Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

[sh9000]

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Paramount still haven't learned their freaking lesson. 

Discovery was a flop. Strange New Worlds succeeded as a spin-off because it did away with everything to do with Discovery.

This is just going to run into the same problem Discovery did, putting a pack of unlikable characters in a setting the fans have already clearly and repeatedly said that they hate. I only hope poor Robert Picardo has good health insurance, because he's going to put his back out trying to carry this series.

[Big s]

29 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Paramount still haven't learned their freaking lesson. 

Discovery was a flop. Strange New Worlds succeeded as a spin-off because it did away with everything to do with Discovery.

This is just going to run into the same problem Discovery did, putting a pack of unlikable characters in a setting the fans have already clearly and repeatedly said that they hate. I only hope poor Robert Picardo has good health insurance, because he's going to put his back out trying to carry this series.

It’ll probably be a flop mostly because it’s on P+. I still don’t know anyone that’s subscribed.

[TangledThorns]

7 hours ago, Big s said:

It’ll probably be a flop mostly because it’s on P+. I still don’t know anyone that’s subscribed.

I'm on a annual subscription with Paramount+. Signed up because it was cheap and for HALO but it's cancelled now. There is some good movies and series, namely Taylor Sheridan's, in the library but don't care for the new STAR TREK series. Picard was mostly bad and Strange New Worlds doesn't keep my attention long enough. But yeah, don't think I'm gonna renew my subscription when it ends.

[Big s]

1 hour ago, TangledThorns said:

I'm on a annual subscription with Paramount+. Signed up because it was cheap and for HALO but it's cancelled now. There is some good movies and series, namely Taylor Sheridan's, in the library but don't care for the new STAR TREK series. Picard was mostly bad and Strange New Worlds doesn't keep my attention long enough. But yeah, don't think I'm gonna renew my subscription when it ends.

If it’s good, I’ll just wait and see if it gets moved to a better service, I keep hearing P+ is getting sold and the story keeps changing for whose acquiring it and if shows will just go separate ways to different streaming services 

[Thom]

If this has the same showrunners/writers as Disco, then that would be a bad sign. But having Picardo and 'Dadmiral' are good signs. Fehr was the only character I really liked on that show.

[Knight26]

I liked Tig's character when she first came on, but stopped watching shortly thereafter.  But yes, I don't know many Trek fans who like disco, so I doubt that it will do well.  Love SNW and Lower Decks though.

[Old_Nash_II]

The return of Holo-doctor^^

 

[Mommar]

They're still trying to flog this concept?  Nobody has wanted this.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Big s said:

If it’s good, I’ll just wait and see if it gets moved to a better service, I keep hearing P+ is getting sold and the story keeps changing for whose acquiring it and if shows will just go separate ways to different streaming services 

It's not Paramount+ that's for sale... it's Paramount itself.

The current incarnation of Paramount was formed by re-merging CBS and Viacom in the hopes that consolidation would help them succeed with lower costs.  It had the opposite effect because CBS and Viacom are two halves of a whole idiot, and so the company's been bleeding money and declining in valuation because many of their channels like MTV and VH1 aren't doing so hot and Paramount+ being the financial equivalent of a sucking chest wound thanks to its profound lack of content.  They're looking for a Get Out of Jail Free card for the consequences of actions like selling billions of dollars in stock to fund the development and production of things like Star Trek: Discovery's seasons 3-5.

 

 

4 hours ago, Old_Nash_II said:

The return of Holo-doctor^^

Ah, but which one?  Is this the original one from Star Trek: Voyager or the copy from "Living Witness" that was reactivated from a backup module in 3074?

 

26 minutes ago, Mommar said:

They're still trying to flog this concept?  Nobody has wanted this.

No kidding... this, like Discovery's third season, is a rescue from 80's and 90's Paramount's pile of rejected Star Trek series pitches.

Various people have pitched the idea of a series set at Starfleet Academy half a dozen times or so, and it's always been rejected because the idea itself is boring and hard to write for.  Starfleet Academy's basically just Space College and cadets don't get any dangerous/exciting duty even in field training.

They even tried to make the concept into a comic book at one point, and it did so poorly it was cancelled after barely a year.

[Dynaman]

They just won't let this terrible idea go.

[JB0]

On 8/1/2024 at 4:14 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Ah, but which one?  Is this the original one from Star Trek: Voyager or the copy from "Living Witness" that was reactivated from a backup module in 3074?

Yes! I've wanted to see that plot thread picked up at some point. But I kinda don't think I want current Trek writers to do it, so I hope it's the original EMH.

[Seto Kaiba]

21 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Yes! I've wanted to see that plot thread picked up at some point. But I kinda don't think I want current Trek writers to do it, so I hope it's the original EMH.

If the Starfleet Academy writer's room is infested with the former occupants of the Discovery and Picard writer's rooms as it almost certainly will be, having him back at all feels like a lose-lose situation.  I don't really wanna see the snarky, comedic EMH turned into yet another miserable bastard.

[JB0]

29 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

If the Starfleet Academy writer's room is infested with the former occupants of the Discovery and Picard writer's rooms as it almost certainly will be, having him back at all feels like a lose-lose situation.  I don't really wanna see the snarky, comedic EMH turned into yet another miserable bastard.

Using the EMH at this point is awkward regardless just because Robert Picardo has aged and The Doctor shouldn't have.

Edited August 2 by JB0

[Seto Kaiba]

48 minutes ago, JB0 said:

Using the EMH at this point is awkward regardless just because Robert Picardo has aged and The Doctor shouldn't have.

In all fairness, I'd say that's a certifiable non-issue.

Unlike Data, who was a physical construct with a fixed appearance, the Doctor is a hologram.  Every aspect of his appearance is entirely arbitrary and mutable.  We've seen that he can modify his appearance to change his projected clothes (e.g. Fair Haven), to appear to be a member of another species ("Blink of an Eye") and/or gender ("Life Line"), or even to impersonate specific people ("Renaissance Man").  We know these abilities aren't unique either, because we've seen another EMH Mk.I reconfigured the same way in "Dr. Bashir, I Presume" to take on the appearance of Dr. Bashir.  Appearing to age a bit is so far within what we already know he can do that it's readily excusible.  He can play the "Screw you, I can look how I want" card every bit as effectively as the Founders.

If they wanna digitally de-age him, they can even chalk the uncanny valley effect up to him being an obsolete hologram from 800 years ago.

[Thom]

On 8/1/2024 at 5:14 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

...

Ah, but which one?  Is this the original one from Star Trek: Voyager or the copy from "Living Witness" that was reactivated from a backup module in 3074?

...

I hope it is the Living Witness version, and I hope they do him right.

At this point, the back-up Doctor would have been active for only 114 years. Voyager was about 70 years away from the Federation at high warp, so that would be plenty of time for him to bop around the galaxy for a little bit, reach the Federation, post Burn, and settle at the Academy when it reopened. I could imagine the character doing a lot of work during the post-Burn era.

As for appearance, that's easy enough to just say he's trying to 'look his age.'

[JB0]

21 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

In all fairness, I'd say that's a certifiable non-issue.

Unlike Data, who was a physical construct with a fixed appearance, the Doctor is a hologram.  Every aspect of his appearance is entirely arbitrary and mutable.  We've seen that he can modify his appearance to change his projected clothes (e.g. Fair Haven), to appear to be a member of another species ("Blink of an Eye") and/or gender ("Life Line"), or even to impersonate specific people ("Renaissance Man").  We know these abilities aren't unique either, because we've seen another EMH Mk.I reconfigured the same way in "Dr. Bashir, I Presume" to take on the appearance of Dr. Bashir.  Appearing to age a bit is so far within what we already know he can do that it's readily excusible.  He can play the "Screw you, I can look how I want" card every bit as effectively as the Founders.

If they wanna digitally de-age him, they can even chalk the uncanny valley effect up to him being an obsolete hologram from 800 years ago.

I suppose that's fair. It just feels weird, particularly for someone incapable of beginning an interaction without saying "please state the nature of the medical emergency".

 

He also changed his clothes in the episode where he had to play the Emergency Command Hologram.

[Seto Kaiba]

20 hours ago, JB0 said:

I suppose that's fair. It just feels weird, particularly for someone incapable of beginning an interaction without saying "please state the nature of the medical emergency".

He could change that, he just didn't want to... as in "Life Line" when he actually gets upset with Dr. Zimmerman for changing it as part of an attempt to upgrade him with some quality-of-life improvements.

The bigger problem is, IMO, that he's still around at all.  He's over 800 years old, technologically, and by the time of Starfleet Academy even his mobile emitter is ~300 years old.  He probably should've been taken offline like B4 was during the Federation's ban on artificial lifeforms and even in the 32nd century Starfleet prohibits self-aware AIs on its ships and bases... so if he's not really self-aware/sentient then why does he still exist at all, and if he is, why is he allowed anywhere in Starfleet?

[Thom]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

He could change that, he just didn't want to... as in "Life Line" when he actually gets upset with Dr. Zimmerman for changing it as part of an attempt to upgrade him with some quality-of-life improvements.

The bigger problem is, IMO, that he's still around at all.  He's over 800 years old, technologically, and by the time of Starfleet Academy even his mobile emitter is ~300 years old.  He probably should've been taken offline like B4 was during the Federation's ban on artificial lifeforms and even in the 32nd century Starfleet prohibits self-aware AIs on its ships and bases... so if he's not really self-aware/sentient then why does he still exist at all, and if he is, why is he allowed anywhere in Starfleet?

If this is the Living Witness version, then he was not reactivated until five years after the Burn happened in 3069, so he would have missed out on all the fun of the artificial life form ban. And compared to the Doctor, B4 was a far substandard version of AI, though possibly more capable than the ones that were hacked on Mars(?), and the Doctor does have a long and distinguished history, so I would assume that exception could be made. This is in reference to the Doctor seen on Profigy, as he was around during the Attack on Mars, and the ban would be lifted 14 years later, in 2399 anyway.

And who knows how long the back-up Doctor spent traveling back to Federation space before then, or what kind of tech he acquired to sustain himself?

But if this is the original Doctor, then they could say that he was just shut down for all that time, and forgotten. Someone finds and reactivates him with 32nd Century tech and voila! Though that is basically identical to the Living Witness episode...

Edited August 4 by Thom

[pengbuzz]

1 hour ago, Thom said:

If this is the Living Witness version, then he was not reactivated until five years after the Burn happened in 3069, so he would have missed out on all the fun of the artificial life form ban. And compared to the Doctor, B4 was a far substandard version of AI, though possibly more capable than the ones that were hacked on Mars(?), and the Doctor does have a long and distinguished history, so I would assume that exception could be made. This is in reference to the Doctor seen on Profigy, as he was around during the Attack on Mars, and the ban would be lifted 14 years later, in 2399 anyway.

And who knows how long the back-up Doctor spent traveling back to Federation space before then, or what kind of tech he acquired to sustain himself?

But if this is the original Doctor, then they could say that he was just shut down for all that time, and forgotten. Someone finds and reactivates him with 32nd Century tech and voila! Though that is basically identical to the Living Witness episode...

On that note: has anyone put Mars out yet?

[Thom]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

On that note: has anyone put Mars out yet?

Good question! Or, have they renamed it Centralia..?

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, pengbuzz said:

On that note: has anyone put Mars out yet?

Signs point to yes?

There's a throwaway line in the second-to-last episode of Star Trek: Discovery ("Lagrange Point") where Ensign Tal mentions the Earth Defense Force has been visiting Mars in the 32nd century.  Whether it's been recolonized or not, it's apparently at least safe to go there.

[sh9000]

[tekering]

Great news!  I loved the first season. 🙄

[Seto Kaiba]

Well, that's... troubling.

Paramount, who are in a bad way financially, are preemptively doubling down on an unasked-for spinoff of the Star Trek franchise's all-time least successful, worst reviewed TV series.  A spinoff based on a recycled series concept that almost every producer to touch the franchise in its golden age rejected as fundamentally unsellable.

And to maximize their chances of success, they cast an actress best known for her starring role in one of the most expensive and embarrassing flops in streaming history?

They do know The Producers was a comedy, not a documentary, right?

[Thom]

12 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Well, that's... troubling.

Paramount, who are in a bad way financially, are preemptively doubling down on an unasked-for spinoff of the Star Trek franchise's all-time least successful, worst reviewed TV series.  A spinoff based on a recycled series concept that almost every producer to touch the franchise in its golden age rejected as fundamentally unsellable.

And to maximize their chances of success, they cast an actress best known for her starring role in one of the most expensive and embarrassing flops in streaming history?

They do know The Producers was a comedy, not a documentary, right?

Actually, I think she was great in She-Hulk. Whether you liked the series or not, she is a good actress with some range, and I look forward to seeing her in this one.

[Big s]

4 hours ago, Thom said:

Actually, I think she was great in She-Hulk. Whether you liked the series or not, she is a good actress with some range, and I look forward to seeing her in this one.

Personally, I hated the show and her character. She may not be a bad actress though. But she may have done a lot of damage to herself with her actions in real life after her shows cancellation and even more after her scenes were cut from the Deadpool and Wolverine movie. But who knows, maybe this will help her wash away all that and move on 

[Seto Kaiba]

4 hours ago, Thom said:

Actually, I think she was great in She-Hulk. Whether you liked the series or not, she is a good actress with some range, and I look forward to seeing her in this one.

Granted, there's little to distinguish a good actress working with a rubbish script and lacking direction from a bad one in the same conditions.

Whether we think she's a good actress or a bad one (I'd call her "middling" based on her inability to spot a bad script), it's not a great look for a production that's already self-sabotaging on so many other fronts to hire an actress best known for two things:  1. starring in one of the industry's all-time biggest flops and 2. blaming "sexist fans" for said flop instead of more deserving figures like either the writers or director.  They couldn't find someone with a less sh*tty reputation for a major recurring guest spot?  Is this just an attempt to get out ahead of the failure with their own fan-blaming expert, or are they going to claim she brought the toxic fans with her?

[Hikuro]

Wow....paramount is so confident in this series they already set it up for season 2? That's, rather odd!

[Dynaman]

I'm thinking this one is going to be so cheap (compared to a starship based series) that they renewed it to have something to show next year.

I still remember the Starfleet Academy episode of Next Generation where they added a stupid sound effect when someone opened an obviously normal 20th century door...