Another aspect, I think, is that today's Trek writers have done basically nothing but film school. Ronald D. Moore at least spent a year on a US Navy frigate!
Deracination from the Western Canon (importantly the classics and the Bible) has been disastrous for writing. This is especially true in Sci-fi and Fantasy: Tolkien and the genre-starters went to extraordinary lengths to incorporate their work into the Western/Christian tradition and Pagan mythologies, while the new authors took inspiration from other fantasy series and nothing else. The end result is that the new works feel stale.
I sort of agree and sort of disagree. In principle, there's something to be said for deliberately diverging from "the Western Canon" for new ideas and inspiration. Do for another mythology what Tolkein did with Europe's, that kinda thing.
In practice... these guys ain't exactly reading the Koran, South Asian mythology, and the authors of the Harlem Renaissance. (Though, depending on who you ask, the last might actually be part of the Western Canon.) And I'm thinking that's a feature, not a bug. Old non-white dudes tend to be no more woke than old white dudes, and that is a very uncomfortable fact for these people.
One good example is The OA, which is heavily inspired by Slavic pagan mythology (tree spirits and water spirits, the Perun and Veles myth, and a multi-tiered afterlife, with transitions betwen the different levels faciliated by a mystical bridge). Key elements of the show are inspired by Slavic pagan concepts: the utopce or Drowned Dead ("spirits of human souls that died drowning"), the mavka ("spirits [who] represented the souls of girls who had died unnatural tragic or premature deaths") and the Firebird ("a magical and prophetic glowing or burning bird from a faraway land, which is both a blessing and a harbinger of doom to its captor").
The problem with crap shows like the ones discussed is quite simple. We consume them.
The profit maximization coda dictates that what is not rejected by the consumer can be lessened in the next iteration. “As quality approaches zero, profits become infinite.” No one is sitting around thinking that, but surely the most fundamental predicates are those we speak and examine least.
This is the reason all (every one) of today’s great writers in every art form are outside the corporate shitstream assembly lines, doing art. If five people see it on Substack, fine. Creativity and passion blacken, curl, and turn to ash at the approach of corporate pimps. Sure, you see a few doomed heads bobbing a little higher on the sea of trash: keep watching as they sink.
The one cure for this tidal wash of feces is to stop eating it. We become inured to it, and fail to note how far our standards have fallen, even as we critique and ridicule it. I turned off my tv for the last time in the nineties, ten minutes into a ridiculously banal and pointless Star Trek TNG episode. I haven’t watched a corporate studio movie since Jackson did that to The Hobbit.
I was unable to finish watching a single one of the clips linked. Why not? For the same reason a sober person of clean habits will be undone by a tenth of an addict’s dose.
I challenge anyone who is equipped to give half a damn about cinema, music, or writing to detox from the whole corporate shitshow for six months, and then try to watch what they felt was passable the previous year. You won’t make it through a half hour of the so-called news, never mind a show.
There are real artists out there doing actual artwork. Find and support them if art matters to you. Those who choose to keep their heads up the corporate cloaca will certainly see worse shit coming soon.
The Hobbit films are an excellent example. And yes, brand loyalty is a reason many people stick with things that are bad, particularly when it comes to franchises - a base of fans who will watch anything with the words Star Trek or Star Wars or Marvel in the title. Yet that base alone can't sustain a franchise, it has to appeal to ordinary viewers too.
I watch a lot of independent/arthouse films, mainly eastern European and often old (like 1970s Polish cinema). Yet pulp storytelling is important too, and just because something is corporate shouldn't and very often doesn't automatically mean that it's bad. I find this particularly true in the world of music - a three-chord guitar song written by a guy high on drugs will be praised as authentic, credible and raw, yet a far more sophisticated song written by a songwriter with a degree in composition for an A-list pop star will be derided as commercial, inauthentic and not "real music". The snobbery around ABBA (despite the fact they wrote their own songs) is a case in point. Corporate or independent, it's the craft that matters.
Thank you for a sane and apt reply. You're right of course that good work still bobs into sight occasionally. Art will out. I am saying that to do so from a corporate media setting, art may reach us only by rolling sevens six times straight, then rowing for the beach against an outgoing tide. No doubt many a fine actress made it across Harvey's couch and onto our screens. We made Harvey a necessary stain on her mind and art forever, you and I, by paying top dollar for Harvey's permission to pan for gold in a sewer.
I am predicting that the crap writing your post criticizes will be worse next year if we consume this year's moron bait. And that the concomitant anti-art pressure on artists and worthy craftpersons in the trade will worsen by another quarter turn of the screw. In my opinion, it is imperative that those who value art cease subsidizing corporate media's lurching dwarfish doppelgangers and look for artists who refuse to whore themselves and their work.
I repeat my detox challenge to every good mind and heart, and assert again that those who accept it will in six months be appalled and sickened by what they found merely stupid yesterday.
Thanks again for a great reply. I can't honor your position, but I honor your defense of it.
I think that this is an excellent and incisive read on why so many of these shows are so terrible.
My big question is what happened on season 1 of Star Trek: Picard. It was terrible and suffered from the same pathologies as the other shows you talk about. Yet it was helmed by Michael Chabon who is certainly someone who is interested in people and is a big reader (of course, he's also one of those people who had the wealthy parents -> MFA -> published author pipeline without ever having a 'real job').
I hadn't heard of her before your comment - she seems smart and engaged: but looks to have the same trajectory as Chabon (i.e. a Masters in Literature -> actress/producer without a 'real job' in between).
Im curious, what do you think about The Orville? I havent watched too many old episodes of Star Trek but my partner (he watched lots of TNG) and I loved it. He said that it felt a lot like older Star Trek and from your descriptions of it, I think that it does. Even a lot of the comic relief characters like Yaphet, LaMarr, and especially Malloy had significant and meaningful development.
I loved seasons 2 and 3. Tonally, it's like Voyager but with more depth and consistency. It's very much about people, and they really give the characters room to breathe.
Another aspect, I think, is that today's Trek writers have done basically nothing but film school. Ronald D. Moore at least spent a year on a US Navy frigate!
That's a huge factor, isn't it? He put his military experience into so many of his scripts. And of course Gene Roddenberry was a veteran too...
I completely agree.
Deracination from the Western Canon (importantly the classics and the Bible) has been disastrous for writing. This is especially true in Sci-fi and Fantasy: Tolkien and the genre-starters went to extraordinary lengths to incorporate their work into the Western/Christian tradition and Pagan mythologies, while the new authors took inspiration from other fantasy series and nothing else. The end result is that the new works feel stale.
I sort of agree and sort of disagree. In principle, there's something to be said for deliberately diverging from "the Western Canon" for new ideas and inspiration. Do for another mythology what Tolkein did with Europe's, that kinda thing.
In practice... these guys ain't exactly reading the Koran, South Asian mythology, and the authors of the Harlem Renaissance. (Though, depending on who you ask, the last might actually be part of the Western Canon.) And I'm thinking that's a feature, not a bug. Old non-white dudes tend to be no more woke than old white dudes, and that is a very uncomfortable fact for these people.
One good example is The OA, which is heavily inspired by Slavic pagan mythology (tree spirits and water spirits, the Perun and Veles myth, and a multi-tiered afterlife, with transitions betwen the different levels faciliated by a mystical bridge). Key elements of the show are inspired by Slavic pagan concepts: the utopce or Drowned Dead ("spirits of human souls that died drowning"), the mavka ("spirits [who] represented the souls of girls who had died unnatural tragic or premature deaths") and the Firebird ("a magical and prophetic glowing or burning bird from a faraway land, which is both a blessing and a harbinger of doom to its captor").
The problem with crap shows like the ones discussed is quite simple. We consume them.
The profit maximization coda dictates that what is not rejected by the consumer can be lessened in the next iteration. “As quality approaches zero, profits become infinite.” No one is sitting around thinking that, but surely the most fundamental predicates are those we speak and examine least.
This is the reason all (every one) of today’s great writers in every art form are outside the corporate shitstream assembly lines, doing art. If five people see it on Substack, fine. Creativity and passion blacken, curl, and turn to ash at the approach of corporate pimps. Sure, you see a few doomed heads bobbing a little higher on the sea of trash: keep watching as they sink.
The one cure for this tidal wash of feces is to stop eating it. We become inured to it, and fail to note how far our standards have fallen, even as we critique and ridicule it. I turned off my tv for the last time in the nineties, ten minutes into a ridiculously banal and pointless Star Trek TNG episode. I haven’t watched a corporate studio movie since Jackson did that to The Hobbit.
I was unable to finish watching a single one of the clips linked. Why not? For the same reason a sober person of clean habits will be undone by a tenth of an addict’s dose.
I challenge anyone who is equipped to give half a damn about cinema, music, or writing to detox from the whole corporate shitshow for six months, and then try to watch what they felt was passable the previous year. You won’t make it through a half hour of the so-called news, never mind a show.
There are real artists out there doing actual artwork. Find and support them if art matters to you. Those who choose to keep their heads up the corporate cloaca will certainly see worse shit coming soon.
The Hobbit films are an excellent example. And yes, brand loyalty is a reason many people stick with things that are bad, particularly when it comes to franchises - a base of fans who will watch anything with the words Star Trek or Star Wars or Marvel in the title. Yet that base alone can't sustain a franchise, it has to appeal to ordinary viewers too.
I watch a lot of independent/arthouse films, mainly eastern European and often old (like 1970s Polish cinema). Yet pulp storytelling is important too, and just because something is corporate shouldn't and very often doesn't automatically mean that it's bad. I find this particularly true in the world of music - a three-chord guitar song written by a guy high on drugs will be praised as authentic, credible and raw, yet a far more sophisticated song written by a songwriter with a degree in composition for an A-list pop star will be derided as commercial, inauthentic and not "real music". The snobbery around ABBA (despite the fact they wrote their own songs) is a case in point. Corporate or independent, it's the craft that matters.
Thank you for a sane and apt reply. You're right of course that good work still bobs into sight occasionally. Art will out. I am saying that to do so from a corporate media setting, art may reach us only by rolling sevens six times straight, then rowing for the beach against an outgoing tide. No doubt many a fine actress made it across Harvey's couch and onto our screens. We made Harvey a necessary stain on her mind and art forever, you and I, by paying top dollar for Harvey's permission to pan for gold in a sewer.
I am predicting that the crap writing your post criticizes will be worse next year if we consume this year's moron bait. And that the concomitant anti-art pressure on artists and worthy craftpersons in the trade will worsen by another quarter turn of the screw. In my opinion, it is imperative that those who value art cease subsidizing corporate media's lurching dwarfish doppelgangers and look for artists who refuse to whore themselves and their work.
I repeat my detox challenge to every good mind and heart, and assert again that those who accept it will in six months be appalled and sickened by what they found merely stupid yesterday.
Thanks again for a great reply. I can't honor your position, but I honor your defense of it.
I think that this is an excellent and incisive read on why so many of these shows are so terrible.
My big question is what happened on season 1 of Star Trek: Picard. It was terrible and suffered from the same pathologies as the other shows you talk about. Yet it was helmed by Michael Chabon who is certainly someone who is interested in people and is a big reader (of course, he's also one of those people who had the wealthy parents -> MFA -> published author pipeline without ever having a 'real job').
I feel the same about Michelle Paradise on S3 of Discovery.
I hadn't heard of her before your comment - she seems smart and engaged: but looks to have the same trajectory as Chabon (i.e. a Masters in Literature -> actress/producer without a 'real job' in between).
Im curious, what do you think about The Orville? I havent watched too many old episodes of Star Trek but my partner (he watched lots of TNG) and I loved it. He said that it felt a lot like older Star Trek and from your descriptions of it, I think that it does. Even a lot of the comic relief characters like Yaphet, LaMarr, and especially Malloy had significant and meaningful development.
I loved seasons 2 and 3. Tonally, it's like Voyager but with more depth and consistency. It's very much about people, and they really give the characters room to breathe.