Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

[Seto Kaiba]

Part of me wants to make a news post about the casting of Adrian Holmes as Robert April for the series... but I'm really hesitant to because the main newsworthy point is that it's going to be a contentious casting decision for continuity reasons that may be mildly politically-charged.

[Thom]

Have we ever even seen Robert April? I think, so far, he's just been a name on a script. Interesting to see how involved he's going to be, as that will be four-captain's Enterprise all on the same show, maybe even at the same time.

April.

Pike.

Kirk,

Spock.

Kirk again.

I think the space-time continuum may combust!😁

Edited May 3, 2022 by Thom

[David Hingtgen]

We've seen April in ST:TAS.  The encyclopedia uses a pic of Roddenberry as a sort of placeholder.  

[azrael]

The only thing I'll say to the casting is, shouldn't Robert April be older?

[Thom]

Movie magic!

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Thom said:

Have we ever even seen Robert April?

He had a starring role in the Star Trek: the Animated Series episode "The Counter-Clock Incident".

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Robert_April?so=search

Memory Alpha has a number of screenshots from that episode in his bio.

Other than that, the file photo used for him in the Star Trek Encyclopedia is a photoshop that put Gene Roddenberry's head on Bill Shatner's body in one of the screen test photos from when they were (re)casting TOS after "The Cage".

 

Since Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is tangentially topical, I can use this scene from the original Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a metaphor for the casting discussions.

(I happen to find this bit hilarious, mainly because I've been the... tall... man in the discussion on a few occasions myself.)

 

 

That said, I have basically zero attachment to TAS and found a lot of it kind of cringeworthy so I'm not at all bothered by this casting decision.  If it means TAS gets the boot again, well, in my mind that's a feature not a bug.

[Thom]

@Seto Kaiba I've never seen TAS, though as I understand, it is considered canon, so this just falls into the recast category.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Thom said:

@Seto Kaiba I've never seen TAS, though as I understand, it is considered canon, so this just falls into the recast category.

It's... it's not bad, I guess?  The production values are pretty iffy even for the period but its main issue was it had a lot of seriously iffy screenplays like "The Infinite Vulcan" (the one with Giant Spock), "BEM" (the one with a colony-alien who's built like a LEGO man), or "The Practical Joker" (the one where the Enterprise's computer goes mad and becomes a 3rd grade troll handing out dribble glasses and screenprinting insults on people's uniforms).  IIRC Amazon Prime has the license for streaming right now if you feel like giving it a whirl.  It has some moments, my favorite being "How Sharper than a Serpent's Tooth?".

It was non-canon, or at best apocryphal, basically from its release until the early 2000s when Paramount suddenly reversed its position on the series and made it canon.  There is debated theory that the decision was motivated by Enterprise's showrunners wanting to introduce the Kzinti to ENT Season 5.  (Which, considering the Kzinti were established to have been epic failures in basically everything, would probably have landed them a spot below the Ferengi on the "ineffectual comedy antagonist" spectrum.)

As to recasting... well... usually when you're recasting an existing character you try to cast someone who looks like the previous appearances of the character.  The elephant in the room being that, from his conception in Star Trek's earliest drafts to his one canonical appearance and many non-canonical appearances, he has always been depicted as a white man.  When a character is recast/reimagined as a different ethnicity from their previous appearances, the audience usually expects an explanation of some sort.  Like the way the live action Ghost in the Shell felt compelled to add a massive subplot to explain why the explicitly-Japanese main character was being played by a white actress, or how Star Trek: Into Darkness had to come up with a lame excuse for Khan (an Indian Sikh previously played by Mexican actor Ricardo Montalban) being played by the very white and painfully British Benedict Cumberbatch.  (I don't want to get into a debate of the identity politics side of it, so let's please avoid that and simply note the narrative confusion.)  Fans are, innocently or otherwise, going to ask that rather awful question of how and why Robert April changed ethnicities between 2258 and 2270 and point to that as evidence that the series is an AU, or non-canon, or whatever.

I have a feeling it's going to be a very contentious casting decision in the short term, at least.

Of course, if you're not invested in TAS it's all gravy... so I have no dog in that fight myself.  

[Thom]

Yeah, I got no dog in it either. If it was Pike or Kirk, I could see it being something seeing how they are far more established characters, but certainly nothing worthy of contention.

[Dynaman]

Having a guy that shows up once (and even then in something most have NEVER seen) being recast as a different ethnicity, can't think of a bigger nothingburger.  

[leibek]

i watch startrek discovery every week ..monday 7 PM .he is pretty good with the bold kligons around no time for boring ................its the six decade of startrek    and still 

incoming series .......................its  just amazing .im looking forward to see strange new worlds.😎.

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Dynaman said:

Having a guy that shows up once (and even then in something most have NEVER seen) being recast as a different ethnicity, can't think of a bigger nothingburger.  

Actually, rather a lot of the older fans have seen it... there used to be a fairly brisk trade in bootleg tapes of the series back before Paramount reinstated the series into Star Trek's canon and made it available in a legitimate home video release and on streaming.  All the fuss and noise they made to promote it did a lot to raise awareness of the series.  That the articles covering the casting decision keep referencing TAS complete with screencaps will probably drive renewed interest in the series too.

Ironically, the people dismissing it as a "nothingburger" are likely to end up convincing people it IS something via the Streisand Effect. 

Though considering how few Star Trek fans still follow the franchise after the messes that were Discovery and Picard, I guess it's possible it would be considered obscure by what little is left of the audience.

(All things considered, the identity politics-driven fuss and noise over the casting decision will likely be the closest SNW gets to actual news coverage Paramount doesn't have to pay a shill for, though.)

[tekering]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

to pay a shill for

[sh9000]

 

[Thom]

First ep is up. Haven't watched it yet. Hopefully this eve.

[Dynaman]

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Actually, rather a lot of the older fans have seen it...

Or to put it another way, even among ST fans most have not seen it.  I'll leave it at that since I doubt there is any kind of scientific poll to prove one way or the other.

April doesn't bother me (I'm one of those who knows the episode exists but have not seen it).  I found the changes to Zephram Cochraine more problematic since the character from TOS is nothing like the one from First Contact in terms of mental characteristics.  

[sh9000]

 

[tekering]

Well, the pilot episode plays out like a Star Trek fan film -- derivative, conventional, utterly predictable, and full of legacy characters that don't really act like you'd expect them to -- but compared to what Akiva Goldsman has done with Discovery and Picard, it's difficult to find fault with Strange New Worlds. 😊

I'm happy to say I'm looking forward to seeing more. 

[Seto Kaiba]

30 minutes ago, tekering said:

Well, the pilot episode plays out like a Star Trek fan film -- derivative, conventional, utterly predictable, and full of legacy characters that don't really act like you'd expect them to -- but compared to what Akiva Goldsman has done with Discovery and Picard, it's difficult to find fault with Strange New Worlds. 😊

... so, if I read that right, it sucks but it sucks a fair bit less than "sitting next to grandpa's corpse for hours after he violently sh*t himself and died on a family road trip" (AKA Picard) or "cornered at a social event by an increasingly drunk and aggressive bigot who won't stop trying to gaslight you and sincerely believes allegedly being a very distant relation of someone famous makes them fascinating" (AKA Discovery)?

 

[Hikuro]

After family and I had watched and tried to stomach Season 2 of Picard, we were a tad hesitant on Strange New Worlds, but bit the bullet and we gave the first episode a shot.
Honestly, that was not bad at all. I liked that Pike kinda poked fun at the transporting thing, the Enterprise sets still while modernized had enough of the old school touch to not feeling alienating and distancing like Discovery. Uniforms I thought are kind of odd, while homaging TOS, there's still several different variations of the 3 main colors and that sorta makes me go "Eh? can't we just settle on one design pattern with the 3 colors?" Yeah I mean I remember kirk had a green tunic and all that, but he did eventually succumb to the standard command gold.  
 

[tekering]

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... so, if I read that right, it sucks but it sucks a fair bit less than "sitting next to grandpa's corpse for hours after he violently sh*t himself and died on a family road trip" (AKA Picard) or "cornered at a social event by an increasingly drunk and aggressive bigot who won't stop trying to gaslight you and sincerely believes allegedly being a very distant relation of someone famous makes them fascinating" (AKA Discovery)?

It's more like "acknowledging the work of a hopelessly bad student, whose grades have improved since he's started plagiarizing his older brother's homework."

Excellent analogies, however. 😆

7 hours ago, Hikuro said:

Enterprise sets still while modernized had enough of the old school touch

Props, too.  I particularly like their tricorders. 

[Podtastic]

12 hours ago, Hikuro said:

I remember kirk had a green tunic and all that

I always thought that that was his "seduce the ladies" leisure suit.😇

[Thom]

Liked it very much. It was fun, dramatic, had a good personal flare to the characters and when they sat to have a chat, no one wasn't pulling on the psychiatrist hat and asking, 'how do you feel about your mother..'

Overall, it was a fun ride, and I'm really hoping this is not a one-episode-wonder. Sure, there were some hokey spots and Vulcans acting a little too human and emotional, and a ship the size of a destroyer with only a three man crew, but I liked it a lot depite those little bits.

I will be happily tuning in next week!

Edited May 6, 2022 by Thom

[sh9000]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, tekering said:

It's more like "acknowledging the work of a hopelessly bad student, whose grades have improved since he's started plagiarizing his older brother's homework."

There's damned by faint praise... but I guess that's more "praised by faint damning"?

 

13 hours ago, tekering said:

Excellent analogies, however. 😆

We aim to please.

 

13 hours ago, tekering said:

Props, too.  I particularly like their tricorders. 

One thing I'll say for both this and DSC, the TOS-like props were pretty good.

[sh9000]

 

[Thom]

One thing I wish they had done, was to keep all the interior spaces of the Enterprise to the same dimensions of the original series sets. It lent a compact look to the ship that, though big, wasn't that big, whereas this Enterprise looks more like a cruise ship.

[wm cheng]

YES I 1000% agree @Thom - had many arguments about it, but always lost out to the practicalities of accommodating the shooting crew.  You never want a grumpy crew on your hands as Art Dept would be the first to be blamed as we usually aren't on set late into the night of a 18hr shoot.  Small sets means its difficult to light and you have to wild out walls to allow for shooting which slows down the crew and restricts the director's choices in long tracking shots - believe me I've heard all the excuses.  It's hard to argue when time is against you especially on a TV series and not a feature.  But yes, everything is huge - at least we don't have that cavernous interior or nothing for the turbo lifts to roller coaster through on Discovery!!!🤣 

 

On K-19 (old Russian Sub) the sets had to be designed to break apart (wild) 1/3rd - 2/3rds on train tracks because they were so heavy to allow the camera into those tight quarters, shots had to be planned months in advance to have a schedule that allowed wilding of such major pieces (but that was a Harrison Ford feature!)

[Thom]

@wm cheng Well, we didnt know Disco had that cadaverous interior until they showed them to us. Who knows what's happening behind the walls on Enterprise!

[renegadeleader1]

1 hour ago, Thom said:

@wm cheng Well, we didnt know Disco had that cadaverous interior until they showed them to us. Who knows what's happening behind the walls on Enterprise!

If it's anything like the Enterprise-D there's at least a couple bodies behind the wall!

[renegadeleader1]

2 hours ago, wm cheng said:

On K-19 (old Russian Sub) the sets had to be designed to break apart (wild) 1/3rd - 2/3rds on train tracks because they were so heavy to allow the camera into those tight quarters, shots had to be planned months in advance to have a schedule that allowed wilding of such major pieces (but that was a Harrison Ford feature!)

I've been aboard K-77, the sub used as a stand in for K-19. It was docked as a museum ship in Providence Rhode Island and sank in storm due to the the modifications the filming crew made rendering it no longer water tight.

 

The thing I'll always remember about it was how the entire boat was encased in 10 inch wide rubber bricks in an effort to dampen the noise and sonar signature it gave off.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Thom said:

@wm cheng Well, we didnt know Disco had that cadaverous interior until they showed them to us. Who knows what's happening behind the walls on Enterprise!

Discovery was pretty ridiculous... even from the outset, but it got worse when it got to the 32nd century and literally became Bigger on the Inside.

The Constitution-class is big for her era, but Strange New Worlds seems to be doing that same thing as the Abrams movies where the ship is seemingly two or three times its listed original size.

[Chronocidal]

Yeah, they did the old JJ-style bloat to it again, though apparently not quite as severe this time.  The "1/1000" Polar Lights kit is the same size as the ancient AMT 1/650 kit.  This one is at least close enough to the original that the saucer windows aren't thirty feet high, but the bridge design still makes no freaking sense, and I still think even the stated numbers are completely made up entirely independently of anything integral to the design.

Apparently they did this because they made the ships in Discovery so stupid huge and wanted it to blend in, but there's just no fixing the problems they've caused at this point.

Edited May 8, 2022 by Chronocidal

[Lolicon]

The actor playing Spock needs to change his name to Ethan Pecs.

[Thom]

Unless there's some interdimensional cross-rip, we'll never see visually this huge size they want the ships to be now, which makes it all pointless. I tend to completely ignore it and just see them (the Enterprise) as the same size as the TOS version. Though now I really want a new-kit of the TMP Enterprise, only now in 1/650!