New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

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Eric Paddon
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Re: New STAR TREK Series - Bryan Fuller Steps Down as Showrunner

#31 Post by Eric Paddon »

Paul MacLean wrote: Fri Sep 08, 2017 12:00 pm A pitfall of trying to be so pointedly topical, is that hindsight often reveals "pressing issues" to be far-less significant than first thought. (Witness that Battlestar Galatica episode a decade ago where they "steal the election" -- Ooooo!)
Oh let me guess. That was their way of trying to be "relevant" about the one day foamings about "theft" in Ohio in 2004, right?

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Paul MacLean
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Re: New STAR TREK Series - Bryan Fuller Steps Down as Showrunner

#32 Post by Paul MacLean »

Eric Paddon wrote: Fri Sep 08, 2017 1:37 pm
Paul MacLean wrote: Fri Sep 08, 2017 12:00 pm A pitfall of trying to be so pointedly topical, is that hindsight often reveals "pressing issues" to be far-less significant than first thought. (Witness that Battlestar Galatica episode a decade ago where they "steal the election" -- Ooooo!)
Oh let me guess. That was their way of trying to be "relevant" about the one day foamings about "theft" in Ohio in 2004, right?
Yup. I did like that show a great deal, but sometimes it could get a bit contrived in its endeavor to be "edgy" and "topical".

Eric Paddon
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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#33 Post by Eric Paddon »

When being "topical" means riffing on Keith Olbermann's lunatic foamings that says it all.

John Johnson
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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#34 Post by John Johnson »

I'll watch the first episode, but won't subscribe to CBSAA. Good luck to those that can watch it outside the US through Netflix.

http://screenrant.com/star-trek-discove ... s-embargo/
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AndyDursin
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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#35 Post by AndyDursin »

You can watch it outside the US on Netflix? Hmmmm....what country exactly

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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#36 Post by John Johnson »

AndyDursin wrote: Thu Sep 14, 2017 9:26 pm You can watch it outside the US on Netflix? Hmmmm....what country exactly
I know it will be available in the UK within 24 hours of the US screening. Canada will have it through the Space Channel (I think).
Anyway, I'll probably catch up with when the Blu-ray release is announced.

http://www.cinemablend.com/television/1 ... y-will-air

http://deadline.com/2017/06/star-trek-d ... 202115723/
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AndyDursin
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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#37 Post by AndyDursin »

I'm not sure it's actually going to be worth catching up with though lol.

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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#38 Post by AndyDursin »

I liked it!

I have to admit, I started watching it, ready to turn it off, and even though the Klingon stuff is transparent to the point of self-parody, the show itself? Yeah, it was good. If I had a way to watch the rest of it, I'd do so.

Anyone else watch the pilot on CBS?

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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#39 Post by John Johnson »

Watched the first episode and I did enjoy it, apart from the Klingon stuff. I found it too heavy-handed. Perhaps it will get better with future episodes. However, I won't be watching the series on tv. Several months ago, I contacted CBSAA and they assured me it would be available as a Smart TV app. Of course this never materialised, so I will wait for the Blu-ray release.

I have heard episodes will be released weekly until Monday November 6, after which the series will take a break before resuming in January 2018 with episode nine.
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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#40 Post by John Johnson »

London. Greatest City in the world.

KevinEK
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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#41 Post by KevinEK »

I finally watched the first season over the past month, using my Emmy membership, which allowed me to have access to the season for evaluation.

I'm glad I didn't pay for it.

The series is okay. To me, it's essentially the next narrative step from Enterprise, albeit done with the showrunners no longer being hamstrung by all the Rick Berman restraints on music and story. This is the kind of show they probably could have done with Enterprise if Berman and Braga had stayed away from it. There's some weird retconning with the Klingons, as well as with Sarek, and some completely unnecessary profanity. But there's also some occasionally good ideas here and there.

The show looks like what I'd expected - a hybrid of the newer bridge designs from the JJ Abrams attempts and some of the thinking from the TNG era. But like Enterprise, there's a lot of rethinking going on here - how is it that these past-era ships have advanced technology we never saw in the original series.

I'd say the new series would best be for those who have never seen the original series and only know Star Trek as a title from the movies inflicted by Abrams and company.

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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#42 Post by AndyDursin »

I didn't see any more of it either. Didn't they change showrunners/producers too? Doesn't sound like this is going to last very long.

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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#43 Post by John Johnson »

London. Greatest City in the world.

KevinEK
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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#44 Post by KevinEK »

Discovery has repeatedly changed its showrunners.

Originally, it was supposed to be a Bryan Fuller show, with the contributors including Nicholas Meyer. Joe Menosky from the TNG era was also on board in the early days. Then Fuller quit the series and from what I can see, both Meyer and Menosky retreated. Meyer supposedly did a little writing that was rejected and then just did some consulting. Menosky is partly credited for a single episode of DIscovery's first season. From what I can see, the first season was taken over by Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts, who supervised the show for the rest of that period. Another casualty in the middle of this mess was Akiva Goldsman, who they thought would be taking over as a creative director, but he's quit also.

Part of the issue appears to be budget, which is not a surprise given that CBS is producing it. CBS is notoriously cheap with television - regularly telling its current productions to take a day off of their schedules, so that long-running shows like NCIS and others, which were made in 8 day schedules, are now told they must be made in 7 days unless there's something REALLY special. (CBS wouldn't even cover a wrap party for NCIS when I was there at the end of the 5th season - the producers and the lead actor covered that themselves.)

In the new season, apparently Berg and Harberts became increasingly abusive to their fellow staff, including threatening the other writers if they tattled about what was happening. And then CBS fired Berg and Harberts and forced Alex Kurtzman to personally take over the show. (Kurtzman's name has been on it from the beginning, but that had been mostly due to the whole project coming out of the JJ Abrams team that inflicted the last three movies. Kurtzman was never expected to be a major player on the show - more of a supervisor looking over scripts and completed episode cuts from Los Angeles while transitioning into his major feature film directing career, supervising his other TV shows and developing further movie scripts. On the other hand, with the failure of his movie, The Mummy, last year, it's understandable that this would be a better berth for him for the moment. But either way, Kurtzman has been forced to come to Canada to actually produce the series - something I don't think he wanted to do. There are stories that another showrunner will be brought in to help him at some point.) There's also the matter that the first ep of season 2 apparently went way over their pattern budget, so they will need to do multiple "bottle episodes" to make up the money - or they will need to do one less episode for the season. Again, CBS is really cheap - they're not going to just give Kurtzman more money. They're going to demand that he give them the episodes they ordered for the original figure and not a dollar more.

I find all of this a bit ironic - in that we heard about similar nightmare shakeup stuff happening in the early days of TNG. Joel Engel's attack book on Gene Roddenberry lists out all kinds of wacky behavior in the writers' room, as does Shatner's video documentary on the same period, "Chaos on the Bridge". At the time, everyone held Roddenberry and his attorney Leonard Maizlisch responsible for the fiasco. David Gerrold continues to hold a grudge against Maizlisch, and Maizlisch has been dead for 25 years or so. In retrospect, given all the disasters we've seen with Trek since the end of the Berman regime, maybe there is something to the notion that Star Trek is cursed...

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Re: New STAR TREK DISCOVERY Series

#45 Post by John Johnson »

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