StillPaisleyCat
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website
- Comment on cdrama idol dreamcasting of classic Star Trek roles 3 days ago:
Wow, that’s a lot of negativity towards both fancasting and idols. But I appreciate your laying out your perspective.
This fancasting done with humorous intent, as one can tell by the original post text that I have included as well as the Chanel visor (since cdrama ‘traffic stars’ are known for being global brand ambassadors of high fashion houses).
So the joke is falling flat with you. The question is “Why?”
Star Trek fans always propose their ideas for new characters in the franchise and even for recasts. It’s nothing new. It’s done in the spirit of fun.
And it’s never taken particularly seriously by those who make casting decisions or we would have seen very different actors cast in all of the shows and movies over the past 50+ years of the continuing franchise. Especially, as many or most of the actors fancast are not any more skilled than idol actors — while on the other hand, the most recent Star Trek shows, that have consistently cast actors with good foundations and craft, have experienced the most fan negativity about casting.
What’s different about fancasting popularity idol ‘traffic stars’ from China vs the usual fancasting of A or B list American actors?
What I found different, and amusing, is that it’s a fancasting crossover from two very different entertainment contexts. It’s challenging assumptions with popular faces, known to the younger cdrama audience.
What’s also amusing to me is that it implicitly pokes fun at Star Trek’s baked-in tendency to cast at least some of the roles on the basis of physical attractiveness, despite its aspirational nature — and recognizes that there has been fan blowback when diversity in looks and body types are included.
I’m absolutely with you that Star Trek needs to be more inclusive of Asian actors, and generally inclusive of more non US actors to really have global reach.
The US-centric mindset of those at senior levels in charge of the franchise since Roddenberry, as well as the embedded American Exceptionalism, is a principal reason it’s cinematic features aren’t capable of making adequate profit margins.
Anime, kdramas and now cdramas, all are rising in global popularity, especially among GenZ and among young women. That’s a global trend affecting the audience that Star Trek needs to share in to survive. What’s the problem with considering what the franchise would need to do to compete with these?
Yes, there are other serious actors in Chinese film and television, as well as other Asian countries. And hopefully as the young audience that is interested in cdramas matures, they may broaden their horizons and taken productions that are more focused on quality than personal beauty.
However, it’s also true that very few, even among those who graduate from China’s top theatre and performing arts programs go directly into serious roles. Very few have the resources to create their own independent production companies. Most are contracted by agencies, with their careers managed by them — with enormous financial penalties if they seek to become independent or move agencies. Most are in their 30s before they can break into more serious film and television roles.
Let’s face it, Star Trek has historically put the most seasoned actors, with theatrical credits, in the Captain chair but the rest of the ensemble has typically been a mix of with less experienced actors included. Many legacy roles were cast with actors of an equivalent skill level to idols.
It’s very welcome to have an Asian actor of Michelle Yeoh’s calibre in a captain’s chair, but Sulu and Kim, in 60 years of the franchise, should not remain the only East Asian main ensemble characters. More, future casting of characters with Japanese, Korean or Chinese biographies should consider hiring actors who are from those countries rather than exclusively Americans with that heritage.
All to say, it’s an interesting discussion. Appreciate the engagement.
- Comment on cdrama idol dreamcasting of classic Star Trek roles 4 days ago:
As I said, the images were posted on Reddit by someone who loves both Cdramas and Star Trek.
I’ve checked privately with the creator and they asked to watermark the images. They shared the watermarked versions with me by private messaging and agreed to let me post here.
This person is a professional vfx specialist working in television who did this for their own amusement. They have asked me to avoid sharing more detail on who they are which I believe is fair.
- Comment on cdrama idol dreamcasting of classic Star Trek roles 4 days ago:
If you aren’t aware that there is a certain amount of directed compositing in many CGI engines for vfx and game design, I don’t know what to say.
Using generated render to rough up an idea can be part of the process.
- Comment on cdrama idol dreamcasting of classic Star Trek roles 4 days ago:
Pursuit of Jade reportedly cost the equivalent of $100 million for 40 episodes and certainly looks like it.
S-tier cdramas are quite well funded now. I just watched the current day 2025 science fiction thriller Mobius on Netflix. It was at the production level of any American or European show.
- Comment on cdrama idol dreamcasting of classic Star Trek roles 4 days ago:
The creator is a professional vfx artist who was playing, and has included a watermark for that reason.
Yes, AI is part of their toolkit, but these were not just a case of asking a gen AI tool fabricate something.
- Submitted 4 days ago to startrek@startrek.website | 15 comments
- Comment on New Star Trek Timelines Book Explores Trek’s Multiverse 5 weeks ago:
I’m down for this one.
The link has just gone to my partner for upcoming gift occasions 😉.
- Comment on Creation Announces First Philadelphia Star Trek Convention For November 5 weeks ago:
Getting into the panels / speaker sessions was always my top priority.
The vendor hall is always worth checking out and it’s fun to mill about and see the cosplayers.
Depending on whether you like that sort of thing or not, paying to meet and get a photo with a cast member or to get an autograph (usually two separate things) is a popular activity.
- Comment on Creation Announces First Philadelphia Star Trek Convention For November 5 weeks ago:
While I won’t be travelling to the US anytime soon, I think it’s great that Creation is getting back into regional cons.
I used to attend them in the late 80s and early 90s and they were a great entry point for newer fans and those who didn’t want the mass experience of something like STLV.
I think that they do more to build a franchise for the long haul than the megacons.
- Comment on The Star Trek Communicator Is Now a High-End Wristwatch 1 month ago:
It looks like a 1970s toy. . . Which makes sense given who their target market is.
I would take it as another sign that the franchise has aged out were it not for the fact that it’s always had awful merchandising and licensing.
- Comment on Review — Destination Star Trek: The Next Generation Board Game 1 month ago:
Appreciate having the review.
There are a lot of games out there. We used to buy games after trying them out at gaming conventions but we only get to the local ones now.
- Submitted 1 month ago to startrek@startrek.website | 2 comments
- Comment on Dif-tor heh smusma. A First Contact Day dinner of salmon and cheese pierogies. 1 month ago:
Пироги are always a great choice!
- Comment on Petition update | Petitions to continue *Starfleet Academy* break 30,000 signatures 1 month ago:
Amazon took on another 3 seasons of The Expanse with about 130k, Netflix did an additional full 20 episode season of *Star Trek: Prodigy with 35k.
More than that, 32.5 k is a lot for one of these petitions in this amount of time. We don’t know what it will level off at.
The rate of signings is accelerating, with nearly 5k in the past 24 hours.
- Comment on Petition update | Petitions to continue *Starfleet Academy* break 30,000 signatures 1 month ago:
I wished they’d used an official image. It’s really odd.
But it was the first petition up so it’s the one with traction.
- Submitted 1 month ago to startrek@startrek.website | 11 comments
- Comment on Star Trek Mystery and Escape Room Games: DS9 & Lower Decks by Beadle & Grimm's Pandemonium Warehouse - Kickstarter 1 month ago:
Cool. I think I’ll be supporting this one.
I’ve been having fun getting new and interesting games through kickstarter campaigns.
My partner is finding this eye rolling, as I’m roping them and one of our teens into play testing. But, I look forward to taking some of these to our regional gaming convention. It’s nice to be able to offer some fresh games with licensed media.
- Comment on 'Star Trek': Andy Weir Apologizes To Alex Kurtzman Over Podcast Remarks 2 months ago:
Meh
- Comment on "It's gone baby... it's all gone"| Sigh .....‘Project Hail Mary’ Author Andy Weir Says Paramount Rejected His ‘Star Trek’ Pitch: Their “Shows Are Sh**” 2 months ago:
Cerebral is definitely not the way I would characterize Weir’s writing.
Middle school or YA science fiction is more like it. I first encountered his work when it was recommended for one of our kids.
- Comment on "It's gone baby... it's all gone"| Sigh .....‘Project Hail Mary’ Author Andy Weir Says Paramount Rejected His ‘Star Trek’ Pitch: Their “Shows Are Sh**” 2 months ago:
Regarding Rick Berman or other showrunners of a large collaboration, my reaction is more complex, because there were so many others involved in the creation.
While a cinematic feature is a huge collaborative undertaking, Weir sells himself as a kind of lone-wolf type author and so invites reactions on that basis.
There’s also the fact that Berman’s abusive behaviour was kept largely secret while the shows were running. So, my love of the specific shows and episodes was already set before I had the full context.
I’d known from friends in the fandom, with close connections to production, that the early TNG years were generally miserable for all involved but hadn’t heard as much by season four. Berman made the other showrunners be the media frontman, spokespersons for production during most of the 1990s. He wasn’t an eminence gris in reality, but might have well have been for the amount of information available for viewers to know what was actually going on.
Watching now, knowing how the actors and crew were treated, hearing their sides to the story, definitely does impact my experience on rewatching, and I am not as likely to rewatch as frequently as I was.
As another comparison, to someone who made himself out as more of an auteur creator, I find that I really can’t rewatch Josh Whedon productions at this point, especially Buffy.
- Comment on "It's gone baby... it's all gone"| Sigh .....‘Project Hail Mary’ Author Andy Weir Says Paramount Rejected His ‘Star Trek’ Pitch: Their “Shows Are Sh**” 2 months ago:
I would argue that very little good science fiction tries to have nothing to say about humanity or the human condition.
There is some very intellectual and intelligent science fiction that takes on and speculates about advanced science and mathematics concepts but these are rarely mainstream and not at all the kind of thing Weir writes.
Some science fiction can be just fun science, engineering or math speculation stories told in prose, but if doesn’t have something to say about ourselves, it’s value isn’t much more than diversion — although diversion and entertainment are valuable in themselves.
Setting aside for now Weir’s rather sour grapes criticism of Star Trek, and stipulating the fact that Star Trek has, from its earliest episodes, had a recurrent pattern of including very transparent and heavy handed allegories to current social and political situations and controversies, let’s consider the general question of what is science fiction for.
Science fiction can be and has been a means of allegorical storytelling, and of pondering the human condition at the individual and the societal level. It tells us about ourselves as much as it tells us about a broader universe.
Huxley and Orwell did this with their dystopias. However, so did hard science fiction greats like Arthur C. Clark. Childhood’s End, Rendezvous with Rama, and 2001: a Space Odyssey were as much about who we are now as what might be out there.
More literary science fiction authors explored themes in psychology and human consciousness from the mid twentieth century on, and high quality science fiction took up those questions in films like The Forbidden Planet.
I didn’t find this kind of reaching about the human condition in either of Weir’s books. I did find them fun rides, the kind of pop fiction that used to be described as “airport” novels — the kind of book people pick up in airport kiosks before a long flight, that are often make into “popcorn movies.”
The science elements in his books are ok, but not astonishing. The level is really middle school, which is why The Martian was reissued in a ‘school edition’ cleaned of the swear words. My own first contact with Weir was our youngest’s ‘school edition’. It wasn’t an overly challenging book for a bright grade 6 student.
What I found in Weir’s writing was a repeating pattern of a lone-wolf individual male hero making some incredibly daft decisions after a catastrophic event that set up his opportunity to MacGyver himself out of the situation. It’s a trope.
It’s not definitive of the genre and it’s not conducive to the ensemble problem solving needed for more complex STEM work in science fiction. And unfortunately Weir’s short fiction has shown that he hasn’t yet mastered the skill of telling stories on a broader canvas.
Fun ride episodes, shows and movies belong in Star Trek and other science fiction too. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be there. One of the franchise’s strengths has been that it can incorporate the full range of styles. But it’s never been only fun rides and individual heroism or individual MacGyvering. I think we’d see as much scathing criticism if shows tried to be just that.
But back to Weir’s attitude and tone, speaking in his moment of success.
He could have let his work speak for itself, and focused on promoting his film.
Instead he chose to prop up himself by putting down others. I don’t respect that. I don’t see that as having integrity. I see that as being a jerk, and it validates the sense that I got from his books that he doesn’t know himself how to work well with others so he doesn’t write what he doesn’t know.
He didn’t have to shoot his mouth off when baited. Instead, he chose to weigh disingenuously into the ‘culture wars’ by claiming to be above having a message.
He could have chosen at some future moment to drop a mention that he, like many writers had pitched spec scripts to the Star Trek franchise that weren’t taken up for movies or television, that weren’t seen as a fit in the strategic plan of the franchise at the time. That would have likely garnered a lot of positive interest from across the Trek fandom.
Instead, he chose to use his moment to trash the creations of others and, implicitly, the part of the fandom that those shows were written for.
He won’t be getting my money.
- Comment on "It's gone baby... it's all gone"| Sigh .....‘Project Hail Mary’ Author Andy Weir Says Paramount Rejected His ‘Star Trek’ Pitch: Their “Shows Are Sh**” 2 months ago:
This is the second quote of its kind in a day. The earlier one was about ‘woke’ messaging and how he writes to have no symbolism or underlying meaning in his work.
Going on a media tour is something that people are trained for.
They have their messages. They are ready for the provocations and the traps. And this isn’t Weir’s first Hollywood movie that’s done well.
This specific call out against Star Trek is something that he could have easily stepped about. He didn’t need to go out of his way to alienate a significant potential portion of his audience.
- "It's gone baby... it's all gone"| Sigh .....‘Project Hail Mary’ Author Andy Weir Says Paramount Rejected His ‘Star Trek’ Pitch: Their “Shows Are Sh**”www.hollywoodreporter.com ↗Submitted 2 months ago to startrek@startrek.website | 24 comments
- Comment on William Shatner And ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Actors React To News Of Series Ending 2 months ago:
The franchise wouldn’t exist if my 90 something year old mother-in-law and women like her didn’t watch it all and buy the books and magazines since 1966z
Or, if I and my partner and others hadn’t been watching since TOS was in first run.
Having defended TNG against TOS fans who wanted it killed, and having seen TAS killed by fan campaigns in the mid 1970s, I have no time for people in their 40s and 50s who would rather kill a show than have new Trek that might be meaningful to my GenZ kids.
- Comment on William Shatner And ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Actors React To News Of Series Ending 2 months ago:
No one was “shoving anything down your throat.”
You don’t need to watch.
You may have been the key 15-34 year old demographic that advertisers and marketers target back in the 1990s. If so, you are not the key demographic now. Why do you think others should be paying for your preferences?
- Comment on William Shatner And ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Actors React To News Of Series Ending 2 months ago:
Good thing people stuck with TNG season one despite rehashes like ‘The Naked Now’, offensive episodes like ‘Code of Honor’ and most of a season of sub par offerings.
- Comment on It's sad that people completely misunderstand what Star Trek is about. 2 months ago:
It’s possible on a regular basis.
However, as with other high profile accounts, one expects that messages that are high profile would be cleared with the person under whose name the official account is made.
- Comment on William Shatner And ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Actors React To News Of Series Ending 2 months ago:
This makes sense if they want to break down the sets.
- Comment on William Shatner And ‘Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Actors React To News Of Series Ending 2 months ago:
There was a report posted elsewhere claiming that the viewership has been greater than expected but they still canceled it.
- Comment on It's sad that people completely misunderstand what Star Trek is about. 2 months ago:
It’s a silver lining to see Shatner using his platform for the greater good.
