime survival tales.
Enemy Mine has been repeatedly adapted to Trek shows from TNG’s early episode where Geordi and a Romulan survive together.
Using this trope again with a ‘curious demigods running experiments’ twist is novel enough. In fact, it’s harder to believe that Arena was the first time the Metrons put humanity and Gorn into one-on-one engagement.
As for the Martian, book or movie, they’re both pretty weak, derivative, middle school stuff. They’re overhyped and couldn’t hold the attention of the hard scientists in our household. If the middle school (sanitized) version of the book hadn’t been so hyped for our kids, we wouldn’t have made the effort to slog through it before they read it.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x09 "Terrarium" 2 days ago:
It seems the Metron scene was necessary for the very vocal contingent of fans who have relentlessly expressed their outrage about the Gorn storyline not fitting in their headcanon about Arena.
- Comment on ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Star Melissa Navia’s Spotlight Episode Is So Intense, She Was Told She Could ‘Shoot a Marvel Film After’ It 2 days ago:
“People know” comments, such as the one in this article are increasingly annoying. Mainly, because they are simply wrong.
No, we don’t know that Ortegas and La’an aren’t on the ship in the first year of Kirk’s command.
Sulu was a xenobiologist at the beginning of TOS, and Kirk had already been captain for some time. There was a bit of a rotation of pilots in the initial episodes.
TOS didn’t even have a regular security officer.
- Comment on Vulcans are an incredibly emotional and passionate species. 5 days ago:
Building on that VS, DNA was barely discovered by Watson and Crick when TOS fan, so we should be able to work the implications of the growing body of knowledge of genetics into what we have done before.
We don’t hold Star Trek back from incorporating advances in real life scientific and technological knowledge.
For example, growing understanding in nanotechnology informed many elements of 1990s Trek. We didn’t say that nanotechnology shouldn’t be referenced just because it wasn’t referenced in TOS.
In fact, Roddenberry insisted that Star Trek always be a possible future for the viewers and insisted on changes and corrections to address changes in knowledge.
In the case of what we saw in this episode, knowledge of epigenetics, an entire domain of understanding that has developed in this century, informed the situation.
Epigenetics can be defined as “The study of the processes involved in the genetic development of an organism, especially the activation and deactivation of genes.”
We were told by Una that, because the Karkovian serum was derived from Spock’s DNA it reflected Spock’s experience. This means certain Vulcan genetic traits were already ‘switched on’ by environmental factors, that could include experiences like meditation, that would lead to ‘switching on’ the genes that enable functioning of the specific Vulcan brain structures noted in Voyager.
- Comment on Michelle Yeoh Admits “We Could Have Done Better” With ‘Star Trek: Section 31’ 6 days ago:
This headline is a quote out of context that is being used to imply an admission.
I don’t mind the inference that the movie wasn’t what Yeoh had hoped it might be, but the headline is a misrepresentation of what she said.
What Yeoh actually said is:
Every time I finish a movie or something, I always think, ‘I could have done better,’ so it’s nothing new. That’s how you always have to think to improve yourself and to hopefully be better the next time.
My partner and I seem to be among the relatively few longtime fans who found the S31 film a blast. I still have to wonder though what we might have got if Kim and Lippoldt had been able to run the show that they originally conceived before Paramount added a male non-Asian action flick show runner ‘for experience’. The episode they wrote for Georgiou in S3 of Discovery was excellent and they have been successful writing on Sweet Tooth for seasons 2&3 since they moved on from Trek…
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 1 week ago:
It’s a biblical metaphor that’s made it into English usage.
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 1 week ago:
Yes. The Destiny trilogy is described as the Alpha to Omega story of the Borg.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x08 "Four-and-a-Half-Vulcans" 1 week ago:
La’an didn’t become Romulan.
That was just the inference that she and Pike made as they both had awareness that Romulans existed.
In fact, it was a misdirection and further evidence that Vulcans can be blind in their prejudices.
The two of them locked onto the explanation that they knew and never considered that La’an’s heritage of altered DNA might lead to manipulative and territorially conquering behaviour like her ancestor Khan.
It was turning off the impact of the balancing unaltered human DNA and augmenting her brain function that let the Khan-like behaviour dominate.
I thought it was a fairly deft look at the risks of emphasizing different elements of brain function through intervention.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x08 "Four-and-a-Half-Vulcans" 1 week ago:
There were references to whales before that in beta-canon diagrams.
The idea that they are a response to Star Trek IV is also beta canon or even widespread head canon.
- Comment on Interview: ‘Starfleet Academy’ Writer Kirsten Beyer On Balancing New Audience And 800+ Years Of Star Trek Canon 1 week ago:
I see that the writers are down in the fine print of the announcement.
Myers just has story credit.
It’s interesting because Mack was originally a NY Film School grad and has two writing credits for DS9. He was picked up from that by Pocketbooks to write Treklit. So, writing a radio play is moving him back towards where he started.
- Comment on Interview: ‘Starfleet Academy’ Writer Kirsten Beyer On Balancing New Audience And 800+ Years Of Star Trek Canon 1 week ago:
There’s real news in there!
David Mack and Kirsten Beyer have cocredit for the script of the Star Trek: Khan audio podcast.
This just increased my expectations that this will be a high quality script.
- Comment on ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ Cast On How Series Was Last Hurrah For “Boys Club” TV Before Me Too Movement 1 week ago:
I do recall that Enterprise was hyped as a response to the demands from (mostly male) fans who wanted a ‘return to exploration’, less ‘magic technology’ and implicitly ‘men doing stuff.’
The 1990s BBS hate of the women in leadership roles in the early seasons of Voyager was savage.
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 1 week ago:
Again, that’s an issue regarding screenwriting not tie-in fiction.
And on the screenwriting side, it’s an issue Paramount has already taken on with Lower Decks, Picard, and Prodigy’s very numerous references to classic shows and characters. All those Easter eggs were included.
Any characters created by tie-in writers are Paramount’s IP under the standard tie-in writer contract. No credit need be given even.
This has already been established as Prodigy and Lower Decks have brought TrekLit elements into canon.
Even Star Trek Online content is Paramount IP. The vfx team were able to directly convert renders of STO ships for Picard.
- Comment on Thanks for sharing about Star Trek books! 1 week ago:
I bought it in hardcover and was deeply disappointed.
See my comments above.
There has been no justification for why the IP holders at Paramount insisted that the most crew of the Voyager be miserable once they returned to Earth, but it’s an acknowledged fact at this point.
- Comment on Thanks for sharing about Star Trek books! 1 week ago:
I found the Voyager books when they return to the Alpha Quadrant very frustrating and disappointing. I DNFd the second one.
It seems like the tie-in auto Christie Golden was required (by the IP holder) to break the Voyager crew up and make them experience a great deal of unhappiness.
In the main series of post Voyager 24th century relaunch timeline novels post Nemesis, longstanding author Peter David was obliged to kill Katherine Janeway off in one of the crossover events!
That said, I did really enjoy Kirsten Beyer’s Full Circle Voyager novels. Beyer was eventually given permission to get the Voyager crew back together for a new exploratory mission to the Delta Quadrant with a group of slipstream ships.
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 1 week ago:
Vanguard is darker even than DS9, so not everyone’s taste.
What it does have is not only Starfleet on-station but also 4 ships that are based there from a scout explorer to a Constitution class. It’s a lot of characters. Plus Tholians and Klingons. The mystery takes a bit to come together but it’s excellent.
The Enterprise and her crew show up occasionally but aren’t the primary characters. There is one Vanguard novel recently add that is Enterprise-focused and is one of the best books since Destiny.
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 1 week ago:
Directors, actors and art directors seem to be very happy to tread the ground of adaptations.
What we really have is some writers that want to tell their own Star Trek stories but aren’t doing a good job of serialization and studio executives who think that rehashing existing stories and characters will buy success.
And yes we have egos like Patrick Stewart’s holding his character hostage to his own reinterpretation of his character to be a reflection of himself.
But as we have seen with the character of Jim Kirk, there can be other actors to carry on the legacy.
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 1 week ago:
That’s not really the point though.
While Slow Horses, Reached or Silo had their print audiences, they are not adapted solely because they are reaching enormous audiences as books. They have become successful shows because someone made the case for adaptation to the studios.
Star Trek has been struggling to make serialized live action shows successfully. Why not go with what works and adapt that?
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 1 week ago:
Tie-in writers are writers for hire.
They don’t own any of the IP for their creations. All the IP is owned by Paramount.
Star Trek television has directly taken concepts from Treklit for Discovery and Picard without any credit whatsoever to the print authors who created them.
Screenwriters who created guest characters like Locarno are owed some credit and residuals but these are very modest.
- Comment on Why doesn't Star Trek use TrekLit for streaming shows? 1 week ago:
There was a good recent thread on this. Much depends on your own preferences.
I posted the image of the first book of the TOS era series Vanguard because I think it would be excellent to adapt to television. It’s about Starbase 47 serving Starfleet in a region of Federation expansion and colonization. It’s somewhat dark and there’s a mystery at the core.
If you’re looking for the Alpha and Omega of the Borg, the Destiny trilogy is excellent.
If you’re into time travel, Christopher L. Bennett has a series of books about the Bureau of Temporal Investigations.
There was also a great anthology of novellas focused on the Starfleet Corps of Engineers.
There are numerous great standalones too.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x07 "What Is Starfleet?" 2 weeks ago:
Frankly, we saw more in Pike’s face and heard more in his tone of voice — grim and determined - than any debates might have given us.
We were shown rather than told, and that’s a good thing.
This was arguably Anson Mount’s best, most sincere, performance as Pike since Discovery season two. There’s been a glibness in Pike in SNW. Both episodes 5 and 6 this season have turned that around.
It was also another episode where Una showed that she really was Pike’s First Officer and principal advisor.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to startrek@startrek.website | 23 comments
- Comment on Paused my DS9 rewatch to read "A Stitch in Time" and am so glad I did 2 weeks ago:
The Destiny trilogy by David Mack is my favourite. I liked it so much that I got a print copy of the omnibus.
Cold Equations is another popular trilogy by Mack.
Vanguard is TOS era series with books alternating in authorship by Mack and the writing duo of Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore. Vanguard, Starbase 47, is a somewhat mysterious Starfleet base of operations in a new region under colonization. While the Enterprise and her crew make a few appearances across the series, it’s primarily about Vanguard and the ships that are based there.
- Comment on What are your favorite Star Trek books? 2 weeks ago:
I liked all the Titan novels.
- Comment on What are your favorite Star Trek books? 2 weeks ago:
The Fall is a multibook ‘event’ in the Relaunch novelverse with each book by a different one of the regular authors.
It comes after Destiny and the Typhon Pact series of books.
While I like most of the books in all of these, there’s one author David R. George III whose books I find unbearably dull. He clearly knew his canon cold but his books are long on excessively detailed exposition, and short on dialogue or action. By the time I got to The Fall, I had learned to skip his books and just count on the recaps provided by the other authors.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x07 "What Is Starfleet?" 2 weeks ago:
I don’t see the documentary as the A-plot at all.
It was constantly present as a frame, but the episode wasn’t primarily about the documentary - it was primarily about how Starfleet captains and senior crew wrestle with ethical decisions when their orders do not align with their values, and how they seek to find information that can provide a rationale to pursue an alternative course of action.
Basically, it showed how important the crew that is present in the situation is and how that makes Starfleet more than just a military organization serving a military mission.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x07 "What Is Starfleet?" 2 weeks ago:
My partner and I really liked this one.
We both think it’s in the top rank of Star Trek episodes. In my view it may be the best of SNW to date.
It definitely should be the ‘For Your Consideration’ episode of this season.
The direction was excellent. This was one of the best dramatic performances from Mount as Pike since season two of Discovery.
My sense is that some viewers were mistaking the C-plot about the warring groups, for the A-plot about the Enterprise officers response to the ethical choice between orders and the free will of a sentient being or the B-plot about the making of the documentary.
I can’t agree that the episode was too short. The best Trek episodes are tightly rendered and leave lots of room for thought after.
- Comment on Star Trek: Prodigy - Supernova to be delisted, Xbox version on sale now 2 weeks ago:
More Prodigy erasure…
🤦🏼♀️
- Comment on Interview: ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Director Talks Challenges Of Shooting Kirk’s First Time In The Big Chair 2 weeks ago:
I can agree that they’re doing a brilliant job of what they’re doing.
For those of us who’ve been wondering about Pike since The Cage was first put back together and released in the 1980s, it’s been a bit disappointing.
Too much Spock, Uhura, M’Benga and Chapel, not to mention Kirk, too soon rather than a focus on Pike, Number One and the ensemble that preceded Kirk.
- Comment on Star Trek: Lower Decks Wins Two Hugo Awards, Celebrating Series Finale and 'Warp Your Own Way' Graphic Novel 2 weeks ago:
I didn’t expect the graphic novel to be able to so accurately capture the voice, tone and humour of the show.
It’s exceptionally good right down to the fine print footnotes on the bottom of several pages.
